Bruce

Bruce is a character in Finding Nemo.

He is the jolly, laidback, jokester, Australian-accented leader of the Fish-Friendly Sharks.

Even though Bruce is good, he is sometimes confused to be somewhat of an antagonist.

Finding Nemo
In Finding Nemo, Bruce is first seen when Marlin accidentally comes face-to-face with him. Even after he politely introduced himself, Marlin and Dory seemed uneasy. Seeing this, Bruce said that he understood, saying, "Why trust a shark? Right?". He then turns to leave, much to Marlin's pleasure, only for the shark to turn quickly and snap his teeth at them, just barely missing their mark. Even though it scares Marlin, Bruce gets a good laugh out of it. After he calms down, he questions what a couple of "bites" like them were doing out. When Marlin says they weren't doing anything, Bruce takes advantage of this and asks if they would like to get to a get-together that he was hosting. Dory asks if it's like a party and Bruce goes along with it and asks if they are up to going. Dory readily agrees, but Marlin is very hesitant, and before the clownfish could swim away, Bruce blocks his path and tells Marlin that he insists and begins to lead the two fish away. Bruce soon comes to an old abandoned minefield where Dory mistakes them for balloons, to which Bruce laughs and says they wouldn't want these "balloons" to pop. As Bruce continues to move through the minefields, a submarine comes into view. Bruce then pushes Marlin and Dory to an opening where two sharks named Anchor and Chum (who are Bruce's buddies) are swimming around in circles. The two sharks complain that Bruce was late and that they were hungry. As Bruce pushes Marlin and Dory closer, it is thought that Bruce has brought them so that his friends could eat them as Anchor opened his mouth to swallow the scared Marlin.

However, in the next scene, Bruce rings a bell and says that a meeting has come to order and they then say their pledge. After Anchor and Chum complain about dolphins, Bruce announces that the meeting was "Step Five: Bring a fish friend." When he asks if they all have a friend, he's pleased to see that Anchor had one. He then asked where Chum's friend was; when told that his friend was misplaced, Bruce offered Chum one of his own friends (Marlin and Dory). The Great White then says that he had not eaten a fish in 3 weeks, which amazes Anchor and Chum. Bruce then invites Dory to go next. After Dory says that she had never eaten a fish, Bruce and his friends applaude her. After asking who was to go next, Bruce looks at Marlin, asking what his "problem" was. Bruce then pushed Marlin onto the "stage" when the clownfish claimed he didn't have a problem. As Marlin introduced himself as a clownfish, Anchor and Chum got very excited, which ended up with Bruce pushing Chum out of the way so to get close to Marlin and urged him to tell a joke. However, as the clownfish starts to rant during his joke, Bruce starts to loose interest. He then murmurs to Anchor that even as a clownfish, Marlin wasn't that funny. When Marlin swims to a scuba diver's mask, he tells the sharks that his son Nemo was taken from him. Bruce is touched when he finds out that Marlin was looking for Nemo. The shark then breaks down into tears and confesses that he never knew his father, which in turn got him a couple of hugs from Marlin and Dory. Meanwhile, Marlin and Dory find the scuba diver's mask, and as Dory is about to ask the sharks to read what it says, Marlin pulls on the mask and Dory pulls back. This makes Marlin let go by accident and the mask hits Dory on the face, causing some blood to spill into the water. Bruce, having just watched all of this, begins to ask Dory if she's okay, but is cut off when he smells her blood. As Bruce's natural instincts kick in, his eyes go from a bright blue to a pitch black color, and just as he is about to eat his two fish friends, he is pinned to the wall by Anchor and Chum. Finally, Bruce is able to get free from his shark friends and charges after Marlin and Dory, shouting that he's having fish tonight. He then goes on a hunt after Marlin and Dory, having a few close calls until Marlin and Dory swim into a room and the door closes, making Bruce slam into the door painfully. As the terrified fish look for an escape, Bruce begins to ram against the door, loosing the bolts (he also says a quote from The Shining {"Here's Brucey!", which is a spoof of "Here's Johnny!"}). Just as Dory and Marlin escape the submarine, Bruce crashes through an escape latch and continues to chase after the fish, finally cornering them in a torpedo tube. In his frenzy, Bruce begins to ram the opening in a futile attempt to get to the trapped fish, nearly crushing Anchor and Chum as they apologized. While stuck inside, Marlin tells Dory that they have to get the mask from Bruce, which had gotten caught in his teeth during the chase. Dory then finds a way to release the torpedo, sending them into Bruce's mouth and momentarily logging it into his mouth, giving them time to grab the mask before swimming back into the tube. Angered, Bruce swings his head and successfully gets the torpedo out of his mouth. However, he sends it flying towards one of the active mines. After hearing Chum say his name again, Bruce finally turns to his friends and sees where the torpedo is heading. Now back to his old self, he yells for his fish friends to swim away.

After this, the sharks' fates are unknown until the end, where it reveals that the sharks survived the explosions. At the end of the movie, Bruce and his friends are shown at the reef, dropping off Dory after one of their meetings before swimming away.

On the DVD easter egg, there's also a scene of Bruce and Dory. In it, Dory is seen playing with Bruce, in which she tickles his belly, making him laugh. The scene ends with Dory swiming offscreen, with Bruce following her.

Trivia

 * Bruce has 202 teeth in his mouth.
 * When Bruce was a pup, he had a hard time understanding why humans were afraid of him.
 * Bruce never knew his father, so he may have been closer to his mom (as revealed by Bruce in the first film).
 * He also comes out on a couple of the Finding Nemo computer games. In one game, he plays a game with Nemo and asks him to shoot seaweed balls into his mouth. In another game, he appears in his meeting and when clicked on, he'll talk.
 * His favorite food is kelp salad.
 * He seems to have a closer friendship to Dory than Anchor and Chum.
 * It's unknown what Bruce's opinion on dolphins is. He may be the kind that doesn't mind dolphins, as long as they don't bother him. While Anchor and Chum were making fun of dolphins, Bruce didn't say anything; he just called the meeting to order (as shown in the original movie).
 * He was actually born and raised on the Great Barrier Reef.
 * The group that Bruce runs is very similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.