Loch Ness Monster in popular culture

Loch Ness Monster (oil painting) by Heikenwaelder Hugo.

The Loch Ness Monster is well known throughout Scotland and the rest of the world and has entered into popular culture.

Literature

• In the Leslie Charteris short story "The Convenient Monster" (1959, coll. 1962) Simon Templar investigates an alleged monster attack, finding a human culprit - who is then attacked by the real monster. A 1966 TV adaptation ends more ambiguously.

• The Scottish poet Edwin Morgan published the sound poem "The Loch Ness Monster's Song" in the 1973 collection From Glasgow to Saturn.

• In Steven Kellogg's book The Mysterious Tadpole (1977), a boy receives a strange tadpole for his birthday which grows to immense proportions and is eventually revealed to be an offspring of the Loch Ness Monster.

• In Roger Zelazny's short story, "The Horses of Lir" (1981), collected in the anthology Unicorn Variations (1983), the Loch Ness Monster is one of several creatures stabled in a cave near the loch who draw the chariot of the Celtic sea-god Lir.

• In the book The Boggart and the Monster (1997) by Susan Cooper, the Loch Ness Monster is actually an invisible shape shifting creature that has become trapped in one form.

• In the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001) by J.K. Rowling, the "Loch Ness Monster" is said to be a misunderstanding of what is in fact the world's largest kelpie.

• The Loch (2005) by Steve Alten is a novel about the Loch Ness Monster which incorporates many historical and scientific elements into the story line. In the book, the creature is said to be a species of gigantic and carnivourous Eel.

• The tabloid Weekly World News often reports on the creature, claiming that it has become pregnant, or been captured, sold, or killed.

• In Keri Arthur's book Destiny Kills (2009), Destiny is shape changing sea dragon whose ancestral home is Loch Ness. She states that the legend of the Loch Ness Monster often provided her family the cover they needed to live among the humans undetected.

• The Cryptid Files: Loch Ness (2010) by Jean Flitcroft is a novel for children published by Little Island that features the Loch Ness Monster and which interweaves the story of a budding cryptozoologist Vanessa Day with facts about Nessie and Loch Ness.

• In the 39 clues (by Rick Riordan and other authors) the Loch Ness is actually a monster shaped submarine by the Ekaterinas.

Music

• The Sensational Alex Harvey Band wrote a song based on the Loch Ness Monster called "Water Beastie", which can be heard on their 1978 album Rock Drill.

• "Synchronicity II" by The Police from their 1983 album Synchronicity, recounts the ever-deepening frustrations of a suburbanite middle-manager as, unbeknownst to him, "many miles away" the Loch Ness Monster encroaches ominously on a lakeside cottage.

• In Spitting Image's 1986 song "I've Never Met a Nice South African", the narrator claims that he has "met the Loch Ness Monster, and he looks like Fred Astaire".

• Lo-fi rock band Some Velvet Sidewalk included a song titled "Loch Ness" detailing the exploits of the lake's mythical monster on their 1992 album "Avalanche". An alternate version of the song was featured on the 1991 compilation album "Kill Rock Stars".

• Composer Guto Puw wrote a piece for SATB choir in 1998 called "The Loch Ness Monster's Song".

• The Real McKenzies' 2001 album Loch'd and Loaded features a song titled "Nessie," which protests the capture and search for Nessie.

• American progressive metal band Mastodon have a song titled "Ol'e Nessie", named after the Loch Ness Monster, on their 2002 album Remission.

• The Judas Priest song "Lochness" from their 2005 album Angel of Retribution is about the Loch Ness Monster.

• The music video for the Reggie and the Full Effect song "Get Well Soon" from their 2005 album Songs Not to Get Married To chronicles the Loch Ness Monster struggling with a divorce, mirroring the album's themes.

• The music video, for the song "Monster" by the band The Automatic, features some clips of the Loch Ness Monster.

• The radio comedy duo Hudson & Landry performed a skit where Landry interviews a German man named Wolfgang Lauderbach who claims, among other things, that he feeds the Loch Ness monster, the Monster looks like actor Tab Hunter, that he was originally German and brought to Scotland by Rudolf Hess, and that his wife is constantly cheating on him with famous baseball players.

