The Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle is a popular place for works of fiction to place mysterious events, especially the disappearances of ships and airplanes. Often, it will turn out that something really weird is involved with the area, such as aliens, paranormal activity, Eldritch Abominations, or Atlantis. If the events are of human origin, it's still something weird like an Ancient Conspiracy or dangerous Cult.

Part of the Hollywood Atlas. The triangle is a region in the Atlantic Ocean, much of which is south-west of the coast of Bermuda. Before it became popular in pure Speculative Fiction, the triangle started out as an Urban Legend. Although that legend has since been discredited, with the number of disappearances being no higher or lower than any other part of the ocean of similar size and weather, it continues to live on through its popularity in fiction.

No real life examples, please; sorry, but we have to cite Wikipedia's "reliable sources" rule on this one.

Appearances of the Bermuda Triangle in fiction include:

Anime and Manga

• In one Doraemon Non-Serial Movie, the heroes discover that this is due to the triangle being part of an ancient force-field, home to an AI gone insane.
• Black Hole, a Kinnikuman villain from the Seven Devil Choujin arc, seems to be connected to the Bermuda Triangle. His theme song explicitly mentions the Bermuda Triangle, and his profile states that is homeland is Bermuda. This is because of the crackpot theory^[1] of a hidden black hole hiding within the Bermuda Triangle.

Comic Books

• In D.R. & Quinch Have Fun On Earth, one of the segments of the titular duo's adventure through time that sees them influence the course of history on some Insignificant Little Blue Planet features Quinch recalling a time with his buddy "while cruising just off Bermuda" and trying to pull in human aircrafts towards their ship with a Tractor Beam "to get a better look at them," only for the beam's force to break apart the fragile planes.
• The fictional nation Themyscira (a.k.a. Paradise Island), the native home to Wonder Woman and her sister Amazons, is currently located (pre-New-52) in the Bermuda Triangle, but the island can teleport to any location or time whenever the island's inhabitants desire.
  • Pre-Crisis, it was in the Bermuda Triangle all the time. Although the DC Universe is generally a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, it was acknowledged in-story that this was a coincidence and the area is not actually paranormal.
• A recurring foe of the Fantastic Four, Mole Man, has a home on Monster Island, which is suggested to be either somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle or off the coast of Japan, Depending on the Writer.
  • The island first appeared in Fantastic Four #1 and was only later localized (for a time) in the Bermuda Triangle, but it more frequently linked to the Godzilla mythos (Marvel once published a Godzilla comic) and thus localized near Japan.
• Also in Marvel, the mysterious nameless island raised to the surface of the Atlantic by Magneto ca. Uncanny X-Men #149 is definitely located in the Bermuda Triangle. It contains ruins of a lost civilization heavily implicated in aliens and eldritch abominations.
• In The Perils Of Penelope, the truth turns out to be that there's an ancient religious cult in the Triangle that abducts people to brainwash them.

Film

• The latest adaptation of Gulliver's Travels, starring Jack Black, depicts the title character's adventure beginning after his ship wrecks in the Bermuda Triangle.
• There's a brief shot in the Special Edition of Close Encounters of the Third Kind where a ship is in the middle of the Gobi desert. It's supposed to be one of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances. The film opens with the discovery of Flight 19, a Navy aviation training exercise that disappeared out of Ft. Lauderdale (the airbase is now Nova Southeastern).
• In Escape From Atlantis, an American family is teleported to another dimension by the Triangle, where Atlantis turns out to be located.

Literature

• In Dean Koontz's Phantoms, Timothy Flyte proposes that the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle are due to one of the Ancient Enemy creatures.
• In The 39 Clues, the Ekaterina have an Island Base here.
• The storied universe of Percy Jackson and The Olympians establishes that because America is the current center of Western Civilization, mythological sites that used to be around Greece and Rome are now located there. This means that The Sea of Monsters is no longer the Mediterranean but the Bermuda Triangle.
• The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz was an instant hit because it pretended to be a real mystery, rather then fiction. The book claims many ships and airplanes have disappeared mysteriously in the Triangle, but the facts in the book were quickly discovered to be falsified. Lots of the ships and airplanes listed never existed in the first place, and others had sunk in other parts of the world. Those that remained were not many enough to be unusual and had sunk under totally normal circumstances, such as extremely bad weather.
  • Larry Kusche wrote a book of his own as a rebuttal to Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved, where he points out the above errors. Kusche is quite willing to admit that mysterious incidents do happen in the Bermuda Triangle (the fates of the airplanes Star Tiger and Star Ariel probably the most baffling ACTUAL mysteries); the problem, he says, is that these incidents happen at roughly the same rates around the entire world and that you can't pin special blame on the Bermuda Triangle.
• The Jennifer Morgue has the Triangle as one of several sites heavily colonized by the Deep Ones. The disappearances of ships in the region involve the weaponization of gas deposits - when released, they can cause the water under a ship to rush out momentarily, causing the keel to sink into the void just as the water starts rushing back in. The Deep Ones do this whenever a ship gets too close to finding out about them.
• The Bermuda Triangle shows up in Time Scout, as possibly explained by an "unstable nexus gate". Basically, one semi-permanent Time Portal that leads to a number of other semi-stable, semi-permanent gates constantly opening and closing. Oh, and it's in warm water.

