Fish People

Wandering free...wish I could be...part of your world!

Mullroy: There has definitely been a breakdown in discipline aboard this vessel.
Murtogg: I blame the fish-people.
Mullroy: [Sarcastically] Ohh, so fish-people, by dint of being fish-people, automatically aren't as disciplined as non-fish-people?

Murtogg: It seems contributory, is all I'm saying.
—Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Fish People are a specific category of (usually) intelligent, underwater fantasy species. While they're humanoids (one head, two arms, two legs), they don't look human at all; their bodies, especially the faces, have a fish-like/reptilian appearance. This means that mermaids are not true Fish People, at least not the kind described here. Neither are more human-like sea dwellers such as Aquaman or Namor the Sub-Mariner. A Fish Person's Character Alignment and ability to survive on land vary depending on the character and the series.

While Fish People are most often a pre-existing race, sometimes they are former humans (or fish) who are the result of mutation. This origin seems especially prevalent in Western Animation.

Merfolk can have a similar style, but fail the critical "has legs" check.... most of the time. Since many Fish People appear somewhat reptilian, Lizard Folk and Reptiles Are Abhorrent are also related tropes. Expect them to create breathtaking Underwater Cities.

Fish People are a subspecies of Petting Zoo People. Super-Trope to Shark Man.

Examples of Fish People include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Water Folk from Moribito Guardian of the Spirit.
  • The Fishmen from One Piece. Their sister species are the Merfolk, traditional mermaids. The two species get along pretty well and can even interbreed, but the Fishmen tend to be more aggressive and angry towards humans while the Merfolk are light-hearted and naive. Also Fishmen are 10x stronger than humans from birth and can use water as a weapon.
    • It has recently been revealed that Merfolk can use water as a weapon in pretty much the exact same way.
  • One of the many denizens found in the Magic World of Mahou Sensei Negima was a dolphin man. A trucker dolphin man. With flippers for hands. How he was able to hold things like the postcard from Makie and Yuuna without fingers, we may never know.
  • Slayers pokes fun at this trope - the standard fishman in Lina's world is basically a giant fish with stick-thin limbs.
  • During the Naruto Land of the Sea filler arcs, Amachi's ambition was to create the perfect aquatic soldier, transforming humans into Fish People. Isarabi was a partially successful trial run, but could not fully switch back to human form. Amachi made himself into a perfect hybrid, but ultimately discovered that without any skills other than becoming scaly, he wasn't the ultimate warrior he'd hoped.
    • Kisame and Fuguki (Samehada's previous owner) both look very much like a shark and a puffer fish, but they're apparently just weird looking humans except when fused with Samehada.
  • Digimon has a few of these. The most notable one is Hangyomon/Divermon, who despite being one of these, needs a diving mask and scuba tank while underwater. Other examples include the amphibion-like Ranamon from Digimon Frontier, the squid-esque MarineDevimon, the aptly named Orcamon and Coelamon, and whatever the hell Surfimon is.
  • Sky-Byte from Transformers: Robots in Disguise is this combined with a Transforming Mecha.
  • The Big Bad of Blue Submarine No. 6, Dr. Zorndyke, floods the earth in an attempt to wipe out humanity and replace it with his own races of genetically engineered Petting Zoo People, the most numerous of which are the aquatic varieties. Not surprisingly, all of the females are Cute Monster Girl 's, especially the mermaids.
  • People with fish for heads (yes, that's right, fish for heads) from another planet are shown in the fifth arc of the Sailor Moon manga. They can be seen here at about 3:36.


