Phineas And Ferb / Tropes Q to Z

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Q, R

• The Quiet One: Ferb usually gets about one to three lines an episode (singing notwithstanding). Notable exceptions include "The Lizard Whisperer", "What Do It Do?", and "Excaliferb".
• Radio Contest: In "Ready for the Bettys", Candace and Stacy win a radio contest to spend the day with their favorite band, The Bettys.
  • In "Delivery of Destiny", Paul the Delivery Guy wins a radio contest after crashing into the station's van. His prize? The band Love Händel will play background music for him while he does his job.
• Rapid-Fire Descriptors: In the song "Truck Driving Girl" from "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud, World", Candace is described as:
  a tire spinnin', gear grindin', clutch burnin', backfirin', paint tradin', red-linin', overheatin', throttle stompin', truck drivin' girl.
  • From "The Beak": The name of Phineas and Ferb's obstacle course at the beginning of the episode is "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".
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: At the beginning of the second Meap episode, the animators who made its trailers were described as a "ragtag group".
• Raised by Wolves: Dr. Doofenshmirtz claims he was raised by a family of ocelots after his birth family disowned him.
• Rapid-Fire "But!": Whenever an invention by the boys disappear, their sister Candace, just in time to bust their antics to their mother, loses her words and repeatedly utters "but". The episode "Picture This" has Ferb beatboxing over Candace's string of "but's". Baljeet, in turn, uses these to rap "There's No Candy In Me".
  Buford: Nerd ain't no pinata!
• Raptor Attack: In "Mandace", Doofenshmirtz is turned into a dinosaur that he calls a Velociraptor, but has little specific resemblance to Velociraptor besides its size and generic theropod shape. Then again, knowing Doofenshmirtz he either thought it was cooler to call it Velociraptor or simply doesn't know what Velociraptor really looks like.
• A Rare Sentence:
  • Absolutely tonnes. They're practically a staple of the show. The Clip Show episode "Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama!" sums many of them up nicely, after being prompted by the line "Super-suit-generated egg renderings always make me a bit peckish":
  "Nothing says 'mother's love' like a gigantic robotic platypus butt."
  "Why am I wearing a turtle on my head?"
  "I wanna float around! ...like men."
  "Am I sweating milk?!"
  "Gotta go, Stacy. Good luck with that llama legislation!"
  "Run for your lives! It's Gnome-a-geddon!"
  "Stickiness is the most underrated of all the -nesses".
  "I knew I should have gotten the down payment on the elephant."
  "It looks a little like a rhesus monkey wearing a powdered wig."
  "Oh no, you did not just tell me to hench."
  "What, you think we should have more Bulgarian folk-related elements?"
  "I'll be in the dairy section if you want to come yell at some cheese."
  "Dad, you might want to wipe the Queen off your face."
  "I too feel a certain element of kebab-ism."
  "Definitely the giant floating baby head."
  "I am to metaphor-cheese as metaphor-cheese is to transitive-verb crackers."
  "I just discovered why cows and frogs don't date."
  "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Taffeta... make a note of that."
  "I'm calling Mom... and I am not using the banana this time!"
  • From "Candace Gets Busted:"
  Doofenshmirtz: Oh, Vanessa! Thank goodness you're here! A platypus has tied me up in my own pants!
  Vanessa: How did my life get to the point where that is not a strange sentence to me?
  • From "Der Kinderlumper":
  Stacy: Can't this thing go any faster?!
  Candace: I got the fennel pedal all the way to the rutabaga metal! And, yes, I know that's a weird sentence.
  • From "The Temple of Juatchadoon":
  Ohio Flynn: We've gotta lure that corn colossus away from those backup singers!
  Isabella: OMG, coolest sentence ever! Somebody write that down!
  Rhode Island Fletcher: *Writes that down*
  • From "Hip Hip Parade":
  Baljeet: "Why can't we both be vegetable samosas?"
  • From "Cranius Maximus":
  Doofenshmirtz: "And there's not enough platypus spit in the world to get you out of it!"
• Reactive Continuous Scream: In "Comet Kermillian", when Suzy shows a squirrel to Candace, who has just gotten in a traumatic experience with a bunch of them, starts screaming, which in turn scares the squirrel that starts screaming as well.
  • In "One Good Scare Out to Do It!", Buford dresses up as Suzy (the scariest person or thing he knows). When Candace bumps into Baljeet and Buford, thinking Buford's the real Suzy, she starts screaming at him, which leads to them screaming back, etc.
• Readings Blew Up the Scale: In "The Chronicles of Meap". Phineas reveals that he took Isabella's cuteness into account for his cuteness meter. Once he readjusts it to detect her cuteness, the machine explodes.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: Played With in the episode "Tri-Stone Area". The characters speak in cave-man jibberish, and no sub-titles are given. Of course, if you know all the Catch Phrases, Running Gags and things that happen Once an Episode, you pretty much know what they're saying, just from the situation and inflections used. The creators break in stop-motion animation, and talk about this:
  Jeff "Swampy" Marsh: Whoa, whoa, whoa. So—so they're just gonna be talking in "cave-talk"?
• Rebound Best Friend: When Buford and Baljeet have a fight, so Buford has to get a new nerd to bully. He tries to get the new nerd to speak in Baljeet's Indian accent, but the kid can only do other accents, annoying Buford.
• Record Needle Scratch:
  • "That Sinking Feeling" has it when the romantic cruise turns out to be for Baljeet; Isabella had been hoping Phineas finally noticed her feelings.
  • Also in "Comet Kermillian" when Phineas invites Isabella to their new project of carving their faces on a passing meteorite and show them to "our grandkids" in the future. Isabella showed too much enthusiasm about the grandkids part, cue record scratch.
