Dan Vs / Tropes M to Z

Go here for the main page.

Go here for Tropes A To L.

---

• Mad Libs Catchphrase: Dan's Skyward Scream in the opening of each episode counts despite not containing one consistent word — just its delivery.
• The Mafia: Dan's plan to get revenge on Elise's parents involves convincing the police that her father is part of it, which leads to real Mafiosi trying to kill him. It's a lie, of course, but it turns out Elise's mother is secretly working for a rival Family.
• Male Gaze: In "Technology", once Elise is put under mind control and gets into that chrome skin-tight suit, the camera doesn't hesitate to get as many shots of her from the rear as possible.
• Manchild: Both Dan and Chris.
• Married to the Job: Jeff the Burgerphile manager, to the point where he would rather lie about getting Dan's order wrong than admit to the mistake and blemish his otherwise perfect service record.
• McNinja: Ninja Dave. (Not just because he now runs a cookie restaurant.)
• Meaningful Name: "Dan" is Hebrew for "He who judges".
• Meaningful Background Event: In "The Family Cruise", as the guide asks which of the group are parents, Elise looks downward sadly. It has been implied a few times she wants children.
• Mecha-Mooks:
  • The Dentobots.
  • The androids. They may look human, but they're hard as a rock and surprisingly brittle.
• Mind-Control Device: Barry Ditmer's plan in "Technology" is to create a long-range wireless mind control device to force people to buy his products. He also has a smaller short-range headband device that he uses to turn Elise into his minion.
• Misophonia Gag: In "Anger Management", a car alarm blares outside. Dan rants about how irritating the sound is, and the other students in the anger management class agree with him. Dan then has them demolish the car to stop the noise. Then Amber reveals that it's her car.
• Missing Steps Plan:
  Chris: So, do we have a plan?
  Dan: Of course. We go to Canada and make them pay for what they did to me.
  Chris: That's not really a plan, so much as a goal.
  Dan: Fine! You wanna plan? Here we go:

  Step 1: We go to Canada.

  Step 2: We make them pay for what they did to me!
  Chris: Now, it's a checklist.
• Mistaken for Gay: In "The Bank", a clerk asks Dan and Chris if they want to open a joint account.
• Mistaken Identity: A cop mistakes Dan for a homeless guy in "Ye Olde Shakespeare Dinner Theatre". Hilarious that the trope page says that this trope was a favorite of Shakespeare's.
• Morality Chain: Subverted. Chris tries to be this for Dan, but Dan just refuses to listen.
• Morality Pet: Mr. Mumbles. Dan flies into a vengeful rage when someone scratches his car up, but isn't even slightly irked when the cat scratches him up on bath day.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Jerkface, Dan's supervillan identity.
• Motionless Chin: On everybody.
• Mouth Cam: A few shots from "The Dentist" use this technique, seeing as Dan's teeth are the focus of the shot (alongside the characters nearby).
• Mugging the Monster: Every episode begins with someone messing with Dan's life, thinking that he's just some crazy, misanthropic jerk. Dan quickly shows them that he's a determined, obsessive, occasionally intelligent, crazy, misanthropic jerk.
• Mundane Fantastic
• Mushroom Samba: Chris starts hallucinating after a ninja shoots him with a "poisonous" dart.
• Mystery Meat: According to Elise, Burgerphile's "chicken" nuggets are actually made from soybeans and recycled newspaper.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "Good news, friends... and Elise."
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Agzegoth the Devourer from "The Monster Under the Bed", even lampshaded by Chris.
• The Napoleon: Dan.
• Negative Continuity
• Never Say "Die": Heavily averted—in "Anger Management" alone, three different characters use the words kill, murder, and die, in that order.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: Crunchy, as well as all the hippies from "The Beach".
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Crunchy, and to a lesser extent, Chris.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Dan is mean, Chris is nice, and Elise is usually somewhere between them.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Magnifico from "The Magician" is an obvious parody of Criss Angel. And Barry Ditmer from "Technology" is based on Steve Jobs. (Which makes the crazy guy they meet in the woods Steve Wozniak.)
