Phineas And Ferb / Tropes D to I

"Mom! Phineas and Ferb are splitting their TV Tropes page!"

To get back to the main page, click here!

For Tropes A-C, click here!

For Tropes J-P, click here!

For Tropes Q-Z, click here!

---

D

• Daddy's Girl:
  • Candace has this kind of relationship with her dad in a few episodes, such as "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World" and "I Was a Middle Aged Robot". And considering the fact that he's actually her step-dad, it's pretty darn cute.
  • Doofenshmirtz clearly wants this kind of relationship with his daughter, she just doesn't return the favor until later episodes.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Played with through Heinz and Vanessa Doofenshmirtz. Though Vanessa shows little interest in evil or her father’s schemes, she occasionally dabbles in it herself, to her father’s pride. In “Finding Mary McGuffin,” she rips a doll out of a little girl’s hands, leaving her crying. “Vanessasarry Roughness” has her helping her father hunt down a rare material for his inventions. Ultimately, she not only never truly become evil, but she also gets an internship at OWCA, and ends up convincing her father to give up evil as well.
• Dame with a Case: Parodied in "Finding Mary McGuffin", where, after watching some of their dad's old detective movies, Phineas and Ferb decorate their room to look like a detective's office and Candace barges in demanding they figure out who her doll got sold to.
• Damsel in Distress: In "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon," Isabella is one of these. Certified, no less. Earlier in "A Hard Day's Knight", Candace plays the part when the boys host a medieval tournament, with the Guy of the Week as her Knight in Shining Armor. Naturally, being Candace, this all blows up in her face.
• Dance Party Ending: Several episodes end in this way, such as "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together" and "Summer Belongs To You!", which both end with the cast jamming out and singing.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • "Phineas And Ferb Get Busted" is among the darkest things Disney has ever done. After Candace successfully busts her brothers, the duo get sent to a reform school that's a prison where their identities and creativity are stripped and they are subject to Clockwork Orange-esque torture and a not-so-subtle form of waterboarding, to the point of becoming imagination-deprived zombies. Candace eventually discovers what's going on and attempts a rescue, where she is barely able to save them. Bonus points for the fact that the reformatory's Drill Sergeant Nasty is perhaps one of the most evil villains to appear in a Disney cartoon, to the point where he even gets killed at the end. Thankfully, it's All Just a Dream (within a dream), but it's still a terrifying What If? episode.
  • The movie is also this. It involves the first time where Phineas is truly mad at someone ( him being upset at Perry revealing himself to be a secret agent, as he feels like Perry never regarded him and Ferb as friends), a dictatorship where every character has Darker and Edgier counterparts, and the first time the main characters have been faced with someone trying to kill them.
  • To a lesser extent, the fourth season as a whole, while still remaining optimistic and upbeat, seems to be more liberal when it comes to using black comedy, and the stories of some episodes may count too, in particular Phineas' controversial snapping in "Mission Marvel".
  • The Season 4 Halloween episodes, "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror" and "Night of the Living Pharmacists", actually have some pretty disturbing content for the show's standards - the latter in particular has Body Horror and a Dwindling Party plot with characters becoming zombies in a really intense situation, with their reactions to such events being akin to watching their friends and family die.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Despite not having a mustache or hat (and wearing a lab coat instead in keeping with his Mad Scientist role), Dr. Doofenshmirtz still has many traits where he would fit this trope: exaggerated nose and chin, hunched posture, elaborate crazy schemes, and over-the-top mannerisms.
• Dating Catwoman: Monty Monogram, son of Major Monogram, and Vanessa Doofenshmirtz, daughter of Doofenshmirtz, end up dating despite being on opposite sides.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Isabella and the Fireside Girls gets theirs in "Isabella And the Temple of Sap"—which also has a Perry-parallel (complete with female supervillain) in Pinky the Chihuahua. And again in "Bee Story".
  • "Vanessassary Roughness" does it for Vanessa. It also features a lot more Ferb than usual (or at least, a lot more Ferb without Phineas there to outshine him).
  • "Nerdy Dancing" gives its A-plot to Jeremy.
  • "A Real Boy" and "Norm Unleashed" focus on Norm.
  • An entire episode focuses on, of all things, a deliveryman.
  • Though Perry is one of the main characters and has no shortage of screentime on the show, "Sidetracked" can be considered one for him. Not only is most of the episode focused on the B-plot, all the A-plot scenes are shown from the point of view of Perry in pet mode and we don't get to see any of its characters' faces (except when they bend down).
  • "Ferb TV" is essentially a sketch show starring all of the supporting and minor characters, with the main characters relegated to very brief appearances as a framing device. Even Doofenshmirtz is reduced to a voiceover in the end credits.
  • "Tales From The Resistance" is this for the 2nd Dimension characters.
  • Isabella's mother has a much larger role than usual in "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon," actually taking part in the adventure.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Phineas was a minor form of this in the pilot (and, by, extension, the "Rollercoaster" episode). A few other times too, though his "deadpan" is so subtle it can be hard to tell. For example, in the original version of the theme song, after the line "driving our sister insane" he replied "it's a short drive."
  • Candace has a tendency to be this at times, though deadpan isn't as common as LOUD SARCASM.
    Guard: There's no yelling allowed.
    Candace: Oh, right, it's a museum, I wouldn't want to WAKE ANYONE UP!
• Dead TV Remote Gag: In "Perry Lays an Egg", Candace recounts how going five feet for popcorn is all right, but five feet to change the channel is too much.
• Declarative Finger: Ferb is often depicted in this pose◊, and delivers some of his lines with it.
• Deconstruction: "The Curse of Candace" really messed with the idea that being a vampire is cool. Especially the song.
• Deep Cover Agent: Perry the Platypus aka. Agent P, is undercover as the pet of the Flynn-Fletcher family. Despite this just being his cover, he adores his family and fears being apart from them.
• Deface of the Moon: Doofenshmirtz and his date turn the moon into a heart shape during their Falling-in-Love Montage.
• Demoted to Extra: Jenny and Django rarely appear after the first season.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • The Old Abandoned Old-Abandoned Amusement Park in "Isabella and The Temple of Sap". Lampshaded by Isabella, then the reasoning was revealed. The amusement park was actually named "The Old-Abandoned Amusement Park", but then it became old and abandoned.
  • "Space Adventure! It's an ADVENTURE in SPACE!"
  • "Phineas and Ferb built THAT?! That's horribly unsafe and dangerous!"
  • The song "Little Brothers". The lyrics state, "You will always be my little brothers/'Cause you're younger, we're related, and you're boys."
  • "You are being invaded from space, by invaders from space!"
  • The Gloominator 3000...inator.
  • Best example yet: The Redundant Scribe of Redundantness, namer of the Uncrossable River of Uncrossableness and the Unclimbable Mountain of Unclimbableness.
  • The title of the episode "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror".
  • In "Where's Perry?" Evil Carl's robot duplicates of various characters include Norm, who is already a robot.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • From episode to episode, and sometimes even scene to scene, the way Candace's eyes move changes. Sometimes her eyes are incorrectly animated like Phineas'—retaining shape when closed or narrowed.
  • Also, during the very few times you see him from the front, he can either look downright creepy or somehow strangely adorable.
• Description Cut: From "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)":
  Phineas: (referring to the portal to Mars) Don't worry, we can fix it! Heh, Candace is probably laughing about it as we speak!
  (cut to Candace on Mars)
  Candace: PHINEAS!!!!
• Desert Skull: Shows up in "Road To Danville", and gets discussed by Heinz.
  Doofenshmirz:Why do we always see cow skulls in the desert? And why do we only see the skull? Did the body die somewhere else? It makes no sense.
• Despair Event Horizon: Happens to Phineas in "Summer Belongs To You!" when they accidentally land in a desert island with only sand a two palm trees (and a yak), so Phineas has nothing to work with to take them out of there.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The construction of the world's tallest building in "The Doof Side of the Moon".
• Determinator:
  • Phineas, whenever someone mentions that something is impossible, he would take it as a challenge and proceed to make it reality.
  • Candace, no matter how many times she fails to bust her brothers, she nevers gives up.
  • Doofenshmirz also qualifies. Every scheme is either about taking over the Tri-State Area or humiliating his brother and no matter how many times Perry the Platypus foils his schemes he keeps trying (with a few momentary successes).
• Deus ex Machina: The whole point of Perry's B-Plot is to create one of these to remove all evidence of Phineas and Ferb's activities. The boys have formed a major reliance on this, to the point where the one time that their stuff wasn't cleaned up by the fight (if there even was one), they had to stay up all night just to clean it up. Naturally, that was the one time Candace wasn't trying to bust them. By "Across The Second Dimension" its shown that Candace has begun to believe in a mysterious force that resides in the backyard dedicated to protecting the boys.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Suzy Johnson, Jeremy's little sister, is constantly torturing Candace whenever nobody else is around to see it.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: In "Bubble Boys", when Buford gets the opportunity to blow bubbles:

  Buford: Ooh, ooh! Can I blow a super-huge one, so I crawl inside it and float around like a little woodland pixie? (awkward pause) Did I just say that out loud?
  Phineas: Yes, yes you did.

