Milo Murphys Law / Tropes S to Z

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

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S

• Seen It All:
  • Milo has been through so much that he barely reacts to anything beyond mild surprise.
  • Most of Milo's peers are fully aware of what happens to him day after day, and just pretty much expect the crazy to occur within his vicinity.
• Self-Deprecation: In "Worked Day", when Milo is looking at a list of possible careers he could choose for Career Day:
  Milo: And some of these don't even sound like real jobs. Animator? I think it's a typo. But what if that is a real job?
• Self-Parody: The song "Toboggan of Love" is a parody of "Boat of Romance" from Phineas and Ferb.
  • Milo has platypus pajamas that look like all platypuses seen in Phineas and Ferb, leading to this exchange:
    Sara: [...] Why are they teal? Aren't platypuses brown?
    Milo: Someone's idea of "artsy."
• Sequel Series: This show begins with the first day of school after the summer which Phineas and Ferb took place during. From time to time, characters bring up the ways Phineas and Ferb’s actions affected their own summer, like the time the boys’ roller coaster fell out of the sky and nearly crushed Melissa. This affects the second season more than the first, as a major arc is Doofenshmirtz trying to learn how to do good, after formally having a Heel–Face Turn in the Grand Finale of Phineas and Ferb.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The main reason BOTT exists is to fix the past, from World Wars to pistachios going extinct. Sometimes needed because Dakota and Cavendish made things go wrong in the first place when originally they hadn't. Dakota also does it often to save Cavendish after the many times he dies.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In "We're Going to the Zoo", after Milo, Sara, and Zack have gone to all the trouble of retrieving Brigette's T-shirts, which they had accidentally donated, it turns out she had planned on donating them to begin with.
• Shared Universe: As stated, it's set in Danville, Phineas and Ferb's own hometown, but just a few neighborhoods away from the two stepbrothers.
  • "Rooting For The Enemy" features a reference to Football X-7.
  • In "Worked Day", Balthazar is seen with a Danville map as they try to deliver a pistachio truck to its appropriate warehouse.
  • The Dr. Zone fan with the braces in "Wilder West" was a background character in "Nerds of a Feather" during the "Our Movie's Better Than Yours" song, among the Stumbleberry Finkbat fans.
  • In "Murphy's Lard," Melissa reveals that on the first day of summer, her science project was destroyed by (unknown to her) Phineas and Ferb's falling rollercoaster from the latter's first episode.
  • Milo is seen wearing Perry the Platypus pajamas in "We're Going to the Zoo." Perry's theme is briefly used in the score. In the same episode, one of the rock band T-shirts stolen by the monkeys is for Love Händel and another for Lindana.
  • In "The Substitute" there are two hints. First, one of the zoetropes shows the Klimpaloon dancing. The second is on the mysterious moving periodic table, which has Pzl (for Pizzazium Infinionite) on the 19th column and below the rest of the table.
  • In "The Phineas And Ferb Effect" we get the long awaited crossover between the words, once and for all putting to rest that the two shows share the same world.
  • The song "I'm Lindana and I Want to Have Fun" shows up a few times in season 2.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Buford for Zack and Melissa in "The Phineas and Ferb Effec."
  • Milo also playfully but approvingly teases Zack when Melissa kisses the latter on the cheek at the end of "Sphere and Loathing in Outer Space." Earlier in the episode, Perry also similarly teases him after he and Melissa have a moment.
• Shoehorned Acronym: In the climax of "The Phineas and Ferb Effect", Derek reveals his M.U.L.C.H. device, standing for "Machine Used for Literally Converting Humans? To Plants". Baljeet and Buford point out that would make the acronym MULCHTP, with Derek shouting at them that the TP is silent.
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Played With; while many plots revolve around school, in one episode we find out that with all of the commotion that goes into Milo's everyday life, he can't attend school like any normal person and has a lot of school to make up for, having to bring in a month's worth of doctor's notes to explain his absences.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Show Within a Show: The Dr. Zone Files is a show about a time traveler with the same name and his sidekick Time Ape. Milo and Sara Murphy love this show to the point where they would watch it all night.
• Shown Their Work:
  • In "Going the Extra Milo", Milo correctly points out that bees are responsible for far more human fatalities than wolves are.
  • In "Murphy's Lard", Milo calls a woodpecker "Picidae", the scientific term for woodpeckers.
  • The giraffes in "We're Going to the Zoo" have blue tongues like real giraffes. In the same episode, there is a female ostrich with brown plumage instead of black and white like the males.
  • "Perchance to Sleepwalk" features "red-beaked crows", a seemingly fictional species of bird. However, when the birds show up, Cavendish's device identifies them as Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, the scientific name of the red-billed chough, which is a real species of corvid with a red beak.
