Tremors/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Crazy Awesome: Burt Gummer. While we know why he's awesome, upon watching certain scenes we often see a little crazy there. The big one being in Tremor's 3 where he's laughing like crazy when mowing down Shriekers with an Anti Aircraft Gun. It also seems to run in the family as Hiram, upon taking a liking to fire arms also laughs like crazy when trying out a Gatling Gun for the first time.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Burt Gummer is the number one fan favorite character, and the only one to appear in all five adaptations (sort of).
  • Fridge Brilliance: Why does Burt transform from Crazy Survivalist Conspiracy Theorist to a sane Combat Pragmatist? He has a physical enemy he can shoot at, instead of stockpiling weapons waiting for the never-going-to-happen government or Russian invasion of his compound.
    • He kinda-sorta turned out to be right about the government, though.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Ever wonder what the full name of "Desert Jack" from Tremors 3 was? The titles reveal it's Jack Sawyer.
  • I Am Not Shazam: The monsters are called Graboids, 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.
  • Misblamed: 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 Farscape's fourth season), but was delayed to that summer months after Farscape concluded in March due to special effects delays.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Anybody else feel this way after hearing Burt recount his first encounter with Shriekers?

Burt: I dropped the first wave with semi-auto fire, but they just kept coming. Sheer luck, most of them were in front of me, so I just put it in six-wheel and ran 'em down. Then I took down the ones that got aboard with a combination of small arms fire and hand-to-hand techniques.

    • Not really - in fact, this troper considers Burt's exposition account as a Crowning Moment of Awesome, since part of the effectiveness of that scene was that we really didn't know what happened to Burt until that point, proving just how freakin' badass he is to have survived.
      • That, and shooting a scene that awesome would've been impossible.
      • Though it would have been interesting to see exactly how one uses "hand-to hand techniques" against shriekers.
  • Sequelitis: An interesting case. The first movie was basically a semi-Black Comedy with Kevin Bacon. Not having to pay Bacon's salary meant the second could afford lots more Stuff Blowing Up. The third is notable for reassembling the entire (surviving) supporting cast of the first, with no characters Put on a Bus.
    • Each movie has its own style. The first two are (relatively) serious monster movies with a healthy dose of comedy, the third puts more focus on comedy than seriousness, and the fourth is more serious than the first two with very little comedy.
  • Special Effects Failure: Happened a lot in the series and the later movies. Primarily the third and fourth.