Milo Murphys Law / Tropes D to H

Milo Murphy's Law Trope Examples
A - C | D - H | I - M | N - R | S - Z

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D

• Dare to Be Badass: In the first episode, Zack (who's starting to get fed up with the danger) asks why Milo's okay with being a living Jinx.
  Zack: How do you live like this?!
  Milo: How do you live like that?
  Zack: What do you mean?
  Milo: I mean, you wanna live like those other kids? They took a bus to school today. A bus. Does that seem like more fun to you?
• Darker and Edgier: "Island of Dakotas". It may be Played for Laughs, but Cavendish's deaths make up the highest onscreen death count out of any episode. The nature of his death can get as family-unfriendly as seeing him fall into lava and leaving behind his skeleton.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Disaster of my Dreams" follows Elliot.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The Doctor Zone Files Files.
• Description Cut: In "Time Out" when Cavendish starts to believe that Milo is a counteragent sent to undermine his and Dakota's mission:
  Cavendish: Just look at him over there, plotting our demise.
  (Cut to Milo enjoying some fast food with Zack and their respective dads.)
  Milo: I sure love cheese fries!
  (Cut back to Cavendish and Dakota.)
  Cavendish: Oh, this is not over, Milo Murphy. Not by a long shot.
  (Cut back to Milo.)
  Milo: They're fries with cheese!
• Deus ex Machina: In "Snow Way Out", Melissa has a wager with Bradley that Milo will make it before the first bell, with the loser shoveling the winner's sidewalk. At first, after Milo and Zack have a series of mishaps with a giant snowball, it looks like Bradley will win the bet... until Milo meets Balthazar and Vinnie, asking if they can take Milo and Zack 5 minutes back in time. Balthazar and Vinnie mention that they can't since they were banished, but there's nothing prohibiting Milo and Zack from time travel, with Milo and Zack going 5 minutes back in time and arriving just before the first bell.
• Disaster Dominoes: Milo's luck is very notorious in causing these types of situations. Hell, when a show begins with a form of them...
• Disney Acid Sequence: Poor Mrs. Baxter experiences one after being sucked into a wormhole caused by mistaking Dakota and Cavendish's time device for a cell phone.
• Diurnal Nocturnal Animal: In "Perchance to Sleepwalk", a bald eagle (usually diurnal) carries off Milo in the middle of the night.
• Doctor Whomage: Milo and Sara's favorite show is The Doctor Zone Files. The main character is a Human Alien with a British accent, Time Travel motif, and totally bananas fashion sense. He's got one foot in the future / And one foot in the past / He's got one hand in the present / Or at least in a gift-shaped cast.
• Dogface: Milo briefly appears as one in "Milo's World", as shown through Diogee's eyes.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Not only does Weird Al voice Milo, he also sings the main theme, "It's My World (And We're All Living In It)".
• Don't Explain the Joke: In "The Note", Melissa tries to make the others laugh by asking whether Milo was carrying osmium (it's actually a stack of doctor's notes). No one gets the joke, so she had to explain that it's the heaviest chemical element.
  • In "Smooth Opera-tor", when Cavendish doesn't react to Dakota's lobster bib joke, Dakota starts awkwardly explaining it, but Cavendish cuts him off.
• Doom Magnet: Milo being a living one is the premise of the show.
• Dreamworks Face: Melissa is prone to this as she makes one in the poster◊ and makes one with Zack on the official website◊.
  • Dr. Zone makes this face◊ in the opening credits of "The Dr. Zone Files".