• American rapper Eminem refers to the creature on the song "Cum on Everybody" featuring Dina Rae off his debut album The Slim Shady LP

• The Dutch/Flemish band Pater Moeskroen have a song titled Nessie, which is about the sex life of the monster.

• The Loch Ness Monster was referenced in the Grinderman song Worm Tamer in the line "My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster, two great big humps and then I’m gone"

Movies

• The first film to deal with the creature was "Secret of the loch" made in 1934 by English film makers. The monster appeared at the end and was an iguana enhanced by special effects.
• The monster is treated in a tongue-in-cheek fashion in a 1961 film What a Whopper. The monster makes a cartoon appearance at the end of the film.

• In the 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes the monster is revealed to be a miniature submarine in disguise.

• The monster is featured in the 1981 American horror film The Loch Ness Horror, directed by Larry Buchanan.

• The 1987 movie Amazon Women on the Moon features a sketch involving a mock TV program, Bullshit or Not?, hosted by Henry Silva in which it is postulated that the Monster was, in fact, Jack the Ripper.

• In the 1992 animated movie Freddie as F.R.O.7 Nessie befriends an enchanted frog prince called Frederick who uses powers of telekinesis to free her tail trapped under a fallen boulder. It is later revealed she has a family, who later helps Freddie defeat an enemy invasion of Britain.

• Ted Danson starred in the 1996 film Loch Ness in which he plays an American scientist trying to disprove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, only to later disprove his own evidence when he comes to recognise that the Monster is best left alone to survive by itself.

• The 2001 horror movie Beneath Loch Ness deals with a series of attack allegedly made by the monster.

• In the Disney-Pixar film Monsters, Inc., the Loch Ness monster is mentioned as one of the monsters who got banished from Monstropolis.

• In the 2004 movie Scooby-Doo and the Loch Ness Monster the characters from the Scooby-Doo The Mystery, Inc. gang travel to Loch Ness in Scotland to see the famous Blake Castle, the home of Daphne Blake's cousin, Shannon. The Castle grounds is home to the first annual Highland Games, composed of many traditional Scottish sports. But when they arrive Shannon informs them that the Castle had recently been terrorized by the Loch Ness Monster. The gang investigate with help from Professor Fiona Pembrooke (who believes Nessie exists) and Sir Ian Locksley (a sceptic). Due to their opposing views, Locksley and Pembrooke share a mutual hatred for each other. It later revealed the monster that has been terrorizing Blake Castle are actually two fakes (one land-based and the other an aquatic sub) perpatraited by Prof. Pembrooke. Pembrooke’s plan was to use her fake Nessie to convince Locksley the real monster existed, and enlist his aide in finding it. The next day, the games begin on schedule; But Locksley calls everyone to his ship to look at new pictures of the monster his underwater cameras had taken. These, plus other pictures Pembrooke had taken convince him the monster does exist. The film ends with the gang leaving Blake Castle and shows Scooby briefly seeing the real Loch Ness Monster.

• In the beginning of the 2004 movie "Napoleon Dynamite", Napoleon gives a speech about the Loch Ness Monster.

• A mockumentary starring director Werner Herzog titled Incident at Loch Ness (2004) shows the director filming scenes around Loch Ness in an attempt to disprove the theories of the monster. His writer/producer continually tries to make a "blockbuster" film that Werner does not want. They eventually run afoul of the real Nessie with eerie results.

• The 2007 film The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep featured a young boy who discovers and hatches an egg belonging to the legendary Celtic creature, the Water Horse. Naming it Crusoe after the fictional character, he eventually is forced to release it into Loch Ness and the world begins to notice.

• In the 2007 Futurama film "Bender's Big Score", Philip J. Fry takes a job caring for a narwhal at an aquarium in Old New York. Eventually the narwhal is return to the wild, and is replaced by the "Loch Ness Monster," which, it has been proven, is just a log with a mask stapled to it. Despite the fact that it is inanimate, it is a huge attraction for the aquarium.

• Beyond Loch Ness (at one point named Loch Ness Terror) is a 2008 horror television movie made for the Sci-Fi Channel, directed by Paul Ziller.

• Nessie, das Monster von Loch Ness or Nessie - Das verrückteste Monster der Welt is a West German film made in 1985.

• Disney released The Ballad of Nessie along with their main feature Winnie the Pooh in 2011. It is a short 2D cartoon narrated by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly and is a story about Nessie's origins.