Comic Books

  • Abe Sapien from the Hellboy comic and its adaptations in other media.
  • Triton from the Marvel Universe.
    • Some of Namor's enemies are Fish People, like Tiger Shark (or whale people in Orca's case) and most of the people from Atlantis almost count as Fish People. Namor is a mutant, however.
      • His second wife Marrina was even closer.
      • Atlanteans in Invincible are a direct tribute to this.
  • Lagoon Boy from the DC Universe...
    • ...and his probable Distaff Counterpart, Gill Girl from Teen Titans Go
    • Then there's Triton from the Teen Titans animated series, and Aqualad's little Mechanic friend Tramm.
    • In Swamp Thing, a new generation of vampires are hatched in a town submerged in stagnant water that have the form of fish people (though closer to fish). Charmingly, they eat each other until only one huge newborn remains.
  • The Waterlogged Warlock from Abadazad.
  • Nessie from Boneyard.
  • The Tangent Comics version of the Sea Devils.
  • Man Ray, a.k.a. Ray Fillet in the Archie Comics Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures.
  • King Shark, former Aquaman and Superboy villain, one-time member of the Secret Six, and post-DCnU reboot a member of the Suicide Squad. But don't call him a fish person! He is a shark! A SHARK!
  • Fishy Pete from The Goon.


Film

  • The Creature from the Black Lagoon (aka the Gill-Man), pictured above, is probably the most famous Fish Person, and certainly the Trope Codifier. He starred in three films—the self-titled first movie and its sequels Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us.
  • The Missing Link from Monsters vs. Aliens is a Creature from the Black Lagoon-esque fish-man.
  • Star Wars:
  • Godzilla vs. Hedorah has a VERY odd and out of place scene where a man pictures humans with fish heads. It makes no sense at all, and is never mentioned again.
    • The character was in a bar and appeared to have been drinking to excess. He was hallucinating, but then again, this was The Seventies.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean, Davy Jones and his damned crew steadily mutate into these over the decades of service on the Flying Dutchman. Except the disobedient, who become more coral-like, and end up fused with the ship itself.
    • It's not just the disobedient. The implication is that, by the time your hundred-year contract is up, you will be part of the ship. One of the crew has the next helm growing out of his spine.
    • This has more to do with Jones's bitterness towards Calypso than the ship itself, however - when Will replaces him as captain, he retains his humanity all the way through to his post-credits reunion with Elizabeth.
  • Although we never see the title monster in Cthulhu, the protagonist does encounter these creatures in a pitch-dark tunnel beneath Rivermouth.

"There were things, and they were everywhere! They were on the ground, they were on the ceiling, they were everywhere!"

  • Dagon (2001), an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
  • The titular monsters from Humanoids From The Deep are of the mutated fish variety of Fish People.
  • As mentioned above, Abe Sapien from Hellboy.
  • The Last Lovecraft has Starspawn and his pets as fish people; they're weakened from being away from the ocean. Also there was a curious "Half-Breed" show, probably offspring of one of the many rapings we hear about in the movie.
  • The male lead of the 2017 Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water.


Literature

  • The titular character/monster in the Robert W. Chambers story "The Harbor-Master" is one of these; it's thought to have been the basis for...
  • H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones, first appearing in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, are one of the oldest and most nightmarish examples.
  • Michael Reaves and Steve Perry's novel Dome is set at a futuristic undersea research lab. One of its residents volunteers to be genetically modified into a Fish Person in order to better survive the underwater environment.
  • David J. Schow's short story "Gills" features Manphibian, a Captain Ersatz of the Creature from the Black Lagoon who has entered Show Business.
  • Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials depicts a Guild Steersman from Dune as resembling this trope.
  • A microscopic version of this trope appears in "Surface Tension", a short story by James Blish. A colony ship crashes on a planet virtually devoid of land, so they create (via genetic engineering) tiny aquatic humans to carry on their legacy after they've died.
  • The Nartec in Animorphs' "The Mutation".
  • Emily Rodda's Rowan of Rin books have a race of fish-people called the Maris.
  • The Merlons from the Crystal Doors series of books.
  • The Evilutionary Biologists in Jack Chalker's The Moreau Factor developed at least three species of aquatic Half Human Hybrids: a race of fish people was one of them.
  • The Scar by China Mieville has several aquatic races, most notably the Grindylow.
  • The Slayers novels feature this too (obviously, since the anime was based of them). There are apparently several varieties of fish people of varying degrees of icthyism, but Nunsa, the one who appears in the first novel, takes the cake; talking and walking around on land are his only concessions to the "people" part of the trope. When Zolf tells him to kiss Lina to gross her out, he comments that he's considered the most desirable mate in his school (the best catch, you might say), then sits down and waits patiently. When quizzed, he claims he's waiting for the eggs, since he's not sure what kissing is, but is vaguely aware it's related to mating.
  • Marsh-wiggles from The Chronicles of Narnia. WikiNarnia describes them as having "green-grey straw-like hair, large ears, long legs and arms, webbed hands with long fingers...hard webbed feet, similar to those of ducks...a muddy complexion and greenish skin." Oh, and they're also an entire race of Eeyores—the only one we meet, Puddleglum, is seen as a Wide-Eyed Idealist by his fellow Marsh-wiggles, and he has lines like:

"Those eels will take a mortal long time to cook, and either of you might faint with hunger before they're done. I knew a little girl—but I'd better not tell you that story. It might lower your spirits, and that's a thing I never do."
"The bright side of it is, that if we break our necks getting down the cliff, then we're safe from being drowned in the river."
"And you must always remember there's one good thing about being trapped down here: It'll save funeral expenses."


Live Action TV

  • Doctor Who has famously featured the Sea Devils, as well as a more literal kind of Fish People in The Underwater Menace. The new series has the Hath, which are definitely more human-like, and the Saturnynians, fish-like aliens with insectoid exoskeletons.
    • The Expanded Universe has the Krill and the Selachians, as well as one-time Doctor Who Magazine companion Destrii.
  • The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Go Fish" had one of these, where the swim team magically mutates into fish dudes due to their coach giving them illegal, soviet fish-based steroids. We know, it makes no sense. Unusually for monsters in a Buffy episode, they all lived Happily Ever After in the ocean.
    • It's really not a happy ending for them since they lost their human personalities, so the swim team essentially died.
    • There seems to be something about the Hellmouth that makes impossible Hollywood Science work, then go horribly wrong. Basically, if you're smart enough you can get the Spark.
  • The kleptomaniac (or at least both the individuals we've seen) Blowfish race in Torchwood.
  • The Mire Men in Knightmare's eighth season.
  • The wormhole-researching Pathfinders in the Farscape two-part episode "Self-Inflicted Wounds".
    • Oo-Nii in another two-parter, "What Was Lost".
  • Old Gregg from The Mighty Boosh. Legendary fish. Some say he's half man, half fish. Others say it's more of a 70/30 split. Whatever the percentage, he's one fishy bastard.
  • TV series No Heroics had a character who was half fish. Specifically, he had the smell, the taste and was white meat...
  • The Abbai in Babylon 5.
  • The Antedeans in Star Trek: The Next Generation.


Music

  • The "Forevers" from Planet Y in the Ayreon saga.
  • Kate Bush's label is called Fish People. Its mascot is a person whose head is a fish.
  • UK Hard trance label Tinrib stands out as having a nautical theme, complete with one of these as their mascot.


