Fanfic / Marooned in Madagascar

Marooned in Madagascar is the first of an All Hail King Julien Continuation Series Fic written by WDGHK.

It picks up almost immediately after “The End is Here”, where, after Clover’s recent departure, King Julien and his people are enjoying having a new protector in the form of Alex, but the lion and his companions are all too eager to return to New York, with the aid of the penguins. After trying and failing to convince each of the zoo animals to stay, King Julien enlists Pancho to “delay their voyage”…without their knowing. And so, the wacky antics of King Julien and his peeps continue.

Marooned in Madagascar is followed up by three more stories, A Foe in Need, which sees the return of Karl, LALA's Last Stand, where Abner and Becca make one last attempt to overthrow Julien by conspiring with the fossa, and Making the Wrong Choice, which offers an explanation for how the various Madagascar installments are linked to each other. A fifth entry, The Odd Family, is currently being written.

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The stories contain examples of:

Series as a Whole

• Alternate Universe: Making the Wrong Choice establishes that All Hail King Julien takes place in an alternate timeline from the Madagascar movies and The Penguins of Madagascar tv series, since King Julien’s actions in those installments (namely abandoning his people) would be very out of character for the AHKJ version.
• Amusingly Awful Aim: Karl is shown to have this whenever he uses his plasma gun, preventing him from easily scoring a victory for the protagonists whenever he uses it, and he fails to assassinate Bone-Fossa thrice because of it.
• Anachronistic Animal: Crowned eagles are the go-to species to play the Brutal Bird of Prey. The Malagasy crowned eagle did exist and did prey on lemurs, but they died out during the 16th century (alongside giant lemurs and elephant birds), leaving only its mainland cousin in Africa.
• Animal Jingoism:
  • The crocodiles, and especially the panicky Crocodile Ambassador, are absolutely terrified of Gloria (a hippopotamus), due to the hippos’ reputation for savagely killing crocodiles.
  • While they already share a common enemy in Julien and Clover, Wigman becomes especially enthusiastic about fighting on Bone-Fossa’s behalf in LALA's Last Stand after finding out that his opponent will be a lion. As Wigman puts it, killing a lion is a major honor for any wildebeest.
  • The fabled animosity between mongooses and snakes is so strong, that even Savio (a New World serpent) intuitively knows what mongooses are and that they pose a threat to him after mistaking Mary Ann for one in The Odd Family.
• Ascended Extra: Following his Heel–Face Turn, Karl becomes part of King Julien’s entourage, as head of security for the kingdom (and effectively co-advisor), replacing Clover as one of his main allies.
• Big Bad: Bone-Fossa becomes this after seizing control of the fossa clan, with Thrax (Uncle Julien’s former gladiator fossa) becoming his second-in-command.
• Character Development: Bone-Fossa was already smarter and more ambitious than the other fossa but those traits only grow over the course of the stories, to the point that he becomes a self-taught Evil Counterpart to Mary Ann. In LALA’s Last Stand, he devises a pretty clever plan and almost succeeds in killing Alex, and by The Odd Family, he has become more eloquent, almost ditching his species’ Hulk Speak entirely.
• Dark Secret: At the end of Marooned in Madagascar, Julien is forced to sabotage the Zoosters' ship, so they will remain in the kingdom and continue protecting it from the fossa. All of Julien’s subjects were given the rundown on his plan in advance and agreed to go through with it (despite Maurice’s objections) and the lemurs continue to keep the Zoosters in the dark going forward, knowing that if someone spilled the beans, it would strain their relationship with their new protectors.
• Easily Forgiven: A Running Gag, where Julien is usually more than willing to forgive his old enemies as long as they’re sincere about their regrets, regardless of their crimes. In his own words, “Being a hater is not the KJ way”.
  • Though oddly averted with the Crocodile Ambassador, who infamously sold out the others to Koto during the War of the Beasts. While the lemurs and crocs remain on good terms, Julien is notably dismissive and passive-aggressive towards the crocodile leader, referring to him as a “treacherous loser”, and in LALA’s Last Stand, it’s shown that Karl’s fly drones spy on the latter, alongside Bone-Fossa, Uncle Julien, Crimson and the penguins, who are considered threats or potential threats by Julien.
• The Ghost:
  • Clover is frequently mentioned but never shows up in the stories (sans by AU cameos), due to now being the queen of the faraway Mountain Lemur Kingdom. ^note  It’s a deliberate choice by the author, who thinks that if one of the protagonist’s best friends gets Put on a Bus, their absence needs to be felt by both the characters and readers.