Live Action TV

• On Eerie, Indiana Marshall once discovers that the titular town, which he believes is "the center of weirdness for the entire planet," has the exact same geometric shape as the Bermuda Triangle.
• The X-Files:
  • The episode "Triangle" sees Mulder investigate a luxury passenger liner that mysteriously appears on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle. Once on board the ship, Mulder finds himself in the year 1939 as Nazi soldiers are fighting the British crew for control of the ship.
  • In a later episode, Area 51 Man In Black Morris Fletcher claimed to be the one who originally coined the term and insisted that powerful, primal, otherworldly forces are hidden beneath the waves, waiting to be plucked by man.
  • The tie-in comics had a story about a suspiciously young man claiming to be John Lawrence, one of the pilots from the famous Flight 19.
• One of Spike Milligan's Q shows included a headline which read "Bermuda Triangle Disappears in Bermuda Triangle".
• In a "Mathnet" segment from Square One TV titled "The Case of the Bermuda Triangle," Pat and George debunk the Bermuda Triangle myth on television, leading to a case where a sunken boat could prove a man's innocence of treason.
• An original miniseries on the Syfy titled The Triangle focused on a team of researchers hired to discover the secret of the Bermuda Triangle. Their mission sees the team go above and beyond just finding out the truth as they eventually aim to destroy the anomaly that causes those who enter the region to vanish.
• In an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, when Sabrina is on a cruise ship that enters the Bermuda Triangle, she discovers that her powers no longer work but can instead make wishes that are instantly granted.
• The dimension-hopping escapades of the 1977 NBC series The Fantastic Journey begin in the Bermuda Triangle.
• The Key West episode Crossroads featured the paranormal activity of the Bermuda Triangle as a plot point.
• For his tenth television special, Stage Magician David Copperfield used the power of the Bermuda Triangle, channeled aboard a ship via a pyramid-shaped frame, to make himself disappear. A light from within the pyramid yanked him inside, and he soon emerged from the ocean along with a long-vanished ship (which quickly burst into flames). Or at least, that's his story and he's sticking with it.

Music

• Mojo Nixon's song "Elvis Is Everywhere" attributes several unexplained phenomena to Elvis, events in the Bermuda Triangle being among them. As it is explained, "Elvis needs boats."
• Metal band Rage mentions disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle in the song "Without a Trace."
• "Bermuda Triangle" by Barry Manilow. "It makes people disappear" is Barry's insightful take on the matter.
• The songs "Without a Trace" by Sabbat and "Flight Nineteen" by Angel Witch are based on the Flight 19 incident.

Tabletop Games

• In Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati, one of the Illuminati Conspiracies is named "The Bermuda Triangle". This is not what they call themselves; they are so secret that no one knows the organization's real name. The others have nicknamed it after the geographical area because they know that it's behind the disappearances there. In both card game versions of the game, this Illuminati conspiracy is one of the playable factions. In the Tabletop RPG version, it's one of the mysterious forces that the characters might have to investigate.

Video Games

• In Dark Void, this region is apparently a gateway to an Alternate Dimension (The Void), but it's not the only gateway of its kind. You even get to loot the USS Cyclops.
• In The Conduit, radio host Conspiracy Theorist Gordon Wells makes increasingly more extreme and bizarre theories as the Drudge invasion progresses, at one point suggesting that the Bermuda Triangle is a "defense mechanism of fallen Atlantis."
  • And in Conduit 2, the first level takes place on a deep-ocean platform in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, which is later attacked by a giant serpentine Leviathan who's guarding Atlantis underneath it.
• Although not specifically named, one of the lost civilizations from The Omega Stone is situated near Bimini, a location linked to both the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis in pop culture. It's represented by the symbol of a triangle containing ocean waves in various clues and Plot Coupons.
• In Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, you simply fly to the triangle whenever you want to get abducted by the aliens. This is actually very convenient.

Western Animation

• On The Fairly OddParents Cosmo and Wanda put Unwish Island, one giant Mythology Gag that holds all of Timmy's un-wished wishes, inside the Bermuda Triangle.
• One episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo took place in the Bermuda Triangle.
  • As did the Scooby Doo Show episode "A Creepy Tangle in the Bermuda Triangle" (skeleton men and plane-swallowing UFO's) and the animated film Scooby Doo: Pirates Ahoy (mysterious fog and ghost pirates being the focus).
• An episode of Rocko's Modern Life involves Rocko boarding a cruise ship with Heffer and his grandfather, which passes through the Bermuda Triangle. After some Deranged Animation, it turns every old person on the ship young, and every young person old.
• In Extreme Ghostbusters, the Bermuda Triangle is revealed to be a huge, all-devouring spiritual entity.
  • The Real Ghostbusters also dealt with "the New Jersey Parallelogram", a (fictional) location off the Jersey coast that's equally mysterious but overshadowed by its more famous counterpart. It turned out to be a gateway to Another Dimension, from which they had to rescue Peter's estranged father.
• In DuckTales (1987) many of Scrooge McDuck's ships were disappearing in the Triangle. Scrooge points out how well-traveled the area is and sets out to find his fleet. He finds it, along with other ships, trapped in a huge mass of seaweed.
• An episode of Ben 10 has the characters visiting a prototype underwater hotel being built in the triangle and uncovering the secret - a colony of aliens bent on collecting everything that comes within reach.
• Futurama gives us the Bermuda Tetrahedron, where spaceships mysteriously disappear. Turns out they are attacked by a fourth-dimensional Space Whale that feeds on spaceship captains' obsessions.
• On Jimmy Neutron they have the "Bahama Quadrant" which Jimmy, Sheen, and Carl visit so that Jimmy can prove them that nothing supernatural is going on there. They end up running into a super villain/scientist that appears to be the cause for odd sightings and disappearances... though the ending leaves us questioning it.
  • Sheen once refers to the Bermuda Triangle as the mythological North Dakota.

1. ↑ Here's a site that debunks that theory.