Once you're in their territory, you're in big trouble.
- Cretaceous and Maelstrom might look like natural predators, but they are actually scary and dangerous threats:
- Their introduction deserves of special mention of its' startlingly effective twist on the Eye Awaken trope—both of the animals are shown to have been frozen with their eyes open, rather than being closed first so they can be opened for dramatic effect.. Just a simple closeup on one of them frozen in the ice, the music builds, then…THOOM! Cretaceous is revealed to be awake by shifting from staring off-center to looking directly at the viewer! This pretty much establishes what the heroes will face from then on.
- Also, considering that Cretaceous and Maelstrom don't speak and they look and act realistically, they are very dark antagonists. All they utter are ferocious growling, snarling, and hissing sounds. Not helping matters is that anytime these two enter the picture, the score audibly transitions to something that'd feel right at home with what you'd hear in a Slasher Movie.
- It's rather easy to notice upon a second viewing that Cretaceous and Maelstrom aren't just acting like typical predators: there is actual, intentional spite in their eyes when their prey gets away, and Cretaceous actually seems to smile when lunging for Manny. Maelstrom later shoots Manny a murderous glare when the two have him cornered underwater, all but confirming that It Can Think...
- In the video game, Maelstrom and Cretaceous act noticeably more feral and unhinged than in the movie, roaring and snarling viciously when chasing Scrat and charging through sheets of ice to get at him. Definitely seems that the herd constantly evading their hungry maws has made them royally pissed off.
- The director does a great job in making the viewers expect the beasts to strike anytime. The young aardvark that is left behind and looks into the lake looks very much like a potential victim and... splash! It was just Fast Tony's glyptodon lackey Stu scaring him senseless into leaving, and then while he swims carefree, it comes as no surprise that the snorkel gets dragged down and Stu gets devoured alive. And his remains, the shell, gets used by his boss (the aforementioned Fast Tony) as a boat.
- Just the fact that if Stu hadn't scared away the young aardvark, Improbable Infant Survival WOULD have been averted.
- Also considering the fact that glyptodon shells are living parts of the body (much like turtles, the shells are fused to the spine), the fact poor Stu was ripped clean out of his paints a VERY disturbing picture of what his death must've been like...
- The Geyser Field near the climax. It's the equivalent of walking through a minefield, except in addition to being blown apart, you suffer a Cruel and Unusual Death via being broiled alive (as the film is all too happy to show us with a Dodo). Every step has the potential to be fatal, the places where the steam erupts from are ever changing - and to cap it all off, there's no other way to go: it's either through the broiling, desolate hell of the Geyser Field, or death by drowning when the Dam finally bursts.
- The vulture confirming that the dam will burst and the valley will be completely flooded in a few days is somber and haunting, especially as the animals look around as the vulture makes clear they're in a bowl ready to be filled up. The vulture also makes it clear what will happen to them if they either perish during their exodus to the boat, or die in the flood:Vulture: There is good news: The more of you die, the better I eat. (Various animals gasp) I didn't say it was good news for you.
- "Do not leave your child unattended. All unattended children will be eaten." Jesus, birdie, could you really not avoid to say that?!?
- The vultures' rendition of "Food, Glorious Food" probably would've been this had it been played seriously instead of Black Comedy.
- The film continues to regularly cut back to the deteriorating dam (Usually when we cut to see what Scrat is doing with his acorn), with an ominous rumbling growing louder and louder with each time, giving us a friendly reminder of the apocalyptic flood slowly growing closer with each passing day in the film. When the dam finally does burst near the end of the film, it's with an almighty explosion of water that instantly drowns and swallows whole the former waterpark and half of the movie's settings, covering in mere seconds what took the entire cast 3 days to travel across. We cut back to the boat, where the animals all feel the earthquake and rumbling roars caused by the biblical flood and realize what has happened - they don't waste a millisecond before they start stampeding up the mountain to hurry onto the boat before it's too late.
- After Ellie is trapped and sends Crash and Eddie to get help, we cut to the approaching floodwaters again, and see Cretaceous and Maelstrom surging with the floodwaters, ready to pick off any victims that didn't escape in time. Now the mammals are in their element.
- When Manny rushes to go save Ellie, he pauses when he notices something on the horizon - it's the gigantic tsunami caused by the flood, barreling towards them. Manny is appropriately terrified.
- Even after Ellie is rescued, the group realizes they’re still in peril as the floodwaters are continuing to rise. They huddle together, and are terrified as they begin to lose solid ground to stand on. Sid and the opossum brothers climb on top of Manny and Ellie since they can, but it’s clear it’s not going to save them since the mammoths will soon lose their footing. Diego, who can’t climb on top of the mammoths, nervously puts a paw onto Manny’s back to support himself, but the implications are clear they’re going to eventually drown from exhaustion.
- During this, the group hears an ear splitting chorus of screams, and look up to see the gigantic peak that was holding the boat collapsing. The hundreds of animals who did make it to the boat are left to scream for their lives as the boat slowly, ominously slides down, and crashes violently into the flood. They are all knocked around like toys by the impact, still completely at the mercy of nature even after reaching their supposed salvation, and are lucky the rest of their ride seemed to be peaceful.
Video Game:
- Death by drowning is unnervingly dark and graphic considering this game's target audience and the rest of the game having more slapstick-y failure scenes. If Scrat's Oxygen Meter runs out underwater, his life rapidly decreases as he makes pained gurgling and choking noises. If that hits zero as well, the squirrel's eyes roll into the back of his head as he visibly inhales a lungful of water and goes limp.
- The Womb Level after Maelstrom swallows Scrat, especially the “boss”: a parasitic circle of eyeballs surrounding a huge sphincter.
- At one point in bog level you have to fight with GIANT spider, that has red eyes and makes robot-like sounds. The fact that Scrat is smaller than spider, makes it more unnerving.
