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Terrifying Pet Store Rat

 Terrifying Pet Store Rat
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat
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The protagonist opens the cupboard in a haunted house and, terror of terrors, there's a rat inside. Everyone involved screams at the sight of the filthy diseased vermin. Except it looks like it's been recently bathed and brushed. And instead of fleeing or acting aggressive, it's looking expectantly at the actors for a treat. In really egregious cases it might even be white or multicolored instead of black or brown like a wild rat.
This is a Terrifying Pet Store Rat. While the animal in question is often a rat, it also applies to spiders, snakes, and anything else the audience is expected to react with fear or revulsion toward, despite the animal reacting like a pet. Spiders will saunter calmly over people instead of racing along in a panic. Snakes will crawl onto people's shoulders, staring them in the face comically instead of hissing and coiling defensively. Non-menacing animals can be an inversion of sorts, when an animal which should, itself, be terrified by events unfolding in-story instead acts calm, content, and eager for the treat its handler is dangling just out of frame.
This is generally caused by the fact that wild animals are really hard to work with. A wild rat might panic and flee realistically, but getting it to sit still long enough for the actors to show up is a challenge, as is anything involved in moving it and keeping it there long enough to have the cameras set up. And the SPCA/Humane Society/local equivalent would be likely to object, too, since there's a much higher chance of the animal or human handlers being injured, which helps no one, so this trope is one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality when it's done for safety's sake. So as far as most directors are concerned, a tame ball python that barely moves is usually a better choice than a deadly jungle snake, especially since no one will notice the difference anyway. Strangely, this often isn't averted with CGI, as fast, complex movements are expensive to animate. Very often crosses over with Misplaced Wildlife.
Tarantulas and scorpions used in film and TV tend to be docile species with very weak venom, since a more lethal species would obviously be more dangerous for the actors. This can give arachnologists or spider enthusiasts a Genius Bonus (alternatively, Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying) when they notice that the characters are freaking out about a harmless species.
A variant of this trope instead features common cats and dogs, either as themselves, used as stand-ins for wolves or wild felines, or put in costumes to represent monsters of various sorts. These will be intended to appear menacing, aggressive and dangerous, but the actual animal actors themselves will be tame and socialized animals. This often leads to dramatic scenes featuring supposedly vicious dogs with happily wagging tails, lolling tongues and other signs of excitement for play, or cats seated with a patient, attentive expression, who will let themselves be picked up and handled or simply sniff, bat or investigate their putative victims, without a trace of the snarls and bristling fur of aggressive dogs or the folded ears and distinctive yowls and hisses of angry or scared cats — or, alternatively, the sounds of angry cats or dogs dubbed over animals that are clearly nothing of the sort.
This is a stock feature of horror movies, they often wander in the background for ambiance, act as a Cat Scare, or provide a Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? moment when a protagonist has to get past them. In severe cases, the central threat of a horror movie may fall into this trope. The main thing making this trope is that the animal is neither threatening nor believably wild.
Related to Reality Is Unrealistic, in that viewers accustomed to seeing only Terrifying Pet Store Animals on film are often shocked by how tick-ridden, mangy and scarred actual wild animals tend to be.
See also Slurpasaur, a.k.a. Attack of the 50-Foot Terrifying Pet Store Lizard. For actual Terrifying Pet Store Rats, see You Dirty Rat!
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In Mythic Quest a rat that's caught in the office is clearly a well fed domestic rat with a white belly. And despite being put in a container with its pups it stays docile even as people are holding up the container to stare at it.
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"Monkey See, Monkey Poo", an episode of Scorpion set in the Amazon rain forest, features a swarm of "deadly wandering spiders" played by (harmless) red-kneed tarantulas. A vegetative variant is also used, when the team divvy up a foul-tasting and exotic "vonvon fruit" that's clearly a dragonfruit from the supermarket.
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Even dead animals get in on the act in Hunter Prey, in which the Ribcage Ridge of "alien" animal bones consists entirely of whale skeletons. The bounty hunter also has an "alien" skull for a shoulder adornment, which is clearly a (real or replica) sea turtle skull.