• Sibling Triangle: A minor example, as both Brulee sisters seem infatuated with Milo in "Family Vacation" (though he doesn't seem to notice).
• Spiritual Successor: To Phineas and Ferb. Instead of making every day awesome with something your parents would clearly disapprove of but never find out about, it's how to find the fun in awesomely bad luck that would send your parents into a frothing panic if they ever found out (assuming they didn't suffer from it themselves).
• Springtime for Hitler: In "Doof's Day Out", Dr. Doofenshmirtz is experiencing a slump, so he decides to volunteer at a life-size exhibit of the human digestive system where he builds a go-cart out of exhibit pieces that resemble a liver, blood corpuscles, a heart, and a spleen to get Zack out of the body exhibit. Later, he goes to the nature center and volunteers in the raccoon exhibit, where he releases the raccoons and rounds them up by blowing a whistle that also summons a herd of pigs. At Mr. Murphy's workplace, he accidentally pushes the safety button with his butt. As Doof muses on his apparent failures back at the Murphys' house, news reporter Destiny Summers comes to the door to interview him, with the museum curator noting that Doof's go-cart attracted more visitors to the human body exhibit, the nature center received thousands of donations after a video of Doof's incident went viral, and accidentally pressing the button at Mr. Murphy's workplace flooded the generator with coolant, preventing a possible explosion due to the warning system not working properly. The curator, museum supervisor, plant foreman, and the crowd give Doofenschmirtz their congratulations.
• Spy Satellites: A spy drone crosses Milo's neighborhood to check on one of the agent's brother-in-law in "The Note." His superior admonishes him for crossing "the Murphy Sector."
• Stable Time Loop:
  • In "Missing Milo." As Milo, Cavendish and Dakota attempt to navigate the Bad Future, a peach hits Cavendish in the back of the head, alerting him to impending disaster. Dakota grabs the peach and puts it in his jacket. Later, Cavendish sees his past self in danger, takes the peach from Dakota and throws it at him to redirect his attention. Cue endless talking in circles as they attempt to figure out where the peach came from in the first place.
  • Later in the episode, Milo's friends give him a letter in his own handwriting which he will eventually, while trapped in the past, place in care of Orton Mahlson to pass on to them. From Milo's perspective this hasn't happened yet, so he decides to hang onto it so he won't have to write it.
  • "Fungus Among Us" confirms that Milo inspired the original run of Doctor Zone by telling its creator all about the show as he knew it from his own time, down to episode summaries.
• Stalker Shrine: Played with when Zack interprets Melissa's room full of pictures of Milo as this; it's actually serving a more practical purpose.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Zack, Melissa, Cavendish, Dakota, Doofenschmirtz, and Perry have to figure out a way to get an alien carburetor back into place to get a spaceship moving. Unfortunately, touching it temporarily turns your bones into a jelly-like substance. They all set themselves up in a line and toss it to each other so they only have to touch it a few seconds, with the last one getting attaching it. When they're all lying on the floor waiting for their bones to solidify, Zack realizes that they could have just used tongs to move it without touching it.
• Stealth Sequel: According to hints, Word of God, and the eventual crossover, it's set in the same universe as Phineas and Ferb.
  • "Fungus Among Us" makes this even more evident as it implies the crossover is happening due to Doofenshmirtz being implied to be "Professor Time," previously mentioned as the inventor of time travel.
  • Season 2 outright confirms it by frequently featuring Doofenshmirtz in episodes as well as a few other characters in some like Perry and Monogram, and "The Phineas and Ferb Effect" ends up heavily tying the two shows together. Considering Doofenshmirtz is the future Professor Time, his appearance is more than justified.
• Storm in a Teacup: Used as a Literal Metaphor in "Agee Ientee Diogee" as Dr. Doofenshmirtz says "talk about a tempest in a teapot" when the shrinking grenade's effect wears off while he's inside a teapot.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The title sequence of The Dr. Zone Files: The Movie Files has an explosion in an empty desert.
  • The show proper has more than its fair share of this trope, naturally.
• Stylistic Suck: The Doctor Zone Files have Special Effects Failure to rival some of the classic episodes of Doctor Who, possibly as a Shout-Out.
• Suddenly Bilingual: Both Milo and Diogee are able to speak Spanish according to "The Llama Incident".
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In Smooth Opera-Tor: "Yeah, it's not like we tied up the guy who usually does this and stashed him in the basement."
• Swapped Roles: In "Backwards to School Night," Martin Murphy, Eileen Underwood and Richard Chase are turned into three-year-olds, leaving Milo, Zack and Melissa to parent their own parents. It's harder than they thought it would be.
• The Swear Jar: "Family Vacation" includes an eye-roll jar, an "unnecessary use of 'grand'" jar, an "anthropomorphizing national monuments" jar, and an "unnecessary wordplay during crisis" jar for the Brulee family. The final scene shows that Milo's family has a "sappy sentiment" jar.

