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{{quote|''"We were waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said to push on!"''|[[wikipedia:Waist Deep in the Big Muddy|Pete Seeger]]}}
In brief: Any river voyage (''or other journey into the wilderness'') is a doomed expedition in which the characters alternately [[Kill'Em All|die]], [[Go Among Mad People|go mad]], [[Shaggy Dog Story|get lost]], [[Going Native|go native]], or otherwise [[Almost-Dead Guy|barely live]] [[Bring News Back|to tell the tale]].
This tends to broadly describe any expedition that involves a hopeless journey along a set path (or path of least resistance) to an unfamiliar (possibly [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|hopeless or nonexistent]]) destination. Often this involves a boat and a river. This trope explains why [[Genre Savvy]] adventurers know to avoid river expeditions at all costs, even though it is usually the fastest way of penetrating the interior.
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* ''[[Aguirre, the Wrath of God]]'' with a very insane Klaus Kinski being overrun by monkeys on a sinking raft.
** [[Werner Herzog]] in general likes to explore nature's savagery and indifference to human survival. See also ''[[Grizzly Man]]'', set in the same territory as ''[[Into the Wild]]''.
** Another Klaus Kinski example, and one fitting the entire "obsession and insanity" theme of this trope, is the movie ''[[Fitzcarraldo]]''. Kinski plays Peruvian rubber baron Ryan Sweeney "Fitzcarraldo" FitzGerald (loosely based on the historical [[Badass Spaniard|Carlos Fitzcarrald]]), who
** See also Herzog's documentary ''Wings of Hope'', about a girl who was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon and ''walked'' for ten days out of the jungle - and then 30 years later, Herzog brings her back to retrace her steps. Oh, and '''Little Dieter Needs To Fly/Rescue Dawn''. Yeah, Herzog ''really'' likes this trope.
* ''[[
{{quote|"I wouldn't trust no words written on no piece of paper from no [[Meaningful Name|Dickinson]] in the town of [[I Don't Like the Sound of That Place|Machine]]. You're just as likely to [[Foreshadowing|meet your own grave]]."}}
* ''[[Black Robe]]'': it's no spoiler to say the Jesuit priest [[Going Native|goes native]]. Portrayed as a ''[[Values Dissonance|good thing]]''.
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'''Gibbs:''' That seems a mite... contradictory, Cap'n. }}
* In ''Without A Paddle'', the characters get lost, lose their boat and supplies, and are attacked and pursued by a bear and violent locals.
== [[Literature]] ==
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* The horror novel ''[[The Ruins]]'' by Scott Smith starts out with a group of twenty-somethings on vacation at the beach who decide to explore some old ruins inland. In [[The Movie]], {{spoiler|all but one of them die thanks to a sadistic, man-eating vine}}. In the book, {{spoiler|[[Kill'Em All|they all die]]}}.
* There is a book called ''Who Is The River'' that is about two guys going up a river in South America. The point of the trip was to find a set of ruins and make their careers. It didn't work.
* In the ''Seventh Sword'' trilogy, there is only one river and this river connects all the cities of the world. Because the river symbolizes the power of the goddess that controls the planet, the river can flow in either direction and ships that travel on her waters may drop anchor in one location at night and mysteriously re-appear elsewhere by morning. Not only that, but {{spoiler|the river is inhabited by flesh-eating fish that appear within seconds of someone entering the water}}.
* In the Shirl Henke novel ''The River Nymph'', the male protagonist grows darker and darker in character as the titular riverboat goes ever farther up the Missouri River and into the wilderness of the American frontier.
* The journey of the City in ''[[The Inverted World]]''. For over two hundred years, the massive [[Base on Wheels|mobile City]] has been pulling itself in pursuit of the optimum. It is a truly Sisyphean effort: even if the City reaches optimum, they cannot rest, because optimum is always moving. The City is doomed to struggle to move 1/10 a mile a day, every day, forever; an unending pursuit of the unattainable.
** And in the novel version, geography eventually renders the goal literally unattainable.
* The second expedition in the novel ''Water Music'' by T.C. Boyle about real-life scottish adventurer Mungo Park and his search for the Niger. He found the river on his first expedition, but he came back for another expedition to find out where it ends.
