Kraken and Leviathan: Difference between revisions

{{trope|wppage=Sea in culture#Early_history}}

 

{{quote|''On a scale of one to ten, [[Broke the Rating Scale|there is no number large enough.]]''|Flavor text for Cawh, pictured, ''[[Magi Nation]]''}}

** The Behemoth can swallow ironclads.

*** Here it is in action.http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/navalbattle.html

* The final book of the ''[[Illuminatus]] Trilogy'', ''Leviathan'', has the main characters coming face-to-um...''something'' with the eponymous sea-monster, a titanic single-celled organism that's survived and grown since the Paleozoic Era.

* The Enterprise fish from ''[[The War Against the Chtorr]]'', part of the ecological [[Alien Invasion]]. These massive fish roam the oceans eating everything natural or man-made to fuel their constant hunger and enormous growth. [[Immune to Bullets]] thanks to their massive layers of blubber, the only way to destroy them is with a low-yield atomic torpedo.

* Steve Alten writes a lot of books with these; his novel Meg was about a Megalodon (sixty foot prehistoric shark) that makes it to the surface after surviving down in the Marinara Trench. [[Hilarity Ensues]]. It suffered from some [[Sequelitis]] though. His more recent novel The Loch deals with, of course, [[Stock Ness Monster|the Loch Ness Monster]]. In a twist however, Nessie isn't a peaceful plesiosaur but a giant eel with a taste for tourists.

{{quote|''The Kraken stirred. And ten million sushi dinners cried out for vengeance.''}}

* Among the whales are [[Moby Dick]] and the giant shark from ''[[Pinocchio]]'' [[Disneyfied]] into a giant whale (and thus, the 'big fish' from the Bible that inspired it).

* In ''[[Narnia|The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]]'', the eponymous ship is attacked by a large sea serpent, which almost manages to crush it in its coils.

* In [[Chronicles of the Emerged World|Sennar's Mission]] a gargantuan sea monster similar to a kraken is met on the way to the Submerged World. Its hunting method consist in wait for ships and then make them slither on his body to the gaping mouth in the middle, using tentacles if necessary. However, the beast is never named.

* In ''[[Tortall Universe|Wild Mage]]'', during the attack on Pirate's Swoop, Daine tries to convince a pod of whales to attack the Carthaki backed pirate fleet. [[Actual Pacifist|When they refuse and leave]], Daine sends her awareness far out after them, and wakes the Kraken. [[Affably Evil|He's more than happy]] to destroy any fleet she wants. She knows full well it's [[Deal with the Devil|a deal with a demon]], but she's desperate and agrees to his offer. He's described as an octopus with too many arms that are a mile long each, with a body that's a mile and a half. He's also fast: Daine found him out past the Copper Isles, a four day sail. He made it to Pirate's Swoop in the space of a morning.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* One episode of ''Jurassic Fight Club'' featured a battle between a ''Megalodon'' shark (see above) and its more recently-discovered contemporary, the "biting sperm whale".

* If we go with the view that [[Space Is an Ocean]], Moya's species of giant living ships called "Leviathans" count as examples of this trope.

* The Leviathans on [[Supernatural]] are not giant sea creatures, but rather are perfectly capable of living on land and while they are seldom seen in their true form, there's no sign that this true form is any bigger than the human disguises they use. But there are good mythological reasons for calling them by the name "Leviathan": Their backstory is related to biblical mythology; they are [[Eldritch Abomination]] s that are all about [[To Serve Man|having a predatory appetite]]; and when their true form is shown, the view isn't very clear, but it definitely has [[More Teeth Than the Osmond Family]].

** Another example would be the unspecified sea monster sent by Posiedon to help the Greeks in the Trojan War, too bad for Odessius he forgot to give Posiedon props for that when it was over.

** Of course the best example to be found in this mythology would probably be Echidna the ''literal'' mother of them all, and a whole bunch of others who don't share her watery lair as well.