Radio

• The creature, and the legend, feature in an episode of The Navy Lark.

Television

• In the 1971 Goodies episode Scotland, the Goodies travel to Scotland in order to capture the Loch Ness Monster as an exhibit for the new Monster House at London Zoo.
• In the 1971 Bewitched episode "Samantha and the Loch Ness Monster", the monster turns out to be a warlock named Bruce that Serena put a spell on.
• In the 1975 Doctor Who story Terror of the Zygons, the Loch Ness Monster is revealed to be an alien cyborg controlled by the extraterrestrial race known as the Zygons and is used in a bid for world conquest. When that scheme is foiled by the Fourth Doctor and its masters killed, the creature returns to its watery home. In the 1985 story Timelash, the Loch Ness Monster is implied to be the Borad, a tyrant whose DNA got mixed with a reptilian monster and was sent back to twelfth-century Scotland through a time corridor by the Sixth Doctor (Although the Borad was later revealed to have been killed almost immediately after his arrival in the Eighth Doctor novel The Taking of Planet 5). In the 2006 episode "School Reunion", Sarah Jane Smith trumps new companion Rose Tyler, who believes she has met far more interesting beings in her travels with the Ninth and Tenth Doctors than Sarah, by mentioning the time she encountered the Loch Ness Monster (in Terror of the Zygons), causing Rose to respond, "Seriously?"

• The BBC television series The Family-Ness showed the adventures of a family of Loch Ness Monsters and their human friends, Elspeth and Angus McTout.

• The anime series Sherlock Hound episode The Adventure of Three Students contains a cameo appearance of the Loch Ness Monster near the end.

• An animated series, Happy Ness: The Secret of the Loch, featured two groups of the creatures. The friendly Nessies included Happy Ness, Brave Ness, Forgetful Ness, Silly Ness, and Bright Ness, while the villains included Pompous Ness, Mean Ness and Dark Ness. A trio of human characters befriended the good Nessies, assisting them in occasional conflicts with the bad Nessies. Both groups wore Loch-ets, each capable of performing a "Ness Bless", making its target temporarily feel the same as the caster. In addition, the Loch-ets protect the wearer from prying eyes, rendering them invisible to all but other Nessies and their trusted human friends.

• In the first episode of The Troop the Loch Ness monster is one of the monsters Hayley mentions to be released into the outside world.

• There was a British spoof of the documentary style 'investigation' titled Nessie: Real or Pretend?, hosted by two British comedians named Arthur Smith and Phil Nice, part of a short comedy series they made which was aired in December, 1985 called "Arthur and Phil Goes Off", made for the British "Channel 4" television network. One of the scenes had tourists standing by the castle looking at the lake. When the monster did not appear, the film crew handed out "special glasses" which had silhouettes of the monster on the lenses. The tourists immediately "saw" the monster, pointing at it in whatever direction they were looking, including one tourist looking at the sky shouting "It's flying! It's flying!" The special was run on America's A & E cable channel in 1986.

• In the TV series How I Met Your Mother one of the main characters, Marshall, has a continuing obsession with the Loch Ness monster. He believes that Nessie is a "gentle creature" and derides the fact that the it is referred to as a 'monster'. He spent 10 days during his honeymoon looking for Nessie with his wife, Lily. And in Season 3 Episode 02, In the future in Marshall's office there is a cutout from a newspaper where the headline is "N.Y.C lawyer captures 'Nesse'".

• The TV series The Simpsons featured the Loch Ness Monster in the episode Monty Can't Buy Me Love, in which Montgomery Burns captures the monster with the help of Homer Simpson, Professor Frink and Groundskeeper Willie. At the end of the episode, the Monster is given a job at a casino.

• In the TV series South Park, Chef's parents, Thomas and Nellie, live in Scotland and claim (in the episode "The Succubus", for instance) to have been repeatedly harassed by the monster, who constantly begs them for three dollars and fifty cents ("tree fiddy", as Thomas pronounces it). They claim that the monster uses elaborate ruses and disguises to get money from them (such as selling cookies in disguise as a Girl Scout, or abducting them in the guise of a space alien), and say that even giving him money won't make him go away. These stories are always told primarily by Thomas, with Nellie offering support.

