Do the monkey with me!One of Cartoon Network's first original characters, Johnny Bravo was based partly on Elvis Presley and partly on Henry Winkler's character from Happy Days. Johnny takes a little too much pride in his appearance, and has little, if any, success at romance or anything else he tries. Not that this fazes him much. He also tends to run into celebrities, including Farrah Fawcett, Donny Osmond, Adam West and the cast of Scooby-Doo.In seasons 2 and 3, Cartoon Network "retooled" the series without Van Partible's input. They also lost the writing contributions of both Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane. The series reverted to its old style for the last few episodes of the 65-episode run.The show is notable for the major changes the style in its humor experienced during the 65 overall episodes. In the pilots and first season, the humor was more mature and Johnny was portayed as a loser and more socially lacking than stupid. The retooled series, however, was more aimed more at the show's younger audience. The amount of slapstick increased and Johnny's stupidity was greatly emphasized.The other main characters are Johnny's mother, Bunny Bravo, and the neighbor girl, Suzy. Other characters include Carl, a Hollywood Nerd who insists he's Johnny's best friend, and Pops, mentor to Johnny and owner of a local diner and quite possibly a few other, sketchier business ventures.In the last few years of the shows run Johnny also had a spin-off program called JBVO. In Johnny was a host who accepted requests via mail or online for any cartoon network shorts that weren't too long to be played. It didn't last too long.In 2011, as a co-production with Cartoon Network Asia, Johnny Bravo will receive a comeback special in the form of Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood
All There in the Manual: Cartoon Network's Web site said that Carl was Johnny's best friend back when he [Johnny] was a scrawny loser. After he grew up and became a macho man looking for ladies, he no longer wanted anything to do with Carl. This isn't really shown anywhere in the show.
Amazon Brigade: The Tall Amazon Women in "Johnny Bravo and the Amazon Women".
Crossover/Continuity Cameo: With Scooby-Doo, leading to severe lampshading of Scooby-Doo commonly questioned tropes (e.g., What does Freddie do when he goes off on his own with Daphne?) and much hitting on Daphne to no avail.
One episode had Johnny going on a blind date with Black Widow, a member of Space Ghost's Rogues Gallery.
Catch Phrase: "Right. What did I say?" Johnny almost always says this when he mistakes one character as someone/something they're not... in a typical Johnny fashion.
One of the most interesting things about the episode in which Adam West guest starred is that the two writers who wrote that episode, Seth MacFarlane and Butch Hartman, have a huge interest in Adam West. In fact, when they split up to make their own shows, they still show that huge interest in him: Adam West plays as himself as the Mayor in Family Guy and he makes guest appearances in some of the episodes of The Fairly OddParents.
How about Mr. T and Richard Simmons... in the same episode!
Creator Cameo: At the end of the Scooby-Doo crossover, the ghost gets several mask pulled off her, before her true identity is revealed. The masks include one-shot characters and monsters from the original Scooby-Doo cartoons, Don Knotts, and finally Joe Barbera.
Deadpan Snarker: As dumb as Johnny is, he still fills this role.
Demoted to Extra: In the last season, Pops was lucky to get a brief cameo. Carl fared slightly better with actual dialogue, but he appeared less often.
Disproportionate Retribution: Inverted; Johnny's punishment for stealing his mother's car to use in a race was... chores for a week. (Carl, who added illegal technology to it, had to help him.)
Dropped Glasses: In the Scooby-Doo crossover, he accidentally collides with Velma:
In "Talk to Me, Baby", supermodel/talk show host Vendela Kirsebom changes into a superhero costume and fights her sumo wrestler cameraman during a commercial. She then turns to the audience and remarks, "They don't call us 'supermodels' for nothing!"
In "The Hansel and Gretel Project", Karl finds the fabled witch's cookbook. "Here's a recipe for German Chocolate Cake: Chocolate, cake... Germans?!"
Express Lane Limit: In "Johnny's Inferno", one of the evil deeds that a demon makes Johnny do is going (slightly) over the checkout lane limit. The cashier doesn't have a problem with this, though, much to his disappointment.
He did in the Valentine's Day episode, but she was a secret agent and she decided it might not work out due to her job... so she erased all his memory of her.
In one episode, Johnny meets a short, balding, chubby guy—the aforementioned Jack Sheldon—who has no trouble getting girls. Johnny asks him how he does it, and the guy sings songs about being sensitive and getting in touch with your feminine side...but at the end, he finally tells Johnny that you can just fake it and get girls just as easily, which is what Sheldon is doing. "I'd tell a woman I could turn lead into gold if it would get her to date me!" Of course, some of the girls overhear this and they are not amused.
In the Titanic parody episode, he successfully got a woman to like him, but in the end he screws it up by accidentally flushing her expensive necklace down the toilet.
