The Barracuda is a minor, but important character in Finding Nemo.
Finding Nemo
"This sinister killer is nothing like Bruce and his gang. He is one of the most feared sights in the reef. When he swims in, everyone else swims out. Renowned for his stare-you-out eyes, the Barracuda can scare most small fish to death even before he lays a sharp tooth on them. Marlin's life is changed forever when his wife, Coral, comes face to face with this monster. Coral is so worried about the eggs she has laid nearby that she cannot bring herself to flee home."[1]
The barracuda is a predatory fish seen at the beginning of the film invading the reef where Marlin and Coral have made their home. Coral sees her eggs and, ignoring Marlin's warnings, rushes to protect them. Marlin attempts to defend Coral, but he is no match for the barracuda and is knocked unconscious. Marlin awakens to find that the barracuda has left from sight. He looks around to discover Coral and all of the eggs were gone. After briefly crying over discovering what happened, Marlin spots one egg (which presumably fell out of the barracuda’s mouth while he was eating the eggs) which later hatches into Nemo whose right fin becomes unusually small due to some slight damage his egg had gained from barracuda attack. The barracuda is not seen again throughout the rest of the entire film.
Trivia
- In the original storyboard of the movie, there was going to be a scene where Coral and the eggs were originally dead and seen inside the barracuda's mouth, but it was later cut from the final film because it would have scared little kids watching the movie.
- Despite barracudas and other fish not having vocal cords and as such not being able to produce any sounds, the Barracuda can be heard roaring as it attacks Marlin and Coral. In a similar vein to Glut the Shark from The Little Mermaid, this may have been done merely for dramatic purposes.
- In real life, barracudas do not eat fish eggs and rarely eat clownfish. They typically eat larger fish.
- They also generally live in open water instead of near coral reefs.
- In the 3-D re-release, when the barracuda closes its teeth, its bottom lip is shown.
- As revealed through the Finding Dory commentary, one of the writers for Finding Dory wanted the last shot of the sequel to be the Barracuda looking hungrily at the reef right before "The End" appears on the screen. The Barracuda was also originally planned to speak in the sequel, in which it would be voiced by the late David Lander, who also voiced Thumper in the outtakes of A Bug's Life. However, the idea was eventually dropped.
- Although Nemo survived the barracuda's attack, his egg got a slight damage from it, a small crack which is why Nemo's right fin is so small.
- A barracuda that resembles the Barracuda in Finding Nemo makes a cameo appearance in Toy Story 4 where it was stuffed and mounted on the wall of the antique store.
- His roars sound very similar to the frogfish from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
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