T

• Take That!: The episode "A Clockwork Origin" contains a few jabs at Apple.
• Take That, Audience!: The opening narration of "Milo's Halloween Scream-a-Torium!" addresses the audience as "children and immature adults".
• Talking Animal: The alternate timeline that occurs in "World Without Milo" somehow gains talking squirrels.
• Taxonomic Term Confusion: Subverted in "Love Toboggan". A train operator misidentifies a family of partridges as quail, but later realizes his mistake.
• Temporal Mutability: The show seems to make use of type 4.
• Tempting Fate: The entire show is a giant example of this one, especially when concerning people who haven't been acquainted with Milo. Melissa even name drops it "The Wilder West".
  Melissa: Isn't it dangerous to tempt fate?
• The End... Or Is It?: The "Missing Milo" special ends this way, with the last of the Pistachio people ending up in the 1955 Town fair.
• Those Two Guys: Cavendish and Dakota.
• Time Machine: Time travelers use car-shaped time vehicles.
  • Doctor Zone and Time Ape use the Time Bee-hicle, a beetle-shaped car shaped like a bee.
  • Agents Cavendish and Dakota use a near-broken time vehicle that looks like a hybrid between a beetle and a jeep.
  • Agents Brick and Savannah use a limo, possibly driven by a man named Lars.
• Time Police: Savannah and Brick take care of more serious time-related incidents. Vinnie Dakota and Balthazar Cavendish are also from the future, tasked with protecting the world's Pistachio supply, because it's stated pistachio plants will go extinct.
• Time Travel: It's a plot element in the Doctor Zone Files Show Within a Show, but it's also a recurring plot element in this series involving a Time Agency.
• Time Traveler's Dinosaur: The episode "A Christmas Peril" has the time-travelling Cavendish and Dakota bringing dinosaurs to a Christmas party they're attending in an attempt to prevent themselves from getting into an argument that ruins their friendship.
• Timmy in a Well: At various points in "Missing Milo," Zack and Melissa each wonder how the other is able to understand Diogee's speech.
• Token Trio: Milo, Zack and Melissa.
• The Triple: In "The Little Engine That Couldn't" when Melissa's dad describes Milo as being "like whatever the opposite of a rabbit's foot is":
  Milo: A rabbit's head?
  Melissa: A fox's foot?
  Milo: A pound of sugar?
• Two Guys and a Girl: Again, Milo, Zack, and Melissa.

