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M
- Mathematician's Answer: The seeing-eye friend whom the main gang tries to help in one episode apparently discards any information not related to "this is a danger from which I must keep my child", because when he loses track of the kid, he can't provide a helpful answer; he was in a place when he lost Stevie, and as for Stevie himself, well, he's got arms, a face... you know, standard-issue human stuff.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Regarding the Foster house itself. As convoluted as it is to get around and how it can house such fantastic creatures as imaginary friends, it's been asked once if the house itself is an imaginary friend. No definitive answer is ever given.
- Mean Boss: Mr. Herriman is always demanding Frankie to tend to everything that needs to be taken care of, even when she's busy taking care of something else.
- Meat-O-Vision:
- Exaggerated in "Dinner is Swerved", in which Mac and Bloo are lost in the house for several hours and Bloo nearly eats an anthropomorphic chicken leg imaginary friend.
- Parodied in "Read 'Em and Weep", where Sam Burger and his adopter Ronald get stranded on an island and Ronald hallucinates Sam as a giant chicken leg when he's already a sentient hamburger.
- Medium Awareness: In "Room With a Feud", Peanut Butter says that he should be allowed to participate in the competition for the room that Bloo, Wilt, Eduardo, and Coco are having because he's a member of the house and asks, "What's this, The Wilt, Ed and Coco Show?"
- Megaphone Gag: When Mac and Bloo attempt to film an entry to a film festival, Bloo turns into a Prima Donna Director who alienates the entire crew by constantly barking orders at them through a megaphone, which he shoves in their faces. Even worse, Bloo spent the entire budget for the movie on purchasing the megaphone.
- Milholland Relationship Moment: Done in one episode when Bloo breaking Mr. Herriman's most prized possession, a bust of Madame Foster. Having already fallen victim to Herriman's occasionally arbitrary rules (earlier, Bloo, in desperate need of some toilet time, is forced to first go through an entire morning routine by the rabbit), he's now done something that even he has to acknowledge is legitimately worth punishing—and he can only imagine what horrors Herriman has in store for him. He goes to such trouble to cover up his mistake that at one point he even enlists the help of Madame Foster herself to impersonate her own bust. When Herriman turns out to have a collection of spares and a completely philosophical attitude towards their breakage, Bloo nearly explodes. Then Frankie, who was knocked out and shoved in the closet the spares were stored in, wakes up and accidentally breaks them all.
- The Millstone: In "Berry Scary", Berry tries to convince Bloo that Mac is the Millstone who is preventing him from getting the world record. Ironically, Bloo himself is generally the Millstone to everyone else at Foster's, to the point where in the very same episode he mentions that being a burden is his 7th favourite thing.
- Miniature Senior Citizens: Madame Foster. She's one of the shortest of all the main characters - hair notwithstanding, she's roughly the same height as Bloo - while Frankie, her granddaughter, is of average human height.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Red from "Seeing Red" was created by Terrence to smash Bloo, but Red was more into smelling flowers and admiring cute things. After suffering a series of Amusing Injuries from Bloo, Red breaks down in tears, which gets Bloo to realize he went too far and apologize to him, which in turn leads to Red turning against Terrence.
- Mirror Character: Mac usually plays The Straight Man to Bloo's antics, and is often exasperated by them, but during some of Mac's wilder moments he acts pretty much EXACTLY like Bloo does.
- Missing the Good Stuff: The plot of the episode "Where There's a Wilt, There's a Way" involves Wilt missing a basketball game he'd been looking forward to because he can't say no when people ask him for help.
- Mock Millionaire: In one episode, several charities compete for the attention of a character pretending to be a millionaire.
- Motor Mouth: Goo always talks very fast.
- Moving-Away Ending: In the Series Finale, Bloo thinks that his owner Mac is moving away from his neighborhood when he finds out from Mr. Herriman that he is moving out of his old apartment. Since Mac made a deal with Madame Foster that Bloo won't get adopted by someone else as long as he visited him every day, Bloo is worried that he will get adopted once Mac moves away. Bloo tries unsuccessfully to convince Mac to stay by listing things they can do, all of which were the plots of previous episodes. Unfortunately for Bloo, Mac tells him they've done all those things already. In the end, Mac has some good news and some bad news; the good news is, he's only moving into his neighbor Louise's apartment since his Mom got a promotion at work and she needs a bigger office space. The bad news is, Louise is moving somewhere that doesn't allow imaginary friends, so Cheese is going to live at Foster's with the other imaginary friends, much to their horror.
- The Moving Experience: The focus of the final episode is that Mac is believed to be moving, which could jeopardize Bloo's immunity to being adopted by a new kid.
- Multiple Endings: Two endings to "Race For Your Life Mac & Bloo" were made in which the winner of the episode's race differed between Mac and Bloo. A poll was held on Cartoon Network's website to determine which ending was used, and the winner was Mac. The "Bloo wins" ending was posted on the website for a period after the episode's airing, and an alternate version of the entire episode with that ending is availble on digital services where the show can be bought as well as Hulu (but not HBO Max).
- Mundane Fantastic: Anything a child imagines can come to life in this world. Despite this, the world is otherwise much the same as ours.
N
- Never My Fault:
- Bloo refuses to accept it's his own fault Eduardo ran away in the episode, "Eddie Monster".
- The rest of the house act like it's Bloo's fault for unleashing a sugar-crazed Mac on trick-or-treaters in "Nightmare on Wilson Way", but Bloo only did that because they went too far in making him think he and Mac were trapped in a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Nice Mean And In Between:
- Between the four main imaginary friends: Eduardo and Wilt are the nice ones, Bloo is the mean one (particularly in the later seasons where he is more of a jerkass) and Coco, who's relatively nicer than Bloo but at the same time can act like a nutty chaotic Cloud Cuckoolander which would make her in-between. Bloo would also be the in-between to Mac's nice and Terrence's mean when he was living with them.
- There's also the three most prominent human characters: Mac (nice), Terrence (mean) and Frankie (in-between). For all the human kid characters, Goo would take the place as an in-between as she is a Nice Girl but can be quite a motor-mouthed Cloud Cuckoolander.
- Between the three main adults at Fosters: Frankie is the fair Cool Big Sis, Mr. Herriman is the stern uptight perfectionist and Madame Foster is a Cool Old Lady who has shown to be kind and generous but has her selfish moments here and there. For all female adults, Duchess would take the place as the "Mean" one.
- No Can Opener: In "Camp Keep a Good Mac Down", the gang is lost in the woods during a camping trip. Coco hatches a ton of eggs, all carrying cans of food and dinner supplies. But she doesn't lay a can opener.
- No Full Name Given: Almost everyone has only a first name, like Mac, or only a last name, like Mr Herriman. Only two main cast members are exceptions; Frankie has a last name by association (she's Madame Foster's Granddaughter, and her ID confirms her last name is Foster) and Bloo, because a 3-year-old Mac apparently thought "Blooregard Q Kazoo" was a great name.
- No Name Given: Mac's teacher was never given a name.
- Non-Appearing Title: The words "Talk to the Jeans" never appear in the eponymous song.
- Noodle Incident:
- In "Bloo's Brothers", Mac's classmates imagine weird clones of Bloo, only to leave them at Foster's; Frankie sees the clones and angrily asks the original if he played with Mac's chemistry set again... he says he did, but "these" clones did not come from it.
- In "Hiccy Burp", the rest of the house forces Wilt to keep practicing his lines for the pageant, remarking that his act last year was a disaster. We never get the exact details.
- The beginning of "Duchess of Wails" has Duchess angrily fling off a dress Madame Foster made for her and declare that she'd rather go naked. Madame Foster begs Duchess not to go through with it, one of her exclamations being "Not again", which implies that Duchess chose to go naked out of contempt for a dress not made to her liking before.
- The ending of "Squeeze the Day" has everyone at Foster's (minus Bloo) returning from a bad day at the beach that resulted in the governor banning them from ever returning. We never fully learn what happened that caused this other than it was Wilt's fault and it resulted in a bunch of dirty sand and homeless jellyfish.
- In the DVD commentary of "Store Wars", Bloo mentions 4 separate incidents he had caused: something involving Eduardo's hair and a clogged toilet, filling Mac's backpack with pudding to the point that it leaks, causing Wilt to trip and break his toe, and having Coco be flown from a catapult and end up trapped up a tree. The real kicker? Bloo mentions, almost confidently, that all 4 incidents happened on the same morning.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Mac is eight when the show starts, and does not age for the duration of the show.
- Not Quite Human: Any child can imagine up any sort of creature whatsoever, meaning it's completely possible to create a convincing, human-like imaginary friend from thin air. Goofball and Prince Charming come to mind.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: "Imaginary friends" in this series are Tulpas, but one episode has a fake millionaire who thought imaginary friends were ones only their creator could see, and only agrees to give Foster's money if they "showed" him those.
O
- Obfuscating Stupidity: In "Emancipation Complication", Madame Foster feigns obliviousness to how evil Lil' Lincoln is so he won't realize her plan to take him down.
- Ocular Gushers:
- Eduardo often cries an assload of tears whenever he sobs.
- In "Seeing Red", Red cries this way when he finds out that he crushed some flowers.
- In "Emancipation Complication", when Foster's becomes overcrowded with imaginary friends, Li'l Lincoln gets the idea to market them. One imaginary friend cries this way when he sees that all the other imaginary friends all have something unique and special about them, making him feel unimportant. Wilt suggests that he use his tears to wash cars, and that's exactly what the imaginary friend is seen doing in a later scene.
- Odd Name Out: In "Berry Scary", Bloo repeatedly calls Berry other names that rhyme with hers, up until the end where he calls her Heather.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
- Invoked as a subtle gag in "Neighbor Pains."Mr. Herriman: "So, you wish to adopt Time-Travelling Tina. We shall sorely miss the many fantastic weekly adventures we took with her through time..." (Beat) "But such is life!"
- Note that the show, which had a new episode weekly, never featured anything of the sort - the joke there is on the audience.
- Meta Example: Candy Milo revealed in an interview that Coco's lines were never written as "Coco". She was given dialogue in the script and told to just read it as "coco". Meaning, somewhere out there are written translations of what it is Coco is really saying!
- Invoked as a subtle gag in "Neighbor Pains."
- One-Shot Character:
- Uncle Pockets only had one major appearence in Bloo Done It. After this he would only get a few Call Backs.
- World from "Destination Immagination" would definitely qualify. This was his one and only appearance in the series. Though it's pretty much justified seeing how it was the series finale.
- The infamous Bendy from "Everyone Knows It's Bendy" was written out of the show, after the poor reception the episode received.
- Terrence's imaginary friend Red from "Seeing Red".
- Omnizot and the Space Nut Boogies accidently Imagined by Goo in "Make Believe It or Not".
- Imaginary Man and Nemesis from "Challenge of the Super Friends".
- There's also Ivan from Sight for Sore Eyes. The many clones of Bloo from Bloo's Brothers also qualify.
- Lil' Lincoln and his au pair Moose from "Emancipation Complication".
- One-Winged Angel: World,
an emotional unstable Reality Warper, does this when Herriman threatens to leave him locked in his trunk alone again. He goes absolutely berserk and creates a chimera body for himself to destroy the ones who are trying to take Frankie away from him. - Only Sane Employee: It's Frankie's job to keep everything from falling into chaos, much to her annoyance.
- Only Sane Man: Mac and Frankie most of the time - in situations where one of them is joining in on the craziness, the other will tend to be the sane man. If both are being immature, one of them will probably come to their senses by the end of the episode to fill the role.
- On One Condition: Bloo will be prevented from getting adopted as long as Mac visits him daily.
- Operation: [Blank]: Parodied in "Adoptcalypse Now" with "Operation Eight-legged-drop-big-purple-scaredy-cat-run-and-scramble" or, in layman's terms:Bloo: We're going to drop this big spider on Edwardo, he'll freak out, and everyone will run away.
- Our Founder: Elwood P. Dowd, of Harvey fame, appropriately enough. The Home itself also has a bust of its founder, Madame Foster, which Bloo promptly... busts.
- Out of Focus: Most of the human supporting characters — Goo, Terrance and Mac's mom — are largely absent in seasons 5 and 6.
- Oven Logic: When Bloo is forced to make cookies alone in "Cookie Dough," his attempt to apply this blows up the kitchen.
- Overly Long Hug: When Madam Foster steals tickets to Europe from Mac, she does it by hugging him tightly for a good few seconds. Mac is honestly very weirded out by it and quickly leaves when Madam Foster lets go.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Somewhat. The show's three-year involvement in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is somewhat neat, since they're one of four Cartoon Network shows to be represented therenote . Their float is rather nifty as well, with its combination of animatronics and puppets
. But the float's last appearance in 2008 is... quite remarkable indeed.
P
- Paintball Episode: "Better Off Ed" features the Bloo vs. the Babies indoor paintball battle royal.
- Paper People: Duchess is made of paper, befitting somebody who looks like a Picasso.
- Parental Bonus: A fair lot of it. In particular, Mac waking up next to Cheese and having to explain his "mistake" to Bloo is played a lot like marital infidelity.
- Parental Obliviousness: Mac's mom has no idea that he still goes to Foster's every day to visit Bloo. Though maybe she knows, considering Terrence could have easily told her by now, but lets him do it because it has more positives than negatives.
- Pass the Popcorn: In "Challenge of the Superfriends", Eduardo is eating cereal when Bloo ties his bib around his neck as a superhero cape... while Eduardo is still wearing it! Thus Eduardo is dragged along for the plot, still eating his bowl of cereal as he witnesses the action unfold before him.
- Perpetual Poverty: It may not look it, but some parts show that, being a nonprofit organization with tons of tenants, finances are relatively low. It's pretty telling that Herriman only allows two sheets of toilet paper when going to the bathroom.
- Poke the Poodle: In "Crime After Crime", when Bloo asks Mac to help him get in trouble since nobody can punish Mac there, Mac gets the idea of doing the worst thing he's ever wanted to do... jump on the bed.
- Pokémon Speak: Coco can only say her own name.
- Portrait Painting Peephole: In "Room with a Feud", Bloo at one point spies on Peanut Butter by looking through eyeholes on a poster of a basketball player.
- Potty Emergency:
- Bloo has one at the beginning of "Busted". However, he can't use the bathroom right away because Mr. Herriman makes him make his bed and brush his teeth first. Being a Well-Intentioned Extremist, Mr. Herriman makes Bloo do everything by the rules, much to the latter's chagrin.
- Bloo, Wilt, Coco, Mr. Herriman and Frankie each have two in "Foster's Goes to Europe". Within the same episode, Eduardo has three of his own, the first two with his aforementioned friends, and the third when it is revealed that somebody sabotaged the Foster's bus.
- Bloo has one in "Hiccy Burp" after drinking a huge amount of soda trying to get new hiccups in time for the talent portion of the annual Foster's talent show.
- Bloo has one in "Bus the Two of Us", and tries to use a bathroom at Mama Joan's Pizzeria, which is for employees only. When Mac asks him why he didn't go to the bathroom at the gas station, since they were there earlier to borrow plungers for him to use as stilts, Bloo tells Mac that gas station bathrooms are disgusting. Bloo says this as he is wearing the dirty plungers, which Mac points out. When Bloo is finished, Mac now has to use the bathroom.
- Bloo has one in "Ticket to Rod" when he drinks a lot of soda to pass the time waiting to hear a chime for a Radio Contest where the grand prize is two tickets to see a new movie starring Rod Tango. He gets Frankie to listen for the chime, and just as he leaves, the chime goes off and Frankie calls the station. This of course, sets the episode's main plot in motion.
- Bloo has one in "Jackie Khones And The Case Of The Overdue Library Crook". The men's room at Foster's is smelly because of something involving George Mucus, so he opts to use the ladies' room. Unfortunately, Jackie and Mac are having a meeting about someone's overdue library book checked under Mac’s name in the only stall, leaving Bloo to squirm around in discomfort. When they eventually get out, Bloo says a quick "hi" to Mac and then dashes in.
- Bloo has yet another one in "Race For Your Life Mac & Bloo" after drinking a 172-ounce soda at a mini-mart. The manager makes him wait in line behind the other customers, and when he does get to the front of the line, he makes him buy a bag of chains with his last quarter, as the bathroom is for paying customers only.
- P.O.V. Sequel: "The Little Peas" is a follow-up to the episode "The Big Cheese" that shows the events of the episode from the perspective of a really tiny imaginary friend named Peas.
- Poor Communication Kills: Several of the episodes' issues could have been avoided simply by answering either Mac or Bloo's questions:
- In "The Trouble With Scribbles", everyone absolutely refuses to tell Bloo what's behind the mysterious door in the house (although Bloo has the right to know as a resident, and the only one who doesn't know at that), which results in his curiosity getting the better of him and opening it.
- In "The Big Picture", no one wants to talk about why everyone, aside from Frankie and Madame Foster, is missing from the annual house photo, resulting in Mac and Bloo spending the whole episode to find out for themselves.
- In "The Bride to Beat", when Bloo asks Mac what he is preparing for, Mac acts scared and tells him he wouldn't understand. This leads Bloo to incorrectly assume that Mac's getting married, which results in him confusing and driving Mac away and ruining his cousin's wedding (Mac was actually just the ring bearer).
- Precocious Crush: 8-year-old Mac has a crush on 22-year-old Frankie.
- Prima Donna Director: Bloo turns into one of these when he is partnered with Mac to produce a film for a contest. He constantly orders the cast around and spends their entire assigned budget on a megaphone. He ends up hiring a very famous and expensive actor (who is mentioned by name), but inverts
Shoot the Money by casting him in a role where his face is completely covered by a helmet. - Properly Paranoid: In "Something Old, Something Bloo", Madame Foster believes the old folks home brainwashes the senior citizens that are kept there. At the end of the episode, she turns out to be right when one of the orderlies admits that mind-altering drugs are used in the pudding they feed them.
- Pun-Based Title: Most, if not all, the episode titles are puns of some kind. Examples include:
- "Nightmare on Wilson Way"
- "Frankie My Dear"
- "Something Old Something Bloo"
- "Bad Dare Day"
- "Crime After Crime"
- Punny Name: Iman Oldcoot, Myron Giant, Sam Burger, Nemesister, Jimmy Shoes, Belly Bob Norton, plus many others.
- Pyrrhic Victory: In "Everyone Knows It's Bendy", getting fed up with Bendy's pranks, Bloo conducts a scheme to have Bendy caught stealing food from the kitchen, then leaving a mess of ink around the house, followed by Bendy trying to wash the ink off leading to the house being destroyed by sabotaged watering. Bloo exposes Bendy for his mischief, taking the time to gloat how his plan worked before getting reprimanded for being the one who's still responsible for wrecking the house.
Q
- Quicksand Sucks: Wilt ends up sinking in quicksand in "Camp Keep A Goof Mac Down".
- Quiet Cry for Help: In "The Sweet Stench of Success", Bloo is tricked into signing himself into indentured servitude after he hits it big as a corporate mascot, and being locked away by his greedy agent Kip Snip. As a last resort, he tap dances "HELP ME MAC" in Morse code during a live performance.
- Quirky Household: The titular foster home is full of quite a lot of eccentric and bizarre imaginary friends.
R
- Rain, Rain, Go Away: In "Bloo Tube", Foster's trip to the Monsoon Lagoon water park gets cancelled due to a rainstorm. While Mac, Wilt, Eduardo, and Coco try to make the best of a bad situation, Bloo has been looking forward to the trip and is so upset over its cancellation that he doesn't want to partake in whatever fun activities Mac and the other imaginary friends have planned, including making their own videos that they plan to post to ViewTube.
- Raincoat of Horror: There was a horror-themed episode taking place on a rainy night, where a forbidding-looking character with a hook-hand, wearing a concealing raincoat seems to be following Frankie around. He's actually a goofy-looking imaginary friend looking for a place to stay, and he's following Frankie because he heard about Foster's.
- Reality Warper: Goo has an overactive imagination, which means that she runs the risk of calling new Imaginary Friends into existence by accident (and somehow, she manages not to be creepy). Frankie's new friend, World, controls an entire dimension inside a toy box.
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: To Bloo's movie in "One False Movie"
- Rebel Relaxation: James Withazee from "Bye Bye Nerdy" is shown leaning against walls and such as part of his "cool" mannerisms.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Bloo and Mac, respectively. Not Color-Coded for Your Convenience, as Mac wears a red shirt in his regular outfit and Bloo is, well... blue.
- Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: The only reason we know what Coco's saying.
- Reused Character Design: The design for Dexter's Dad from the Dexter's Laboratory episode "Glove at First Sight", which was previously reused for Dick Hardly in the The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Knock It Off", is recycled for Kip Snip in "The Sweet Stench of Success", although it's had some changes as shown here.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Uncle Pockets constantly speaks in rhyme.