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Inverted in The Thing (1982)—the first form of the namesake creature is presented as a tame sled dog, but it's actually a wolf/dog hybrid, and an extremely ominous presence at that.
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 The Thing (1982)
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Bones uses this from time to time when a corpse is found infested with animals eating it.
Frequently when they find a decaying body in the sewer covered in rats, none of which show the slightest surprise or interest in the living humans walking about. This even applies to a wild rat which Brennan removes without struggle from a nest of helpless pups: something an actual rat mother would surely attempt to defend.
In one episode they find the victim surrounded by opossums. Again, no opossum shows any hint of non-familiarity with humans.
In another episode the dead Victim of the Week is surrounded by "feral" stray cats, which sit about and let themselves be picked up by animal control. This does allow for a gag: the cats sit and stare at the team while licking their lips, distinctly unnerving Booth.
In the sixth-season episode "The Killer in the Crosshairs", the Victim of the Week is found crawling with sewer rats that are not only very healthy and well-groomed, but patiently hold still to be picked up and then voluntarily enter transport containers.
This extreme instance of the trope may have been the reason why the next time the show featured a body swarmed by rats (the seventh-season episode "The Hot Dog in the Competition"), they averted the trope with domesticated feeder rats for the victim's pet snake.
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On Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter "In A Mirror, Darkly," the Rottweiler dog portraying Mirror Universe Porthos was noted by the producers and animal handlers to be "an even bigger baby than the regular Porthos," a small beagle.
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House once uses maggots to treat a patient's burns. This is a real medical procedure used to remove necrotic tissue while leaving healthy intact (although it's now known that they will eat healthy tissue if left alone too long). The doctor wouldn't really just dump the maggots all over the wound — and it doesn't work too well with the mealworms that were actually used on the show.
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In The Hazing, the pledges have to collect a live rat as one of the items in the Scavenger Hunt. They catch a rat in an alley that is suspiciously clean, well-groomed and tame for something that is supposed to be feral. This does not prevent Delia from being terrified of it.
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In one episode of Castle, the titular hero and Fair Cop Beckett are moving through a hidden alcove in the ceiling when Beckett tells Castle that even if he's scared, she doesn't think he should be rubbing her neck. It wasn't him, but a rat, calmly sitting there. It barely protests when Castle lifts it off of Beckett by the tail.
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A conspicuously Unterrified Pet Store Mouse appeared in The Outer Limits (1995), being fed to the scorpion-like alien creatures a scientist is raising in secret. The fact that the mouse we see the scientist pick up is very obviously pregnant, but the one shown happily waiting to be devoured alive isn't, doesn't help.
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 The Outer Limits (1995)
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Vikings: In Season 1, King Aelle of Northumbria throws his captain of the guard into a Snake Pit filled with plump, sleek, non-poisonous pythons. The guard screams in terror as the calm, docile serpents slowly slither onto his lap and over his shoulder.
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Notably averted in the sewer scene in From Russia with Love. The tame white rats they intended to use became lethargic under the hot lights (and kept licking off their cocoa-powder "makeup"), so the producers hired someone to catch a sufficient number of real sewer rats. The ones seen in the film are noticeably scruffy.
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The Evil Dead (1981) briefly features a domestic-variety hooded rat in the cabin in the middle of nowhere.
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 The Evil Dead (1981)
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In Dude, That's My Ghost!, aspiring horror movie director Spencer tries to shoot a movie about a killer sea monster... played by his pet goldfish.
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 Dude, That's My Ghost!
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Thunderbirds Are Go has the characters menaced by giant lizards. They're actually just bearded dragons shot to look huge, and they spend their time sitting around pretty calmly — the show uses CGI for its humans, so they didn't even have live actors to react to.
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Adventures in Babysitting: Brenda, having lost her glasses, accidentally picks up an adorable white "huge sewer rat" thinking it's a cat, and freaks out once it's pointed out.
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World of the Five Gods: Demon Daughter contains an In-Universe example. Ilpo, a ten-year-old boy, catches a rat and attempts to use it to scare Otta, a six-year-old girl. But the rat he caught was a cute, friendly juvenile rat, and instead of being scared of it Otta wants to keep it as a pet.