  • "Lights, Candace, Action" has it when we get a toes-to-nose shot of Candace in a beautiful gown that ends with her wearing a monster head.
  • This is actually quite common. A gentle wake-up scene for Candace gets one when she realizes Perry's on her bed, for instance, or the boys spotting Perry with his fedora.
  • In "When Worlds Collide" there's an actual record scratch when Lawrence takes the needle off of an LP, even though he and Linda are listening on headphones.
• Recurring Extra:
  • The farmer that never seems to think his ideas through and his nagging wife asking him if he expected for whatever thing is necessary to just fall from the sky, cue that very thing falling from the sky due to either the boys' and/or Doof's projects.
  • All eight boys who rode the first rollercoaster with Phineas and Ferb have a goodly number of appearances in crowd scenes. However, only Dimitri Popaunicolas ever plays an important role in any episode: he holds a red balloon in the rodeo in 'Robot Rodeo', angering the mechanical bulls. Buford actually lampshades the group's status (or, at least, the status of the trio formed by Pedro, Dimitri, and the boy who remembers Irving) as extras in the episode with the second rollercoaster, stealing the poster to ride for free, noting that he deserves to ride more than them, because they are extras.
  • Django was typically the first person to show up in any crowd for the first season, culminating in his own plot, after which he rarely shows up.
  • There are a handful of unique extras that appear in most crowd reaction scenes. Most notable are two men voiced by Dan and Swampy, and the woman with her watermelon.
• Re-Cut: "Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation" has an extended edition that restores a cut song.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Some episodes use "Aloha Oe" and "Kronk for Hire" as background music.
• Red Herring:
  • In "Remains of the Platypus", Doofenshmirtz has brainwashed Perry to think he's a butler. Carl laments "Oh, if only you had your hat", and there's an entire sub-plot about Linda finding it. It doesn't do anything, and Perry breaks out of the brainwashing because of a Note to Self instead. The song lampshades this!
  • The title of "La Candace-Cabra" seems to imply that Candace would be mistaken for a chupacabra and there's even a gag early in the episode showing that she shares certain characteristics with the creature. Such a mix-up never occurs.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Phineas is the energetic, cheerful Red to Ferb's stoic, soft-spoken Blue.
  • Candace is the loud, short-tempered Red to Stacy's polite, level-headed Blue.
• Redemption Equals Death:
  • In "Where's Perry?" The robot Candace decides to take a lasershot for Candace after hearing the message Jeremy left for her.
  • Played for laughs in "Meapless in Seattle". Ballooney somehow remembers his friendship with Doof and saves him from some soldiers, but one is able to get a final shot and pop him, at the end he is "revived".
• Redundant Romance Attempt: Jeremy obviously likes Candace just as much as she likes him, but she's so blinded by her own insecurities that she still goes out of her way to make him notice her. In reality, he likes that she acts unhinged out of a deep desire to look after her younger brothers—Jeremy himself is a protective older brother.
• Reed Richards Is Useless:
  • Any creation by the boys, Doofenshmirtz, or anyone else will be undone by the end of episode and not mentioned again, even though some of them have incredible world-changing potential, such as a pair of Stargate-style teleportation rings.
  • Subverted when Phineas mentions "A jellybean-based monetary system for emerging nations...I dunno, I'm just not feeling it!"
  • Doofenshmirtz explains that he only cares making things for the evil. To the point that when an invention of his is used for improving vision, and he is even being paid for it, he still feels the need to create something to worsen people's vision to "balance" things out.
• Reference Overdosed: The show as a whole has a lot of shout-outs, many of which count as Parental Bonuses.
• Refuge in Audacity: This is the reason the boys' mom never believes Candace. If your daughter told you that your pre-teen sons were doing something outrageous like, say, building an escalator to the moon, would you believe her?
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Candace traveled through time, wrestled alligators and was once the queen of Mars. Useful bits when Stacy or Phineas need to remind her of her self-worth.
• Repetitive Name: According to the credits, Carl's full name is Carl Karl, apparently as a way to clear up confusion on the topic (his name being spelled differently before).
• Rescue Romance: Phineas and Ferb both save their respective love interests (Isabella and Vanessa) at least once over the course of the series.
• Reset Button: Played for Laughs, especially with the convoluted and improbable ways P&F's schemes get undone before their mom can see what happens.
• Retcon: "Oh, There You Are, Perry" shows that Phineas has had Perry since he was a toddler. However, Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension says otherwise, with the boys having gotten Perry much more recently.
• Retired Badass: The "Doof Dynasty" version of Perry used to be a proud warrior, but retired after some kind of traumatic experience.
• Retroactive Wish: The recurring woman who chastises her husband "Did you think [something they need that was just cast off by Doof or the boys] was just going to fall out of the sky?" is proved wrong again:
  Woman: Okay... What, did you think a million dollars was just going to fall out of the sky?
  [Nothing happens]
  Man: It doesn't work that way.
  Woman: Well, how does it work, then!?
• Revealing Continuity Lapse: "Lost in Danville" is set in a parallel universe, as revealed in a twist ending. One of the only two hints to this twist is the fact that Phineas got an extra stripe on his t-shirt, something that would normally be passed off as an animation error. The other one is that Lawrence Fletcher is a polar bear, which was only shown moments before the twist reveal.
• Revenge Ballad: "Busted", where Vanessa and Candace sing about how they will make their moms listen to them and bust their father and brothers (respectively) once and for all.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Although they only do one replay; Perry was trying to determine whether Doof's Dull-and-Boring-inator had fired before being destroyed. It had.
  • Also, at the end of "It's About Time!", when Lawrence is seen in bed repeatedly listening to the ending jingle from the audio tour he got at the museum:
  Lawrence: Fossils! dun dun dun. Fossils! dun dun dun. Fossils....