• Did Not Do the Bloody Research:
  • Ferb's grandfather describes a magic trick as "a bit of the old how's-your-father." That term refers to the sort of thing the kids shouldn't be watching.
  • In the same scene he says "I may seem like a barmy ol' git now..." Git is a mild swear word in the UK, so in UK airings the line is edited down (almost seamlessly) to "I may seem barmy now..."
• Did Not Think This Through: Doofenshmirtz tends not to consider the implications of his inators.
• Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: They build a rollercoaster. Except this time, it's A MUSICAL! The trope title is practically quoted verbatim. It's actually taken up to eleven since nearly every single character mentions the fact that it's all happened before.
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: Stacy clearly thinks this when Candace has actually grown two inches thanks to Phineas and Ferb's growth elixir in "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister".
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: In "Gaming the System", Phineas dies and flickers out of existence in Candace's arms after he and Ferb get stepped on by the final boss. Cue the Big "NO!". Of course, he gets better.
• Diegetic Musical: Played With. Many of the songs play out as though they're just characters breaking into random, unexplained musical numbers, but these musical numbers still occur in-universe and are just accepted as something that happens in Danville. One episode, "Rollercoaster: The Musical" takes this farther and has Phineas's daily project be to build another rollercoaster...but this time as a musical. Every character follows suit and many of them openly acknowledge having to do musical numbers, because that's just what they're doing that day. Many other examples involve characters putting on performances, knowingly breaking out into random song, and even paying background dancers to be there.
• Diegetic Switch: A variation - in some songs, including the title sequence, characters can sometimes be seen playing instruments during fills and solos.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Danny the Dinosaur from "Agent Doof" is clearly a dragon. Parodied to its illogical extreme in "Last Train to Bustville", where Doofenshmirtz decides to dominate the Tri-State Area by bringing back dodo birds. He admits that he has no idea what a dodo looks like, but since they're extinct, just like dinosaurs, he envisions an army of fire-breathing Godzillas.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • No mention is ever made of Ferb's biological mother, or Candace and Phineas's biological father. Word of God says what happened to them is unimportant, since the point is to portray a happy, stable mixed family. In fact, since Phineas and Candace both call Lawrence 'Dad', Ferb calls Linda 'Mum', and other than in "Rollercoaster" the 'step' in 'stepbrother' is omitted, a casual viewer might not even realize this is a blended family.
  • Most of the side characters only get one parent shown, if any, usually the mom. Vanessa is actually the only child/teenage character who seems to actually have two biological parents. Maybe the dads are all at work?
• Disintegrator Ray: Doofenshmirtz's disintegrator-inator and his mentor Kevin's disintevaporator.
• Disney Death: Phineas and Ferb losing one of their lives in "Gaming the System".
• Disproportionate Retribution: Most of Doofenshmirtz's plans involve over-the-top punishment for minor slights, when he isn't trying to rule the TRI-STATE AREA!!.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • The boys are completely unperturbed by Candace's attempts to bust them. They've even helped her a few times.
  • Ferb remains unfazed in the face of things even Phineas reacts to. His "zany serenity" is even lampshaded in "Invasion of the Ferb-Snatchers".
• The Diss Track:
  • Candace's song "E-V-I-L B-O-Y-S" is about how her stepbrothers are "evil" for doing crazy misdeeds such as building roller coasters in the yard and driving cattle through the city.
  • In Doof's song "My Goody Two-Shoes Brother", he rants about how his brother is favoured by their mother and he wants to dump pigeon poo on him.
• Distant Duet:
  • The episode "I Scream, You Scream" has Busted. Although it is a duet for Candace and Vanessa, they never actually see each other during this episode.
    • Similarly "When Tomorrow is This Morning Again" (sung by Candace and Doofenshmirtz) from the Grand Finale "Last Day of Summer". Part of the song resembles "Busted", with Doofenshmirtz taking the position of Vanessa.
  • The episode, "Bully Bromance Break Up" had "Hole in My Heart", a Break-Up Song between Buford and Baljeet.
  • The episode "Act Your Age" has "What Might Have Been", a duet between Phineas and Isabella where they somberly sing about what it might have been like if they had gotten into a relationship together like they both wanted, and regretting not ever having done so.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Ferb's initial encounter with Vanessa results in him taking the blueprints she was picking up and vice-versa. It ended up saving Carl the consequences of his blunder.
  • During the search for the pizzazium infinionite, Ferb appears to be staring at Vanessa's butt during the musical number.
• Ditzy Genius: Doofenshmirtz. When it comes to mad science he's usually quite brilliant, as some of his -inators are clever enough to stand right up there with the boys' creations, and at least SOME of his Evil Plans have been great ideas. Then he fails to understand expressions like "carbon footprint" and "green thumb", or fails to see a flaw in his plan that would be obvious to a middle-school student.
• Does Not Like Spam:
  • Doofenshmirtz finds rice pudding disgusting.
  • In "Doofapus", it is also revealed that Phineas doesn't like zucchini.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: This shows up a lot.
  • Dr. D losing the girl of his dreams to a guy with bigger hands in "Out to Launch".
  • "Hey Candace! The things they make us wear, huh? At least you don't have a wiener on your head."
  • "And I am not using the banana this time!" Phineas, after a few seconds, decides to add: "You guys heard that too, right? It wasn't just me?"^note  Of course, she was pretending the banana was a phone, but the point still stands.
  • "So Isabella, what'd you think of your first rainbow?" "Well, it was really pretty, but it's not my first rainbow."
  • "You just squeeze and pull and squeeze and pull and..." said by Isabella while doing very obvious hand motions.
    • She was talking about milking cows, but the point remains.
  • "Your hotdog is no match for my bratwurst!"
  • In "The Lake Nose Monster", Dr. Doofenshmirtz is eating chicken wings and begins to talk about genies. He looks like a stoner with the munchies, talking about the completely pointless things you talk about when high.
  • In response to Isabella's fawning in "Interview with a Platypus," a hungry squirrel squeaks the following into the animal translator: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm cute, I'm cute...now, nut me!
  • It's unavoidable in "Lost In Danville". Doof calls Peter a thwarty call.
  • In "Chronicles of Meap", there's the part where Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella are taken to a cloud.
    Ferb: That's no cloud. That's a space station.
    Phineas: I've got a good feeling about this!
    • That’s actually just a Star Wars: A New Hope reference.
  • Candace's busting obsession is frequently compared to an addiction, with Stacy calling herself an "enabler" and Stacy and Jeremy referring to Candace's desperation to bust her brothers before midnight in the New Year's special as a "relapse".
  • In Norm's "Weaponry" song, he sings about wanting to "be a conqueror and win my father's love". Those motivations sound a lot like the motivations a lot of pundits and satirists attribute to George W. Bush.
  • In "Act Your Age", during Isabella's song, there's an Imagine Spot where an older Isabella is kneeling by the toilet in her nightgown, with Phineas patting her back. The lyric for this part mentions "being sick with salmonella", but the visual context seems an awful lot like morning sickness, or possibly the result of drinking too much. In the same episode, teenaged Phineas realizes his feelings for Isabella when she's no longer in the yard with him, and goes back to working on his project... which is a giant eggplant.
• Door Stopper: The door-sized Fireside Girls manual. The table of contents is a separate, conventionally large volume. Candace almost lost her voice narrating the audiobook version over a whole day.
• Don't Explain the Joke:
  • Utilised occasionally, for example:
  Phineas: Dad, can I borrow your glasses? I can't see my entree....y'know, 'cause its so small!
  Lawrence: Yes, I think we got that.
  • A Real Life example: Jeff Marsh noted in an interview that the head of Children's Programming for Disney Channel didn't understand how Stacy could become president of Uruguay in "Phineas & Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", despite it being a throwaway gag, so Dan Povenmire concocted an explanation, which involved, among other things, dating the son of the current president and being swept into office with a "llama vote".
  • This exchange from "The Beak" episode:
    The Beak: All right, let's wrap this up. Hey, my first superhero pun.
    Khaka Peü Peü: Well, don't quit your day job, Mr. Comedian.
    Random guy: Actually, I thought it was pretty clever.
    Charles: Yeah, because, see, it wrapped around the legs.
    The Beak: If you didn't like that one, maybe this'll be a hit.
    Charles: Yeah, see, because… because he hit him.
    Random guy: I'm not an idiot, Charles.
• Doomsday Device:
  • When Baljeet becomes super-intelligent in "Cranius Maximus", he creates a machine that will put Earth's atmosphere on the Moon.
  • Dr. Doofenshmirtz has created at least two. In "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer" he created the Move-The-Earth_Away-From-The-Sun-inator which caused global freezing, and then in "Last Day of Summer" he created a Do-Over-Inator that caused a rupture in the space-time continuium. Worth noting, both were created for lesser reasons and he never considered their awesome power.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom:
  • The "Phineas-and-Ferb-edge-of-insanity-kiss-your-butt-goodbye-gravity's-a-stone-cold-sucker-nightmare-rail-skate-track-obstacle-course of doom" in "The Beak".
  Phineas: You know, it occurs to me we could get hurt. I suppose the "of doom" in the name should have tipped us off.
  • Baljeet's Spinning Tops... OF DOOM!
• Double Entendre: When Perry enters his lair, it is covered in newspaper. Monogram explains it is because they have new recruits and they haven't been "trained" yet. (Because they are animals.)
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Supervillain Khaka Peü Peü is hit by a chair thrown by his wife, who demands they go shopping for more "throwing chairs".
• Downer Ending:
  • "Candace Gets Busted", despite the title being a Foregone Conclusion. Candace spends the entire episode trying to keep a party, that she didn't even intentionally throw, from getting out of hand. However, their parents come home and she gets blamed for it.
  • "Mommy Can You Hear Me?": Candace re-injures her foot, and the boys fail to get their birthday message to Sergei with no way to reach out to him. Miles away though, an alien that looks like Ferb manages to give the message.
• Dragons Versus Knights: The legend of the Black Knight of Worcestershire involves the knight going off to fight a dragon.
• Dramatic Drop: Doofenschmirtz drops a plate of crackers, which shatters on the floor. He was getting them so Perry could have crackers with his cheese, but to the Mad Scientist's shock, the Platypus ate the entire wheel of cheese in the few seconds it took him to get the crackers.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Done by Perry in "Leave the Busting to Us!" with a magician's hat.
• Dramatic Spotlight: Candace gets one at the end of the Aglet song, and then ruins her own big moment by both not learning the word "aglet" and by, instead of singing, going off on a rant about why aglets don't matter.
• Dramatic Thunder: The Regurgitator has this installed in his lair, which is lampshaded several times by Doofenshmirtz.
• Dream Within a Dream: "Phineas And Ferb Gets Busted!" is the Dream Within a Dream of Perry the Platypus.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: The Drill Sergeant in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" His goal is to break the boys so they would never use their "dangerous" imagination ever again.
• Drives Like Crazy: At least during his driving test, Doofenshmirtz, to the point where Perry is so scared he starts signing his will on the spot. Given the nature of the test, it may be a requirement of Drusselsteinian driving.
  • Candace in Bubble Boys, due to chasing Phineas and Ferb to bust them. And then a jetpack gets stuck on the car.
• Driving Up a Wall:
  • Upon seeing a commercial for an "all-terrain" vehicle that markets it on its ability to drive on the road and in the mud, Phineas quips that road and mud are hardly "all-terrain" and set off to make a vehicle that can actually drive on any terrain. One of the "terrains" they demonstrate on is the side of buildings.
  • In "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World", Candace starts to drive her monster truck up an incline. Said incline becomes so steep that it goes up at a 90 degree angle, and then Phineas tells Candance that it gets steeper. After Candance reaches the top of the incline, the camera zooms out to show that the 90 degree incline features a loop-de-loop.
• Droste Image:
  • In "Meapless in Seattle", Ferb finds an ancient roman cup with the picture of a Roman senator, that looks just like Ferb, carrying a cup with the picture of a Roman senator that looks just like Ferb...
  • In "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!", he explains with cards how he tricked Perry into following him into his secret lair. The last card is one of him showing Perry the card of him showing Perry...
• Drunk on the Dark Side: More like "Drunk on intelligence so extreme that it gives you Blue-and-Orange Morality that causes you to do evil deeds", but Baljeet falls under this in "Cranius Maximus".
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: In the episode "S'Winter", Candace becomes insanely jealous of Jeremy's new exchange-student friend, who looks like a gorgeous Swedish girl from the back. Said student turned out to be....
  D.D.: Derek Dukenson, but you can call me 'D.D.'
• Dude, Not Funny!: Perry reacts this way to Major Monogram's goofy doodle of the fallen Agent T.
  Monogram: "What? Too soon?"
• Dude, Not Ironic:
  Buford: That's a little something I like to call "Ironing".
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Said by Ferb at the end of "The Beak", when no one seems to recognize his part in controlling the supersuit, and Phineas gets all the credit.
• Dwindling Party: By the end of "Night of the Living Pharmacists", the only character in the main group left un-zombified is Isabella^note other than Doofenshmirtz, who is immune, but he makes up for it by going into an emotional breakdown when both Perry and Vanessa are infected, and even she succumbs in the end. Fortunately, in her final moments of consciousness, she manages to activate the machine that restores everyone to normal. As it turns out, the only character we know that escaped zombification entirely was one not involved in the main plot at all: Stacy.
• Dysfunctional Family: At least, Candace certainly thinks she's in one of these.
  Candace: (While dusting off her platypus suit) Sometimes, I swear I'm the only normal one in this family.
  • A more straight example would be the Doofenshmirtzes. With Heinz's mother favoring his younger brother, Roger, because he is good at kickball, his father favoring the dog, which he called "Only Son", and they disinheriting Heinz for whatever reason so he ended up raised by ocelots. Heinz really wants to defy it with his own daughter.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • "I'm Lindana and I Wanna Have Fun" is heard as elevator music in "Are You My Mummy?" before being featured in "Flop Starz".
  • "Phineas and Ferb's Hawaiian Vacation Part 1" has a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo of Ducky Momo in the hotel gift shop, a character later given a bigger role in "Nerds of a Feather".
  • Rodney and Dr. Diminutive appear in photographs leaving Doof's building in "The Bully Code," an episode before they're introduced properly.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the pilot episode, Phineas's cheery demeanor is absent and he instead seems disaffected, even cynical and grumpy. Compare his reaction toward Candace after she says she's in charge with the remake; in the original he says "Whatever,"; in the remake he says, "The condition didn't have to do with the moose, did it?"
  • His voice (as well as Isabella's) is also noticeably deeper in the earlier episodes, slowly growing into the more familiar tone as the first season progressed.
  • He also comes across as ruder, making snarky comments at Candace and saying he should have charged more for the roller coaster ride; after this, he never charges for rides, and in fact, will often given away his creations for free or a nominal amount. While he does have his sassier moments moving forward, they're not a common occurrence.
  • Some Season 1 episodes often have Candace bring Lawrence to see the Big Idea; after Season 2, Lawrence happens to approve of the Big Ideas and participates in them, and Candace only wants to bring Linda to see it because it's implied the busting power is from the mother.
  • Doofenshmirtz's character was more actual evil in the early episodes, notably in "The Magnificent Few" where he tried to dunk Perry in a lava pit. He also didn't call every invention of his an "inator".
    • Also, his early schemes were closer to "classical" supervillain plans (e.g. stop the Earth's rotation). Later in the series, most of his plans would be either extremely petty ways of getting back at his brother, or over-the-top solutions to minor everyday annoyances. Most of his early plans are also not focused to just "the entire Tri-State Area".
  • Similar to Candace, Vanessa is trying to bust Doofenshmirtz for being evil to Charlene. This was dropped after only two attempts in Season 1.
  • In early episodes, Candace would respond positively to a few Big Ideas, especially if they're meant as gifts for her or made to help her in some way. Later on, Candace routinely rejects everything her brothers do, even if it's for her, going out of her way to not enjoy herself.