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The Beast Must Die features a werewolf played by a very happy, very friendly looking German shepherd.
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James Bond
Notably averted in the sewer scene in From Russia with Love. The tame white rats they intended to use became lethargic under the hot lights (and kept licking off their cocoa-powder "makeup"), so the producers hired someone to catch a sufficient number of real sewer rats. The ones seen in the film are noticeably scruffy.
The beginning of Live and Let Die has a Hollywood Voodoo ritual execution where the victim is bitten by a venomous snake. Except the snake in question is actually a non-venomous emerald tree boa.
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This was part of why the infamous Kennel from Hell match from WWE Unforgiven 1999 lived up to its name for all the wrong reasons. It was advertised as a match where the ring would be surrounded by two cages with vicious attack dogs in between, but once the match got underway, it became clear that the dogs weren't so much "vicious beasts" as "happy little puppies". The greatest danger posed? That one of the wrestlers would slip and fall in a puddle of dog wee or dog crap. And when they weren't making a mess on the floor, they were mating.
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Life After People, if not using CGI for the rats.
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Silver Bullet: A girl is startled into falling over when a rodent emerges from beneath a garage shelf. It's a gerbil.
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In Friday the 13th Part III, the farm rat that distracts Mrs. Hockett from Jason's imminent attack is a cream-and-white hooded rat.
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In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein uses electric eels as his energy source for bringing the creature back to life. The eels shown in the film are common American or European freshwater eels, which are unrelated to South American electric eels (which aren't true eels), don't look very much like them, and don't produce electric currents.
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Aside from one rattlesnake, the creepy critters that pour out of the pumpkin mask in Halloween III: Season of the Witch are harmless, the vast majority being the type of crickets sold as live food for pets.
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In season 4 of The Walking Dead, a shadow-hidden figure feeds a live rat to a walker through the prison fence. The rat remains calm, even curious, as it's held up to the chain-link, showing no fear of the walkers or the human holding it, even when it's being carried by its tail (which hurts).
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Deadly Eyes: In order to have rats the size of small dogs in some scenes, they were literally played by small dogs; the filmmakers dressed some dachshunds in specially made rat suits.
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Phineas and Ferb: In "Face Your Fear", the Show Within a Show Night of the Felis is a parody of Night of the Lepus that features footage of playful kittens as giant monsters.
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Star Trek:
The Alfa 177 canine in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Enemy Within" is supposed to be cute but also is supposed to be a newly discovered life form, it is basically just a terrier of some sort wearing extra fur, and a fake horn and antennas.
On Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter "In A Mirror, Darkly," the Rottweiler dog portraying Mirror Universe Porthos was noted by the producers and animal handlers to be "an even bigger baby than the regular Porthos," a small beagle.
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The Giant Gila Monster's title character — portrayed not by an actual gila monster, but by a Mexican banded lizard on a miniature set — is oddly cute.
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Indiana Jones does this extensively:
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Indy and Short Round nearly die while Willie refuses to reach into a crevasse filled with harmless stick insects and millipedes to shut off the death trap they're in. Though Willie freaks out because she's a fussy, high-maintenance load, not necessarily because the bugs are supposed to be dangerous. Indy isn't fazed by them at all.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull lampshades the use of non-venomous (or at least less-venomous) scorpions in movies. Mutt gets attacked by a large but harmless emperor scorpion, and Indy says, "The bigger, the better... if a small one bites you, don't keep it a secret."
Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Some of the snakes are recognizable harmless snakes of types people keep as pets, though there is at least one actual cobra (behind glass). There's also several "snakes" being played by European Glass Lizards (Pseudopus apodus), which aren't even snakes at all. And of course, some of them are clearly just sections of rubber hose. The snake in Jock's plane right at the beginning might count as a subversion as it really is a pet... not that this reassures Indy in the least.