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Meap, everyone points out how cute he is, and some tend to get distracted from their tasks when they see him. His whole species take it further, since they literally can weaponize it.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction:
  • One episode lampshades this by having Phineas begin building a submarine at the same time Isabella begins making a cheese sandwich. When Isabella returns with the sandwich, Phineas is just finishing up the submarine.
  • Lampshaded again the second time they build a submarine (to search for Buford's missing fish), complete with fourth wall breakage.
    Ferb: It usually takes us a montage.
  • Also lampshaded in "Candace Disconnected", in which Phineas tells Candace that it took 40 years to come up with cellular phone technology, so they can build her one in 38 minutes. And they build two. With teleporter functionality.
  • Lampshaded again in "Just Passing Through" when Baljeet complains that "You can build a roller coaster in a day, but it takes you 12 minutes to pump up a tire?!"
• Right Behind Me:
  • In "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbstein" Constance mocks Phineastein and Ferbgor idea of entering a monster contest since they don't have a monster. Not noticing the giant Platypus Monster behind her.
• Robot Me:
  • In "I, Brobot". The boys create robotic versions of themselves to help them with their projects.
  • Karl created robotic duplicates of the entire Flynn-Fletcher family in case of emergency.
• Rousing Speech: In "The Lizard Whisperer" Ferb, in a very uncharacteristic scene, gives a speech on how they will never give up on finding their new friend, Steve the Chameleon.
• Roundabout Shot:
  • In "Voyage to the Bottom of Buford", Buford has one with his goldfish Biff during his flashback.
  • Happens between Phineas and Stacy in "Put That Putter Away" during the Gratuitous Disco Sequence.
  • Phineas and Isabella have one in "Summer Belongs to You!" as they dance during the final song.
  • In "The Great Indoors", Candace and Jeremy have one during Jeremy's song as he tries to tell Candace what he likes about her.
• Royalties Heir: Heinz Doofenshmirtz invented a device that corrects people's eyesight and the royalty checks he receives for this make him feel uncomfortable that one of his inventions is being used to do good.
• Rule of Funny: If something make sense or not, even in-universe, is dictated on how funny the result would be.
• Rummage Fail: In "Lawn Gnome Beach Party Of Terror". Doofeshmirtz tries to turn on his screen to explain his backstory, but cannot find the correct remote for the tv.
• Ruritania: Drusselstein, Doofenshmirtz home country. Which is filled with rustic homes, no modern clothing, and goats roaming freely.
• Rushmore Refacement: In "Candace Loses Her Head", the boys sculpt Candace head into Mount Rushmore as a birthday gift. But a lava flow (created by Doof and Perry) destroys it.

S

• Sadistic Choice: In "The Beak", Phineas and Ferb have to pick between Isabella falling to her death or letting a billboard fall on several bystanders. Third option? There are two components of The Beak. Phineas (in control of the upper body) somehow gets out to save Isabella and Ferb (in control of the lower body) takes care of the falling billboard.
• Sadist Show: This article mentions that the creators wanted to avert it. Dan says that the easiest way for humor is for characters to be mean to each other, but that they wanted them to actually be nice while still having some edge.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Candace is having a sort of series-wide version, due to her busting attempts and hallucinations becoming more and more Flanderized as the show goes on.
  • Played for Laughs in "Bully Bromance Breakup". Baljeet insists on climbing Danville Mountain with only his natural strength. Unfortunately, Phineas and Ferb can't stand not building anything. Eventually...
  Phineas: ICE CHALET!!! (runs off at the speed of light)
  Ferb: If we hadn't been able to invent something soon, I was going to scream.
• Sapient Cetaceans: The OWCA has whale agents. In addition, a dolphin is apparently one of the world leaders in this universe.
• Sapient Pet: Perry the Platypus has to hide his sapience from his owners because if they were to discover he's a secret agent, they would have to have their minds wiped of that discovery. Unlike other examples, Perry can't speak like a human, but he's still sapient nonetheless.
• Sarcasm-Blind: This moment in "The Mom Attractor" shows that Phineas doesn't exactly seem to grasp the notion of it:
  Phineas: Well, y'know how we do something new every day?
  Candace: (pulling a priceless false-shocked expression) Noo...
  (Beat)
  Phineas: ...Oh, well, we try to build some big project, or do something-
  Candace: I'm aware of the concept, Phineas, I was just being sarcastic.
  Phineas: ...Really? Hey, that was pretty good. Wow, I totally fell for it. Ferb, I totally fell for it!
• Satellite Love Interest:
  • Jeremy. A few episodes tried to expand on his characterization, but for the most part, he didn't seem to have any personality except "ambiguously (or not) likes Candace". Later episodes like "Nerdy Dancing" and "The Lizard Whisperer" fix this a bit, giving him some more personality.
  • Played straighter by Stacy's boyfriend Coltrane and Vanessa's ex-boyfriend Johnny due to their overall lack of appearances. Interestingly, Johnny only gets his character fleshed out in Doof 101, after he's no longer dating Vanessa.
• Save the Villain: It doesn't matter if they are "enemies", Perry would always save Doofenshmirtz if he is in a life-threatening situation.
• Saving Christmas: Subverted, Christmas was never actually in any danger; Santa Claus arranged the entire plot so that, among other things, Phineas could get a shot at doing this.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Jeremy is the nicest, calmest, most level-headed guy in the world. Candace is a neurotic, incredibly high-strung Genki Girl.
• Saw It in a Movie Once:
  • Doofenshmirtz uses a villain deathtrap on Perry, saying he "saw it in a movie once." He then goes on to add that he "didn't see the end, but it seemed pretty foolproof." In fairness it's the scene in Goldfinger where Bond is Strapped to an Operating Table, which was foolproof. Unless you're using it on a platypus who doesn't have wrists to strap down, so he can pull them free the moment you've gone.