  • The animation in Season 1 is more choppy and exaggerated than in later episodes.
• Ear-Piercing Plot: Alluded to in one episode where Candace listens to Stacy's plan to get her ears pierced, then to Stacy crying in pain over it, and finally, denying to Stacy's mother about knowing anything about Stacy's plans in the first place and how wrong it was for Stacy to go behind her mother's back.
• Ear Worm:
  • Doofenshmirtz once created a video loop scientifically created to embed itself in the listener's head in a hypnosis plot.
  • One of Doofenshmirtz's plots involved stealing a bunch of fast food mascots because he kept getting the chain's ear worm jingle stuck in his head.
• Easter Egg: During Rollercoaster: The Musical When Candace and her mom are going back to the car, the future Candaces from "Quantum Bugaloo" can be seen behind a car.
• Edible Ammunition: When Doofenshmirtz joins the fight in "Mission Marvel", he chooses, of all things, the waffle-inator (which uses waffles as projectiles) as his weapon.
• Egomaniac Hunter: Mitch from "The Chronicles of Meap" who captures the galaxy's rarest creatures for his personal collection.
• Egopolis:
  • Danville is named after creator Dan Povenmire.
  • Dr. Doofenshmirtz creates his own country called Doofania out of spite of his brother.
• Ejection Seat:
  • Double 0-0's car in "Elementary, My Dear Stacy", being a parody of James Bond. Agent P accidentally activates it, and Double 0-0 is sent flying out of his own car.
  • In "A Hard Day's Knight", Doof giant dragon robot has an ejection seat that suggest to the pilot (just before ejecting them) to take a parachute.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Perry has his secret lair under the Flynn-Fletcher house, with many secret entrances throughout the house.
• Elseworld: the series has several episodes that break the usual setting by putting the main characters in a different time period. Examples include:
  • "Tri-Stone Area" (which featured all characters in 27,000 B.C.)
  • "Doof Dynasty" (which featured them in the Ming Dynasty era of ancient feudal China)
  • "Excaliferb" (which featured the characters in a medieval/fantasy setting, although this was a story read to Major Monogram by Carl)
  • "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon" (an Indiana Jones spoof set in the early 20th century). These four were part of the "Time Shift Event" and premiered back to back.
  • "Steampunx" has a steampunk version of the world back in the 1920s.
  • "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein" shows Victorian-era characters taking on the same roles as the main cast. Unlike the other others, this was a story told to the kids by Ferb's grandpa.
  • "Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars" is set, well, guess.
• Embarrassing First Name: Francis Monogram, who gets made fun of for his first name quite a bit.
• Embarrassing Hobby: Candace loves the children's show Ducky Momo, but being an average teenage girl, she can't let anybody find out lest she be teased to death.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: "Is 'Candace Gertrude Flynn' your full legal name?"
• Embarrassing Old Photo: This gem. Doofenshmirtz will never live it down. It's also a bit of a Continuity Nod because he mentions the video was lost. In "One Good Scare Ought to Do It", a lot of his junk was dumped out of his aircraft.
• Emergency Cargo Dump: In "Last Train To Bustville" , Candace does like Phileas Fogg did in Around the World in Eighty Days, with a train on its last run that the engineer wanted to make go to the top of a hill.
• Emo Teen: Parodied in "Bee Day," where Candace takes a personality test that leads her to believe she's emo. She immediately changes her outfit and overall demeanor to match, until Stacy points out that she added her score wrong.
• Empathic Environment:
  • It turns out that all of The Flying Fishmonger's attempts to jump McGregor's Gorge were rained out because his theme song was too dreary.
  • In the Christmas Special, Doofensmirtz's Naughty-inator causes the entire town to come up as naughty on Santa's list. A side effect is filling the sky with ominous clouds, which Phineas immediately and thoroughly lampshades.
• Empty Shell: Phineas and Ferb are brainwashed into these in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", losing their creative and energetic spirit and becoming obedient and emotionless. They do recover, though.
• The Ending Changes Everything:
  • Done humorously in the episode "The Curse of Candace", when it's revealed that Candace, in fact, is a vampire. Maybe...
  • Played slightly more straight in the episode "Tri State Treasure: Boot of Secrets". It turns out at least most of the episode was actually a movie made by the boys, but since 14-year-old Doofenshmirtz is there, it's not very clear how much of it was.
  • It's revealed at the very end of the episode "Lost in Danville" that the episode took place in an Alternate Universe version of Danville, which the original Phineas and Ferb are viewing via a sorbet machine. A clue to the reveal (as pointed out in the very end) is the fact that the alternate Phineas has an extra white stripe on his shirt (and that Lawrence is a polar bear).
• End-of-Episode Silliness: All the time. In "Picture This", they turn Candace's post-failure stammering into a rap song at the end of the episode, just to name one example.
• The End of the World as We Know It:
  • More like "The end of the TRI STATE AREA as we know it", but a lot of Doof's plans would result in this, if he weren't so ridiculously lacking in common sense, doing things such hypnotizing everyone or building a wall around the city.
  • "Quantum Boogaloo" provides proof, though, that if Perry wasn't there to stop him, he would successfully turn the place into an awful dystopia. Don't know if that really counts, but it's certainly not a nice place to live.
  • Candace invokes this. She apparently thinks that asking Jeremy to the dance will result the Earth exploding.
  • "Night of the Living Pharmacists" ended with the world being turned into zombies and only the walled city of Danville being safe.
• Enemy Mine: Every once in a while Doofenshmirtz is forced to team up with Perry and/or the rest of the O.W.C.A.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Phineas is an overly enthusiastic Genki Boy and Ferb is The Quiet One who speaks about Once an Episode, but they make a great team.
• Enfant Terrible: Suzy Johnson, Jeremy's little sister. She apparently scares Buford, the bully.
• Engrish: Invoked for comic effect in the song JPOP (Welcome to Tokyo).
  "Welcome to Tokyo,"
  "Being glad that you are here."
  "We came visiting, delightful us"
  "Welcome to Tokyo."
• Enslaved Tongue: Many of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's inventions and schemes involve communication. One example is the Double-Negative-Inator. Which makes everybody trying to say a negative to add another negative to their sentences, so they become positive (and their own attitude change, as if they actually wanted to say a positive). Or the Least-Likely-inator, which forces people to do, or say, the least thing in their nature. Among others.
• Entertainment Below Their Age: Candace has been a fan of Ducky Momo since she was little. The one time the audience gets to see Ducky Momo for themselves, it's a blatant parody of real-world preschool shows in general, and the kind of Fake Interactivity seen in shows like Dora the Explorer in particular.
• Epic Fail:
  • Several of Doofenshmirtz's schemes result in this, most notably when he was defeated by a potted plant. He lampshades this later on:
    Doofenshmirtz: "That failure was spectacular, even for me!"
  • A Noodle Incident variety in "At the Car Wash:" Katie somehow managed to get seriously injured operating a lemonade stand.
• Escort Distraction: When Phineas and Ferb plan to reunite Love Händel for their parents' wedding anniversary in "Dude, We're Getting The Band Back Together!", Candace is tasked to keep Linda distracted. Hilarity Ensues when both parties end up at the hair salon of one of the band members.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: Buford insists that cowboys are fake, and asks the other characters if they've ever seen one. They all get looks of amazement on their face as they realize that they haven't—even though, in point of fact, they had been cowboys in one episode. It was just an in-universe tale instead of a Series Continuity Error, though.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Baljeet is first shown doing homework, and not comprehending Phineas pointing out that it's summer and he shouldn't have any. He is then pushed off his chair by Buford.
  • Ultimately defied by Buford, thanks to Characterization Marches On. His first appearance was on "Backyard Beach", where he shows up to challenge Phineas, as his initial concept was that of Phineas's enemy. But that was dropped after his second appearance and has been their friend ever since.
  • Doofenshmirtz has one involving, of course, opposing Perry the Platypus and an evil scheme, but he also spends a lot of time ranting about things that aren't particularly important, gets a humorous injury, and his scheme is grandiose, half-baked, and without gain.
    Doofenshmirtz: See? And you thought I was just making it up!
  • Isabella's first appearance involves her Catchphrase and staring with hearts in her eyes at Phineas.
  • Candace, amazingly, got hers even before the official beginning of the first episode.
    "Mo-om! Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence!"
• Even Nerds Have Standards: Pretty much describes Baljeet's reaction to Irving.
  • In "Nerds of a Feather", the convention-goers all cheer for Candace until they find out that she is a teenager in a Ducky Momo costume, then promptly drop her and walk away in disgust. Even the nerds think Ducky Momo is an embarrassment that makes them all look bad.
• Even the Guys Want Him: In "Quietest Day Ever", Doofenshmirtz makes himself handsome (when he actually was planning to make everybody ugly.), so much that even the men faint when they see him, and everybody is willing to give him anything he wants.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: A subtitle-free variant in an episode in which Ferb translates his grandfather's bizarre British slang. After a particularly odd statement, he simply says, "I have no idea."
• Everybody Cries: Phineas' Rousing Speech in "Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama!" causes most of the people in the crowd to be brought to tears, including Candace, who realizes she can't bring herself to bust her brother on his birthday and destroys the disc.
• Everyone Can See It: Phineas and Isabella, full stop. This is lampshaded by Vanessa, who pretends to be surprised before revealing that she knew too. For context, Vanessa has rarely if ever interacted with any of the children other than Ferb.
• Every Episode Ending: Expect a loud guitar strike at the very end of every episode when it snaps to black.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Perry thwarts many of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's schemes, no matter how silly they would get. But when his scheme was learning whale speak, just so he could get back at them for stealing his girlfriend, Perry left in disgust.
  • There are a few instances where Candace decides it's not worth trying to bust her brothers.
• Everyone Hates Mimes:
  • Doofenshmirtz clearly expresses his hatred of them in "Picture This", when he decides to trap every mime in the Tri-State area in actual invisible boxes.
  • There's also a mime that gets abused with Amusing Injuries in Paris in "Summer Belongs to You". Finally his makeup gets washed off and he exclaims, "Hey, everyone, I can talk!"
• Evil Counterpart: Thaddeus and Thor. (They're not evil, per se, but Thaddeus is obviously a Jerkass compared to Phineas.)
  • "Thor, I know who we're gonna out-do today!"
  • "Hey, where's Harry?" "Over here!"
    • "He's a contractor. They don't do much."
  • Vanessa isn't evil but in the song "Busted" and in the episodes "Finding Mary McGuffin" and "Hail Doofania" she does come across as a Darker and Edgier counterpart to Candace, as her Clothing Switch with Candace made incredibly obvious.
  • Doofenshmirtz is, to all the effects, a Harmless Villain counterpart to the boys, with his Evil Plans being the evi...mean-spirited counterparts to the Big Ideas.
  • Dr. Doofenshmirtz himself gets an evil counterpart in his second dimension counterpart, who unlike him is truly evil.
  • Doofenshmirtz also has Rodney, who is essentially Doof without his redeeming qualities.
• Evil Gloating: Doofenshmirtz.
  • As a matter of fact, in "One Good Scare Ought To Do It!", Doof gives Perry a presentation of how he planned the day. Perry bursts in, Perry gets trapped, Doof pretends he didn't know he was coming, and he makes a presentation showing how he had planned it out, complete with a picture of him pointing at a board with a picture of him pointing at a...you get it.
  • And a later one, wherein he shows relatively the same type of presentation but in a pop-up book form.
  Doofenshmirtz: ...the, uh... book seems to have caught up with us in real time...
• Evil Is Petty: Doofenshmirtz is pretty much the poster boy, with pretty much all of his schemes meant to deal with whatever little annoyance is bugging him at that particular moment. And like everything else, this is lampshaded at one point:
  Doofenshmirtz: And now, Perry the Platypus, prepare to witness a truly petty act, brought on by my own mindless jealousy!
• Evil Laugh: Doofenshmirtz obviously enjoys indulging in this. For added fun, in the Take Two interview with Neil Patrick Harris, Doofenshmirtz, playing to Neil's own stint as a Mad Scientist, challenges him to a contest of these. Neil wins when his manages to summon Dramatic Thunder.
• Evil Poacher: Mitch in "The Chronicles of Meap". He travels through space to take creatures from their planets and add them to his collection.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Subverted. One of Doofenshmirtz's plans was even devised out of his frustration at lacking a deep voice. Then again, Neil Patrick Harris once beat Doof in an Evil Laugh contest because he could pull this off.
• Evolving Credits:
  • The title sequence changes each new season to show clips of episodes from the past season before the title appears.
  • Starting with "Don't Even Blink", during the Staggered Zoom to Phineas in the line "Like maybe...", he gradually smiles with each shot.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Pretty much everything Doofenshmirtz builds. Lampshaded a couple times:
  • He describes his 'Misbehave-inator' as doing "pretty much what the name implies, really".
  • When he reveals his 'Make-Up-Your-Mind-inator', he briefly wonders if the name is too precise.
  • This aparently is actually important. Once he run out of ideas, he created a good-idea-inator, but he thought it would be counterproductive, because it had "good" in the name. So he created a bad-idea-inator...which apparently gave him the idea for a feed-the-pigeons-inator.^note In front of a sign of "DO NOT FEED THE PIGEONS"
  • Subverted and lampshaded when Doofenshmirtz builds the Retire-inator, not to make someone stop working, but to get back at him for running over his foot in his automobile and putting him in a cast. (Get it? Re-tire? Because they "tire"'d him, and now he's "re-tire"'ing them?) He then points out the retire-inator for retiring... complete with crosswords and a cat for him to pet.
    Doofenshmirtz: Behold, The-Wrapped-Up-In-A-Nice-Little-Bow-Inator! I bet you're wondering what it does.
  • "SPACE ADVENTURE! It's an adventure in spaaaaaace!"
  • Stacy's song "Little Brothers".
    You will always be my Little Brothers, 'Cause you're younger, we're related, and you're boys.
  • Subverted with the Sea of Razor Sharp Rock Spires, which is a land of pillows.
• Executive Meddling: Invoked in "Nerds of a Feather". Doof pitched a show to a Hollywood producer, but made a Rage Quit when said producer suggested to give Perry a girlfriend. The show was made anyway, and Doof lampshades at the end that they were probably right. This example is probably also an in-joke, as "give the platypus a girlfriend" was an actual suggestion given by Disney regarding the show, according to a Wired article about it.
• Exercise Excuse: In "Just Passing Through," a mishap with Phineas and Ferb's molecular scrambler leaves Candace with her head and arm stuck through a porta-potty door. She sees Jeremy coming her way and freaks out, but a beam from Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Be-Gone-inator hits the door, leaving her just stuck with her arm in the air. When Jeremy finds her like that, she acts like she was just stretching her arm.
  Candace: [reaching to the side] ...And four, and breathe. Whew, just doing some stretching. Oh, hey Jeremy!
• Exploding Calendar: In the opening credits. A calendar slowly rips pages from it, getting faster to show that they need to exploit summer.
• Expository Theme Tune: As you can see, there's a whole lot of stuff to do before school starts this fall...
• Expospeak Gag:
  Phineas: Judging by my chronometer it should be just about time. Only one thing left to do.
  Baljeet: You mean test the resiliency of our cartilaginous collusion with vigorous application of weight and velocity?
  Phineas: Exactly; let's jump on it!
  • And in the Christmas special:
    Buford: Cool clubhouse!
    Phineas: Oh no, this is not, how you say, a clubhouse. This is the ultimate rest and relaxation lounge perfectly tailored to the jolly rubenesque world traveler.
    Beat
    Phineas: It's a rest stop for Santa.
  • Also in "Bubble Boys":
    (The group's bubble is getting closer to a very pointy sculpture)
    Gretchen: With our angle of descent, leaning will be ineffectual!
    (The group lets out a collective "What?")
    Gretchen: We're gonna crash!
  • Probably the best one yet came in "Bully Bust".
    Isabella: I love it when Phineas uses unnecessarily long words for common things like brushing your teeth and washing up.
    Baljeet: Yes, it is gratifyingly erudite.
    Isabella: It's not as cute when you do it.
    Baljeet: Ah... I am cognizant of that fact.
• Expressive Mask: Albert's glasses change with his facial expressions. Sometimes.
• Extremely Short Timespan: While not short, per se, the entire series takes place over a span of a single summer vacation, living up to the theme's songs lyric about their vacation lasting for 104 days.
• Eye Scream: In a scene 20 years in the future in the episode "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", Perry throws dentures at Doofenshmirtz, causing the false teeth to bite his eye.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Crash from The Betty's has very long hair that cover her whole face, except her mouth.

