Shark Man

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
By Cotton

It's common knowledge that Everything's Even Worse with Sharks. Out of all the sea creatures, none sets in man a Primal Fear quite like a shark does. But what if you want something scarier than a shark? How could we possibly make so fearsome a beast even scarier? Why, by giving him legs, arms, and a human brain! Thus we have the Shark Man. It may be a Half-Human Hybrid. It may be a natural mutation on a shark, or a human Super Soldier with shark like enhancements. All that matters is it packs the bestial parts of a shark with the form of a human. Could probably apply with any large sea predator.

Examples of Shark Man include:

Anime and Manga

  • From Bleach, we have Hallibel in a more subtle version of this trope.
    • In a less-subtle way there's a Anime-only Arrancar of great power resembling a Hammerhead shark-man who was shown attacking Harribel and her Fraccion.
  • Kisame from Naruto, a member of the Antagonist group Akatsuki and one of the most badass ninjas around, very strongly resembles a shark. He has pale blue skin, small, round white eyes, gill-like facial markings under his eyes, gills on his shoulders and sharp triangular teeth. His sword is even named Samehada, meaning Shark-skin. He even becomes a shark-ray-man hybrid when he merges with Samehada.
    • The previous wielder of Samehada, Fuguki Suikazan, had a similarly shark-like appearance.
  • Skybite from Transformers: Robots in Disguise takes this form on for his robot mode.
  • Arlong of One Piece. The name and appearance seems to be a Visual Pun that works in multiple languages- the character is a literal Loan Shark, and "Ah-long" is a word for Loan Shark in some Chinese dialect.
    • Also from One Piece, we have Jinbei (A huge whale-shark man), Hody Jones (Great White Shark), Zeo (Japanese Wobblegong), Dosun (Hammerhead) and Daruma (Cookiecutter shark). On the mermen side we have prince Fukaboshi (fuka means Dogfish) and Madame Shirley (Shortfin Mako). Captain Vander Decken is a four-legged Japanese Bullhead-shark or "Nekozame" (catshark).
  • in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Viral combines this with Cat Boy.
  • One Duel Monster from Yu-Gi-Oh! is a shark with arms.

Comics

  • The DCU villains The Shark, King Shark and Carcharo. Note that of these only The Shark was an actual shark (evolved into human form by nuclear radiation) while King Shark is supernatural (see myths below) and Carcharo is a mutant.
    • Also ironically, The Shark originally ate fear not flesh, though he was changed to an actual maneater later during the Dark Age of comics.
  • Marvel Comics doesn't fall behind with the likes of Tiger Shark (a mutated human.)
  • "Frenzy" Fischmann from Top Ten.
  • In an issue of Tales of the TMNT, it was eventually revealed that the slain worm-animated clone of the Shredder had been brought back to life as one of these.
  • In a story unrelated to the one above, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures featured time-travelling Shark Man Armaggon as a nemesis for the future version of the turtles.
  • One of the many minor stories in the event comic Fear Itself featured Amadeus Cho, the second Power Man, Thunderstrike, X-23 and Anya Corazon teaming up (at Amadeus' Request) to save honolulu from an army of shark men in a vril-powered Nazi flying battleship.

Film

  • The main monster from the movie version of Peter Benchley's Creature. The novel version arguably counts in that it posses some very shark-like qualities.
  • Maccus from Dead Man's Chest is half hammerhead shark.
  • The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D. Sharkboy has many shark-like adaptations to his body, including gills, fins, sharpened teeth, claws, high strength, exceptional hearing and sense of smell, agility, reflexes and swimming ability. He is not affected by deep sea pressure or the bends.
  • The villainous aliens from the film adaptation of I Am Number Four seemed to have been designed with this in mind, being bald, having pure black eyes, gills, fangs and a super powerful sense of smell.
  • SharkMan, aka Hammerhead.
  • In Immortal, one of the scientists that captured Jill is a red-skinned man/hammerhead hybrid.

Live Action TV

Literature

  • Viktor Krum from Harry Potter became one temporarily in order to save Hermione in the second task.

Religion & Mythology

  • From Japanese Mythology there's the Samebito (litt. Shark Man), a servant of the Sea Dragon God Ryuujin. They're usually described as large ogre-like beings with ink-black skin, a fin and red beard. Also their tears turn into pearls.
  • Polynesian legends believed in sharks that could take human form. The DC Comics villain King Shark is the Half-Human Hybrid son of one.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Web Comics

Web Original

  • In Homestuck, Fin of the Felt appears to be this. He can even track people by their time trails much like a shark can follow the scent of blood in the water.

Western Animation

  • Street Sharks.
  • Spongebob's driving instructor from SpongeBob SquarePants. He is notable as one of the few sharks to be seen on the show.
    • Another shark was the spokesman for "Anchor Arms" (rubber gloves with inflatable muscles)... which Spongebob gets suckered into buying.
    • Another recurring character is a rather nerdy shark.

"Hey, that's my family you're talking about!"

  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Tansom, from the season 4 episodes "Water War" and "Gungan Attack". He fights by slacking his jaw, then ramming and biting people. They even have a segment where some people are trapped in a glass structure while he tries to break into it!
  • An episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo? had the gang travel to Antarctica, where they encountered a monstrous fish-shark monster that was terrorizing the Antarctic base.
  • Sharkey the sharkdog from Eek! The Cat is a variation on this, being a shark-dog hybrid
  • Gantu from Lilo and Stitch looks very sharklike (or whalelike) in appearance.
  • Sever from Hot Wheels Battle Force 5
  • Shark people played a large role in one episode of the second series American Dragon: Jake Long where a bubbly female sharkwoman asked Jake for help protecting her and Neptune's trident (which she kept in her stomach both to keep the weapon from falling in the wrong flippers and because of her nature as an all-consuming predator). The episode's one-time antagonist were a group of delinquent shark men and their leader, Tiburon, (all consisting of different shark species) who desired the trident so they could flood the world. The Sharkwoman's compulsive eating was the show's Running Gag
  • Partially counts in an episode of Aladdin The Animated Series, which had an evil mermaid put a magic spell on Aladdin that caused him to slowly transform into a shark, with his mid-transformations fitting this trope.
  • One recurring group of villains that Batman faced were the Terrible Trio, three thieves who wore head-covering masks representing three different animals, including a vulture, a fox, and a shark. Their backstories differed in each Batman series. In Batman: The Animated Series they were ordinary rich masked men who comitted crimes for fun, while in the The Batman' they were a group of university students who mutated themselves into therianthropic Petting Zoo People (including a hammer-headed shark man). The same formula was used in Batman: The Brave And The Bold where the eponymous superhero and his friend/rival Bronze Tiger battled a group of animal-masked martial artists, who not only were billionaires but tried to use a magical artifact to turn themselves into monstrous versions of the animals they represent, one of them transforming into a muscular but more generic shark man.
  • Although unintentional, the Transformers Prime version of Megatron actually looks like one of these (especially him having fangs and gill-like vents all over his body and alien jet altmode).
  • Tony Trihill from Cars 2 is a shark boat.
  • "AAAAAAH! Shark boy!"
  • An episode of Rugrats had the babies imagining used car salespeople as these.

Other

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