In one scene, Alfred Molina's character is covered with tarantulas. This particular variety is the Mexican Redknee, which make popular pets because they are extremely docile and have venom that is harmless to humans. Of course, the spiders aren't meant to be dangerous so much as just kinda gross, since Indy, again, seems largely unfazed by them.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The petroleum-filled Venice tomb is full of rats; Indy even notes that his father never would have made it past the rats, as "he's scared to death of them". All the rats are pet store rats; Harrison Ford is seen in behind-the-scenes footage playing with some of them. They are replaced with unmoving dolls when the bad guys torch the petroleum.
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Three Big Men contains what might well be one of the most ridiculous cases ever: man-eating guinea pigs.
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Manos: The Hands of Fate has the Master's "devil dog", a big Doberman who seems like the friendliest dog in the world. His affection for the Master (played by the dog's real-life master, aptly enough) is palpable.
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Kim Possible: In "Low Budget", Frugal Lucre menaces Kim and Ron with his budget version of a Shark Pool — a kiddie wading pool full of pet snapping turtles that quickly retreat into their shells when confronted.
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 Kim Possible
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Snakes on a Plane has plenty of actual venomous snakes appear on camera, but also a number of harmless milk snakes and a corn snake.
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The Amazing Spider-Man uses this with lizards, who lead Peter into the sewers after Conners and participate in a fake out scare where they make Peter think The Lizard is coming.
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Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Some of the snakes are recognizable harmless snakes of types people keep as pets, though there is at least one actual cobra (behind glass). There's also several "snakes" being played by European Glass Lizards (Pseudopus apodus), which aren't even snakes at all. And of course, some of them are clearly just sections of rubber hose. The snake in Jock's plane right at the beginning might count as a subversion as it really is a pet... not that this reassures Indy in the least.
In one scene, Alfred Molina's character is covered with tarantulas. This particular variety is the Mexican Redknee, which make popular pets because they are extremely docile and have venom that is harmless to humans. Of course, the spiders aren't meant to be dangerous so much as just kinda gross, since Indy, again, seems largely unfazed by them.
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Nosferatu: Some of the rats are obviously hooded rats, a pet store variety.
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The Food of the Gods uses this with its swarm of giant rats. They tend to stare around in a perfectly tame way looking for a treat. The rats' leader is even a white rat. It doesn't help that since they're just superimposed on miniature sets, they have no reaction to the human actors whatsoever.
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The Alfa 177 canine in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Enemy Within" is supposed to be cute but also is supposed to be a newly discovered life form, it is basically just a terrier of some sort wearing extra fur, and a fake horn and antennas.
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 Star Trek: The Original Series
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The Abominable Dr. Phibes has its first onscreen victim "torn apart" by bats — portrayed by flying foxes, which are a) fruit bats and b) look like adorable flying puppies. They seem more interested in snuggling up to their human co-star for warmth than doing anything aggressive. Later in the movie, actual Terrifying Pet Store Rats make an appearance, and a woman is killed by locusts (aka grasshoppers) after being covered by a concoction brewed from Brussels sprouts.
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On CSI: Miami, a man falls from a balcony into a tank full of jellyfish. Wolf identifies the jellies as box jellyfish and potentially lethal, but they're obviously moon jellies — one of the least-dangerous types — in all the shots where they're not CGI.
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 CSI: Miami
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The Craft is the king of this trope near the climax when the other witches torment the main character. Her house absolutely fills with piles of harmless snakes, small lizards, scorpions, spiders, and cockroaches that just sort of ignore her as she flees from them. The rats are at least dropped on her from offscreen.
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Chopping Mall has snakes and spiders get loose in an actual pet store. They aren't played as dangerous, but they make it challenging for the heroine to stay silent while being stalked by killer robots.
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The Stuff uses a Great Dane which is apparently threatening its owner if it doesn't get more of the title substance. It wags its tail throughout the scene while dubbed in growling plays.note Granted, dogs do wag their tails when angry, or when upset. The higher a dog holds their tail, the more threatened you should feel. Mid-height is relaxed, and lowering it is fear, or potentially submission. These should all be considered in relation to the breed, such as Huskies having a curly tail, and Whippets a very droopy one. Slow wagging indicates insecurity. Even worse, in the shot where the dog goes for his throat, it's clearly just trying to happily lick the actors' face. Made more ridiculous because it's preceded by a shot of a model dog head unhinging it's jaws with the Stuff pouring out of it, while the actual dog looks nothing like it.