• No Indoor Voice: Dan.
• No Theme Tune: The show has no theme song. It only opens with the show's title and ends with Dan shouting out who and what he is declaring vengeance against, followed by the episode's title. And then the plot immediately kicks off after that.
  • Originally, it had a guitar theme song, in which the guitar was played by the real Chris Pearson and the lyrics were sung by the real Dan Mandel.
• Noir Episode: "The Catburglar", complete with Private Eye Monologue narration by Dan, a Femme Fatale named Honey O'Houlihan, and a sepia tone filter over most of the episode.
• Nonstandard Character Design: In his first appearance, Imposter Dan looked like a really badly drawn Dan, making him really stand out. For his later appearance, minor tweaks were made to his design so he didn't look so out of place.
• Noodle Implements: Dan's plan for destroying Chris "involves two Bengal tigers, an albino child, and five... no, six gallons of hummus." He hasn't worked out the details yet.
• Noodle Incident: Dan's grandmother died at some point (offscreen). Since then, Dan has expressed his dislike of her and made mention of some unspecified unpleasantness which he does not regret.
  • Remember how Dan believes in proportionate revenge (i.e. the amount of revenge he takes is equal to the amount of wrong he believes has been done to him)? Well, in "Anger Management", a family of squirrels did something to Dan so horrible that it warranted Dan breaking into NORAD and attempting to launch the entirety of America's nuclear arsenal at the U.S./Canadian border, which would have led to World War III, and potentially, the entire extinction of the human race, all in pursuit of revenge (luckily, Elise was able to stop him).
• No Seat Belts:
  • Played straight in "Technology" when they get in a wreck and Dan is thrown through the windshield resulting in a Non Sequitur, *Thud*.
    Dan: Rainbows are nature's rainbows.
• No Theme Tune: The openings tend to have something terrible happen to Dan, and then Dan screaming skyward about the episode's subject. There actually is an ending theme, but it's not heard on TV since, like nearly all networks, the Hub ran promos over the end credits. (This practice stopped after the transition to Discovery Family.)
• Not So Above It All: While Elise mostly disagrees with Dan's vengeful nature, she occassionally either joins him (albeit for her own reasons) or commences her own version of revenge parallelly. She also joins him for the Skyward Scream in Jury Duty.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Well, Not So Imaginary Enemy, but Chris and Elise are pretty sure Dan has lost his mind in "Dan".
• Obfuscating Stupidity: The governor and his work release employee in "Stupidity". The governor is a British villain pretending to be an uneducated hick in order to bring down the education system in America while the employee is a government agent working undercover to stop him.
• Odd Couple: Chris and Dan.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Dan drags along an unconscious Chris to help him exact his revenge in "The Animal Shelter".
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After Dan's rousing speech at the end of Stupidity Chris is making his enterance in the eating contest. Gilligan Cut to Chris in a hospital bed with the winner's trophy on the nightstand.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Dan's boss in "Dan vs. The Boss".

• Once Killed a Man with a Noodle Implement: In "The Salvation Armed Forces", Dan tells his friend Chris that the bell ringer knows twelve ways to kill a man with a bell. Chris thinks about it, but can only come up with one.
• Once per Episode: Dan is wronged (or perceives that he has been wronged) and yells the name of the perpetrator. Cue title card.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In an argument with a pitcher in "Baseball", Dan can be heard ranting about how he didn't learn how to tie his shoes until he was twelve.
• One of the Kids: Dan behaves this way sometimes. Lampshaded in "Parents".
• Only Friend: Chris is Dan's only friend. Ted is occasionally mentioned, but has yet to actually appear, probably because Dan is usually mad at him.
• Only One Name: Dan, although given that Chris' last name is Pearson, and named after one of the show's writers, it's quite probable that Dan's last name is Mandel, after his own namesake, although Dan's driver's license in "Dan" only shows his given name.
• Only Sane Man: So far, Chris is the most normal of the cast aside from the fact that he's apparently a werebear or something. Dan really should rethink his habit of sticking his fingers in Chris's mouth.