F

• Face–Heel Turn:
  • Balloony against Doofenshmirtz during "The Chronicles of Meap". However, he's a balloon, so his Face–Heel Turn consists of not following Doofenshmirtz.
  • Doofenshmirtz has employed several inators with the intention of turning Perry, Major Monogram, or others evil.
• Faceship:
  • Dr. Doofenshmirtz has a monster truck shaped like his own head. Also his Sandwich-Suit-Removinator.
  • In a less obvious example, Perry's hovercar is shaped like him.
  • Professor Poofenplotz has her "Me-Mobile" in "Isabella and the Temple of Sap".
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Linda is apparently the only one in Danville who is completely unaware of the boys' big ideas; Candace even notes this a few times.
  • Some of the big ideas are large enough they can be seen from a distance (ie. the giant building), and yet, Linda never notices.
  • "The Fast and the Phineas" has a total of three occurrences:
    • When Perry crashes the car into the garage at the end, there should be a hole in the roof where it crashed through, but strangely neither Linda nor Candace saw it.
    • Candace doesn't bother to check the two pictures that were taken — one where she is covered in ashes, one of Phineas racing — before handing one back to the photographer; as a result, she brought back the wrong photo (the one of her in ashes) for Linda and is horrified.
    • When Candace switches the TV on in time to see Phineas' Swamp Oil 500 win, Linda somehow does not hear the TV despite being within an earshot in the next room.
  • In "I Scream, You Scream", Phineas and Ferb accidentally build a Space Laser-inator meant for Doofenshmirtz, but did not put on the laser attachment; that part was not cleaned up, and strangely Linda and Candace didn't see it.
  • In "Mom's in the House", Linda completely fails to realize she was in a duplicate of her own house created by Doof's inator.
  • While Linda does see the creation in "The Bully Code", she passes it off as public art.
  • Candace doesn't see Atlantis rise out of the ocean which made her win the sandcastle contest, believing Jeremy meant her poorly made castle, and it sinks when she goes off to get the ribbon.
  • When Linda comes out to the backyard in "Doofapus", she completely fails to see the boys' liquefying device and Candace turned into a puddle right at her feet.
• Failure Is the Only Option:
  • Candace would never be able to bust her brothers, so they can continue their antics the next day. And Doofenshmirtz plans to take the Tri-State Area will always be thwarted.
  • Doofenshmirtz does occasionally succeed, but it ends up being a Meaningless Villain Victory. For example, he successfully stole the key to the city, before realizing it's not an actual key, and he successfully hit everybody with the resolution-change-inator, before finding out that nobody keeps their new years resolutions anyway.
  • Isabella in the later episodes, whenever she tries to invite Phineas to a date without Ferb. She finally succeeds in "Happy Birthday Isabella" (with some help from Ferb).
• Failure Montage: In an episode where the title characters are attempting to build a rocket, we are treated to several failed attempts, involving an equation on a chalkboard, old test launch footage, and the resulting ash-covered boys going back and modifying their equations.
• Fake High: Inversion/parody/whatever of this trope happens to Candace in "The Ballad of Badbeard". She touches some orange moss in the woods, which she was told causes wild hallucinations and begins acting insane, "thinking" Perry is a spy, imagining a sassy, anthropomorphic zebra speaking to her, and confusing a self-destruct button for a vending machine. At the end of the episode, after her "recovery", her grandmother explains that it is actually blue moss that causes hallucinations, and that the only reason Candace was "crazy" was because of the "power of suggestion." Just then, Candace touches some blue moss, and the zebra returns.
• Fake Static: Suzy does this to Candace in "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!" after Candace herself tries it on Jeremy earlier while panicking. Linda also does it in "Bullseye!", and it is implied that she uses the trick on a regular basis.
• False Reassurance: Isabella is a bit wary when Phineas is about to launch her to the treehouse platform with a tube-swing cannon, but he says they haven't missed yet...because she's the first passenger.
• Fandom Rivalry: Mocked In-Universe in "Nerds of a Feather". It has a plot where fandom rivalry at a con erupts into an "inter-genre geek war" between fans of two movie series, one sci-fi and one fantasy.
• Fanservice Extra:
  • The ones in Where's Perry Part 1 actually wiggle their butts at the camera!
  • In general, Doofenshmirtz's songs tend to have a large number of sexy backup singers wearing sexy outfits relevant to the song.
• Fantastic Aesop:
  Candace: Oh, I get it, big lesson. Yeah, well I guess I learned it wouldn't be too hard to ask Jeremy out if he were growing out the back of my head!
  • And this gem from "Meapless in Seattle":
  Phineas: I think we all learned a valuable lesson today, but we all know what it is so why waste our time restating it?
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: "Journey to the Center of Candace", complete with a micro sub. The boys go on a voyage inside their sister's body.
• Fantasy Helmet Enforcement: Being a Disney show, the characters are never shown without helmets whenever they engage in any fast-paced activity.
  • They tend to lampshaded it all the time, like using helments under their hats, using invisible helmets, or using hair-shaped helments.
  • In "Tour de Ferb", Candace drags her mother out of the shower so she can see the boys' latest projects. Lynda quips: "Lucky thing I picked today to wear my bike helmet in the shower."
  • Parodied in "De Plane! De Plane!" when a pool mysteriously dries up (thanks to doofenshmirtz) and everybody starts skating, then Candace accidentaly steps on a skateboard and starts running wild in the pool.
  Kid 1: Safety first! [throws a helmet on Candace]
  Kid 2: Safety first! [throws knee and elbow pads on her]
  Kid 3: Safety first! [hands her a steering wheel]
  Candace: Steering wheel? How is this safe? [an airbag deploys from the steering wheel]
• Fashion Show:
  • In "Runaway Runway", a famous designer visits Danville planning to show his new collection, which Candace was actually ask to model (the dresses required a model with a very long neck) but then Phineas and Ferb create their own collection (based on their regular clothes) and imprese the designer so much he changes the whole show to their designs.
  • Phineas and Ferb also host a smaller one during their Mom's birthday to showcase the sundress they got her as a present.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel:
  • In "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)", the teleporter transports user to Mars in less than one second. Mars is few light minutes away from Earth.
  • In "Escape From Phineas Tower", the tower creates a barrier around the Milky Way in one second. Light needs 120 000 years just to travel across it.
  • Explicitly averted in "Run Candace Run" where Phineas - using his speed shoes - tries to outrun light, but "it's just too fast."
• Fatal Fireworks: In the episode "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together", Dr. Doofenshmirtz tries to strap his archnemesis Perry the Platypus to a giant rocket/firework. Perry, of course, escapes, and Doof ends up strapped to the rocket when it goes off.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • Minor example from "The Beak".
    "You monster! Now I'm wet!"
  • Stealing a museum exhibit is only almost as serious as yelling in said museum.
  • Leaving toys on the floor at the Bango-Ru convention.
  • Selling two-dimensional miniature pyramids that look as if they are three-dimensional, which constitutes as fraud.
• Finger-Snapping Street Gang: In "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer", the members of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. snap their fingers while kidnapping the O.W.C.A. agents and singing "O.W.C.A.'s Goin' Down".
• First Girl Wins:
  • Candace was the first girl introduced in the series alltogether, and becomes Jeremy's girlfriend.
  • Vanessa was the first girl Ferb got infatuated with and dates her in the future.
  • In a sense, Isabella was the first child girl introduced, and she and Phineas finally become a couple in the future.
• First Kiss: Candace and Jeremy kiss for the first time in "Summer Belongs to You!"
• Flag Drop:
  • During Ferb's Rousing Speech in "The Lizard Whisperer", a truck with a Union Jack on the side drives up behind him.
  • An American flag appears behind the Fireside Girls while they are singing their anthem in "Isabella and the Temple of the Sap".
• Flashback with the Other Darrin: In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", the boys who see and take the flyer for the rollercoaster have different voices from the same boys in the first episode.
• Flashed-Badge Hijack: Subverted: Perry pays a kid twenty bucks to borrow her skateboard.
• Flash Forward: The episode "Act Your Age" takes place entirely in the future, 10 years from the present time, seeing the possible futures of the characters.
• Flash In The Pan Fad: one episode has the boys set up a platypus-themed restaurant they call "Chez Platypus". Word of the "trendiest restaurant" spread into the entire Tri-State Area and people quickly went in line to the Fletchers' backyard, even Dr. Doofenshmirtz and his date. At the end of the day, a badger-themed restaurant opened up in the street, the patrons promptly bailed, and the restaurant was sold to someone who wishes to expand it to a chain.
  Ferb: Ah, the public is fickle.
  • In the episode "Run Away Runway", Phineas and Ferb set up a fashion line based on their Limited Wardrobe. Within seconds everyone is wearing it, until an army of Doofenschmirtz clones inadvertently turn his Limited Wardrobe into a craze. until the next episode, anyway.
  Gaston Le Mode: Face it, mon ami, your designs are 3 minutes and 37 seconds ago.
• Flat Character:
  • All of the Fireside Girls sans Isabella, who pretty much just exist to help Phineas and Ferb in various projects. Some episodes seem to go a little further in establishing character, most notably "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" and "Bee Story". Between the six of them, Gretchen and Ginger get the most development. The former is The Smart Girl and Isabella's second-in-command, and the latter has her own hopeless crush on Baljeet and in season four, is revealed to be Stacy's little sister and they have few episodes exploring their Sibling Rivalry.
  • Parodied with the twin sister of Phineas and Candace's grandmother, who lives in a closet until one time a year where she participates in a prank.
  • Jeremy, until about the middle of season 2, was seen by some as just a "Nice Guy Who Cheers Up Candace".
• Flat "What":
  • Phineas's response to Baljeet's intention to climb a mountain without inventions in "Bully Bromance Breakup".
  • In "That Sinking Feeling", this is all Isabella can say after she realizes the romantic cruise Phineas invited her on was for Baljeet and his Girl of the Week.
• Flawed Prototype:
  • In "Cheer Up, Candace!", Doof's plan is to create copies of Perry to frame him of various crimes, he has many perfect robot clones, but then shows the first one, Jerry the Platypus, which was ugly and dumb.
  Doofenshmirtz: ...but you know, he was so cute, I couldn't bear to...
  • Doofenshmirtz plan in "Run Away Runway" is to clone himself via copy machine, the first one lacks toner, the second one got jammed, the third one is just dumb and ugly.
  Doofenshmirtz: Why is it when people copy their butts, it comes out perfect?
  • Phineas and Ferb speed boots. They say their newer models are better than the flawed prototype they left at home. Which, of course, Candace took to use.
  • O.W.C.A.'s molecular transporter. First it dropped Perry off the edge of Doof's balcony. Then they managed to transport him to the exact spot, just into Doof's trap.
• Fluffy the Terrible:
  • The Big Bad of "The Chronicles of Meap" is a villainous-looking space poacher with the unassuming name of Mitch. ^note  although some people call him Big Mitch
  • Also is Doofenshmirtz's mentor, Professor Destructicon. Kevin, to his friends.
  • L.O.V.E.-M.U.F.F.I.N. member Rodney has a pet fish named Fluffy. Said fish is a piranha.
• Flushing Toilet, Screaming Shower: The credits of "The Backyard Aquarium", but replacing the "toilet" with a hose.
