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| 2 | %% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1646750976029402700&page=1 |
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| 5 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/monica_8.png]] |
| 6 | [[caption-width-right:350:From left to right: Smudge, Monica, Jimmy Five, Maggy.]] |
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| 8 | ''Monica's Gang'', also known as ''Monica and Friends'' (originally titled ''[[Pt/TurmaDaMonica Turma da Mônica]]'') is a hugely popular [[{{UsefulNotes/Brazil}} Brazilian]] comic book series that has been running since the 1960s. It was created by Brazilian cartoonist Mauricio de Sousa. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | The series has countless comic books, strips and almanacs, and is divided in several branches. The main one features four main 7-year-old kids and takes place in UsefulNotes/SaoPaulo: |
| 11 | * ''Monica''/''Mônica'' (1963-present): Main character and self-appointed leader of the gang. She started out making appearances in Jimmy Five's strips, [[SpotlightStealingSquad but ended up getting the spotlight soon afterwards]]. Her most noticeable traits are her prominent front teeth, her SuperStrength and her red dress ([[LimitedWardrobe her wardrobe's full of these]]). Thanks to her short temper, [[BerserkButton calling her pudgy, bucktooth, shrimp or any combination thereof]] is a sure-fire way to get her to [[ImprobableWeaponUser beat you up with her blue plush bunny]]. |
| 12 | * ''Jimmy Five''/''Cebolinha'' (1960-present): He used to be the main character of his own comic strips, but ended up losing the spotlight to Monica soon after. Jimmy is a creative boy who envisions countless "infallible plans" to get Monica's stuffed bunny and [[TakeOverTheWorld take over the block]]. He has only five single strands of hair, [[ImprobableHairstyle which is unusual for a kid his age]]; and when speaking, [[ElmuhFuddSyndwome he swaps the 'r' for 'l' (or 'w']], depending on the version you're reading). He is the only protagonist, and one of the very few kids oversall, who wears shoes. |
| 13 | * ''Smudge''/''Cascão'' (1961-present): Jimmy Five's best friend. A [[ThePigPen pigpen at heart]], he absolutely hates water and never has any contact with it (save for drinking it). A very skilled soccer player. |
| 14 | * ''Maggy''/''Magali'' (1964-present): Monica's best friend, always wearing a yellow dress, and basically the poster girl to the BigEater trope; she loves to eat, particularly [[TrademarkFavoriteFood watermelons]], but [[NeverGetsFat never gains any weight at all]]. She also tends to be rather girly sometimes. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | The other groups created by Mauricio include: |
| 17 | * ''Chuck Billy 'n' Folks''/''Turma do Chico Bento'': A Brazilian child hillbilly's life. |
| 18 | * ''Horacio's World''/''Turma do Horácio'': A vegetarian '' T. rex'' who muses about life. |
| 19 | * ''Bug-a-Booo''/''Turma do Penadinho'': [[MonsterMash A ghost and his monster friends.]] They like to scare people, but usually fail miserably. |
| 20 | * ''The Cavern Clan''/''Turma do Piteco'': A caveman dealing with his prehistorical life. |
| 21 | * ''Tina's Pals''/''Turma da Tina'': A teenager and her friends, which include her blue-haired best friend, her chubby best female friend and said friend's lazy boyfriend. |
| 22 | * ''The Tribe''/''Turma do Papa-Capim'': A group of Brazilian Indians. |
| 23 | * ''The Funnies''/''Turma do Astronauta'': A Brazilian astronaut's journey through the cosmos. Frequently stumbles by classic sci-fi characters (a story had him taking his spaceship to the shop; [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Kirk and Spock]], [[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader]], [[Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial E.T.]] and the crew from ''Series/LostInSpace'' were all there awaiting service on their ships as well), and it can be sometimes adventurous, sometimes philosophical (in fact, the first graphic novel of the Graphic MSP seal, which deals with Mauricio's characters as seen by other prominent Brazilian comics artists, stars Bubbly in a study on loneliness). |
| 24 | * ''Lionel's Kingdom''/''Turma da Mata'': A group of jungle animals. The English title has the name of the ruler of said jungle (a lion, of course), but the main character is the elephant Thunder (Jotalhão), originally created as the mascot of a tomato sauce (which had a realistic elephant on its cans, but eventually changed to Thunder). |
| 25 | |
| 26 | A general rundown on the franchise for English speakers can be found [[http://www.monicaandfriends.com/ here]]. The English dub of the series on the Monica Plus Website/{{YouTube}} channel can be found [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzzNocnagTE&list=PLBUqbL0gszR6HijGRt0rJ0_PS-T0byEvC here]], and the official English channel can be found [[https://www.youtube.com/@monicaandfriends/channels here]]. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | In 2019, the franchise got its first Live-Action installment with the theatrical film ''Turma da Mônica: Laços'' (''Monica's Gang: Bonds''), based on the official graphic novel of the same name. It got a sequel in 2021 called ''Turma da Mônica: Lições'' (''Monica's Gang: Lessons''), also based on an eponymous graphic novel, and in 2022, an original series for [[Creator/{{TVGlobo}} Globoplay]] with the same cast. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | ---- |
| 31 | !!Provides examples of: |
| 32 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 33 | |
| 34 | [[folder:Tropes A-M]] |
| 35 | * AbortedArc: In June 2018, Emerson Abreu set up a bigger plotline in Monica, Jimmy and Maggy's comics, which all featured interconnected storylines. However, he never followed up on it, leaving some questions unanswered. Namely, the relevance of the mysterious black cat that ominously shows up in the background of a few panels, or how Jimmy forgave Smudge after disowning him as a friend at the end of Monica's story. |
| 36 | * AdamAndEvePlot: A variant of this almost happens to Smudge on "O Mundo do Cascão"[[labelnote:Translation]] "Smudge's World"[[/labelnote]], from 1985: After seeing his plans fail one time too many, Captain Fray decides to use a gigantic magnet to create a planet made of trash off Earth's orbit, takes Smudge to it and fashions a "Eve" out of mud for him so they'll populate his planet. |
| 37 | * AdaptationalWimp: |
| 38 | ** In the "An Adventure in Time" animated movie, Pitheco is a brave hero who enthusiastically decides to confront Pitoco while the villain is posing as a fire god. In the comic book adaptation, he is reduced to an ineffectual coward whom Monica has to drag back to his village in order to convince him to protect it from Pitoco. |
| 39 | ** In the ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' comics, Mongul is depicted as a cunning tyrant whose strength rivals or outright surpasses the hero's. Here, he is reduced to a ButtMonkey: The gang refers to him as a "ComicBook/{{Darkseid}} rip-off" whose name is not worth remembering, and he goes down in a single hit when Monica bashes him with her stuffed bunny. |
| 40 | * AdaptedOut: In some animated versions of comics, a few characters such as Specs, Junior and Jeremiah never appeared and were replaced by someone else. While Junior and Jeremiah now appear in the cartoons regularly, Specs has been so forgotten he barely even appears in the comic books, let alone in any episode. |
| 41 | * AdvertisedExtra: The cover art for "Dimensão Floquiniana"[[labelnote:Translation]] "The Fluffy Dimension"[[/labelnote]] prominently features Monica's teen version, implying that the story is a crossover between the original comic and the manga spin-off. However, teen Monica's role is reduced to a cameo in a single panel, with no lines or interaction with her original self. |
| 42 | * AllLoveIsUnrequited: |
| 43 | ** Tooga towards Pitheco. She wants to marry him, but he doesn't want to date her, or anyone else (though some stories do suggest he's just being {{Tsundere}}). |
| 44 | ** Franklin towards Marina. Not helped by how the attempts at winning her heart with inventions or manipulation backfire ''hard''. |
| 45 | * AlphaBitch: Cindy Frou-Frou's most common characterization is of a spoiled, snobbish rich girl who belives herself to be above everyone else. |
| 46 | * AlternateContinuity: The ''An Adventure in Time'' special takes place in its own separate continuity, since Tom-Tom and Bubbly are not depicted as living in the present as usual, but in the 1500's and the far future, respectively. |
| 47 | * AmazingTechnicolorWildlife: |
| 48 | ** Thunder is a green elephant (Jotalhão). Lampshaded in one story when a kid wanted his father to get him a green elephant. When the father let him play with Thunder, the kid was disappointed [[spoiler:since he wanted Thunder to ripen]]. |
| 49 | ** The comic has blue, green and yellow dogs: Blu (Bidu), Fluff (Floquinho) and Glu (Bugu), respectively. Played for laughs in one comic, where Monica reveals that Franklin dyes Blu's fur... whose natural colour is purple with avocado-green stripes. |
| 50 | * AmicablyDivorced: Sunny and Crystal's parents are divorced, but are very friendly with each other and are constantly seen hanging out together. |
| 51 | * AmusinglyAwfulAim: In the parody of ''Film/TheAvengers2012 '', Hawkeye is made into a complete buffoon who inexplicably misses a shot even when the target is standing directly in front of his bow. Loki exploits this and simply walks up to him during their "battle". |
| 52 | * AnatomyAnomaly: |
| 53 | ** None of the characters who walk around barefoot have toes (e.g. Monica, Smudge, Maggy, Sunny), except for those in Chuck Billy's stories. The ones who wear shoes (e.g. Jimmy Five and Franklin), however, do. Lampshaded in an 80s story where Monica finds out she has no toes and, along with Jimmy Five, decides to complain to Mauricio about it. He manages to convince them by telling them that [[AnAesop this is one of the traits that make them unique characters]], and then goes back to his sketching board - and gets ''horrified'' upon trying to draw Monica with toes.[[note]]The original reason for them not having toes is that Mauricio, in the beginning, did everything himself, and it took him a long time to draw shoes on the characters, then left them barefoot without toes.[[/note]] |
| 54 | ** Glu is the only dog with no nose, and he is shaped like an egg. |
| 55 | * AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: Non-gameplay example. The protagonist of "The Power of Imagination" is Mauricio himself, who teams up with a sentient magic pencil to rescue his crew from the comics' most famous antagonists. |
| 56 | * AnimatedActors: Most notably the Blu stories co-starring his production manager, Manfred. Other times, it happens because the NoFourthWall nature makes the characters notice what they are playing, the scripts, and talk to the writing crew. |
| 57 | * AnimatedAdaptation: |
| 58 | ** As from 2004. There are currently 25 seasons and about 207 episodes. Most of the episodes adapt stories seen in the comics - even the older ones. |
| 59 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Fs1m857bM There are some episodes dubbed in English in this YouTube channel, if you want to check]]. |
| 60 | ** Before 2004, The first known animated adaptations were a couple of commercials made for Cica between 1969 and 1989, a christmas special made in 1976 and some feature films which were made between 1982 and 1990.[[note]]These films are: As Aventuras da Turma da Mônica (1982), A Princesa e o Robô (1983), As Novas Aventuras da Turma da Mônica (1986), Mônica e a Sereia do Rio (1986), O Bicho Papão (1987), A Estrelinha Magica (1988) and Chico Bento, Oia A Onça! (1990).[[/note]] |
| 61 | * ApatheticStudent: Chuck Billy used to alternate between a lazy boy who hated studying and BookDumb, often to the chagrin of his teacher. As of TheNewTens, however, he started to be portrayed as a working and well-intentioned student, albeit not without his difficulties. |
| 62 | * ArtEvolution: |
| 63 | ** The main characters [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_X643PcxIPVk/SZnVsHTy_AI/AAAAAAAAQjc/KETW5PPGRbY/s400/Tiras_Classicas_da_Turma_da_Monica_VOL_004.jpg earlier designs]] had flatter heads with pointier cheeks. [[http://joanasalvador.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/turma_da_monica.jpg The modern designs]] have round heads and chubbier bodies. |
| 64 | ** Following the series' boon in popularity during the 1970s, Mauricio developed a new, more simplistic art style to compensate for the higher workload. Some of the changes include drawing the new characters without shoes and toes, giving them generic clothing, and reducing Jimmy Five's hairdo to just five hair strings. |
| 65 | * ArtShift: |
| 66 | ** One 2009 story was about Jimmy Five and Smudge swiping supporting character Marina's magic pencil and being transported to various comic book worlds. Much [[ShoutOut Shouting Out]] ensues. |
| 67 | ** The plot was revisited the following year. This time, it's Captain Fray who steals Marina's pencil in order to pull off yet another of his worldwide pollution plans, and he drags Smudge (whom he considers his disciple) along for the ride. |
| 68 | * ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Naturally it happens with The Cavern Clan. Interestingly this was lampshaded in one story set in the present time, when an Archaeology class finds cave paintings left by Pitheco, basically portraying him failing to hunt, and being chased by, a large dinosaur. One of the students notes that [[AnachronismStew humans and dinosaurs did not live during the same period]]. His professor simply {{Handwave}}s it by saying that the drawings contradict such a "theory". |
| 69 | * AscendedExtra: |
| 70 | ** Monica and Chuck Billy started as minor characters. Both are protagonists now. |
| 71 | ** Smudge and Maggy were secondary characters, and in 1982 and 1989, respectively, gained their own series. |
| 72 | ** Denise was used mainly as a prop character, like when the writers needed another girl in the scene. Thus, [[YouDontLookLikeYou she changed her looks and behavior with every appearance]]. This is explained and lampshaded in her breakout story in 1998, in which the "[[AnimatedActors actress]]" playing Denise calls it quits after getting sick of all the {{Mind Screw}}y changes to the character, and the others decide to hold an audition to find a replacement for her. In the end, [[StatusQuoIsGod she returns]] and, with the character design having now stuck, later appearances [[CharacterDevelopment give her a more sketched-out character]], making her basically a [[GenkiGirl Genki]] ValleyGirl who loves gossiping. |
| 73 | * AscendedFanboy: Subverted in a story about Smudge and Jimmy Five going to a ''Franchise/StarWars'' convention. Smudge is a dedicated fanboy to the point of being a {{Geek}}, while Jimmy is basically the definition of a casual fan and just goes with him to the convention for the ride. And yet Jimmy is the one who ends the story (after getting a picture with George Lucas, a book with cast autographs and Chewbacca's costume) ''[[ExaggeratedTrope invited to be in the next Star Wars movie]]'', while Smudge gets... a ticket to the new motion picture. So the actual fanboy doesn't get much (in fact, saying that Smudge was the ButtMonkey in this particular story is an understatement), but the one who isn't gets everything and more. |
| 74 | * AssShove: Mr. Bill once climbed a cashew tree, only for the children to show up to harvest the fruits. Unaware that the man is hidden among the leaves, Monica forcefully shoves a bamboo pole into the treetop. The next panel is a HitFlash, followed by Mr. Bill jumping from the tree while screaming and clasping his behind. |
| 75 | * AuthorAvatar: |
| 76 | ** Mauricio appears more or less often in the stories, and the rest of the writing staff appears sometimes. He's also a character in-universe, as Marina's dad, along with his wife Alice Takeda. While Monica's father, Mr. Sousa, was also based on Mauricio himself, he is drawn like a young Mauricio (because Monica was created in 1963, when he was 28 years old), while Marina's father looks like the older Mauricio (Marina was created in 1995, when Mauricio was already 60 years old). |
| 77 | ** The parody of ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' has as its antagonist Sousauron, who prior to becoming a FacelessEye was known as Maurisauron. |
| 78 | ** Up until the publication of Horacio's graphic novel, all of his stories were written exclusively by Mauricio. This is because he viewed Horacio as a representation of himself and as a means to convey his personal philosophies, and therefore felt nobody else would be able to grasp the character's true essence. |
| 79 | * BackFromTheDead: |
| 80 | ** Jimmy Five died and came back twice: |
| 81 | *** In [[https://arquivosturmadamonica.blogspot.com/2020/10/cebolinha-e-anjinho-hq-preparando-cama.html a 1990 story]], Jimmy is slated to die and become a angel, and once Angel finds out, he repeatedly saves Jimmy from many accidents that Angel's boss set up (such as falling off a cliff or being crushed by a massive safe), until Jimmy gets killed by being struck with lightning. Fortunately, in the end, at seeing how broken up Angel is by Jimmy's death, God brings him back. |
| 82 | *** In a later story, he accidentally fell off a cliff while trying to flee from Monica. The story was about him accompanying Lady [=MacDeath=] to Heaven and Hell before she decides where he should go. However, after seeing him trying to protect Monica from the Devil, Lady [=MacDeath=] gets emotional and decides that Jimmy deserves one more shot at living. |
| 83 | ** Chuck Billy has died but came back to life at least twice: |
| 84 | *** After getting another bad grade at school, he decided to never study again and came across [[TreacherousAdvisor a man who persuaded him to just ditch school and have fun the way he wants]]. Later Chuck decided to swim in a dangerous river (kicking away the warning sign, to boot), but the rapids dragged him under and he woke up in Hell, where the man revealed himsself to be the Devil, who just wanted an opportunity to take his soul. Chuck was ultimately saved by an angel, who carried him out of Hell and back to Earth to have a second chance, as God knew that, as a child, he is still prone to making mistakes (the implicit point being that Chuck could never learn from them if he died). |
| 85 | *** Chuck trips while fleeing from Lau, snapping his neck once he hits the ground. When an angel comes to take his soul to Heaven, Chuck's spirit dives back into his own body, which miraculously comes back to life. The teary-eyed angel then muses to himself that the Lord must have been moved by the boy once again. |
| 86 | * BadDate: Played for both laughs and drama when Luca allows Monica to escort him home, which she interprets as him agreeing to date her. After a series of events in which she accidentally injures the boy out of sheer clumsiness, Luca is shown as a BandageMummy, with Monica sobbing by his side. |
| 87 | * BadassAdorable: Monica, who is just a cute seven year old yet can destroy the biggest threats possible without barely breaking a sweat. |
| 88 | * BalloonBelly: |
| 89 | ** Chuck dives into a river to save Zé Lelé, and comes out of the water with a massive belly. Thinking that he has contracted schistosomiasis, he panics and goes to a doctor, only to find out that his stomach has only gotten larger due to him swallowing a lot of water. His body returns to normal shortly after he goes to the bathroom. |
| 90 | ** In "Day of the Flying Donkey", Maggy overeats until she becomes a literal balloon and floats into the atmosphere. Sunny believes that this is because all the extra mass gave Maggy her own gravitational field, though it's later clarified that she was indeed just gassy. |
| 91 | * TheBardOnBoard: ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrPmtCc1bso Jimmy Five and Monica in the World of Romeo and Juliet]]'' |
| 92 | * BeautifulAllAlong: |
| 93 | ** Chuck Billy's teacher is very attractive without her glasses and taking down her hair. |
| 94 | ** Smudge's mom. One story had [[StacysMom several of Smudge's friends falling hard for her]] because they see her with her hair down and wet as she was coming out of the shower. ''Smudge himself'' doesn't recognize her at first. Played for laughs, since she then ends up looking [[{{Gonk}} hideous]], after styling her hair (badly) and putting on some (bad) make-up. |
| 95 | * BelligerentSexualTension: A basic description of Monica and Jimmy Five's relationship. Somewhat downplayed in their teen incarnation, when Jimmy - ahem, J - is much less of a JerkAss, but not entirely, since both him and Monica are more accepting of their relationship by then. |
| 96 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: Maggy is one of the most unambiguously good characters in the comics, but ''don't mess with her friends''. |
| 97 | * BewareTheSillyOnes: Nutty Ned, big time, though it's rare for him to have a moment of this. He usually just annoys people without meaning harm, most likely without even trying, and definitely regards Jimmy at least as some kind of friend. However there is a story where [[KickTheDog Jimmy manipulates him into stopping Monica from chasing him]]. Once Ned realizes this, things get ''ugly'' for Jimmy, with Ned using his RealityWarper powers to nearly drive Jimmy insane. |
| 98 | * BigBadEnsemble: In "An Adventure in Time", the gang travels to different time periods to retrieve canisters containing essences of the four ClassicalElements, though they soon face opposition in the form of four different villains: |
| 99 | ** Monica has to defeat Pitoco, a caveman who uses the [[PlayingWithFire fire element]] to convince his fellow tribesmen that he is a god and to coerce Thuga into becoming his bride. |
| 100 | ** Jimmy faces Cabeleira Negra, a space pirate who adds the [[BlowYouAway wind canister]] to her treasure collection. |
| 101 | ** Smudge has to deal with Goldtooth, a degenerate treasure hunter who, seeking to harvest the gold at the bottom of the rivers, uses the [[MakingASplash water canister]] to cause a drought in the Amazon rainforest. |
| 102 | ** Maggy has to retrieve the [[DishingOutDirt earth element]] from baby Monica, who clings to it like a toy and creates earthquakes whenever someone tries to separate her from it. While the toddler is not nearly as malicious as the other antagonists, she is still the final obstacle the gang must face in their quest, and is alligned with the villains in the comic book cover. |
| 103 | * BigBallOfViolence: Every time someone's fighting, it devolves into this. Even if it's one of the typical {{Curb Stomp Battle}}s Monica has with the boys - and even if it's only Jimmy getting beat up. |
| 104 | * BigBrotherInstinct: Jimmy has this towards Mary Angela, though he can a bit of a BigBrotherBully on occasion (some stories [[PlayedForLaughs play it for laughs]], but even in those he's never portrayed as being on the right when he acts like this). He never wants to take care of her, said she had a "knee-like" face when she was born (which was sort of understandable, since he was around five years-old), and overall tends to see her as a AnnoyingYoungerSibling. One story [[{{Flanderization}} takes it to the extreme]] by having him taking Mary Angela for a walk... ''in a dog collar''. Despite this, he's never outright mean to her on purpose, several stories show that he can take care of her in a extremely competent manner, and often stops her from accidentally hurting herself (once he actually saved her from nearly being ran by a car while crawling close to the street). |
| 105 | * BitchInSheepsClothing: |
| 106 | ** Maggy: |
| 107 | *** Although Maggy likes to picture herself as a NiceGirl, her unpleasant side comes up whenever food is involved. She often takes huge bites out of other people's food, invades her neighbour's houses to raid their fridge, and outright swallows her own snacks to avoid sharing. |
| 108 | *** Promotional material consistently describes her as "sweet", though her portrayal in the New '10s is of a snarky, occasionally selfish young girl. In one arc where the four main characters' monthly comics were interconnected, Maggy ends up getting mycosis from a beach trip. In the end, she comes over to her friends and upon hearing their own disastrous tales (Monica ruined her date with the boy she liked, Smudge ran away from home and Jimmy's [[spoiler: pet chinchilla died]]), she immediately starts jumping happily and saying that she feels much better [[AppealToWorseProblems since her friends had it much worse than her]]. They are less than amused. |
| 109 | *** More than a few stories have put Maggy in Monica's position of power over the block. She outright borders on TheCaligula to the point that when Monica seizes back the position, the boys, who are normally scheming against her, welcome her back with open arms. |
| 110 | ** Denise was also this in her old days, DependingOnTheWriter, before settling down as the GenkiGirl DeadpanSnarker with a taste for gossip we know today. It was even lampshaded [[AnimatedActors by her actress]] in the story which settled her current personality that whenever they needed the girls' group to have a FalseFriend, they'd go for Denise. |
| 111 | * BlackComedy: |
| 112 | ** In "The Tenebrous Doll", the eponymous villain plans to explode Maggy's house with a bomb... which she sets up while joyfully singing her own version of "[[WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs Heigh Ho]]". |
| 113 | ** Bug-a-Boo's stories, especially the ones that were published in newspapers, treat death and other sensitive topics in a satirical manner. One such strip has a young boy innocently asking Lady [=McDeath=] to push his kart, which she does until he falls off a cliff. |
| 114 | ** Nico Demo's strips [[http://f.i.uol.com.br/livraria/capas/images/11364389.jpeg often dwelled in]] [[https://preview.redd.it/hypfpcvd3dy21.jpg?auto=webp&s=cce774b05d1c738861960bbf10f7fc7698a6c36d this]] (just see him feeding [[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jkJ8fdXPC6s/Ux_KqsryZsI/AAAAAAAACoA/ILb1eE_-cYA/s1600/_Nico_Demo+(5).jpg an elephant]] Comicstrip/{{peanuts}}), if not plain [[https://preview.redd.it/9v1skfwhx9b51.jpg?auto=webp&s=a998396e2b798564fb19a8e80dbc62e7a4cd4743 politically incorrect]]. |
| 115 | * BlindPeopleWearSunglasses: Doreen is blind and is always seen wearing sunglasses to protect her sensitive eyes. However, she jokes that she only wears them because they are fashionable. |
| 116 | * BlindWithoutEm: Many of Specs' solo stories concern him losing his glasses. |
| 117 | * BodyHorror: In [[https://twitter.com/renatofelix/status/1170444793547251714 one 1980 story]], Jimmy breaks free from the boundaries of the pages to evade Monica and this causes his lineart to unravel. The other kids manage to rescue Jimmy when he's been reduced to just his head and reassemble him into a stickman for an in-universe cartoonist to add the rest of his details. |
| 118 | * {{Bowdlerise}}: |
| 119 | ** Reprints of older comics remove or modify controversial elements in an effort to make the comics more suitable for younger children. Weapons are erased or redrawn as innocuous objects; minor swear words are swapped with generic interjections; and the native Brazilian women are given leaf bras to conceal their exposed breasts. |
| 120 | ** The teen spin-off introduced a character called Sangria, whose superpower is to generate and manipulate blood. When she made an appearance in the original comics, the characters refuse to spell out the true nature of her abilities. |
| 121 | --> '''Ballerina:''' This is Sangria. Can you guess what her power is?\ |
| 122 | '''Zé Beto:''' She is attacking us with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangria gooseberry juice]]! |
| 123 | * BrattyHalfPint: Junior's stories usually revolve around him pestering Jimmy, Maggy or Crystal. |
| 124 | * BreakingTheFourthWall: The fourth wall is already [[NoFourthWall barely there]], but sometimes it literally gets broken as the characters leave the panel (and sometimes walk on the paper being drawn upon) to interact with Mauricio and other staff members. |
| 125 | * BreakoutCharacter: |
| 126 | ** Sunny became a popular character at the start of the 21st Century, when stories started to portray him as a kind-hearted ButtMonkey. Later on, he became much more prominent, with some comics detailing his family life or even having him replace Smudge as Jimmy Five's adventure partner. |
| 127 | ** Denise's popularity exploded after the famous "O Concurso das Denises"[[note]] "The Denise Contest"[[/note]] storyline, in which she finally pointed out how her character had never been properly utilized in previous comics. She became a tritagonist to Monica and Maggy in later stories, and eventually developed into her own independent character, a sassy DeadpanSnarker with a sharp tongue. This culminated in her being upgraded into a member of the main cast in the teen spin-off. |
| 128 | ** The Flying Donkey first appeared in a 2004 comic, in which she played a minor role as part of a corny horror story told by Jimmy Five. The sheer ridiculousness of the character led her to become instantly popular among readers, who took to forming jokey communities of "Flying Donkey worshippers" in many social platforms. The comics would acknowledge her popularity by greatly expanding on her mythos, culminating in her becoming a central character in the "Umbra" arc of the teen spin-off. |
| 129 | * BreakoutVillain: Cabeleira Negra was created exclusively for the "An Adventure in Time" film, but her popularity was such that she soon started making appearances both [[CanonImmigrant in the main comic book and the teen spin-off]], thus becoming the only member of the BigBadEnsemble to be officially integrated in the main canon. |
| 130 | * BulliedIntoDepression: Penha's hobby is to give {{The Reason You Suck Speech}}es to people until they sink into a deep depression. In "The Girls from the Pitangueiras Neighbourhood", Maggy says that six girls were emotionally scarred by her in just a week, and the reader then gets to see Penha in action as she reduces Carminha to tears and insults Monica until the protagonist feels physically ill. |
| 131 | * BullyingADragon: Jimmy and co. ''know'' of Monica's strength. They ''know'' she has a short fuse. They ''know'' they'll get their asses handed to them in platters if they make fun of her. None of that has ever actually stopped them. |
| 132 | * ButtMonkey: |
| 133 | ** If Zeca is in a Chuck Billy 'n' Folks story that takes place in the country, setting up a CityMouse plot, he'll almost invariably be this. Made quite apparent since CountryMouse stories, which have Chuck in the city, will usually have the latter confused or at worst, annoyed, but hardly ever a ButtMonkey, whereas poor Zeca is always in for a painful ride despite the fact that he has been in the farm enough times to know better. |
| 134 | ** Mr. Bill's entire shtick is that he is driven insane by the children's antics, admitted to a sanatorium, cured of his madness, and given a new job, at which point he inevitably comes into contact with Monica's gang again, and the cycle repeats ad infinitum. |
| 135 | * CanonImmigrant: Nik, a gamer/vlogger introduced in issue #100 of the Teen imprint, is later brought into the kids' universe in order to have another Afro-descendant kid to play Falcon in their ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'' parody (which itself is full of nods to the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse as a whole), since Jeremiah was already cast as Nick Fury[[note]]War Machine is played by Smudge, who had already played Rhodey in the ''Film/IronMan'' parody, and who also plays Hawkeye - this is handwaved by both Smudges being [[UncannyFamilyResemblance identical cousins]][[/note]] This is even lampshaded in dialogue: |
| 136 | --> '''Black Window''' (Monica): Hmm... Where do I know you from?\ |
| 137 | '''Falconik''' (Nik): From some Teen Gang, I guess! |
| 138 | * CantStandThemCantLiveWithoutThem: Pretty much what Monica feels about the boys: They get to her nerves at every turn, but she would risk her hide for them anyway. |
| 139 | * TheCasanova: Curly, from Tina's Pals. It usually [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]], though, since he's far from an infallible example: several stories also have him [[CasanovaWannabe being immediately shot down by the women he hits on]] despite being sure of his charmer skills. Still, in most comics he has a girlfriend (one had Curly dating three girls at the same time) or succeeds in wooing a girl, even if at the end she breaks up with him for some comedic reason. |
| 140 | * CatUpATree: |
| 141 | ** One by one, while trying to rescue a cat from a tree, all four main members of ''ComicBook/MonicasGang'' got ''themselves'' stuck until the branch they were sitting on gave in and they fell. The cat remains stuck to this day. |
| 142 | ** Franklin once scolded his dog for growling at a cat that was up a tree. Then he tried to rescue the cat, only to be scratched by the ungrateful animal. Franklin was now the one growling, to Blu's amusement. |
| 143 | * CatchingSomeZs: Whenever a character is sleeping, a "Z" would appear on a speech bubble. |
| 144 | * CatchPhrase: |
| 145 | ** Whenever Glu sets foot in Blu's stories, he ''has'' to shout "[[HiMom Hello, mom!]]" And say "bye-bye, mom!" whenever Blu ''[[LiteralAssKicking literally]]'' kicks him out. |
| 146 | ** Crystal says "[Lord] give me strength..." a lot. |
| 147 | ** Jimmy Five has the word "pindarolas" (an old-time interjection which roughly means the same as "Good God" or "Holy mackerel"). |
| 148 | * CatsAreSnarkers: Vanilla, Maggy's cat, is definitely the snarkiest of all the comic's pets, in contrast to the usually-affable dogs. |
| 149 | * ChainLetter: The main plot of "Acorrentada" ("Chained"). Monica receives a chain letter and, desperate to avoid the bad luck, mails it to all her neighbours. Unfortunately, they turn out to be as superstitious as her, kickstarting a send and receive loop that plunges the city into chaos. |
| 150 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: |
| 151 | ** In his debut, Angel was a FallenAngel who was banished from Heaven because he was too fond of pulling mean-spirited pranks. In later comics, his character is firmly established as an [[IncorruptiblePurePureness incorruptible, benevolent protector of the children]]. |
| 152 | ** In Carmem's first story, she is presented as Ms. Five's rival and comes up with a plan to ruin her enemy's school play, only to back down at the last moment after witnessing how happy the children were. In subsequent comics, one of Carmem's main traits is her bitter hatred of children, to the point she reacts to the kids' distress with either amusement or cold apathy. |
| 153 | ** Sofia is much more antagonistic towards Monica in her first two appearances, verbally mocking the protagonist and cruelly smiling as she prepares to bully her. By her third comic, her personality changes completely, as she only minds her own business and refuses to say a single word. The teen spin-off adapts the latter characterization, establishing that Sofia was actually shy to the point of only speaking at age 9, and any misdeeds she performed in the past were the result of Penha pressuring her into committing them. |
| 154 | * TheChewToy: |
| 155 | ** Sunny, whose "second-banana" status is frequently mentioned, even by other B-list characters. Weaponized in their parody of ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'' where Sunny was Film/{{The Incredible Hulk|2008}}, HulkingOut whenever his B-list status is mocked (that, and cockroaches). |
| 156 | ** Mr. Bill has to get a different job every time he appears because Monica and her friends [[UnwantedAssistance just won't leave him alone]] (unfortunately for Mr. Bill, they happen to be quite fond of him), in a somewhat similar dynamic to [[WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants Spongebob and Squidward]], which puts a lot of strain on his mental health, to the point that he is commited[[note]] (he's actually acquainted with Nutty Ned because they occasionally attend the same asylum)[[/note]]; upon release, he actively looks for some new line of work that will keep him far away from the gang. They eventually always stumble upon him again nonetheless. |
| 157 | * ChickMagnet: |
| 158 | ** All the girls in the neighbourhood are attracted to Luca, due to his good looks and [[NiceGuy kind personality]], though he is mostly oblivious to their feelings. |
| 159 | ** Nimbus used to be portrayed as a shy kid whom all the girls considered cute, though this trait got phased out throughout the years in favour of making him an enthusiastic practitioner of magic. |
| 160 | * ChildHater: Due to all the times the kids accidentally ruined Carmem's precious garden, she developed a profound dislike for children, whom she comes to view as misbehaving brats, leading her to getting the reputation of being the meanest lady in the neighbourhood. |
| 161 | * ChildProdigy: |
| 162 | ** In Emerson Abreu's stories, Smudge is prone to vocalizing in extremely complicated sentences that wouldn't be expected from a 7 year old boy. One of the most notorious examples happens in "The Syllable Game", where the gang is astonished after Smudge gives a highly detailed lecture on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignin cell wall lignification]]. |
| 163 | ** Franklin is very smart for his age. |
| 164 | * ChoosyBeggar: In "Perdidos no Meio do Nada"[[labelnote:Translation]] "Lost in the Middle of Nowhere"[[/labelnote]], Antenor is walking through the desert when he finds a man begging for help. The protagonist immediately offers him some water, though the man complains that the last mirage he saw gave him strawberry milkshakes. Annoyed by the beggar's pickiness, Antenor sarcastically asks if imaginary desserts are better than real water. The man comically ponders for a while before dryly responding "Meh, I guess I'll take this water then". |
| 165 | * CinderellaPlot: One of Blu's comics parodizes classic fairy tales by replacing the main characters with dogs. One of the protagonists is Cindercadela[[note]] a pun on Cinderella and "cadela", which is Portuguese for a female dog[[/note]], a stray mutt who is turned into a refined dog so she can court the canine prince. When the spell wears off, her pumpkin carriage reverts into a car driven by a DiabolicalDogcatcher, who takes her to a [[PoundsAreAnimalPrisons prison-like pound]]. Luckily, she is identified by the prince when her lost collar fits her neck, thus enabling her to be set free. |
| 166 | * CirclingBirdies: Whenever a character is dizzy, attacked or hit on the head, stars (or sometimes spirals or planets too, depending on the story) circle the character's head. On rare occasions, the birds themselves make an appearance. |
| 167 | * CityMouse: Chuck Billy's cousin Zeca, who often suffers culture clash when visiting the countryside. Chuck himself serves as a CountryMouse when he goes his cousing in the city. |
| 168 | ** Tom-Tom occasionally comes across some of these, often to highlight the dichotomy between the beauty of nature and the artificiality of man-made things. |
| 169 | * * ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: |
| 170 | ** In "Astral Heaven", Monica convinces Jimmy of the Astral Hell, an astrological phenomenon in which one suffers great misfortunes in the days leading up to their birthday. Immediately afterwards, Jimmy is involved in a series of accidents and decides to lock himself in his room until his birthday, despite his mom's protests that superstitions only affect people who believe in them. It's heavily implied she is correct, as the bad luck seemingly vanishes when Jimmy believes the Astral Hell is over, only to return with double the intensity once he realizes he had miscounted the days on the calendar. |
| 171 | ** In "O Urubu da Confusão" ("The Vulture of Confusion"), Monica and Jimmy accidentally break a mirror and become convinced that the act has unleashed the Uruca, an evil entity from another dimension who will curse them with extreme bad luck. Throughout the comic, whenever someone says the creature's name, Jimmy is struck by a random lightning bolt, though this stops once he stops believing in the curse. |
| 172 | * {{Cliffhanger}}: In the 2001 story "The Tenebrous Doll", the eponymous antagonist pretends to have turned good, but Maggy realizes the façade just as the comic ends. The 2011 sequel reveals that Carlito came to his daughter's aid by removing the toy's batteries and tossing it away. |
| 173 | * ClingyJealousGirl: |
| 174 | ** Rosie Lee's reaction to seeing Chuck with another girl is to throw a fit, despite Chuck showing that he only has eyes for her. |
| 175 | ** Isabel's most defining trait is her jealousy, but since Bucky is a shameless flirt, her case is more justified. |
| 176 | ** Puff, from Tina's Pals, is quite the jealous girlfriend, always assuming her boyfriend Steve is checking other women out and/or on the verge of cheating on her. One story exaggerated this greatly by showing that she somehow ''engraved his name backwards on his shoe soles'' so that whenever she feels the need to follow him she can tell they're his footsteps. Unlike Isabel, she's completely off the mark, since Steve truly loves her and her suspicions are proven wrong pretty much every time[[note]]Steve used to have "wandering eyes" in the past, but he's been solidified as more of a slacker than actually unfaithful[[/note]]. |
| 177 | * CloudCuckooLander: |
| 178 | ** Nutty Ned, a constant psychiatric hospital escapee who invariably makes Jimmy Five's life a surreal fever dream. |
| 179 | ** Due to operating within his own logic (i.e. [[CommanderContrarian a complete reversal of common sense]]), Nick Nope often falls into this. Notably, he once interacts with Nutty Ned, leaving the latter impressed at how he was somehow out-crazied. |
| 180 | * ContinuityPorn: The Panini years marked the point where the writers would start to dig up villains from old comics or fill the milestone editions with homages to old stories. |
| 181 | * CoolBigSis: Sunny's sister Crystal, who along with being a fun and reasonable teenager is also [[StacysMom the subject of the other boys' crushes]]. |
| 182 | * CoversAlwaysLie: The cover of the first issue of Cebolinha/Jimmy's solo title showed Captain Fray attacking a hot air balloon Jimmy was in, but Fray didn't even appear in the comic. [[LampshadedTrope Lampshaded]] in issue #500 of Jimmy's title, when Fray [[NoFourthWall reads Cebolinha #1]] and gets angry when he notices he's depicted only on the cover, then tries to travel back in time to [[MediumAwareness rewrite that story]]. |
| 183 | * CrappyHomemadeGift: One comic has the gang making gifts for each other as they play Secret Santa, with disappointing results: Smudge gives Maggy a painting which he made with objects he found in the garbage; Maggy bakes Franklin a pie, but can't resist eating it first; and Franklin, rather than coming up with an actual gift, devises a trap to give Smudge a bath. Finally, Monica and Jimmy respectively present each other with a poorly-knitted scarf and an insulting caricature, which leaves the girl in tears. |
| 184 | * CrazyEnoughToWork: Jimmy once defeated Monica. How? In one page-long comic from the nineties, Monica is shown falling off a cliff while running from a swarm of bees. After painfully crashing through lots of things as she falls, she gets her head stuck in a hole on a fence (which happens to have a target painted around it on it) and is left unconscious. Near the fence, Smudge tells Jimmy that there's no way his [[ComplexityAddiction latest plan]] - to sic a swarm of bees on Monica - is going to work. |
| 185 | * CreepyCrosses: Translucent crosses surround the Flying Donkey whenever she appears, highlighting her ghostly nature. This element of the character has been omitted in the Panini comics, as writers are no longer allowed to display explicit religious imagery in their stories. |
| 186 | * CrisisCrossover: In "The Return of Captain Fray", the titular villain kidnaps Smudge and Lady [=McDeath=], then sends his robotic duplicates to wreak havoc across space and time. In response, Franklin assembles rescue parties by recruiting various protagonists from across TheVerse. |
| 187 | * {{Crossover}}: |
| 188 | ** With Creator/DCComics, across all the Gang's titles throughout December 2018: |
| 189 | *** In ''Monica'', Jimmy accidentally gets hold of Comicbook/GreenLantern's Power Battery and decides to take advantage of it for his newest infallible plan, by convincing Hal Jordan that Monica is a tyrant out to rule the world; Monica has to resort to asking Comicbook/WonderWoman for help. |
| 190 | *** In ''Jimmy Five'', ComicBook/HarleyQuinn kidnaps Marina [[spoiler:for her magic pencil]]. Monica, Jimmy and Smudge decide to tag along with Comicbook/{{Batman}} to rescue her - all dressed up like different Comicbook/{{Robin}}s (except for Smudge, who decides to do Comicbook/{{Nightwing}}). |
| 191 | *** Smudge ends up paired with none other than Comicbook/{{Aquaman}}, who had the Trident of Neptune stolen. |
| 192 | *** Maggy teams up with Comicbook/TheFlash to investigate the disappearance of all cats in the neighborhood, orchestrated by none other than Comicbook/{{Catwoman}}, who is strangely behaving like she did in the Silver Age. |
| 193 | *** Comicbook/{{Superman}} and Wonder Woman, taking a break from the neverending battle, pay a visit to Chuck Billy. |
| 194 | *** Mauricio and the Gang get invited for Superman's birthday at the Fortress of Solitude. Villain-fighting hijinks ensue. |
| 195 | ** In 2019, the Gang had promotional crossover strips with various characters from Creator/CartoonNetwork, which broadcast Monica's Gang cartoons in Brazil. |
| 196 | ** In 2020, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlqcFlxbU2w the #DCFandome event had]] the Gang video getting a video call from the Westernanimation/TeenTitansGo. |
| 197 | ** 2022 had a three part crossover with Comicstrip/{{Garfield}}. |
| 198 | * CuckooClockGag: In "The Genius", Franklin invents a clock that only goes cuckoo if nobody nearby is expecting it to. Though the device appears to be just a comical display of the boy's ineptitude as a scientist, it turns out to be a ChekhovsGun, as it reappears later on and starts making loud noises while the heroes are trying to sneak past an EldritchAbomination. |
| 199 | * CutAndPasteComic: Stories that depict the characters in mundane situations often resort to copying and pasting panels, with minimal changes in the drawing to accomodate the dialogue. This practice became especially prevalent after the number of pages per comic book was doubled, thus enabling the comics to be published monthly without putting too much pressure on the art crew. |
| 200 | * {{Cumulonemesis}}: Cumulus is a small recurring antagonist who, due to losing a job opportunity after Smudge accidentally gets him dirty with mud when playing soccer, uses a potion to turn himself into a sentient humanoid cloud in order get his revenge by wetting the boy with rain. Unfortunately for him, something as simple as Smudge turning on a ventilator managed to defeat him in his first appearance. He makes returns and gets [[CerebusSyndrome more serious]] in the teenage spin-off, however. |
| 201 | * DadaComics: While bizarre comics happen every now and then, Nutty Ned runs on this. And since they rely a lot on wordplay, they are usually a nightmare to translate, when they can be translated at all. |
| 202 | * DaddysGirl: Mr. Sousa can be very protective of Monica in any situation her strength can't solve, such as boys making eyes at her. |
| 203 | * ADayInTheLimelight: Given the amount of secondary characters, sometimes the writers just feel the need to center stories around them. And then there's the Graphic MSP line featuring books based on Jeremiah (focusing on him [[TokenMinority being Black]], as opposed to the regular comic hardly ever giving importance to his ethnicity) and Captain Fray (giving him some SympatheticPOV as a misunderstood TragicMonster). |
| 204 | * DeafComposer: The core of Doreen and Luca's stories involves them overcoming their own disabilities as they try to achieve their dreams. The former is a blind girl who pursues a career as a fashion designer, and the latter is a wheelchair-bound boy who aims to excel in multiple sports. |
| 205 | * DemotedToExtra: |
| 206 | ** Specs was a main character when he was created, but appeared less and less over the years. In the 2000's, he is explicitly referred to as one of Mauricio's "forgotten characters" in-universe. |
| 207 | ** Since 2015, all of the characters except the main four, Milena and Chuck Billy noticeably started making less appearances, with Bubbly and Tom-Tom in particular barely having any stories to their names. |
| 208 | * DependingOnTheWriter: |
| 209 | ** Applies to everyone, which is helped by a team of writers that treats the cast each in their own way. Are the characters WiseBeyondTheirYears or not much smarter than the average six-year-old? Do they behave like stereotypical children or do hilariously absurd things? |
| 210 | ** Carmem's antagonism towards the children varies as the plot demands it. Stories where she plays a minor supporting role usually portray her as an innocent victim of the gang's antics who only wishes them to leave her and her prized garden alone. In stories where she is an active antagonist, Carmem is instead a sadistic bully who abuses her position of authority to boss the kids around or belittle Ms. Five, whom she sees as a rival. Finally (and more rarely), some stories have Carmem acting respectfully towards the gang, with one example being "Notice Me, Sunny", where she is very friendly to Monica and Denise, even giving the latter some dating tips. |
| 211 | * DetailHoggingCover: Especially from the late 2010s, where [[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FYhImjjwZ1Q/YEOyB6qXBsI/AAAAAAABWSs/3QVkyEXU1U0RHsgRk7XV9YCJTK9H0jPQACLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/20210306_133233.jpg the covers had more elaborate coloring and shading]] than the inner pages. |
| 212 | * DeusExMachina: Played for laughs in "Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?" Jimmy regrets his disastrous wish on a shooting star and goes on a long speech about how he has learned his lesson. Annoyed at the futility of his own discourse, he then angrily addresses the writer, demanding him to come up with a way to return things to normal, which is done by having a random "wish-ungranting rising star" pop up in the corner of the panel. |
| 213 | * TheDitz: Maggy's obsession over food often degrades to a one-track mind state. This tends to annoy the others so much that the ''Star Warp'' series, where she plays C-3PO, has a RunningGag with characters asking "Where do you turn her off?" whenever she goes off on a stupid or food-related rant. |
| 214 | * DidIJustSayThatOutLoud: Smudge seems to have a knack to always say improper things at the wrong time. This is usually what crashes Jimmy's "infallible plans", but he has given himself away many other times. |
| 215 | * DinnerWithTheBoss: Maggy's Dad's boss once had dinner with her family and she was told to control herself. [[BigEater Easier said than done]]. [[spoiler:Maggy's Dad was afraid he'd be punished but instead his boss gave him a raise so he'd be able to support her]]. |
| 216 | * DisproportionateRetribution: The Flying Donkey is a spirit who protects children and Tupperware. She kidnaps Jimmy's mom, shrinks her until she can fit in a spoon, and hypnotizes the rest of the family in order to replace her... Because the woman dared to store frozen beans in an ice cream box. The Donkey explains that not only was this act disrespectful to the container, but also had the potential to disappoint Jimmy, since nobody wants to find disgusting vegetables where a delicious dessert is supposed to be. |
| 217 | * DolledUpInstallment: The Monica games for the UsefulNotes/SegaMasterSystem and UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis are edited ''VideoGame/WonderBoy'' games. |
| 218 | * DoubleStandard: |
| 219 | ** When Bucky mistakenly assumes that Smudge and Maggy are dating, he praises the boy for starting another relationship behind Dustine's back, yet chastises Maggy for cheating on her boyfriend. Maggy responds by chasing Bucky off while calling him a sexist, and breaks the fourth wall by wondering how his character is still allowed to make appearances despite not being politically correct. |
| 220 | ** One comic had Monica, Denise and Maggy give boys scores (Sunny, Jimmy and Smudge getting low scores and Luca getting the highest one). In the last scene, the boys give the girls their scores, and then they get beat up for it. |
| 221 | * DroppedInTheToilet: In "Peteca", Junior's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peteca peteca]] falls into Jimmy's toilet bowl. Jimmy is too disgusted to retrieve it despite Junior's pleas, but changes his mind after the latter coerces him by dropping his beloved "[[ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} Aguaman]]" action figure into the bowl. The boys then tie a knot around another toy and use it to fish the other two items out. |
| 222 | * DrunkWithPower: |
| 223 | ** Monica, sick of dealing with Jimmy Five's antics, splits the block in two and gives Jimmy Five half of it. It doesn't take long for Jimmy Five to not only start making increasingly totalitarian demands (the boys could only listen to music HE likes, and he was to be fed ice-cream every day during the summer, and popcorn with tea in the winter, for instance) but to start talking about world domination. The other boys quickly defect to Monica's side, and Jimmy, left without subjects, relinquishes the power (and gets beaten up as a consequence, as usual). |
| 224 | ** When Maggy became street ruler during Monica's absence, one of her demands was for the boys to constantly feed her. |
| 225 | * DubNameChange: [[DubNameChange/MonicasGang So many names were changed in international localizations that it has its own page.]] |
| 226 | * EarWorm: In "Você Está Pensando o Mesmo que Eu?"[[labelnote:Translation]] "Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?"[[/labelnote]], Smudge can't get the "Mocotó Song"[[note]] A parody of "Égua Pocotó", a song that went viral in Brazil in 2003 for its catchy beat, corny lyrics and overall poor quality[[/note]] out of his head. This becomes problematic when Jimmy accidentally establishes a PsychicLink with him, kickstarting an endless loop that prevents both boys from thinking about anything productive. |
| 227 | * EarlyBirdCameo: Milena was already featured in institutional pieces and advertisement throughout 2018 before being introduced properly in the comics, early in 2019 - and her little brother even appeared earlier. |
| 228 | * EarnYourHappyEnding: In "The Well of Discord", Jimmy is struggling with his grades and suffering from many illnesses, so he decides to dig a wish-granting well to solve his problems. Unfortunately, Denise takes advantage of the well and steals his lifelong dream of ruling the street, then tricks Monica into knocking him into the waterhole, where he remains stuck for most of the story. The comic concludes with [[spoiler:Jimmy repeatedly swimming to the bottom of the well to retrieve coins, which he then uses to grant himself a pair of wings, cure all his diseases, hire a private teacher and ''finally'' dethrone Monica as the ruler of the street]]. |
| 229 | * EverythingTalks: The most notorious aspect of Blu's stories is that every inanimate object is sentient and capable of speech. The most recurring secondary character is a literal rock whom the dog is frequently seen having long talks with. |
| 230 | * EvilCounterpart: The boys have compared Carminha to Penha on at least one occasion, noting how they are both rich, snobbish girls who never cease to brag about their good looks. The difference is that the former is spoiled, but largely harmless, whereas the latter is actively malicious and feared by everyone as a result. |
| 231 | * ExactWords: One story features Maggy being left in charge of a bakery by the baker's son. When the baker and his son return, there's no bread left and she claims she sold everything and the buyers will pay the next day. The son believes her but the baker deduces she ate the bread. Maggy's parents show up the next day and pay for the bread, prompting the baker to tell his son the both of them were right. |
| 232 | * ExplosiveBreeder: Rabbits are often portrayed as this, as indicated with the [[MassiveNumberedSiblings massive horde of rabbit siblings]] from the Lionel's Kingdom stories as well as a Monica Toy short in which Samson and Delilah spawn multiple offspring in a matter of miliseconds. |
| 233 | * FailureIsTheOnlyOption: Jimmy Five's "infallible plans" to steal Monica's stuffed bunny are always doomed to fail. Even when it seems he has won, a DiabolusExMachina (usually Smudge accidentally revealing his schemes to Monica) prevents his victory from being permanent. |
| 234 | * FakeKillScare: One story, translated in English as ''The Icky-Sticky Plan'', centers around Jimmy and Smudge pretending to die through Monica's bunny-bashings, "blood" and all. It works almost too well, as Maggy also falls for it and comes up with the idea of having them ''buried'', bringing in Blu to dig in graves for them. After they pretend to have miraculously recovered in order to escape being BuriedAlive, Smudge's mom arrives and reprimands them for [[ABloodyMess wasting ketchup]], thus blowing their cover. |
| 235 | * FallenHero: The first character Mauricio de Sousa ever conceived was Captain Popsicle, who was the protagonist of the comics he drew as a child. Said hero would become a CanonImmigrant in the late 2000's, but with a radically altered personality, being portrayed as a GreenEyedMonster who despises Monica for replacing him as Mauricio's greatest creation. In his next appearances, he forms his own LegionOfDoom to take over the gang's comic books, going as far as to kidnap the writers to prevent new issues from being published. |
| 236 | * FamilyFriendlyFirearms: |
| 237 | ** One story had Jimmy and Smudge [[http://emersonabreu.blogspot.com/2009/05/cebolinha-e-cascao-no-mundo-de-quake.html doing]] some DeepImmersionGaming of ''Videogame/{{Quake|I}}'', and to show this trope in action, Jimmy demonstrates that when the rifles are fired, they shoot either pencils or marbles. |
| 238 | ** As of the New '10s, the writers are forbidden from including firearms and toy guns in the stories. Reprints of older comics had the drawings digitally altered to remove any and all weapons, resulting in guns being replaced by unusual objects (such as a lobster, in the parody of ''Film/TheGodfather'') or in characters threatening others simply by pointing their fingers at them. |
| 239 | * FeaturelessPlaneOfDisembodiedDialogue: Most stories employ simplistic backgrounds, consisting of solid colours that are changed every panel. This artistic choice is meant to emphasize the characters' actions and dialogue, rather than the setting, as can be seen [[https://monica.fandom.com/pt-br/wiki/M%C3%B4nica_N%C2%BA_1_(Editora_Abril)?file=M%25C3%25B4nica_apanha_do_Casc%25C3%25A3o.jpg here]]. |
| 240 | * {{Flanderization}}: |
| 241 | ** All characters had more subdued traits in the original newspaper strips, but by the 1980s they were severely flanderized. Monica went from a mere short-tempered girl to one-punching a Superman expy, Smudge went from just not liking bathing to literally ''never'' bathing, Maggie went from merely gluttonous to an impossible BigEater, and so on. |
| 242 | ** During the first half of the TurnOfTheMillennium, the kids were much more hyperactive, and had some traits amped up so as to come across as almost negative - for example, having the resident BigEater flying into a frenzy at the slightest mention of anything food-related, and using Sunny's perceived "lack of notability" to make him the all-around ButtMonkey (something he was '''never''' known for before). Also, they tack in lots of [[OutOfCharacterMoment OOC Moments]], if only for RuleOfFunny. |
| 243 | ** Inverted since TheNewTens: the characters are, little by little, losing all of theirs special characteristics and becoming more and more {{Flat Character}}s. Monica is much less likely to lose her temper and try to solve her problems by beating up people; Jimmy rarely ever comes up with elaborate plans to defeat Monica; Smudge's crippling fear of water is toned down; and Maggy's gluttony is barely brought up, out of concerns that it may lead to comparisons to compulsive eating. This was done in order to transform the lead characters into role models for young children, given that the comics have since changed their focus from comedic stories to educational ones. |
| 244 | ** Agnes' "weirdness" became increasingly more pronounced with each new story. In her debut, she was just an average nerdy girl, but the next comic amplified her social awkwardness by making her a hypochondriac and implying that she enjoys imprisoning birds. Her next appearance reveals she lives with her undead parents and actually ''eats'' the birds she hunts. Finally, the prelude to "Shadows from the Past" has her attempting to eat Maggy's cat, and an offhand comment from her mother strongly suggests that Agnes is also a ''cannibal''. |
| 245 | * FlatCharacter: |
| 246 | ** Xaveco/Sunny's most defining trait is the fact he is [[TheGenericGuy the most generic, forgettable member of the entire cast]] -- the only trait he had to set himself apart was a [[TheDitz ditz]] phase in the 1980s, and a recurring gag even is characters belittling him due to his status as a secondary character. Ironically, this also makes him very versatile, as his lack of a defined personality gives the writers much more freedom when utilizing him in the stories. As a result, he soon became one of the most recurring secondary characters come the 21st Century and a major BreakoutCharacter whose popularity almost eclipses that of the protagonists. |
| 247 | ** Jeremiah occasionally gets some exposure in stories that focus on his African descent, or solo stories concerning his nice hat, but is otherwise the least developed member of the cast. This is lampshaded in a Christmas special, when Franklin mistakes him for Nimbus and asks him to perform a magic trick. After Jeremiah clears out the confusion, Franklin angrily tells him that "as a character, he is even more worthless than Sunny". |
| 248 | * FlockOfWolves: One story has Jimmy Five calling a meeting at the boys' club to inform there is a spy among them. One by one, each of the attending boys winds up giving themselves away as being actually the girls in disguise, and they all leave, until Jimmy is left alone in the clubhouse, whereupon he leaves, revealing himself to actually be a disguised Monica. |
| 249 | --> '''Monica:''' Well. Next time, I'll tell them beforehand. |
| 250 | * FlowerPotDrop: Monica once accidentally dropped one from an apartment window and hurried down. She couldn't use the stairs because they were being washed, so she had to wait for an elevator. Despite this, she [[spoiler:managed to arrive on time to be hit]]. |
| 251 | * ForcedTransformation: Cabeleira Negra exposes Jimmy to a device that will gradually transform him into a rat until someone says her name, which acts as a password to cancel the transformation. Due to Jimmy's speech impediment, he is unable to pronounce her name correctly, and every attempt ends up speeding up the metamorphosis. |
| 252 | * ForgetsToEat: Used to be one of Junior's defining characteristics (though he was ''[[SubvertedTrope intentionally]]'' [[SubvertedTrope neglectful]]), just so he could act as a foil to Maggy. While he has not lost this one, his role in the stories has shifted deep into BrattyHalfPint. |
| 253 | * FreeRangeChildren: Zigzagged. In most stories the children are wandering around their neighborhood (and we never get to see just how big it is; there have been attempts, but the scale fluctuates from story to story), but several stories show that they all have a limit imposed by their parents of how far they can go by themselves (and it's strange how children that visited other planets and dimensions have limits at all). |
| 254 | * FrenchJerk: Penha the Dreaded has a French accent and is a spoiled AlphaBitch who bullies and belittles the other children. |
| 255 | * FreudianSlip: Blu and some of his fellow dogs meet a dog who likes to make dog-based puns. They first suspect that the character making the jokes isn't a real dog when he starts a phrase with "You, dogs...". After being called out on that, he tries to restart the phrase with "We, dogs..." but it's too late. They remove his dog mask and find out he's a cat. |
| 256 | * TheFriendNobodyLikes: While it's downplayed since they don't always hang with him, most of the gang considers Junior to be a huge pain in the butt. Even Maggy, his own cousin, thinks he's a BrattyHalfPint (and doesn't shy from saying it to his face), though she's still more willing to play with him than the rest of the kids. In several stories they just play with him because their own parents (particularly their mothers) think Junior is [[CutenessProximity adorable]] and shouldn't be ignored [[TagalongKid just for being younger]]. When Monica's mom once made a comment of the sort, Monica replied that Junior is as cute as he is annoying. The only kid who enjoys Junior's company is Milena's little brother Bertie, and even that's because they're in the same age range. |
| 257 | * TheFriendsWhoNeverHang: Maggy and the boys is a downplayed example. They do interact in the adventures where the four main characters share the spotlight, and she ''has'' had stories with them (though usually with either Jimmy ''or'' Smudge, less so with both of them at once), but the number of those is quite overshadowed by the number of stories Monica shares with them. It's sort of justified in that Monica just has more reasons to hang out with them, being more of a {{Tomboy}} than Maggy, and often target of their provocations, not to mention of course [[OfficialCouple her relationship with Jimmy]], which guarantees that they'll have some stories as a duo (however Monica does have plenty of stories with just Smudge too; one almanac had three of those). If Maggy's in a story with just one more character and that character is male, it's probably Junior, or maybe Franklin. (Or [[NonHumanSidekick Vanilla]].) |
| 258 | * FrivolousSummoning: One strip shows Angel trying his best to help the townspeople, but he keeps getting called for frivolous reasons, such as Monica wanting him to deliver a pair of doll's shoes to Maggy, or Maggy being hungry and wanting some food. |
| 259 | * FrustratedOverheadScribble: A smoky, scribbled black line is used over the characters' heads to show when they are frustrated, sad or mad. [[MetafictionalDevice It was even used as a humorous plot point]] in the story "O Terrível Ladrão de Fumacinhas"[[labelnote:Translation]]"The Terrible Smoke Thief"[[/labelnote]], in which the titular smoke thief uses a vacuum cleaner to suck up or put back all of the little tangled smoky lines above angry characters -- and thus, making people suddenly get angry or calm whenever he wants to so he could take over the world. His plan fails when his machine overheats and explodes after he tried in vain to steal Nick Nope's scribbled line, since "the smoke" above his head was actually just the boy's hair in a ponytail. |
| 260 | * FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' crossover: |
| 261 | ** Sunny makes occasional cameos in the background of all comics, pretending to be one of ''DC'''s various superheroes and accidentally injuring himself in the process. |
| 262 | ** A panel that depicts Superman duking it out with Doomsday has Lady [=McDeath=] standing in the background, impatiently waiting for the two to kill each other, as a reference to their long struggle in ''ComicBook/TheDeathOfSuperman''. |
| 263 | * GadgeteerGenius: Franklin spends most of his free time in the lab, developing creative (though mostly malfunctioning or useless) inventions. In particular, he is responsible for all the gadgets that improve Luca's mobility, such as helicopter blades that enable the disabled boy to fly, or coils that let him jump. |
| 264 | * GenderBender: One comic about Monica's birthday has she and her friends turning into the opposite gender. |
| 265 | * GenderEqualEnsemble: Two boys (Jimmy Five and Smudge) and two girls (Monica and Maggy) |
| 266 | * GenderFlip: The ''Lord of the Rings'' parody has Monica as Sam, and the ''Film/{{It|2017}}'' one has Maggie as Bill. |
| 267 | * GenerationXerox: One story shows Mr. Five telling Jimmy about [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything a plump, bossy girl from his childhood memories who walked around with a doll whose arms and legs he loved to tie in knots solely to piss the owner off. The girl used to retaliate by running after him and hitting him with the doll]], and he remembers how, despite the danger element, [[BelligerentSexualTension he just couldn't stop messing with her, and they were always together as a result while time passed...]] Jimmy is astounded by the obvious similarity between his father's childhood and his own, and asks what became of that girl. The living room's door is suddenly opened by Mrs. Five coming back from the supermarket, and Mr. Five answers Jimmy with a fond smile - "Speak of the devil...". [[GirlsHaveCooties Jimmy doesn't take it too well at the end of the story]], but knowing he and Monica are the OfficialCouple, GenerationXerox was still on point. |
| 268 | %% * GeniusDitz: Maggy. |
| 269 | * GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Invoked in "The Mystery of the Models", where one panel has the message "Dear reader: Get ready for a shocking scene that could only be published thanks to the censors being distracted". Maggy is then shown to have fallen into one of Franklin's machines, which proceeds to apparently break her spine. Thankfully, it turns out that the contraption was only stretching her back to make her look taller, and Maggy explains that she only screamed because the process tickled her tummy. |
| 270 | * GiftGivingGaffe: Smudge's uncle innocently presents the boy with a bath-related item every year, completely unaware that Smudge suffers from crippling aquaphobia. Subverted during the protagonist's seventh birthday, when he appears to give Smudge a portable bathtub, but the present turns out to be a ridable toy car that the boy falls in love with. |
| 271 | * GodivaHair: Women from Tom-Tom's tribe used to be drawn with long hair to conceal their exposed breasts. Averted after the turn of the millennium: In the 2010's, they instead wore bras made out of tree leaves; and as of the 2020's, all Indian characters wear regular clothing. |
| 272 | * {{Gonk}}: Ximbuca is a cross-eyed yellow poodle with prominent front teeth. Monica says he looks like a hell hound, and Jimmy initially mistakes him for an overgrown mosquito. |
| 273 | * GoshDangItToHeck: In older comics, the verb "feder" ("to stink") was frequently employed in place of a similar, very vulgar swear word. |
| 274 | * GreenAesop: A considerable amount of Chuck Billy's comics are about the horrors of deforestation, pollution, "how living in a city turns you into a sedentary paranoid" - if his cousin is involved in the comic there is a 99% chance that the story will be about that -, or how "bad men" will hunt innocent animals for money. He has been turned into several kinds of animals and even engaged into conversation with a waterfall and the Sun itself. Parodied in one of Jimmy Five's stories, when the title character says "Wait, do you think I like to live in nature, green and stuff? Who the heck do you think I am? Chuck Billy?" |
| 275 | * GreenEyedMonster: Despite being Maggy's best friend, Monica is deathly envious of her singing talents. When Maggy was a child and briefly famous singing, Monica ''hated'' it and only reconsidered their friendship because her mom [[WhatTheHellHero pointed that out]]. In the manga, she nearly destroyed Maggy's short stint on a GirlGroup. |
| 276 | * HairTriggerTemper: If Monica understands something as an insult to her height/weight/teeth (even if by mistake), everyone around will get beaten up. |
| 277 | * HairyHammerspace: Fluff, Jimmy's dog. It's not uncommon for people to hide there (an ''entire police troop'' once got lost in his fur trying to catch a robber who hid in there), or for plenty of things to be found in his fur. |
| 278 | * HandsomeLech: Bucky, at least when his girlfriend is out of sight. |
| 279 | * HateSink: |
| 280 | ** Penha [[RedBaron The Feared]], the unpleasant and stuck-up girl from the other street (the fake French accent is a bonus). |
| 281 | ** Tina's side character Rubão is a sexist and chauvinistic man who was basically an embodiment of toxic masculinity back when the term didn't even exist. He appeared in seven stories in the 80s, mostly being a CrazyJealousGuy towards his girlfriend, aside from a story where he complains that other guys are doing unmanly things. While he was never depicted as being in the right (even if one story has the girlfriend deciding she preferred Rubão's StayInTheKitchen attitude rather than her more accepting new boyfriend...), the character proved to be so controversial that he was eventually dropped. |
| 282 | * HeightInsult: The boys often tease Monica by calling her short, [[HypocriticalHumor even though they all share the same stature]]. |
| 283 | * HereditaryHairstyle: Jimmy's five-strand look - his father and grandfather have the same hairstyle as well, and in occasional stories that show the future, so do Jimmy's male children. |
| 284 | * HeterosexualLifePartners: A particularly touching story about friendship uses Jimmy and Smudge's relationship as a FramingDevice, showing that theirs is a friendship that will go on with the years, even with the bumps along the way. |
| 285 | * HiddenAgendaVillain: When Carmem agrees to marry Sunny's father, the boy concludes that she has some ulterior motive, since she normally wouldn't want to live under the same roof with a child. His suspicions seem to be correct, as he soon discovers a secret dungeon in her house with a cage that perfectly matches the size of a small child. At the end of the story, [[spoiler:this turns out to be a subversion. The dungeon was only built to protect Carmem's prized flowers from harm, and she genuinely loves Sunny's father]]. |
| 286 | * HisNameReallyIsBarkeep: Bubbly is an astronaut whose name ''is'' Astronaut. It's later explained that his name is a result of his parents, Astrogildo and Natalina, combining their own names into one. |
| 287 | * HomemadeInventions: A lot of what Franklin invents looks like a hodgepodge of pieces, though more often than not with plating, covering and otherwise professional-looking presentation. |
| 288 | * HousepetPig: Smudge, a boy who never took a bath in his life, has a housepet pig called Chauvy, who ironically grew to love baths, cleaning and tidiness. |
| 289 | * HumanHummingbird: An extreme case of the frightened version... as when presented with the possibility of falling into water, Smudge's arm flapping ''enables him to start flying''. |
| 290 | * HumiliationConga: One story has Jimmy get his head stuck in the bathroom sink while trying to wash his hair (or lack thereof). Smudge and Monica try to help him, but only make things worse when he inadvertently slights her, leading her to chase him out of the bathroom [[ThereWasADoor by breaking the wall leading out to the street]], and completely forgetting about Jimmy, who is left naked and ashamed for everyone to see. It gets worse when the incident makes it to the TV news: ''even his parents'' laugh at his misfortune. |
| 291 | * {{Hypochondria}}: Agnes the Tenebrous is a hypochondriac girl who rarely leaves her house out of fear of getting ill. Ironically, her fears are justified, since her parents died while she was still a child, and she herself wouldn't live past her teenage years. |
| 292 | * HypocriticalHumor: |
| 293 | ** Jimmy Five calling Monica short and fat, when he's just the same height and rather tubby himself (neither is exactly fat, but he and Monica have a very similar body shape). |
| 294 | ** A story has Monica being harassed by Junior (who is the shortest of the gang), a one-shot boy who is very visibly obese, and Bucky (whose buckteeth are pretty much the same as Monica's). Instead of getting angry, Monica just laughs and takes the time to point out the hypocrisy. In the end, they change their tones to call her tall, skinny and toothless. |
| 295 | * IdeaBulb: It is common for a lightbulb to appear over the character's head when they have an idea, most prominently whenever Jimmy is shown coming up with a plan to steal Monica's stuffed bunny. |
| 296 | * ImprobableWeaponUser: Monica uses a ''blue stuffed rabbit'' to beat up the boys who annoy her, and just about every bad guy that shows up. |
| 297 | * IncurableCoughOfDeath: Subverted and PlayedForLaughs. The gang has happily convinced Sunny's grandma that she can't die, since she is a comic book character and StatusQuoIsGod. However, she has an exaggerated coughing fit immediately after and appears to drop dead on the spot, although the following page shows she has survived. The [[BlackComedy gag]] is repeated in "The Ring of Discord", where she has another apparently lethal coughing fit, but is revealed to have survived shortly afterwards. |
| 298 | * InformedPoverty: Some stories suggest that Smudge is a tad poorer than his friends, despite his house not being different from the others'. Justified in that we usually see it from his point of view and that this trope shows up almost always in the context of him wanting new toys (instead of the ones he fabricates himself), which is understandable; children will usually feel that others get more gifts than they do. It's also been pointed out that his father does in fact receive a smaller income than the other parents of the comic, but not so little that will have an influence in the family's household. |
| 299 | * InformedSpecies: While [[http://p2.trrsf.com/image/fget/cf/460/0/images.terra.com/2014/02/26/floquinho-619.jpg Fluff does pass as a green lhasa apso]], [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GWWWJt1DQ90/Upv3ogtFsiI/AAAAAAAABGo/wLSz0XCoVlU/s1600/de+003.jpg Blu's status as a schnauzer is not so clear.]] And then there's Glu, a dog that's ''yellow and shaped like an egg''. |
| 300 | * InsistentTerminology: Nutty Ned will always complain about any synonym of insanity he's given, insisting it's "Nutty". |
| 301 | * InsufferableGenius: Franklin believes himself to be the smartest kid on the neighbourhood. Though he is abnormally intelligent for his age, all of his inventions go wrong. |
| 302 | * InternalHomage: The books that marked the franchise's 50th anniversary had updated covers of the first issues. |
| 303 | * InvincibleHero: Monica's SuperStrength is often employed as a DeusExMachina to defeat whichever villain the gang is currently facing. In the ''Film/BatmanForever'' parody, she plays the role of Chase Meridian and is kidnapped by The Riddler (portrayed by Franklin). After being taunted enough, she single-handedly breaks out and beats up everyone in the room. |
| 304 | * JekyllAndHyde: Professor Spada transforms into the megalomaniacal supervillain Doctor Spam whenever he is hurt by an electric shock. |
| 305 | * TheKlutz: |
| 306 | ** The main trait of Sunny's father is his clumsiness, which leads him to cause great disasters while trying to perform trivial tasks. He manages to short-circuit every device on his house while changing a light bulb, and his first attempt to bake a pizza somehow results in the local mayor declaring a state of emergency. |
| 307 | ** Smudge's father is quite clumsy, with the stories where he spends time with his son being heavy on the slapstick (specially as he has a tendency to try building toys or other things on those occasions). |
| 308 | * LaughablyEvil: Captain Fray, over the years, has become progressively more comical and over-the-top, usually even engaging in small-talk with the kids. This doesn't necessarily equate to DiminishingVillainThreat, however, because his powers over dirt are regarded seriously and he ''has'' had some really nefarious plans. |
| 309 | * LegacyCharacter: A story acknowledges the fact that Denise's appearance is inconsistent by saying she's just a character played by various [[AnimatedActors animated actresses]]. |
| 310 | * LethalChef: Zigzagged with Monica. Some stories have her cooking bizarre meals such as okra flan and chicken foot stroganoff, which prove to be so revolting even Maggy refuses to eat them. Other comics present her as a somewhat decent cook, to the point she convinces the boys to accept her on their club by bribing them with her homemade cookies. |
| 311 | * LighterAndSofter: In the New '10s, the comics adhered to a new set of rules meant to make the work more friendly to a younger demographic. Some of the new limitations include prohibiting the writers from depicting characters naked, forbidding the display of firearms, not having the boys scribble on the neighbourhood's walls, not showing animals trapped inside cages, censoring words that are too similar to certain profanities, abolishing the BlackComedy from Bug-a-Boo's stories, and drawing Black characters without their trademark thick lips (although the last one was revoked after receiving numerous complaints from fans). |
| 312 | * LikeFatherLikeSon: In a story written to celebrate the comics' 35th anniversary, the main four are shown to be married and with children in the future. |
| 313 | ** Monica and Jimmy are parents to Monique, who is a mischievous brat just like her father used to be; and Asparagus, who has inherited his mother's HairTriggerTemper and love for stuffed bunnies. |
| 314 | ** Maggy and Smudge are parents to Migali, who hates water just like her father; and Cascof, a gluttonous boy who is frequently seen munching on watermelons much like his mother used to do. |
| 315 | * LikeYouWereDying: A 1987 Lady [=McDeath=] comic follows a man named Otavio, who has just found out that he has a terminal disease and will die within three months. Rather than panicking, he decides to spend his last days living life to its fullest: Otavio quits his job, gets drunk at the bar, divorces his abusive wife, and is seen undressing in the company of two beautiful women. When Death finally comes for him, she reveals the disease has regressed and he will live, prompting Otavio to tell her that [[ImpliedDeathThreat she will soon need to go after his doctor's soul]]. |
| 316 | * LimitedWardrobe: Monica's wardrobe is shown to have nothing but red dresses just like the one she usually wears. She's usually pretty comfortable with this situation, though. |
| 317 | * LiveActionAdaptation: Mostly at the theater, plus two films (one made for TV, one direct to video), [[http://www.producaocultural.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/teatro-turma-da-monica.jpg all with adults wearing masks.]] An adaptation of a graphic novel spin-off, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjz_IqLtI58 Laços]]'' (translation: ''Bonds''), this time with actual children, and featuring Creator/RodrigoSantoro as Louco/Nutty Ned, was made and premiered in June 2019. A sequel, ''Lições'' (Lessons), premiered in 2021, with Creator/IsabelleDrummond as Tina. |
| 318 | * LongPants: When you see someone wearing social pants and shoes, they're like this, except in the rare case that the pants and shoes are different colors, or they're drawn in promo artwork (i.e. not within a story). This dates back from Mauricio's old strips, out of a need to simplify the design. It also seems to be the reason for the toeless barefoot characters (Monica wore shoes in her first appearance, but more bits of them were erased at each strip as he had less and less time to get them ready - he worked alone at the time -, until she became barefoot and toeless). |
| 319 | * LongRunner: Along with the comic itself, which has been running since the late 50s (in magazine form, since the 1970s), the animations have had basically the same voice actors since the 1980s. |
| 320 | * LoveMakesYouDumb: Or, in a variation, extremely incompetent. Franklin finds out in one comic that this is the reason most of his inventions didn't work as planned; his crush on Marina made it hard for him to concentrate. Upon hearing this, Smudge suggests that Jimmy might be in love too, [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption and that's why his plans never work]]. Jimmy vehemently denies it, [[ShipTease but in the next (and final) panel he's dreamily thinking about Monica, complete with hearts drawn around her in his thought bubble]]. |
| 321 | * LukeIAmYourFather: Captain Fray is Smudge's uncle who either went crazy or got transformed by the dust of his comic collection, but few people remember or care about that. In a Franchise/StarWars parody, Fray (as "Dork Frayder") says "I am your father's ''brother''!" to Smudge Skywalker and throws his [[NoFourthWall debut comic]] (Mônica Vol.1 #31, published in 1972) as proof. Years later Smudge seems to have forgotten about it, as Marina shows him that same comic and he gets shocked, quoting Darth Vader once again. |
| 322 | ---> This is a bombastic revelation! The readers must be shocked! "Smudge... I... am... your... uncle!" |
| 323 | * LuringInPrey: In one Bubbly story, the space adventurer suddenly sees images from his family and love interest on Earth inviting him to stay with them, which he gets out of his ship to investigate. As he draws near, however, the computer of his spaceship uses a robotic arm to quickly drag him back, revealing that the images that the astronaut had been seeing were nothing more than illusions created by a gigantic anglerfish-like creature from the depths of space that used what passing travellers wish the most as a lure to get them as its prey. |
| 324 | * MadnessInducedOmnivore: Maggy is a little girl with [[BigEater a voracious appetite]]. In "Entrou Areia" ("Sand Got In"), she goes insane after not eating anything for a few hours, and resorts to making food sculptures out of sand to curb her hunger. |
| 325 | * TheMagnificent: The three girls from the Pitangueiras neighbourhood are always referred to by their name, followed by one or more epithets befitting of their reputation. |
| 326 | ** Penha TheDreaded is infamous for her uncanny manipulative skills and detestable personality. |
| 327 | ** Agnes the Tenebrous (sometimes also called "the Shy Weirdo") frightens the other children due to her habit of mistreating animals, her socially awkward personality, and the fact she lives in a haunted house with her undead parents. |
| 328 | ** Sofia the Terrible, the Tractor, the Dragon, the Cannon Fodder, is a perenially angry girl who intimidates the other children with her frown. |
| 329 | * MaleFrontalNudity: Could be seen with the boys (with the excuse that [[ChildrenAreInnocent underage nudity is not that dirty]]) [[NakedPeopleAreFunny mostly for comedy]] aside from Chuck Billy and folks SkinnyDipping.. At times [[http://www.guiadosquadrinhos.com/edicao/ShowImage.aspx?id=23556&path=globo/c/pa15001086.jpg&w=400&h=566 even on the cover]]! That being said, it basically vanished in the 2000s. |
| 330 | * MassiveNumberedSiblings: Mr. Zig Zag, from Lionel's Kingdom, has 118 children, which is a lot, even for a rabbit. |
| 331 | * MayTheFarceBeWithYou: The original Star Wars trilogy is parodied in the comics ''[[Film/ANewHope Coelhada nas Estrelas]]/[[https://web.archive.org/web/20050926043816/http://www.monica.com.br/ingles/comics/coelhada/welcome.htm Star Warp]]'', and the sequels ''[[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack O Feio Contra-Ataca]]'' and ''[[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi O Retorno de Jedito]]''. And then the prequel series, with ''[[Film/ThePhantomMenace A Trapaça Fantasma]]'', ''[[Film/AttackOfTheClones Sotaque dos Clones]]'' and ''[[Film/RevengeOfTheSith A Vingança dos Psithos]]'' (which is focused on Smudge's ''uncle'' instead of father). |
| 332 | * MeatOVision: One story follows Maggy as she tries and fails to find something to eat. At the end, she sees ''the world'' as a giant watermelon and [[PlanetEater dives mouth-first into it]], leaving only a patch of land. Towards the end, cut to the studio, and Mauricio orders the story to be rewritten. |
| 333 | * MealTicket: Subverted with Maggy and Toddy. One story showed that she really wasn't dating him only because he was the bakery owner's son and constantly gave her free bread and sweets. It ends with Maggy willingly choosing Toddy over a big basket of bread, which for her is a ''huge'' deal. |
| 334 | * MediumAwareness: The characters are fully aware that they live in a comic book and will often break the fourth wall to lampshade it, sometimes jumping across panels to get to different destinations. |
| 335 | * MicroDieting: In "Mãe de Dieta" ("Mom on a Diet"), Ms. Five forces the family to support her new dietary regime, which consists of meals such as a single piece of lettuce for lunch or two stalks of celery for dinner. Although she manages to accomplish her goal of slimming down, she is horrified when she realizes her husband and son have gotten thin to the point of being clinically ill. This causes her to abandon her diet, restoring the status quo. |
| 336 | * MonsterMash: Bug-a-Boo's gang are parodies of monsters from classic horror movies. |
| 337 | ** The title character and all other ghosts are literal {{Bedsheet Ghost}}s. Occasionally, they lose their bedsheets and become [[{{Invisibility}} invisible people]] instead. |
| 338 | ** Lady [=McDeath=] is TheGrimReaper, though a female and [[DontFearTheReaper quite clumsy]] interpretation of the creature. Has a counterpart in the [[DeliveryStork Reincarnation Stork]]. |
| 339 | ** Vic Vampire is a ClassicalMovieVampire, who fails in his bloodsucking task very often, and sometimes is even given bat traits. Many strips show him and other vampires sleeping by hanging upside down by the legs - usually on tree branches - rather than inside a coffin. In the cartoons, he is given a [[VampireVords faux-Slavic accent]]. |
| 340 | ** Frank is based on FrankensteinsMonster, but is a GentleGiant ManChild whose body parts frequently fall off. |
| 341 | ** Wolfgang is a werewolf who [[WerewolvesAreDogs mostly behaves like a dog]]. |
| 342 | ** Moe the Mummy is, well, a {{Mummy}}. Depending on the story, taking out the wraps makes him invisible or reveals his dry corpse. |
| 343 | ** Skully is [[LosingYourHead just a disembodied skull]] (and not too happy about it). |
| 344 | ** Later stories also added a [[FishPeople Fishman]] who is rather grumpy, although he doesn't live in the graveyard with the rest of the characters. |
| 345 | * MoreHypnotizableThanHeThinks: |
| 346 | ** Chuck's cousin buys a hypnosis book and Chuck refuses to believe it works. Trying to prove otherwise, Chuck's cousin decides to hypnotize him into believing he's a dog. At first, it seems it doesn't work but then it's revealed the hypnosis doesn't have immediate effects. |
| 347 | ** Done again when Denise hypnotizes Monica into thinking she's a bridge-guarding troll. It has the same delayed effect because Denise used a method to hypnotize dogs. Let that one sink for a moment. |
| 348 | * MoreThanMindControl: What makes Penha so feared is that she can manipulate other people simply by sneering at them. According to Monica, her contempt is so overpowering that the victim can do nothing but mindlessly agree to do her bidding. The only known protection is an unflinching sense of self-worth, with Denise being the one person to resist her power so far. |
| 349 | * TheMovie: 1980's "As Aventuras da Turma da Mônica" ("The Adventures of Monica's Gang", the first movie ever released[[note]]not counting a [[MadeForTVMovie TV]] live-action adaptation/spoof of ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet''[[/note]] and the movie where the scene with the mice came from) and 1983's "A Princesa e o Robô" ("The Princess and the Robot"), as well as Cinegibi (literally "Comic Book Movie", and we mean ''literally''[[note]]The movies are collections of shorts adapted from stories published in the comics, but the literal part is because this is achieved by one of Franklin's inventions: a cross between a movie projector and a blender, where comics pages are fed and turned into the film[[/note]]) series (currently with nine titles, most of them direct-to-DVD), and one about TimeTravel that got released in theaters are noteworthy mentions. Before that, there's been quite a number of direct-to-video releases containing a series of stories, such as 1988's "A Estrelinha Mágica" ("The Magic Little Star"). In 2019, it was also released a theatrical adaptation of the Graphic Novel ''Turma da Mônica - Laços'', being the first official Live-Action appearance of the gang. A sequel with the same cast, now adapting the Graphic Novel ''Turma da Mônica - Lições'', was released in 2021. |
| 350 | * MovingBeyondBereavement: |
| 351 | ** Chuck is devastated when his dog Fido dies from old age. Tonico thus comforts his grieving son, assuring him that, although death is inevitable, the bond that they shared in life is timeless. |
| 352 | ** In "A Star Called Mariana", Chuck and his family are left grieving after the title character dies, but her spirit returns in the form of a star, whose shine gives them the strength to move on. |
| 353 | * MrImagination: |
| 354 | ** Smudge lets his imagination run wild whenever he plays make believe, often getting carried away and injuring those around him as a result. When he pretends to go back in time to the Jurassic era, he starts visualizing his parents as two hostile dinosaurs and attacks them, until they eventually manage to snap him back to reality. |
| 355 | ** Denise's creativity is even wilder than Smudge's; she manages to "out-imagine" him when the two compete to see who is better at role playing. "Denise's Mysterious Secret" goes one step further and implies that this also makes her [[spoiler:a RealityWarper, since she somehow manages to transform her imaginary friend into a real person]]. |
| 356 | * MuggingTheMonster: In some occasions, some people who don't know Monica's SuperStrength (usually criminals or bullies from another neighborhood) find out the hard way why it's a big mistake to threaten her or her friends, or simply [[BerserkButton insult her]]. |
| 357 | * MultipleDemographicAppeal: It's supposedly made for children, but the occasional moments of BlackComedy and ParentalBonus also earned the franchise many grown-up fans. It helps that the comic often does send-offs to popular media aimed at older audiences, such as a special retelling of ''Series/{{Lost}}'' and the "Cinema Classics" parodies of ''Film/{{RoboCop|1987}}, Film/TheRing'' and ''Film/It2017''. Downplayed since the New '10s, since most of the stories that are not advertised on the comic books' covers are didactic in nature and directed exclusively towards very young kids. |
| 358 | * TheMultiverse: A 2022 story reveals Fluffy was irradiated by one of Franklin's machines in the past, causing his fur to produce an unique form of subatomic particle that distorts the fabric of time and space. This produces microscopic wormholes that act as portals to alternate realities, leading Franklin to conclude that the dog has become the link between all the dimensions that make up the "Monicaverse". |
| 359 | * MundaneSolution: |
| 360 | ** Carlito tries to defeat the Tenebrous Doll in a fist fight, though the evil toy subdues him by beating him up with a frying pan. When Eliana shows up, he begs her to flee for her life... but the woman saves the day by nonchalantly picking up the doll and removing its batteries. |
| 361 | ** A RunningGag in Dr. Spam's second story is that Jimmy keeps defeating him by performing simplistic actions, such as turning off the computer the villain is using to materialize into the real world. |
| 362 | [[/folder]] |
| 363 | |
| 364 | [[folder:Tropes N-Z]] |
| 365 | * NakedPeopleAreFunny: |
| 366 | ** In "A Travessia" ("The Crossing"), Jimmy's mother retrieves his clothes while he is taking a shower, leaving him with nothing to cover his body with after he is done. Unfortunately, Monica and his crush Juliana show up for a visit just as he steps out of the bathroom, and the humour revolves around him trying to figure out a way to make it to his bedroom without being seen by them. The 1997 animated short "Como Atravessar a Sala" ("How to Cross the Living Room") has the same plot, but swaps Monica and Jimmy's roles. |
| 367 | ** Jimmy takes a picture of Monica while she is taking a bath and threatens to show it to her friends to embarrass her. She furiously chases him throughout the neighbourhood, but when she finally catches him, she realizes she forgot to put on her clothes and everyone is staring at her in shock or confusion. To add insult to injury, the epilogue then reveals Jimmy had forgotten to remove the lens cap before he took the photo. |
| 368 | ** In "Monico", Jimmy gets Monica's hair style after being exposed to Franklin's prototype hair gel. His mother mistakes him for the girl while he is getting out of the shower, but before he can clear out the confusion, the towel around his waist falls, causing his mother to scream in shock. |
| 369 | ** One comic has Jimmy somehow getting his head stuck in a sink drain while he is completely naked, and he refuses to let Smudge call anyone for help because he feels it will ruin his image. The story concludes with the firemen coming to his aid, and the rescue is broadcasted on national television, much to his embarrassment and every other viewer's amusement. |
| 370 | ** At least three stories have Chuck Billy's clothes being stolen while he is skinny-dipping. HilarityEnsues as he tries to return home without being seen by anyone. |
| 371 | * NarratingTheObvious: A Nimbus story follows the young boy as he repeatedly hypnotizes his friends as part of his magic show. Each performance is accompanied by the narrator explaining that "Nimbus performs a hypnotic gesture!". The obviousness of this statement is lampshaded at the end of the comic, when the sentence is replaced with "Nimbus... oh, you know the rest!". |
| 372 | * NegativeContinuity: Characters from Bug-a-boo's gang are given different backstories every now and then to explore different scenarios that led to them becoming monsters. |
| 373 | * NeverTrustAHairTonic: |
| 374 | ** In one story, Mr. Five begins freaking out after one of his five strands of hair falls and begins looking for anything that can solve that situation. Near the end, he purchases an expensive hair tonic spray only to find out that all the tonic did was thicken the hair that already existed, not make new hair grow. |
| 375 | ** In another, Jimmy tests out a hair tonic developed by Franklin, but instead of placing only a few drops on his hair, as Franklin advised, he just spills the entire tonic on his head. As a result, his hair starts cycling rapidly through different styles until it all falls out, leaving him completely bald. |
| 376 | * NeverTrustATitle: In "Panterelas versus Pitangueiras", it's implied that Monica, Maggy and Denise will don their Panterela outfits (a RunningGag that parodies ''Film/CharliesAngels2000'') and confront [[TerribleTrio the girls from the Pitangueiras neighbourhood]]. This never happens in the actual comic, as Monica's plan to use spy paraphernalia to infiltrate her enemies' territory is immediately shattered by Denise, who proposes they simply jump over the neighbourhood's brick wall. The rest of the story doesn't follow a detective theme either, turning the first half of the title into a two-page gag. |
| 377 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: Some situations escalate because of one character's good intentions. One good example is [[https://arquivosturmadamonica.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-turma-hq-anjinho-encapetado.html a 1994 story]] in which Monica "borrows" Angel's halo and puts it on Jimmy Five to see if he will stop messing with her. While it does give him IncorruptiblePurePureness, it also leaves Angel open to being brainwashed into evil by a devil. |
| 378 | * NoBiologicalSex: Played with. All the angels consider themselves to be genderless, but only the adult ones are implied to not have reproductive organs. The gang's guardian angel has been confirmed to have a boy's anatomy after he undresses in one comic, but when Junior mischievously pulls down the pants of an archangel, he is shocked to find out the entity "[[BarbieDollAnatomy looks like a girl]]". |
| 379 | * NoChallengeEqualsNoSatisfaction: |
| 380 | ** The boys suffer from this when it comes to stealing Samson. One time a friend of Monica's actually ''gave it'' to them since Monica had just bought a doll, and despite rejoicing at first, they got tired pretty quickly, until Monica found out. They like stealing Samson [[BullyingADragon specifically to get Monica angry]], so just getting it too easily and without her knowing won't do. |
| 381 | ** It's quite similar to what happens between Chuck Billy and his friends and Mr. Lau. According to them, the guavas just don't taste the same if Lau isn't running after them yelling and cursing. In one story in the [=80s=], Chuck decided to plant his own guava tree, but once it started bearing fruit, he didn't like the taste, for this specific reason. |
| 382 | * NoFourthWall: Characters frequently mention panels, the writing staff, the reader, and lampshade facts such as the barefoot characters not having toes. |
| 383 | ** One amusing 3 letter panel had Jimmy and Smudge running away from Monica only for Jimmy to smile and suddenly stop after seeing the "End" graphic at the corner... of the second panel. The third panel shows a beaten-up Jimmy berating whoever made that mistake. |
| 384 | ** One Chuck Billy story had him racing Zeke in many occasions, with Zeke always failing to beat Chuck. Then, at the last page, Zeke proposes to see who could get to the end of the story faster. After Chuck zips out of the panel, Zeke simply pulls a pencil out from his pocket and writes "END" at the corner of the frame he's in. Only half a page later, Chuck is still running, and looks up and sees how Zeke managed to fool him. |
| 385 | ** A 1990s Smudge story which parodies the Literature/SinbadTheSailor stories, much to his disgust (since he has to, you see, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment sail the seas of water]]), ends with him cutting off the narrator just as he starts going on about Smudge's next adventure (which would be Sinbad's third travel) and writting "End" at the bottom of the panel (with only one extra panel for denouement). |
| 386 | * NoWaterproofingInTheFuture: In a ''[[Film/TheTerminator Terminator]]'' parody, Jimmy, Smudge and Monica are ancestors of the rebels that give robots trouble and three robots are sent to out time to kill the kids. When the robots attack Jimmy, he scares them away with a ''water'' pistol. |
| 387 | * NotAllowedToGrowUp: Zigzagged and occasionally lampshaded. |
| 388 | ** The main cast is always seven, nevermind the fact the series has been running for over 40 years. Every year there's a special edition featuring one of the main characters' 7th birthday. This is lampshaded when someone asks Jimmy how old he's turning. "Seven," he replies, "just like ''evewy'' other year." |
| 389 | ** In one of the late-2009 issues, it is implied that all of the birthday stories are actually about THE ONE AND ONLY BIRTHDAY PARTY they will ever experience - the 7th birthday party. This means, for example, that every Jimmy's birthday-themed story reveals one of the events that happened in his 7th birthday party. Again, the main character of this story is... Jimmy Five. |
| 390 | ** Notoriously averted with the [[SpinoffBabies Spinoff Teens]] manga, which was first released in 2008. "They grew up!" even became the franchise's tagline for the first few issues. |
| 391 | ** The SlidingTimescale is alluded to in a special issue released by the time of the [[UsefulNotes/TheWorldCup 2010 FIFA World Cup]], in which Maggy's mother was stated to be pregnant of her in 2002, while Monica and Jimmy appear as babies in 2006 (complete with rewriting the infamous Zidane headbutt into one of her first bunny-bashings gone wrong: she tried to hit Jimmy, but the bunny slipped off her hand [[DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength all the way to Berlin]]) which, considering they're all about the same age, would be quite inaccurate (they'd have to be three to four years old by the latter point). |
| 392 | ** It's referenced again in a story involving a CreepyDoll made in 2010, where Maggy recounts its first appearance. She begins with "It all started in March 2001..." only for Jimmy to stop her and point out that, if Maggy is seven years old, ''she shouldn't even be born yet by that time''. |
| 393 | ** Downplayed with Tina and her pals, who ''do'' age, but only by a few years after a couple of real-life decades. Tina was 12 when she was created in 1970, but turned 16 in the '80s. In the late 2000's, WordOfGod confirmed that she had turned 18, and her 2019 graphic novel portrayed her as a 22-year-old woman. DependingOnTheWriter, her and her friends are either still on college or working office jobs. |
| 394 | * NotBigEnoughForTheTwoOfUs: One story features Jimmy's father telling a joke where an elephant tells an ant the town where they are isn't big enough for the both of them. Jimmy's father is the only character to find the joke funny. |
| 395 | * NotMeThisTime: Occasionally, it's really not Jimmy who stole Samson. Many one-page/short stories will have Smudge as being the culprit just for the sake of a quick subversion (since Monica will always go for Jimmy first), but sometimes it's not the main boys at all. |
| 396 | ** In one comic, not only Samson but all the girls' dolls are stolen, and Monica, [[OutOfContextEavesdropping who had listened to Jimmy talking to Sunny about how "the plan will work, and we're finishing her this time"]] earlier that day, immediately blames him. One could forgive her for the misunderstanding, but she beats him up before even asking any questions, which prompts a battered Jimmy to explain that he was talking about a football coach's plan to defeat another team (which in Portuguese has a female pronoun). Monica doesn't even believe it till Sunny vouches for him and says he's been with Jimmy all day. An embarrassed Monica and the girls quickly say sorry and leave, [[LampshadeHanging while Sunny remarks to Jimmy that he has grown a rather unfortunate fame for himself]]. |
| 397 | ** Another story had this done quite creatively: Monica finds Samson missing and goes to interrogate the boys, one by one, only to find they all have perfectly reasonable alibis. She then has a flash and notices the artists had used Samson to stylize the title of the story, so she goes back and picks it up. |
| 398 | --> '''Monica:''' These artists have some ideas! |
| 399 | * NotSoHarmlessVillain: The normally incompetent Captain Fray is portrayed as a genuine threat in "The Return of Captain Fray", where he sends his robotic duplicates through time and space to create cataclysmic events designed to devastate the environment on a global scale. Though the gang manages to destroy the robots, Captain Fray takes advantage of the heroes' distraction to take over the city. [[spoiler:Subverted with the revelation that the Captain Fray seen in this story is actually Nutty Ned in disguise, who orchestrated a CrisisCrossover just to reunite characters from across TheVerse for his birthday party]]. |
| 400 | * OffToSeeTheWizard: Made in graphic novel format, although it's not so much a parody as it is a retelling with the Monica's Gang flavor, complete with the musical numbers and all other tropes the format entails. |
| 401 | * OneSteveLimit: |
| 402 | ** This omnipresent trope is averted by the existence of two secondary characters who share the same name: Both the local snobbish rich girl and the woman who is obsessed with her flower garden are named Carmem. |
| 403 | ** There are 20 different characters called José. Unsurprisingly, said name is also very common in Brazil, with one story even implying that Mauricio can't come up with a different name for his secondary characters because virtually everyone he interacts with on a daily basis is called José. |
| 404 | * TheOneWhoWearsShoes: Jimmy Five is the only one among the four main characters. Shoes are much more frequent with background characters, with only Sunny and Hummer consistently appearing barefoot. |
| 405 | * OnlySixFaces: |
| 406 | ** Lampshaded. The series often jokes about this with characters commenting about "how they can't tell each other apart when they're bald because everyone looks alike". Most of the child characters have the same facial features (the only tell-tale difference being nose shapes aside from other facial nuances - like the dirt strokes on Smudge's cheeks) and the differences between their body types are subtle. |
| 407 | ** This was even lampshaded by Sunny in one story: "That's the good thing on Mauricio's characters all having the same face... No one can tell them apart!" (as Jimmy was wearing a bushy blonde wig to look like Sunny, who wanted to sneak out of his room despite being bedridden). |
| 408 | * OrganTheft: Played for laughs. When Smudge's stuffed earthworm goes missing, he becomes convinced that the thief intends to harvest the toy's plush and sell it to another country. |
| 409 | --> '''Smudge:''' This could happen to anyone! I saw it on TV! |
| 410 | * OrwellianRetcon: |
| 411 | ** Whenever an older story is republished showing wall scribbles, a pasted-on paper is added around the scribble. |
| 412 | ** Firearms are not allowed to be shown in the comics anymore (even toy guns - one instance had Junior appparently shooting water from his finger, and another infamous one had a mobster's tommy gun replaced with a ''lobster''). |
| 413 | ** Reprints changed the dialogue to replace objectionable terms and [[GoshDangItToHeck mild cursing with softer synonyms]] (such as "azar" - bad luck - and "droga" - darn it), removing physical punishment from the kids' parents, even if implied (slippers and belts are removed altogether when a parent threatens the child with them), and rewriting Jimmy's thought bubbles so they don't contain the misspellings of when he talks. Also, some dialogue in Chuck Billy's stories is also rewritten to keep the accent consistent. |
| 414 | * OurGhostsAreDifferent: Exaggerated in the ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' parody. Teveluisão tells Jimmy that all ghosts look alike, but is proven wrong when he is surrounded by phantoms that defy the traditional idea of what spirits look like. Among the cameos, one can spot WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom, the twins from ''Film/TheShining'', [[Anime/SpiritedAway No-Face]] and ComicBook/GhostRider. |
| 415 | * OutOfCharacterMoment: Zé Beto and Crispiano made their debut in the teen manga as two dim-witted, immature rednecks. When their child selves first showed up, they were instead portrayed as cultured and sophisticated boys. By their next appearance, however, they reverted into a duo of mischievous hillbillies. |
| 416 | * OutOfFocus: |
| 417 | ** Specs was a major character in the 1960's newspaper strips, but quickly faded into obscurity once Franklin took his place as the gang's [[TheSmartGuy smart guy]]. His lack of prominence is lampshaded and mocked on occasion, such as when Monica says there is a rumour he had been trying to save his career by acting as a rock's stunt double in a Blu comic strip. (In his defense, it's a sentient, talking rock, with whom Blu often converses.) |
| 418 | ** Bloggy vanished from the comics at the start of the New '20s. One comic book has Junior bring up his sudden disappearance, only for Maggy to reply that she had seen Bloggy in Jimmy's yard a while ago, implying that she has forgotten who he is and is mistaking him for Fluffy the dog. |
| 419 | ** Garotão, Jimmy's giant friend in the 60s newspaper strips, who was [[TheGhost never shown or heard on-screen]], although he did interact with the other characters- he did make it into some of the earlier comics, when by then, he was only TheFaceless, and frequently mistaken for a imaginary friend, but largely disappeared after that. |
| 420 | ** Bernardão, also from the 60s strips, and who didn't even make it into the comics, known for always dressing in black and [[TheJinx attracting bad luck to anyone or anything that he was associated with or came close to]], as exemplified on this dialogue from his debut: |
| 421 | ---> '''Jimmy:''' They say he's ''weally'' unlucky; I don't believe those things... though they say he was ''wooting'' for ''Jabaquawa'' this year's championship... [[note]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabaquara_Atlético_Clube Jabaquara]] finished last place in the São Paulo state football championship the year the strip came out. [[/note]] |
| 422 | ** Jaime, Tina's boyfriend in the 80s that mostly disappared after that decade. |
| 423 | ** Manezinho, who was created before the main characters, appearing recurrently in the 60s,making the transition into the early comics as well, also went through this for a while, appearing less and less from the 70s onwards and disappearing entirely by the 90s, until he started appearing regularly with Bucky and Franklin from the mid-2000s. |
| 424 | ** Teveluisão, known for being obsessed with television and having a [[PerpetualSmiler perpetual grin on his face]], used to appear recurrently in the 60s strips, but since the 70s, only appears very sporadically, although he has had a small boost since Bloggy's (introduced as his brother) introduction. |
| 425 | * ParentalBonus: Stories of both Jimmy Five and Chuck Billy have them enter their parents' bedroom and acting as a MomentKiller, and thus the folks do their best to drive the children away. |
| 426 | * ParentalHypocrisy: In one story, Chuck Billy and Rosie try to secretly meet after dinner and her father caught them. When Rosie's Mom says it sounds like someone she knows, Rosie's Dad says it's different because [[ExactWords his secret signal sounded like a bird other than the one chosen by Chuck]]. |
| 427 | * ParodyNames: Celebrity or licensed character/series often make cameos in the strips, but their names are slightly changed to something that creates a pun and is close enough to the original to avoid copyright infringement. Examples include: Pokemão instead of Pokemon, Darti Vesgo instead of Darth Vader, Superomão instead of Superman, Ton Cruzes instead of Tom Cruise... However, the jokes make more sense and are funnier in Portuguese. This, invariably, sometimes ends up leading to BlandNameProduct and LawyerFriendlyCameo. |
| 428 | * PerpetualFrowner: Monica was always looking angry in the [[TheSixties '60s]] strips. |
| 429 | * APigNamedPorkchop: Chuck Billy owns a pig named Porkchop. In the Brazilian original, the pig is called Torresmo (which means "pork rind" in Portuguese). |
| 430 | * PintsizedPowerhouse: The first few comics justified the boys feeling pain when struck by Monica's stuffed bunny by revealing she had hidden a brick inside the toy, but later stories retconned this by giving the five-year old girl super-strength. Some of her feats include punching down walls and lifting trucks with minimal effort. |
| 431 | * PoliticalOvercorrectness: The writer of the ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'' parody [[BitingTheHandHumor snuck in a few jokes to criticize the comics' new stance on political correctness.]] All weapons are purposefully redrawn as ridiculous objects, such as ponies, popsicles or literal censor bars, much to the characters' confusion. Chuck then explains that these changes were a demand from the Associação Super Corretinha Organizada [[labelnote:Translation]] Organized Super Correct Association[[/labelnote]], whose abbreviation, "ASCO", is Portuguese for "repugnant". |
| 432 | * PortalBook: In the story "Fábulas", Blue disdains the book of [[Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine La Fontaine]]'s {{Fable}}s his owner Franklin was reading, arguing that his own solo stories also have {{Talking Animal}}s and it's just humans who can't understand them. However, when Blue tries to give the book a look, he falls into it and ends up [[FairyTaleFreeForAll in a land where all of the classic Aesop's fables take place]] and [[MetaFictionalDevice all the morals appear as literal pieces of paper delivering the lesson at the end of each story]]. He loses a bet after betting on the hare from "The Hare and the Tortoise", gets chased by the wolf from "The Wolf and the Lamb", gets tricked by the fox from "The Fox and the Goat" and in return tricks her into tasting castor beans in "The Fox and the Grapes", until he finally returns home. |
| 433 | * PostModernism: The lack of FourthWall leads to this. The original Marina story had the real Marina (Maurício's eponymous daughter) invading the comic, only for dad to reveal at the end of the story that he created a cshoharacter based on her.[[note]]furthering the MindScrew: since Franklin's UnrequitedLove for Marina was [[LoveAtFirstSight at first sight]], he originally fell in love with the real one! And at times it's implied that her in-comic father is still Mauricio.[[/note]] |
| 434 | * PowerTrio: |
| 435 | ** For the girls: Monica, Maggy, and either Marina or Denise (with Marina as the third member, they even formed their own LovelyAngels team in a few stories). |
| 436 | ** For the boys: Jimmy Five, Smudge, and usually Sunny. |
| 437 | * PrehensileHair: Jimmy Five's pointy hair injures people, pops balloons/balls, and at least once became a HelicopterHair. |
| 438 | * ProgressivelyPrettier: Whenever we'd see Monica and Maggy as teenagers, the earlier comics tend to make them stretched out versions of their regular selves. Later comics tend to make them much more feminine and traditionally attractive in appearance, and much less cartoonish. Jovem tends to split the difference, with its manga style. |
| 439 | * ThePromise: In "Deus Cebola", Jimmy has gained godly powers after climbing the Stairs to Heaven and needs to be brought back to Earth. Smudge ties a rope around his waist and asks Angel to pull him back when he asks, before climbing the Stairs to retrieve his friend. After the mission is accomplished, Smudge is revealed to actually be Satan in disguise, who wanted to prevent the birth of another god. The evil entity begs Angel to pull the rope before the heavenly forces purify him, and the protagonist, after much deliberation, complies, saying that, as much as he would have liked his biggest enemy to be defeated, fulfilling a promise is what differentiates angels from demons. |
| 440 | * RedemptionRejection: When Maggy, along with Denise, tries to change Agnes' ways. Since her parents are two [[OurGhostsAreDifferent phantoms]] who keep her paranoid and maintaining animals imprisioned, Agnes rejects Maggy's words and sides with her cruel AbusiveParents, who keep saying they only want the best for her. |
| 441 | * RealityWarper: |
| 442 | ** Due to AuthorPowers, Marina's magic pencil allows its wielder to bring whatever they draw to life, as well as create doors to alternate universes. |
| 443 | ** Due to RuleOfFunny, RealityIsOutToLunch whenever Nutty Ned gets involved, and he can change his surroundings in the craziest ways. |
| 444 | * RecursiveCanon: The Gang's comics exist in-universe as well as out. No one really comments on this. |
| 445 | * ReedRichardsIsUseless: |
| 446 | ** Some of Franklin's inventions could literally change history. He has been able to create functioning time machines, multitask robots, size shifting potions and many, manyothers. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since StatusQuoIsGod, naturally, and also most of his creations are infamously far from flawless (though, of course, just the fact that he's able to make something close to the real thing would be world-changing). |
| 447 | ** One story came close to [[SubvertedTrope subvert this trope]]. Franklin managed to build a machine at Maggy's request that could multiply food, and came to realize that, since with one sandwich he could make thousands, he had ''ended world hunger''. Cue some merchants understandably pissed, since now they were probably going bankrupt. Before Franklin can figure out a solution, the rest of the gang finds out that the machine's food copies have actually no nutritional value, not satisfying hunger whatsoever. |
| 448 | ** Another from Franklin involves a time machine, which he worries about falling in the wrong hands in a conversation with Smudge. As soon as he says this, a lot of people show up trying to use their machine for their own purposes (even, hilariously enough, an ice cream man who wants to use it to TakeOverTheWorld). Franklin's solution to this is to travel back in time to keep them from taking the machine, thus creating a StableTimeLoop, which is even acknowledged by the final caption: |
| 449 | ---> The end? Nope! Go back to the beginning and read the story again! |
| 450 | * ReferenceOverdosed: |
| 451 | ** Each of the Cinema Classics specials feature at least one large panel in which characters from various media make cameo appearances. Said cameos often tie in to the general theme of the current setting, such as [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda Link]], [[WesternAnimation/AdventureTime Finn]] and ComicBook/{{Etrigan}} showing up in the parody of ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' because they all hail from old-fashioned worlds that resemble the Middle Ages. |
| 452 | ** This trope is turned into a game in "Paul Is Dead". The final panel notes that there are 28 references to ''Music/TheBeatles''' songs spread throughout the comic and challenges the reader to spot them all. |
| 453 | ** The famous "Escape from the Infinite Comic Books" storyline follows Jimmy and Smudge as they jump through multiple comic book worlds as they try to return to their own universe. The duo is transported to the worlds of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' and many others before finally making their way home. |
| 454 | * {{Reincarnation}}: |
| 455 | ** The ghosts from Bug-a-Boo's comics are all fated to be reborn as new living people. This gets PlayedForLaughs in an old newspaper strip, in which one of the souls that was about to reincarnate loses his chance when his would-be mother decides to take a morning-after pill at the last minute. |
| 456 | ** In "A Star Named Mariana", the title character is Chuck's [[DeathOfAChild deceased baby sister]]. In her second appearance, she is reborn as Chuck and Rosie's daughter. |
| 457 | * RelaxOVision: Jimmy befriends an elephant that goes AxCrazy whenever it hears a certain keyword. When Junior accidentally says it, the story cuts away to a panel explaining that the ensuing violence is unsuitable for a kids-friendly comic book, and comically replaces the carnage with the image of a random anthropomorphic bee reciting poetry. When the plot resumes, the elephant is shown returning to its normal friendly self, while Jimmy is horrified at the injuries Junior suffered off-screen. |
| 458 | * {{Retcon}}: |
| 459 | ** Originally, Monica was Spec's sister. |
| 460 | ** Chuck Billy's dog, Fido, died in a story written in TheEighties, only to be resurrected some years later, with no explanation given. |
| 461 | ** In one story, Fluff is said not to be a lhasa apso, but a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puli_dog puli]]. |
| 462 | ** As mentioned on AnatomyAnomaly, most barefoot characters lack toes. One story revealed Smudge only ''looks'' like he has no toes - he wears flesh colored socks, with the look only being more undistinguishable from actual feet due to his dirt. |
| 463 | * RichBitch: Penha is the daughter of a corrupt politician and often takes advantage of her family's affluence to antagonize the other children. At one point, she buys Monica's neighbourhood just so she could feel she had some sort of control over the protagonist. |
| 464 | * RogerRabbitEffect: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAKbp1U-t1M Some of their films]] have the animated characters interacting with real performers, including Mauricio de Sousa in their cinematic debut; and singer Tetê Espíndola in "A Sereia do Rio"[[note]] "The River Mermaid"[[/note]]. |
| 465 | * RollingPinOfDoom: |
| 466 | ** In the ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' parody, friar Smudge tells Romeo (Jimmy) that his marriage to Monicapulet would cause her to stop hitting them with her stuffed bunny. Jimmy's enthusiasm is short-lived, as Smudge then explains that wives hit their husbands with rolling pins instead. |
| 467 | ** In their second game for the UsefulNotes/SegaMasterSystem (a reskin of ''VideoGame/WonderBoyIIITheDragonsTrap''), Maggy's weapon is a rolling pin. |
| 468 | * SatelliteLoveInterest: |
| 469 | ** Dustine has little personality other than being Smudge's girlfriend. |
| 470 | ** [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] with Isabel, Bucky's girlfriend. Though she used to be mostly defined by her love for her boyfriend, she [[CharacterDevelopment grows out of it]] once the two break up in the teen spin-off. |
| 471 | * {{Schemer}}: Jimmy Five loves to scheme against all the other three main characters, to defeat Monica (or at least steal her plush bunny), give Smudge a bath, and make Maggy eat less. |
| 472 | * SelfDeprecation: In "The Power of Imagination": |
| 473 | ** Captain Popsicle is infuriated when Mauricio's writers can't tell the difference between him and Horacio. Emerson retorts by criticizing the comics' art style, saying that all characters look the same anyways. |
| 474 | ** Captain Popsicle's refusal to approve Emerson Abreu's scripts are a jab at some of the writer's personal flaws, such as his tendency to let his imagination run wild and write overly long stories, as well as his propensity to pepper the dialogue with LGBT slangs that fly over the heads of general audiences. |
| 475 | * SeriousBusiness: |
| 476 | ** Stealing Monica's stuffed rabbit is no joking matter for a lot of the boys in the block (mostly Jimmy Five and Smudge). The [[ZanyScheme plans]] to try and steal it away from her have included ''time traveling''. |
| 477 | ** Carmem takes gardening very seriously. She builds a dungeon in her house and fills it with traps to ensure that nobody can harm her beloved flowers. |
| 478 | * SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: In "The Power of the Bad Mood", Monica's temper leads her to beat up Jimmy after he pulls a harmless prank on her. This starts a chain reaction of people becoming irritated, which escalates until Earth is destroyed by a fleet of angry aliens. Horrified by the fact that a petty squabble led to the end of the world, Monica requests the narrator to send her back to the start of the comic. This time, she laughs at Jimmy's prank, kickstarting [[ContagiousLaughter another chain reaction]] that leads to an EverybodyLaughsEnding. |
| 479 | * ShadesOfConflict: SliceOfLife comics are usually GreyAndGrayMorality (the reader can sympathize with Jimmy because Monica's so bossy, for instance), as are those with an IneffectualSympatheticVillain added. Harsher bad guys earn BlackAndWhiteMorality. |
| 480 | * ShaggyDogStory: In "Observadores de Pássaros" ("Birdwatchers"), Mr. Bill undergoes CharacterDevelopment, loses his dislike for children, and befriends Monica. He also finds a sanctuary filled with rare and endangered species, which he hopes to present to the scientific community in order to finally [[EarnYourHappyEnding be acknowledged professionally]]. Unfortunately, when he recounts the adventure to a policewoman, she is convinced that he is insane, and Monica refuses to corroborate his claims out of fear that the sanctuary would be devastated by anthropic actions. With his chance at happiness taken from him at the last second, Mr. Bill descends into insanity, thus [[StatusQuoIsGod restoring the status quo]]. |
| 481 | * ShipTease: Tina and Curly have had several subtle moments of this, but since both are often dating other people, StatusQuoIsGod usually stops them for going any further than being just good friends. One comic had Tina hearing from a clairvoyant that she'd soon meet the man of her life. On the same day she crashes into her father in a street corner, and when he jokes that ''he'' is the man of her life, Tina shakes off the clairvoyant's prediction by thinking it's not real. The story then cuts to nighttime, when Curly arrives at the same spot because a fortune-teller told him he'd meet the woman of his life there, but since there's no one he mutters that he probably missed her... |
| 482 | * ShoutOut: |
| 483 | ** Smudge is a diehard "[[Franchise/StarWars Star Warp]]" fan, and frequently references the original franchise either by quoting its characters or dressing up as them. |
| 484 | ** The parody of ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' has the gang exploring a world inhabited by [[http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljlh4hK1UQ1qbnzf6o1_500.jpg fictional blue characters]], which includes cameos of Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog, [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} Dr. Manhattan]], [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} Squirtle]] and [[WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} the Genie]], among many others. It's even the page image of ReferenceOverdosed! |
| 485 | ** A storyline that parodizes ''Franchise/IndianaJones'' has Jimmy pushing Smudge into a pool of water, which causes the latter to scream "Look what you've done! I'm melting!", mimicking the death and last words of [[Film/TheWizardOfOz the Wicked Witch of the West]]. |
| 486 | ** In "Perdidos no Meio do Quarto"[[labelnote:Translation]] "Stranded in the bedroom"[[/labelnote]], Sunny loses his way while exploring Smudge's dirty bedroom and decides to wait for someone to show up and rescue him. After several days, Jimmy and Smudge find him, but he has lost his sanity, proclaiming everything to be an illusion except his beloved soccer ball, which he now refers to as Wilsa. This is a parody of ''Film/CastAway'', in which the protagonist tries to survive in a deserted island alongside his inanimate companion, a volleyball called Wilson. |
| 487 | ** Luca is occasionally called "Paralaminha" ("Little Paralama"), which is a reference to how the frontman of the band Music/OsParalamasDoSucesso, Herbert Vianna, became wheelchair-bound after an airplane accident in 2001. |
| 488 | ** In "The Haunted Washing Machine", Jimmy plays a prank on Smudge by pretending to be hypnotized by the titular appliance. He turns around, his eyes turning white and his hair contorting into a spiral, and utters "Manga/{{Uzumaki}}", referencing the eponymous manga and its main conflict. |
| 489 | * SilenceIsGolden: Some stories in each book are completely silent, and rely solely on visual gags as a source of humour. |
| 490 | * SimultaneousArcs: |
| 491 | ** The December 2005 comic books feature a continuous narrative. In Smudge's book, he decides to run away from home and shows up at Jimmy's place, but his friend is too focused on his pet chinchilla to pay attention to him. Said pet dies in Jimmy's story, and he is comforted by Monica at the end of her comic book. Finally, Maggy returns from a trip to the beach and finds her desolated friends at the end of her own story. |
| 492 | ** The covers for the May 2006 comic books can be connected to make one big artwork, hinting that their stories are also linked. In Monica's book, she notices her stuffed bunny has gone missing and suspects Jimmy of stealing it. However, Denise points out Jimmy is at Sunny's farm (which is the focus of his own story), leading Monica to investigate Junior instead. Upon arriving at his place, she is greeted by Crystal, who is in a bad mood due to having to put up with Junior's antics (as shown in Maggy's comic book). Finally, Smudge's story has him growing jealous of Jimmy and Sunny's friendship and trying to find a new best friend. |
| 493 | ** The June 2007 comic books show the main four getting ready for Denise's birthday party. Monica helps Denise set up the decorations, Jimmy tries to clean his party clothes after a last minute accident, Smudge tries to find Denise the perfect gift, and Maggy comes into conflict with an evil witch while searching for a cake. |
| 494 | ** The June 2018 stories from Monica, Jimmy and Maggy's comics all take place at the same time. Jimmy offers to look after Franklin's lab while the latter attends a scientist convention (which is the focus of Maggy's story), but comes across an interdimensional monster, which he manages to tame. He then decides to use the beast in his latest scheme against Monica, with the results being shown at the end of her comic book. |
| 495 | * SinisterSuffocation: A 1994 comic follows Astronaut as his suit is invaded by an oxygen-eating alien, who is implied to have committed genocide on a global scale after consuming its home world's atmosphere and causing all other life forms to suffocate. Despite only appearing in this one storyline, the alien is portrayed as a thoroughly sinister villain that poses a serious threat to Earth, sharply contrasting the franchise's other antagonists, who are LaughablyEvil at worst. |
| 496 | * {{Slapstick}}: No gender nor social boundaries provide immunity from slapstick, as Luca (who is wheelchair-bound, need we remind you) has been on the receiving end of Monica's needy abuse at least once. |
| 497 | * SoftReboot: Even if the Panini comics would become more and more ContinuityPorn, down to counting the output of all three publishers to celebrate 500th or 600th overall issues of a character, in 2015, just after the 100th issue of the core comics, the numbering was reverted back to #1. And they did it again after just 70 issues in 2021! |
| 498 | * SourOutsideSadInside: Xepa (Sunny's paternal grandmother) spends the majority of her debut storyline being a massive {{Jerkass}} to everyone around her, such as by mocking her son's ex-wife for being single and stealing Maggy's food. At the end, she reveals [[spoiler:her behaviour is deliberate. She deeply misses the friends she's lost in her old age, so she wants her loved ones to hate her to spare them of the same pain]]. |
| 499 | * SpeakOfTheDevil: |
| 500 | ** Sometimes, whenever a Mauricio character mention death or the verb "die", Lady [=MacDeath=] (a female and [[DontFearTheReaper comedic]] GrimReaper from Bug-a-boo's stories) appears. |
| 501 | ** Also Nutty Ned: whenever someone speaks of being "nutty", "nuts" or something along these lines (e.g. "who would be nutty enough to do X?", where X may be something like testing out one of Franklin's inventions), he shows up. |
| 502 | * TheSpeechless: Hummer only speaks in "hmmmm". |
| 503 | * SpoiledBrat: Monica is one on her [[DependingOnTheWriter worst days]], using her strength and 'street ruler' status to force others into doing her bidding. |
| 504 | * SpotlightStealingSquad: |
| 505 | ** At first the protagonist was Jimmy Five. [[http://crescer.globo.com/edic/129/monica4.jpg Once he stumbled upon a girl who hit him]], and she later turned into the main character. (probably due to being [[TheSmurfettePrinciple the first female one]], and based on the creator's daughter, no less) And even in being the main character, at times she'll hog the spotlight some more (a blatant example being the ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' comic, where Monica played Tia Dalma, and thus every time she appeared there were lampshades of "you're not supposed to be here" as the character only showed up in the sequel). |
| 506 | ** Due to Denise's [[BreakoutCharacter rising popularity]], she soon started usurping the roles of other secondary characters, most notably by replacing Marina as the [[OnlySaneMan voice of reason]] to Monica and Maggy. |
| 507 | * SternTeacher: Chuck Billy's teacher, especially because Chuck is often in her nerves. But she has CoolTeacher moments too. |
| 508 | * StringOnFingerReminder: Used in a short Chuck Billy story. It starts with Chuck failing to remember why he tied a string around his finger in the first place, spending the whole day asking people if they had anything to do with it. He finally remembers what he had to do during bedtime, [[spoiler:which was to save his best friend, who was in a LiteralCliffhanger the entire time]]. |
| 509 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: in the comic that introduces Sunny's grandma, she spends most of the comic mistaking Sunny for Crystal, much to Sunny's frustration, until, in the end, she produces a old photo revealing that Crystal used to look ''exactly'' identical to Sunny when she was younger. |
| 510 | * SuddenNameChange: "Perfeição" introduces a recurring antagonist called Creuza, whose name is inexplicably changed to Carmem by her next appearance. |
| 511 | * SuperStrength: |
| 512 | ** Monica, sometimes to hilarious extents (in one single-page comic she literally blew the world away from her with a sneeze). Maybe that's why the bunny bashings hurt so much. |
| 513 | ** In the early issues, it was revealed that she used to keep a brick inside Samson. Nowadays she really possesses super-human strength, and her mother revealed that some of her family members also have the power. |
| 514 | * StandardHeroReward: Subverted in one old episode, in which Monica portrays a princess that is kidnapped by an ogre and eventually rescued by Jimmy Five. When Monica's father as the king tells Jimmy he'll be rewarded for saving her, Jimmy already imagines himself being forced to marry Monica, only to find out his reward is actually a bejewelled sword. |
| 515 | * StickySituation: The 154th issue of Globo's run of the ''Monica'' comic had a story titled "Chiclete, NÃO!", which had Monica get stuck when she sits on a bench where gum was left on the seat. Her attempts to free herself result in slipping out of her panties, which remain stuck to the bench. She tries to pull her panties from the bench, only to humiliate herself further when other people see her bare bottom and the panties are ultimately torn. After rushing home to get a new pair of panties while using a bush to cover herself, Monica finds out who it was who left the gum on the bench and has her revenge by using gum to stick the boy to a trash can by the seat of his pants. |
| 516 | * TagalongKid: Junior, and occasionally Jimmy Five's little sister. Though Mary Angela at least is a harmless baby, while Junior [[BrattyHalfPint just has to make things more difficult/annoying whenever he's around]]. |
| 517 | * TakeThat: |
| 518 | ** The {{Crossover}} with the ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' has the gang traveling across multiple famous ''DC'' issues and recruiting superheroes to help Franchise/{{Superman}} overcome his rogues gallery. When Sunny suggests they recruit the Golden Age ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} next, everyone responds with uproarious laughter (including [[ComicBook/BatmanHush Hush]]-era Franchise/{{Batman}}, which Sunny points out to be incredibly OutOfCharacter). They then warp to the ''ComicBook/New52'' universe to enlist the help of the [[TookALevelInBadass modern version]] of Aquaman. |
| 519 | ** The parody of ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' pokes fun at the much-maligned wizard battle from the first film. As the {{Captain Ersatz}}es of Gandalf and Saruman hurl invisible spells at each other, Sauron comments that the duel is boring him and leaves. |
| 520 | ** The parody of ''Film/TheAvengers2012'' pokes fun at many of the criticisms leveled against the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse, such as ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} being rather weak compared to the rest of the heroes,[[note]] His CaptainErsatz is an incompetent buffoon who can't hit a target that is directly in front of him[[/note]] the reliance on [[TheStinger post-credit scenes]] to set up future films[[note]] Which is represented by Junior's mother growing progressively exasperated as the film never seems to end[[/note]] and the excessive number of scenarios in which superheroes fight each other for contrived reasons. |
| 521 | --> '''Asthornaut''': We are heroes! Why are we even fighting?\ |
| 522 | '''Iron Bunny''': Industry tradition! |
| 523 | ** In at least two stories, Emerson Abreu has ridiculized "The Ketchup Song", a song that went viral in Brazil during the 2000's despite mostly negative reviews from critics. In "Perfeição", Mrs. Five immediately shoots down Jimmy's proposal to perform the song's choreography during the school play; and in "Desconectados", its lyrics are used to represent the sound of dying computers. |
| 524 | * TeenGenius: Specs used to be TheSmartGuy. Downplayed to OlderAndWiser as Franklin became cemented as the gang's resident [[ChildProdigy Boy Genius]]. |
| 525 | * TeenyWeenie: The story "A Travessia" ("The Crossing") revolves around Jimmy trying to make his way from the bathroom to his room without being seen naked by Monica and his crush Juliana. When the girls walk towards the bathroom, Jimmy ends up pretending to be a naked angel statue, somehow fooling them both. Juliana notes that the statue looks like Jimmy and has a tiny nose, to which Monica remarks, "Yeah... a tiny nose... and the rest too!" leaving Jimmy irritated and his cheeks red with embarrassment. |
| 526 | * TemporalParadox: The main source of conflict in ''An Adventure in Time''. Franklin explains that, if an object from a given timeline is sent into the past or future, its absence will gradually cause distortions that result in time freezing in that reality. Monica and the gang must thus venture into other time periods to retrieve the {{MacGuffin}}s from their era before the time flow is damaged. |
| 527 | * ThoughtBubbleSpeech: |
| 528 | ** Played straight with Vanilla, but averted with Blu and his friends, and also Lionel's Kingdom crew, who all use normal speaking bubbles. However, Vanilla can use the speaking bubbles as well, usually when interacting with other animals (though sometimes he uses the thinking bubbles even when interacting with other cats. It really [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]]). He once lampshaded this when talking to a human, saying that he only does it when it's necessary. |
| 529 | ** Ditto, Fluffy and Chauvy (Monica's, Jimmy's and Smudge's pets respectively) will usually play it straight too, though it's very rare for them to show any thinking animal tendencies at all. |
| 530 | * TimeMachine: Franklin builds so many of them that many times characters lampshade how it's basically the only thing he does (Smudge makes fun of it in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHDHXWm4Fjo this episode]]). In fact, one of these is what triggers the events of the TimeTravel movie. |
| 531 | * TokenGoodTeammate: Sofia is largely harmless compared to the other girls from the Pitangueiras neighbourhood. While Penha is a HateSink with no sympathetic qualities whatsoever, and Agnes became cold and cruel after years of her parents' emotional abuse; Sofia never goes out of her way to antagonize the other children, often doing little more than standing in one place licking her lollipop. In the teen spin-off, she ultimately pulls a HeelFaceTurn and befriends the heroes. |
| 532 | * TokenMinority: |
| 533 | ** Jeremiah is the standard "token black boy", but there's also Doreen (blind girl), Luca (boy in a wheelchair) and Hummer (who was initially only mute, but was [[{{Retcon}} retconned]] as deaf as well) and some others. |
| 534 | ** The fact Jeremiah is a semi-regular character was enough to warrant calls for representation. In response, two graphic novels starring Jeremiah and focusing on his ethnicity have been written; and Milena, a new African-Brazilian character, was created in 2018 (although her formal comics debut, along with her family's, only came in January 2019) and immediately integrated to the main cast. |
| 535 | ** In Chuck Billy's gang, there has always been the Japanese-Brazilian Taka. |
| 536 | * TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Monica, who loves physical activities and to beat up boys, and Maggy, who is just plain girly. The latter even attempts to make Monica less masculine at times. |
| 537 | * TookALevelInDumbass: Maggy, strangely enough, is portrayed as a total dumbass when she's not eating in some of early 2000s stories written by Flavio. The reason behind this is unknown and a complete OutOfCharacterMoment, since Maggy is commonly portrayed as one of the smartest characters of the gang. |
| 538 | * TookALevelInJerkass: Dustine used to be little more than Smudge's SatelliteLoveInterest and lacked defining characteristics of her own, but her personality eventually shifted into that of a BitchInSheepsClothing. In a story where Denise spreads a rumour that Smudge and Maggy are dating, Dustine immediately believes the lie and starts revenge dating in response. She also proudly states that she is shallow and vindictive and was only dating Smudge because he is a main character, something that Maggy herself calls a low blow. |
| 539 | * TrademarkFavoriteFood: |
| 540 | ** Maggy eats everything, but watermelon is explicitly her favourite food. It's completely normal to see her gobbling an entire one down. |
| 541 | ** Lettuce is Horacio's favourite food, which is ironic, considering he is a baby ''T. rex''. |
| 542 | ** Chuck Billy has a great love for guavas, especially those stolen from Mr. Lau's orchard. |
| 543 | * TrueCompanions: The main four, regardless of all the pranking and alienating negative traits. One of the main themes of the Gang is friendship, after all, and it's been stated more than once that children's friendship is the strongest kind - even when they argue and drive themselves away from each other, it's always temporary, and the next day they're back together. |
| 544 | * {{Tsundere}}: Monica is Type A; she may beat Jimmy Five (and Smudge) up in most of the comics, but they are also good friends, and in some stories set in the future, they are married with children (not to mention them becoming a full-fledged OfficialCouple in the Teen Gang imprint). Even as kids, there are hints of affection between them (mostly on her side; Jimmy, for the most part, has a GirlsHaveCooties attitude towards her in this regard). |
| 545 | * {{Tuckerization}}: Considering most characters are based on [[WriteWhoYouKnow people Mauricio knew]], common. Maggy, Monica, Nimbus (Mauro in real life), Nick Nope (also called Maurício in real life) and Marina are [[http://100jabuticabas.com.br/caldeirao/mauricio-de-souza-publica-fotos-de-seus-filhos-que-inspiraram-personagens-da-turma-da-monica/ his children]] (also Jimmy Five's baby sister, Mary Angela, whose English version name matches her real life one), Smudge and Jimmy Five are childhood friends, Chuck Billy and Zeke were brothers of his grandma (he never met them, but she always told stories), Tina is a school acquaintance and Horacio, a childhood friend who became a teacher. For another person's case, Penha is named after writer Emerson Abreu's mother. |
| 546 | * TuttiFruttiHat: Maggy dresses as Creator/CarmenMiranda in a comic book cover. However, as a reference to the character's gluttony, most of the fruit have bite marks on them. |
| 547 | * UncattyResemblance: Invoked with Ditto, Monica's pet dog. Jimmy and Smudge gave it to her as a gift just to get a quick laugh on this trope, but [[InsultBackfire she ended up loving the pet]]. |
| 548 | * UniversalAdaptorCast: With both "characters in other settings" and "WholePlotReference stories". Thanks to this, Jimmy Five's been Franchise/{{Batman}}, Film/IronMan and [[Film/XMenFilmSeries Wolverine]], and Chuck Billy's been Franchise/{{Superman}} and [[Film/TheAvengers2012 Captain]] [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger America]]. |
| 549 | * VerbalTic: The Tenebrous Doll is unable to prevent herself from constantly shouting "[[CatchPhrase Fear! Terror! Darkness!]]" In her debut storyline, the doll blurts this out while pretending to have turned over a new leaf, giving away that she is still evil; and in Monica's 500th comic book special, [[spoiler:Cumulus Nimbus screaming the three words makes Monica realize that the doll is the one who had brainwashed him]]. |
| 550 | * ViewersAreGeniuses: Smudge's pet pig is named "[[http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/60s70s/g/gl_mcp.htm Chovinista]]" (Chauvy in the English translation). |
| 551 | * VileVillainSaccharineShow: |
| 552 | ** In a world where most villains are LaughablyEvil, Agnes stands out as a thoroughly sinister antagonist. Monica calls her heartless for torturing animals, and Maggy points out that her repressed hatred and loneliness have made her unable to feel empathy. Her growing resentment ultimately transforms her into a malevolent spirit, whom Angel has to personally drag into the afterlife to save Monica's life. |
| 553 | ** The [[CreepyDoll Tenebrous Doll]] is unlike other antagonists in that she has no goal other than to terrorize and murder her victims. In her debut storyline, she plots to explode Maggy's house with a bundle of dynamite while the protagonist is still inside. |
| 554 | * VillainDecay: Dr. Spam is introduced as a fairly effective villain who outsmarts the entire gang, requiring Bloguinho to intervene and program an antivirus specifically to deal with him. However, in his second appearance, he is treated as a complete joke, as Jimmy repeatedly defeats him through banal means (turning off the computer which Dr. Spam is using to materialize into the real world, for example). He is also much less powerful, since his electricity blasts are retconned into mostly harmless bolt-shaped spikes. |
| 555 | * ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption: |
| 556 | ** Monica, particularly in the newspaper comics, where it's easy to make quick joke with either a beating or threatening to do so. |
| 557 | ** It used to be worse in the original strips. Once, Maggy suggested that, if Monica were to fight, she might as well do it like a girl, hair tugging and everything. ''She proceeded to tear all the hair off Maggy's head.'' It even got to the point where, in-universe, no one would want to be in the same strip as her. |
| 558 | * VitriolicBestBuds: |
| 559 | ** Jimmy Five devotes his existence to annoy and mess with Monica. In return, she beats him up to a pulp. Never stopped either of them of referring to each other first and foremost as "friends", and they will come to each other's aid whenever necessary. |
| 560 | ** Maggy and her NonHumanSidekick Vanilla, also have a bit of this going on. [[KindheartedCatLover While she adores the cat and spoils him rotten]], and Vanilla does care for her a lot more than he lets out (in fact, he's shown several times that he's secretly afraid that she'll grow tired of him eventually), most of their stories together are about them going at each other like [[SitcomArchnemesis sitcom arch-nemeses]], and when not being lovable they are decidedly snarky towards each other. |
| 561 | * WalkingShirtlessScene: The cast of The Tribe, true to their nature as Natives. Albeit at a certain point of TheNewTens Tom-Tom started dressing as a "civilized Indian" with a shirt, shorts and slippers. |
| 562 | * WastefulWishing: In "Shooting Stars and Boiled Eggs", most of the children are transformed into monsters when their [[WishUponAShootingStar wishes]] upon a meteor shower [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor backfire]]. Smudge gets the chance to save his friends by using the last shooting star, but absent-mindedly wishes for a boiled egg instead. The comic ends with the gang, now irreversibly mutated, chasing after him. |
| 563 | * WerewolvesAreDogs: Lobi from the Bug-a-Boo stories -- which parody many classical cinema monsters -- is a werewolf who, DependingOnTheWriter, often has the behavior of a stereotypical friendly dog, such as going after bones, barking and running away from baths. |
| 564 | * WhamLine: Denise used to have a rarely seen sister called Sonia. In 2015, their relationship is turned upside down when Denise says [[spoiler:Sonia "is not really her sister", but her imaginary friend who has somehow materialized as a real person. Subsequent stories depict Sonia as a malicious entity who deeply resents Denise and vows to torment her for her troubled existence]]. |
| 565 | * WhatTheHellHero: As much of a [[NiceGuy Nice Girl]] {{Tsundere}} that Monica is, she can sometimes be really bossy and irrational and when she wants to do something, she's not above using violence to convince the boys to do as she wants when they're minding their own business.[[note]]E.G:Forcing Smudge and Jimmy to celebrate the "National Poetry Day" (which is 14th March in Brazil) while Smudge was minding his own business and Jimmy wanted to watch a soccer game on tv when it wasn't even 14th March, just because she felt like it. And when Franklin told then when the actual Poetry Day was, Smudge and Jimmy walk away pissed off at Monica and the story ends when her turning to Franklin saying "See what you did?" and she beats Franklin afterwards.[[/note]]. Granted, Jimmy does call her out on this in the Manga. |
| 566 | * WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Whenever the gang comes across a complex problem, the solution is usually using Monica's SuperStrength to simply brute-force their way through. |
| 567 | ** In a storyline based on ''Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves'', the gang is captured by the thieves and imprisoned in an underground cell in the middle of the desert. Jimmy comes up with a convoluted plan, which involves sending Smudge's pet flies across the ocean to retrieve items to aid in their escape, but then realizes Monica has just punched a hole through the wall. He disheartedly laments that, once again, they had to rely on "the same old cliché of Monica's strength". |
| 568 | ** A RunningGag in the ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' crossover is someone posing a difficult problem for the gang, only for Monica to solve it by throwing her bunny at someone. This includes freeing Superman from a parasite, restoring the Flash's memory, and defeating the likes of Black Manta, Mxyzptlk and Mongul. |
| 569 | * WhenIWasYourAge: Jimmy Five's father once told Jimmy that, with Jimmy's allowances, he once bought stuff for home. Jimmy then asked how his parents did to live off ice cream and sweets. |
| 570 | * WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve: The Grim Reaper must reap the old year before the year's last day's midnight or the new year won't be born and last year's events will happen all over again. |
| 571 | * WhereNoParodyHasGoneBefore: They made one too, basically parodying the [[Film/StarTrek2009 2009 film]], but making nods to the original series here and there. |
| 572 | * WholePlotReference: |
| 573 | ** The "Cinema Classics" series are parodies of blockbuster films and follow their plots rather closely, though the darker elements are obviously sugarcoated in order to maintain the comic's humorous tone. Some of the films that have been referenced include the ''Franchise/StarWars'', ''Film/JurassicPark'' and ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' trilogies, which were divided in three parts just like the originals. |
| 574 | ** In the ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' retelling, Monica disagrees with Shakespeare's [[DownerEnding ending]] and forces the Prince of Verona - Sunny - to give them a happy one. |
| 575 | ** [[https://web.archive.org/web/20010417002024/http://www.monica.com.br/ingles/comics/12trab/welcome.htm One comic]] has Monica play the role of [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Hercules']] daughter and [[FollowInMyFootsteps do a variant of his 12 works]]. |
| 576 | ** "Mingau com Chuva" ("Porridge with Rain") is based on ''Film/TheShining''. Maggy's actions mirror those of Jack Torrance, as she apparently loses her sanity and chases Vanilla around the house with the intent of killing him. The ending reveals that the story was told from Vanilla's point of view, with him becoming excessively paranoid after watching said film and projecting its events on his owner when she was in fact just trying to feed him. |
| 577 | ** The August 2023 commemorative issues are about different versions of Monica from across the "[[TheMultiverse Monicaverse]]" joining forces to stop an assortment of villains from breaking the fabric of reality. Though the stories parodize CrisisCrossover events as a whole, the conclusion takes direct inspiration from ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'', being titled "Crisis On the Monicaverse" and featuring a villain called "[[Characters/TheMultiversity the Anti-Monicor]]". |
| 578 | * WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: |
| 579 | ** Smudge is aquaphobic, to the point even a ''glass of water'' can make him shiver. His fear is such that he can spontaneously come up with wild ways to avoid getting wet, such as flapping his arms like wings to avoid falling into a lake. Though his teen version has overcome his fear to a certain degree, he is still not very fond of the idea of bathing[[note]]Brazil is a tropical country, where it's customary to shower/bathe at the very least once a day. In his teens, Smudge only does that bare minimum.[[/note]]. |
| 580 | ** Monica, while superstrong and brave, has her own girly fears (like pretty much every other girl in the gang): she will shriek and cower at the sight of any [[EekAMouse mouse]], bug, worm or what have you. Needless to say, Jimmy has used it to his advantage more than once. |
| 581 | ** Marina is abnormally afraid of dogs. A comic that explores her phobia has her crawling up an air vent to avoid Monica's dog, and it's played as a homage to ''Film/{{Alien}}''. |
| 582 | * WickedStepmother: Carmem almost becomes Sunny's stepmother and threatens to enforce strict methods to discipline him, including feeding him nothing but scarlet eggplant soup. Luckily, Sunny's father realizes how much she hates children and ends their relationship. [[spoiler:They resume dating after Carmem [[TookALevelInKindness takes a level in kindness]] in the story "Notice Me, Sunny"]]. |
| 583 | * WildTake: Became pervasive since the 2000s, especially when Sidnei Salustre is drawing. |
| 584 | * WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief: Lampshaded in a story where Maggy is telling Junior the ''Jack and the Beanstalk'' story and putting her spin on it at every step. Better yet, it's lampshaded by the ''giant'' in the story: |
| 585 | --> If he's accepted that I live on the clouds and that you came up here on a beanstalk... Why can't I be a sculptor and use hairspray? |
| 586 | * WithFriendsLikeThese: In "Jujube's Disappearance", Smudge falls into a trash can that rolls downhill, collides with a truck and is sent flying into a coconut store. Monica laughs at the entire ordeal, while Jimmy takes advantage of his friend's unconsciousness to undress him and take pictures to blackmail him with later. |
| 587 | * WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: When Jimmy accidentally finds and climbs the Stairs to Heaven, he is imbued with godly powers and knowledge, which drive him insane and cause him to distort reality with his thoughts. |
| 588 | * WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Agnes becomes an orphan at a young age, though the spirits of her evil parents remain bound to the Earth. Their abusive treatment cause her to become shy, lonely and sadistic, until she too is filled with so much hatred that she transforms into an incredibly powerful evil spirit. |
| 589 | --> '''Agnes:''' If I can't have friends... If I can't be happy... Then no one can! One day, you will all pay! |
| 590 | * WouldHitAGirl: Dozens of stories show Jimmy Five and the boys in general trying to beat Monica to end her "reign". Sometimes they succeed. |
| 591 | * WrittenSoundEffect: In both the comic book and the animated versions, moments where characters beat up each other are replaced with simple panels/frames containing a single onomatopoeia. This is deliberately done to avoid depicting acts of violence and discourage bullying. |
| 592 | * YouAreFat: In Emerson de Abreu's "A Origem da Mônica"[[note]] "Monica's Origin"[[/note]] storyline, several jokes come at the expense of Monica's pudginess. Her weight almost causes a boat to sink, triggers a rock slide when she stands at the edge of a cliff, leads a group of elephants to believe that she is one of their calves, and makes a plane lose altitude. As it turns out, all these events were [[spoiler:actually part of a fake backstory that Jimmy came up with in order to tease her]]. |
| 593 | * YouMeddlingKids: In a particularly {{Troperiffic}} story in which Nutty Ned and Jimmy Five disguise themselves as [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Sherlock Holmes and Watson]] respectively in order to solve Samson's disappearance and find that TheButlerDidIt, the guilty butler says this line, prompting Jimmy to lampshade the [[Franchise/ScoobyDoo shout-out]], since there are ''no'' meddling kids in the case. |
| 594 | * YouNoTakeCandle: In "Paul in Roça", Chuck requests the letterer to translate Music/PaulMcCartney's dialogue to Portuguese so the readers and himself can understand what he is saying. Though the request is granted, the Beatle's lines are childlike and with mangled grammar, highlighting both his innocence and the fact he is a foreigner. |
| 595 | * ZanyScheme: Jimmy Five's [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption Infallible]] Plans. One comic had him developing a [[GambitRoulette over-the-top one relying on random factors]] (such as having Monica attacked by a passing alien ship), only for Smudge to convince him on giving up by saying it was too implausible. [[GilliganCut Cue Monica saying she had just went through all of what had been described in the plan...]] |
| 596 | [[/folder]] |
| 597 | |
| 598 | !!Tropes exclusive to ''Monica Adventures'': |
| 599 | |
| 600 | [[folder:Tropes A-M]] |
| 601 | * AbortedArc: |
| 602 | ** The "End of the World Saga" was put on an indefinite hiatus in 2016, when Emerson Abreu left the writing staff of the teen spin-off. Though the writer has continuously teased the series' return since then, no further stories have been published. |
| 603 | ** Wagner Bonilla's "Savert Saga" was the focus of four issues of Chuck Billy's book in 2015, but the plotline was dropped afterwards. Though it seemed to be making a comeback in 2021 with the "Village of Nightmares" arc, the manga was cancelled immediately afterwards, leaving it with no official ending. |
| 604 | * AnAesop: |
| 605 | ** Being prideful will end up very badly for you if you don't realize the harm it causes to the people around you, a lesson that is made very clear with Monica and Jimmy's characters, especially in the manga where their pride has more often than not caused a bad situation for those around them and for themselves as well. |
| 606 | ** Don't waste the opportunities that are given to you. This is made clear by Genesinho's actions in the Chucky Billy manga, where he blows the opportunity his father gave to him to study abroad in a partying life and ended up not only losing that opportunity, but also leaving a girl pregnant and losing all the trust and respect his father had for him. |
| 607 | ** Nothing is set in stone. If you want something, you HAVE to work for it. Jim believed he and Monica were destined to be together and at one point he began to take her for granted and believed that Monica was only trying to get him to chase her again when Monica kissed Nick Nope and started debating who she truly loved. It wasn't until Maggy gave him a BreakingSpeech that he realized how much of a tool he was and how he's lost Monica forever. |
| 608 | ** Ambition will lead to evil if carried for the wrong reasons. Jimmy's ambition to be the king of the block and later change the world was revealed to be a product of a need to prove his worth to Monica rather than a desire to make things better. In the manga, Jim's ambition resulted in not one BadFuture, but TWO, along with an AlternateUniverse where Jim is a bully that has dirt on everyone. And in the manga present proper, his ambition actually results in Monica, Smudge and Maggy being killed. |
| 609 | ** The entirety of the romantic sub-plot with Monica and Jim shows that despite how much you love someone, if you end with more grief and stress than actual good feelings, it's not worth to keep pining for that person and while moving on is difficult, it will ultimately end well for you. |
| 610 | ** It's ok to be different, but it shouldn't be something or you to force on yourself just because you want to be unique. This is pretty much the core of Nick Nope's character and Denise eventually tells him that hating something because everyone likes or does it is as bad as liking or doing something just because everyone else likes or does it. Like and dislike what you will based on YOUR individual opinion. |
| 611 | ** Don't go against the norm just for the sake of going against the norm. Nick Nope always did it to the point of trying to impose this on his dates with Monica and going as far as projecting into her the need of going against the norm in regards to her refusal of braces with little regard to her health in Issue #94 and it ended up blowing up in his face when he put his CommanderContrarian tendencies before Monica's feelings. |
| 612 | ** While you generally mean well, it pays well to listen to your children. Viviane kept trying to force her daughter Ramona to be a witch and to "be like everyone" and it ultimately backfired when Ramona decided enough was enough. |
| 613 | ** Be respectful of your parents and listen to what they have to say. They were in your shoes before too. In one manga issue where Jim made a bet with Toni that he could survive being in a dangerous forest area for a night, Jim paid no heed to his father when he tried to enroll him in the Boy Scouts for survival lessons because he thought Boy Scouts were for wimps and took it as an insult and tried to go to the forest by himself. His lack of survival knowledge got him lost and he would have been stranded there for a good time had his father not come to save his hide with the knowledge HE picked up from his time with the scouts. |
| 614 | * TheAlcoholic: According to Bia, Cumulus smells like alcohol and has a serious drinking problem, which fuels his psychopathic behaviour. |
| 615 | * AllAccordingToPlan: When [[spoiler:the possessed Smudge]] declares that he will shroud the Earth in darkness in preparation for the Serpent's arrival, Denise objects that the Serpent cannot be alive, since the heroes exploded her homeworld a while ago. However, the villain smugly reveals that planet Tomb wasn't his master's homeworld, but her prison, and the heroes were lured there specifically so they would destroy it and set the monster free. |
| 616 | * AlternateUniverse: |
| 617 | ** While the manga itself is considered one to the kids' gang (even according to WordOfGod), its issue #36 adds in ''another'' AU, a CrapsackWorld in which Jimmy, who didn't care about getting better from his [[ElmuhFuddSyndwome speech impediment]], does indeed rule the street by being a [[JerkAss gigantic asshole]] to everybody, asserting his authority through threats of exposing their secrets. Even the teachers at the school don't get any respect from him. He only grows out of it when [[spoiler:the rest of the gang decides to not care about the blackmail and come clean with each other, thus breaking the hold he had over them. Plus, when Smudge's uncle (a powerless, CorruptCorporateExecutive version of Captain Fray) tried to get a hold of Franklin's world domination machine, built at Jimmy's behest, he was [[FateWorseThanDeath sent to an uninhabited planet]] because, since it was built in such a hurry, there was [[ExactWords nothing in it to specify ]]''[[ExactWords which ]]''[[ExactWords world the user wanted to rule]]. Seeing it could have happened to him, Jimmy loses his jerkiness.]] The reason for all this? [[spoiler:Monica had moved away from the neighborhood while they were still children, essentially [[ForWantOfANail leaving a vacuum in her friends' lives]]. When she came back [[SheIsAllGrownUp all grown up]], no one recognized her.]] |
| 618 | ** Other differences in this AU: Maggy didn't learn to put her appetite in check, so she grew fat; Bucky is shy and insecure, while Sunny is more outgoing and confident; Franklin is a nebbish geek who can't find it in him to approach Marina; Nutty Ned is still a teacher, but has a lot more composure (despite being [[RippleEffectProofMemory apparently aware of the AU]]), and he's the target of Maggy's juvenile crush; Nimbus is a failure at magic; and Sunny's sister didn't make the cut for the space program, working at a fast food joint instead. |
| 619 | ** Another AU gets created in the "Flying Donkey" arc, where the main four are possessed and taken over by evil entities under the [[EldritchAbomination Flying Donkey]]'s bidding, Maggy's latent magic saves her, Monica and Smudge, but Jim decides to keep the entitie within himself because of the powers it gave him, to use them for his ambitions. The 3 turn on him and warn the others against him, but Jim convinces most of the boys to join him with the promise of making a better world, Smudge obtains Captain Fray's powers and turns evil, Maggy isolates herself out of fear people are only using her for her magic, leaving Monica, Sunny, Denise and the rest to lead a resistance against them after Jim takes over the world with Franklin's help and turns everything into a CrapsackWorld. |
| 620 | ** The twist of "The Portal of Darkness" is that the dark world to which the heroes' souls had been sent is [[spoiler:actually identical to the main reality, but their version of Smudge succumbed to the Malevolence's influence and became its messiah]]. |
| 621 | * AndIMustScream: Penha's first defeat results in a brain injury that leaves her in a coma. It's later revealed that she was conscious the whole time and spent an entire year as a prisoner of her own body, abandoned in a hospital bed with only Sofia to keep her company. Jim himself expresses pity for her, and Maggy casts a spell in the hopes of helping her regain mobility eventually. |
| 622 | * AngstWhatAngst: Invoked InUniverse in "The Reverse Tower", when Stavros asks how the gang can remain calm and crack jokes despite them being stuck in a haunted hospital. The heroes collectivelly shrug and explain that they are used to dealing with supernatural horrors: Penha says her best friend is a LivingShadow, Maggy is the heir of the Coven of Hecate, Denise has an ImaginaryEnemy, and Jimmy has a scar that renders him immortal. |
| 623 | * AnimateDead: The Widow can raise the dead and place them under her control, making her one of the most dangerous members of the Umbra Chidren. |
| 624 | * AnimatedAdaptation: A first attempt was made in 2015 with only 1 episode along with some promotional videos, but due to how the animation was too non-anime, an actual version was made, which was released in 2019. |
| 625 | * AntiHero: [[CharacterDevelopment Monica and Jim both shift down the scale to UnscrupulousHero in the manga]], especially Jim. Although Monica can be a NominalHero as far as Irene is concerned. |
| 626 | * ArcWords: "The Serpent is coming back" is said by multiple characters during the "End of the World Saga", foreshadowing the arrival of a creature that is said to bring about the apocalypse. |
| 627 | * ArtEvolution: Compare the covers of the manga version to the inside. Has gotten more consistent lately, but the difference is still pretty glaring. |
| 628 | * ArtShift: During comedic moments, the series ditches the highly-detailed manga art style and depicts the characters with simplistic physical features, such as lipless mouths for the girls, BlackBeadEyes and [[TheNoseless noseless faces]]. |
| 629 | * AtrociousAlias: |
| 630 | ** The adult version of Angel originally went by "Céuboy"[[note]] a pun on "Céu", meaning "sky"; and ''ComicBook/{{Hellboy}}''[[/note]]. In response to fan backlash, he changes his name to Angelo at the end of the first arc, but not before Denise mercilessly mocks his alias. |
| 631 | ** Captain Fray changes his codename to Dark Dust in the first arc. When he returns as the main antagonist of "[[spoiler:The Reversed Tower]]", he embraces his original designation, acknowledges that "Dark Dust" was an overly edgy name, and blames this poor decision on him having a middle-age crisis. |
| 632 | * BadFuture: The manga has not one, but TWO, all caused by [[TokenEvilTeammate Jim]]. |
| 633 | * BelligerentSexualTension: Denise represses her love for Future Sunny by frequently abusing him. At one point, she kicks him in the face for being "too perfect". |
| 634 | * BigGood: Creuzodete and Future Denise both act as the main forces of good during the "End of the World Saga", since they are some of the few characters who are aware of the Serpent's imminent return and have actually devised plans to counter the creature. |
| 635 | * BittersweetEnding: The conclusion to "The Reversed Tower" has [[spoiler:Monica being brought back to normal and everyone escaping the Nine Circles alive. However, Smudge is unable to prevent his uncle from becoming Captain Fray, Dr. Stavros is left traumatized by the visions of his sister, and Maggy loses her powers]]. |
| 636 | * BloodyMurder: Sangria can transform water into blood, which she can then manipulate at will. |
| 637 | * BodyHorror: |
| 638 | ** When [[spoiler:the fake Nick Nope]] succumbs to the Serpent's influence, a pair of insect legs erupts from his back as he mutates into his combat form. |
| 639 | ** The Horseman of Pestilence can manipulate organic matter, producing grotesque results. |
| 640 | *** He is the host of the Serpent's insects, which crawl under his skin. |
| 641 | *** Though he initially looks like a feeble old man, he shapeshifts into a centipede-like monster. When Sofia tears his body in two, he reorganizes his cells into the shape of a giant cockroach. |
| 642 | *** One of his first actions is to transform the lower half of Monica's body into a slug. |
| 643 | *** To grant himself protection against Penha's dominating sneer, the Horseman removes his own eyes, leaving two lumps of skin where his eye sockets were supposed to be. |
| 644 | * BreatherEpisode: Issue #88 is this, a light episode featuring the classic gang's misadventures on Comic Book Experience 2015 (a stand-in for the Comic Con Experience in São Paulo). |
| 645 | * BroughtDownToNormal: Maggy loses her magic powers at the end of "The Reversed Tower", as the possessed Smudge uses his newfound [[{{Biomanipulation}} biokinetic abilities]] to mess with her brain cells and transform her into a regular human. |
| 646 | * TheCameo: [[Series/{{House}} Gregory House]] as a school doctor. He does look fairly older than Creator/HughLaurie, but everything else is still there. |
| 647 | * CallBack: The Tombanian that [[spoiler:impersonated Nick Nope]] calls its species a group of "shadows from the past", which is a reference to the first arc of the "End of the World Saga". |
| 648 | * CallingYourAttacks: Denise's flying kick to Future Sunny's crotch is punctuated by her screaming "Superattack! Omelette of Terror!" |
| 649 | * CanonForeigner: Several minor characters, including the HotTeacher whom Maggy has a crush on and the weight-conscious Maria Mello. |
| 650 | * CerebusRetcon: The "Tomba" aliens, the "flying donkey" and several elements from the classic series (up to and including Captain Fray's origins) are painted here on a much, '''much''' darker light. |
| 651 | * CerebusSyndrome: Pretty much any story written by Emerson de Abreu. |
| 652 | ** The "Flying Donkey" arc introduces us to the biggest horrors in this series' history, Jim stayed dead for most of it, Sunny's Future self comes back to the present timeline to stop Jim from turning the world into a CrapsackWorld as he did in Future Sunny's original timeline. By exorcising the spirit of the Flying Donkey, the protagonists may have played UnwittingPawn to the Children of Umbra that they thought were victims at first but are hinted to have become evil after 20 years in limbo, and if Future Denise's words at the end of Issue #79 are any indication, it's not over yet. |
| 653 | ** The Reversed Tower arc (#90-92) is this as well, by making Captain Fray an agent of the pestilence which threatens to corrode the world and reshape it to their own notion of order. The gang has to resort to Maggy's innate magic to guide them, but it falls upon Smudge, the closest person to Captain Fray, to save everyone from the growing madness of the titular place - a series of underground levels designed in the fashion of [[Literature/TheDivineComedy Dante's Inferno]] by an elite group to assume control over humankind, and upon which an orphanage was built as a front, to which a child Fray was sent after his parents died from a landslide. It turns out that he made a pact with the Serpent, the leader of the insects, to have his life saved in the event, and in return they gave him powers that cause corrosion and decay. Once he reaches adulthood, the Serpent comes to demand he becomes the bearer of the Curse of Pestilence, for if he refuses, it will pass on to the person he loves the most - his nephew, Smudge. And that is how he became the Captain Fray we know. |
| 654 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: Bucky's first appearance in this spin-off was about his break-up with Isabel because all Isabel wanted to do was go out and party, while Bucky needed to prepare for the inter-school baseball tournament. After that Bucky starts acting like a controlling jealous boyfriend. |
| 655 | * ChekhovsGunman: Berenice is introduced in a brief comedic scene in "Shadows from the Past", but doesn't play any significant role until the Umbra arc, where [[spoiler:she turns out to be one of the [[FusionDance two components]] of the [[BigBad Pale Horse of Death]]]]. |
| 656 | %%* {{Chickification}}: Maggy in the manga, as if she wasn't enough of a chick. |
| 657 | * ContinuityNod: In the "Threshold Rising" arc from season 3, one of the portals to the afterlife depicts the Umbra, a major location from the eponymous arc from season 1. |
| 658 | * ContinuitySnarl: The Flying Donkey is reimagined as [[spoiler:a vindictive practitioner of black magic who has murdered many children, and her status as a benevolent ghost is established to be just a marketing ploy designed to sell toys]]. However, this contradicts the events of the original comics, in which the children have many positive interactions with the spirit. |
| 659 | * CoolTeacher: Nutty Ned of all people. He's still a nutjob ([[BerserkButton don't let him hear you say that, though]]), but damn if he isn't awesome. |
| 660 | * TheCorruption: The black liquid from planet Tomb transforms whoever comes into contact with it into one of the Serpent's followers. Shub-Sogoth refers to it as the Serpent's blood, a physical manifestation of the pain and suffering of the living. |
| 661 | * CrossOver: |
| 662 | ** Issues #43 and #44 cross the characters over with many Creator/OsamuTezuka characters. Mauricio and Tezuka had been close friends when the latter was alive, and the idea had been in the works for quite some time, even before Tezuka's passing. |
| 663 | ** Like their kids' version, the teens cross over with the Comicbook/JusticeLeague (issues #25 and #26 of Volume 2) However, unlike the stories in the kids' books which are akin to Silver Age stories, this one plays more like a conventional CrisisCrossover, with the Legion of Doom using a "Sisterbox" (a modified Motherbox) to dump the heroes (and Harley Quinn) in the Teen Gang's universe, just as the Gang's own RoguesGallery starts attacking the city. The second issue takes place in an AlternateContinuity where the Gang and the Justice League coexist, only this time it's Monica and friends who are sent into famous locations from the DC Universe thanks to one of Franklin's teleporters. They end up helping the superheroes fight off a gigantic creature made of ocean garbage, result of a battle between Superman and Captain Fray. |
| 664 | * DarkerAndEdgier: Emerson de Abreu's "End of the World Saga" is an outright horror story, with explicit violence, death and references to the occult. As such, even if it still has moments of the author's trademark humour, it's considerably more frightening and depressing than both the original comics and the other issues of the manga. |
| 665 | * DealWithTheDevil: |
| 666 | ** [[spoiler:The Flying Donkey]] sells her soul to the Serpent in exchange for a spell designed to [[spoiler:bring her daughter back to life]]. |
| 667 | ** After [[spoiler:the child who would become Captain Fray]] is trapped under rubble, he agrees to be saved by the Serpent, though he is cursed into becoming the Horseman of Pestilence in return. |
| 668 | * DemonicPossession: |
| 669 | ** Spokesperson can take over other people's bodies, although his powers have three limitations: he cannot take over more than one person at once; his victims' faces are replaced with his own mask; and he cannot influence those whose magic powers are more advanced than his. [[spoiler:By the end of the "Umbra" arc, the first restriction turns out to be a lie, since he successfully places the entire city of Sococó da Ema under his control]]. |
| 670 | ** The liquid shadows take over whoever makes contact with the substance. At the end of "The Reversed Tower", [[spoiler:they forcefully possess Smudge, turning him into Captain Fray's successor. Though Cumulus manages to purify the boy, he too is overwhelmed by the fluid, going mad due to hearing "voices in his head" and flying away screaming in agony]]. |
| 671 | * DownerEnding: The "Umbra" arc ends with [[spoiler:the gang losing their trust in Jim, especially Monica, who stops talking to him altogether. Also, although the BigBad is defeated, it's implied that the heroes unleashed something far worse in the process]]. |
| 672 | * EasterEgg: In the "End of the World Saga", car plates make direct references to Bible verses that allude to the Apocalypse or are relevant to the current issue's themes. For example, in the "Heirs of the Earth" storyline, which is about aliens plotting to return the Earth to its original lightless state, a vehicle's registration number is shown to be [=GEN0102=], whose corresponding Bible verse states "the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep". |
| 673 | * EvilVersusEvil: "The Reversed Tower" storyline culminates in a final battle between [[spoiler:Cumulus, who is a lecherous, megalomaniacal criminal; and Smudge, who has been corrupted into serving the [[{{Satan}} Serpent]]]]. |
| 674 | * {{Expy}}: In "The Reversed Tower", the nurse that is transformed into the Cerberus is clearly based on Miss Meany from ''WesternAnimation/WoodyWoodpecker'', more specifically her appearance from the episode "Calling dr. Woodpecker". She is even introduced saying "Calling Dr. Strudeldunker!", her first line in said episode. |
| 675 | * FaceHeelTurn: Out of the four main characters, Monica is the only one who does not become a supervillain in the BadFuture seen in "Shadows from the Future". |
| 676 | ** Jim embraces the curse placed on him by the Flying Donkey and becomes an undead, megalomaniacal tyrant. He converts the male members of the gang into a robotic army and, with Franklin's help, develops a computer virus that puts all electronics under his control as part of his quest for world domination. |
| 677 | ** Smudge becomes Captain Fray's successor, an agent of pestilence who plots to pollute the Earth. |
| 678 | ** Maggy loses her sanity after being overwhelmed by her latent magic powers. Paranoid that the rest of the world intends to exploit her, she isolates herself in a tower and violently attacks anyone who intrudes her domain. |
| 679 | * {{Fanservice}}: |
| 680 | ** In the first issue of his teen spinoff, Chuck Billy spends three gratuitous panels [[ShirtlessScene shirtless]] after jumping into a creek to escape a swarm of bees. |
| 681 | ** Sunny's future self is muscular, has ManlyFacialHair and is a WalkingShirtlessScene for most of his second appearance. All these characteristics are further emphasized by the characters pointing out how attractive he looks compared to his wimpy counterpart from the present. |
| 682 | ** The "Vacation at the Beach" arc contains many moments in which the characters admire each other's bodies. In particular, the very first panel shows Denise from the back while she is wearing a revealing bikini. |
| 683 | ** In "The Portal of Darkness", Sunny has a seizure and starts accidentally scratching and bruising himself. In response, Denise tears Jeremias' shirt apart so she can have something to tie Sunny's arms with, leaving the boy's muscular torso exposed for the rest of the arc. Lampshaded when Jeremias complains that the readers will have to see his chest until the story ends, to which Denise replies that nobody is going to mind. |
| 684 | * ForcedTransformation: Anyone who enters the House Outside of Time is doomed to transform into a cuckoo bird, though the spell can be broken by living 7 years in the outside world, drinking a glass of water inside the House, or by touching a sufficiently powerful magic user. |
| 685 | * ForgottenAesop: Many plots have Monica acknowledging the harm in her wanting everything her way and that she is aware she is TheDreaded to her friends, as well as accepting Irene as a friend...but the actual change never shows in-story. She also keeps saying that she matured and isn't a quarrelsome girl anymore...but she still will hit a boy at the slightest thing that angers her. |
| 686 | * FusionDance: [[spoiler:The Flying Donkey fuses with her own daughter]] to become [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse the Horseman of Death]]. |
| 687 | * FutureBadass: Sunny is a scrawny teenager with [[ButtMonkey terrible luck]], but his alternate self from a BadFuture is a muscular, courageous hero. |
| 688 | * {{Glamour}}: [[spoiler:The Flying Donkey]]'s bottom half is replaced with a pair of horse legs after she makes a pact with the Serpent. She is able to disguise her true appearance with a simple glamour spell, though Madam Creuzodete is able to immediately see through it. |
| 689 | * GoodAllAlong: Played with in "Umbra". [[spoiler:The seven ghost children are originally stated to be evil spirits that haunt the city of Sococó da Ema. Then it's revealed that this was all a lie, and they were actually trying to protect everyone from the real BigBad. After the gang succeeds in bringing them back to life, Smudge starts finding flaws in their backstory, causing him to speculate that maybe they really were evil after all. His theory is correct, as the seven children start using their powers to take over the city as soon as the heroes leave]]. |
| 690 | * GreaterScopeVillain: [[{{Satan}} The Serpent]] is a primordial being of pure evil. Its presence is felt in each chapter of the "End of the World Saga", as it preys on the other antagonists' negative emotions: |
| 691 | ** Though not outright stated, Agnes made a pact with the Serpent shortly after her death in order to become one of the Shadow People. This is subtly suggested when [[spoiler:Rosie]] is corrupted into a form similar to Agnes' ghost in "Heirs of the Earth", and confirmed by [[WordOfGod Emerson Abreu]]. |
| 692 | ** [[spoiler:It exploits the Flying Donkey's grief to teach her how to perform black magic]], setting the events of "Umbra" in motion. |
| 693 | ** In "Heirs of the Earth", it [[spoiler:manipulates the heroes into destroying planet Tomb, thus setting it free from its prison]]. |
| 694 | ** [[spoiler:It takes advantage of Captain Fray's despair to give him the power to control pollution]], leading to the events of "The Reversed Tower". |
| 695 | * GroinAttack: Denise delivers a flying kick to Future Sunny's crotch when she believes he is flirting with Bia, as a reminder that he is already in a committed relationship. The next few panels show him pressing his groin with an ice bag as he complains that she got too carried away with her jealousy. |
| 696 | * HateSink: Gene grew up from a SpoiledBrat to a SmugSnake DirtyCoward who got an american girl pregnant during his time in the United States and refused to take responsibility for the child when she came to him with the news, tried to get Fran drunk for his own amusement, faked his death to search for a treasure and outright refuses to be a responsible, decent human being and blows off every opportunity and responsiblity his father gives him to serve his own interests. |
| 697 | * HazyFeelTurn: In "The Reversed Tower", Penha is considerably nicer to the heroes and actively helps them defeat the Horseman of Pestilence. However, she never stops being a morally repugnant person, and the fact [[spoiler:she is one of the Horsemen of Apocalypse herself]] casts some doubt on whether she is really becoming an ally or only helped the gang for her own personal ends. |
| 698 | * HeelFaceDoorSlam: The Tombanian [[spoiler:who replaces Nick Nope]] assimilates some of the boy's personality traits and becomes genuinely friendly. However, when he is taken back to his homeworld, he succumbs to the Serpent's influence and tries to kill the heroes once more. Though Franklin begs him to remember his good side, the alien is too far gone and has to be incinerated by Astronaut. |
| 699 | * HeelFaceTurn: Sofia was originally a declared enemy of Monica's gang. When she returns in "Shadows from the Past", she becomes an ally of the heroes after Maggy and Denise show her kindness for the first time in her life. The fact that her former friend Penha has devolved into an abusive AlphaBitch also helps. |
| 700 | * HiddenHeartOfGold: Carmem. AlphaBitch SpoiledBrat by every definition who, in gratitude to Dustine for the grade she got for both of them allowing Carmem to pass the semester, helped her fix her relationship with Smudge through a very elaborate plan. Monica put it best: |
| 701 | --> ''Monica'': Carmen. Thanks for what you did for them. Looks like you're not mean or dumb all the time. Just mostly. |
| 702 | --> ''Carmem'': ({{Beat}}) ...Bite me. |
| 703 | ** Bucky. Of course, it requires a DEEP digging through the crust that is formed by his sexism and massive ego. But despite these bad qualities, this was the guy that was willing to help Irene make friends with the gang and willingly put his relationship with Isabel at risk when she found out the mesasges Irene left him because he didn't want her to get in trouble because of his mistake. |
| 704 | * {{Hypocrite}}: |
| 705 | ** Monica hates when people tell her what to do, yet she's the bossiest character in the series. |
| 706 | ** Played for laughs when Denise berates Zé Beto and Crispiano for leaving her at the end of a previous arc. Halfway through her speech, she concludes that, given the circumstances, she would have done the same thing. |
| 707 | ---> '''Denise:''' You abandoned me! You abandoned me for fame, success, money... Wait, I would have done the same thing! We're cool now. |
| 708 | * IJustWantToHaveFriends: Irene. All she wants is to be part of the gang, but Monica is an absolute bitch to her all because she is friends with Jim. And the only reason she's always interacting with Jim in the first place, or any boy for that matter, is because Monica won't let anyone else befriend her. |
| 709 | * InMediasRes: The prelude to "The Portal of Darkness" shows Smudge jumping from a skyscrapper to save Monica. This only happens at the very end of the following issue. |
| 710 | * TheInfested: The heroes visit a hospital and find a mysterious old man with unusual symptoms. He believes his symptoms are due to an infestation of bugs crawling under his skin, and tries to back up his claim by showing them a live cockroach, which he apparently ripped from one of his blisters. His theory is later proven to be correct: He turns out to be [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse the White Horse of Pestilence]], and the bugs are working on [[SatanicArchetype his master]]'s behalf to monitor the man's activities. |
| 711 | * InspectorJavert: Monica to Irene. No matter how good intentioned Irene is about anything, Monica will always think the worst of her. [[DisproportionateRetribution All because Jim is the only person that talks to her]] [[StockShoujoBullyingTactics because Monica won't let anyone else befriend her]] [[InsaneTrollLogic because she thinks Irene is a temptress, all because her first appearance was asking Jim to help her with english.]] |
| 712 | * InformedAttribute: Maggy is often regarded as the sweetest, kindest person there is and the embodiment of IncorruptiblePurePureness by many people, but anyone who reads the manga will be able to notice that it's definitely not that way, seeing how she became a StalkerWithACrush towards [[HotTeacher Rubens]] and continues to crush on him, sometimes ''in front of her actual boyfriend'' without thinking of the consequences and thinks it's totally ok to do so despite how much trouble it caused her and how it's going beyond an actual crush, didn't bother telling Smudge on issue #49 why everyone was always busy and avoiding him and very cowardly backed out of the conversation ''after he saved her life'' and how quickly she is to [[DoubleStandard point out the boys' flaws but ignore the girls' fault at any given situation, aside from one occasion on Issue #59.]] |
| 713 | * ItsAllAboutMe: Bucky and Jim are prime examples, but Monica really stands out. To name one instance, when Jim was late to a rehearsal with her for the school play because he was busy with a school project whose deadline was the day afterwards and he needed to hand out a part of his projects at the same day of the rehearsal, Monica says that what he did was thinking only of himself. [[SarcasmMode Because being a good student is absolutely selfish, isn't it?]] |
| 714 | * {{Jerkass}}: |
| 715 | ** Even in that continuity Jimmy still has his moments. In issue #47, where the gang travels to Japan, Jimmy behaves like a total tool, complaining all the time and voluntarily getting himself lost because he was tired of being told what to do. |
| 716 | ** Although he ''pales'' in comparison to Toni. To put in perspective, Jim never plotted to crush Monica's heart for a ''decade'' just because he got beaten up by her and made fun of by it. And Toni goes as low as bullying Luca and saying that not bullying him just because he's crippled would be "special treatment" and "prejudice". |
| 717 | ** Denise also sometimes displays an appalling lack of tact, openly making fun of everyone around her. |
| 718 | * KonamiCode: Rosie finds an Incan artifact adorned with gemstones that act as buttons. She fidgets with it, saying she is going to press the stones in an "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, red stone, yellow stone" pattern, which ends up activating the device. |
| 719 | * LighterAndSofter: |
| 720 | ** The teen spin-off was originally conceived as a means to combine the franchise's signature comedy with adventures that had higher stakes, typical teen drama, and occasionally some horror elements. However, the second season drops most of these ideas in favour of mundane stories that appeal to a much younger demographic, as exemplified by an issue which focuses entirely on Nick Nope's bad odor. The only exception to this ToneShift is the "Portal of Darkness" two-parter, a horror story that is about as dark as the first season's "End of the World Saga". |
| 721 | ** InUniverse, the legend of the Flying Donkey was sugarcoated in order to turn it into a profittable brand. [[spoiler:She is not a benevolent spirit who guards over children, but an insane old woman who killed several innocents in a ritual designed to bring her daughter BackFromTheDead]]. |
| 722 | * {{Magitek}}: In "The Portal of Darkness", the spirit of light who assists Smudge manifests into the human world through an app in the protagonist's phone. |
| 723 | * MakingASplash: Cumulus, the human cloud, can manipulate any liquid at will, an ability which he mainly uses to conjure up wicked tempests. |
| 724 | * MarkOfTheBeast: The runic letter [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Runic_letter_ior.svg ior]] is the symbol of the Serpent and represents the inevitability of evil. Jim is branded with it during the "Umbra" arc, suggesting that the evil entity intends to use him for its own ends at some point in the future. |
| 725 | * {{Manchild}}: Zé Beto and Crispiano are mischievous, immature pranksters, even in their teenage years. Future Sunny annoyedly remarks that they haven't grown at all since the last time he met them. |
| 726 | * ManipulativeBitch: |
| 727 | ** Penha [[spoiler:sends the ghost of Agnes to terrorize Monica, who responds by breaking into the spirit's house. Penha records the protagonist's actions and shows it to Jim, threatening to get Monica arrested for invasion and property damage unless he agrees to date her. Finally, she convinces Sofia to spy on Monica, to ensure that the heroine's heart has been broken]]. |
| 728 | ** Madam Creuzodete refers to [[spoiler:the Lake Girl]] as the most manipulative and dangerous spirit in the city of Sococó da Ema, since its only goal is to fool someone into setting it free from the afterlife so it can bring about the end of the world. |
| 729 | ** Future Denise approaches the mentally unstable Maggy with the specific purpose of obtaining a spell capable of saving the world, though she comes to sympathize with the latter. Regardless, when the mission is concluded, Maggy feels used and betrayed, developing a deep hatred for her former friend. |
| 730 | * MasterOfIllusion: The Ballerina can create incredibly realistic illusions, which she uses to make her foes "dance between madness and sanity". |
| 731 | * MeaningfulName: Maggy's original name, Magali, contains the word "maga", meaning "witch". She is later revealed to descend from a long lineage of witches and possess incredible powers herself. |
| 732 | * MindVirus: According to the Silent, all the robots in Future Jim's army are actually normal men in cybernetic suits. Their consciousnesses are subsumed by a computer virus, which spread through the internet and put all electronics under the tyrant's control. |
| 733 | * MoodWhiplash: {{Bathos}} is frequently employed during the "End of the World Saga" to provide some levity to otherwise serious moments, most often by having Denise blurt out something irrelevant while others are faced with the prospect of imminent danger. In "Heirs of the Earth", the reveal of [[spoiler:Rosie]]'s monstrous corrupted form is followed up by Denise geeking out over the villainess' goth-inspired dress. |
| 734 | * MrFanservice: Chuck is shown shirtless in several panels during the "Heirs of the Earth" arc, be it when he is plowing the field, swimming or changing into a space suit. Denise lampshades his muscled appearance by calling him a "hot bumpkin". |
| 735 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Jim has a ''spetacular'' one in issue #69. He tells Monica that they had nothing special and that he didn't care if she kissed Nick Nope and is seeing him. He does so because he thought it was all a plan Monica crafted to make him crawl back to her and wanted to turn the tables on her because he believed [[EntitledToHaveYou their relationship was set in stone]]...Only it wasn't a plan. At all. And then the following takes place: |
| 736 | -->'''Maggy:''' We tried to help you all get together. Tried to do everything to help you. [[WhamLine You could have apologized. Could have tried being with her. But you messed everything up. Again. Because are only ''plans'' on that hard head of yours.]] You thought Monica was acting, faking, and said a lot of stupid things to her. I'm sorry Jim...I really am. But Monica deserves ''more''. Someone that doesn't only think about playing, compete, win. Someone that makes her happy. Someone that- |
| 737 | -->'''Jim:''' [[OhCrap It wasn't a plan...]] |
| 738 | -->'''Maggy:''' Jim? |
| 739 | -->'''Jim:''' I said...I said to Monica...I said that..that I don't care about her...that there's nothing special between us! I...I...I DUMPED MONICA! And now she's with Nick Nope...she is with him for real! It wasn't a plan! |
| 740 | -->'''Maggy:''' Jim...so...finally, you understand...but it's too late! |
| 741 | -->'''Jim:''' How could I not notice? How could I be so ''stupid''!? I lost Monica! Forever! |
| 742 | [[/folder]] |
| 743 | |
| 744 | [[folder:Tropes N-Z]] |
| 745 | * NakedPeopleAreFunny: Chuck, Zé Beto and Crispiano were raised in the interior region of Brazil, where SkinnyDipping is seen as mundane. Unaware that public nudity is a taboo in the big cities, they inadvertently cause the other characters to feel uncomfortable when they undress to go swimming. |
| 746 | * TheNicknamer: If one of Denise's girl friends has a name that she deems as "too common", she will give them a new one. Sofia, Bia and Rosie are addressed to as Maitê, Rayssa and Juliana, respectively. |
| 747 | * OlderThanTheyLook: Agnes looks like a teenager, but is implied to be as old as Captain Fray, who is a middle-aged man. |
| 748 | * OneSteveLimit: Averted. Sofia is the name of Monica's childhood bully, who is introduced in "Shadows from the Past", and of a major character in Chuck Billy's "Contagion Zone" arc. |
| 749 | * {{Outgambitted}}: In issue #35, Jim somehow managed to outgambit himself, by creating another persona to attend to a costume party held by 3 rich people (One of them being Carmen's aunt), so he could spend a romantic night with Monica without needing to defeat her first. Naturally this creates a 5th competition for Monica's affections. May double as a case of LoveMakesYouDumb. However, said persona [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse is never brought up again]]. |
| 750 | * PlayingWithFire: |
| 751 | ** Wormwood is a pyrokinetic who has an asteroid for a head. He commonly fights by igniting the planetoid and launching it at his foes. |
| 752 | ** Future Denise specializes in flame spells, which she perfected while working as a fire breather in a carnival. |
| 753 | * PlotHole: It's a major plot point in "Shadows from the Past" that spirits cannot be caught on tape. However, in "Umbra", which follows up on the events of said arc, the gang is only able to see the ghosts and other mystical elements by watching them through the lens of a camera. |
| 754 | * PowerIncontinence: Maggy gains access to her ancestors' vast magic powers when she hears the sentence "The Moon cries tonight". However, all this information overwhelms her brain and causes her great agony. Smudge compares Maggy's condition to someone trying to contain an entire ocean within a dropper. |
| 755 | * ProtagonistCenteredMorality: Monica can sometimes act like a self-centered harpy in a way that [[Literature/{{Twilight}} Bella]] could never achieve to be, and a bully on top of that, as her treatment of Irene and Sofia shows, and she never accepts anyone disagreeing with her. ever. But she somehow ends up always being in the right, not being called out on any of her bad deeds or getting away with it with nothing but a slap-on-the-wrist. |
| 756 | * RaceLift: In Emerson Abreu's [[http://emersonabreu.blogspot.com/search/label/Sombras%20do%20Passado blog]], he comments that he always envisioned Madam Creuzodete as a Black woman, and expresses annoyance that the art crew started depicting her as Caucasian past her first appearance. |
| 757 | * RedHerring: The Horseman of Pestilence is initially identified as Samir, which is a reference to an obscure, OneShotCharacter who only appeared in a 2008 Smudge comic book. This is meant to dissuade the reader from figuring out the villain's true identity: He is [[spoiler:a horrifically mutated Captain Fray]]. |
| 758 | * ScareChord: Cumulus making his move on Maggy is punctuated by a close-up on his eyes and the onomatopoeia "DOOM". |
| 759 | * SdrawkcabName: Wagner Bonilla's "Savert Saga" is about the eponymous [[EvilInc evil corporation]], whose name is "trevas" ("darkness") written backwards |
| 760 | * {{Seers}}: |
| 761 | ** Madam Creuzodete, the "famous yet obscure" seer the heroes used to visit when they were younger, returns as a major ally in the "End of the World Saga", providing them with cryptic clues that ultimately prove vital in their battles against the Horsemen of Apocalypse. |
| 762 | ** The Violinist is the Umbra Child who can see into the future. [[spoiler:The fact he abstains from sharing his knowledge for most of the "Umbra" arc is what makes Smudge realize that the seven ghosts are not as benign as they appear to be]]. |
| 763 | * SelfDeprecation: |
| 764 | ** Captain Fray is ashamed of his portrayal in the first story arc and flies into a rage whenever someone brings up that he used to go by Dark Dust. |
| 765 | ** In "Contagion Zone", Chuck takes care of a young girl, who requests him to tell her a bedtime story. He recounts how he saved a horse called Brave in a previous story arc, so she asks him if the horse was given that name due to its personality. After Chuck confirms it, the girl disdainfully groans "Urgh, that's so cliché!", much to his annoyance. |
| 766 | * SelfImposedExile: In the BadFuture seen in "Shadows from the Future", Maggy's magic powers are unlocked and [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity drive her insane]]. When Nena, Viviane and Ramona try to help her, she accidentally disintegrates them. Consumed by guilt, Maggy isolates herself in the Tower of the North Wind. |
| 767 | * SeriousBusiness: Smudge with his hobbies, Monica with the school play that took place on Issue #9. |
| 768 | * ShipTease: In "The Reversed Tower", Penha and Sofia begin to [[ShipperOnDeck ship Jim and Denise]] after noticing their similar personalities, namely in terms of their ambition and cunning. [[spoiler:Later on, the two heroes surprisingly fall for each other and start making out in front of everyone. However, their unusual behaviour is then explained to be due to the Nine Circles' corrupting influence, which amplified the duo's lust. As soon as Jim and Denise leave the Reversed Tower, their passion vanishes, with them awkwardly agreeing to forget what happened and go back to being just friends]]. |
| 769 | * ShoutOut: |
| 770 | ** Manga Issue #35 had a lot of them. A costume party with the characters dressed as many famous figures such as: Franklin as Literature/SherlockHolmes, Sunny as [[VideoGame/GodOfWar Kratos]], Todd as [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]], Marina as Dorothy from Oz, Jeremiah as Mace Windu, Tikara as WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack, Denise as Harley Quinn (a character she has come to be strongly associated with) and many others. |
| 771 | ** There was also a two-issue story that was entirely a shoutout to Manga/DeathNote. |
| 772 | ** The "Id Monsters" saga is about the main quartet facing their dark side and once they're overcome, they're trapped within cards that gives them powers when activated. [[VideoGame/{{Persona 4}} Does that sound familiar?]] |
| 773 | ** There's also an issue which Jim plays ChessWithDeath. Just like Film/TheSeventhSeal. |
| 774 | ** Each of the flying pigs in the "Shadows from the Past" arc borrows design elements from certain ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}''. |
| 775 | ** The "Shadows From the Future" arc borrows some plot elements from ''ComicBook/DaysOfFuturePast'', since it deals with characters going back in time to prevent a dystopic future where the world has been devastated by a robotic army. One of the chapters even pays homage to said comic, being titled "Nights of Future Past". |
| 776 | ** The aliens from "Heirs of the Earth" identify themselves as "Engineers", are an old species that was worshipped by many ancient human cultures, and aim to destroy all life on Earth with a black fluid that corrupts and mutates whoever comes into contact with it. All these elements are straight references to the main antagonist of ''Film/{{Prometheus}}''. |
| 777 | ** In "The Reversed Tower", Stavros forbids Penha from leaving the hospital without going through some exams first. She responds by throwing a temper tantrum, saying he can't keep her there and yelling "Wanna know why? Because I'm rich! I'm rich!" This is a famous quote from the 2008 Brazilian telenovela ''Beleza Pura'', which became a meme in the country due to actress Carolina Ferraz's dramatic delivery. |
| 778 | ** "The Haunted Carnival" has homages both to ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'', since it takes place in an abandoned facility overrun by violent, defective animatronics; and ''VideoGame/PokemonGo'', since Sunny and Denise are obsessed with a fictional app called "Bilumon Go". |
| 779 | * SinisterDeerSkull: Played with in the "Umbra" arc from the Teen spin-off. The main antagonist is [[https://super-saga-do-fim-do-mundo-tmj.fandom.com/pt-br/wiki/Jumenta_Voadora_(personagem)?file=Jumenta_Voadora.png the Pale Horse of Death]], a malevolent EldritchAbomination with a donkey skull for a head. However, the tree branches attached to the sides of its cranium resemble a pair of antlers, invoking the image of an undead deer. |
| 780 | * StarCrossedLovers: Subverted. When the future versions of Sunny and Denise travel to the current timeline, they are separated in the time stream, with the latter being flung [[spoiler:seventeen years]] into the past. When they finally reunite, Denise [[spoiler:confesses that she no longer loves him and ends their relationship, though this is really a lie and she is actually trying to protect him from an undisclosed threat]]. |
| 781 | * StepfordSmiler: In "Vacation at the Beach", when Denise excuses herself to go to the bathroom, Big Sunny and Monica discuss how much they admire her for her optimism and constant good mood. However, once Denise finds herself alone in the bathroom, her smile vanishes and she breaks down crying due to her UnresolvedSexualTension with Sunny. |
| 782 | * TakingYouWithMe: Future Marina creates a portal to redirect Crematorium's flamethrower to the villain's fuel tank. He tries to take her out in the imminent explosion alongside him, but she manages to teleport away just in time. |
| 783 | * TattooedCrook: The Wave Guy has the kanji for "water" tattooed on his right arm. It's prominently displayed during his introduction and serves to foreshadow his role as that story's main antagonist. |
| 784 | * ThinkingUpPortals: Future Marina can create portals to any location of her choosing by using the magic pencil attached to her staff. |
| 785 | * TimeSkip: A good chunk of issue #50 of ''Monica Teen'' took place ten years into the future, showing, among other things, Jimmy and Monica's wedding and married life. The Manga itself counts as a whole. |
| 786 | * ToiletHumour: Denise falls sick after gorging herself with expired candy in "The Haunted Carnival". She spends the majority of the comic loudly farting, which grosses Sunny out. |
| 787 | * TokenEvilTeammate: |
| 788 | ** Jim. [[spoiler: His ambition to prove his worth and change the world not only leads to TWO BadFuture timelines as well as an AlternateUniverse where he controls the whole street through being a gigantic douche and blackmailing people with their secrets, but it also leads him to be a direct cause of Monica, Smudge and Maggy's deaths in the Flying Donkey arc.]] |
| 789 | ** Penha accompanies the heroes as they journey through the Nine Circles in "The Reversed Tower" and plays a pivotal role helping them defeat the Horseman of Pestilence. However, she is still an abhorrent person whom the others openly despise, as they make it clear that they still haven't forgiven her for her previous crimes. |
| 790 | * TookALevelInBadass: |
| 791 | ** Jim grows a backbone and starts to call out Monica on her violent tendencies and bossy attitude. |
| 792 | *** In issues #23 and #24, which have a WholePlotReference to ''Manga/DeathNote'', Jim takes on the identity of "The Great Clown", who can send people into laughing fits by writing their names into his magical "Laughter Note". Smudge says that, since Monica is so hotheaded, she could be a potential target of the Clown. When Monica protests that she doesn't deserve to have a laughing attack, Jim angrily tells her that he's had enough of her constant bad mood. |
| 793 | ---> '''Jim:''' You know what, Monica? Smiling wouldn't kill you! It's a pain in the ass to put up with someone who is always stressed! You may feel comfortable with that big temper of yours... But we're the ones who suffer to put up with your fretfulness! |
| 794 | *** In issue #26, where two brothers who are professional rollerbladers, [[note]] Carmen's cousins, no less [[/note]] are bullying everyone around their city and acting like [[InsufferableGenius colossal pricks]], Monica gets fed up with their attitude, challenges them to a rollerblading contest, and forces Maggy, Smudge and Jim to participate alongside her despite none of them knowing how to skate. After she repeatedly berates Jim for his lack of skill and accuses him of not putting enough effort into this training, he retaliates with a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. |
| 795 | ---> '''Jim:''' So you want to know if you can count on me? I NEVER said I knew how to skate! I don't! And still, I'm here! Wearing this stupid outfit! Scraping my hutt on the floor! And all because someone made a rollerblading challenge, when said person doesn't even know how to skate! And still, she got her friends on a stupid contest! Without even asking them! And NOW you wanna know if you can count on me? |
| 796 | ** Captain Fray becomes quite TheChessmaster in the later issues, as his powers have evolved, making him able to cause erosion. It is later revealed that these powers [[spoiler:came from a DealWithTheDevil in return from being saved from a landslide that demolished his home and killed his parents.]] |
| 797 | ** Todd, who grew some major cajones not only as he grew up, but as the manga itself progressed. Unlike most of the male cast (save for minor exceptions, such as Nick Nope), Todd takes none of the girls' DoubleStandard bullcrap, often pointing out that he doesn't take well to Maggy's crush on the science teacher and yet getting fussy when he looks at other girls with the faintest hint of interest. There's also the way he handled his bullying in later issues, with no need whatsoever to get violent, and still coming out on top. |
| 798 | ** Maggy has incredible magical powers as a descendant of the Coven of Hecate, but they needed to be sealed inside her mind due to their highly destructive potential and the eventual toll it would take on her sanity. As such, they can only be triggered through a code phrase, and locked again with another. [[spoiler:It is implied that she loses these powers for good at the end of the Reversed Tower arc.]] |
| 799 | ** Humbert is deaf and mute, which often led others to ignore him when he was a child. In the BadFuture seen in "Shadows from the Future", [[spoiler:Jim takes advantage of how silent Humbert is to transform him into a fearsome spy]]. |
| 800 | * TooMuchInformation: Future Sunny tells Denise he started dating her future self after they shared a kiss on the beach and returned home to have "the most romantic night of their lives". She responds by [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale beating him up]] out of sheer embarrassment, all while screaming to spare her of such details. |
| 801 | * TookALevelInJerkass: |
| 802 | ** Monica, who is basically a Brazilian [[Literature/{{Twilight}} Bella Swan]]. [[spoiler:In #94, the character jumps to disgusting levels of jerkassery, especially in the ending]]. |
| 803 | ** Bucky became a massive sexist, controlling asshat, even after his break-up with Isabel. |
| 804 | ** Jimmy, whose ambition led him to basically become the TokenEvilTeammate. He's starting to mellow out though, especially after he unwittingly nearly causes Monica to become RetGone [[spoiler:due to his sorrow over losing her to Nick Nope]]. |
| 805 | ** In the original comics, Penha was just a snobbish SpoiledBrat; but her teenage self is considerably more dangerous, as she devises a complex plot to [[spoiler:get Monica arrested. When that fails, she personally tries to kill the protagonist by running her over with Angelo's sword. Her ruthlessness ultimately transforms her into one of the HorsemenOfTheApocalypse, representing War]]. |
| 806 | ** Zeca in the original comics was just an average city boy who had difficulty adjusting to the rural lifestyle. His teen version is a pretentious show-off who cannot go six months without asking his parents for a new car. His sexist comments drive Denise up the wall, and Monica herself calls him an insufferable person. |
| 807 | * UncertainDoom: Cumulus' fate at the end of "The Reversed Tower" is ambiguous. Though he supposedly [[spoiler:died after absorbing the liquid shadows and being exposed to sunlight]], Rosie went through the same ordeal in a previous arc and survived without any lingering ailments. |
| 808 | * TheUnfairSex: |
| 809 | ** While Jim ''was'' a {{Jerkass}} and had problems, both personal and in his relationship with Monica, In #69 he's shown as the only one responsible for their relationship going wrong. It didn't show Monica responsible or commissioned for it at any point, despite that clearly she was equally wrong in many of their arguments over the long run and, if anything, slowly changing for the worse. |
| 810 | ** Bucky was flanderized into a sexist, controlling, bitter ex to make Isabel's empowering CharacterDevelopment more positive ([[CharacterizationMarchesOn Compare to his manga debut where they broke up because she wanted to do nothing but party but Bucky wanted to dedicate himself to his baseball career]]), the following chapters after "Shadows of the Past" treat Jimmy's forced relationship with Penha as intentional two-timing when he was actually being blackmailed into going out with her and even Monica seemed to regard that as such at the end of the arc, Maggy thinks it's totally fine to droll over the HotTeacher in front of her boyfriend but she won't accept people calling her out on it or Todd glancing at another girl with the faintest hint of interest, although Todd at least calls her out on it herself and she's upset... Because he found out and didn't think he had noticed. |
| 811 | * VoluntaryShapeshifting: The Tombanians are living shadows and can take on the appearance of whatever they desire. One of them perfectly poses as [[spoiler:Nick Nope]] for two issues, though the species as a whole tend to favour arthropodous forms for most occasions. |
| 812 | * VoodooDoll: Wooden Leg is described as a living voodoo doll, since any pain he feels is redirected to his enemies and amplified. |
| 813 | * WeakenedByTheLight: The Tombanians are made from solid shadows and instantly combust when exposed to the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. They have taken measures to circumvent this weakness, such as developing suits that shield them from the light, invading Earth only at night, or trying to shroud the planet in clouds of darkness with the aid of the Horseman of Pestilence. |
| 814 | * WhatTheHellHero: Monica refuses to talk with Sofia and forbids the rest of the gang from befriending her. Maggy eventually gets fed up with Monica's stubborn behaviour, calls her shallow for mistreating the new girl due to a childhood rivalry, and ultimately leaves her friend to sit by Sofia's side in the classroom. Thankfully, this causes Monica to acknowledge she was the villain of the story and prompts her to make an effort to help Sofia feel included. |
| 815 | * WillTheyOrWontThey: There is also some argument as to Monica and Jimmy's relationship over this (pretty much since they are the only main characters without any kind of engagement). While, as kids, they never get together due to him not seeing her as more than just a friend (and, in the worst-case scenarios, he deems her too ugly to be date-able -- she had made advances on him before), as teenagers, they go one step further, even though he is still too shy to admit it once and for all. So much so, that in one issue, it's Monica who takes it upon herself to have the initiative, by ''stealing a kiss from Jim''. Though he runs away flustered (with her chasing him, "just like the old times"), one can see that deep down he liked it. However, Monica eventually grew tired of Jim's arrogant claims of "having to defeat her to date her"[[note]](not quite BestHerToBedHer, since there's no physical confrontation or sex involved, but it can be taken as a mild version)[[/note]] and she hitches up with Nick Nope, causing Jim to realize that it was his behavior that pushed Monica away from him. |
| 816 | * WouldHitAGirl: Zeca has no problem getting into a fight with Denise, as the two are shown repeatedly going at each other's throats due to UnresolvedSexualTension, their conflicting political opinions, and his sexist remarks. |
| 817 | * WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler:The Lake Girl died while pulling a malicious prank on the city children. Her mother, blinded by grief, blamed the innocent kids for the accident and sold her soul for a magic spell meant to bring her daughter back to life. To perform it, she drugs seven children, kidnaps them and sacrifices them in a satanic ritual]]. |
| 818 | [[/folder]] |
| 819 | |
| 820 | !! Tropes exclusive to the MSP graphic novels |
| 821 | |
| 822 | [[folder:Tropes A-M]] |
| 823 | * AdaptationalHeroism: There is nothing particularly heroic about the Boiuna from Myth/BrazilianFolklore, as it's mostly portrayed as a cunning snake that lures people to the rivers in order to devour them. In Tom-Tom's novel, Boiuna is the BigGood, granting the protagonist supernatural powers in order to fight against the villainous White Night. |
| 824 | * AdaptationalWimp: In the comics, Penha, Agnes and Sofia are bullies who terrify everyone with their supernatural abilities. In "Lições", they have no powers and are bullying victims themselves. |
| 825 | * AmbiguousEnding: In "Tina: Respeito", it's unclear whether Jairo [[spoiler:faced any comeuppance for sexually harassing 23 women throughout his career. Though Tina succeeds in publishing a report detailing his numerous crimes, and his co-workers are seen glaring at him, he plainly states that he is far too influential to face any repercussions for his actions. Regardless, the novel ends on a hopeful note, with Márcia saying that, in the event that Jairo loses his job, she will gladly re-hire Tina]]. |
| 826 | * AnachronicOrder: In "Horácio: Mãe", the narrative constantly jumps across three different time periods: the earliest one shows Horácio's mother caring for the protagonist's egg; the main one is about Horácio's quest to reunite with his mom; and the final one takes place in modern times, as a paleontologist discovers a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' skeleton in Brazil. |
| 827 | * ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: The hobo that assists the heroes in "Bonds" says that he has seen his fair share of weird things in his life, including werewolves, talking dogs and "[[ButtMonkey that boy, Sunny]]". |
| 828 | * BloodierAndGorier: In the comic books, the characters only suffer AmusingInjuries for the sake of {{Slapstick}}. In contrast, the graphic novels don't shy away from displaying serious wounds. In "Magnetar", Bubbly falls for a trap that leaves a bloody trail on his forehead; and in "Bonds", Smudge suffers a cut on the top of his head and spends a significant amount of time with blood stains on the right side of his face. |
| 829 | * {{Bookends}}: "Bonds" starts and ends with Jimmy and Smudge running away from Monica, as their latest attempts to pull a prank on her backfired due to Smudge's fake mustache detaching from his face. |
| 830 | * TheBusCameBack: Gerson, Smudge's uncle who is oblivious to his nephew's aquaphobia, returns as a main character in "Cascão: Temporal", thus making his first appearance since his sole 1998 story. |
| 831 | * TheCameo: Don Ramón from ''Series/ElChavoDelOcho'' makes a surprise appearance at the end of the ''Bonds'' graphic novel, where he is seen selling Maggy a churro and tamarind juice. |
| 832 | * CastingCouch: Jairo threatens to fire Tina if she refuses to go out with him. Distraught, the protagonist considers subjecting herself to the harasser in order to keep her job, though she ultimately decides to fight for her rights. |
| 833 | * ChekhovsGag: Halfway through "Bonds", the heroes are surrounded by a pack of feral dogs, which are scared away thanks to Maggy's tummy loudly roaring due to her hunger. [[spoiler:This comes back at the climax of the novel, with Maggy taking advantage of her GrowlingGut to pacify the dogs she is trying to rescue]]. |
| 834 | * TheChewToy: Sunny from the "Bonds" graphic novel is just as unlucky as his comic book counterpart, as his two-pages cameo only consists of him being repeatedly stepped on by the gang while Monica and Maggy chase after Jimmy and Smudge. The writers [[ThrowTheDogABone throw him a bone]] in the sequel, as he suffers no injuries and is instead portrayed as the most popular student at his school. |
| 835 | * ComingOfAgeStory: Franklin's graphic novel revolves around the 12-year-old protagonist developing a crush on Marina and working up the courage to talk to her, while also struggling to let go of his childhood interests. |
| 836 | * ContinuityNod: Dita's worsening health reminds Chuck Billy of Mariana, his baby sister who died in a 1990 story. |
| 837 | * CurseCutShort: Tina reminisces about the conversation she had with Pipa the previous night. When Pipa finds out that the protagonist's co-workers have taken to calling her "Cris" (a nickname which Tina hates), she teasingly threatens to start doing the same. Tina responds by playfully swearing at her friend, though the last line in her flashback is interrupted when her boss snaps her back to reality. |
| 838 | --> '''Tina:''' Oh, [[YouCalledMeXItMustBeSerious Janaina]], go f- |
| 839 | --> '''Márcia:''' Cris! Are you deaf? |
| 840 | * DarkerAndEdgier: The graphic novels aim to please older readers and deal with mature themes that would not be allowed in the regular comic book. "Magnetar" shows Astronaut slowly descending into insanity; "Tina: Respeito" builds its narrative around the topic of sexual harrassment; and "Jeremias: Pele" realistically depicts the racism suffered by Afro-Brazilian children. |
| 841 | * ADayInTheLimelight: |
| 842 | ** In the main comics, Nutty Ned is a strictly secondary character whose relevance is restricted to a couple of Jimmy Five's stories. He is the protagonist of the tenth graphic novel, in which the reader gets to see the world from his point of view for the first time. |
| 843 | ** Jeremias doesn't have much presence in the main comics, with some of his friends BreakingTheFourthWall by calling him a "filler character". He got his first graphic novel in 2020, preceding the likes of Jimmy, Smudge and Maggy, something that surprised even Mauricio himself. |
| 844 | * DespairEventHorizon: "Chico Bento: Arvorada" climaxes with Chuck attacking [[Myth/BrazilianFolklore Boitatá, Curupira and Saci]] with a rake in a desperate attempt to keep them from reaching his dying grandmother. When the three monsters are joined by a werewolf, he loses all hope and screams in anguish as the creatures invade the house. [[spoiler:His horror turns into surprise upon realizing that the monsters were there to pay their respects to the old lady]]. |
| 845 | * DesperatePleaForHome: In "Magnetar", Astronaut spends months isolated in the orbit of a dying star after his space ship is damaged, and begins suffering from paranoia-induced hallucinations that make him reflect on how much his profession has alienated him from his friends and family. The rescue team manages to reach him before his air supply runs out and informs him that he will be able to return to his mission in no time. Astronaut's reaction is to feebly reply that he wants to go home. |
| 846 | * FormerTeenRebel: Tina's mother was a rebellious hippie during her teen years. She recalls participating in many movements to advocate for freedom (referencing how the rise of the hippie movement in Brazil coincided with the period of military dictatorship), though many people labeled her as a fool for preaching about love and peace. |
| 847 | * FunWithAcronyms: Nutty Ned states that his real name is Licurgo Orival Umbelino Cafiaspirino de Oliveira. Take the first letter from each word and you get his original Brazilian name, Louco, which literally means "crazy". |
| 848 | * ImagineSpot: In ''Franklin: Contact'', the protagonist escorts Marina home and gives her a small lecture on the physics of belching. Surprisingly, she giggles and appears to be pleased by his company... but then she points out that none of that is really happening, Franklin is just imagining the entire scenario while laying on his bed. The following panel shows the boy doing just that. |
| 849 | * InnocentlyInsensitive: Played with in "Jeremias: Pele". Jeremias' teacher tasks the students to pretend to have a certain job and write an essay on what they do for a living, then assigns a prestigious profession to every child except the Black protagonist, who is told to write a text about being a construction worker. When Jeremias brings this up at the end of the story, the teacher cringes in embarrassment as she realizes the unfortunate implications of her request, but the big twist is that Jeremias [[spoiler:has come to the conclusion that his own negative feelings towards low-paying jobs are just as damaging as the racism that is ingrained in our society, and proudly states that he would never be ashamed to be a construction worker]]. |
| 850 | * KidAnova: In ''Franklin: Contact'', Isabel's parents forbid her from dating Bucky. This leaves her devastated, but he appears to move on immediately, as he is shown flirting with other girls. [[spoiler:Subverted in that he is only doing so because his father encouraged him to forget about Isabel. He is last seen sadly gazing at a picture of her in his cellphone]]. |
| 851 | * KnightOfCerebus: "Bonds" follows a fairly simple plot of the gang going to another neighbourhood to search for Jimmy's dog. While there are suspenseful moments throughout their journey, all of them conclude with a comedic gag. This changes once the [[BigBad dog abuser]] enters the picture, as he poses a very genuine threat to the heroes. |
| 852 | * MindScrew: One of the criteria Mauricio established for a Nutty Ned graphic novel is that the plot embraces surreal elements that enable the character to explore his own nonsensical universe. In "Louco: Fuga", by Rogério Coelho, the narrative follows the titular character as he ventures into a bizarre world to save a bird that represents mankind's creativity. While the premise is a clear criticism of general censorship, all other elements are left up to the reader's interpretation, including whether the adventure indeed happened or was just part of Ned's imagination. |
| 853 | * MrImagination: At some points in Franklin's novel, the world is depicted from the protagonist's point of view, with him imagining mundane things as extraordinary events. His messy bedroom is represented by a tornado, while his childish science fair projects are replaced with complex robots and a live ''T. rex''. |
| 854 | * TheMultiverse: Nutty Ned visits the Imagination World, in which he sees multiple images that represent different artists' interpretations of Monica's gang throughout the years, including Mauricio's newspaper strips, the teen spin-off, and every previous graphic novel. It's implied that each image is a portal to a separate continuity, which Ned can access and explore at will. |
| 855 | [[/folder]] |
| 856 | |
| 857 | [[folder:Tropes N-Z]] |
| 858 | * NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: The big twist of ''Franklin: Contact'' is that [[spoiler:the mysterious person who had been talking to Franklin through his radio is his counterpart from the original comic books. Believing that reality would fall apart if they met, the latter had to manipulate his other self into providing him with the tools necessary to build a machine that could send him back to his home dimension]]. |
| 859 | * NewFriendEnvy: Pipa immediately takes a dislike to Katia, mumbling to herself that Tina shouldn't forget who her best friends really are. |
| 860 | * OriginsEpisode: |
| 861 | ** "Bidu: Caminhos" details Blu's early life, when he lived as a stray dog before being adopted by Franklin. |
| 862 | ** "Horácio: Mãe" shows Horacio's birth, details how he befriended Tecodonte and finally reveals what happened to his mother. |
| 863 | ** "Penadinho: Vida" is a [[StealthSequel stealth prequel]] that shows the beginning of Penadinho and Alminha's relationship, as well as how the gang came to know Lobi. |
| 864 | * PrecisionFStrike: Fittingly for a KnightOfCerebus, the dog abuser from "Bonds" [[SirSwearsalot swears a lot]]. Some of the expressions he says include "Saco"[[labelnote:Translation]] Literally "bag"; but used coloquially to refer to a man's scrotum[[/labelnote]] and "Inferno" ("Hell"), which, while still somewhat mild for Brazilian audiences, are uncharacteristically strong by the franchise's standards. |
| 865 | * RedHerring: The events of the graphic novel ''Astronauta: Magnetar'' are frequently mentioned throughout Franklin's book, leading the reader to believe that the person who is talking to the protagonist through the radio is Bubbly, who is stranded in space and looking for a way to return to Earth. [[spoiler:The mysterious person turns out to be Franklin from the original comic books, who became stuck in the graphic novel's world after a failed time travel attempt, and has been manipulating his alternate self in order to return to his home dimension]]. |
| 866 | * {{Reincarnation}}: |
| 867 | ** In "Penadinho: Alma", the protagonist finds out that Alminha is about to be reborn, and decides to spend as much time as possible with her before her time comes. At the end of the book, [[spoiler:the stork notices how Alminha doesn't want to be separated from Penadinho yet, and agrees to let her remain as a ghost for a little longer]]. |
| 868 | ** In "Horácio: Mãe", it's implied that [[spoiler:the boy who is shown to be fascinated by the ''T. rex'' skeleton is in fact a reincarnated Horácio, who is instinctively drawn to the last remains of the mother he so desperately sought in a previous life]]. |
| 869 | * ShoutOut: |
| 870 | ** In "Lembranças": |
| 871 | *** Jimmy confesses to having a PrecociousCrush towards Crystal by singing a heavily butchered version of Peter Cetera's "Glory of Love". |
| 872 | *** The anime that Monica and Maggy watch during their sleepover is an obvious parody of ''Franchise/SailorMoon''. The first few verses of the theme song are even a direct copy of the Brazilian translation. |
| 873 | *** Monica and Maggy pretend to be superheroines, with the former calling herself "[[JapaneseRanguage Serena]]" and quoting [[Franchise/SailorMoon Sailor Moon]]'s catchphrases, and the latter threatening to summon her robots to make up a "[[Franchise/PowerRangers Mecha Zord]]". |
| 874 | *** The song Monica sings at Carminha's birthday party is a parody of "Lua de Cristal", by Xuxa Meneghel. |
| 875 | *** When Jimmy asks Monica to hammer a nail, he calls her "ComicBook/TheMightyThor". |
| 876 | ** In "Temporal", Gerson tries to get his nephew Smudge to open up by talking about comic books. He asks the boy whether he likes older comics or "[[ComicBook/New52 the New 22]]", a reference to the 2011 DC event that rebooted the company's entire continuity. |
| 877 | ** In "Franklin: Contact": |
| 878 | *** Among the items in Franklin's bedroom, it's possible to spot a couple of ''[[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983 He-Man]]'' action figures, a ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' poster, and assorted sci-fi novels, including ''Literature/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'', ''[[Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries 2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' and ''Literature/IRobot''. |
| 879 | *** Franklin shows up in front of Jeremiah's house while holding a radio above his head, mimicking the iconic scene from ''Film/SayAnything''. Lampshaded, as Jeremiah says that he understood that reference. |
| 880 | *** Franklin wonders what questions he should ask to the mysterious person who has contacted him through his radio. After an awkward silence, he says "[[Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles Who's your favorite Ninja Turtle]]?" |
| 881 | *** [[Film/BackToTheFuture1 Marty and Doc Brown]] appear in a thought bubble when [[spoiler:comic book Franklin reflects on the dangers of meeting his alternate self]]. |
| 882 | *** Franklin recalls that, when he was a young child, he and his mother played on the beach by pretending to be [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} John and Sarah Connor]]. |
| 883 | * TokenMinority: "Tina: Respeito" introduces Katia, the first openly LGBT character in an MSP publication. After Tina witnesses a fellow co-worker calling Katia "a waste" for not being attracted to men, she laments that some people will do whatever they can to make you feel ashamed of who you are. |
| 884 | * UncertainDoom: The BigBad of "Bonds" is mauled off-screen by the dogs he had been abusing. Whether he survived his injuries is not revealed to the reader. |
| 885 | * UninvitedToTheParty: In "Lembranças", Monica is the only kid who is not invited to Carminha's birthday party, due to her poor behaviour in the preceding year (which includes hogging the karaoke machine to herself, running around in her underwear after her dress is stained, and accidentally ruining the cake by smashing a piñata into it). Figuring out a way to be invited to the party is Monica's main plotline throughout the novel. |
| 886 | * WouldHurtAChild: The BigBad of "Bonds" violently throws a coffee mug at Jimmy, barely missing the boy's head. Horrified, Jimmy freezes in place and keeps repeating that he is just a child. He only snaps out of his shock after Monica desperately screams for him to run away. |
| 887 | [[/folder]] |
| 888 | |
| 889 | !! Tropes exclusive to ''Turma da Mônica: Geração 12'' |
| 890 | * AgeLift: All of the kids of Lemon Tree Street, including the main four are aged up to twelve-year-olds. |
| 891 | * {{Animesque}}: Even more so than its predecessor, ''Monica Teen''. With it being the flagship series of Manga MSP, there are even more manga aspects to it, including chibified versions of the main cast appearing from time to time. |
| 892 | * MeaningfulName: The manga series is named after the characters now being twelve years old. |
| 893 | * SpiritualSequel: To ''Monica Teen''. |
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