• Origins Episode: The third season finale, "Summer Camp", where Dan recounts to Elise how he and Chris met and how he embarked on his first revenge mission ever against the corrupt camp director, Mr. Tedesco.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: The Wolfman in the eponymous episode doesn't seem to know about being a werewolf, as evidenced by wondering aloud who shot him in the butt with a silver arrow. The Wolfman itself is a general troublemaker, but isn't seen doing anything worse than damaging cars.
• Our Zombies Are Different: They're dance-fighting monsters.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Happens a few times, with "The Dentist" being one of the more jarring examples.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: Dressing Chris while he's lying unconscious in a hospital bed is "the third most uncomfortable thing I've had to do all week."
• Pac Man Fever: Chris is shown playing a video game by holding an Xbox controller upside-down. The quickness with which Dan beats the... level? Stage? ...when he takes over (also holding the controller upside-down) might also count, depending on what kind of game it's supposed to be.
• Palette Swap: Often done as a cheap way to make background characters. For instance, the guy who gets hit by the bus in "New Mexico" is clearly seen with new hair and shirt colors in "Baseball" as one of the members of the seating feud.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Used by Dan and Chris on several occasions, but probably most hilariously in "Elise's Parents", when a very-obviously male undercover cop poses as Dan's girlfriend and Elise's parents don't seem to notice.
• Predatory Business: Gigundo-Mart.
• People Puppets: Dan does this to an unconscious Chris in "The Animal Shelter" in order to use his credit card to buy explosives.
• Personality Swap: Dan and Chris toward the end of "Anger Management".
• Pet the Dog: In "The Animal Shelter", Dan "adopts" a kitten and released all the animals before blowing up the shelter.
• Pink Boy, Blue Girl: Chris and Elise.
• Poisonous Friend: Dan to Chris (literally in "The Animal Shelter").
• Police Are Useless: In "Burgerphile", when Jeff tries to have Dan arrested, the cops try asking Dan nicely to unchain himself from the cash register, and when he refuses, they immediately give up and leave.
  • Justified, as this takes place in America, and Dan was exercising his 1st Amendment right of a non-violent protest. He wasn't doing anything illegal, so they couldn't arrest him.
  • Neatly subverted in "The Wolfman"—Dan and Chris are chasing after a child, and pass right by a Donut Eating Cop. He ignores it but then does a Double Take, proclaiming "Oh, right, I'm a cop." Smash Cut to Chris and Dan in a jail cell.
• Police Brutality:
  • Those Canadian security guards are friendly, but violent.
  • In "The Wolfman", a police officer does taze Dan, but only after Dan made a scene at the station and took his hat after being warned not to.
• Potty Emergency: Why Dan is so harried at the beginning of "Traffic".
• Potty Failure: What sets Dan off against traffic.
• Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Dan thinks in "The Animal Shelter".
  "I didn't ask you to build an animal jail across the street. Shut your prisoners up, warden!"
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Played with and Inverted. While the scripts are occasionally favorable to him, it's made very clear that Dan is nearly always in the wrong... and is sometimes blamed for doing things that aren't his fault. Dan is berated by Elise for sending an innocent man to prison for his crimes... when that "innocent man" stole Dan's identity. In "Family Cruise," Elise Sr. notes how it's Dan's fault the ship is sinking... when she and Elise broke the navigation system.
• Pun: Several throughout the series, including Dan's Dentist being named Dr. Pullem and creating a "turtle neck" by placing turtles along the inner shoulder.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Several episodes end up in one of these. Dan gets his revenge, but he does so in a way that makes his life objectively worse.
• Radio Contest: "Dan vs. Chris" is kickstarted by Dan and Chris listening to KLIE: The Lie at the right time to catch a giveaway for the blaster from "Space Monkeys". Chris calls in at the right time, answers an obscure trivia question, and wins the blaster.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Elise starts to lay one on Dan in "The Ski Trip".
• Recognition Failure: In "The High School Reunion", NO ONE remembers Chris.
• Recurring Character: Several, the most prominent being Crunchy.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • In "New Mexico", Dan and Elise murder several innocent people with a death ray, but it's downplayed by how the death ray works like a video game.
