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alt title(s): X Men Evolution 
An X-Men animated series that, like Marvel's Ultimate Universe and the movies, rebooted/retooled the universe to one where many important characters were teenagers. While the Marvel Universe tend to take place in real cities, this show's setting was Bayville, a generic, fictionalized town in New York (not California, as often assumed), where the famous mutants went to school along with more mundane folks (presumably because the X-men's canonical hometown, Salem Center, is upper-class in the real world).
A certain amount of Adaptation Decay and Adaptation Distillation, depending on who you ask. While the previous (and very popular) X-Men series spent a lot of time condensing the mythology of the long-running comics, this series purposefully tried to go its own way. It was an effort to not bog the story down to Continuity Lock Out and keep most stories individualized. The animation and story scripting was consistently high but it was also impossible to ignore the Spinoff Babies vibe.
The series started off mostly going with the With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility theme, while later seasons started to get more into the "outcasts and racism" topics that permeated the regular X-Men stories. The writers eventually tried to address these concerns in the last season by bringing it more in line with familiar X-Men storylines, and even teased at the regular comics continuity in the Grand Finale.
Does have the distinction of producing the Canon Immigrant X-23, and a more openly sympathetic take on The Brotherhood as a group of Jerk With A Heart Of Gold street kids more than absolute evil. And while it isn't responsible for creating Kitty "Shadowcat" Pryde, this series did help popularize her with the non-comic readers.
Tropes:
- Academy Of Adventure: Both Xavier's Institute and Bayville High get into all sorts of trouble.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Avalanche and Shadowcat.
- Ascended Extra: Berzerker, an obscure Morlock in the comics, left the sewers to join the New Mutants in this version.
- Badass Teacher: Even before mutating into his Beast form, Hank McCoy was Bayville High's uber-muscular gym coach, and a science teacher whose first lesson was a stinkbomb.
- Badbutt: As in all other animated adaptations of the X-Men, Wolverine.
- Bare Your Midriff: They're in high school, so of course you get this to some extent. Every girl has at least one civilian outfit that does, and all three of Jean's do.
- Batman Gambit: Magneto's plan in "Day of Reckoning".
- Beach Bury: Quicksilver does this to Spyke... granted, it's in combat, but the reference is clear.
- Beta Couple: Sam/Amara and Bobby/Jubilee, if the series hadn't been axed prematurely.
- Big Bad: Magneto in the first two seasons, Apocalypse in the third and fourth.
- Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The completely out of nowhere montage in "Sirens of Bayville".
- Boot Camp Episode: Both the good guys and the bad guys get sent to a boot camp.
- Broken Aesop: Stopping the villains from using their mutant powers for crime makes the heroes look pretty noble. Unless the heroes live in a mansion with a pool and a jet while the villains live in a hovel and are stealing to pay the utility bill and reconnect their water, of course. Then, regardless of the circumstances, the heroes look kind of like dicks.
- Of course, the villains have the option of living in the mansion, but instead chose to use their powers for villainy.
- Not to mention that they almost never use their abilities for petty crimes, since it would expose them as mutants. They don't do it that much after the fact, either, and the one time they were trying to make a buck the X-Men didn't stop them until it got too dangerous.
- Bullying A Dragon/Mugging The Monster: The latter in the first two seasons, the former after. And for some odd reason, the bullying gets worse after people learn mutants could kill them on a whim. Why would you keep knocking Scott's glasses off? Do you have a death wish?
- Broken Bird: Rogue, Scarlet Witch (until she got better from Mind Rape... It Makes Sense In Context), X-23.
- Butt Monkey: "What is this? Abuse the Toad Day?" Yep, just like yesterday and the day before.
- Canon Foreigner: Several, but mainly Spyke and Duncan Matthews.
- Canon Immigrant: X-23.
- Chaotic Neutral: Boom Boom, with emphasis on the "chaotic".
- Really, the alignment of the Brotherhood as a whole (the only possible exception is Quicksilver, who's enough of an unrepentant Jerkass that he might qualify as a mild Chaotic Evil)
- Character Development: Thanks to this, Shadowcat largely stopped sounding like an airhead prep.
- Claustrophobia: Storm.
- Clothing Damage: Scott, all the time. Whenever he was supposed to be badly hurt, half of his shirt got ripped off. Somehow. Also happens with Rogue on occasion, mostly to her sleeves, as a plot point to use her Blessed With Suck powers against her.
- Commuting On A Bus: Spyke after Season 3.
- Cool Big Sis: Jean Grey. Tabitha/Boom Boom comes to fill in as well, from the third season on.
