YMMV / Crocodile Hunter

• Badass Decay: Following Steve's death, the Irwins' television work has understandably become far tamer, not the least because the man's kids are now driving most of it. As of the late 2018 premiere of Crikey! It's the Irwins, Bindi was only just this side of adulthood and has grown more interested in the research side of the house, despite capturing her first croc at age five (albeit a "harmless" baby freshie). As a result of new regulations brought about by the "Baby Bob" incident, where Steve brought the infant Robert in with him for a croc feeding, Robert couldn't start getting down and dirty with the crocs quite as young as Bindi or Steve did. There's been almost no focus on the Australia Zoo's animal rescue activities, which is where most of the craziness came from. Even the interactions with crocodiles have mellowed out, and are now more methodical than the frenetic pace at which Steve's croc captures went. For instance, when trapping crocodiles for research nowadays, they no longer use the counterbalanced net traps that Steve favored and instead exclusively use soft-sided crate-style traps that don't get tangled in the croc's jaws (which happened constantly), and the ropes used to hold the jaws closed are secured in a way that doesn't require the use of a knife to remove them. There is a chance, however, that the action level might ramp up as Robert gets older.
• Crazy Is Cool: Let's see... gleefully jumping on large predators, grabbing venomous snakes by the tail... admit it. This guy was nuts, and we all enjoyed watching the man perform.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show is far more popular outside of Australia than inside. Part of it is the Cultural Cringe seeing that Steve Irwin seemingly embraced basically every Australian stereotype, and the other part is... well, it just isn't as impressive for people who actually live in Australia.
• Harsher in Hindsight
  • Basically any joke or comedic segment about Steve getting dismembered or dying is going feel terribly wrong nowadays. All of these run in the face of some very sad conversations he'd had with Terri in private, relayed in Steve and Me, about whether she'd still love him if he was dismembered or disfigured in the course of his work, followed by Terri gently reassuring him that nothing would happen.
  • In 2000, Steve Irwin appeared in a commercial for FedEx, in which he's bitten by a snake and says the antidote is being shipped via FedEx because in this business "if you're not absolutely sure, you're absolutely dead" and is then told antidote has been sent by a different courier and falls over dead. Six years later...
  • Steve used to say in several Crocodile Hunter specials and talk-show interviews that if he were to ever be killed or eaten by wildlife, he wanted the cameras to keep rolling, joking about squeaking out a last "Crikey!" as a hypothetical monster crocodile swallows him whole. A small film crew was with Steve when he had his accident with the stingray, and in accordance with his wishes, they filmed it. Terri was given the only copy of the footage after a handful of crew watched it and rather than watch it herself, she immediately had it destroyed.
• Memetic Mutation: "Crikey!" "Gorgeous." "Very, very dangerous!"

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