  • Also, in "That Sinking Feeling", Phineas claims they've seen a movie about a cruise ship sinking, and it seemed to have worked wonders for the romantic aspect of the film, which is where they got the idea for Baljeet's date with Mishti.
• Scare Chord: Used in a few early episodes as Candace is ready to show the evidence to her mom.
• Scenery Censor:
  • Doofenshmirtz, while explaining his plan to flood the coast and make his house beachfront property, rips off his outfit to reveal... The edges of a speedo peeking out from above the wooden railing in front of him.
  • Happened to Ferb while holding a string spool, when the string ran out of the spool, his own clothing began to unravel, leaving him naked except for the spool itself.
• Science Fair: The appropriately named episodes "Unfair Science Fair" and "Unfair Science Fair Redux". In which Phineas and Ferb help Baljeet to create a working portal to Mars so he can get an A+.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Doofenshmirtz, following the example of the mad scientist at the top illustration of the trope page, has a big lever as a on/off switch for the lights. He also has an obsession with installing self-destruction buttons and other buttons or dials that actually make it easier for Perry the Platypus to thwart Doof's plans. Even the titular characters aren't completely immune to the self-destruction button obsession as evidenced when they built a Rainbow-inator.
• Schizo Tech: Common throughout the show, but the episode "Doof Dynasty" shines a bright spotlight on it. Taking place in 1542 in China, they often talk about Phineas and Ferb using "tech slightly more advanced than we have today."
• Scolding the Fourth-Wall Breaker: Here's Major Monogram chewing out Carl for one such instance.
  Major Monogram: What did I tell you about breaking the fourth wall, Carl?
• Scooby-Dooby Doors:
  • One scene in "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!" has this scene happening when Candace explores the brothers' haunted house.
• Scout-Out: Parodied with the Fireside Girls. They come prepared for any situation, they have a handbook for various subjects from Car Maintenance to Time Travel Machine Repairing and accomplishment patches for absurd tasks such as Alligator Wrestling and moving mountains with their bare hands.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: From "Lotsa Latkes":
  "I don't have to put up with this, I'm part of the greatest generation!"
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In "Perry Lays an Egg". When Perry discovers that Doofenshmirtz plan amounts to nothing more than trash-talking a whale for taking his girlfriend, he goes away without even trying to thwart him.
  • In "Make Play", when Candace's double basically says that she is more than happy to join the kids to help them with their project, Buford couldn't stand such an out-of-character moment and walked out.
  • Baljeet's reaction to the evil gelatin monster: "Okay, I'm going home."
• Seahorse Steed: In the Atlantis episode, Isabella mentions that she could get an underwater equestrian badge if they find a seahorse. When they come across some, Baljeet brings that up, only for her to point out that they are far too small to ride. After that, Buford rounds several up together and proceeds to ride them.
• Secret Chaser: Candace trying to prove to her mother that her brother's projects are real.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Stacy, as of "Happy Birthday Isabella". She learns that Perry is a secret agent. She promises to keep this secret, and Perry agrees not to wipe her memory.
  • Perry as of "Sipping With The Enemy", he discovers Vanessa on a date with Monty (Doofenshrmitz and Monogram kids respectively), but Vanessa talks to him and he promises to keep the secret from her father.
  • Carl as of "Thanks But No Thanks". He discovers the relationship of Monty and Vanessa, and blackmails Monty about not telling his father. (To be fair, the only thing Carl wanted was a "thank you" from his boss.)
• Secret Ingredient: In "Meatloaf Surprise", the secret ingredient in the Doofenshmirtz family meatloaf recipe is hate. "Usually it's love, but Great-Grandma Gretel had some issues."
• Sea Aping: One episode features the titular step-brothers using growth elixir to turn the "A-Primes" (short for Aqua-Primates) human-sized. Like the Sea-Monkeys, the A-Primes are depicted as having a whole civilization.
• See-Thru Specs: In "No More Bunny Business", Phineas and Ferb buy some X-ray glasses that turned out to be fake, so Phineas immediatly decides that they should make their own functional X-ray glasses.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Buford and Baljeet occasionally have conversations like this. The most straightforward example would be from "Backyard Hodge Podge", when they discuss what a vegetarian turned zombie would eat.
• Self-Deprecation: In Spa Day:
  Candace: I'm sorry we had to clean up everything we destroyed... and had to rebuild it. I'm especially sorry I made us miss our spa appointment. But most of all, I'm sorry for being a bad friend. I was just trying to impress Jeremy and I lost sight—
  Stacy: Okay, you can stop that right now. You're starting to sound like one of those TV shows we like to make fun of.
  • One of the locations on Doof's Undesirable Destination Wheel from "Candace Gets Busted" is the city of Burbank. Burbank, California is the city where Disney TV Animation is based, along with many other big name animation studios.
• Self-Destruct Button: Doctor Doofenshmirtz puts these on everything, which generally just makes Perry's job easier. The handful of times Doof met with the title characters, Phineas shuts down the idea.
• Self-Parody:
  • In "The Wizard of Odd", the credits contain the song "Rusted", a parody of the earlier Phineas and Ferb song "Busted".
  • Also "Perry the Teenage Girl" (parodying Perry's regular theme) and "Couldn't Kick My Way Into Her Heart" (parodying "Snuck Your Way Into My Heart").
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Buford and Baljeet. The former being your typical bully acting rough and preferring masculine things, the later mellower, preferring more intellectual abilities.
• Sensitivity Training:
  • In one episode, the Flynn-Fletchers were sailing and Baljeet and Buford were watching over Perry the Platypus for them, which kept him from responding to Major Monogram's call. Monogram commented he couldn't send another animal agent because all of them were doing sensitivity training.