- Rogue, according to Kurt.
- Crazy Awesome: Everything the New Mutants do, arguably.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: See X-Men.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny
- Combined with Getting Crap Past The Radar in "Walk On The Wild Side", giving us the following in Lance's jeep (which was "borrowed" by Boom-Boom):
Rogue: Wish we coulda found a better place to change.
Tabitha: Relax; nobody'll believe that toll-booth guy!
- Professor X actually makes a crippled joke at his own expense in one episode after lecturing Jean on how all obstacles can be overcome.
Professor X: [finding himself at the top of a flight of stairs] Though, some obstacles are more irritating than others.
- The end of "X-treme Measures". Professor Xavier is sitting in the back of his car, and tells Logan he's ready to head back to the mansion. Problem is, Logan gave the keys to Kitty...
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: The entire Christmas Episode.
- Darker And Edgier: The fourth season.
- Dating Catwoman: Shadowcat and Avalanche.
- Deadpan Snarker: Rogue.
- Die For Our Ship: Avalanche was bashed by Nightcrawler x Shadowcat fans. Jean was bashed by Cyclops x Rogue fans. Surprisingly, Nightcrawler's canon girlfriend Amanda took much less heat than them...
- Disco Dan: Forge, since he's from the seventies. He still manages to come up with some Totally Radical Wall Bangers, though.
- Ditzy Genius: Forge again, in every appearance. Possibly forgivable, given the two to three decade culture-shock.
- Double Standard: According to fandom, Quicksilver can go out with several girls for the ball and no one complains, but Jean is indecisive between Duncan and Scott and she's a WHORE. And the less we talk about the fandom treatment of Boom Boom aka "default slut", the better.
- Unfortunately the fandom took a fun character trait of Boom Boom's way too far. She was seen flirting with no less than Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Avalanche, Quicksilver, just about every male New Mutant, and even Magma. And flirting makes one a slut, right?
- I'm a female who liked to see her flirt and have fun. =(
- Wait, wait... Wolverine?! I never took it that way.
- Draco In Leather Pants: It's true that the Brotherhood is more sympathetic than in other continuities, but some of their fans claim they're utter saints bullied by the evil X-Men, and conveniently "forget" that sometimes the boys reach dangerous levels of criminal negligence in their actions.
- Thanks mostly to Quicksilver and Avalanche being attractive. It's doubtful Toad and the Blob would get the same treatment.
- Believe it or not, there is a good number of people who find Toad to be adorable. I'm serious...
- I've seen it. I believe you. *pet*
- Drives Like Crazy: Shadowcat gives everyone heart attacks whenever she's behind the wheel of a car. This is because she does not avoid driving hazards. She phases through them.
- She even scares Wolverine! Now there's an accomplishment!
- Ducks In A Row
- Dude Not Funny: In the fourth season, when the Brotherhood play around with a petrified Mystique. Nightcrawler reacts in appropriate horror, given she's his mother.
- Enemy Mine: The X-men and the Brotherhood against Juggernaut and then the Sentinal (Magneto and the Acolytes were there too, but were provoking it for their own reasons), and later all the other factions team up to stop Apocalypse.
- Enforced Cold War
- Elite Mooks: The Acolytes — Colossus, Gambit and Pyro.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: A couple, but Berzerker might be the biggest one-as he was an obscure one-issue morlock in the comic continuity, but got a very decent fan following after landing a spot in the New Mutants. He even gets a cameo in Wolverine And The X Men.
- Enemy Mine: Done repeatedly, the Boot Camp Episode being one of the first.
- Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: Averted for the most part, in that hardly any of the main characters actually go by their codenames (except Rogue, for lack of a real one). Sure, they get mentioned every now and then, but they seem to have no problems referring to each other by name, even in the heat of battle.
- Largely played straight with Toad and Blob, both of whom had their nicknames before they took up costumed villainy. Toad in particular has embraced his, and uses it to refer to himself.
- Evil Is Cool: The Brotherhood, though this is more like "misbehaving yet not being super evil is cool", also a strange inversion where the good guys are cool and popular and the bad guys are a rag tag bunch of misfits and are generally disliked and made fun of.
- Evil Teacher: Principal Kelly; Mystique when posing as Principal Darkholme.
- Exactly What It Says On The Tin: "Turn of the Rogue".
- Fan Of Underdog: Nightcrawler's classmate Amanda had a crush on him for a while, before she found out he was a mutant. Finding out only made it better.