• Fly in the Soup: Doofenshmirtz and a waiter at Tony's Delicatessen once argued because Doof noticed there was a fly in his soup, but the waiter insisted it was a raisin. An entomologist said it was a raisin, but that there's a fly on the other side. Doofenshmirtz wanted to destroy Tony's Delicatessen for this.
• Food and Animal Attraction:
  • There's an entire song where this happens. Candace gets acorns in her pants, and of course, squirrels follow...
  • In "Misperceived Monotreme", Perry is replaced by an ordinary platypus with a love of sandwiches. His mindlessly charging and devouring every sandwich in sight allows him to defeat Doofenshmirtz with nobody the wiser.
• Follow in My Footsteps:
  • Subverted in "Minor Monogram". Monogram's son, Monty actually wants to fight evil, but Monogram thinks he doesn't, and allows him to do what he wants.
  • A more complex example than that: Major Monogram was himself a straight example of his trope, and ended up becoming convinced that his son wanted the same thing he did: to escape the family legacy and become an acrobat. He ended up pushing Monty to become an acrobat instead, making it an unintentional example of "Follow In The Footsteps I Wanted To Leave". He does eventually get the hint that Monty's fine with fighting evil, though.
• Forgotten Anniversary: The main focus in "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together". Where their father forgot his anniversary.
• Foreshadowing:
  • "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" has a few vague instances that foreshadow the episode is All Just a Dream:
    • Baljeet is acting way off, specifically saying he got kicked out of summer school because his grades were "too high", and he was actually excited at joining the reform school unlike the other boys.
    • After Linda realizes Candace was telling the truth in the beginning, she calls her "the best daughter any mother could dream of having." And in front of Phineas and Ferb nonetheless.
  • From "Swiss Family Phineas":
    Candace: Or you could have made a gigantic slingshot and shot us back.
    Phineas: Not bad. Mind if we use that someday?
  • In "Primal Perry," Baljeet mentions that he's already begun work on his college applications. Cue "Act Your Age," and Baljeet has already finished college and been hired as a professor while the other kids are just about to start college.
• Formally-Named Pet:
  • In "Spa Day", Doofenshmirtz took in a cat and named it Mr. Fluffypants, after his uncle Fluffypants.
  • Candace had a bunny for one episode (who was really a rogue agent named Dennis) that she called Mr. Cutie Patootie.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: "Doof 101" takes place in school and does not make use of any of the show's typical Running Gags. Phineas and Ferb themselves only get a cameo appearance while Candace does not appear at all, and we instead get a subplot involving talking insects that have never appeared in the series before.
• For the Evulz: A lot of the "evil" things Doof does are for no reason other than for being evil.
• For Want Of A Nail: In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", future Candace discovers that busting her brothers on the first day of summer results in the tri-state area becoming a dystopia ruled by Doofenshmirtz.
• Four-Fingered Hands:
  • All of the characters on the show only have four fingers. Naturally, this is not even mentioned or addressed most of the time... until the "Musical Cliptastic Countdown" episode, where it is lampshaded. Dr. Doofenshmirtz says that they're at the "final four" songs, and he holds up a hand with all of his fingers extended, except for his thumb. He looks at his hand and extends his thumb in order to show four fingers.
  • Averted in Mission Marvel where the Marvel characters have five fingers.
• Four-Legged Insect: The worker bees in "Bee Story" and the talking insects in "Doof 101". Strangely, the bees' queen has six legs, as do the less stylized bees shown during Poofenplotz's exposition. All the other insects we've seen in the show also avert this, having the appropriate six legs.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot:
  • Candace has a blog that readers can e-mail questions to. There are options for e-mailing other major characters as well, though those messages appear to only be used for advertising on the website rather than direct interaction with the audience.
  • Doofenshmirtz invites viewers to post questions and suggestions on his Youtube clips, for potential use in future videos.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: Vanessa dresses like a typical Goth, but is generally pretty down to earth.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip:
  • Perry and Candace swap bodies for the duration of "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?". Combined with Voices Are Mental and, somehow, Gender Bender, assuming that Perry is indeed male. Perry's body gains eyelashes and starts sweating milk.
  • Late in the series' run came the episode "Mind Share", where Phineas, Ferb, Isabella, Buford, and Baljeet were duped into swapping bodies with a bunch of reptilian/amphibian aliens (and a fly creature, in Buford's case) in a prison on a faraway planet. Fortunately, Candace saved the day through the power of square-dancing before the switch became irreversible.
• Freak Out: Candace is - even by her own admission - a walking bundle of neuroses, so this happens to her a couple times, though always Played for Laughs and ultimately harmless. For example, in "Where's Perry? Part 2," when she believes Jeremy has broken up for her she pretty much has a total meltdown, runs off into the wild and goes full-on Jungle Princess.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Many recurring characters can be spotted this way, the best example being the Mix and Mingle Machine, which contains among others Danny and a Badinkadink.
  • In "She's the Mayor", toward the end of the time-lapse, a Perry-Doofenshmirtz fight takes place. Some artistic liberties were taken; at one point Perry can be seen dressed as a typical lazy husband sitting on a recliner and watching TV while Doofenshmirtz irons clothes. Wearing a dress. During the same sequence there is freeze-frame taken during the time of Candace's run for the mayor with a huge poster on a wall, similar to Barack Obama's Hope poster.
  • In "What Do It Do?" when Phineas wonders what "this big red button's all about," try freeze-framing right as Linda's telling the kids "Don't touch it!" Not only is Candace reaching out for the button, Ferb has stepped out of one shoe and is reaching with his toes.
  • In "Phineas and Ferb Musical Cliptastic Countdown Hosted by Kelly Osbourne", a list of every song in the series scrolls down the screen, including some that had not appeared in the series yet.
  • In "The Curse of Candace" the sign for the charity run (in the park) says "Help put an end to signs in parks."
  • In "Sidetracked" when Perry is pursuing the robbers to the Canadian border, the gate above the border announces "Welcome to Canada" followed by a small font "eh".
  • Among the headlines in "The Beak" is one that just says "The Beak is a Hunk!"
  • The close up of Doof's driver's license in "The Doonkleberry Imperative" reveals that the episode, and consequently the whole series takes place in 2012.
• Freudian Excuse: Parodied with Doofenshmirtz, who half of the time has a different background story for every little problem he has. The other half normally involve his brother.
  • In "The Chronicles of Meap", when he is trying to explain why he wants to steal the balloons from the city, but has to stop himself at various points to not sidetrack from the mains story with many others, like smelling to much like pig, being raised by ocelots, working at the dunk tank of the fair (as the projectile), and disguising himself as gnome.
  • In "The Plane! The Plane!", his plan is to dry all the pools because when he was a kid, his mother would not let him swim in public pools. The flashbacks consists simply of him standing at the edge of the pool, and his mother just telling him "no".
  Doof: What? That's it! You know, not every backstory has to have some big in-depth spiel, Mr. High Expectations!
• Friend-or-Idol Decision:
  • In "Traffic Cam Caper", Candace has to pick either the CD that will bust her brothers, or Phineas. Naturally she goes with Phineas.
    Candace: You may be a pain, but you are my brother.
  • In "The Lemonade Stand", Candace has a falling-out with Stacy, and reaches a point where she has to choose between a perfect opportunity to reveal the boys' activity, or catch up with Stacy to apologize. Again, naturally, she goes with Stacy.
  • In "The Beak", Phineas as the Beak has to save either Isabella falling off City Hall or the citizens about to be crushed by a billboard. He chooses both; he leaves the suit to save Isabella, while Ferb pilots the suit alone to save the citizens.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: In "Happy New Year," all the characters, including the adults, drink sparkling cider instead of champagne on New Year's Eve.
• Fruit Cart:
  • The giant bowling ball destroys one.
  • A vegetable cart gets destroyed during the Christmas Special.
• Full-Name Basis:
  • "Ah, Perry the Platypus!"
  • To a less ridiculous extent, Monogram insists on calling Perry Agent P^note He even has a line in Perry's theme song, where he chews out the singers for calling him Perry the Platypus . He's called him 'Perry' all of twice, one of which was fulfilling the 'Where's Perry?' quota.
  • Also "The flying car of the future, today!" from "Phineas And Ferb Get Busted!"
  • And as mentioned by the show's creators, Klimpaloon has to always be referred to as "the magical old-timey bathing suit that lives in the Himalayas."
• Funny Afro: Near the end of "Robot Rodeo", Isabella's hair gets frizzed up so much it looks like two big afro puffs. It gets its own theme song.
• Funny Animal: Marty the Rabbit Boy, which is unusual even by the standards of this show. No one in-universe ever points this out.
• Funny Answering Machine: Linda's voicemail messages tend to be quite sarcastic:
  "Leave your psychotic rant at the sound of the beep."
• Funny Background Event:
  • In "We Call It Maze", as Phineas and Baljeet are trying to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar, Ferb repeatedly opens his mouth and puts his finger up as if he wants to say something, but Phineas and Baljeet keep talking.
  • In "The Lemonade Stand", Candace takes a walk around Danville regretting on how she puts busting over Stacy, and she was too focused that she didn't realize that everywhere she goes, stands/balloons/blimps/boards/posters on Phineas and Ferb's lemonade stand appears. This makes Candace unable to bust her brothers.
  • In "Canderemy" the dog Phineas and Ferb made chews on a tree like a stick, digs a giant hole, and finds a dinosaur.
  • In "The Magnificent Few", the cows' stampede passes in front of a pizza place. The cook then got his head stuck in pizza dough.
  • In "Night of the Living Pharmacists" Stacy somehow manages to make her new tv set remote control neighbors tv. You can even see the neighbor getting mad over this.
• Funny Phone Misunderstanding: In an episode, Jeremy and Candace are talking over the phone, the line experiences some interference, and Jeremy tries to tell Candace about the signal break-up. Candace completely misconstrues what Jeremy is trying to say and assumes Jeremy is breaking up with her.
• Funny Photo Phrase:
  • Near the end of the episode "For Your Ice Only", Linda Flynn-Fletcher tells everyone to say, "Canadian bacon" as she prepares to take the picture. Everyone's reply is "ham", as part of a Brick Joke from Baljeet claiming near the episode's beginning that the two meats were the same.
  • At the end of the episode "Split Personality", Jeremy shows up to inform Candace about the picture frame that her "romantic" personality bought for him. He believes that they should take a picture together to put in the frame, so Candace's brothers Phineas and Ferb decide to take one for them. Ferb prompts them to say, "fromage", and they do, which results in the picture looking rather goofy.
• Fun with Acronyms: Played with a lot.
  • The Buoyancy Operated Aquatic Transport and Metropolitan Oval Aquatic Trench from Interview With a Platypus.
  • League Of Villainous Evildoers Maniacally United For Frightening Investments in Naughtiness from Nerdy Dancin'
  • "Summer Belongs to You" gives us the Organization Without a Cool Acronym.
  • The Doofenshmirtz Institute of Evilology has a rather succinct, and somewhat evil, message encoded in its name.
• Fun with Flushing: In one episode, Perry goes to his lair by flushing himself down a toilet.