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: Milo has a Dr. Zone and Time Ape poster in his room before the characters debuted on the show.
  • Dakota and Cavendish also appeared in some runs of "The Undergrounders" (they were digitally removed after the premier) and they also have a brief cameo in "The Doctor Zone Files," before they were named and officially introduced 3 episodes later.
• Easter Egg: In some runs we can see Dakota and Cavendish appearing as cameos.
• Egg Sitting: A variant for three in "Sunny Side Up"; Zack and Melissa have to partner with Milo on a project which requires them to build a container that will prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from a height. They break a lot of eggs in the planning stages.
  • Notably, due to making the egg proof against, well, Murphy's Law, the final egg is practically invincible while in the container. It also was one Milo himself picked out from the entire supply.
• Enemies Equals Greatness: For the brief period that he believed Milo Murphy was intentionally trying to prevent him and Vinnie Dakota from fulfilling their assignment, Balthazar Cavendish was happy because he took it as a sign their assignment wasn't meaningless.
• Engineered Public Confession: One of these proves to be Victor Verliezer's undoing when he confronts his ex-partner Clyde in "A Clockwork Origin":
  Victor Verliezer: You want to talk genius? How about making people believe that they needed my vCo products? I mean, look at this vPhone 6, it's just smaller than the 5 and bigger than the 4. That is literally the only difference and it's flying off the shelves!
  Zack: People have different-sized pockets.
  Victor: People are sheep! People are stupid gullible puppets that I can manipulate at my whim! Who's the genius now?
  'Melissa: Actually, it's still Clyde, because he didn't just say a bunch of horrible things about the public while we were live streaming on our phones.
  Victor [replayed on the big-screen video display]: People are sheep! People are stupid gullible puppets that I can manipulate at my whim!
  • Everyone quickly sells their vCorp stock and he goes out of business soon afterwards.
• Epileptic Trees: Discussed in-universe as fan theories about "The Dr. Zone Files" emerge when Wally says pistachios being Dr. Zone's favorite nut is just a theory and when Melissa had a theory that Dr. Zone and Time Ape are brothers.
• Expanded Universe: Same art style as Phineas and Ferb, as it's set in the same universe and a few neighborhoods away from Danville.
• Expy:
  • Milo, personality-wise, is extremely similar to Phineas. Nothing fazes either of them, they tend to do the impossible daily, and one of the early jokes for both of them is having official documentation.
  • Doctor Zone is an expy of the titular character of Doctor Who, with one alien race being mentioned, Trashcandroids, possibly being a mashup of Cybermen and Daleks from that show.
• Extinct in the Future:
  • While the series takes place in the present day, the time travelling syndicate that operates in the background reveals that pistachios are extinct by the year 2085. Dakota and Cavendish are tasked with trying to remedy this but given what happened when they succeeded, they end up believing that they're better off extinct.
  • The fact that Cavendish doesn't know what a giraffe is and Dakota mentions that they rarely see animals anymore suggests that many wild animal species are extinct by their time.

F

• Famous Ancestor:
  • Milo is the descendant of Edward A. Murphy Jr., the namesake of the original Murphy's Law.
  • Jackie from "Wilder West" is the descendant of Calamity Jane.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Cavendish and Dakota are from the future, but their understanding of the past is very limited. For instance, Cavendish thought The '70s referred to the 1870s, and they're unfamiliar with Halloween because it doesn't exist in their time, and they need the holiday explained to them. Thankfully, they were able to save the holiday, which means it will continue exist in their future.
• Flintstone Theming: In-universe example in "The Dr. Zone Files" where the characters abuse the word "time" a lot. Even Dr. Zone's sidekick is called Time Ape.
• Fluffy the Terrible: In "Wilder West," Milo is, naturally, assigned to a horse named "Psycho," who proceeds to buck him off repeatedly. It's quickly revealed that the horse is normally the gentlest of the horses and was given that name as a joke.
• Foil: Cavendish is one to Milo. They are both unlucky and tend to get into dangerous situations, but while Milo is Crazy-Prepared, allowing him to come out none the worse for wear, Cavendish's lack of attention and smarts often results in self-made misery and regular death.
• Foreshadowing: There's quite a bit, but some of the most notable examples include...
  • In "The Llama Incident", a Freeze-Frame Bonus shows a Pistachion in the football field, indicating that the Pistachions wind up travelling back in time to the day the incident happened.
  • While on their mission at the beginning of "Missing Milo," Cavendish says to Dakota he refuses to be "the butt of some cosmic joke," before a Dr. Zone billboard (which they are unknowingly copying the photo on) collapses behind them. It is revealed later in the episode that Cavendish and Dakota were actually the inspiration for Dr. Zone and Time Ape, respectively.
  • A few episodes depict Dakota reaching for Cavendish and pulling him away from oncoming disaster. "The Island of Lost Dakotas" reveals that he's been regularly traveling back in time to prevent his death.
    Dakota: If you're still alive, can we go home now?
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In "Sunny Side Up", Melissa only reads out a small portion of her egg hazard list.
  • The Dr. Zone Files has some silliness in the closing credits, but they go by way too fast to read normally.
  • Dakota and Cavendish appear in almost every episode. If they don't have speaking lines, you can usually catch them briefly in the background.
  • In "The Llama Incident", there is some Foreshadowing due to it being possible to note a Pistachion in the football field, indicating that the Pistachions wind up traveling back in time to the day the incident happened.
  • The sign in front of the school has a different message each time it appears.
  • In "Love Toboggan", we briefly see the first 13 items on Milo's list of 62 ways things can go wrong with snow. A giant snowman is indeed #12.
• French Accordion: In the episode "The Undergrounders", Zack is revealed to be claustro-avoidant, and as he, Milo, and Melissa are trapped in a runaway metro wagon, Zack needs to be distracted in order to calm down. Milo's second attempt is to hang up posters of Paris, don a beret and play music on an accordion, leaving Zack too distracted.
• Fruit Cart: Pistachio carts appear to be getting a raw deal to the point time travelers have to protect them.
• Funny Background Event: In "Rooting For the Enemy", after Joni mentions she just got the cast off, she walks off a few steps before getting hit by a stray football, right during the middle of a conversation.
  • Continuing Joni's misery, in "Spy Little Sister!", after she made small-talk with Milo, a jealous Amanda attacks when Milo returns to his seat.
  • In "Abducting Murphy's Law" when Doofenshmirtz rips the head off the Milo android, a man who happened to be walking by quickly covers his son's eyes and they run away.