- Five Bad Band: The Brotherhood:
- Foe Yay: The show seemed to set up a few of the X-Men and Brotherhood as having counterparts on the other side. Avalanche x Cyclops pretty much wrote itself with their rivalry. The same can be said with Toad x Nightcrawler and Spyke x Quicksilver.
- Freaky Is Cool: Let's just say, blue is Amanda's favoite color.
- Fridge Logic: Rogue's crush on Scott seems to be pure crack until you realize that they're actually quite similar, and then the pairing starts to make perfect sense... Oh, right. Jean.
- How is being a really fat guy a mutant power?
- The super-strength would count, not to mention the fact that he can make himself impossible to move. Doesn't come up in the show specifically, but Blob can create a gravitational field that sticks him to the ground. This is why Cyclops was incapable of harming him in his first appearance. Blob simply doesn't move without wanting to.
- Fun Personified: Nightcrawler, Boom Boom, Toad.
- Genius Bruiser: Beast.
- Getting Crap Past The Radar: Much of Boom Boom's dialog manages this, sometimes subtly, others not.
- The episode "Cajun Spice". That is all.
- Plus the entirety of the episode "Walk on the Wild Side". Boom Boom-centric, of course.
- "Cuddle Bumps." Said by Toad to Wanda, in case you were wondering.
- Giant Spider: A mystical guardian against Apocalypse in one episode.
- Girl's Night Out Episode: "Walk on the Wild Side".
- Goth: This show's interpretation of Rogue, but justified as behavior deliberately instilled by her adoptive parents, as being Blessed With Suck meant that it was best not to have her attract attention.
- The Hecate Sisters: Kitty is the Child, Rogue is the Crone, and both Storm and Jean are the Mother.
- Heel Face Turn: Rogue, attempted by Avalanche.
- Heel Face Revolving Door: Boom Boom, sort of. First she's with the X-Men, later with the Brotherhood, and finally returns to the X-Men. However, she never actually works against the X-Men during her time with the Brotherhood. More accurately, she's free-loading off them during their "neutral" phase. The instant they start to look like trouble again ( specifically, when Mystique comes back), she ditches them to return to the X-Men.
- Heroes Want Redheads: Jean is very popular.
- Hey Its That Voice:
- Hopeless Suitor: Rogue's feelings for Cyclops, and Toad to Wanda.
- Hot Shounen Mom: Mystique, according to some.
- Storm, maybe, considering she's pretty much the Team Mom.
- Ho Yay: Yaoi fans were particularly interested in what Avalanche and Quicksilver did with their free time together living in the Brotherhood Boarding House.
- Not to mention Nightcrawler and Cyclops, Rogue and Kitty, Kitty and Danielle Moonstar, etc.
- Idiot Hero: Good god, the New Mutants, in virtually every appearance. Bobby especially. Thankfully, they do seem to get better about it near the end.
- Jerkass: Quicksilver, Boom Boom for a while, Avalanche in his very first appearance. Cyclops is called one by Fan Dumb, when in fact it was more mutual animosity between him and Avalanche.
- Jerk Jock: Duncan Matthews, not surprising. Goes hand in hand with Bullying A Dragon in the third season. He eventually bites off more than he could chew when Spyke returned, getting himself arrested after an ill-conceived attack on the Morlocks.
- Jerk With A Heart Of Gold: Wolverine and Avalanche.
- The Juggernaut: Guess who filled that role...
- Leitmotif: "T, O, A, D, TOOOOOAD!"
- Limited Wardrobe: Semi-averted. All of the main X-Men wind up with four outfits: their battle suits, a formal one, and by the third season, two normal outfits that they alternate between. Still fairly limited, but at least they change it up a bit.
- Loads And Loads Of Characters: Once the New Mutants were introduced.
- Love Redeems: To a point. Avalanche is almost a complete Jerk Ass until he develops an interest in Shadowcat and slowly starts getting better. He even did a Heel Face Turn, but it didn't stick, eventually settling for a sort of Anti Villain role.
- Mystique gave it one last try in the series finale, but Rogue and Kurt just weren't interested.
- Luke I Am Your Father: Mystique reveals that she is Nightcrawler's mother toward the end of the first season, then again to Rogue (adopted) near the end of the third. Averted somewhat in that Quicksilver knows that Magneto is his father all along, contrary to other series, as does Wanda (a source of much anger for her).
- Magnificent Bastard: Magneto. For this troper, the clincher was erasing his daughter's memory rather than accepting the damage his own actions caused.
- Marvel Universe: Earth-11052, according to the Marvel Wiki.