• In the TV-series Godzilla: The Series, which is an animated 'continuation' of the 1998 film, one episode features the Loch Ness monster as a foe of Godzilla. The episode is one of few in the series with what seems like inter-monster communication, in this case between Godzilla and 'Nessie' who seem to be able to understand one another, or at least read each other's body language. 'Nessie' is portrayed in a positive light and a creature the audience is supposed to sympathize with rather than root for being destroyed or otherwise defeated by Godzilla. The reason for this being is that Nessie has been attacking scientific installations along the Loch because they have captured and stolen her one offspring. In this episode, rather than being a Plesiosaur as commonly depicted, Nessie's species is a gigantic type of Mosasaur.

• On an Episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy's friend, Carl, loses a sea turtle in the lake which grows to epic proportions after Jimmy's dad puts toxic waste in the lake. In an other episode, when Carl says going to Eygpt during school hours will get on their permanent record, Sheen replies that a permanent record is a myth like the Loch Ness monster and North Dakota.

• An episode of Disney's "Gargoyles" titled "Monsters" featured a captured female plesiosaur Dr. Sevarius kept in a hidden cavern within his base of operations beneath Urquhart Castle. His goal was to collect a variety of "exotic DNA" for future mutation experiments and Nessie was merely bait to lure out "Big Daddy" - her larger and more fearsome mate. The main character Angela befriends the monster when she is also taken into Sevarius's captivity. The episode also featured a submarine and a mini-sub designed to look like the monsters as well. There is a final appearance of Nessie's entire family - revealing the pair had at least two offspring when reunited at the end.

• One episode of Phineas and Ferb show the brothers visiting a place called "Lake Nose" and going in search for the "Lake Nose Monster", or "Nosey" for short (a pun on the Lock Ness Monster's nickname "Nessie"). Meanwhile, Candace goes crazy during her lifeguard shift when she sees several sitings of Nosey, which all turn out to be hoaxes. Once Phineas and Ferb found the monster, they become friends with Nosey and learn that he just wants his existence to remain a secret so he could live in peace.

• In "Achilles Heel", the second story in series 7 of The Tomorrow People, a pair of aliens visiting earth to extract a rare mineral found in the vicinity of Loch Ness note that another race of aliens who had previously dominated the earth had transplanted a "giant plascadron" in the lake to ward off the natives.

• The Lupin the Third episode "50 Ways to Leave Your 50 foot Lover" reveals the monster is actual and surfaces when it hears Fujiko Mine singing. A criminal researcher determined to capture the monster kidnaps her, compelling Lupin and gang to take action. The researcher, crippled by the Creature's attack years earlier, has an undersea craft made in the image of Nessie.

• In Swiss TV-show "Teleboy", a candid camera version, in 1976 a "Nessie"-like dummy, later by Yellow press called "Urnie", was used in Lake Lucerne.

• In the Futurama episode, "Spanish Fry", Fry is certain that Bigfoot exists, but is repeatedly told it does not. When the creature's existence is indeed later confirmed, Fry exclaims, "The Loch Ness Monster's book was right!"

• In a Toyota commercial featuring fresh water biologist Adrian Shine, the Loch Ness Monster tossed around a Toyota Tacoma.

• In The Secret Saturdays Doyle and Van Rook are shown to be going to the Loch Ness, where they are searching for V.V. Argost, and instead find Munya, where they believe Argost is dead.

• An episode of Wonder Pets featured the trio rescuing the Loch Ness Monster.

• An 1978 episode of Scooby-Doo ("A Highland Fling With a Monstrous Thing") featured a case that tied the Mystery Inc. gang between the Loch Ness Monster, and a phantom that seemed to be controlling it.

Comics

• In the webcomic George the Dragon the Loch Ness monster plays a large role. It is revealed that her name is actually Gladys and in the course of the story she becomes the love interest of the title character. She and the titular dragon eventually wed and she moves out of Loch Ness (which explains why no scientist has ever found her). There is an entire story arc which occurs inside the stomach of the Loch Ness Monster.
• In issue 5 of Doc Savage entitled "The Earth Wreckers" and published in July 1976. Subtitled "The Man of Bronze uncovers the Secret of The Loch Ness Monster" as the hero of the book pursues his enemy Iron Mask to Loch Ness.

