The Ass Blasters fly by essentially farting out combustible chemicals, creating an explosion that shoots them into the air, and from there they open their wings and start gliding.
Burt Gummer is the number one fan favorite character, and the only one to appear in all seven installments (sort of).
Then there's the albino Graboid named El Blanco.
Miguel, a Nice Guy decent at MacGyvering whose Mauve Shirt survivor status stood out in the first movie. Fans were not happy that he ended up knocked off a cliff in the third one.
Mindy, for being decently adorable and not being The Load in the first movie, and being a decently competent Action Survivor as a teenager in the third.
First Installment Wins: The sequels largely avoid succumbing to Sequelitis, and offer up the same enjoyable B-movie fun as the original despite being lower-budget and going Direct to Video. That said, in terms of writing, casting, and special effects, the first movie is still held to be the best of the bunch.
Try listening to one of Burt Gummer's rants about the government collecting people's information after hearing about the NSA scandal and the IRS targeting of political opponents, and see if you still find them funny.
One of Burt's rants in his Establishing Character Moment is him telling the rest of the townsfolk that if Rhonda discovers something in the valley like uranium, the government will arrive to kick everybody out by claiming "eminent domain". The battle of the residents of Perfection to stay in the valley with the government wishing to kick them out because the Graboids are considered an endangered species, a battle that the government finally wins by Shrieker Island when Burt, the only resident remaining in Perfection after everybody else got fed up of the mess and left, decides to get out himself because they won't give him licensing to reinforce his home thanks to said eminent domain, are a constant subplot of the franchise from the third movie onward.
Val and Earl's decision to leave town loses most of humor when we learn in Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell everyone else eventually had the same idea and Perfection is reduced to a mostly demolished ghost town.
Val and Earl talk about needing a tank. An improvised tank. "What about that bulldozer over there?" 17 years later someone else had a similar idea...
Ever wonder what the full name of "Desert Jack" from Tremors 3 was? The titles reveal it's Jack Sawyer.
In the first movie, after sending the final Graboid over the cliff, Val yells, "Can you fly?!" Two movies later and...
Val makes a remark that everyone knew about the Graboids and simply didn't tell Earl. He was being sarcastic, but then came the fourth movie.
I Am Not Shazam: The monsters are called Graboids (coined by Walter Chang in the first film), not Tremors. Lampshaded in the third movie. The film title refers to the tremors, miniature earthquakes, caused by the monsters tunneling through the ground near the seismic sensors. Blame Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure for people thinking the monsters were called Tremors.
It Was His Sled: The eel-like snake things are the graboids' tongues, the actual animal is rather large.
Happened a lot in the series and the later movies. Primarily the third and fourth, largely due to its lower budgets.
The Canadian "snow" in the sixth movie is really South African sand with a variety of color filters.
Averted in the fifth and sixth movie, the CGI on the creatures is fantastic (if sparse) and it's almost impossible to believe it's from a straight-to-DVD movie.
Squick: At the end of the first film, the last Graboid falls off the cliff and just ruptures upon impact to the rocky ground, gushing out orange blood.
Strawman Has a Point: In the third film, Back to Perfection, the three federal agents who show up in town to protect the Graboids are obviously intended to seem like two intrusive bureaucrats and one useless bleeding heart. They're willing to take away the homes of the residents to protect monsters, so they're secondary antagonists. At the same time, though...well, they do have a point. The Graboids are either bizarre living fossils that reflect an ancient lineage with no other representatives, or possibly even extraterrestrial in origin (documents online say that scientists haven't ruled this out, due to the possible age of the earliest fossil). No one knows how many of them there are, but it's a very small population. Even when the scientist from the Smithsonian launches into a tirade about how Burt has been instrumental in their slaughter on "three separate occasions", he's only absolutely wrong to condemn the first incident. It seems like just thinks it was like the other two, which were done to protect an oil company's assets in Sonora and what was most likely an agricultural tract/chicken farm in the Pampas. Allowing either population to survive in a fenced-in reserve could have even made human survival in a more serious incident easier, since killing them ASAP has led to sketchy info about their life cycle. Burt was lucky that what showed up on the Pampas were still Shriekers, because he had no way to know that they would metamorphose again into gliders. The agents are really just three underpaid, poorly funded people trying to protect a dangerous, but genuinely endangered, species. Their decision to act like jerkasses on first appearance comes across later like it was a poorly thought out attempt to cow everyone into not fighting back. Particularly Burt, who has money and public support from his past "hunts".
