History Arthur / TropesAToD

* ArtEvolution: The animation became much crisper in the later episodes of Season 1 compared to the earlier ones. Season 6 then introduced a brighter color scheme (though contrary to popular belief, the show did NOT ever use hand-painted cel animation; th colors were always digital). As we've discussed elsewhere, a more noticeable (and in many people's eyes, more egregious) phase in the art evolution came in Season 16, when the show switched to Flash animation.

** In the opening to "Buster's Green Thumb", the food in Buster's "food cabinet" (a collecion of rotten food that he keeps for sentimental reasons) has literally come alive and is quarreling.

** D.W. likes animals (except mice, which she's scared of, and Arthur's pet dog Pal, whom she thinks is dumb) and in "D.W.'s Deer Friend" she [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin befriends a deer]] and even cried over the death of a fish her parents caught. She also takes a liking to Ladonna's pet rat, General Higgings, with Ladonna saying she can play with him whenever she wants.

** In "Buster the Myth Maker", Brain lists scorpions as among the "climatically inappropriate ''vertebrates''". It may be a case of ImmediateSelfContradiction, given how he says "animals" right before making the list.

** In one episode, Brain refers to scorpions as vertebrates.

** In "Jenna's Bedtime Blues", Jenna accidentally drops her training pants in front of her friends at a sleepover and in an attempt to deflect suspicion from herself, insults the hypothetical person who it belongs to, clearly expecting everyone else to join in. Instead, everyone else thinks she's being really mean and overly harsh.
** In "So Funny I Forgot to Laugh", Arthur mocks Sue Ellen's new sweater. At first it's no harm but then he takes things too far to the to the point that nobody thinks that he is funny, instead they think he is mean.

** In "Jenna's Bedtime Blues", Jenna accidentally drops her training pants in front of her friends at a sleepover and in an attempt to deflect suspicion from herself, insults the hypothetical person who it belongs to, clearly expecting everyone else to join in. Instead, everyone else thinks she's being really mean and overly harsh.
** In "So Funny I Forgot to Laugh", Arthur mocks Sue Ellen's new sweater. At first it's no harm but then he takes things too far to the to the point that nobody thinks that he is funny, instead they think he is mean.

* DudeNotFunny: In "Jenna's Bedtime Blues", Jenna accidentally drops her training pants in front of her friends at a sleepover and in an attempt to deflect suspicion from herself, insults the hypothetical person who it belongs to, clearly expecting everyone else to join in. Instead, everyone else thinks she's being really mean and overly harsh.

** Inverted starting with S16, which is [[LimitedAnimation very noticeably]] animated in-house at Creator/9StoryMediaGroup using Flash to cut production costs (a trend that had previously hit fellow PBS Kids show ''WesternAnimation/{{Cyberchase}}'' and would later hit ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents''). Also inverted by seasons 12-15[[note]]by Creator/AnimationServiceHK[[/note]], which also exhibits a noticeable drop from the previous seasons by Creator/{{AKOM}}.

* AnimalsLackAtributes: This is obviously played straight since it's a kids' show, but it's made painfully obvious in "Pet Projects" when Pal and Nemo, tired of their owners making videos of them, point their rears at the camera with no anuses on display.

** Inverted starting with S16, which is [[LimitedAnimation very noticeably]] animated in-house using Flash to cut production costs (a trend that had previously hit fellow PBS Kids show ''WesternAnimation/Cyberchase'' and would later hit ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents''). Also inverted by seasons 12-15[[note]]by Creator/AnimationServiceHK[[/note]], which also exhibits a noticeable drop from the previous seasons by Creator/{{AKOM}}.

** Season 20 is animated by a new studio. Switching from Flash to Toon Boom, it looks much better than Season 16-19. It improves in Season 22.

** In the episode "Draw!" Francine probably shouldn't have called Fern a mouse, but did she really deserve nearly ''all'' the other kids making rude comics about her?

