Kraken and Leviathan: Difference between revisions

They'll live in the deepest depths and their appearances are saved for the end of days when the world is to be shattered by their movements. If they're not [[Eldritch Abominations]], they're the next best thing. There will be little shyness about their inspirations, they'll be unabashedly named after the Norse legend of Kraken or the biblical Leviathan. The Kraken tends to take the form of a [[Combat Tentacles|tentacle laced]] [[Everything's Squishier With Cephalopods|giant squid or octopus]], while the Leviathan is more variable, ranging from a colossal whale to a [[Sea Monster|massive]] [[Final Fantasy|sea serpent]]. However, since [[Our Monsters Are Different]], the title of kraken or leviathan may be given to all kinds of terrors of the deep.

 

 

Kraken on the other hand are believed to be inspired by giant squid, and when most people think of a kraken, they tend to imagine a a squid-like creature that is simply many times bigger than a real one. However, since actual [[Nautical Folklore]] says that the Kraken could be mistaken for an entire [[That's No Moon|chain of islands]], one can reasonably infer that it was imagined to be ''much'' bigger than most film depictions.

== Comicbooks ==

* As you might expect, both the [[Sub-Mariner]] and [[Aquaman (Comic Book)|Aquaman]] have tangled with these types of creatures. For obvious reasons, they stand a much better chance than do the land-dwelling, air-breathing humans.

 

 

*** In the Midrash there's a legend or myth that states that the giant fish which swallowed Jonah narrowly avoids being eaten by Leviathan.

* Cthulhu from [[HP Lovecraft]]'s [[Cthulhu Mythos]] ''may'' count, as is imprisoned in the ocean on Earth, but it originally came from space...

* The sixth ''[[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]]'' book features a kraken. It's actually a peaceful bivalve creature that lives off of microorganisms and krill filtered out of seawater (just like a blue whale in fact). You still don't want to be on top of it when it sheds its skin, though...

* The ''[[Codex Alera]]'' has its own leviathans, something like enormous turtles with no shells. [[Word of God]] is they're descended from plesiosaurs, and the ''smallest'' ones are forty feet long. The larger ones... well, they're probably the single greatest threat to oceangoing ships. Alerans have to use [[Making a Splash|watercrafting]] to get around them, and the Canim maintain elaborate maps of their territories to avoid making them angry by sailing in too close.

** 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.

** There's also Scylla (or is it Charybdis?),from ''[[The Odyssey (Literature)|The Odyssey]]''.

*** Scylla was a six headed, snake necked creature that sat atop a cliff and snatched sailors from passing ships. The reason they didn't just sail around was because of the creature opposite the cliff, Charbydis. Basically she was a giant mouth under water. Every time she opened her mouth, a whirlpool formed to suck everything down. The original rock and hard place.

** 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.

* The first and second boss in the arcade shooter, ''[[The Ocean Hunter]]''. Leviathan is a giant shark in this game.

* ''[[Razing Storm]]'' has a squid-like [[Humongous Mecha]] named the Kraken, complete with [[Combat Tentacles]].

* ''[[Wonder Boy in Monster Land (Video Game)|Wonder Boy in Monster Land]]'' has a Kraken boss, although not particularly large.

* ''[[Wing Commander (Video Game)|Wing Commander]]: Prophecy'': The Terrans assign [[Reporting Names]] to the ships used by the new alien race attacking through the new [[Cool Gate|wormhole]] in the Kilrah System. These names are [[Theme Naming|pretty much all]] names for aquatic creatures from Earth, given that the alien ships all look like they would be at home under the ocean. The capital ships are named for mythological sea monsters, including the Kraken and Leviathan.

== Real Life ==

* Whales, [[Captain Obvious|obviously]].

** Then there's the [http://squid.tepapa.govt.nz/ Colossal Squid]. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Colossal_squid_caught_in_February_2007.jpg A live specimen was caught in 2007], and initial estimates put its total length at 10 meters (33 feet) long before the tentacles shrank post-mortem. It's theorized that there may be even larger examples of the species in the wild, as the beak of the live specimen was smaller than what they'd found in the stomachs of sperm whales.

* There have always been unpleasantly large cephalopods throughout the history of the world:

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]

[[Category:Kraken And Leviathan]]