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Murder, She Wrote: In "Tinker, Tailor, Liar, Thief", a seedy alley is portrayed by the presence of a couple of sleek and well-groomed pet store rats. At least they are brown and not white.
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Occurred when Jake "The Snake" Roberts was supposed to sic a (real, but de-venomed) cobra on Sting as a match finisher, only to have the snake turn on him, but the cobra turned out to be too tame and wouldn't actually bite him, so he just held it to his face while it flailed pathetically.
Happened again on RAW when the snake he brought out to torment a KO'd Dean Ambrose wasn't too keen on tormenting him. And Dean corpsed when the snake was rubbing against his face.
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Night of the Lepus: The rabbits look like a menagerie straight from a pet store, which are mostly shown running through miniature sets in slow motion or in extreme close-up, smeared with red paint and backed by dubbed growling. It's made even more obvious due to the fact that the film earlier shows stock footage of actual feral rabbits, making the non-wild nature of the giant ones a lot more blatant.
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The Haunted Mansion (2003): At one point, the son needs to get past spiders to get into the mausoleum. The spiders are harmless tarantulas (orange-kneed) and they're tame enough that he can move them with his hands. However, he is arachnophobic, so no matter what spider they used, he would still be frightened by it.
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 The Haunted Mansion (2003)
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Ratman's Notebooks: Done deliberately in Willard, since the rats are supposed to be tame, well-groomed, and friendly because Willard takes care of them. It's just that they'll kill if they're told to.
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Barbarella at one point has the lead character thrown in an execution chamber to be torn apart by parakeets and lovebirds. While they do fly around in a panic, they're pretty clearly not attacking her at any point.
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Shutter Island: A whole Terrifying Pet Store Rat swarm confronts Daniels when he begins climbing the cliff face to the cave. Not only are they obviously well-groomed and curious about his presence, but the first one to appear is clearly dropped into view of the camera rather than climbing or jumping down to the rock.
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Happened again on RAW when the snake he brought out to torment a KO'd Dean Ambrose wasn't too keen on tormenting him. And Dean corpsed when the snake was rubbing against his face.
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 Jon Moxley (Wrestling)
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Dracula (1931): The English-language production has a scene where Count Dracula introduces his "children of the night", which are implied to be supernatural monsters. The animals on screen sure look suspiciously like opossums and armadillos. Of note is that opossums have lower body temperatures compared to most mammals, and many human transmissible diseases won't survived inside them. Likely a lucky coincidence, though, armadillos are known to be disease vectors for leprosy but aren't exactly intimidating.
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The Killer Shrews uses dogs in bad costumes to play the shrews. As you might guess from the quality of the effects, the dogs were not trained well enough to act scary either.
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The beginning of Live and Let Die has a Hollywood Voodoo ritual execution where the victim is bitten by a venomous snake. Except the snake in question is actually a non-venomous emerald tree boa.
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Fresh contains a dog fighting scene between two dogs who act more like they're playing than fighting. Prior to the fight, they both act like tame pets, without any tension or aggression.
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Doctor Who:
In "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", literal pet store rats were used as one of the ways of portraying Mangus Greel's giant sewer rats, together with a series of large puppets. Tom Baker riffed on how unconvincing the results were in the years since the serial's airing.
In "Survival", vicious alien creatures called Kitlings were played by black cats with hair gel in their fur (when they weren't being portrayed by an animatronic). A behind-the-scenes featurette includes cast and crew complaining about how unprofessional their feline co-stars were.
In the 50th anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", the 10th Doctor delivers a Badass Boast to what he thinks is a shapeshifted Zygon... but is in fact an ordinary rabbit. He's probably fooled by the fact the supposedly wild rabbit calmly lets him get close enough to touch without fleeing. Or perhaps because it's played by a lop-eared domestic rabbit.