* ArtisticLicense:
** From "Buster's Amish Mismatch". In general, Amish people are anxious to keep themselves separate from the outside world. Most of the time, though they are hospitable, they do NOT take kindly to outsiders just poking around. Due to a lack of modern technology to communicate with a school (i.e., phones, email) it is highly implausible that they would randomly set it up so a public school class could come to someone's house and take a tour. Even if an Amish family agreed to this, it would have to be cleared through their church elders and bishop, and the family/groups involved would need to have a close bond with the teacher or someone at the school.
** "How the Cookie Crumbles": Muffy should ''never'' have even been allowed to enter the strawberry baking contest in the first place due to her father Ed being a judge [[note]]thus presenting a blatant conflict of interest[[/note]], which was the very reason stated by a bitter fellow competitor in said contest.

** In the episode "Fernkenstein's Monster," Arthur, still apparently traumatized from the events of "Arthur's Underwear," tells a story of a boy (who strongly resembles Arthur himself) who, as a birthday present, gets a pair of briefs with clown faces all over them. The boy attempts to bury the pair of underwear in his drawer and forget about them. The next day, the boy is in front of his entire class doing a math problem at the blackboard when his pants inexplicably fall down and the entire class laughs at him. The boy looks down to see that he is wearing the clown-face briefs that he got for his birthday, despite the fact that he had buried them in his drawer and had not put them on that morning. One of the clown faces is seen maniacally laughing, indicating that the underwear had some sort of supernatural power to cause the boy embarrassment as punishment for trying to get rid of them.

* {{Bookends}}: "All Grown Up" ends with [[spoiler:an adult Arthur revealing his first children's book to his friends, telling the story of how he got his first pair of glasses -- the subject of the original ''Arthur'' book and the first segment of the first episode of the series]]. The camera zooms into a photo of Arthur's house at a similar angle to the one first depicted at the start of the series.
* {{Bookends}}: The first shot of the Pilot episode is a shot of the Read house at night as a flashlight shines around inside the windows. The last shot of the Final Episode is a picture in a graphic novel showing a shot of the Read house at night with a flashlight shining in the window. [[spoiler: It's the first page of Arthur's first graphic novel.]]

** In "[[Recap/ArthurS2E4ArthurMakesAMovieGoToYourRoomDW Arthur Makes a Movie]]," the kids decide to make a [[BlandNameProduct James Hound]] FanFilm because they aren't likely to be allowed into the latest, PG-13-rated, real one. HilarityEnsues: they make a model supersonic jet for their villain (which gets eaten by Arthur's dog, Pal), they use their inflatable shark, [[ALizardNamedLiz Sharky]], as part of a [[Franchise/JamesBond Bond]] villain-esque peril scene (Arthur defeats it by deflating it), and [[EverythingIsOnline Brain accidentally hacks into the library's electrical power and turns it off]] while simulating trying to hack a nuclear missile. Prunella (who has seen the real film despite being only a year older) thinks the result is BetterThanCanon.

* ArcNumber: Every episode in Season 10 has the number 10 hidden in various places and mentioned in the dialogue at some point. The first episode of the season, "Happy Anniversary," is Mr. and Mrs. Read's tenth, and the Reads have a PlotDrivenBreakdown outside a restaurant called "The Ten Spot Diner".

* AnthropomorphicFood: It's shown that the old food in Buster's "food cabinet" (a drawer where he keeps old, rotten food that's sentimental to him) are actually alive and can talk to each other.

** Kate has made friends with most of the animals she's met. It helps that she SpeaksFluentAnimal.

** At the end of S3's "Mom and Dad Have a Great Big Fight", Nadine states that the moral of the story is "Don't put your milk close to the edge, because someone's going to knock it over."

** Prunella's older sister Rubella occasionally calls her "Prunie".
** Brain's "nickname" can also be referred to as this, since his real name (Alan) is said so infrequently.