G

• Glass Slipper: Milo's missing loafer in "School Dance."
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: "Hey Milo, is that a new scar?" "Yeah. Thanks for noticing."
• Goofy Print Underwear:
  • Zack seems to have heart-printed underwear in his hamper in "Sunny Side Up".
  • The gecko mascot when he's out of his costume. Also from "Rooting for the Enemy", the quarterback somehow took the underwear from another player.
  • Cavendish tells Doofenshmirtz that he's wearing underwear with his face on it. Doof declines the offer to see them.
• Got Volunteered: When hearing that the class would be breaking off into teams of 3 for their assignment in "Sunny Side Up", everyone in the class besides Milo, Zack and Melissa hide under their desks.
• Gratuitous Spanish: As Amanda is a Latina, she is naturally able to speak Spanish, and quite evidently so in "Cake 'Splosion!"
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: In "Managing Murphy's Law", Dakota and Cavendish are tasked with retrieving a piece of alien rubbish located at the Slushy Dawg, assigned to meet Jeremy. Each time Cavendish and Dakota drive through, they pass the radioactive alien rubbish, which causes them to experience temporary amnesia as it warps them into a video game arcade, fills their van with fast food wrappers from 79 hot dogs they didn't recall ordering, warps them into a circus where they're leotard wearing trapeze artists, find themselves jousting on Segway scooters with foam pool noodle floats, turns them into rock-and-roll hippies with a vanful of guitars and amps, and Cavendish finally decides not to use the drive-thru to get the alien device, while Dakota plugs and stops the leak with fast food wrappers.

H

• Hair-Contrast Duo: Cavendish's grey hair against Dakota's dark one. Cavendish's the uptight against Dakota's laidback personality.
• Halloween Episode: "Milo's Halloween Scream-a-Torium!" has Milo building a haunted house and trying to use it to scare Zack. Meanwhile, Cavendish and Dakota take advantage of the last Halloween ever to learn how it's supposed to work and have fun.
• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Melissa's father has this reaction to Milo before coming to understand his condition better in "The Little Engine That Couldn't."
  Mr. Chase: Does this Murphy's Law thing have an off switch?
  Milo: I haven't found one yet!
• Headbutt of Love: Between Milo and Brigette at the end of "Worked Day."
• Hereditary Curse: The entire "Murphy's Law" concept (only following the male heir to the Murphy name, causing mayhem and destruction around the target yet never actually killing them) has all the hallmarks of a family curse. Still, the way Milo views his life, if anything it'd be Cursed with Awesome.
• Heroic Dog: Diogee, who is responsible for helping Milo out of his more dangerous scrapes.
• Hero of Another Story: In "The Note", during a scene that is a Shout-Out to a similar moment in Shaun of the Dead, Milo meets a Distaff Counterpart and a pair of Suspiciously Similar Substitutes.
• Historical Rap Sheet: In a non-villainous example, the bad luck of the Murphy family has caused many infamous historical disasters.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Milo is separated from his backpack for most of "Missing Milo", preventing him from pulling out useful tools at a whim like he usually does. When he finally gets it back at the episode climax, he and his friends use its contents to incapacitate almost all the pistachio people in short order, with only the Big Bad taking slightly more effort to defeat.
• Hurricane of Puns: You could make a drinking game out of Doctor Zone's time puns.
• Hypocritical Humor: After the shareholders dump their vCorp stock:
  Teenage girl: How insulting! I'm selling my vCo stock immediately!
  Teenage boy: Yeah, I'm not a sheep. I'm gonna do exactly what she was doing.

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