  • In another episode, the agency had a mandatory Animal Sensitive Seminar. Carl said that any animals where excused and could return to their missions, which Monogram found unfair saying that they were picking on the higher species.
• Sentient Cosmic Force: Candace thinks that there's one preventing her from busting her brothers. Whether there actually is one is ambiguous. At least until it's named as "The Phineas and Ferb Effect" in the crossover with Milo Murphy's Law.
• Series Goal:
  • For Candace: Bust the boys. For Doof: Take over the ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA!!!!!!!!!! And Isabella has confess her feelings to Phineas. Phineas and Ferb's stated goal is to have the best summer ever, which technically they don't complete until the end of summer, i.e. the end of the series.
• Serious Business: In the Clip Show episode, Perry gets called into the OWCA headquarters so that they can tell him that his performance has been suffering. It turns out that they mean that his entrances have been getting boring, not that his mission performances have been poor. The look on Perry's face indicates that he is very upset by this.
  Monogram: We should wait before we bring up his exits.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  • Invoked in "Lotsa Latkes", Phineas and Ferb have a list of "S" words seldom used by kids that they seem to try to use. Among them is "simultaneously" and "septuagenarian".
  • The episode "Let's Take a Quiz", in which the boys create their own game show of the same name. Its goal seems to simply say as many obscure words as possible. The only rules seem to be "answer fast and answer often".
  • Parodied in "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" when Gretchen actually says "sesquipedalian", the Fireside Girls shrug, and Milly gives her a patch for "Saying A Word No One Else In The Room Knows".
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In "Quantum Boogaloo". When Candace managed to return in time to bust her brothers but returned to a dark future (created by Doofenshmirtz), she had to go back in time to stop herself from busting her brothers.
• Sewer Gator: Candace fights one in "Fireside Girls Jamboree". Phineas and Ferb chase one in "What a Croc!"
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • Candace earning all 50 patches of the Fireside Girls to get tickets to the Paisley Sideburn Brothers concert, only to learn that Isabella could bring guests with her.
  • "Canderemy" is an episode where Stacy challenges Candace's loyalty, demanding the duo spend time together without any mention of Candace's boyfriend Jeremy. Candace becomes literally stuck on Jeremy, and has to hide him while spending the day with Stacy. The two get unstuck just in time to prevent Stacy from seeing him. Immediately after he leaves and it seems Candace has succeeded in hiding him, Stacy anticlimactically reveals she knew he was there the whole time. At first it seems like a subversion since Candace did refrain from calling attention to him, but she definitely devoted more energy to hiding Jeremy than she did spending time with Stacy.
• Shaking the Rump:
  • Unintentionally done by Candace a couple of times because she has squirrels in her pants. The extended version of the song has extra ass shaking action!
  • Intentionally done by the Fireside Girls in "Waggle Dance".
• Shapeshifter Showdown: Doofenshmirtz and Perry have one in "Phineas and Ferb: Hawaiian Vacation!", though this is a rare example where neither of them have any control of what creatures they turn into, so they just have to make the most of it.
• Shared Universe: Milo Murphy's Law takes place in Danville like Phineas and Ferb, with the show making occasional references to its predecessor. A crossover aired in early 2019.
• Ship Tease:
  • Phineas and Isabella, constantly. It's almost confirmed in "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", when Amanda refers to Isabella as her aunt. A twist is added when Candace points out that Isabella will still be an aunt if she marries Ferb. Then Ferb starts flirting with her.
  • Midway through "Candace Disconnected", Phineas teleports directly in front of Isabella, so close that his nose is literally touching hers. She acts her normal flirtatious way, but Phineas doesn't get it when he teleports away, as usual. Still, it's the closest those two have ever gotten to a kiss as children. That they both remember, anyway. "Act Your Age" finally ends the teasing and has them get together after high school.
  • Baljeet and Ginger get a little in "Bee Day" and "Bee Story". It's the first time we see them actually interact. Baljeet tells Phineas to wait a little while he talks with Ginger. And Ginger actually listed to what Baljeet was talking about where he said earlier most people either leave or fall asleep by that point.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Judging from this bit, Phineas seems to be a Ferb/Vanessa shipper.
    Phineas: Hey, where's Vanessa?
    Ferb: She went off with someone else.
    Phineas: That's too bad. I thought the two of you, you know, a boy, a girl, alone, in the City of Love -- I thought romance was a forgone conclusion!
• Shipping Torpedo: Suzie always does everything in her power to break up her brother Jeremy's relationship with Candace.
• Shoehorned Acronym: OWCA at first looks like it might stand for something interesting, given that it's the group Perry works for... until you learn it stands for Organization Without a Cool Acronym. Similarly named groups include COWCA- Canadian Organization Without a Cool Acronym, HSWCA- High School Without a Cool Acronym and SOKWCA- Secret Order of the Knights Without a Cool Acronym. There's also SS SN- Super Secret Spy Network.
• Short-Lived Leadership: Twice, both times with Candace. The first time, she becomes the Queen of Mars after accidentally going through one of her brothers' portals. Her reign lasts until the boys bring her home for dinner, with the next ruler (A fake volcano made by Doofenshmirtz) being crowned soon after. The next time comes when she wins a contest to become the mayor for a day. At the end of the episode, Doofenshmirtz's new Accelerate-inator gets destroyed, time gets rewound, and an old man from Phineas and Ferb's pioneer town is given the mayor position instead.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Played with. Phineas and Baljeet are shorter than most of their friends, but Ferb is the tallest in the main group of kids. Gretchen is the shortest of the Fireside Girls, but "Act Your Age" shows that she becomes the tallest during their teenage years.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Shown Their Work: Has its own page.