G

• Gag Haircut: In the episode "Bad Hair Day", Candace's disastrous attempt at a do-it-yourself haircut kicks off the plot of the episode.
• Gainax Ending:
  • Parodied in "Tri-State Treasure: Boot of Secrets"; the boys' short film ends with the villain getting taken down by an army of flying saucers driven by past one-shot characters that suddenly appears, then a Shout-Out to the falling banner scene from Jurassic Park.
  • "Cheers for Fears" ends with a look inside Ferb's mind.
  • In "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror", Phineas changes his story's Downer Ending to this. It has Baljeet's cowboy life coach ride in on a unicorn and save the day, then talking grape juice box Officer Concord (voiced by none other than Alex Hirsch) shows up and thanks the kids for saving the factory, then we get a Dance Party Ending with cameos from characters from the previous stories. The bit Buford believes the least? The cowboy.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Phineas and Ferb. No matter how big or extravagant a project might be, they can always finish it in a single day, and still have enough time to play with it.
• Gender-Concealing Writing:
  • In the episode "Oil On Candace", Dr. Doofenshmirtz is awaiting a visit from his old evil science professor, "the mighty Dr. Gevaarlijk!" No pronouns are used to refer to Gevaarlijk before she appears, and she turns out to be a diminutive older lady.
  • Brazilians don't have a gender-neutral equivalent for "Professor". When the episode where Professor Poofenplotz was first mentioned was translated for Brazilian audiences, they used the masculine equivalent. Then the episode "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" reveals Professor Poofenplotz is a woman.
• Genre-Busting: Exaggerated/parodied in "Mommy Can You Hear Me?", when it's revealed that the boys have made a book series that fits into just about every literature genre imaginable.
• Genre Blind: Isabella in "The Beak", lampshaded by Candace.
  Isabella: Phineas is The Beak?!
  Candace: (sarcastically) Hey! You just got your 'Ah-Durr' patch!
  • Monogram in the DVD commentary for "The Chronicles of Meap" with regards to Medium Awareness.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Nearly every character in the show is fully aware of their Strictly Formula lives as well as the other tropes that make up their daily lives.
  • Doofenshmirtz shows exceptional knowledge of the "Evil Scientist Vs. Secret Superagent" schtick. Strangely, he never uses this knowledge to his advantage.
    • In "Robot Rodeo", he used his knowledge of Perry & the other animal agents always winning to his advantage; they had all been captured to prevent their interference in a "Inator Creator" contest, only for Doofenshmirtz to release them so that they destroyed all of the other Inators whilst he worked on his entry, the "Destroy-Rodney's-Inator-Inator".
  • Similarly, after the first few episodes, Candace begins to master the series of events that unfold every time she attempts to bust her brothers to her mom. And like Doofenshmirtz, she rarely actively tries to use this to her advantage.
  Candace: (to Linda) Anyway, when I bust them, everything will just magically disappear. Always happens. You'll see. Well, you won't see. I'll see. Trust me.
  • Not just that, but even Linda eventually starts to get the hang of things. So much so that the one time Candace doesn't call her mom (like she would normally do), Linda gets genuinely worried and goes home immediately.
  • Candace appears to have reached a level of genre-savviness where she realises she can neither busting her brothers nor giving up trying, and can only bemoan her fate or achieve some kind of Animal Man-style fourth-wall-breaking revelation and Rage Against the Author.
  • The No Fourth Wall character commentary for "The Chronicles of Meap" established Doof as this in terms of Medium Awareness—in contrast to Genre Blind Monogram, he's aware of Hammerspace and thought bubbles.
    Monogram: Why is his head in a cloud.
    Doofenshmirtz: That's a thought bubble. You've never seen a thought bubble?
    Monogram: It's a thought bubble...
    Doofenshmirtz: You live in a cartoon universe, you've never seen a thought bubble...
    Monogram: I guess I've just never really noticed it before.
    Doofenshmirtz: Well, that's what they call—it's, it's a convention in cartoons...
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-Universe. Two jokes about how much the French love Jerry Lewis in one ten minute episode? That has to be a record, surely?
• Get Back to the Future:
  • In "It's About Time!", Phineas, Ferb and Candace are stranded in the age of dinosaurs after their time machine is destroyed, and Phineas has to Write Back to the Future telling the Fireside Girls to build a second time machine and come rescue them. When the rescue party arrives, it looks like they're still going to be stranded, because the time machine has to be plugged in. Fortunately, a convenient bolt of lightning gives them the power they need to get home.
  • In "Phineas And Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", Future!Candace goes back in time and busts her brothers on the day they made that Rollercoaster. She goes to the future and finds it's now a dystopia. Then she goes back again, stops her other previous self before she can bust her brothers, succeeds, but they both get trapped in the past. So they track down Phineas and Ferb so they can repair the time-machine and take them back to the future. (Or one of them, at least. Or maybe it never happened at all. Timey-Wimey Ball means that this episode is something of a Mind Screw.)
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: Subverted in "The Belly of the Beast". A huge wave was about to hit the ship where Candace, Stacy, and the captain where. Stacy mentioned that they all will get wet. When the wave passes, somehow, only Candace is soaked.
• Gift of Song:
  • In the episode "Mom's Birthday", Candace writes the song "I Love You Mom" for her mother's birthday, and Phineas, Ferb, and the Fireside Girls help her perform it for her.
    • Translated to Real Life when Olivia Olson, the voice of Vanessa Doofenshmirtz, performed the demo version of the song for series creator/voice of Dr. Doofenshmirtz Dan Povenmire's fiftieth birthday.
  • Played with in the episode "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together", where Phineas, Ferb, and Candace get the rock band Love Händel back together to perform as a gift for their parents' anniversary, recreating the scenario that lead to their first kiss.
• Gift of the Magi Plot: Averted by Jeremy and Candace in the Christmas Special: each of them got rid of something they had already been planning to get rid of, except that instead of buying something for themselves they got the gift for the other. So actually, everything worked out perfectly.
• Gilligan Cut: From "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo":
  Candace: Yes, they're building something. But I've realized that the problem is I always jump the gun. So I'm gonna wait until just the right moment... (stops and looks panicked)
  Stacy: Candace? Hello?
  (cut to Candace running with her phone in her hand)
  Candace: They're on the move, I'll bust them now! I'll bust them now!
• Girls Like Musicians: Candace's love-interest Jeremy plays guitar in a band, which has lead to her fawning over him as he plays, being directly sung to, and even buying him a special silver guitar she knew he wanted. Meanwhile, her friend Stacey ended up crushing on his band-mate and best-friend, Coltrane.
• Go-Karting with Bowser:
  • Perry the Platypus helps Doofenshmirtz set up his daughter's birthday party, and helps him practice kickball, and goes to a science fair with him (and goes shopping with him to prepare for the fair), and hangs out with him at his condo in the suburbs. They even exchange gifts at Christmas, though Perry's not all that pleased with his.
  • This also happens a lot with Candace and the boys. "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud World", "Tree to Get Ready", and "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror" are just three examples. Also, Stacy and the boys in "Put That Putter Away".
• Gold Fever: The Crazy Old Coot. "If ya find any gold it's mine!"
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Perry recruits various wild animals in Africa as new O.W.C.A. agents to help fight evil Carl's robots.
• Good Parents:
  • Linda and Lawrence are a Happily Married couple raising the children from their respective first marriages together, and while mostly oblivious to their exploits, take care of them very well.
  • From the same series, Doofenshmirtz to his daughter Vanessa, who begins to realize over the course of the series that he's not so bad a father despite his usual doting. Averted, however, by Doofenshmirtz's own parents, who were basically horrible. In fact it could be interpreted that his own horrible upbringing is the reason he so desperately wants to be a good father.
• Good-Times Montage:
  • Many examples. Often combined with Hard-Work Montage when it is a montage of Phineas and Ferb building their big idea for the day. Accompanied by either the "Quirky Worky Song" or the song of the week.
  • "When We Didn't Get Along" parodies this. The lyrics and images are of Perry and Doofenshmirtz beating each other up, but treated like it was good times.
  • Parodied again in "My Nemesis.". Showing when Doof got Perry as a nemesis, he is happy to have someone that would be there...to thwart his plans.
• Good Stepmother: If it weren't for the hyphenated names and mixed accents, you wouldn't even be able to tell that this is a blended family. The phrases "stepchildren" and "stepsiblings" are virtually never used. Neither parent shows any preferences between biological and stepchildren, and that extends to even the shown grandparents treating all the kids equally.
• Goofy Print Underwear: In "Bubble Boys", Doofenshmirtz wears a pair of Perry the Platypus print undies.
  Doofenshmirtz: For your information, I've had these WAY before I met you.
• Gorgeous Garment Generation: The "Ball-gown-inator", which dresses whoever it shoots with a beautiful ballgown. Curiously, Doofeshmirtz created it specifically to shoot men to embarass them due to being forced to uses dresses when he was a kid.
• Grandma's Recipe: Gretel Doofenshmirtz has a recipe for a delicious meatloaf. The secret ingredient? Hate.
  "Usually it's Love, but Great-Grandma Gretel had some issues."
• G-Rated Drug:
  • The orange moss in "The Ballad of Badbeard", which causes Candace to act almost exactly like she's high when she touches it, complete with a psychedelic background and music. Subverted since it was only the power of suggestion, and it's the blue moss that's the straight example. Then Candace looks down and sees that her hand has been in blue moss the entire time.
  • Also, Phineas' apparent addiction to building things in "Bully Bromance Breakup" is treated suspiciously like this, including him getting some sort of withdrawal and relapse.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence:
  • The disco-themed hole at the miniature golf course, complete with ABBA-styled theme.
  • During the boys' Robot Rodeo, a thick mist messed up Isabella's hair — causing the episode to end on a hilariously random note: "Izzy's Got the Frizzies".
• Gratuitous Spanish:
  • From Doofenshmirtz no less, though whether he's actually fluent is debatable. If he is, he has a strange sense of humor.
    Doofenshmirtz: Wait! Wait! I can't fight you when you're dressed as a girl! It's so... cómo se dice... awkward.
    Doofenshmirtz: We did it! We did it! Lo hicimos! We did it!
  • This was even subverted in one episode. which is subverted twice since do svidaniya means goodbye in Russian.
    Doofenshmirtz: As they say in Mexico, do svidaniya! Down there, that's two vidaniyas.
  • From the Christmas special...
    Doofenshmirtz: You are feliz naviDEAD to me! See, that's Spanish...
  • Recycling a quick gag in the original pitch that didn't make it, Phineas does it, too.
    Phineas: Siga sentado, por favor!
  • Ferb speaks some Japanese in "Summer Belongs to You" and Buford, of all people is fluent in French.
    Buford: Wasn't that hard. A lot of the root words are the same in Latin.
    —->(A few minutes later)
    —->Baljeet: Wait a minute, you speak Latin?!
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", future Candace climbs a tree to eavesdrop on her time travelling brothers. This works until she thinks "Wait a minute. Isn't this a virtual tree?" and immediately falls through the hologram.
• Great Big Book of Everything: The Fireside Girls manual, containing information on advanced car maintenance, traveling through time or space, and combating giant robots.
• Green Aesop: Parodied when one of Doof's schemes involved making large carbon footprints. He didn't understand what that meant, so he just created a giant foot out of carbon paper with which to stomp things.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: In "Greece Lightning", Buford uses Baljeet and his helmet like an axe to remove the obstacles that get in his way during the chariot race.
• The Grinch: Subverted in the Christmas Episode. Doofenshmirtz, the villain, who hates just about anything related to the plot, admits that he actually doesn't hate Christmas and wonders what's wrong with him. This bothers him so much that his Christmas wish is...to develop a hatred of Christmas. It comes true.
• Groin Attack: Baljeet suffers from an extremely painful one in "My Fair Goalie" during a football match. His incredibly high-pitched scream helps to break the emu curse on Ferb
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Much of the finale is built around one. Candace is trying to bring her mother to the yard before the project disappears, while Doofenshmirtz keeps adding steps to his trap to make sure Perry remains still.
• Group-Identifying Feature: While the Fireside Girls are known for wearing uniforms with various alterations (one episode revealed they sew their own uniforms), Isabella's uniform stands out the most, being a complete Palette Swap of her everyday wardrobe, and is the only one to not have a red diamond on her beret, having it presumably covered up by her signature hairbow.
• Grub Tub: In the episode "Day of the Living Gelatin", the boys make the world's largest gelatin dessert by filling a swimming pool with as many boxes of gelatin as they can get. Unfortunately the massive gelatin gets hit with Doofenshmirtz's Turn-Everything-Evil-inator which turns it into an evil monster, to capitalize on the summer-heat.