U

• Unfazed Everyman: Milo is so used to the strange things that happen to him that he barely even reacts. Melissa as well to a certain extent since she has known Milo for a long time to the point that she can accurately predict what will happen and for how long Milo will be held up.
• Unknown Rival: Initially, Cavendish and Dakota are unaware that Milo triggers all the pistachio-related disasters. As of "Time Out", the roles are reversed, with Milo unaware of their plans towards him.
• Unluckily Lucky: Given Milo's curse, he's usually rather short on good luck. After a lifetime of dealing with it though, he's a master at turning it to his advantage.
• Unraveled Entanglement: Happens to a young Milo (then later the present day version of himself and his friends) with shoelaces—the reason why he wears loafers.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Those who have known Milo for a while tend to be pretty blasé about the weird things that happen to him... as long as they don't get caught up in it.

V

• Viewers Are Geniuses: Milo and Veronica haven't seen each other in 300 fortnights. That's roughly 11.5 years. So, the last time they saw each other, Milo was 3 years old. Since Veronica also recognized Diogee, and said he was bigger than the last time they'd met, we have to assume everyone's favorite stout pooch is also around 12 years old.
• Villainous Crush: More like Rival crush, as Bradley isn't villainous, per se. But "Sunny Side Up" makes it obvious that he is interested in Melissa, what with >ahem< not naming his team after her, but a different Melissa.
• Vocal Dissonance: Milo is 13, but due to being voiced by Weird Al, who is in his mid-fifties, sounds much older.

W

• Walking Disaster Area: Milo's condition means that his mere presence causes things to go haywire around him.
• War Is Hell: Parodied. A gigantic pistachio is about to crush Milo and Phineas and Ferb's friends, until he sees the fighting all around him, having an existential crisis by asking "What Have I Become?". And then decides to Walk the Earth. In the middle of the warzone no less.
• Weaksauce Weakness: King Pistachion's species of pistachio plant is extremely vulnerable to uric acid (which is found in urine).
• Wealthy Yacht Owner: Milo's school has been underfunded ever since the school board bought that yacht.
• Wham Episode:
  • "The Island of Lost Dakotas" reveals that Dakota repeatedly goes back in time to avert Cavendish's numerous deaths, and sends the previous versions of himself to live on a deserted island as to not disturb the time stream.
  • "Fungus Among Us" ends on a cliffhanger with most of the characters having been captured by pistachions. The ending also features the appearance of Dr. Doofenshmirtz, initiating the crossover with Phineas and Ferb.
  • "Snow Way Out" ends with Cavendish and Dakota getting banned from time travel.
• Wham Shot: The final shot from the Season 1 finale "Fungus Among Us" is one. Milo and co have arrived at Professor Time's abode as they get trapped, when he gradually walks into the scene, revealing it to be Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb... who set the trap in the first place for the pizza delivery guy.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human? / What Measure Is a Mook?: When the sproutlings, clearly sentient, attack the group, Dakota decides he'd like a snack and chows down on a vast majority of them.
• What the Heck Is an Aglet?: Milo mentions that shoelace tips are called aglets in "The Island of Lost Dakotas", a Call-Back to Phineas and Ferb in which this fact was the focus of an entire episode.
• When Trees Attack: The "Missing Milo" special has the mutated pistachio plant from "The Substitute" grow into the sentient King Pistachion and take over the world.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: Milo’s best friends are Zack, who he meets for the first time in the pilot, and Melissa, who he’s known since first grade.

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