• Sibling Rivalry:
  • A one-sided case with Doofenshmirtz and his brother, who is more successful than him (he is the current mayor of Danville). Half of his evil plans are to supplant his brothers, or at least embarass him.
  • Lawrence has a friendly one with his brother, Adrian, where they are always competing in childish games that Adrian always wins. (He doesn't know that Lawrence has hold back in all their competitions).
• Sibling Team: The titular brothers, especially when the rest of the gang isn't around.
• Sibling Triangle: "Quantum Boogaloo" reveals that Isabella is going to marry one of the Flynn-Fletcher brothers. It will probably be Phineas, but Ferb seems to hint that he's keeping his options open. Another possibility is that Amanda could have called Isabella 'Aunt Isabella' in the sense that she's so close to the family that she's like an aunt. "Act Your Age" shows that Phineas and Isabella eventually get together in ten years.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: A very subdued example with Phineas and Ferb, though they see this a more of an advantage than a drawback. (Well, technically, they're stepbrothers, but they never refer to themselves as such). Phineas is hyper, talkative, and assertive, while Ferb is reserved, quite, and supportive (An easy way to exaggerate this is by their hair colors). However, they also share some core personality traits, such as eternal optimism, naivety, and love of fun and summer.
  • Also, both the boys and Candace. They are creative and always wanting to have some fun, while Candace (tries) to be the mature and responsible sibling.
• Sick Episode:
  • Phineas, Ferb, Isabella and Baljeet are all in bed with colds in "Brain Drain". Buford is just being lazy. Though Buford ends up catching a real illness by the end of the episode.
  • Candace had one in "Put that Putter Away", forcing her to hire Stacy to do the brother-busting for her.,until the end of the episode where Stacy is sick as well
  • Doof has been too impaired for efficient evil at least twice; once with a hangover and a second time with a bad cold.
• Sickeningly Sweet: "Ducky Momo" appears the be this universe's equivalent to Barney the Dinosaur and other such sugary-sweet toddler shows, which is probably why Candace catches so much grief for liking it (or believes she would).
• Sigil Spam: One of the main symbols of the show is the triangle, since Phineas' head is shaped as such. Thus, it's put everywhere when a mono-color background is used (most of the time for a song).
• Silent Bob
  • Ferb tends to say only one or two lines per episode. His expression doesn't change that much either, though people tend to notice if he is happy or angry.
  • Perry, who cannot talk at all, yet he is able to communicate effectively with any human he has to interact with, mostly Monogram, Carl, and Doofenshmirtz (though the later can be slow at times.)
• Silent Partner: Ferb, who doesn't speak too much and simply allows Phineas to be the "spokesperson" for the team.
• Silent Snarker: Perry. He cannot talk, but it is really obvious when he thinks that whatever Doofenshmirtz is doing is specially dumb even for him.
  Doofenshmirtz: Don't roll your eyes at me! It's a good plan!
• Silicon Snarker:
  • In one episode, Phineas and Ferb design a tower to try and present themselves with an escape challenge. After taking a hit from Doofenshmirtz's "Rude-inator", it becomes noticeably snarky...and more homicidal.
  • In another episode, Doofenshmirtz finds Norm's "original head" in storage. It's snarky reparte about his (lack of) skills as a mad scientist remind him why he put it in storage to begin with.
  • Even Norm's regular personality had a few moments. Once, when Doof complains about Norm's cooking, the robot replied:
    Norm: WELL NEXT TIME YOU CAN DO ALL THE COOKING AND I'LL STAND AROUND COMING UP WITH EVIL PLANS THAT ULTIMATELY FAIL.
• Simpleton Voice: Doofenshmirtz has a bizarre voice that not only tells you in a second that he is a total idiot, but also that he is evil and certifiably insane.
• Skirts and Ladders:
  • One of Candace's inventions (long story) is picked up by Doofenshmirtz's hook, she's forced to dangle from the edges while Stacy hangs onto her legs. She glances up her skirt but quickly looks down after that.
  • Doofenshmirtz is very close to getting an upskirt view of Candace in Across the 2nd Dimension while the main characters dangle in chains above a lava pit, but for most of the time, he was looking down.
• Skyward Scream:
  • Candace's Big "NO!" from "Gaming the System", after seeing her brothers die inside the videogame. They get better.
  • Parodied in the song "Way of the Platypus", where the lyrics outright say part of the training is falling in the rain and look into the sky while screaming.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Extremely idealistic, as long as creativity isn't crushed.
• Slow Clap:
  • In "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon" Doof enters the scene while clapping slowly specifically to make his entrace more dramatic. The boys had to admit that it worked.
  • In "Where's Perry", when Perry arrives at the headquarters to save Monogram, but is immediately trapped by Evil Carl, who proceeds to clap in self-indulgence.
    Monogram: Carl, you slow clapping fiend!
• Smokescreen Crime: In part one of "Where's Perry?", Doofenshmirtz uses a device that locks away everyone's gym equipment with the supposed intent of making his enemies too out of shape to stop him from taking over the world. After Perry the Platypus destroys the device and leaves, Doofenshmirtz reveals that this scheme was just a smokescreen to distract from his true goal: planting a mind control device on Major Monogram, the head of O.C.W.A.
• Snap Back:
  • Doofenshmirtz seems to get into very compromising situations, some of which seem out-and-out irreversible (like getting stranded on the moon) and be okay again by the next episode.
  • Every object in the Universe is expanded to 9 times its size by Phineas and Ferb's growth elixir in "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister", but is somehow reversed later offscreen.
  • In "It's About Time", Monogram appears to have been hit by Doof's -inator of the day offscreen, turning him into a immobile statue. This isn't shown to be fixed by the end of the episode.