  • The same is true for Doctor Blowhole, to the point that all the other characters think that he’s just a figment of the penguins’ deranged psyche, while Julien and his entourage try to use him as a means to cover up the truth about the Zoosters' stranding. Of course, we know that he’s real.
  • In Karl's flashback in A Foe in Need, Karl tells Chauncey (before Bruce reveals to him that he murdered the cockroach) that he meet Roger the alligator.
• Fantastic Racism: Has two overarching examples:
  • Due to being a fossa, Mary Ann naturally becomes a social pariah once she becomes a citizen of Julien’s kingdom, with even the nicest people like Ted and Dorothy being terrified of her, while others, like Hector and Tammy would rather see her chased out with pitchforks and torches. The scorn and ostracization carry over to Mary Ann’s husband, Horst, who is treated as a dangerous loon for being married to a fossa.
    • In general, the lemurs and other vegetarian animals seem to be prejudiced against meat-eaters, even if the latter aren’t bothering them in any way, like Julien’s shock upon finding out that Karl is a meat-eater in A Foe in Need.
  • The penguins, especially Skipper, are very patronizing towards the lemurs, treating them like hapless, backwater imbeciles, and are even willing to pillage the latter’s resources for their own gain (like trying to highjack King Julien’s plane without his consent).
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Averted. Marooned in Madagascar, set just two days after Clover’s departure, shows just how heartbroken both Julien and Maurice are over her absence, and they continue to greatly miss her for a while. Early on, there’s even a Running Gag where Julien demands Clover’s assistance for some miscellaneous problem, only to then morosely realize that she’s no longer with them.
• Full-Boar Action: Bushpigs frequently show up as minor antagonistic figures, being depicted as non-sentiment, foul-tempered brutes. Making the Wrong Choice reveals that in the movie timeline, Clover was killed by a herd of them while trying to protect Julien, after the latter tried to adopt one of their piglets as his pet. In The Odd Family, Alex gets chased around by an enraged bushpig, which Julien tricks into demolishing the second “HELP” sign the Zoosters built, to ensure that they won’t be rescued.
• Heel–Face Turn: A recurring theme across the fics.
  • Marooned in Madagascar: While she was no longer an antagonist by the end of the series and renewed her relationship with Horst, Mary Ann abandons the fossa clan entirely in this and becomes a Token Minority citizen of Julien’s kingdom.
  • A Foe In Need: Likewise, while his last canonical appearance had him retire from his quest to destroy King Julien, Karl fully reforms by the end of the fic and becomes part of Julien’s personal entourage.
  • LALA’s Last Stand: Abner and Becca finally learn that King Julien wasn’t the tyrant they made him out to be (as well as being the same person as Banana Guy Mike). While the two parties reconcile, LALA’s final scheme to try and kill the king ends with them being banished into exile.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • As mentioned in the Anachronistic Animal, the Malagasy crowned eagles had gone extinct in 16th century, meaning that the ones appearing in the fanfic are those that live on the mainland.
  • The keeper of Orphanage of Fear in The Odd Family is a pangolin, which are only native to mainland Africa.
• Original Flavor: Sans the sparse use of cuss words and some of the darker themes the show exploited being more explicit, the stories very much follow the high-octane comical tone of the original.
• Patchwork Fic: While mainly based on All Hail King Julien, it also adapts elements from the other Madagascar entries, most notably by having the stranded Zoosters, Skipper’s team, and chimps be part of the supporting cast, as well as having occasional references and/or cameos by The Penguins of Madagascar characters. The penguins are also characterized after their portrayals in their own show.
• Sir Swearsalot: Hector is the most inclined towards cussing, likely due to being too old and cranky to care.
• Status Quo Is God: Averted. A major theme in the series is change. Clover leaves Julien’s kingdom permanently, the Zoosters and penguins are stuck on Madagascar, Karl loses Chauncey but befriends Julien, Abner and Becca learn that they misjudged Julien and perform a Heel–Face Turn, Mary Ann comes to live with the lemurs and her and Horst become adoptive parents, and so on.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: The penguins, sans Private, aren’t cast in the most flattering light. But Skipper’s rampant paranoia and patronizing attitude towards mammals, Kowalski’s self-aggrandizing narcissism and Rico…well, being an Ax-Crazy psychopath are all well-established canonical character traits. But since we see them from the lemurs’ point of view, their nobler characteristics are far less evident, although they are still willing to help the Zoosters return to New York and will jump in to save a civilian from harm at the drop of a hat.
• Unusual Euphemism: All the lemurs usually say "Frank" (the highest ranking Sky God) in place of "god" ("What in Frank's name?", "For Frank's sake", "Frank-forsaken", and so on).

Marooned in Madagascar

• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Following his Moral Dilemma, Julien agrees with Pancho that they need to keep the Zoosters on Madagascar, even if by force. Maurice tells him that this would be sabotage and keeping them hostage, but Julien insists that they are merely "delaying their voyage". Without the Zoosters' knowledge that is.
• Butt-Monkey: Literal example with Mason and Phill. They were stuck in their cage and completely forgotten about after the penguins highjacked the cargo ship and voyaged to Antarctica and then to Madagascar. Alex and Gloria end up finding them by accident and they are on the verge of death from hypothermia. Julien is confused by this, since his experience with Stanislav and the cosmonaut chimps left him with the impression that chimpanzees were cold-weather animals.
• Defector from Decadence: Mary Ann and Horst come to King Julien begging him to offer Mary Ann asylum, otherwise she will get killed by the other fossa for being a traitor. Julien is reluctant at first but ultimately gives in, under the condition that Mary Ann keeps her savage urges under check. Alex helps by vouching for her (due to sympathizing with her plight following his own savage episode) and by telling her that she can keep herself fed on fish.
• Early Instalment Weirdness: There is one reference to how all the lemurs who aren’t part of the main or supporting cast all look the same, which is how Maurice noticed Horst’s absence during the lemur’s meeting discussing the Zoosters’ arrival. This gets dropped in the other stories, where random extras are usually described as distinct species of lemur (more in line with the movies).
• Hate at First Sight: The King Julien/Skipper animosity from The Penguins of Madagascar carries over. Skipper is immediately suspicious of Julien the moment he sees him, and the feelings become mutual once Julien picks up on the penguins’ condescending attitudes towards him and his people, as well as their refusal to help the lemurs in their time of need.
• In Spite of a Nail: Alex and friends still get stranded on Madagascar because their ship is out of fuel, but the reason behind the lack of fuel is different.
• Moral Dilemma: After failing to convince each of the zoo animals to stay, King Julien is left with only one option; to sabotage their ship so they will be forced to stay (upon Pancho’s suggestion). While Maurice is vehemently against it, Julien argues that it’s either that or leave themselves as a walking buffet for the fossa. The other lemurs agree to this plan in a heartbeat, but Maurice is left torn up with immense guilt.
• Red Herring: Through sheer dumb luck. The penguins almost instantly find out that someone (Pancho) drilled a hole into the ship’s fuel tank in order to keep them hostage on the island. But luckily for Julien, instead of him getting caught red-handed, Skipper immediately assumes that this was the work of his marine mammal Arch-Enemy, Doctor Blowhole! This also prompts the penguins to go on a man-hunt for the villainous dolphin, leaving the lemurs’ secret safe for a while.
• Riches to Rags: Following Bone-Fossa’s coup, Mary Ann goes from Fossa Queen to just being Horst’s housewife. Though she’s content with her situation, as she and Horst can at least finally settle down and be Happily Married.

A Foe in Need

• Broken Ace: Karl spends the entire story being a weeping, somber shell of his former self, but he finally regains his vigor at the climax, when he uses his plasma gun to save King Julien and Ted from Bone-Fossa.
• The Bus Came Back: Karl returns after retiring to Florida for only two months, thanks to Bruce.
• A Day in the Limelight: For Ted, who here serves as Maurice's substitute (as the latter has to attend his sister's wedding), as well as his alter-ego Snake later on.
• Darker and Edgier: While still having lots of humor, this story is notably darker than the rest, with the plot focusing on Karl’s depression, existential crisis and eventually being Driven to Suicide, which Julien and Snake have to forcefully prevent, as well as involving the cold-blooded murder of a sentient being (Chauncey).
• Foreshadowing: After Melman spots Karl snuggling with Julien in the latter’s bed and shares the news with his zoo mates, Phil is conspicuously absent. It's later revealed in the story that he got bribed with bananas by Xixi so she can share this scandalous news with the entire kingdom.
• Furry Reminder: It’s revealed that Karl is indeed a predator, as Julien and Ted find his hut littered with the bones of tiny animals, much to their horror, while Karl mentions that he never brought it up before because he thought it was “obvious”; with him having claws, fangs and being related to the fossa. Later, when Julien blows off Karl's grievances about being lied to and strung along all these years while worrying more about his own kingly image, Karl goes livid, snarls, and claws Julien’s arm before running off on all fours.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Following an accidental conversation with Hector while trying to avoid Julien’s dance party, Karl, at long last, learns that his former Arch-Enemy isn’t a great genius but a Cloudcuckoolander with unlimited dumb luck. Realizing that their "legendary feud" was nothing but a lie, coupled with Chauncey’s recent death, causes Karl to spiral into an existential crisis that ultimately results in him losing his will to live.
• Hate Sink: Bruce was already one in the show, being an obnoxious Smug Snake Frat Bro, Big Brother Bully, Corrupt Corporate Executive, and a misogynist, but he crosses the line here by killing Chauncey purely to hurt his little brother in the worst way possible.
• Innocently Insensitive: When he’s not outright being dismissive towards Karl, King Julien is this, from constantly talking about Chauncey like he was just some inane pet to making halfhearted attempts at cheering Karl up, like dragging him to a dance party in the fanaloka’s honor, complete with a banner saying “Get Over Yourself, Wuss”, despite Karl being an introvert who does not like parties and proceeds to have panic attacks after being forced onto the dance floor.
• Killed Off for Real: Chauncey, who gets squashed by Bruce.
• Mistaken for Gay: With Karl being Karl, he makes his grand return snuggling with Julien in the latter’s bed, but this time sobbing. Unfortunately for them, Melman happens to walk by and makes the obvious conclusion. He shares the story with his zoo mates, who all agree to keep it a secret…until Phill gets bribed by Xixi to spill the beans, and she shares the scandalous news with the entire kingdom.
  • Apparently, this also happens to Ted all the time, despite him being married to Dorothy, to the point of constantly being called a bachelor by random people, which frustrates him to no end. Though his manlier alter-ego, Snake, can see why that happens and keeps mocking him for it.
• Open-Minded Parent: Subverted. Princess Julienne and Prince Barty both fall into a coma after hearing that their son might be gay. Julienne later wakes up and joins the angry mob trying to barge into Julien’s plane, yelling at her son that he will be disowned if the rumors are true.
• Revenge: Why Bruce killed Chauncey, as payback for Karl destroying his poo-coffee empire. He originally planned to give Karl a serious pummeling, but then figured that killing Karl’s Only Friend would be far more effective, as Karl had grown used to Bruce’s beatings.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: During his rant to Karl, Hector briefly mentions suffering from PTSD, due to seeing his mother’s abduction as a child and then serving during a war.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Julien doesn’t see an insect such as Chauncey as a person and is therefore vexed by Karl being so heartbroken about Chauncey’s death. Bruce also cruelly mocks him over it. Not so much with the others, especially Maurice, who immediately sympathizes with Karl, because he too almost lost his best friend (King Julien) on countless occasions.

LALA’s Last Stand

• The Ahnold: Wigman Wildeebest is this again. Upon seeing him, Marty even blurts, “Who the blazes is the Schwarzenegger wildebeest?”.
• Back from the Dead: Wigman Wildebeest is brought back as a Revenant Zombie by Bone-Fossa using Masikura’s resurrection spell.
• Continuity Porn: Almost all the recurring characters from All Hail King Julien show up as spectators in the battle arena, including King Joey, Hans, and Fred, with Uncle King Julien serving as the announcer.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Alex gets fooled into fighting the fossa’s champion Thrax in a death match (though Alex refuses to kill him and just plans to "rough him up a bit"). Unfortunately for Alex, the fossa’s real champion is Wigman, and Alex gets absolutely destroyed in the arena. Wigman would have finished him off with his Signature Move (the same one that killed Grandma Rose), if the others hadn’t managed to bring Masikura back in time to undo the resurrection spell.
• A Day in the Limelight: For Abner and Becca, who serve as the main characters. Though their actions in this story lead to them being Put on a Bus.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Wigman’s final fate. According to Masikura, you can only go to Frankri-La once.
• Easily Forgiven: Played with. After the day is saved, King Julien is happy to forgive Abner and Becca. Unfortunately, the rest of the kingdom isn’t so forgiving about high treason and demands that the couple be executed, so Julien manages to find a compromise with his people by exiling Abner and Becca and leaving them as servants to his uncle and Zora in Feartopia.
• The Heavy: The undead Wigman serves as this to Bone-Fossa, being used to battle Alex in the gladiator arena.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Becca’s reaction upon finding out that Julien is innocent and that they have doomed him and Alex to death. Abner is a bit slower on the uptake.
• Unknown Rival: King Julien keeps forgetting that LALA are one of his enemies, due to Abner and Becca’s rather lackluster track record. Maurice convinces him that, on account of his more serious enemies being dealt with, that this would be the ideal time to try and bury the hatchet, but due to them dawdling on the matter for so long, Abner and Becca get roped into Bone-Fossa’s plot to kill Alex.
• Too Dumb to Live: Abner and Becca fall for Bone-Fossa’s claim that he sympathizes with their plight of being ruled by a "tyrant king" and reluctantly decide to work with him. Even when King Julien keeps switching between himself and his Banana Guy Mike persona right in front of them during their forced audience, it takes them a while to finally put two and two together. Mary Ann, who’s been hired as Julien’s bodyguard during the meeting, even consider breaking her rule of not eating lemurs by invoking this trope.
• Villain Team-Up: LALA and the fossa (and Wigman too). Naturally, Bone-Fossa plans to eat the revolutionary couple once they served their purpose of stealing Masikura's resurrection spell.

Making the Wrong Choice

• Awful Wedded Life: In the timeline where Julien didn't leave Crimson at the altar, they have 27 children (with more on the way), Queen Crimson is using up all of the kingdom’s resources for her own frivolous fun while leaving her people to bleed dry, and she has reduced Julien to a simpering, henpecked Househusband.
• The Bad Guy Wins: We see one timeline where Koto successfully killed Sage during their youth, by orchestrating a bushpig stampede and pushing his brother off a cliff, and this led to him successfully conquering Madagascar in record time; turning it into a barren wasteland, enslaving all of its inhabitants, keeping Julien as his fanning slave (while also putting him in the Iron Booty) and brainwashing Clover into being his queen with a love potion from Maggie the Unwashed, with plans to have her carry his children. The Zoosters still got marooned in Madagascar, but were slain by the mountain lemurs, and stuffed and mounted in Koto’s throne room.
• The Caligula: Queen Crimson completely destroyed the kingdom by wasting all their resources on gifts for herself.
• The Cameo: Various characters make brief appearances, such as Marlene, Darla, Roy, Bada and Bing, Sonya, and the land shark that hounded Mort.
• Canon Welding: Subverted. The movies, The Penguins of Madagascar and All Hail King Julien are shown to be in the same universe but represent alternate timelines, with the latter being the most disconnected from the rest, as this King Julien has no intentions of abandoning his kingdom and is gobsmacked that any version of himself would do it. The Penguins of Madagascar is shown to be canon with the first two movies, but it and the third one represent branching timelines, where in the former, Julien, Maurice, and Mort sailed to New York on their own, while in the latter, they joined the Zoosters on their trip to Europe.
• Cerebus Retcon: In the movies, Julien abandoning his kingdom is given next to no fanfare, and in The Penguins of Madagascar, him having a kingdom back in Madagascar is only occasionally alluded to. Naturally, with All Hail King Julien fleshing out said kingdom and many of its inhabitants, Julien abandoning them and never coming back in the alternate timelines is presented in a much less flattering light, with Uncle King Julien taking back the crown in his nephew’s absence, and regardless if he stays at the Central Park Zoo or joins Circus Zaragoza, Julien’s still a callous idiot who abandoned his subjects for inane and selfish reasons and effectively gave up his kingship. At least in the movies’ timeline, he found true love with Sonya, but in The Penguins of Madagascar one, he’s reduced to being little more than the village idiot at Central Park Zoo, with the penguins, Marlene, and the other animals considering him an obnoxious nuisance and/or tolerating him out of simple pity, and even Maurice lost respect for him due to Julien’s callousness, ending the brotherly relationship they once had.
• A Day in the Limelight: For Masikura, who uses her magic crystal orb to show Julien, Maurice, Karl, and Mort various alternate timelines.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Clover is revealed to have died in the movie timeline while saving Julien from an attacking sounder of bushpigs, not long after he was crowned. Masikura explains that the lack of the former’s positive influence was a contributing factor in stunting the alternate Julien’s personal growth and leading to him remaining reckless and selfish.
• Dung Fu: In one of Masikura’s visions, Darla the baboon does this to King Julien in response to one of his morning announcements waking her up.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the movie timeline, Karl says that King Julien's voice sounds off, a nod to the fact that Sacha Baron Cohen voiced King Julien in the films whereas Danny Jacobs took over the role for the TV series.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In the timeline leading to The Penguins of Madagascar, when the lemurs try to sail all the way from Africa to New York in a small lifeboat, Julien tries to ask Judy (the lemur’s water goddess) to help them with their voyage, and the trio is promptly swallowed by a whale who takes them to New York. As usual, it’s left ambiguous if this is just classic KJ dumb luck or if the gods are indeed helping the king.
• Other Me Annoys Me: King Julien is, to put it mildly, horrified by the actions of his alternate selves, not just for abandoning their people without a care in the world, but even more so for trading down their royal status in Madagascar to be the village idiot of Central Park Zoo or run away with a circus performer respectively.
• Riches to Rags: Ultimately what happens to the other two versions of King Julien, with one outright throwing his crown away so he can join a circus with his ursine lover. Of course, they are too airheaded to realize their mistakes.
• Skewed Priorities: Played for Laughs. Despite Maurice and Karl’s constantly urging him to stop an escalating feud between two lemur families (who have even purchased lethal weapons from Pancho and Fairfax), Julien is more interested in exploring What If? scenarios with Masikura’s crystal orb. After being thoroughly traumatized by the experience, he finally sobers up and decides to deal with the real issue.
• Swallowed Whole: How Julien, Maurice, and Mort arrived in New York in the The Penguins of Madagascar timeline. There, Julien tried to cross the Atlantic on a small boat with Maurice and Mort rowing and after slowly realizing that this might not have been the best idea, he tried to bargain with their water goddess (Judy) by offering Mort as a sacrifice. By coincidence or not, they end up swallowed by a passing whale and eventually reach New York.
• Too Dumb to Live: The alternate Juliens very much embody this trope, from leaving a gecko as the substitute king to trying to cross the Atlantic on a rowboat. The main Julien is no genius, but even he is shocked by the sheer stupidity of some of their actions.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: If King Julien leaves Madagascar, his uncle takes back the crown, to the suffering of the other lemurs, sans Hector. To him, either of the two Juliens is an equally lousy ruler. Then there's the timeline where Koto won the War of the Beasts...
• What If?: The main premise of the fic, as we get to see alternate timelines where Julien or other characters made different choices during crucial moments that wound up having far-reaching consequences.

The Odd Family

• Accidental Hero: Alex saves Julien from Bone-Fossa by unknowingly grabbing the latter instead of a dummy during a press conference, and uses the fossa ruler like a pair of nunchucks before tossing him into the river. He does get a more genuinely heroic moment immediately after though, when he talks down the angry mob from trying to lynch the accused Mary Ann.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Mary Ann and Horst are shown to be social outcasts, with nobody, not even the nicest people like Ted and Dorothy wanting anything to do with them, even though Mary Ann has been on her best behavior for seven months.
• Affably Evil: Gladys the crowned eagle is very cordial towards King Julien while holding him hostage and planning to use him as hunting practice for her upcoming chicks. She stops being affable, however, once Keke throws one of her eggs off the tree as a distraction.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance:
  • Why the author made Keke a kinkajou, since they are tawny-furred carnivorans with claws and fangs (like a fossa), while also being fruit-eaters that act like and physically resemble lemurs. When Bone-Fossa first learns who Keke is, he pauses and wonders if Mary Ann and Horst “broke some laws of nature”.
  • Coupled with Furry Reminder with Hector, who, after Julien and Keke shave him with his own razor blade (which he had since his days in the army) and then throw it away, grows a large white beard that extends all the way to his ears. This makes him look even more like a Grumpy Old Man, but it's also a reminder that he's a black-and-white ruffed lemur (but one that likes to stay clean-shaven).
• Babies Make Everything Better: Downplayed. Mary Ann and Horst are already Happily Married but the former is longing to take the next step but knows it’s impossible since she and her husband are biologically incompatible. So when Keke arrives on the scene and is placed in the odd couple’s care, Mary Ann is very enthusiastic about embracing her role as a mother.
• Bait-and-Switch: Chapter 5 ends with a hawk-riding lemur arriving on the scene, which Julien assumes to be Clover coming for his birthday party. It’s then revealed to be Nigel (the Captain of the Mountain Lemurs) who has come to inform Julien that Queen Clover cannot accept his invitation due to currently waging war against invading mangabeys. Julien spends a few minutes in willful denial about Nigel not being Clover before breaking down and not-so-gracefully accepting the reality that his old friend still won’t return.
• Birds of a Feather: Like in Marooned in Madagascar, Alex is shown to sympathize with Mary Ann’s plight, because he himself is a carnivore and knows what it’s like struggling with predatory instincts. He passionately speaks on her behalf and defuses the angry mob that wanted to lynch her, and then escorts Mary Ann and Keke back home so they won’t be harassed. To a lesser extent, fellow carnivore Karl is also shown being sympathetic to the fossa and willing to support her, but he’s not particularly helpful due to being more focused on proving himself to King Julien.
• Black Comedy:
  • The entire scene in the medical hut is filled with this, as all the characters try to snap Victoria out of her petrified state, only to find out that she’s a taxidermized corpse after Julien accidentally pulls her head off.
  • When Rebecca and her son get eaten by the mystery predator, her husband arrives on the scene and realizes what has happened…and promptly cheers and thanks Frank for “giving him back his freedom” before running off to the bar.
  • During the scuffle with Bone-Fossa and his clan, one fossa grabs hold of Karl’s plasma gun, only to look into the barrel and pull the trigger, blasting himself in the face and reducing it to a charred skull before dropping dead.
  • Mary Ann's Imagine Spot where she brutally kills Tammy.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Keke establishes herself as one the moment she arrives on the island, being a cheeky Tomboy who mouths off to any adult that opposes or annoys her (or she just deems lame) and has a penchant for pranks.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: After his pranking spree, Julien gets caught and carried off by a giant crowned eagle named Gladys, with Keke hitching a ride in a poorly thought-out attempt to rescue him. After Keke drops one of Gladys's eggs out of the nest as a distraction to help Julien escape, the vengeance-crazed eagle pursues them across the jungle and tries to tear Keke apart. After they, together with Mary Ann and Karl, try to escape back home via the river, Gladys reappears and pushes their log toward turbulent waters.
• The Bus Came Back: The penguins return after being gone for seven months but leave just as quickly. Half of them anyway, as Skipper stations Kowalski and Private in Julien’s kingdom to search for Dr. Blowhole and protect the civilians if need be. Naturally, Julien and Maurice fear that the penguins will find out about their Dark Secret.
• Child Hater: Both Hector and Kowalski don’t take kindly to Keke right from the get-go, and the feeling is mutual. Hector calls her a freeloader and later refers to her as Mary Ann’s “burden”, while Kowalski takes it very personally when, during their first interaction, Keke mocks his Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness tendencies and insinuates that he’s a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, despite Private repeatedly trying to explain to him that she’s just a kid acting out.
• Cuteness Equals Forgiveness: Keke thinks that will get her out of trouble with Mary Ann for getting caught by an eagle and lost in the jungle, and she tests it on King Julien, who is instantly swayed. But when she tries it on Mary Ann, the fossa doesn’t buy it.
• Cuteness Proximity: Keke is a child kinkajou, so naturally, she has that effect on people. Though it wears off with many of them once they get to know her character.
• Dog Got Sent to a Farm: What Julien tells Keke to spare her from the fact that her mother is dead, though he puts his own spin on it by claiming that Victoria is a super spy who left her daughter on Madagascar for the latter’s own safety.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Played for Laughs. During their pranking spree, Julien and Keke do such things as exploiting Hector’s PTSD in order to stop him from snitching on them for pranking him, making Melman think he’s terminally ill, using Private’s naivete to make him eat candy laced with jalapenos, and after Julien destroys the second “HELP” sign Alex built, he tricks the lion into searching for a non-existent ship using binoculars with boot polish laced on the eye sockets.

  Pineapple: Perhaps some of their stunts were in poor taste…but I must concede that they were pretty darn funny.

• Exact Words: Keke pretends to apologize to Kowalski for mocking him in order to trick him into eating cookies laced with jalapenos. After watching his comrade run off in agony, Private scolds Keke only to instantly be tricked into eating a Peanut Butter Winkie that Keke swears has no jalapenos on it. After it has the same effect on the rookie, Keke adds that she said nothing about habaneros.
• Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: Maurice and Karl have this argument over how to handle King Julien's troubled relationship with his parents. Though Maurice initially tries to make Julien understand how toxic his relationship with his parents is, after being greeted with anger and accusations from the heartbroken ringtail, he then tries to slip a note to Julienne and Barty to remind them to stay for their son's birthday, to spare Julien from more heartbreak. Karl, however, steals the note and destroys it, telling Maurice that they need to force Julien to confront the cold, hard truth in order to break him out of his delusion, citing his own experience in A Foe In Need as proof of its effectiveness. After being told by the fanaloka that he's only hurting Julien more by enabling the latter's delusions, Maurice reluctantly agrees that Karl is right.
• Gratuitous Spanish: As a animal hailing from the Latin America, Keke uses Spanish words in her speech.
• Groin Attack: Keke does this to Mort the second time they met after Mary Ann warned her that Mort touches kids. Being Literal-Minded, Julien then scolds the mouse lemur for having No Sense of Personal Space.
• Hard Truth Aesop: The B-plot with Princess Julienne and Prince Barty regarding their relationship with King Julien. Though people can change, not everyone does and might instead relapse into their old habits. This is evident with Julienne and Barty, as although they initially seemed to grow fonder of their estranged son and do show some affection for him now and then, they are still careless Upper Class Twits who mostly visit their son when they need someone to pamper to their needs and never showed remorse over abandoning him as a child. Whatever fondness they do have for Julien also makes things worse, as it keeps Julien from seeing reason and trapped in the toxic relationship.
• Hidden Villain: The antagonist is another Guatemalan animal that escapes from the same ship as Keke, but this one is a large predator and he starts picking off lemurs one by one, while keeping to the shadows. It turns out to be a familiar boa constrictor.
• Imagine Spot: In chapter 11, when Tammy insinuates that Mary Ann’s night together with Karl involved more than just searching for King Julien and Keke, the fossa attacks and mauls her, squirting blood on everyone in the vicinity. Except that it was all Mary Ann’s imagination, used as a coping mechanism in order to keep herself from losing her shit for real.
• Interspecies Adoption: Done by an interspecies couple no less. Mary Ann and Horst are settled with taking care of Keke, with the former being very enthusiastic about having a child and the latter quickly warming up to her, but then have to prove to the public that they are capable caregivers, otherwise Keke will be sent to an Orphanage of Fear.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Uncle King Julien actually utilized this trope to maintain a respectable (ish) image as the new king after he staged a coup against and dethroned the previous king, his own uncle. As he himself puts it, no matter how bad of a king he is, will look like a saint to his subjects compared to King Julien the Terrible.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Basically everyone in Madagascar but Keke knows that the latter's mother Victoria is dead and buried, with King Julien enforcing the cover story that Victoria is a super-spy on a mission to spare Keke the grief. On a lighter note, Keke doesn't know and gradually learns about various other characters, including Clover (who Julien keeps mentioning).
  • Mort being Older Than He Looks (and also not a regular lemur) is a fairly open secret among the denizens of Madagascar, but the penguins don’t know it, and Kowalski and Private believe that the mouse lemur is a child, even when he angrily argues to the contrary. He later uses it to his advantage when trying to poison the penguins, since they wouldn't expect a child to try and commit cold-blooded murder.
• Malaproper: True to form, King Julien constantly mispronounces Guatemala as “Guanomala” and kinkajou as “kinky-do”.
• Malicious Monitor Lizard: One of the methods Mort uses to murder Kowalski and Private is releasing a Nile monitor, hoping that the lizard will eat them.
• Manchild: While King Julien is already a well-established example, here it’s further emphasized with him befriending the prepubescent Keke and two acting out by playing pranks on everyone, highlighting how they more or less on the same level in terms of maturity. When Hector catches them red-handed, he threatens to tell on Julien to his visiting parents and Julien begs him not to. Earlier, he unintentionally implies to Keke that his parents abandoning him during his childhood has mentally scarred him and stunted his emotional growth.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Mort figures that the best gift he could give King Julien for the latter’s birthday is to murder the penguins so they won’t find out the lemurs’ Dark Secret (after Julien wished the penguins would just disappear). His first attempt to off the duo involves making them run through an elaborate series of death traps. Of course, being the ridiculously skilled commandos they are, Kowalski and Private navigate through it without a hitch, while Mort’s traps keep backfiring on him and he suffers Amusing Injuries. He later tries a more subtle approach by offering them smoothies filled with snake venom, but he gets eaten before he can go through with his plan.
• No, You: Julien's usual reaction once Maurice, Karl, and Masikura start increasingly hinting (more like bluntly saying) that the king's parents might not love him all that much and are far more concerned with their own needs. The fact that Maurice was abandoned by his family as an infant and Karl was The Unfavorite in his makes it easier for Julien to pretend like the two are projecting their own parental issues onto him instead of vice versa.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Tammy serves this role, along with Rebecca and the rest of their small group of Gossipy Hens, who act catty and discriminatively towards Mary Ann (and carnivores in general), pressure King Julien into putting her and Horst on a week-long trial to prove themselves as capable guardians, and Tammy does everything she can to discredit and slander Mary Ann and get Keke taken away from her. Also, several Freudian Slips make it clear Tammy doesn’t care about Keke’s well-being so much as she’s just looking for an excuse to run Mary Ann out of the kingdom, including constantly getting Keke’s name wrong.
• Offhand Backhand: Karl does this to Mort to shut him up when the latter is about to blurt out to Keke that her mother is dead.
• Piranha Problem: They are one of the Latin American animals that escaped from the poaching ship, and they infest Madagascar’s rivers literally overnight. Julien enlists Gloria and the crocodiles to keep their numbers under control, which the hippo takes in stride while the reptiles are utterly terrified (despite their cousins from the west regularly eating piranhas, as Keke points out). They later attack Bone-Fossa following his defeat.
• Rascally Raccoon: Keke is a kinkajou, who are part of the procyonid family, and a Bratty Half-Pint who enjoys pranking people and causing mischief. When introducing herself, she even calls her kin “jungle raccoons” who lack the iconic masks but still share their cousin’s handy (dexterous) hands.
• Trauma Button: Saying “The sifakas are coming!” does this to Hector, making him think he’s back on the battlefield and go into a murderous frenzy where he tries to spear any sifaka he comes across, unfortunately for Nurse Phantom.
• Snooping Little Kid: Masikura claims that Julien was fond of snooping around and eavesdroping on others' conversations as a kid. Which is why he was far more aware of his parents' apathy and his uncle's disdain towards him, and why he has been repressing that knowledge.
• Something Itis: During their pranking spree Julien and Keke trick Melman into thinking that he has contracted “mad bushpig distemper-itis”. Melman, being familiar with every disease in the book, questions if it’s real but after they convince him that he has all the symptoms, he caves in and lets them bury him up to his neck in a makeshift grave.
• Vegetarian Carnivore: Keke, a kinkajou, is a literal example. Her kin are carnivorans, just like fossa or lions, but unlike them, they feed on fruits, just like lemurs.
• Villainous Rescue: Accidental example. Savio eating Mort ends up inadvertently saving Kowalski and Private’s lives, since the mouse lemur was planning to poison them by offering them smoothies containing mamba venom, under the pretense of thanking them for “saving his life” earlier.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 14 reveals that King Julien hasn't simply been willfully ignorant about his parents' apathy towards him in the present but that he has always known that they abandoned him of their own volition to live on an island condo (instead of getting eaten by the fossa or going to a farm), due eavesdropping on them conversing about their plans as a child on the day they left, and Julien has been repressing that memory ever since then.
• Women Are Wiser: The moment they take Keke in, Mary Ann takes up the role of the responsible and level-headed parent, while Horst quickly slips into Bumbling Dad territory.

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