Shark Week is in full swing, and we’re celebrating five of our favorite famous sharks in pop culture!
Predating humans by about 420 millions years, sharks have a kind of mysticism surrounding them; predators of the sea, they haunt our imaginations because they thrive in an arena where we’re already so vulnerable.
Now in its 26th year, Shark Week was created to raise awareness and respect for the often-misunderstood animals. A worldwide event that broadcasts in 72 different countries, since its debut on The Discovery Channel in 1987, Shark Week has gone from being simply a weeklong documentary special into an eagerly anticipated annual social media phenomenon.
But Shark Week isn’t the only time of year we should be celebrating these fierce undersea predators. We present five famous sharks that remind us to “live every week like it’s Shark Week.”
‘Finding Nemo’
“Fish are friends, not food.” One of the most quotable of Finding Nemo’s infinitely quotable lines, Bruce’s catchphrase easily sums up the ironic twist that the Finding Nemo creators gave their sharks.
Bruce and his friends are reformed carnivores determined to change their bloodthirsty shark image. Unfortunately, millions of years of evolutionary biology often wins out over their vegetarian diet. They get points for at least trying, right?
‘Happy Days’
Widely regarded as the shark that ended it all, Fonzie’s infamous shark jump is known more for what it symbolized: the closing of the show’s most effortlessly delightful era.
Happy Days fifth season premiere featured a trip to Los Angeles where the Fonz proved his bravery by water-skiing over a shark tank. And while the shark jump episode actually had an astounding 30 million viewers, it’s gone down in history as the quintessential episode highlighting the moment a once-original, hit show loses its creative juice and starts to decline.
‘Shark Tank’
Perhaps the most terrifying sharks on this list, the Shark Tank crew are just as willing to take a bite out of each other as they are the weekly entrepreneurs that present on the show.
As investors with the ability to make or break a featured contestant’s business aspirations, within the span of an entertaining hour these Sharks manage to showcase both the magnificent triumph and heartbreaking defeat of attempting the American Dream.
‘The Little Mermaid’
Despite only being on screen for a few minutes, the shark in The Little Mermaid makes a splash for not only scaring the fins off of Flounder, but for terrifying three year olds everywhere in what was supposed to be a ‘family movie.’
‘Jaws’
The mother-load of all shark movies, this 1975 Spielberg thriller is the one that started it all. It single-handedly created the summer blockbuster, forever changing the way films are made and marketed.
Jaws put sharks back on the map again, and effectively ended ocean swimming for millions of horrified Americans.