  • Invoked in "Agent Doof", where Phineas, Ferb, Linda, and the Fireside Girls are all turned into babies by the end of the episode, causing Candace to hope that everything is back to normal by the next episode.
• Snipe Hunt: In "Undercover Carl", Major Monogram sends Perry on a literal wild goose chase because Phineas and Ferb were allegedly involved in Doofenshmirtz's daily scheme, and he feels that Perry is too close to the case. He finds the goose.
• Snooty Sports:
  • "She's The Mayor": The rich mayor Roger Doofenshmirtz plays golf with his downtrodden brother Heinz, who finds the game so boring he creates an invention to speed up Roger playing just to get through it quicker.
  • "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted": The boys are hit with a ray that makes them dull and boring, and this results in Phineas proudly proclaiming that they're "gonna watch golf on television!"
• Soap Within a Show: "The Great Indoors gives us the Mexican soap El Matador de Amor.
• Sophisticated as Hell: In "Nerdy Dancin'":
  Phineas: So, brother of mine, what endeavor shall we engage in today?
  (Jeremy walks up to Phineas and Ferb)
  Phineas: Hey, Jeremy. What's the haps, big guy?
• Solo Duet: Two counts; the first in 'Mom's Birthday' with a recorded version of Candace and Candace singing live. The second is from 'Split Personality' where the two Candaces sing a duet about how happy they are to be separate.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: "It's a Perfect Day", a happy song about what a beautiful day it is, plays while Candace is being chased by a mob of angry animals.
• Space Episode: Several episodes involve the title characters going to space, but the most notable is probably "Out to Launch", as it is the first time they have the specific goal of doing so and specifically focuses on their adventure there.
• Spaghetti Kiss: Parodied during the "Bouncin' Around the World" song in "Summer Belongs to You"....with Buford and Baljeet.
• Spanner in the Works: Unsurprisingly, Doofenshmirtz and his inators. If they hadn't erased all evidence of Phineas and Ferb's big idea before Mom arrives, then Candace would've won.
• The Speechless: None of the O.W.C.A. Agents can talk, since they are animals and all. They mostly comunicate through their facial expressions.
• Spelling for Emphasis: When Candace is singing about how her brothers are "evil" due to their shenanigans, she says, "Let me spell it out for you, Mom: E-V-I-L B-O-Y-S!".
• Spelling Song:
  • From "Tip of the Day":
  "A-G-L-E-T, don't forget it!"
  • Norm spells out W-E-A-P-O-N-R-Y in his song in the episode "Norm Unleashed"
• Spiked Wheels: During "Greece Lightning", Buford chariot is equiped with them to take out his competition.
  Phineas: Remind me again why did we put spikes on Buford's chariot?
• Spin-Off:
  • A mix of animation and live-action called Take Two With Phineas and Ferb, in which the characters interview Real Life celebrities. To date, they've covered Jack Black, Andy Hawk, Tony Hawk, Taylor Swift, Regis Philbin, Neil Patrick Harris, Randy Jackson, Emma Roberts, Cedric The Entertainer, David Beckham and Howie Mandel. Miss Piggy and Ty Pennington will appear in future episodes.
  • There is a series online called Doofenshmirtz's Daily Dirt, which involves Doof talking about various online topics.
• Split-Screen Phone Call:
  • Also during the episode when the gang is at their respective homes sick, their conversation is done this way.
• Spoiler Title: "Candace Gets Busted", ends with Candace grounded after their parents find out she (accidentaly) made a party in their absence.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad:
  • Near the end of the show's run, the A-Plots of many episodes and a majority of the show's merchandise put Perry and Doof in the spotlight.
  • Candace counts as well, possibly getting the most screentime and focus episodes out of all the main characters to the point where the title characters got progressively less focus as a result. The Disney+ movie is focused primarily on her.
• Squirrels in My Pants!:
  • Trope Name-inator. Named from the scene in the episode "Comet Kermillain" where Candace gets... What do you think she gets? Now extended! — With extra ass shaking action!
  • In the episode "Fast and the Phineas" Perry slings a piece of cheese down the back of Doofenshmirtz's pants, causing a mouse to run up his pants leg.
• Stab The Storm: Defied in the episode "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein". Phineas and Ferb originally planned to spend their day standing in a field, holding up a metal rod. Since a thunderstorm was happening outside, they had to cancel that plan, perhaps knowing well this trope would take effect if they didn't.
• Staggered Zoom: During the theme song on the line "Like maybe...", the camera zooms in on Phineas in steps before cutting to the chorus.
• Stalker with a Crush: Candace, particularly in the early episodes where she does things like photograph Jeremy hundreds of times and watch him through binoculars instead of just walking up and talking to him, not to mention her elaborate lists and scrapbook projects (which are apparently a secret from everyone besides Stacy). It seems it's not in the nature of this family to do things by halves. Atypical in that Jeremy and Candace develop a healthy relationship based on mutual affection, but the affection on the one side continues to be highly obsessive.
• Stand-In Portrait:
  • In the opening theme Phineas starts painting a moustache on Candace's portrait, only for her to come out of it to scold them.
  • In "Fireside Girls Jamboree", Isabella is talking about the founder of the Fireside Girls and the rules she imposed while standing in front of a portrait. Candace says the rules are dumb, and the lady comes out of the window.
  Candace: Who puts a picture-frame on a window?
• Star-Crossed Lovers:
  • Norm and Chloe, who are forbidden from seeing each other by their respective creators: Doof and Rodney, who hate each other.
  • Monty and Vanessa, kids of Monogram and Doofenshmirtz respectively, start dating in "Sipping with the Enemy" and try to keep it secret.
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • In one episode, Phineas and Ferb decide to build a device that can teleport anything from anywhere in the world into the backyard in order to retrieve the skateboard Ferb left in England. Lawrence asks why they don't just build a new skateboard.