H

• Haggis Is Horrible: Averted with Ferb. He loves his haggis!
• Hair Style Inertia:
  • Subverted in "Imperfect Storm". Doofenshmirtz's childhood bully, Grulinda, moved to Danville recently. He thinks it's a woman who looked very much like she did as a child. He is surprised when he sees her now.
  • Also subverted, although subtlety, in "Act Your Age". Isabella wore pigtails when she was a toddler (up when she's very young, down when she's slightly older) and wears her hair longer in a pony tail when she's older as a teenager/young adult. Phineas plays it straight, except in flashbacks/photos to when he's a young teenager, where he actually combed his hair. Buford meanwhile has a completely different hair style.
• Halloween Episode: There's been a new one almost each year. Even if only two actually takes place during Halloween:
  • "That's the Spirit", where the boys encounter a strange boy named Russell on Halloween night who is convinced his house is haunted. Meanwhile, Agent P has to stop Doof after he becomes a werecow.
  • "One Good Scare Ought to do It", in which Phineas creates a haunted house.
  • "The Curse of Candace", in which Candace is convinced she's a vampire.
  • "The Monster of Phineasnferbenstein", a Frankenstein parody.
  • "Tri-State Trilogy of Terror", three horror story shorts.
  • "Druselsteinoween", where a giant Halloween party is thrown in Druselstein.
  • "Night of the Living Pharmacists", a Zombie Apocalypse with pharmacists.
• Hammerspace:
  • In a unique case of hammerspace, it seems Doofenshmirtz came from it as a baby, seeing as neither of his parents were present at his birth.
  • Lampshaded in "Chez Platypus", as Buford claims to carry a large, conspicuous velvet rope wherever he goes. Phineas asks where he keeps it, but Buford proclaims that he'll never tell.
  • Lampshaded as well in "The Chronicles of Meap: More Than Meaps The Eye", Candace asks Meap, who never wears clothes, where he keeps all these photos.
  • Perry and his fellow animal agents regularly pull their fedora from here. Perry's parachute, rocket pack, and hang glider often show up out of nowhere as well.
  • "Did you have that purse when you came in here?"
• Hammy Villain, Serious Hero: Dr. Doofenshmirtz is as hammy as a Mad Scientist can possibly be, often shouting his sentences and always planning some sort of Zany Scheme, each more ridiculous than the last. Perry the Platypus, his Archenemy, on the other hand, is The Stoic who rarely smiles, and he acts as the rational one between him and Doof.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: Norm is powered by a squirrel operating a hamster wheel. This has both advantaged and disadvantaged him in multiple episodes.
• Hands Looking Wrong: At one point, Perry and Candace swap bodies, and Candace wonders why her brothers are now so big compared to her and why her hand is green.
• Hands-On Approach: In "Last Train to Bustville". While in a balloon race, Phineas asked Isabella if she could hold the steering wheel while he tightens it, she complied and completely surrounding Phineas with her arms.
• Hand Wave: Mercilessly in "Where's Perry Part 2". Perry is sent through an inator to Africa where the kids eventually find him. When the cast begins to wonder how Perry managed to appear in Africa, Ferb just reminds us that ever since the discovery of platypus, the species was a synonymous with impossible. The explanation seems to be good enough for everybody but Candace...
• Hangover Sensitivity: In "Crack That Whip," an obviously-impaired Doofenshmirtz barely has the focus to explain his evil plan of the day and finally begs off after a token effort, promising to be more evil tomorrow.
• Happily Married:
  • The Flynn-Fletcher family is extremely tight. It's not actually readily apparent that the kids are stepsiblings, since all three refer to each other as brother and sister, and both parents as Mom and Dad; Candace in particular has something of a Daddy's Girl relationship with Dad, despite being his stepdaughter.
  • In "Little Brothers" it shows a seven- or eight-year-old Candace with a three- or four-year-old Phineas and Ferb, so it could be they have all been together for so long, it just seems right to call them that.
  • In "Dude, We're Getting The Band Back Together", it appears that Linda and Lawrence were together before they had kids, further confusing issues and making it so that they must've broken up, married separately, gotten divorced, and gotten back together. It's definitely possible, but it doesn't exactly help matters.
• Happy Dance: Several times, most notably Lawrence's "victory dance" from "My Fair Goalie" or Candace's "awesome awesome awesome" dance in "The Mom Attractor".
• Harmless Liquefaction: In the episode "Doofapus", Phineas and Ferb create a device that turns any solid into a liquid. Candace gets hit by it and is turned into a puddle. She's eventually solidified again by Phineas and Ferb.
• Harmless Villain:
  • Doofenshmirtz's Evil Plan in "Out To Launch" was...to make shadow puppets on the Moon. Was it even worth Perry's effort to stop him?
  • In "The Beak", the villain doesn't seem to actually do much in the way of threatening the populace.
  Bystander Who Looks Suspiciously Like Dr. House, For Some Reason: You monster! Now I'm wet!
  • In "Perry Lays an Egg", after hearing about Doof's evil scheme to learn how to speak 'whale' so that he could insult a whale, Perry leaves without even bothering to stop him. Doof then follows Perry around with cries of, "Thwart me, Perry the Platypus! Thwart me!"
  • This is to the point where Doofenshmirtz is occasionally completely ignored by the O.W.C.A. when they need Perry to deal with more pressing matters. Doof tends to unintentionally undo his own schemes in these situations.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Liam the platypus hunter, despite detesting platypuses, uses gear that is platypus-inspired, including barbs on his ankles and diving fins that resemble the webbed feet of a platypus. Interestingly, he can be considered to have "become the monster" from the get-go, as it is clear from the start that his aim to kill all platypuses is Disproportionate Retribution.
• Heavy Mithril: "Epic Monster Battle" from the episode "Excaliferb!" which is set in a medieval fantasy setting.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • In "Voyage to the Bottom of Buford", everyone believes Doofenshmirtz turns good when he accidentally saves a kitten. He is not particularly amused.
  • In "Meapless in Seattle", Balloony, who was working for Mitch in this (somehow) switch sides after "remembering" his friendship with Doofenshmirtz.
  • In "Where's Perry Part 2". Robot Candace, who was supposed to take Perry, sacrifies herself to save Candace from another robot, and deliver a message that Jeremy left for her.
  • Buford was initially introduced as a villain, but became one of their friends early on.
  • In the series finale Doofenshmirtz himself abandons evil after a talk with his daughter about her joining OWCA and pointing that maybe he only does this evil things as a reaction to his backstories.
• Held Gaze: Ship Teased couples on this show often employ this trope for means of instigating UST between the participants in it. For instance, Ferb and Vanessa share one when he first meets her, and Phineas and Isabella have also held each other's gaze - most notably in the special "Summer Belongs to You!", when they are stranded on the island.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • In "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted", the boys end up losing interest in their usual crazy projects after getting hit by a stray shot from Dr. Doofenshmirtz's "Dull-and-Boring-inator". Perry goes back to Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. and convinces Doofenshmirtz to help him make a Dynamic-inator. When the machine is finally built, the shot fired misses Phineas and Ferb and explodes, but they manage to snap out of it by themselves in time to save Candace. When the kids go home, they find Linda acting weird after getting hit by the stray Dynamic-inator blast, and the episode ends with Perry going back to Doofenshmirtz to rebuild the Dull-and-Boring-inator.
  Doofenshmirtz: Really?
  • In "Candace Disconnected", due to Candace refusing to read the handbook for the cellphone that the boys made for her, she ended up accidentally sending herself to Easter Island (the phone has a teleportation device activated by voice). After having being saved secretly by Perry, she tells her brothers that she will bust her for sending her to Timbuktu, while holding her phone, so she once again was teleported.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Phineas has one in the Christmas special after Candace tells him he's the reason all of Danville got labeled as "naughty" by Santa due to his inventions (it really is due to an inator from Doofenhsmirtz).
  • Isabella's face goes completely blank at the end of "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" when Candace suggests an alternate interpretation to a comment made by Candace's future daughter: that Isabella might marry Ferb rather than Phineas.
  • Phineas has one in "Summer Belongs To You" when the kids end up crashed on an island with only sand, two palm trees and a big fat ox. Phineas is unable to come up with an invention to get them back to Danville and just stammers himself to a stop.
  • And another in "Bully Bromance Breakup" when Baljeet, determined to scale a mountain without his assistance, forbids him and Ferb to invent anything while they're climbing. He ends up just being toted along by the others at the end of his harness.
    Phineas: (wide-eyed, in the fetal position) Hey Baljeet, you sure you don't need any robotic suction spikes up there? … Or how about mechanical lobster claws? … Or maybe gas-propelled pine cone grappling hooks? Or cybernetically controlled towing spiders?
    • When they finally reach the top and he's let loose, he builds an ice chalet at such frantic speed that Isabella comments, "You're gonna get the bends or something."
      Isabella:' How are you feeling, Phineas?
      Phineas: (sacked out in a hot tub made of ice)' Coming down now, coming down.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Robot Candace stops a laser shot directed at Candace.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • The titular Phineas and Ferb, who are inseparable and hardly ever seen on-screen without each other, to the point that if one of them is going somewhere, is normally implied the other will tag along (to the frustration of Isabella).
  • Buford and Baljeet. They are normally always together and know a lot about each other. They even break up their bully-nerd relationship in one episode, only to make up at the end.
  • Perry and Doofenshmirtz, even though they are supposed to be enemies, they tend to be on friendly terms, with Perry even helping Doof with his personal problems (normally involving his daughter).
• Hiccup Hijinks:
  • "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!" Has Isabella get the hiccups through unknown means. In contrast to the usual takes on this plot, the boys only do one thing (build a haunted house to scare them out of her). At the end of the episode, her hiccups are gone when she sees Phineas in danger.
  • It's subverted with Candace though. The same episode has a subplot where Candace plans to hang out with Jeremy, but is constantly tortured by his little sister Suzy. At the end of the episode, she pretends to have hiccups to get attention from Jeremy.
• Hidden Depths: In "Summer Belongs to You", Buford speaks fluent French and quotes Voltaire. In other episodes he also drops hints of deep thinking, though he usually subverts this into Sophisticated as Hell pretty quickly.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Dr. Doofenshmirtz takes it up to eleven, of course:
  "It all began on the day of my actual birth. Both of my parents failed to show up. And on my fifth birthday, I had to throw myself my own surprise party."
• His Own Worst Enemy:
  • The show constantly tells us that if Candace stopped trying to bust her brothers, especially given how Failure Is the Only Option seems to be a law in this universe for her, her life would be much easier and enjoyable.
  • Doofenshmirtz would be a far greater threat if he just stopped placing self-destruct buttons in his devices. But as a Harmless Villain, he can't help it.
• Historical AU: "Time Shift" episodes like "Tri-Stone Area" (prehistoric era) and "Doof Dynasty" (ancient China) transplant the contemporary characters into vastly different time periods.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Happens to Doof numerous times, such as Chez Platypus, where his date was ruined by his own de-loveinator.
• Hold Up Your Score:
  • In "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror!", where Phineas enters a surfing contest and gets a score so high (10 to the fifth power and infinity being two of the scores), it causes one judge to reconsider Einstein's theory of relativity!
  • In "At the Car Wash", Perry does one of his usual entrances to his lair. While on his monitor, Monogram and Carl are waiting with scoreboards.
• Hollywood Atlas: Phineas lampshades the fact at all of England's famous buildings and locations are all just a few feet away from one another.
• Hollywood Economics: Over the course of the summer, the Flynn-Fletcher family takes at least two family trips to London, a vacation in Hawaii, a road-trip in a rented RV, and a trip to Africa. Apparently, they run a very successful antique shop.
• Hollywood Evolution: Doofenshmirtz's De-evolution-inator. Aside from the concept of Evolutionary Levels being biologically incorrect to begin with, most of the ancestral forms that Doofenshmirtz and Perry are reverted into are rather nonsensical and inaccurate. Probably justified as "Brain Drain" suggests that Doofenshmirtz himself doesn't know what evolution actually is, only that it is "something to do with monkeys".
• Hollywood Magnetism:
  • In the pilot episode, Dr. Doofenshmirtz builds a magnet so strong it even attracts aluminum, a metal not normally known to react to magnetism.
  • Possible a reference to this, in the movie, Carl gives Perry a new wrist-communicationizer, which includes a powerful electromagnet which attracts his aluminum glasses.
    Carl: Neat, huh? And these are aluminum.
• Homage:
  • In "Interview with a Platypus", Jeremy brings Candace's shoe to her when she accidentally leaves it behind.
  • Perry throws his hat in order to save the day.
  • Love Händel is an homage to eighties rock bands like Def Leppard.
• Homemade Inventions:
  • Though Phineas and Ferb and Dr. Doofenshmirtz create new inventions Once an Episode at home, they actually subvert this trope most of the time by having supplies delivered to them rather than simply using whatever they already have lying around.
  • Played straighter in "Backyard Hodge Podge", where they decide to make something out of the remains of they past inventions.
• Honking Arriving Car: Linda often honks her car before she arrives home. Candace calls it her distinct "three-horn honk".
• Honor Before Reason:
  • In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", when Doofenshmirtz took over the Tri-State Area in the Bad Future, he got everyone (including the O.W.C.A.) to swear obedience to him. All he had to do to stop whatever plans they had to dethrone him was reminding them of the oath.
  • When Candace is trapped in a video game in "Gaming the System," she asks if the boys could just transport her to the end of the game. Phineas answers that they don't use cheat codes.
• Hope Spot:
  • It is revealed early on in "Night of the Living Pharmacists" that rubber No Sells the zombie infection, so one might expect the kids to remain safe due to the rubberizing ray they'd invented earlier. However, the zombies destroy the machine before the main characters can use it to recharge themselves, and the power goes out not long after, which prevents them from fixing the machine at all.
  • In "Meapless in Seattle", Meap challenges Mitch just as Candace despairs about Mitch turning himself into the cutest being in the universe. Meap actually holds his own for some time, but is eventually defeated when Mitch ambushes him. Another example is when Doofenshmirtz runs into Balloony, thinking that Balloony will spare him as his former friend. He is wrong... for a few moments at least.
  • In "Candace Gets Busted", Doofenshmirtz's Go Away-inator teleports away all the partygoers at the Flynn-Fletchers' house. However, since they were teleported into Doofenshmirtz's pants, Doofenshmirtz tells Perry to reverse the effects, and thus Candace gets busted for holding a party anyway. Given that the title gives away the ending though, this is to be expected.
• Horns of Barbarism: Elrik the Visigoth wears a large, horned helmet in addition to the rest of his ancient armor.
• How We Got Here: "Remains of the Platypus" starts with Doofenshmirtz in his underwear, Perry working as his butler, Carl in a squirrel costume, and a booth that crashes carrying a group of break-dancing Buckingham Palace guards. The rest of the episode is a backwards retelling of how all of that happened.
• Human Mail: Adyson of the Fireside Girls gets caught in the mail system while looking for Isabella's letter that's being sent to Phineas.
• Human Popsicle: In "Boyfriend From 27,000 BC", the boys go to the local glacier and find a frozen caveman, which they decide to thaw out to show him the modern world. Meanwhile, Candace is going to a costume party as a cavewoman.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Happens regularly to Candace, not only will she fail to bust her brothers, but she will look insane by doing it, also fail into a secondary goal she had for the day, or even get busted herself.
  • Also Doof, his inventions tend to be stopped in a way that always ends with him hurt (normally because he added an unnecessary self-destruct button), and/or humiliate him in front of many people.
  • Exploited in "This is Your Backstory!", which is a 24-minute long reliving of Humiliation Conga memories on Doof. That was done by himself. It turns out he was using the bad memories to fuel a new Inator, which was depowered by good memories.
• Hurt Foot Hop: Doofenshmirtz has concocted an Evil Plan to get revenge on an ice cream man who ran over his foot the previous day, resulting in him having to wear a cast. In the ensuing fight with Perry The Platypus, he injured the other foot, causing him to hop up and down holding his foot, only to have to switch which foot he was holding because the act of hopping caused his already injured foot to hurt again. Once he started doing this, his newly injured foot started to hurt because he was hopping on it, and so on and so forth.
• Hypno Pendulum: In the episode "A Real Boy" Candace has Stacy hypnotize her with a pocket watch into ignoring the need to bust her brothers so that she can spend the entire afternoon relaxing with Jeremy.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: From "Gaming the System":
  Candace: Nobody picks on my brothers but me!
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • For her coming-of-age, Candace considers herself to be the only mentally mature person in her family, which is ironic given her erratic and obsessive (bordering on selfish) behavior so common on the show.
  • In "Nerds of a Feather" Doofenshmirtz puts in a random monster to wrap up his TV show pitch. The TV exec calls him out on it as "Shoddy Writing"— as immediately afterward a random monster attacks the hall.
  • In "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World" Linda's French cooking teacher doesn't allow cellphones in class, but that doesn't stop him from bringing one himself.
  • In "What Do It Do?" Linda finds one of Doofenshmirtz's inventions on the lawn, and spends the entire episode freaking out and trying to convince Lawrence to come home and see it. He thinks she's gone completely bonkers. After Candace specifically compares Linda's situation to hers and discusses how frustrating it can be, she then tries to tell Linda that Phineas and Ferb are reverse-engineering the strange device in the backyard. Linda's response? "Candace, honey, I love you. But you couldn't have picked a worse time to go completely bonkers."
  • In "The Lemonade Stand", Candace complains that Phineas and Ferb never do anything "normal". This coming from the girl that spends every day trying to get them in trouble.
  • In "Bee Story", when Ginger realizes that Baljeet is the key to the problem they are facing with the bees, Isabella's immediate reaction is "Now is not the time!" In the previous episode however (which happened on the same day), Ginger calls Isabella out on trying to flirt with Phineas, but she just tells her to stand down.

