in an alternate universe there’s a direct pipeline to the gods where you can just talk to them and ask for shit but most of the time if your wish is stupid they’ll vaporize you but one day Adam and Jamie came to the gods and were like “hey we wanna take Mythbusters to the next level can we have infinite lives like a video game so whenever we die we just wake up the next day completely ok” and the gods were like “this should be really fuckin good” and gave them both immortality so they started testing Fucked Up Unethical Myths like “can you survive on nothing but toothpaste” and “how far high up do you have to jump from for a belly flop onto water to kill you” and “what happens if you swallow live explosives and then explode them” and “how long can you survive in sulfuric acid” and stuff like that and then the gods are just watching them and laughing their asses off and if a TV network refuses to broadcast the new “Mythbusters Dying Edition: this shit’s fucked up now!” they get vaporized also
so most bony fish mouths all work pretty much the same way, which is that the actual mouth is a fairly delicate structure that’s normally folded up inside the fish’s face like an accordion. and when the fish sees something it wants to eat/intimidate/smooch gently, it extends the mouth and literally launches its jaws forward out of its face and at its target.
“oh dang, I am just a normal fish going about my normal fish day.”
“HEY YOU GIMME SMOOCH”
and Oarfish are no exception! their version of fish origamiface is just a little more... extreme. like someone tried to make a paper crane while drunk, and also possessed by a demon. normally their faces are folded up all politelike like this,
but when they see something delicious....
*SHOOMP*
this exploding-face trick creates a low-pressure zone inside of the Oarfish’s mouth, which forcibly sucks in any shrimp/small fish/souls of drowned sailors that are in the Suction Zone. these goodies are immediately swallowed as the Oarfish puts its face back together and goes back to being not a nightmare alien creature.
“hello friend, it is me, Normal Fish!”
and sure, there are definitely fish out there with WAY more extreme mouth extension than the Oarfish! but those fish are not also 50 foot long earthquake-predicting mirror sea serpents that spend their time hanging vertically in the deep ocean like they’re pretending to be a support column.