Mythology

  • One legend pertaining to the legendary Merovingian Dynasty claims that they were descendants of Fish People. The writers of the Holy Blood Holy Grail, and The Da Vinci Code decided to interpret this as that they were in fact the descendants of Jesus Christ, since early Christians used a stylized fish as their symbol, not to mention that the Greek word for fish, icthys, formed a nice acronym of Jesus's name and titles. There isn't an ounce more evidence to prove this theory than there is to prove actual Fish People's involvement, though.
    • This seems to be based on a rather desperate interpretation. "Merovingian" means people of the sea, and so originally most likely referred to a people who lived on the coast, or settlers who came from overseas.
      • The Merovingians were perfectly historical, and they're called that after an ancestor named Merovech. If The Other Wiki may be believed, his name has, despite the similarity to "mere", German Meer, etc, nothing to do with the sea, but means "famed fight".
  • There is a report of the 16th century King of Poland being shown a fish-like creature resembling a Bishop, that gestured to be asked for release to a group of Catholic bishops. Upon its release, it made the sign of the cross and disappeared back into the sea.
  • The Undine
  • The umibozu mentioned above probably served as a folkloric antecedent for the ningen, a sort of gigantic (and absolutely terrifying sea creature with vaguely human characteristics. It's probably an urban myth. Hopefully.
  • Ginny (or Jenny or Jeannie) Greenteeth, who according to British cautionary tales drowns kids who play too close to the water's edge, is usually described as a green-skinned monster.
  • According to Japanese mythology, earthquakes are caused by a giant catfish called the namazu. Following the Great Ansei Earthquake that struck Edo (Tokyo) in 1855, a new type of watercolor blockprint, called namazu-e (catfish pictures) became popular. Examples featuring anthropomorphized catfish can be seen here.


Tabletop Games

  • The locathah from Dungeons & Dragons, consciously designed after the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The sahuagin are another example that in many settings were brought into being by Sekolah, the god of sharks.
    • The Savage Species supplement introduced the anthropomorphic animal template, which can be applied to any creature with the Animal type, including mundane fish.
    • In 3E, every 1 in 100 sahuagin would be born looking like their hated enemies, the sea elves. Most of the team, these mutated sahuagin, called malenti, were eaten by their own parents. Some of them are raised to be deep cover infiltrators for sahuagin, though.
  • The very first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle had a race actually called the Fishmen.
    • The 8th Edition book has reintroduced references to them, causing no small amount of Epileptic Trees.
  • The Homebrew New World of Darkness game Leviathan: The Tempest allows the player to play demigod fishmen descendants of beings such as Dagon. It originally began as a joke that White Wolf should complete the Universal Monsters stable by making a "Creature of the Black Lagoon" Splat, but then it took a turn towards Ancient Mediterranean mythology and The Shadow Over Innsmouth...
  • The Fighting Fantasy gamebook world of Titan features the Fish Men, a race created by an Evilutionary Biologist sorcerer who blended a number of unwilling humans with fish. They tend to be solitary, cruel, and hostile to humans, attacking them with tridents when the humans intrude on their territory or simply to steal the humans' riches.
  • The Triton parahumans in GURPS: Bio-Tech have their gills on their chests in order to function properly. The extensive modifications needed to let them survive underwater required making them inhuman inside and out.
  • The Merfolk of Magic the Gathering are more fishlike than most, featuring scales all over their bodies, and some have legs instead of fish tails. There are also Homarids, who are lobster-people, and Cephalids, octopus-people.
  • In Mortasheen there are several of these, created as servants for the mostly aquatic vampires. You've got your requisite Creature From The Black Lagoon homage and man-shark, but the others are somewhat stranger
  • Fifty Fathoms has fish people, crab people, squid people, dolphin people, seal people and (villainous) octopus people.
  • The Sea Folk, a playable race in Blue Rose, are technically more like Dolphin People—they can't actually breathe underwater (but can hold their breath for an hour or more), aren't scaly, and are portrayed as graceful and elegant rather than repulsive. They can also live on land and interbreed with normal humans, although they need to immerse themselves in water daily and usually stick near the coasts.
  • Along with the standard D&D sahuagin and locathah, Pathfinder has anglerfish-inspired ceratioidi and shark-like adaros.


Toys

  • The Barraki in Bionicle.
  • Lagoona Blue from Monster High, who has a pretty strong case of the Innsmouth Look going on- blue skin, protruding eyes, full lips, a nose so flat as to be virtually nonexistent, fins on her arms and legs and serving as her ears, and webbed fingers. There's also her boyfriend, Gillington "Gil" Webber.


Video Games


Webcomics


Western Animation

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