History WesternAnimation / TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndmandy

* UnexplainedAccent: Grim's Jamaican accent.
** [[RuleOfFunny Unexplained?]]
*** His grandmother also has one, and has a Jamaican look to her to boot.
*** Not unexplained at all, actually; it's a Shout Out to ''Film/MeetJoeBlack'', wherein Death adopts a Jamaican accent to make a dying Caribbean woman more comfortable, and accept him as a TrueNeutral rather than evil. Or it could just be the fact that the Caribbean has something of an association with Voodoo and magic in general, for which Grim exhibits a propensity.
*** This troper remembers reading something that said it was a mistake that Grim's voice actor made when originally auditioning for the role. [[ThrowItIn Maxwell Atoms liked it so much that he decided it should be kept.]]

* ForgottenFallenFriend: In Nergal Jr.'s origin episode, he paralyzes a boy who was disgusted by his appearance and shapeshifts into his form, doing the same to all other children he meets who refuse to be his friend (as an homage to Creator/JohnCarpenter's ''Film/TheThing''). In future episodes, this boy's form is Nergal Jr.'s "default". The other children were rescued by Billy and Mandy, but Nergal Jr.'s [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse initial victim is never mentioned or seen again]]... [[FridgeHorror and this episode takes place in bitterly cold weather.]]

* MyNameIsNotDurwood: "It's Good-'''''VIIIIIIIBES!'''''

* CloudCuckooLander: Fred Fredburger.

!! This show provides examples of (see YMMV [[YMMV/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy here]]):

Rounding out the show's cast are Irwin, Billy's best friend and the TokenMinority (who also has a massive crush on Mandy); Sperg TheBully; Mindy the AlphaBitch; [[EvilDead Hoss]] [[EscapeFromNewYork Delgado]], a supernatural bounty hunter with more brawn than brains; Eris, the goddess of chaos and discord; General Skarr (formerly seen in ''WesternAnimation/EvilConCarne''), who now wants to garden instead of conquering the world; and Nergal, the Sumerian Death God who lives in Earth's molten core and just wants to be friends with everyone, really.

** Dean Toadblatt is voiced by the late John Vernon, who is remembered by many as the antagonistic Dean Wormer from ''AnimalHouse''.

* BreakupBreakout: After breaking off from Evil Con Carne, it became the more successful of the two shows.

* BrokeTheRatingScale: Billy managed to score himself a NEGATIVE 5 on an IQ test, being outperformed by a shovel and a pair of candy bracelets.

-->"The network said no-one wants to see a worn-out old bag like me on TV anymore."

-->'''Billy:''' And you keep breaking my arms just because she wants you to. [[Literature/TheBible Who's the bigger fool?]] [[StarWars The fool or the fool who follows him?]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: A RunningGag in later seasons is that Mandy never smiles... except one early episode had her clearly smiling after [[spoiler: making everyone on Earth spontaneously vanish.]]
** It actually goes further back than that. She smiled at the end of the very first short of the very first episode after Grim becomes Billy and Mandy's best friend.
** And a few subtle times in the episode where she gave Grim a "makeover."

* {{Fanfiction}}: Webcomic/GrimTalesFromDownBelow derived from this.

* FiveManBand: Underfist.

* ForgottenFallenFriend: In Nergal Jr.'s origin episode, he paralyzes a boy who was disgusted by his appearance and shapeshifts into his form, doing the same to all other children he meets who refuse to be his friend (as an homage to JohnCarpenter's ''Film/TheThing''). In future episodes, this boy's form is Nergal Jr.'s "default". The other children were rescued by Billy and Mandy, but Nergal Jr.'s [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse initial victim is never mentioned or seen again]]... [[FridgeHorror and this episode takes place in bitterly cold weather.]]

* HypocriticalHumor: During the Underfist special.

* KillEmAll: The episode "Wishbones". 9 characters have their wishes granted. Not many of them survive. Though retconned when Grim wishes Billy and Mandy never found the skull, undoing the wishes.

* NeverSayDie: Obviously averted, what with death ''itself'' being a main character and all, and an episode titled ''Who Killed Who?''.

* NonSequiturThud: Billy's first appearance in Underfist includes this.

* PlayingPictionary: Dracula's pictionary drawing of Abraham Lincoln is mistaken for successively more absurd things.

* ProductionThrowback: The film grain effect during the title sequence hides this, but [[http://hurtermonkey.blogspot.com/2007/01/7-year-itch.html the gravestones are inscribed with the names of three fellow series]] (EvilConCarne, TimeSquad, and WhateverHappenedToRobotJones), all of which were cancelled during the production the show's first solo season.

** Hoss Delgado is a blatant reference to both Ash from the ''Film/EvilDead'' series and Snake from ''Film/EscapeFromNewYork''.

** One episode was a straight-up parody of ''God-Emperor of {{Dune}}'', with Mandy in the Leto II role, Billy in the Duncan Idaho role, and Grim still as Mandy's servant.

** And yet another Dune reference: At the end of the episode "Scary Poppins," Mandy uses the [[CompellingVoice Bene Gesserit Voice]] to command the neighborhood adults to attack the nanny.
** [[Film/EvilDead "This... is my DOOMSTICK!"]]

** And there's Vampire Santa quoting [[Film/EvilDead the Deadites' catchphrase]]:

** Pinface is a blatant reference to Pinhead of ''Film/{{Hellraiser}}'' fame.

** "Billy and Mandy Begins" had {{Shout Out}}s to ''Franchise/IndianaJones'', ''SilenceOfTheLambs'', ''{{Film/Airplane}}'', ''Franchise/StarWars'', and ''{{Film/Ghostbusters}}''. The title itself might also be a reference to ''Film/BatmanBegins'', since that episode aired around the same time that movie came out.
** General Skarr in command of his [[GreenThumb army of plants]]: "[[TheSoundOfMusic Bloom and grow! Bloom and grow FOREVER!]]"

** An episode revolving around Grim and Dracula driving through the desert entitled ''[[FearAndLoathingInLasVegas Fear and Loathing in Endsville]]'', complete with a title card evoking Ralph Steadman's signature style of illustration.

** Billy is admitted to a prestigious dancing academy, whose headmistress is actually a witch who feeds on her students to retain her immortality. This is a WholePlotReference to DarioArgento's ''{{Film/Suspiria}}''.

** And ''TheTerminator'' gets one when Billy asks [[ItMakesSenseInContext the ghost of Lord Byron]] for "a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range" (Lord Byron wisely steers him away).
** The episode "Hurter Monkey" contains a lot of them; you've got the Film/{{Terminator}}, Film/TheMatrix, JohnWoo (with DisturbedDoves and DualWielding), Grim's [[ChristopherWalken Christopher Walken-esque]] attorney Harvey as mentioned below and ''{{Film/Se7en}}''.

*** It's worth noting that The Powerpuff Girls was originally intended to target an older audience. And it was going to be called "The Whoopass Girls". Now take what Mandy said, replace "Powerpuff" with "Whoopass", and [[FridgeBrilliance it all makes sense.]]

** In the episode "Smarten Up" Billy’s cat Milkshake eats an intelligence enhancing bookworm that was meant for Billy. After Billy complains about never being able to pass a math test now that the worm is gone Milkshake states “…I'm very well acquainted with matters mathematical. I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical.” These are lyrics from the “Major-General's Song” from the 1879 opera The Pirates of Penzance.

* SideEffectsInclude: In ''Nergal's Pizza'', Nergal tells Jr. to spike Granny Grim's pizza sauce with some "horrible ghastly elixir". When Jr. asks what it does, Nergal responds "I don't know, but it's ''ghastly''."

* SuddenlyFluentInGibberish: In the "Underfist" special, Irwin pleads with Hoss, Skarr, and Jeff that, among other things, Mindy was kidnapped by a marshmallow bunny. However, his hysterical InelegantBlubbering couldn't be understood by anyone save Jeff, who speaks "crybaby."

* StrangeGirl: Mandy.

* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: Two examples act as joint TropeNamer.

*** Not unexplained at all, actually; it's a Shout Out to ''MeetJoeBlack'', wherein Death adopts a Jamaican accent to make a dying Caribbean woman more comfortable, and accept him as a TrueNeutral rather than evil. Or it could just be the fact that the Caribbean has something of an association with Voodoo and magic in general, for which Grim exhibits a propensity.
*** This troper remembers reading something that said it was a mistake that Grim's voice actor made when originally auditioning for the role. Maxwell Atoms liked it so much that he decided it should be kept.

* VillainSong: Mindy gets one in Underfist.

----

TheGrimReaper has come for a soul -- specifically, a hamster in his dying days -- but he's stopped from taking the hamster to the afterlife by two children: the [[DumbIsGood blissfully idiotic Billy]] (the hamster's owner) and the cynical, amoral Mandy (Billy's best friend). [[ChessWithDeath The pair challenge]] "[[ChessWithDeath Grim]]" [[ChessWithDeath to a limbo contest to save the hamster]]; when Grim loses, he becomes Billy and Mandy's newest friend -- and by "friend", we mean that he's contractually bound to be the kids' friend and cater to their every whim. Grim begrudgingly serves as something of an underworld version of Mary Poppins, thanklessly placating Billy's demands for cheap entertainment and Mandy's schemes for self-profit with his magical scythe while desperately trying to find a way to be rid of the duo for good. Thus go ''The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy''.

** "Son of Nergal" has the kids sent off to "winter camp" - where the axe-wielding counselor is named [[Literature/TheShining John Jack Daniel Torrance]].

* ElvesVersusDwarves

* FootFocus: In "Prank Call of Cthulhu," anyone who gets dragged through the phone into Cthulhu's world loses their shoes, because according to Grim, they're to big to fit. Because of this, Billy and Irwin are stuck in bare feet on the other side of the portal, and when Mandy and Grim go in to save them, Mandy's forced to leave behind her own shoes and go barefoot for the rest of the episode.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: Jeff The Spider is a black widow. A male black widow. [[ItMakesSenseInContext Meaning he's a primordial fear of humanity (and Billy)]] [[FriendToAllLivingThings when all he wants is his "dad", Billy,]] [[TheWoobie to love him.]] [[TruthInTelevision Considering male black widows are HARMLESS,]] [[CrapsackWorld this makes sense in the twisted world of Endsville.]]

*** From the same episode: Malaria and Grim dance the twist in a scene almost exactly like Mia and Vincent's in ''Film/PulpFiction''.

** In the episode "Smarten Up" Billy’s cat Milkshake eats an intelligence enhancing bookworm that was meant for Billy. After Billy complains about never being able to pass a math test now that the worm is gone Milkshake “…I'm very well acquainted with matters mathematical. I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical.” This are lyrics from the “Major-General's Song” from the 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance.

This show was actually the winner of a contest held by Creator/CartoonNetwork to determine what cartoon would be their next new show. On an interesting note, ''Billy and Mandy'' ended up lasting longer than most of the shows that CN greenlit without fan input; ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', the winner of the contest the following year, did likewise. (Think about this: those two shows, voted to greenlight status by the viewers, ended up lasting at least two more seasons than any other show CN greenlit afterward). ''Billy and Mandy'' was originally a much darker ThreeShorts show that included another cartoon, ''WesternAnimation/EvilConCarne'' (and known then as ''Grim & Evil''), but became the more comedic (but still pretty dark) ''Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy'' when ''Con Carne'' was dropped after the first season in an unsuccessful SpinOff attempt.