* Apep might also count. He was a colossal serpent that stalked the ancient Egyptian underworld, hoping to devour the sun god. According to [[The Other Wiki]] one of his nicknames was "World Encircler", making him similar to Jormungandr above.

 

** The splatbook ''Elder Evils'' has the Leviathan, an immense world-spanning sea monster made out of pure chaos which was a side-effect of the creation of the world. It sleeps at the bottom of the ocean and will eventually fade away into nothingness, provided nobody wakes it up. Unfortunately, since this is [[Apocalypse How|Elder Evils]] we're talking about...

** Kraken and another Leviathan also appear in the various ''Monster Manuals'', the former being a particularly [[Giant Squid]] with magical powers, the latter being a really, ''really'' big whale. Supposedly.

** While it never appeared in the original novels, the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' modules based on the Chronicles trilogy give us the King of the Deep. The King of the Deep is a nightmarish sea monster with the body of a huge fish covered in silver hairs, the head of a giant squid, and a pair of long, deadly lobster claws, created when ten (or twelve in the updated 3rd Edition version) of the corrupted priests of Istar offered themselves to the [[Big Bad|Queen of Darkness]], who turned them into this monster.

* In Chaosium's ''Stormbringer'' supplement ''Demon Magic'', the adventure "Sorcerer's Isle" had a [[Megalodon]] that could sink ships by biting through their hulls and a giant whale-like demon named Lvthn.

* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' has a few, though they're rather obscure. The Space Wolf homeworld has a ''massive'' kraken (said to be a [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Tyranid offshoot]]) and sea serpents straight out of Norse myth, appropriate given the Space Wolves' Viking theme, and a sea monster is said to live on the planet Armageddon, where it attacked Ork ships. Given the nature of the setting, it's a safe bet that most world with any oceans have at least one.

** Though a couple references that aren't obscure by any stretch of the imagination are the Tyranids of the hive fleets named, you guessed it, Kraken and Leviathan. The third canonic hive fleet ([[Canon Discontinuity|ignoring Naga, Jormungadr, and Gorgon]]) is Behemoth, the first fleet to appear in the chronology.

** There's also a fan-brew game on RPG.net, ''[[Leviathan: The Tempest]]'', which is all about playing the [[Fish People]] in human form descended from primordial gods of the ocean. They have the ability to assume ungodly large forms, but don't do it except for dire circumstances as it tends to rend the [[Masquerade]] in two and drives humans into a state of holy terror.

*** And humans would utterly crush any Leviathan who tried it.

 

== Other ==

 

 

** From the Niobraran Sea, of Cretaceous Kansas, we have ''Tusoteuthis'', a 20 to 35 foot long (with tentacles outstretched) relative of the modern-day vampire squid. Of course, it was not even close to being the worst of the worst of the denizens of the Niobraran: a fossil of a predatory salmon, ''Cimolichthys'', showed that the beast choked to death while trying to swallow a ''Tusoteuthis'', tailfirst.

* Much is made about how the bus-sized, 20-foot placoderm fish ''Dunkleosteus'' was the world's first vertebrate superpredator. It's often mentioned that ''Dunkleosteus'' ' bite was among the strongest of any vertebrate living or extinct, and that it was a [[Big Eater|voracious cannibal]]. What isn't mentioned is how Big D had several, equally voracious relatives, including the evocatively named ''Dinichthys'' and ''Gorgonichthys'', who were only slightly smaller (by about a few feet, or so). And then there was the 30 foot long ''Titanichthys'', the largest placoderm ever, though, it was a [[Gentle Giant|basking shark-like plankton eater]] with "ineffectual mouthplates."

** ''"[[Charlie the Unicorn|It's a]] '''[[Charlie the Unicorn|magical]]''' [[Charlie the Unicorn|Liopleurodon!]]"''

* Also, the Mosasaurs of the Cretaceous, which were about as close to the mythical sea-serpents as you can get.