The Scrappy: Travis in the 5th and 6th films earned some ire for his lecherous behavior towards women as well as constant, forced puns and pop-culture references. You can hear Zoran Gvojic rant about it here and here.
TV Series:
Better on DVD: Due to the series being aired Out of Order when it initially came out, many plot point and character introductory episodes don’t come until after they’re well established in the show. note Episode 5, "Project 4-12" for instance introduces Cletus Poffenberger and the concept of Mixmaster, yet the 6th episode, "Ghost Dance", which already has his relationship with the Perfection citizens established, was aired as Episode 2. The DVD release keeps its intended episode order making character development and plot points more coherent to understand.
Plenty of the new faces in Perfection like Tyler, Rosalita and W. D. Twitchell are generally liked, with some wishing they show back up in the new movies.
Many of the shows new monsters such as 4-12, the Giant Shrimp and the Mixmaster plant are often ranked as some of the show’s best monsters for their terrifying moments of suspense and rampage through Perfection, in some regards almost taking over the small town.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The short-lived Syfy series might have been better if it had adapted more than one of the scripts from an un-produced earlier series (a vampire mountain man, an octopus creature in the trees, a winged monster the heroes pursue with sky-fishing methods etc.).
Growing the Beard: The first 4 episodes play out like basic Tremors fare not unlike the first 3 films. Episode 5 is where many fans agree the show slowly grew into its own identity with the reveal of Mixmaster, a chemical that can mutate any animal and even plant life for new, strange adventures.
Harsher in Hindsight: The episode "Blast from the Past" features the cast dealing with an Ass-Blaster named Messerschmitt that escaped from a Vegas magical act called Sigmund and Ray (a clear reference to famed Vegas showmen Siegfried & Roy). At one point, Tyler lambasts Sigmund and Ray for keeping such a dangerous and unpredictable animal and warns that Ass-Blasters attack people out of instinct that can't be controlled. This episode premiered six months before the infamous tiger attack during one of Siegfried and Roy's shows that left Roy permanently disabled for the rest of his life.
He's Just Hiding: In "Shriek and Destroy," the lack of human remains in Otto's van along with the blood (when most shrieker attacks in the show leave blood and bones) cause some fans to wonder if Otto or Meghan (or both, with one being wounded) escaped the shriekers by ducking out another door.
Mis-blamed: The TV series often gets the blame for the cancellation of Farscape, which earned it a great deal of backlash. However, the series was actually picked up two months before the Sci-Fi Channel's decision to cancel Farscape (which at the time had a contractual obligation for a fifth season). In fact, Tremors was originally set to premiere in January 2002 (alongside the final half of Farscape's fourth season), but was delayed to that summer months after Farscape concluded in March due to special effects delays.
Val and Earl! Many felt they should’ve had at least one appearance within the show and explore what they’ve been up to since last they were seen.
Regarding characters within the show, Melvin only appeared in 2 episodes, one of which (the pilot) involved him trying to sabotage the residents of Perfection by making El Blanco freak out so it could be killed and he could build homes over protected land. He would’ve made for a perfect recurring villain within the show, but aside from one other appearance in "Water Hazard", he’s never seen interfering with Perfection afterwards.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Project 4-12" introduces a subplot of an abandoned lab that held the Mixmaster that now roams through Perfection. Burt sets out to find this lab and is even referenced in the following episode, but thanks to the show being Screwed by the Network this plot point was never resolved.
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