Games

• A board game of the hunt for Nessie was produced by Searchglen called Nessie Hunt in 1987. The game was designed by Anthony Harmsworth

• Sim City 2000 features an Easter Egg of Nessie making rare appearances in large bodies of water.

• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Nessie is referenced to but is eventually found to be a fraud, instead being a giant blow up Steel Samurai.

• The Tomb Raider III expansion pack The Lost Artefact begins in a castle by Loch Ness, with the monster itself putting in an appearance towards the end of the first level. Apparently, there are two versions of Nessie at this level. One is the robotic version, and another is the true version of Nessie. The robotic version takes the shape of a plesiosaur, whereas the real Nessie is a marine serpent.

• In Saint's Row 2, there is a small island out in the ocean with the bones of what is believed to be the Loch Ness Monster.

• One part of the story in Mega Man Star Force 2 focuses on the Loch Mess Monster, which is eventually shown to be fake.

• In the SNES video game, Top Gear, there is a level that takes place at Loch Ness and on certain curves a player can spot a monster in the water.

• Loch Ness Monster, built in 1985, was the final pinball machine built by Game Plan, before the Game Plan company went out of business. As the factory "production run" was but a single prototype, the machine is almost as rare as the monster itself. Among the few who have played it, Loch Ness Monster is said to be Game Plan's best game, by far. Unlike all previous Game Plan games, it featured speech, a ramp, and a strobe-lit mechanical animation below the playfield.

• In the game EarthBound, to get through Winters, you must ride a monster in the lake named "Tessie" which you may ride afterwards if you go back.

• In the Nancy Drew game Danger on Deception Island, when Nancy is writing a letter to her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, She shows a picture of what looks to be a Loch Ness Monster but instead she calls it a snake horse.

• Super Mario 64 contains a level called "Hazy Maze Cave" in which you must visit an underground lake hidden within the cavern and ride on Dorrie, a blue plesiosaur, in order to collect a star.

• You can summon Nessie in the DS Game called Scribblenauts.

• In World of Warcraft, an NPC named "Nessy" can occasionally be seen swimming in the water midway through the Deeprun Tram. Also, in the Loch Modan region there is an NPC named "Modan Monster". Nessy resembles the traditional Nessie [2]; the Modan Monster resembles a kraken-type monster, which is really just a tough-looking, spiky fish [3].

• The Forgotten Futures tabletop RPG adventure Free Nessie (1994, part of Forgotten Futures III) involves an attempt to free the Loch Ness Monster from captivity.

• The first generation Pokémon Lapras is directly modeled after the Loch Ness Monster.

• In Team Fortress 2 (PC), one of the Demoman achievements is titled "Loch Ness Bombster", a straight reference to Nessie (in the game, the Demoman is an explosive weapons specialist hailing from Scotland). The character bio for the Demoman mentions that as a child, he had a terrible plan to kill the monster using explosive weaponry, which failed.

• A screenshot of the corner before the chicane in a redesigned version

of Trial Mountain in GT5 from the Tokyo Game Show 2010 has a lake. If the viewer were to look beyond the last couple of NGK billboards in the corner (foreground) and the bottom of a hill (midground), you can see a figure that looks like the Loch Ness Monster. Someone on YouTube created a video of it, showing the lake, the history of the creature, and pictures of Trial Mountain. The final picture zooms in dramatically at the figure.

• In AdventureQuest, the clan leader for Water looks like the Loch Ness monster.

• The Loch Ness Monster was part of the quest for Cryptid Island on Poptropica.

• In League of Legends, the champion Cho'Gath has a remodel called Loch Ness Cho'Gath, which makes him look like a sea creature based on descriptions of the Loch Ness Monster.

• Rend Lake College in Ina, Illinois sponsors a yearly 'Monster Hunt' in which the students of the college hunt lake monsters in nearby Rend Lake.

Theme park rides

• There is a Loch Ness Monster rollercoaster at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia.

Further reading

• Bauer, Henry H. "Common Knowledge about the Loch Ness Monster: Television, Videos, and Films", Journal of Scientific Exploration (2002) Vol. 16. No. 3, pp. 455–477. A critical appraisal of seventeen television and film documentaries on the Loch Ness Monster, which concludes that they promulgate various errors of fact and interpretation.

See also

• Bigfoot in popular culture