- Meaningful Name: Lance Alvers. Alvers Lance. Alverslance. Avalanche. Did they change his name just for the Incredibly Lame Pun? Same with Toad, real name Todd Tolansky.
- Two-shot minor character Dorian Leach, who drains all power from the surrounding area.
- Moral Dissonance: In the third season premiere, Wolverine abandons the group when Cyclops refuses to treat the military as the enemy and respond with appropriate force. He doesn't just cede leadership, he outright rides off and leaves them to their fate. No one ever calls him on it, but he at least admits Scott had the right idea.
- Moral Event Horizon: Duncan Matthews and his pals went from Jerk Jocks, to physically assaulting Scott (unprovoked) after he was outted as a mutant, to post-graduation attempted mutant murder with mining machinery. That last one got them sentenced to life in prison. There was also the soft-drink manufacturer who unknowingly laced his drink with mutant poison. You can tell he's genuinely surprised... then Mood Whiplash kicks in and he figures he can make a lot of money off the discovery.
- Motor Mouth: Quicksilver.
- Mythology Gag: All over the place. Calling Cyclops "Slim." Showing the Blob vs. The Juggernaut onscreen and invoking the Unstoppable vs. Unmovable debate (moving is better). Coming up with an excuse to put the original team together for an episode. The list goes on.
- Narm: In the second episode of season one, while Wolverine is gearing up to fight Sabertooth, this troper half expected him to say "I'm going to take this glove... AND PUT IT ON!" as the scene was complete with misplaced Crowning Music Of Awesome.
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero: Magneto destroys a Giant Spider in an effort to stop Apocalypse from reawakening. Turns out the spider was actually a guardian preventing Apocalypse from escaping. In destroying it, Magneto opened the second door for Apocalypse. Oh Crap.
- Professor X gets one, too, combined with a possible Tear Jerker (if you're so inclined). Xavier finds out he has a super-powerful psychic son with three distinct personalities fighting for control: good boy David, psychopath Lucian, and a little kid. Xavier helps banish Lucian and the little kid within David's mind, only to learn that Lucian swapped his appearance with David during the mental battle. Cue the now unfettered Lucian flying off to raise whatever hell he wants. Nice job breaking your own son, Charles.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: David Kaye's voice as Professor Xavier seems to be based on Patrick Stewart, with just a touch of Sean Connery.
- Official Couple: Cyclops and Jean Grey, even if it took them
a bit two-and-a-half seasons to get there. The ending also revealed that Avalanche and Shadowcat got back together.
- Opposites Attract: Avalanche and Shadowcat.
- Opposite Sex Clone: X-23.
- Papa Wolf: Wolverine, somewhat arguably. Most noticeable when X-23 first shows up and arguably in "Grim Reminder".
- Parental Abandonment: A huge Berserk Button for Scarlet Witch since she is Magneto's daughter and Quicksilver's sister, the former putting her into a
n orphanage mental institution when her powers proved to be too unstable when she was younger. This causes her to gun for Magneto's head until he captures her and has Mastermind rewrite her memories to view him as a more loving father.
- Pet The Dog: While Mystique disguising herself as Risty and befriending Rogue was mostly done just to spy on the X-Men, she does seem to make a genuine effort to improve Rogue's life while doing so (namely convincing Rogue to be more social and helping her get over her crush on Scott). She's is Rogue's (foster) mother, after all.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Being roughly equal parts Adaptation Distillation and Adaptation Decay.
- Previously On
- Professor X Likes Watching Teenagers Sweat
- Puberty Superpower
- Put On A Bus: Spyke, Jubilee, Wolfsbane; Spyke at least came back later, and the other two have a cameo in the final scene of the finale.
- Quirky Mini Boss Squad: The Brotherhood, contrasting earlier adaptations. The Acolytes might count as well.
- Rescued From The Scrappy Heap: Spyke, who after living with the Morlocks, became a Badass, mutant-protecting vigilante that can light his spikes on fire.
- Re Tool
- Romantic Two Girl Friendship: Magma and Boom Boom's relationship can be seen as this without a big stretch; also potentially Rogue and Risty, especially in the dance episode.
- Sad Clown: Nightcrawler.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Ms. Darkholme knows this trick.
- The Scrappy: Spyke was sometimes dismissed by fans as a Token Minority replacement for the more famous and "edgy" Marrow. Word Of God says they didn't have Marrow in mind, some sources claiming they didn't even know about her.
- Screams Like A Little Girl: Toad.
- Ship Tease: There were more than a few Gambit and Rogue moments during the show's run, but nothing much came of it. Not to mention the Scott and Jean moments throughout the first two seasons and half of the third. It was inevitable, we were all just waiting for them to get to the point.