  • "Anger Management" opens with Dan almost starting World War III and setting off a nuclear bomb to get back at a family of squirrels. And whatever the squirrel did to anger him so much is never brought up.
• Reusable Lighter Toss: Dan toss his lighter and then promptly realizes he just threw away his good lighter.
• Revenge: Each episode sees Dan attempt to get revenge on someone or something that has wronged him (or he perceives to have robbed him).
• Revenge Before Reason: Many of Dan's revenge bouts are either misguided or not worth the effort. He gets called out for this in "Mall Santa", where, after taking a job specifically to buy a Christmas present for Mr. Mumbles, he prioritizes petty revenge against the Mall Santa over the gift he's working to buy in the first place.
• Riddle for the Ages: In "The Magician", a magician named Magnifico humiliates Dan and Chris by stealing Chris's jewelry and making Dan's underwear appear in Magnifico's hands. Dan gets revenge on him by showing his audience how his tricks work... except for the underwear, which Dan still can't figure out.
• Roswell That Ends Well: The end of "New Mexico".
• Running Gag: Several.
  • The Skyward Scream at the beginning of every episode.
  • Dan taking out his revenge list and adding something new to it in the middle of revenge missions.
  • Dan knocking a glass off Chris and Elise's table and breaking it whenever Chris contradicts him.
  • Dan unsuccesfully working on inventing a jet pack.
  • Chris eating things laced with poisons, toxins, intoxicants, etc.
  • Dan leaving messages for Chris which always contain a rebuttal to something Dan succesfully predicted Elise would say.
  • The subject of the episode somehow damaging or messing with Dan's car. Especially if it's a location, abstract concept, long-dead historical figure or something else that shouldn't be physically capable of it.
• Sadist Show
• Samus Is a Girl: As revealed in "Art", Mr. Mumbles is female. However, even after learning this, Dan does not change her name.
• Santa's Existence Clause: "The Mall Santa" has elements of this, though only so far as Dan admitting his genuine belief in Santa Claus.
  "Of course I do! Read your Bible!"
• Satan: Chris' boss.
• Scenery Censor: In "Art', this is done with Elise's head on a naked Chris painting.
• Scream Discretion Shot: Hilarious in that nothing actually happens to Dan, but he screams anyway, while ordering Chris to hot glue his tooth back in or just sitting in the dentist's chair.
  • Used in the same episode at the dentist's office. When Chris comes in to check what's going on, they say they haven't done anything yet.
• Scarecrow Solution: Used by Chris in "The Monster Under the Bed" to scare Dan away long enough for him and Elise to enjoy their weekend.
• Security Cling: Dan and Chris have a tendency to do this.
• Serious Business: Chris takes cocoa preparation very seriously, and he does not appreciate being woken up at three in the morning to make it only to have it wasted. He actually manages to intimidate Dan into sitting down and drinking it.
• Shady Scalper: Once Dan gets Chris to buy baseball game tickets for a thousand dollars each, but about eight other groups all have the exact same seating tickets which leads to a riot and causes everyone to be tear-gassed and thrown out.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: "The Wolfman", as Dan and Chris go thorough a month of preparation just so Dan could key his car back.
• Shark Pool: One in "Baseball". With squeaky rubber sharks! Dan is not amused. Then there's one with a real shark in "The Beach", which Dan and Chris attempt to "borrow" from the aquarium.
• Sidetracked by the Analogy: In "The Wolfman".
  Dan: Come on, get after him! Pretend he's a sandwich!
  Chris: What kind of sandwich?
• Silver Arrowhead
• Skewed Priorities:
  • In "Burgerphile", Jeff is so focused on having a perfect customer satisfaction record that he'll completely piss off a customer in order to claim that his record is still spotless. Jeremiah Burger calls him out on this at the end of the episode.
  • The vegans and vegetarians in "Vegetables". It's not stated whether they're on that diet for health or moral reasons, but either way they completely missed the point. The ones in it for health reasons never considered that starving themselves was far worse for their health than eating a steak. And the ones in it for moral reasons had no qualms about eating a broccoli monster, even though it was an intelligent, speaking creature.
