Famous sharks besides 'Sharknado'

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Famous sharks besides 'Sharknado'

Photos: "Sharknado" is the darling of the Twitterverse but that doesn't make other pop culture sharks mere chum, does it?

Dieting is difficult and Bruce the great white's inability to control his hunger -- namely, for Marlin and Dory -- resonated with film audiences everywhere who found themselves agonizing over whether to get the giant popcorn or the giant popcorn with extra butter during the 2003 film "Finding Nemo".

They all laughed when SyFy released the original "Sharknado" TV movie in 2013, but the film -- about a half-shark, half-tornado that terrorizes the people of California -- did well enough two sequels: 2014's "Sharknado 2: The Second One" and 2015's "Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!" Actors Ian Ziering and Tara Reid have starred in all three installments, along with a lot of random guest actors, including David Hasselhoff and Billy Ray Cyrus.

Taylor Lautner starred as Sharkboy, a boy raised by sharks, in the 2005 Robert Rodriguez film, "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D". Photo: Rico Torres/Courtesy of Dimension Films.

Mega Shark -- a giant, prehistoric shark -- starred in a series of films bearing its name, including 2009's "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus" and 2014's "Mega Shark Versus Mecha Shark," in which Mega Shark faces off against the submarine Mecha Shark.

The 1961 musical "West Side Story" featured the Puerto Rican gang the Sharks facing off against the Jets, the white gang. Bloodshed and doomed love follow.

The "Left Shark" that didn't quite know the choreography stole the halftime show from singer Katy Perry during Super Bowl in 2015. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

Using sharks in medical research went horribly awry in the 1999 film "Deep Blue Sea," starring Saffron Burrows and Samuel L. Jackson.

Sharktopus was the star of the eponymous 2010 SyFy movie about a half-shark, half-octopus that terrorizes beachgoers. Photo by: Syfy

Jack Black voiced Lenny, a closeted vegetarian great white shark, and Robert De Niro voiced Don Lino, Lenny's father, in the 2004 animated movie "Shark Tale."

The ABC show "Shark Tank" features entrpreneurs pitching their inventions or ideas to "sharks," business moguls that include Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran.

The '90s animated show "Street Sharks" featured half-men, half-sharks who fought crime.

This line from the original 1975 film "Jaws" pretty much says it all about the most gargantuan great white to grace the golden screen: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." The film -- based on the 1974 book by Peter Benchley -- also spawned three sequels: "Jaws 2," "Jaws 3-D" and "Jaws: The Revenge".

Sure, we only saw file footage of its fin but the implication to "Happy Days" fans was clear: If The Fonz didn't jump the shark, we'd have to pretend we actually cared about Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph each week. (SPOILER ALERT: Fonzie survived, lame brown pleather jacket intact, we had to pretend we actually cared about Ted McGinley a few "Happy Days" seasons later and a pop culture term for the moment when a TV show literally turned into chum was born.)

Land Shark was of the more popular sketches from the 1975 season of "Saturday Night Live." To wit: Voice: [pause] Candygram. Woman: Candygram, my foot! You get out of here before I call the police! You're the shark, and you know it! Voice: Wait. I-I'm only a dolphin, ma'am. Woman: A dolphin? Well... Okay.

Somehow we were all supposed to buy into Hanna-Barbera's premise that a 15-foot cartoon great white shark, Jabberjaw, could be a drummer for a band called The Neptunes in an underwater world in 2076. As the creators of "Sharknado" said in a recent interview, "Right. Like anyone would believe that."* *Not really

To their fans out west, the San Jose Sharks hockey team rules the pool. Or the ice. Look for plenty of "Sharknado" puns in the Mercury News next season, hockey lovers.

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Dieting is difficult and Bruce the great white's inability to control his hunger -- namely, for Marlin and Dory -- resonated with film audiences everywhere who found themselves agonizing over whether to get the giant popcorn or the giant popcorn with extra butter during the 2003 film "Finding Nemo".

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