I

• "I Am" Song:
  • The twofer song that is also an "I Want" Song, "I'm Lindana And I Wanna Have Fun".
  • "I'm Me" from "Vanessassary Roughness".
  • "Fireside Girls" is a "We Are" song.
  • "Fabulous" by Bobbi Fabulous of Love Händel (see It's All About Me below).
• I Can See My House from Here:
  • Parodied in "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror!". Phineas could see his house while parasailing...in his backyard.
  • In "Rollercoaster: The Musical!" Stacy comments that she can see the rollercoaster from her house. Cut to the rollercoaster...
    Phineas: Hey! I can see Stacy's house from here!"
• I, Noun: The episode "I, Brobot".
• I Have No Son!: Doofenshmirtz's father says this exact phrase when young Heinz chickens out on the high-dive. Considering his childhood as a whole, it was more of a lateral move. His dad also named his dog "Only Son".
• I Just Want to Be Special: Paul the Delivery Guy, guest lead of the episode "Delivery of Destiny", wants to be something more important than a delivery guy. After saving the day by delivering Agent P's escape tools to him and using packing tape to stop Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Juice-inator, he decides that he is special enough but now calls himself a "mobile logistics technician".
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Candace is reduced to delivering a desperate and, eventually, tearful one to her brothers in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", after they have been literally stripped clean of their personalities.
  "Listen to me, guys. Forget everything they told you. Creativity isn't bad! It's the best thing about you! (sobbing) You two can do anything! And that's why I've always been secretly proud to be your older sister! What have I done?! What have I done?!"
• I Let You Win:
  • Ferb lets Baljeet beat him at a video game in "Brain Drain", despite denying that he'd done so afterward.
  • In "My Fair Goalie". Lawrence revealed that he has let his brother wins all their competitions since they were kids just to make him happy.
• Illness Blanket: When a sick Candace sneaks out of the house in "Put That Putter Away", she's wrapped in a blanket even though it's summer.
• I Meant to Do That: Doofenshmirtz does this quite a bit.
  Doofenshmirtz: (after turning on his atomic-leaf-blower-inator) "AHHH! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!" (turns it off after blowing all the leaves off of his tree) "...Perfect! Just as I planned!
• I Owe You My Life: "The Bully Code". The song lampshades it as "a Seventies sitcom cliché" Buford spends the episode acting as Baljeet's unwanted servant and protector after the latter saved his life. To break the deal, they have Buford save Baljeet.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: A visual version comes up in "Greece Lightning"; Phineas mentions they've made a chariot for Candace that looks just like her... and is actually a repulsive gorgon. Candace's response?
  Candace: Oh, that's ridiculous! I do ''not'' have wheels!
• I Think You Broke Him: Mandy's reaction to Thaddeus and Thor getting stunned stupid by Phineas and Ferb's fort: "Nice going! You broke their brains."
• Identical Grandson:
  • In "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein", Ferb grandpa tells the story of one ancestor that looked just like Ferb, working for a doctor just like Phineas, being taken care by a governess that looks just like Candace. In the same episode, Doofenshmirtz also tells the story of his own ancestor that looks just like him.
  • Ferb looks exactly like his grandfather Reginald Fletcher.
  • Future Candace and her daughter Amanda look remarkably like the present day Linda and Candace.
  • Ferb, his father, and grandfather and even his great-grandfather all have capital F shaped heads.
  • And Monty Monogram is basically just his father without the gray hair and mustache.
• Identical Stranger: In "Make Play", Princess Baldegunde from Drusselstein is coming to town, and Monogram tasks Perry to protect her. He says that they don't have a photo, but she is a 15-year-old girl and "they look pretty much the same", so he shows a photo of a 15-year old (Candace) with a superimposed crown. Then Carl finds a real photo of the Princess and turns out she looks exactly like Candace.
  Monogram: Oh, wow, what are the odds?
  Carl: Well, it is a cartoon, sir.
  Monogram: What did I tell you about breaking the fourth wall, Carl?
• Idiot Ball:
  • In the episode "Excaliferb" Candavere accidentally spills some of her brothers' potion on herself, causing her to grow a unicorn's horn. What does she do then? Spills another one on herself, thinking it will make it go away. By the episode's climax, she's changed herself into a fire-breathing uni-whale-scorpio-pega-squid-icon-girl.
  • Doofenshmirtz really holds onto this in "A Real Boy" after he's been hit by the Forget-About-It-Inator. Yes, it was a Laser-Guided Amnesia device, but it was only supposed to make him forget about what he was thinking at that moment, which was apparently the identity of Norm. He drops it again once the machine explodes.
  • Quite ironically, when Baljeet becomes super-intelligent in "Cranius Maximus", he decides to remove the Earth's atmosphere because it obstructs the view of celestial bodies from telescopes. What he does not seem to know is that this is exactly what orbiting satellite telescopes(like the Hubble) are for.
• Imaginary Friend: Linda believes Steve the chameleon is imaginary, but she's wrong.
• Imagination Destroyer:
  • In the episode "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted," Dr. Doofenschmirtz builds a Dull-and-Boring-inator. The boys are actually hit by it offscreen, before the show begins, and its effect is to make them dull and boring, and completely sap them of their usually fertile imagination.
  • In the special "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" Candance finally gets the boys busted and they get sent to a summer school where, using nonmagical means (similar to Gradgrind's) and along with a class of other boys, their imaginations get taken. It was All Just a Dream.
• Imagine Spot:
  • Phineas asks why his usually-diligent brother got the blueprints switched in "I Scream, You Scream"; Ferb zones out in a brief fantasy of Vanessa.
    Ferb: I ... was weak.
  • Isabella goes into a similar trance (which she calls "Phineasland") in "Isabella and the Temple of Sap". Apparently this happens to her frequently (complete with another instance in "Bee Day") and the other Fireside girls clue her into what she missed while she zoned out.
• The Immune:
  • Doofenshmirtz's Delete-From-My-Mind-inator erases whatever is on his mind from anyone in the Tri-State Area...except anyone who isn't aware of what he is thinking about.
  • Doofenshmirtz's Worst-Fear-inator makes people's worst nightmares come alive; however, if you're fearless (like Perry), then it has no effect on you.
• Impossible Shadow Puppets: Doofenshmirtz's shows he is very good with creating complex shadow puppets, yet he lost the love of his life to a guy with huge hand and bad puppets. So he plans to use a giant robot to create shadow puppets on the Moon!
• Impossible Task Instantly Accomplished: Once an Episode, Phineas and Ferb will accomplish some ludicrous task within less than 24 hours, only for all their effort to go to waste from whatever Doofenshmirtz and Agent P. are doing, much to Candace's dismay.
• Impossibly-Compact Folding: This show loves this trope:
  • In "Summer Belongs to You", Ferb unfolded a map from a roughly two by two inch square into a world map larger than the house it was leaning on. This was first set a precedent in "The Ballad of Badbeard", in which Ferb unfolds a smaller (but still very large) map.
  • Their "Plataposterior" robot is about 10 feet tall, but folds up into a square that fits in Ferb's front shirt pocket.
  • The full-sized chemistry lab they carry around with them also qualifies.
  • Also the "Wrapped up in a nice little boxinator" literally compacts his WHOLE BUILDING into a tiny box.
• Improbable Age: Lampshading it is a Running Gag in the series.
  Employee: Aren't you a little young to be [Insert whatever Phineas and Ferb are doing]?
  Phineas: Yes, yes I am.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Ferb. In "Ain't No Kiddie Ride", Ferb uses a slingshot to shoot a quarter into the quarter slot of the former children's ride (currently modified to be a working rocket) that Candace was at that moment falling to her doom in.
• Improbable Parking Skills: In "Bubble Boys", Candace channels Elwood Blues to pull off a 90-degree Parallel Parking job with her right foot on the dashboard in her mother's temporarily-rocket-powered station wagon.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Doofenshmirtz is surprisingly adept at sword-fighting with a bratwurst.
  • And in "Raging Bully", Doof and Perry weaponize birthday hats, party noisemakers, paddle-balls...
  • In "Brain Drain", Isabella uses her sash as a weapon in a fighting game featuring themselves to defeat Buford.
  • Pinky turns out to be good at using computers as weaponry.
• In a World…: Parodied and tributed to the late Don LaFontaine in "The Chronicles of Meap", where he begrudgingly says the line.
• In the Local Tongue: A French fashion designer tries to flatter the long-necked Candace into modeling for him by calling her his cou de crayon, which Ferb points out means "pencil neck."
• Incoming Ham: AYE AHM THUH REGURGITATOR!!! (Thunder and lightning with dramatic music)
• Inconsistent Spelling: The Tri-State area's founder, John P. Trystate (the name used on the eponymous elementary school P&F go to) or Tri-State (used on a statue of him in Candace Against The Universe).
• Incredible Shrinking Man: In "Hide and Seek" they wanted to play, well...hide and seek. But when is pointed out that the house is too small for that, the decide to create a device to shrink everybody so they can hide.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: In "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted", the boys decide, among other things, to literally watch grass grow and to clean each other with lint rollers. Turns out this is due to a misfire of one of Doofenshmirtz inators.
• Indy Escape: In "Are You My Mummy?", being a shout-out to old films, the boys end chased by a giant gumball machine, which they manage to outrun. When Candace tried to do the same, she wasn't so lucky.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: On the few episodes Perry is otherwise occupied, Doofenshmirtz tends to defeat himself one way or another.
• Inevitably Broken Rule: Played with in the episode "Candace Gets Busted", when the mother made a "no parties" rule while she was gone. Candace tries her hardest not to break the rule, but people get into her house and a wild party occurs anyways, and in the end, well, there's a reason it's called "Candace Gets Busted".
• Inexplicably Awesome: Ferb. He can teleport, speak several languages, including Martian, can knock you out with one Vulcan-based nerve pinch, and is able to build anything the plot requires. Why? Nobody knows.
• Inexplicably Speaks Fluent Alien: As mentioned in the above example, Ferb is shown to speak perfect Martian in the episode "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)".
• Infinite Supplies: Phineas and Ferb apparently have infinite funds to buy the supplies they need for the project of the day, often at very short notice or delivered to absurd locations. Possibly justified by several of the projects being insanely successful, if short-lived, commercial ventures.
• Informed Ability: It's become a recurring gag that Ferb apparently gives several long speeches off-screen that only Phineas seems to hear (except once in "Finding Mary McGuffin", when it's a random bystander he's interrogating). He also gave a speech at debate camp so amazing that his opponent just gave up. We do finally get one in "The Lizard Whisperer" though, and later in "Excaliferb".
• Informed Attractiveness: Invoked as a joke in "Quietest Day Ever". Doofenshmirtz accidentally turns himself handsome using on of his inators. Yes, he is certainly an improvement from how he was before, but the population of Danville oversells it way, way too hard.
• Informed Flaw:
  • Doofenshmirtz's ineptitude is a running gag; the writers often remind us that he purchased his doctorate online. In truth, he single-handedly creates the most powerful inventions in the series. Phineas and Ferb can push the laws of physics (defying gravity for short times, repairing an old time machine, etc.), but Doof can do things that border on magic (creating or destroying matter, opening portals to other dimensions, altering abstract concepts like ugliness or love, and even turning metal into broccoli). Doof may not have a real doctorate, but he is legitimately brilliant.
  • Especially shown in "Oil on Candace", where Doofenshmirtz is showing off his career of evil to his old teacher. When asked whether his -inators actually worked, Doof sheepishly "admits" that they didn't, even though anyone who watched the episodes they appeared in would know that they actually worked just fine. The only part of that sequence that was accurate was that the Drillinator did indeed fail to harm anyone other than Doofenshmirtz himself.
  • In "Oh, There You Are Perry", Phineas uses giant speakers to call for Perry. All the platypuses in Danville end up in their backyard, and there's a surprising amount of them. Phineas and Ferb then look at them one by one to determine if they're Perry, and Phineas criticizes flaws that each platypus has like 'too tangerine' that makes it different from Perry despite the fact each platypus is identical.
• Injured Limb Episode: "Mommy Can You Hear Me?" is one for Candace, whose leg has been injured, thus forcing her to stay in bed with a cast. Even that's not enough to stop her from trying to bust her brothers, though.
• Ink-Suit Actor:
  • Coltrane, voiced by Corbin Bleu. The creators actually changed his standard outfit (something that they never do) between his first appearance and "The Baljeatles" to match Corbin.
  • "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer" has Jay Leno playing yet another character with his giant chin.
  • In "Live And Let Drive", Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May of Top Gear fame make a cameo as racing commentators Adrian, Nigel, and Ian, respectively. The designs of Adrian, Nigel, and Ian are meant to resemble their real-life counterparts.
• Innocent Prodigy:
  • The titular brothers, both of whom are creative and technical geniuses, but use their talents more for their own amusement than anything else. They also manage to regularly figure out the solutions to other characters' problems, while still maintaining an oddly childlike sense of naivete.
  • At least Once an Episode, somebody will ask Phineas if he and Ferb are too young to be doing whatever they're doing. Phineas always responds: "Yes, yes we are."
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • One episode involves Doofenshmirtz charting out the pattern of evil within a month. He discovers that while his own evil is perfectly constant, there is a gigantic increase in general evil around the time of the full Moon... assuming that the problem is werewolves. He considers this bad because it makes him seem less evil by comparison and reasons that he should rotate the Moon so the dark side always faces the Earth. When he later discovers that the light of the Moon is actually a reflection of the light of the Sun, he reasons that he should have instead rotated the Sun.
  • In "Last Train to Bustville", he reasons that since dodos and dinosaurs are both extinct, dodos are prehistoric monsters.
• Insignificant Anniversary: Candace observes many of these regarding Jeremy, such as the first time that he spoke to her, the time that he brushed up against her in the hallway, or the time that he laughed so hard that milk came out of his nose.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • From "Last Train to Bustville":
    Baljeet: I do not even know why you even brought the swordfish!
    Buford: It's a marlin.
  • From "Candace Gets Busted": "It's not a party, it's an intimate get together!"^note "Candace party! Candace party!"
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!:
  • If by "awesome" you mean "hilarity", Norm is your guy.
  • TREEHOUSE ROBOT FIGHT!
  • Doofenshmirtz: A-ha, Perry the Platypus! Your giant, robot dragon is no match for my giant, robot, ah... Queen Elizabeth... the First...
  • In "Doof Dynasty", Doofenshmirtz builds a giant steampunk robot dragon. The boys counter this with a giant steampunk robot terracotta warrior.
    Regent Monogram: Man, they would love this over in Japan.
• Interactive Narrator: During the song "Lunar Taste Sensation", the singer blames Baljeet for forgetting the marshmallows. Baljeet and the singer named Disembodied Reggae Space Voice proceed to get into an argument.
• Interquel:
  • "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" takes place during "Bubble Boys".
  • And "Bee Story" occurs at the same time as the events of "Bee Day".
• Interspecies Romance:
  • One of Doof's girlfriend's left him for a whale. She was last seen living in his mouth, cooking him pancakes.
  • In the "Chronicles of Meap" in-character commentary, when Candace's Senor Frowg appears and she says "I just found out why cows and frogs don't date", Major Monogram says that Agent C and Agent F have been an item for some time.
• Intrepid Reporter:
  • Isabella in "The Beak", she goes into dangerous situations to discover who the is the mysterious hero The Beak (it's Phineas), in a parody of Lois Lane.
  • In "The Temple of Juatchadoon", Candace is an a reporter that wants to "bust" Phineas and Ferb during one of their adventures to get the story to her editor (her mom).
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Often subverted with the secret agent animals.
  Professor Mystery: Peter the Panda never mentioned me?
  Doofenshmirtz: No, but he doesn't actually, you know, talk.
• Inventional Wisdom: Doofenshmirtz apparently adds a self-destruct button to ALL his inventions, according to him, it's his thing.
• Invisible Backup Band: Lampshaded in "Rollercoaster: The Musical"
  We should do it again! This time, as a musical! Whadya say? We'll do all the same things, except we'll break into spontaneous singing and choreography with no discernable music source!
• Involuntary Dance: In "Out of Toon", Doof's new invention is a ray that forces anyone to dance.
• Ironic Echo Cut: From "Dude, We're Getting The Band Back Together":
  Danny: (talking about the concert) Come on boys, let's blow the roof off this place!
  (Cut to Doofenshmirtz)
  Doofenshmirtz: (Tied to a large firecracker) Oh no, it's going to blow the roof of this place!
• Ironic Name:
  • Smile Away Reform School, which is really a military school run by a not-so-friendly drill sergeant meant to brainwash boys of their creativity.
  • The Galaxy 5000 race, which is technically a 50-lap race. According to Phineas, it should technically be the Galaxy 50, but changed it to "Galaxy 5000" to make it sound cooler.
• Irony: Sometimes, with Candace's obsession at trying to bust her brothers, the only one who gets in trouble is Candace herself. One time, she makes them build platypus-hatching grounds; Linda saw this and forces her to clean everything up, and she lampshades the twist.
• It Makes Sense in Context:
  • One particularly disgusting example would be the "triple scoop garlic-roach cone". Bleh...
  • One hilariously lampshaded example from "Phineas's Birthday Clip-o-Rama!" The episode also included clips to induce this even in more loyal Phineas and Ferb fans by tricking them into thinking there are episodes they haven't seen.
  Candace: (After watching a literal clip show of these) ...What the heck was that?
  Baljeet: That is what I said! Sure, give the weird stuff to Baljeet, who cares if it does not work out of context!
  • "Remains of the Platypus" hilariously lampshaded this. To give you a hint, imagine Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated's interior, Doof's Inator is flashing yellow and red lightning, Carl is dressed in a squirrel suit and trapped in a cage, Perry the Platypus is Doof's Butler, Doof himself is in his briefs (yes, just his briefs), celebrating because he feels he has finally won, Major Monogram is wearing jeans and a Hawaiian style button-up shirt, bloated, and tottering out of Phineas and Ferb's backyard, scaring everyone away, and here's the kicker: one of Phineas and Ferb's inventions crashes through the roof of DEI, and opens up to reveal four British Bobbys and a midget, who then proceed to take the party up to an eleven. The rest of the episode is spent going back one scene at a time to explain how things got to this point.
• It Was Here, I Swear!:
  • A good half of the boys' projects are simply removed from sight, with no evidence as to where they actually end up. Notably, "Don't Even Blink" is spent specifically trying to find out what keeps happening to them.
  • There are a number of times where Linda does see the boys' project. However, during these instances, there is either no evidence connecting them to the boys:
    • "Put That Putter Away", where the boys' mini-golf course was dropped on top of Little Duffers, leading Linda to think they simply remodeled the place.
    • The device from "The Bully Code", which she just thinks is public art.
    • "Dude, We're Getting the Band Back Together!", which she believes was arranged by Lawrence.
  • Or she only sees them after something happens to make them appear normal:
    • "Thaddeus and Thor", where Linda only sees the top, "old-school construction" portion of the boys's fort.
    • "Hip Hip Parade", where the giant floats Phineas and Ferb create float away, leaving Linda to see only them and their friends pulling kiddy wagons behind them.
    • "Interview With a Platypus", where Linda sees the animal translator the boys build, but she only sees them use it to decipher Perry's chatter, which turns out to not mean anything, so she has no reason to think that it actually works.
  • Mom's Birthday revolves around the boys giving over-the-top gifts to Mom, with Candace trying to keep up. She makes no comment about the big screen TV and stage in her backyard.
• It Wasn't Easy: How Phineas explains his and his friends' sudden popularity in "Flop Starz":
  Candace: How did you get a one-hit single?!
  Phineas: Well, it wasn't easy. It took most of the morning and half a dozen phone calls!
• It's All About Me:
  • Candace plays this trope to perfection. She'll ditch friends and family alike to hang out with her boyfriend Jeremy, and she will ditch everything for yet another chance to carry out her ill-advised, obviously pointless and arguably spiteful self-appointed mission to bust her brothers. That said, the beginning of "Candace's Big Day" is the one that really takes the cake: Candace criticizes her aunt's marriage plans simply because they don't involve her. Even her own mother calls her out on that one.
  Candace: What about my needs?
  • Bobbi Fabulous of Love Händel lampshades this trope in his "I Am" Song, "Fabulous", in which one of the lines is "It's all about me!" Ironically, the song was started by Phineas to convince him that his former band mates needed him for a concert. "It's all about you" comes before "It's all about me." Over the course of the song, he grudgingly acknowledges the flattery until he admits that, yes, it is indeed all about him.
• It's Always Spring: Or rather, it's always summer, with some exceptions:
  • When it's S'winter, in which case, it's winter and summer together.
  • Or S'Fall, which is fall and summer together.
  • The Christmas Special takes place at... well, when do you think? It's canonically set on the Winter Break before the other episodes that have aired so far.
  • Other episodes that have taken place outside of summer include "That's the Spirit" and "Happy New Year!"
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet:
  • Whenever Candace enjoys one of the boys' inventions and doesn't call Linda, she starts to get concerned and, ironically, returns immediately.
  • In addition:
  Major Monogram: [Doofenshmirtz] has been quiet recently. A little too quiet. I want you to find out what's not going on and ... er, put a stop to it.
• "I Want" Song: "The Wizard of Odd" gives us several of these, with Buford giving a hilarious subversion.

  Buford: I WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNT... nuthin'.

• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: When Candace competes against Wendy for a job at Mr. Slushy Burger, Wendy is voiced by Brenda Song, who worked with Tisdale on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.

---