* In [[Jasper Fforde]]'s ''[[Thursday Next|One of Our Thursdays Is Missing]]'', Thursday gets to go on a [[Genre Savvy]] one of these.
* In ''[[The Red Tent]]'', Jacob crosses a fast river ahead of his family and servants, and has his famed vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder or staircase, as well as an alleged fight with one (which results in his thigh being dislocated.) He is shown to have a fever, and the other characters take his visions as delirium. {{spoiler|This is an important point, as it is essentially where Jacob (fearful from his unexpected [[Vision Quest]], and later jealous of his wealthy twin brother Esau) starts to listen to Simon and Levi's influence and [[Face Heel Turn|become corrupt and greedy]]}}.
* The Priest's Tale from ''[[Hyperion]]'' is a lot like this: the [[Apocalyptic Log|journals]] of a man hiking out into the most deserted wilderness of an alien planet, only for things to get progressively more insane.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* Sir Ernest Shackleton's [[Real Life]] expedition to the Antarctic. Partially averted in that everyone survived and Shackleton was forced to travel the last leg by himself, [[Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity|over sheer cliffs]] because they crash landed on the wrong side of the island of [[wikipedia:South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands|South]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20131031091735/http://www.sgisland.gs/index.php/Main_Page Georgia], the only source of possible help for 5,000 miles in any direction.
* When Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to be the first expedition to reach the south pole, Scott's expedition found the Norwegian flag waiting for them. Then Scott's entire team died from scurvy on the way back.
* Several [[Real Life]] expeditions into [[Darkest Africa]] inspired this trope, most notably [[Cloudcuckoolander|Emin Bey]]'s expedition to Equatoria, a vast and inaccessible swamp on the headwaters of the Nile. (A German-Jewish geographer who had been appointed Bey of the Turkish Empire, he claimed the region for either England, Egypt, or Germany, it's not clear which.)
* After "discovering" Dr. Livingstone ([[Unwanted Rescue|who was doing just fine without him]]), the "journalist" Henry M. Stanley made a name for himself penetrating the headwaters of the Congo in the service of [[Complete Monster|King Leopold]] of Belgium, executing uncooperative natives along the way, and claiming the entire Congo basin for Leopold's [[Privately-Owned Society|personal rubber fiefdom]]. His expedition is what inspired Conrad to write his book, after it came out what Leopold's men were [[Moral Event Horizon|actually doing in Stanleyville]].
** Also Stanley's expedition to [[wikipedia:Emin Pasha Relief Expedition|rescue the above-mentioned Emin]].
* There were many, ''many'' doomed voyages into the interior of Australia, filled with some of the harshest desert known to man and landscape utterly foreign to Europeans. One notable mention was [[wikipedia:Charles Sturt|Charles Sturt]], who nearly died multiple times and even took a ''boat'' with him to settle the debate about if Australia had an inland sea. Many Australian explorers barely came back alive and others died miserable lonely deaths.
** Ironic, considering that surviving comfortably in the outback is perfectly possible, but they were too proud to ask survival tips from the natives. (Perhaps not really ironic, [[Too Dumb to Live|just stupid.]])
** Actual irony: There ''was'' an inland sea-Stuart and his fellows were just about 100 million years too late.
* The first explorers to take a boat down the Grand Canyon: Half of them died.
** [[Lampshaded]] in the case of a honeymoon couple that attempted to go down the canyon in a [[Too Dumb to Live|two-ton scow]], with much buildup by Ken Burns in ''The National Parks'' documentary. They were [[Never Found the Body|never seen again]], but the boat was found sitting with all their belongings (and lunch) intact.
* ''Deliverance'' was based on the author's real-life experiences rafting in Appalachia. Massively inverted in that the locals were incredibly helpful, and were excited to hear he was writing a book about the area!
* Apropos of a related trope, [[No Party Like a Donner Party|the Donner Party]] is worth mentioning. Basically, a group of pioneers set out for California, ended up snowbound in the Sierra Nevada, and resorted to [[I'm a Humanitarian|cannibalism]], eating the corpses of those who died.
* The first Western voyage up the Mekong River in Southeast Asia was pretty difficult, partly because the river isn't actually navigable up most of its length, and partly because most of the crew repeatedly caught tropical diseases.
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[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:River of Insanity]]▼
[[Category:Tropes of Nature]]
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