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The iconic pale yellow snake in The Path was played by an albino Burmese python named Ghost. He appears several times throughout the show, and Aaron Paul said far from being menacing, he was very easy to work with. He spent most of his time on set going to the bathroom all over everything, which in this case could mean he was fed recently, or that he was mildly stressed.
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Parodied in Monty Python's Flying Circus, where the wolf of Little Red Riding Hood is portrayed by a very nervous-looking dachshund in a fur coat.
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Fairly common on Zoo when real lions or wolves are shown "ferociously menacing" humans with body language that indicates they're having a fine old time playing with their handlers.
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On Criminal Minds, some well-groomed rats gather to investigate a bound captive whom the Killer of the Week had left to be devoured alive. They crawl on the bound man's lap and occasionally touch his bare skin with their forepaws, but remain obviously calm and friendly, even when rescuers break in and start shoving them away with an unrealistic delicacy.
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In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the "tarantula" bug is a giant, aggressive spider that can actually knock out your character and send them back to their house, making it the most dangerous creature in an otherwise relaxed game. Visually, however, it's based on the redknee tarantula, a harmless and docile spider that's commonly kept as a pet.
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 Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Video Game)
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Maradonia and the Shadow Empire prominently features snakes as the villains' Animal Motif... but bungles it by making them all species of domestic python.
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The Monster Squad: Armadillos are seen wandering around Dracula's tomb in the opening scene in an homage to Dracula, above.
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South Park:
Played for Laughs in "Pandemic", when the town is overrun by giant guinea pigs and other "guinea" animals such as rabbits and dogs. The animals in question are simple shots of pet animals shuffling about benignly in cute outfits, which have been digitally inserted into the animation.
Also spoofed with the Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka, which isn't even a real frog, just a stuffed toy on a string.
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In If Looks Could Kill, the supposedly deadly scorpion used in an effort to kill the hero is in reality a harmless emperor scorpion.
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Apart from the foreground shot of a cobra, all of the snakes in Patient X's hospital cell in The Exorcist III are harmless corn snakes, rat snakes, and king snakes, species commonly sold in pet shops.
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 The Exorcist III
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The Mummy Returns: In the beginning, Evy and Rick are in an ancient ruin and encounter some snakes. They're Terrifying Pet Store Snakes; in an overlap with Misplaced Wildlife, some are tricolor milk snakes, which are known for having warning coloration similar to that of venomous snakes but are not known for living in Egypt. The venomous snakes they mimic aren't exactly from Egypt either. During a fight in the O'Connells' house, Meela throws a snake at Rick, claiming it's a very poisonous Egyptian asp. What actually gets thrown isn't a live snake at all due to another trope, but any shots that did use a live snake use a black kingsnake, another harmless snake and common pet.
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The petroleum-filled Venice tomb is full of rats; Indy even notes that his father never would have made it past the rats, as "he's scared to death of them". All the rats are pet store rats; Harrison Ford is seen in behind-the-scenes footage playing with some of them. They are replaced with unmoving dolls when the bad guys torch the petroleum.
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In-Universe example in House of Anubis where Victor stages a mice infestation in Anubis House to get the students out so he can search for the elixir he suspects Sibuna is hiding. It gets lampshaded when Fabian asks a teacher (who is part of the The Conspiracy) why all the mice look like they came from a pet store, which she refuses to answer.
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 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ee829854
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1.0
 House of Anubis
hasFeature
Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ee829854
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f16adb7
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f16adb7
comment
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull lampshades the use of non-venomous (or at least less-venomous) scorpions in movies. Mutt gets attacked by a large but harmless emperor scorpion, and Indy says, "The bigger, the better... if a small one bites you, don't keep it a secret."