Not quite. Instead of a necklace, it was a really awesome looking decoder ring that he was letting her borrow, not keep. She seemed to lose interest in him randomly, implying that it was just a fling brought about by his rustic, lower class "charms." Interestingly, she brought him into the captain's quarters to be alone, which he assumed meant letting him play with the helm. It appears that even if Johnny got the girl, he wouldn't know what to do with her.
This is however after the Flanderization set in, and at that point interest in women was an badly-fitting artifact of the original design.
In one episode Johnny was thrown in a volcano as a virgin sacrifice. Seeing as the volcano spitted him out with so much disgust it exploded the island, we can assume he's... the opposite of a virgin. So therefore he never gets the girl onscreen.
He very nearly came close in the Prison Episode, with all the women throwing themselves at him, but sadly, the guards realized their mistake and he's carted away in the end.
Flanderization: A major example. In the earlier episodes and the pilot, Johnny was just incredibly cocky, socially inept, reckless and actually somewhat competent in martial arts. Seasons after, however, made him stupid, immature, misogynistic, and buff without any benefit.
And how. To elaborate, in the later seasons, Johnny, for all his bulk, is repeatedly humiliated by 6-year-old boys and girls, whereas in the pilot, he effortlessly mauled a CROCODILE.
Oddly, in the last season, this was reversed completely, but upped up Suzie's annoying tendencies.
Gender Bender: Johnny, in the season 4 episode "Witch-ay Woman".
Genre Savvy: Johnny, on occasion. For example, in the Scooby-Doo crossover, he points out how ludicrous Let's Split Up, Gang is after Fred suggests it.
During the "Prince and the Pauper" episode, Johnny realises what's going on as soon as he sees his double.
It Got Worse: After Johnny's favorite shampoo goes out production, he has Pops whip him up a homemade batch. As soon as Johnny steps outside, his hair is immediately surrounded by flies... which soon attract birds... which soon attracts cats... which soon attracts dogs... which somehow attracts a giant ant emerging from the Earth's crust.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Johnny may be crass to Suzie, Carl and a host of women, but the boy is devoted to his mama.
He will also fight tooth and nail to keep Pops in business.
Most of the time his brainless antics are well-intended, such as "saving" the "Queen of Atlantis" from sharks or "rescuing" an oppressed pinata.
Ladykiller In Love: Very rarely, but Johnny did, in a Scooby-Doo crossover (or at least a Cartoon Network bumper), fall hard for Velma. Very sweet, actually. Here it is!
Has a Continuity Nod of sorts in another bumper where Dexter tries to ask Velma out but she leaves him for Johnny. And the actual Scooby-Doo crossover episode had Velma hitting on Johnny.
Meaningful Name: Johnny Bravo is named after his creator, Ephraim Giovanni Bravo "Van" Partible.
Muscles Are Meaningless: Johnny, despite having such a broad chest and big muscles, is repeatedly beaten in fights, even with those much smaller than him.
It should be noted that Johnny's weakness was played up more as the series went. Compare Johnny effortlessly manhandling a crocodile in the pilot with how he's beaten by children in the era of Carl and Pops.
Never Say "Die": Averted; the shark mentioned below even eats two characters on screen..!
Niche Network: Johnny once caught a glimpse of the "Fish" Network. The channel's content consisted entirely of video recordings of fish swimming. "All fish, 24/7"
Johnny also once had a bear named "Chronos, The Master of All Time," watch the "Tree Channel" to try and cure his insomnia.
Nixon Mask: Worn by a shark in the first season, in an overcomplicated plot to eat a contest's worth of surfers.
Overly-Long Scream: Happens when Johnny and Carl go over a waterfall, and at one point, stop screaming to take a breath.
Paper-Thin Disguise: In Wolf in Chick's Clothing: "Yeah. Sure. No one will ever know." The disguise in question was covering an anthropomorphic wolf's teeth with a small piece of cloth, and it worked perfectly.
Paper Tiger: Johnny Bravo is a pretty muscular-looking guy but he's always getting beaten up by the women he flirts with.
Secret Ingredient: When Johnny wins a trip to the factory where they make Jake's Jerky, he sees his friend disappear into the vat labeled "Secret Ingredient," not realizing that his friend was only investigating it for himself. He then bursts into a press conference shouting, "Jake's Jerky is people!"
Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Johnny is obviously the manly one, and Carl is the sensitive (but mainly wimpy and dorky) man.
Although later seasons did have the "wimpy Johnny screaming like a girl" gags.
She's All Grown Up: A future-set episode that parodies Titanic shows that "Little Suzy" grew into quite the attractive woman.
Shout Out: There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shout out to Back to the Future in the very intro - when the title shows up in three different styles, one of them is clearly drawn to resemble the title cards for the movies.
Among many, many other things.
In the Bullfighting episode, Johnny, the Girl of the Week, and the bull drive off into the sunset and become famous Hollywood starts, featuring in such titles like Raging Bull.
Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In "The Sensitive Male!", Jack Sheldon takes advantage of this trope by pretending to be women's perfect guy to get dates with them. When the women find out, they are not happy.
Spin-Off: The short-lived series JBVO, which was basically Johnny Bravo playing old cartoon shorts that kids called in to request.
Statuesque Stunner: An entire island of 'em in "Johnny Bravo and the Amazon Women".
Stopped Clock: Subverted. A jet cutting a power line stops Johnny's clock at 12:00, and after seeing similar events, he's convinced that time has stopped for everyone but him.
Strange Minds Think Alike: In "Mini-B.", Johnny wanted to go to the beach to pick girls up, but was thwarted by Mama Bravo's bringing a child home from the day care she worked at. So, he improvised by laying a beach towel and umbrella on the grass of the park they were at, lied down, and started applying sunscreen on the basis that girls would be attracted to him if they saw a sunbather like him. In five seconds flat, a Cloud Cuckoo Lander with a particularly stoned tone of voice walks by, sees Johnny sunbathing. Automatically assuming that there was a beach on the park, the beach bum pulls a surfboard out of Hammerspace and proceeds to surf joyously, as though he were actually at the beach.
Sunglasses at Night: The only time in the entire series run when we actually see Johnny's eyes is in Bravo Dooby Doo when he puts on Velma's glasses by mistake.
Tempting Fate: From the episode "Karma Krisis". Johnny believes that he has broken a curse by swinging a bag of salamis in a cornfield while yodelling. He exclaims, "With these deli meats as my witness, I will never be unlucky again!" Cue tornado.
Took a Level in Dumbass: Johnny obviously wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer when he first appeared, but you can tell later episodes played up his idiocy and immaturity more and more.
Wax On, Wax Off: Subverted back and forth in an episode where Johnny is pitted off against the best student of a rival dojo. Master Hama has him doing actual chores, and it's clear he's not interested in teaching him. Nevertheless everything he does comes in handy later, during the fight. Too bad Master Hama gave up and decided to bet against him.
Weaksauce Weakness: Moonlighting as a superhero, Johnny Bravo accidentally blasts a (dangerous) candy-themed supervillain with a hose. This causes the villain to meltaway into a soapy puddle.
Made stranger by the fact that this villain was quite clearly a man in a candy-themed suit.
A much later season Johny eats some spicy food as a last meal before the Ice Giant swallows him. Smoke comes out of the giant's mouth. The next moment, Johnny is drowning in a pool of hot water, screaming that he's about to be digested. Some Ice Giant. Can't even handle a guy with higher-than average temperature.
There was a futuristic episode that has among his references, of all things, Big Brother.
The episode based on The Prince And The Pauper actually ends with Mark Twain coming in and begging cartoon makers to "let this tired old story die!"
And "It's a Good Life", a classic episode from The Twilight Zone. Complete with Bill Mumy lookalike.
Not just "It's a Good Life": they also did Nightmare at 20,000 Feet complete with a Shatner Parody, and Talking Tina, in a episode aptly titled "The Zone", with several references to other episodes.
One episode was a reference to BioDome, which unsurprisingly was written better than the actual movie.
Another Pauly Shore film, Jury Duty was referenced in One Angry Bravo
Wholesome Crossdresser: The many times Carl dresses as a chick, and the couple of times Johnny does it.
Wingding Eyes: Lampshaded in the King Kong episode. "I have huge dollar signs in my eyes!"
Do the monkey with me!One of Cartoon Network's first original characters, Johnny Bravo was based partly on Elvis Presley and partly on Henry Winkler's character from Happy Days. Johnny takes a little too much pride in his appearance, and has little, if any, success at romance or anything else he tries. Not that this fazes him much. He also tends to run into celebrities, including Farrah Fawcett, Donny Osmond, Adam West and the cast of Scooby-Doo.In seasons 2 and 3, Cartoon Network "retooled" the series without Van Partible's input. They also lost the writing contributions of both Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane. The series reverted to its old style for the last few episodes of the 65-episode run.The show is notable for the major changes the style in its humor experienced during the 65 overall episodes. In the pilots and first season, the humor was more mature and Johnny was portayed as a loser and more socially lacking than stupid. The retooled series, however, was more aimed more at the show's younger audience. The amount of slapstick increased and Johnny's stupidity was greatly emphasized.The other main characters are Johnny's mother, Bunny Bravo, and the neighbor girl, Suzy. Other characters include Carl, a Hollywood Nerd who insists he's Johnny's best friend, and Pops, mentor to Johnny and owner of a local diner and quite possibly a few other, sketchier business ventures.In the last few years of the shows run Johnny also had a spin-off program called JBVO. In Johnny was a host who accepted requests via mail or online for any cartoon network shorts that weren't too long to be played. It didn't last too long.In 2011, as a co-production with Cartoon Network Asia, Johnny Bravo will receive a comeback special in the form of Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood
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