"Lost in Paris" has a rather brilliant detail: Pepito is the reason Madeline was ultimately found. At first, his insistence to give Madeline her parting gift (the shrunken head) seems pointless and even silly. But in the grand scheme of things, it set off a butterfly effect. Before he came along, Miss Clavel and the collective girls were sadly resigned to the idea that Madeline was off to a better life without them. If he hadn't convinced them to take them to Madeline, they wouldn't have gone to the train station to see her off. And if they hadn't driven him to the train station, they wouldn't have learned she never boarded the train nor discovered Genevieve at the Metro. Without Pepito, the metaphorical alarm bells wouldn't have gone off, and nobody would've come to Madeline's rescue.
What's more, Pepito's shrunken head played a part in Madeline and her new friends overpowering Madame LaCroc in the climax. On so many levels, he played a big part in Madeline's triumph over the villains.
In the original 1988 CINAR special, Madeline is a prankster who loves to play tricks on her friends, but then Characterization Marches On, and she becomes less mischievous and just a PluckyGenki Girl instead. Could there be an in-universe reason for this change? Possibly! The next two specials released after the original, in order, were Madeline's Christmas and Madeline and the Bad Hat. In the Christmas special, all the other girls and Miss Clavel get sick and Madeline has to take care of them by herself: that experience probably helps to mature her. Then in Bad Hat, Pepito is introduced, and for the first time Madeline becomes a target of someone else's pranks, which she realizes isn't much fun.
Fridge Horror
How do you suppose LaCroque and Henri learned of Madeline and her fortune?
In Madeline at the Ballet, Madeline is upset because the ballet teacher completely ignores her and tries to impress him by wearing pointe shoes during rehearsal. While she causes a disaster, she is lucky that she didn't seriously hurt herself wearing the pointe shoes—essentially, a dancer younger than 12 shouldn't go en pointe because the bones in her feet haven't fully formed and may be damaged from the physical stress that comes from pointe technique. If your feet aren't strong enough, you can break an ankle trying to go on pointe for the first time.
In Madeline's Rescue, the part where Genevieve is missing is already a Tear Jerker from the little girls' point of view, but imagine Genevieve's perspective! The poor dog is chased out into the streets (book) or taken away by car and abandoned in the woods (animated version), and has to find her way home all alone while pregnant! She reaches home only a few hours before she goes into labor: what would have happened to her, or to her puppies, if she hadn't made it in time?