• Skyward Scream: Dan does one just before each episode title is shown. Occasionally, his enemies will do the same after Dan's retribution.
  • Almost does it a second time in "Gigundo-Mart", but realizes halfway through that he already did that.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Dan.
• Smarter Than You Look: Dan is well versed in Shakespeare's works, even naming his teddy bear Brutus. In "George Washington", Chris points out that Dan's knowledge can be very intricate, but random. He asks who carved Mount Rushmore, and Dan nonchalantly gave the correct name without even thinking about it, as well as the fact that his son had to complete it. However, when asked which U.S. state Mount Rushmore was in, Dan threw out a random guess, Ecuador.
• The Smurfette Principle: All but one of the chefs that Dan rescues in "Fancy Restaurant" are men. Justified as this is Truth in Television, ever see Ratatouille?
• Something Person: Terriffi-Guy.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: In "Dan vs. The Boss", Dan and Chris get hired to work in cubicles at some vaguely-defined office. Dan avoids his work as much as possible by hiding in the bathroom for hours every day—and somehow the boss decides to promote him to management. Then it turns out the said boss is literally a demon.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: "Gigundo-Mart".
• Spanner in the Works: Frequently, Dan's crusade for revenge will inadvertently stop an evil plan of some kind, intersect with whatever secret mission Elise has been sent on, or both.
• Spoiled Brat: Timmy.
• Springtime for Hitler: In "Reality TV", Dan, attempts to leave the competition by failing the contest. Only problem is that even his attempt at creating a fashion costume somehow causes him to win.
• Stab the Salad: In "Ski Trip", the Pleasant family does this three times. It later turns out they really are psychotic.
• Stealth Pun: In "The Bank", we learn that Dan's PIN is 5375. This spells "JERK" on a numberpad.
• Stepford Smiler: The family Chris meets in "Ski Trip" are mental patients that escaped and planned on eating Chris.
• Sticky Situation: Dan gets covered in maple syrup in "Canada", and with lemonade in "The Lemonade Stand Gang".
  Elise: Oh, that Dan. Always covered in something.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In "Elise's Parents", when Dan presents a very poorly edited recording of a conversation with Don as evidence that he's a mob boss, he tries to pass off the phrase "cupcake him" as slang for murder. Later, an actual mob boss uses the same phrase.
  • Dan wears a black shirt that says "JERK". The Hockey Mask Maniac wears a black shirt that says "MANIAC".
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Elise's ex, Colby, from "The Family Camping Trip", elicits this reaction in Dan, if Dan's comments are anything to go by.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Dan gives one at the end of "Ye Olde Shakespeare Dinner Theatre" with an impromptu victory poem, having spoken most of his dialogue in this episode in iambic pentameter.
  It lies in ruin, plain for all to see!
  ...That should teach you not to mess with - DAN!
• Subverted Suspicion Aesop: Nearly every episode follows this format. If Chris tries to tell Dan that he's overreacting, and whoever provoked Dan's ire doesn't really deserve retribution, nine times out of ten Dan will be proven right. Whoever Dan's angry at really is cartoonishly evil, part of some conspiracy, or just enough of a jerk to deserve whatever Dan does to them.
• Super Drowning Skills: Conscious Dan in "The Beach" after the ridiculous collapse of a boat with him and Chris far enough from shore.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Dan-Man has a cape, despite Dan's inability to fly. He trips over the cape in action.
• Super Villain: Turns out dentists are evil and want to take over the world. (At least one, anyway.)
  • Dan takes the identity of Dr. Jerkface in order to gain revenge on Terrifi-Guy in "The Superhero".
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In "The Parents", Dan engages in an epic fight with the hippies to save the kid he bonded with from being adopted by them. Then the adoption agency lady arrives with a cop and tells him that his background check disqualifies him from adopting the kid. Dan lets the kid go back to the hippies, but not before making him promise to steal from them at every possible opportunity.
  • "The Neighbors" has the titular neighbors at first, be amused by Dan’s antics and stories. But as they get progressively more deranged, like when he gets to how he almost *ahem* “does them in” purely because he’s suspicious of how nice they are? They are legitimately horrified that he tried to murder them; all because they were nice to him. After one of his attempts accidentally goes off? They immediately move far away from him and never want to see his face again.
• Suspicion Aesop: "The Neighbors" is the rare episode that plays this one completely straight. Dan can't believe that his new neighbors are as normal and nice as they seem, and concludes that they must be cannibals. But just this once, Dan's suspicions are completely unfounded, and the neighbors really are as nice as they seem. And they're so appalled by Dan's behavior that they leave for good at the end of the episode.
• Sword Fight: Probably the most inactive sword fight ever animated is in "Ye Olde Shakespearean Dinner Theatre".
• Take That!:
  • "The Monster Under the Bed" has Chris tell Dan that he should be lucky he's not being visited by Uggragoth of the DeviantArt.
    • And if that does not convince you of this trope, then Dan's disturbed reaction to the images surely will.
  • In "The Magician", the antagonist was modeled after Criss Angel.
  • In "Stupidity", one of the leading causes of Dan's crusade against the subject matter is a parody of Transformers, complete with the tagline "give up on story, more explosions."
  • Another, smaller, instance in "Stupidity": "TV shows just quote older TV shows," a possible Take That! to Family Guy.
  • In "Reality TV", Dan dates a woman who he mentions is "the only female wrestling fan he knows that's graduated high school."
  • A few are directed towards places in southern California.
  Chris: City of Industry? What's in City of Industry?
  Dan: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
• Tan Lines: Dan is pretty sallow already, but under his shirt and pants, he's extremely pale.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: In "The Fancy Restaurant", Dan writes a message on the cheesecake Chris and Elise ordered for dessert, telling Chris to meet him in the men's room. Elise comments, "This is weird," and the waiter immediately appears with another cheesecake reading, "It's not weird. Don't listen to Elise."
• Technical Euphemism:
  • In "Technology," when Elise reveals that she knows about Barry Ditmer's mind-control devices, Barry says he'd rather say "guiding synaptic processes from afar" instead of "mind control."
  • In "The Dinosaur", Dan says he's "a deceiver, a misleader, and a fabricator", not a liar.
• Tempting Fate: What would you expect from a cruise ship called the SS Funtanic?
• Theatre Phantom: Dan takes on a locally owned theatre by becoming a phantom to ruin it. He dons a mask with a Gag Nose so the crew won't recognize him.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Dan got angry at a squirrel for an unspecified reason and was unable to find afterwards, so he decides to hijack some nuclear missiles and destroy all life on Earth to make sure that he kills the right squirrel. Elise stops him from going through with it though.
• There Was a Door: After infiltrating the Salvation Armed Forces store to get the file on his accidentally-donated car, Dan breaks the window to get back out, only to remember he'd left the file inside and casually go back in and out through the unlocked door. Revealing not only the broken window but the infiltration plan itself (he had hidden in a chair Chris donated) as pointless.
• They Killed Kenny Again: In several episodes, Dan's car is destroyed, vandalized, etc and it re-appears to its original semi-destroyed and vandalized state by the next episode. However, unlike the other examples of this trope, the damage to the car oftentimes jump starts the plot for that episode.
  • Eventually justified in-universe: Dan's mechanic repairs the car for next to nothing, simply because he enjoys the challenge.
• This Is My Side: In "The Ski Trip", Dan and Elise get Snowed-In a cabin together, so Dan divides the cabin in half, going so for as to declare his side Dantopia.
• This Is Reality: Played with in "The Wolfman".
• Those Two Guys: The two paramedics.
• Title Drop: Actually done Once per Episode when Dan screams the name of whatever is bugging him then it cuts to the title showing said subject.
• Title-Only Opening / No Theme Tune'
• Title Reading Gag: Each episode is titled after the thing that Dan is trying to ruin in the episode ("Dan vs. Traffic," "Dan vs. the Mall Santa," etc.) Near the beginning of each episode, when Dan gets angry at that thing, he yells it in a Skyward Scream as the title of the episode pops up on screen.
• Too Dumb to Live: In "Stupidity", the antagonist's goal is to lower educational and entertainment standards so that all Americans are too dumb to live. Chris and Dan's near terminal stupidity at the end of the episode (Chris managed to set himself on fire and Dan tried to remove fire ants by beating himself with a two-by-four) convinces him that his job is done and he moves the operation to China.
• Toon Physics: Used sometimes, like when Dan hid an entire car behind a scrawny tree.
• Trash of the Titans: Dan's apartment.
  "How can a human being live like this? It's like a giant petri dish."
  • Even Dan acknowledges how filthy it is.
    "Man... I really need to vacuum...!"
    "How does this place get messier when I'm not even here?"
    • In "Dan", Dan settles for the fancy redeco that the Imposter left, only for it to return to its usual mess following a "Ten Minutes Later" card.
• Tuckerization: Dan and Chris are named after the show's creators, Dan Mandel and Chris Pearson.
• Unexpected Kindness:
  • In "The Family Thanksgiving", Elise reminds Dan that her parents have invited him to their house for Thanksgiving. He initially doesn't believe her because of their usual contempt for him, but when he realizes it's true, he's stunned. Her parents are also being unusually friendly (i.e. offering him lemonade and calling him "honey") and he wonders if they're plotting against him, but then they apologize for having been so disdainful to him. Then it's subverted when it's revealed that they were just manipulating him so they could get his deviled egg recipe.
  • In "The Neighbors", Dan is suspicious of his new neighbors, Jennifer and Jason. When they give Chris a pie, Dan thinks they're trying to poison him, but the pie isn't poisoned after all. Later, Dan thinks they're cannibals. When Elise forces him to go to their residence to prove him wrong, he has a casual chat with them. He realizes he has more in common with Jason (who reveals that he has some anger issues too) than he initially thought. Unfortunately, he ends up driving them out of his apartment anyway when he admits he'd been trying to make them leave (he expected them to laugh his statements off).
• The Unfavorite: In "The Family Camping Trip", Don states that Elise's ex Colby is the closest thing he has to a son. Elise Sr. then asks him about their actual son, Ben.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Dan himself, like 95% of the time.
  • Even though Chris saved everyone from a serial killer and proved himself a man, Elise's father STILL hates him and swears to get back at him. He's probably angry that Chris one-upped Colby, who's more of a son too, but Colby was ready to let everyone but Elise die.
• Unreliable Illustrator: In Elise's flashback in "New Mexico" her parents look no younger than they do in the present.
• Unstoppable Rage: Impressively, Dan, in a state of berserker rage, hits a pane of bulletproof glass with his head hard enough to crack it in "The Bank".
• Unwilling Suspension: Dan does this to a costumed kid in "The Wolfman" and to the commissioner of baseball in "Baseball".
• Vanity License Plate: Chris's car has a license plate that reads, "PUSHOVR".
• Versus Title
• Villain Protagonist: Dan varies, depending on how badly he's actually been wronged, but this trope peaks with "Hero", where Dan tries to get back at Terrifi-Guy by trying to upstage him as a new Superhero... for about five minutes. He then quickly switches gears to become the supervillain, "Dr. Jerkface".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Dan the Jerkass is best friends with Nice Guy Chris.
• Vocal Dissonance: In flashbacks to Elise's childhood, she still has the same voice. Even in "The Magician", with a slight lisp.
  • As do Dan and Chris in the flashback to their childhood in "Summer Camp".
• Weaksauce Weakness: Terrifi-Guy's is hot sauce.
• Weirdness Magnet: Dan. In at least three episodes random beings (including a dinosaur of all things) mess with his car for no reason whatsoever, prompting him to hunt them down, and in another episode, he has to deal with a giant tentacled monster hiding under his bed (this one was actually averted since it was only Chris pulling a prank).
• We Want Our Jerk Back!:
  • Subverted in "Dan". When Dan seems to have given up on busting the fake Dan and takes the pleasant personality of Biff Wellington, Chris is excited and wants it to stay that way. Elise is skeptical, and it seems as if she's going to play the trope straight, but all she really does is remark that "she knew he hadn't changed" when the cops take the Fake Dan away.
  • Played straight in "Anger Management". Chris is so unnerved at Dan's new pleasant attitude he actually gets angry for once and effectively swaps roles with him.
  • Then played straight in "Anger Management". Chris is horrified that Dan (having taken the lessons in Anger Management to heart and found inner peace) won't get payback against Amber for extorting him. When Dan invites him over for herbal tea, Chris says that he doesn't even know who Dan is anymore. Of course, when Dan does go back to normal at the end of the episode, Chris seems more resigned than happy.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Specifically, at the end of "Dancing", what happened to Mr. Mumbles? Mr. Mumbles was left alone at Dan's place long enough that, by Chris' account, she was emaciated and not moving. Before a week-long Time Skip. Chris asks what happened to her at the end of the episode, but Dan only turns on TV to show the dance hall getting blown. And she's not seen until two episodes later.
  • Made explicitly clear what happened to Mr. Mumbles by Chris' remark of "I thought we got rid of all the explosives," and Dan turning on the TV right after Chris asked what happened to Mr. Mumbles. In case you didn't figure it out, Mr. Mumbles went and put them back, continuing the trend of Dan's personality rubbing off on her. And considering Mr. Mumbles is seen again alive and well...
  • "Elise's Parents" ends up establishing that Elise Sr. is actually a Crime Lord. Even though there are other times it would have been relevant, this doesn't come up again until the penultimate episode of the third season, "The Family Cruise".
• What Is This Feeling?: Whenever someone shows Dan kindness, he is often left dumbfounded and not sure how to react.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In "Dancing", Chris expresses shock that Elise stuffed Dan in a box and mailed him to a ghost town populated by fight-dancing madmen to keep Dan from endangering her chances of winning a dance contest. Doesn't really go anywhere since Elise pacifies him with a shoulder rub.
• What Would X Do?: Dan asks himself "What would Mr. Mumbles do?" when trapped on a roof. He then displays cat-like agility by scaling a drainage pipe, landing on the stairway railing, then jumping the remaining distance to the sidewalk. He is amazed it actually worked.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Averted; Chris's ID in "The Animal Shelter" places the setting in Van Nuys, Los Angeles.
• Wholesome Crossdresser:
  • Ty, from "Ye Olde Shakespeare Dinner Theatre".
  "It's for a play."
  • Vinnie, from "Elise's Parents", wears a dress even when no longer undercover though since he's actually part of the mob, he may also qualify as a Creepy Crossdresser.
• William Shatner: Is on Dan's enemies list.
• William Telling: In the Origins Episode, a young Dan at summer camp is tied up by a Gang of Bullies to shoot apples off his head, but Chris rescues him before they take a shot. At the end of the episode, after their cabin take over, Dan and Chris leave the camp as their abusive Social Darwinist counselor is subject to the same treatment. This is basically a form of execution, as the campers about to loose the bows point out they were never allowed to practice before.
• Women Are Wiser: Elise. Not always, however...
• Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer: "Baseball":
  Chris: Okay, I'll go.
  Dan: I don't want to hear your excuses, you miserable— wait, did you say "okay?"
• World Pillars: Canada is seen to be supported by some sort of ice pillar in a cave inside a mountain which, after getting destroyed, ends up flooding Canada with snow and ruining it.
• WPUN: In "Dan vs. Chris", Dan listens to a radio station KLIE, The Lie, featuring a giveaway for a ray gun and covering the UFO attack on Santa Fe.
• Writing Around Trademarks: In "Dan", there's clearly a poster of The Ramones in Dan's living room, but a torn corner and other things cover parts of all the words.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: One of the actors at Ye Olde Shakespearean Dinner Theatre keeps misusing archaic grammar. This really pisses Dan off.
  Actor: Have at thou!
  Dan: Have at thee, you beslubbering canker-blossom!
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Don't mess with Dan. Ever. If you're lucky, he'll only burn your house down.
  • Elise is a super-spy with deadly combat training and expertise in all sorts of powerful sci-fi technology. She's not as quick to anger as Dan is, but she can hold as well as he can — and her plans usually work. Messing with her doofy, oblivious, average-looking husband is not a good idea.

---