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f16adb7
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f16adb7
featureConfidence
1.0
 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
hasFeature
Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f16adb7
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f4bee6fd
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f4bee6fd
comment
Graveyard Shift, a movie based on a short story about killer rats by Stephen King, uses several scenes of rats sitting placidly along the rafters staring at the characters in a way reminiscent of The Birds. Fortunately the movie shifts the actual monster to a giant (animatronics) bat, sparing us from a forced-perspective Terrifying Pet Store Rat as final boss.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f4bee6fd
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f4bee6fd
featureConfidence
1.0
 Graveyard Shift
hasFeature
Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f4bee6fd
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f634206e
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f634206e
comment
Ratatouille features an animated version. Remy is supposed to be a common street rat, but his looks (and temperament at that) are of a pet rat. It's almost impossible for a wild-born rat to be Remy's Russian Blue-looking color, as the vast majority of wild brown rats are exactly that - brown.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f634206e
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f634206e
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1.0
 Ratatouille
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f634206e
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f67f447b
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f67f447b
comment
The titular rodents in Rats: Night of Terror appear to be in pretty good health, at least the ones who haven't been pre-killed to swell the ranks. Several of them are multicolored or white, as well.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f67f447b
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f67f447b
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1.0
 Rats: Night of Terror
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f67f447b
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f6faf93e
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f6faf93e
comment
One scene in Tales of Terror has a terrifying vision of a harmless rat, a harmless snake, and a crab that has clearly been cooked.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f6faf93e
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f6faf93e
featureConfidence
1.0
 Tales of Terror
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f6faf93e
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f9452969
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f9452969
comment
Ice Cream Man: Whenever we see inside the crazy killer's truck, there are white mice and Madagascar hissing cockroaches wandering placidly around the ice cream and bloody eyes.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f9452969
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f9452969
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1.0
 Ice Cream Man
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f9452969
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fbf3ee2c
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fbf3ee2c
comment
In The Traitors, one challenge features the contestants having to complete tasks in a terrifying room filled with things like insects and rats. The rats are clearly harmless pets and even have color patterns that are not typical of wild rats.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fbf3ee2c
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fbf3ee2c
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1.0
 The Traitors
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fbf3ee2c
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fc29ccc7
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fc29ccc7
comment
In the third season episode of ''The Alfred Hitchcock Hour'' "Water's Edge' an abandoned boathouse is filled with sleek, calm, obviously domesticated rats, including a couple of small youngsters — who at one point are obviously being flung out of a hatch in the ceiling rather than jumping down of their own accord.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fc29ccc7
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fc29ccc7
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1.0
 Alfred Hitchcock Presents
hasFeature
Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_fc29ccc7
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ffbcb90e
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ffbcb90e
comment
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Indy and Short Round nearly die while Willie refuses to reach into a crevasse filled with harmless stick insects and millipedes to shut off the death trap they're in. Though Willie freaks out because she's a fussy, high-maintenance load, not necessarily because the bugs are supposed to be dangerous. Indy isn't fazed by them at all.
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ffbcb90e
featureApplicability
1.0
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ffbcb90e
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 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_ffbcb90e

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Terrifying Pet Store Rat
processingCategory2
Acceptable Breaks from Reality
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat
processingCategory2
Animal Tropes
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat
processingCategory2
Horror Tropes
 Terrifying Pet Store Rat
processingCategory2
Rodent Tropes
 The Pied Piper (Animation) / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Chopping Mall / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Cry of the Werewolf / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Day of the Animals / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Frogs / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 From Russia with Love / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Graveyard Shift / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Halloween III: Season of the Witch / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Ice Cream Man / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 If Looks Could Kill / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Live and Let Die / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Manos: The Hands of Fate / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Maradonia and the Shadow Empire / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Night of the Lepus / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Nosferatu / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Razorback / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Shutter Island / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Silver Bullet / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Snakes on a Plane / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Abominable Dr. Phibes / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Amazing Spider-Man / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Craft / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Exorcist III / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Food of the Gods / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Sword and the Sorcerer / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Uncanny / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Holes / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Neverwhere / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Something Wicked This Way Comes / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 World of the Five Gods / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Alfred Hitchcock Presents / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Amazing Stories (1985) / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 CSI: Miami / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Murder, She Wrote / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Prehistoric Park / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Traitors / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Traitors (UK) / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Twin Peaks / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Wagon Train / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Zoo / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 The Boys Next Door (Theatre) / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat