Line #20 WesternAnimation/TheFantasticFour1967


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6	->''The Fantastic Four, united in their fight against interplanetary evil. Fantastic!''
7	-->-- '''OpeningNarration'''
8
9	This action cartoon, produced by Creator/HannaBarbera for [[Creator/AmericanBroadcastingCompany ABC]], was among the first of several {{animated adaptation}}s of the ''Comicbook/FantasticFour'' comic book. Several of the Creator/StanLee[=/=]Creator/JackKirby [[ComicBook/FantasticFour1961 stories from the early issues]] were adapted for this program. This series ran for 20 episodes, including two 10-minute shorts, until the {{Media Watchdog}}s demanded less violence in children's television.
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11	----
12	!!This series provides examples of:
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14	* AboveGoodAndEvil: ComicBook/{{Galactus}} provides an example that might not have come up too often in '60s children's cartoons.
15	* AdaptationDistillation: For instance, the Galactus trilogy got compressed into one episode.
16	* AdaptationSpeciesChange: The stand-ins for Namor (who were created because Hanna-Barbera couldn't obtain the rights to the character due to them already being claimed by Grantray-Lawrence Animation for use in ''WesternAnimation/TheMarvelSuperHeroes'') are different species from the original character.
17	** Prince Triton is a full Homo Mermanus instead of half as indicated by his blue skin and not being able to be outside of water.
18	** Dr. Gamma is a fully human scientist who is mutated into some huge purple sea creature with a fin on his head.
19	* AdaptationalSuperpowerChange: Sometimes Hanna-Barbera would show Sue activating her force fields in episodes adapted from comics set before she learned how to do so.
20	* AdaptedOut:
21	** Ben's girlfriend, Alicia Masters, never appeared in this show.[[note]]Moreover, her role in the aforementioned Galactus episode was given to Sue.[[/note]]
22	** Since the episode adapting the Red Ghost's debut only runs 10 minutes, the Fantastic Four do not get to meet TheWatcher in it. Instead, "It Started on Yancy Street" marks the first time the Four meet him.
23	** Likewise, when Klaw first appears, he mentions a past encounter with the FF where he was thought dead, but the person who nearly killed him, Comicbook/BlackPanther, is neither seen nor explicitly mentioned.
24	** "The Micro World of Doctor Doom" does not have ComicBook/AntMan in it, likely because the studio that made ''WesternAnimation/TheMarvelSuperheroes'' already secured Hank Pym.
25	* AllYourPowersCombined: As in the comics, the Super Skrull has the powers of the entire team, plus a few of his own. He's defeated when they manage to cut off the energy feed from the Skrull homeworld, taking away all that power.
26	* AntagonistTitle: "Klaw", "Diablo", "The Red Ghost", "The Mysterious Molecule Man", "Galactus", "Blast-Starr, the Living Bomb Burst", and "Rama-Tut" all have titles consisting simply of the villain's name. Some other episodes also have titles consisting of phrases with the villain's name.
27	* BlackBeadEyes: Doctor Doom appears to have these most of the time. In close-ups, his eyes look blue with black pupils.
28	* ClipShow: "The Terrible Tribunal" (doubles as a CourtRoomEpisode) and "The Deadly Director" both used footage from older episodes.
29	* DamselInDistress: There's a large number of episodes where you can count on Sue to call out, "Reed, Johnny, Ben! Help!" Though it probably counts as FairForItsDay, as Sue does get her moments.
30	* DeathTrap: "The Three Predictions of Doctor Doom" sees Doom trap Sue in a room where TheWallsAreClosingIn, suffocate Johnny in a room that quickly rotates to extinguish his flames, and leave Reed LockedInAFreezer until he shatters like a rubber ball.
31	* DiplomaticImpunity: In "The Way It All Began", Doctor Doom invokes diplomatic immunity as Latveria's ruler to avoid being arrested upon arriving in New York.
32	* DontExplainTheJoke: Johnny tells Ben that they didn't need an explanation behind his crack about waiting until "Doomsday" for their next confrontation with Doctor Doom.
33	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first episode produced, "Klaw", only lasts 10 minutes. Reruns pair it together with the equally short episode "The Red Ghost".
34	* EpisodeTitleCard: Par for the course for Hanna-Barbera's superhero cartoons.
35	* EvilIsHammy: Just about all the villains chew the scenery.
36	* {{Expy}}: Since the rights to [[Comicbook/SubMariner Namor the Sub-Mariner]] were already claimed by ''WesternAnimation/TheMarvelSuperHeroes'', Prince Triton and Gamma-ray were created in his place with the former for Namor the Hero and the latter for Namor the Villain respectively.
37	* FilmFelons: "The Deadly Director" involves a villainous MasterOfDisguise impersonating a famous movie director and interviewing the Fantastic Four about their previous adventures under the pretense of digging for ideas for a movie about them, while noting the various ways the villains failed to defeat them and plotting his way around their pitfalls.
38	* {{Foreshadowing}}: The scene of the cosmic storm in "The Way It All Began" contains some lines that foreshadow the respective abilities that Sue, Johnny, and Ben gained that day: Sue says she feels like she's not really there, Johnny says he can feel himself heating up, and Ben says he feels heavy.
39	* HappilyMarried: Unlike the comics, this cartoon always portrays Reed and Sue Richards as husband and wife, bar the flashbacks set before the founding of the Fantastic Four. However, the show does avoid portraying Reed's and Sue's marriage as 24/7 bliss. "Galactus" begins with Sue lamenting to Ben about how sometimes Reed spends more time with his science experiments than with her, and Ben assuring Sue that Reed still loves her.
40	* HeelFaceTurn: The ComicBook/SilverSurfer turns against Galactus after Sue[[note]]Who has the role originated by Alicia Masters in the comics.[[/note]] demonstrates human sympathy towards him.
41	* HornAttack: "Invasion of the Super Skrull". While fighting the Thing, the Super Skrull used Reed Richard's elastic power to shape his head into that of a ram and head-butt the Thing with his horns, knocking him off the top of a building.
42	* IJustWantToBeNormal: The Thing, to the extent where he even becomes the lackey of an evil scientist who offers to turn him human.
43	* InMediasRes: The first episode produced and the first one aired both take place some time after the team's formation and the marriage of Reed and Sue.
44	* IncredibleShrinkingMan: Doctor Doom shrinks the Fantastic Four in "The Micro World of Doctor Doom".
45	* {{Irony}}: The rights to the series are currently owned by Creator/WarnerBros, who also owns Marvel's biggest competitor Creator/DCComics. Meanwhile Marvel itself is now owned by Creator/{{Disney}}, who acquired a backlog of animated Marvel adaptations from other companies several years prior to acquiring Marvel themselves, but wouldn't own the Fantastic Four film rights until buying what is now Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios in 2019.
46	* LamePunReaction: No one laughs at Ben's crack about waiting until "Doomsday" to face Doctor Doom again.
47	* LaserGuidedAmnesia: "Invasion of the Super Skrulls" has an example. [[spoiler: After the Fantastic Four stop the Super Skrull from taking over the world, he proclaims that he can not return to his home planet, lest the king of the Skrulls punish him for his failure. Reed allows him to stay on Earth under the condition that he turns himself into a cow, then lets Reed erase his memories of being a Skrull.]] Note that this differs greatly from the aftermath of the Four's first encounter in the comics with the Super Skrull (but ''not'' from their first encounter with Skrulls in general).
48	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: "The Micro World of Doctor Doom" begins with Ben transporting a piano, while muttering to himself about how embarrassed he'd feel if any of his fans saw him.
49	* LimitedAnimation: One particularly obvious example happens in the beginning of "Invasion of the Super Skrulls": The Four are going to get zapped by the Skrulls, yet only Sue moves, waving her hands once to create a {{deflector shield\|s}}.
50	* LoopholeAbuse: In the episode where the Four take on Rama-Tut, he uses a ray that forces them to do his bidding. A burst of cosmic energy briefly turns the Thing back into Ben Grimm, and because Rama-Tut put the Thing under his control, this somehow means Ben's free to do whatever he wants until it wears off and he changes back.
51	* NarratingTheObvious: Par for the course in UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks.
52	* NeverMyFault: Victor Von Doom blames Reed Richards for the accident that ruined his face. Everything Reed did in this case was warning Doom about some miscalculations and Doom decided to ignore the warning.
53	* NeverSayDie: Zigzagged; the words "die" and "kill" are used on occasion, but the characters refer to actual demises with such terms as "finished" and "done for".
54	* {{Nonindicative Name}}s:
55	** "The Menace of the Mole Man" adapts a comic titled, "The Return of the Mole Man!", while "The Return of the Mole Man" adapts a comic titled, "The Mad Menace of the Macabre Mole Man". The former episode's title doesn't match its comic because Hanna-Barbera had yet to adapt the first ''Fantastic Four'' issue. (When they finally did so, they left out Mole Man's scenes to boot.)
56	** Namor's heroic stand-in Triton is the ruler of Pacifica, rather than Atlantis. Despite the name change, it is by all appearances still located in the Atlantic rather than the Pacific Ocean.
57	* NotQuiteDead: Somehow Doctor Doom manages to survive jumping out of an airplane and crash landing while flying a missile.
58	* OriginsEpisode: "The Way It All Began" contains flashbacks to when Reed first met Ben and Victor Von Doom, the transformation of Victor into Doctor Doom, and the fateful trip that turned Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben into the Fantastic Four.
59	* PragmaticAdaptation: Due to not having the rights to Namor, Hanna-Barbera replaced him with a pair of CaptainErsatz, known as Gamma-Ray and Prince Triton, the former as Namor as a villain and the latter as Namor as a hero. Triton's domain was likewise changed from Atlantis to Pacifica, even though Atlantis is public domain.
60	* ProphecyTwist: "The Three Predictions of Doctor Doom" has Doom threaten that he will remove TheHeart of the Fantastic Four, that he will remove the strength of the Fantastic Four, and that the greatest power will conquer all. [[spoiler: Doom removes the heart by kidnapping Sue and the strength by turning [[TheBigGuy the Thing]] back into [[BroughtDownToNormal human Ben]], but since the Four ultimately overpowers him, he fails to "conquer all."]]
61	* RaceLift: Prior to mutating in the creature known as Gamma-Ray, Dr. Gamma appears to be an East Asian character. Namor, the character he was adapted from, was white, having been fathered by the white Leonard [=McKenzie=].
62	* RageAgainstTheReflection: Victor Von Doom becomes so disgusted at the sight of his post-explosion scarred face in a mirror, he smashes the mirror with his fist.
63	* SleepingSingle: In "The Terrible Tribunal", Reed and Sue are shown sleeping in separate beds in spite of being married.
64	* StayInTheKitchen: In "The Micro World of Doctor Doom", Doom's plan to make the Four slaves to lizard people would apparently result in Reed doing research, Ben working in mines, Johnny burning down enemy cities, and Sue...cooking everyone's meals.
65	* TeamHandStack: Performed in the intro, the end credits, and the flashback of when the Four first practiced their superpowers and created their superhero names.
66	* TitleMontage: The intro plays one following a depiction of the Four gaining their powers from the cosmic rays.
67	** CreditsMontage: The end credits reel basically superimposes text over the above intro [[note]]Which was a regular occurrence in many (but not all) of Hanna-Barbera's shows until at least the mid-1970s.[[/note]].
68	* TitleSequenceReplacement: Some reruns play the intro with just the visuals and music, no OpeningNarration.
69	* TruerToTheText: Zigzagged. Coming a year after ''WesternAnimation/TheMarvelSuperHeroes'', Namor's heroic stand-in Triton is the ruler of Pacifica rather than Atlantis. On the one hand, Namor's creator Bill Everett never intended for Namor's home to be Atlantis. On the other, Namor's people lived in the Antarctic Ocean, while Pacifica, despite its name, by all appearances is still located in the Atlantic.
70	* VillainTeamUp: "The Terrible Tribunal" features a team-up with the villains Klaw, Molecule Man, and Blastaar.
71	* TheWorfEffect: A subdued example, but they show how powerful Galactus is by having him easily block the Thing's strongest punch.
72	* YouDontLookLikeYou: Galactus has greener skin and a shorter height compared to how he looks in the comics. He also wears blue instead of purple.
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Context WesternAnimation / TheFantasticFour1967