- Shirtless Scene: Scott and Wolverine in "Blind Alley".
- Shout Out: One episode had Blob watching a cartoon with characters that suspiciously looked like the Powerpuff Girls.
- "Survival of the Fittest", which introduced Juggernaut, also introduced us to the Danger Room program Logan's Run.
- "On Angel's Wings" gives us a brief glimpse of Warren reading a Daily Bugle newspaper.
- First episode of the last season has Toad knocking on the head of the petrified Mystique shouting "Hello? McFly?"
- Spanner In The Works: Wanda in "Day of Reckoning", but her power in general works like this.
- Spinoff Babies: Comes off as this, but only because of timing. In comic continuity, the X-Men did start out in high school, and didn't become full-fledged adults until the 70's; even then, the main team are adults, but the majority of X-Men are high-school aged students at the Xavier Institute, some even younger. When Kitty Pryde was first introduced to the comic, she was 13, even younger than her X-Men Evolution counterpart. However, when comparing it to the previous X-Men animated series, it definitely falls under this.
- Spotlight Stealing Squad: While episodes did alternate between the six leads, Cyclops and Rogue were always center stage for the most important storylines. Toad also got a rather large amount of attention, and even his own theme music.
- Stalker With A Crush: Gambit to Rogue — just try to deny it. Also the Blob to Jean Grey in his first appearance, but he at least got over it after an ass-kicking.
- The Straight Will And Grace: Nightcrawler and Shadowcat.
- Sunglasses At Night: Cyclops, to control his mutant powers. Lampshaded in the first episode:
Duncan (after Scott interferes in a group Toad-beating): I think me and my buds are gonna squash this slimeball. So you and your stupid sunglasses at night can bail.
- Team Mom: Storm.
- Techno Wizard: Forge.
- Temporary Blindness: Scott, whenever he loses his glasses, as the obvious destructive nature of his powers makes seeing dangerous for everyone else, leading to an alternate form of Blind Without Em. Most noticeable in the episode "Blind Alley", where Mystique strands Cyclops in Mexico City without his glasses, effectively blinding him for almost the entire episode.
- The Un Favorite: Wanda. Even after having her memory altered, Magneto still abandons her in favor of Pietro and scheming for world domination.
- The Worf Effect: Wolverine seriously suffers from this throughout the show.
- This Is SPARTA:
- Token Minority: Spyke.
- Too Dumb To Live: Bobby and the New Mutants, more so the former than the latter. To stress just how bad it is, they stole the X-Jet and took it for a joyride. As if this in itself weren't stupid enough, Bobby, the pilot, hadn't even managed to fly the simulator successfully for longer than a minute despite several tries. Granted, he was doing dangerous stunts in said simulator and didn't repeat them outside it, but still...
- Then there's "Fun and Games", where the entire mansion goes into lockdown and the people inside, standing near several windows, utterly fail to notice the giant metal shutters locking them in (or the complete lack of outside light therein).
- Took A Level In Badass: Spyke in Season 4.
- To a lesser degree Cyclops in Season 3, when he took on Mystique with his eyes closed, Daredevil style.
- Totally Radical: Nightcrawler's and Spyke's clothing style in season 1.
- Troubled But Cute: Gambit, Avalanche, Quicksilver, and arguably Toad who is enough of a pitiful loser to be sympathetic.
- Tsundere: Jean Grey gets rewritten into a Type B. She's usually a Cool Big Sis, but is crankier when it comes to Scott. Mystique is also easily provoked.
- Tykebomb: X-23, who was created to be "the perfect weapon".
- Uncanny Valley Girl: Risty Wilde. She's Mystique in disguise, out to stalk Rogue and use her as a way to spy on the other X-Men.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: Ignoring the obvious example, Spyke and Berzerker.
- Wake Up Go To School Save The World: Literally.
- Wangst: Everyone, but especially Rogue.
- Welcome Episode
- Wild Teen Party: "Fun and Games".
- Where Did They Get Lasers
- The Woobie: X-23 in her first appearance, especially when she breaks down in Logan's arms.
- Wolverine Publicity: Averted! He's around but only really gets two episodes of focus throughout all four seasons and doesn't hog the spotlight too much.
- Your Mileage May Vary: The X-Men as teenagers in high school is either brilliant, or the stupidest thing you've ever heard of. As noted with Spinoff Babies, they were teenagers in their very first appearance, although Angel and (especially) Beast being noticeably older than Jean and Scott made this troper scratch his head for a while.
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