  • Happens to Doofenshmirtz from time to time. Like when he wanted to transport the Big Ben from London to his building so he could have an easier time reading the time. When the secrent agent acompanying Perry asks why he doesn't just buy a bigger clock, Doof says that that would be too complicated.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Whenever Candace realizes that her brothers aren't actually nuisances, she warms up to them. But by the next episode she's back to her normal frantic self. One of the biggest jokes of the series is that no matter what happens, it will all go back to normal. Somehow.
  Doofenshmirtz: And who would have guessed it, it all goes back to normal. Explosion....now.
  • A recording session done by Dan Povenmire confirms that Doof will return to being evil in season five.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Generally the case with Candace; when she comes back outside with Mom to show her what the boys did, the invention is suddenly gone when it was there seconds ago.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Love Händel is named in the style of '80s rock bands, and the pun becomes hilarious when one realizes that people who listened such bands in their heyday are now middle-aged.
  • In "Lights, Candace, Action!" Candace's personal trainers are a pair of fleas.
  • Roger and Heinz Doofenshmirtz's caddies in "She's the Mayor" are Katy and Perry, respectively.
  • Phineas solved one of the puzzles in 'Escape from Phineas Tower' by undoing a lock with a bone. That is to say, a skeleton key.
  • In "The Belly of the Beast" Ferb pilots a giant mechanical shark from inside a suspended motion-capture shark suit, propelling it forward by agitating the tail. In other words, Phineas may be the shark's captain, but it's Ferb who has to shake his finny ass.
  • In "La Candace-Cabra," Buford dresses up as a goat to serve as bait. He's a 'bully goat,' get it?"
  • In "Last Day of Summer" when Phineas and Ferb are stuck in the time loop they run into a bunch of groundhogs.
• Stepford Smiler: Norm the robot is always smiling, both literally and metaphorically, even when is shown that he has his own problems to worry about
• The Stinger: Every episode features something that plays during the end credits. Half the time it's just an encore for the song of the episode, but for the other half it's a brief extension to the final segment.
• Stock Audio Clip: Candace: various screams, "Meep...". Perry: (chattering). Isabella: "Whatcha doin'?". Bob Weber: (snaps fingers) "OK!"
• Stock Clock Hand Hang: In episode "Quantum Boogaloo", the band Bowling for Soup slide off a giant clock during a music video.
• Stock Footage:
  • Being a remake of the very first episode IN SONG, "Rollercoaster: The Musical" reuses a lot of footage from that episode (though most of the reused lines were rerecorded and some of the jokes were changed).
  • Perry's lair entrance in the first episode was reused in "The Fast and the Phineas" and the Grand Finale.
• Stock Ness Monster: The Lake Nose Monster. An ancient dinosaur that lives in Lake Nose but has never been seen (except by the brothers). A lifeguard states that the Monster is just a legend that they keep milking for getting tourism and sell souvenirs.
• The Stoic: Ferb doesn't have a whole lot of expression—notably, his face remains completely blank as Phineas employs Puppy-Dog Eyes to persuade Candace to keep Nosey's secret in "The Lake Nose Monster".
• The Stool Pigeon: Candace is a self-appointed one. She will stop at nothing until she has been able to bust her brothers and reveal their projects to their mother.
• Storefront Television Display:
  • In "The Flying Fishmonger" While Candace is out shopping with Linda, Lawrence and Winifred, she passes a storefront TV and witnesses the ad promoting the jump of the Flying Fishmonger over the gorge in the Flynn-Fletcher backyard. Candace brings Linda back to see, but right when she does so, it quickly switches to another ad promoting pore paste, to which Linda comments Candace's pores aren't that big.
  • In "A Phineas and Ferb Family Christmas", Candace calls Linda, who happens to be near a set of TVs in a storefront, which is broadcasting the Christmas in July special the boys are hosting. Right when Linda turns to look at the TV, it immediately goes right to commercial and shows the Wintobreath toothpaste the show is promoting, which reminds Linda she needs to pick up toothpaste and ends the call.
• Storybook Episode: "Excaliferb", where the characters are set into a medieval setting.
• Strangely Specific Horoscope: Doofenshmirtz gets an oddly accurate horoscope about being shot in the butt while covered in honey and hair.
  Doofenshmirtz: Shot in the butt while covered in honey and hair. What do you know, my horoscope was right.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Occurs often enough to become a running gag.
  • In "S'Winter", the boys create a mix between winter and summer, calling it "s'winter", and Phineas makes an aside comment that it could also be called "wummer". When Candace want to show it to her parents she explains the concept of s'winter to them, but her father says that it seems more like wummer.
  • In "Perry Lays and Egg" Candace become overprotective of said egg and puts on a Platypus suit, calling it her "Mom suit". At the end of the episode Jeremy appears to take Candace out only to find her dressed like a platypus, after an akward pause, he simply compliment her mom suit.
  • In "Gi-Ants", when the kids are douzed with ant pheromones, the first thing Buford can think is that it smells like his grandmother's house. Later, when Candance douze herself with the pheromones, she also says that it smells like Buford's grandma's house.
  • Lampshaded once by Doofenshmirtz.
    It's a callback to something I didn't even hear! Take that, logic!
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: In the episode "Make Play", Princess Baldegunde talks like a German accented Yoda who just suffered a head injury. While this initially seems like a result of her not being fluent in English, Ferb reveals that this is the proper syntax for royalty to speak in her country.
• Strictly Formula: Each episode involves the plot with the boys creating a big project and their sister failing to show it to their mom, and Doofenshmirtz setting an evil plan in motion and be thwarted by Perry.
  • After the first season, the creators started to break and play with their formula.
  • They had a caveman episode, where they all talked in grunts. And you still knew exactly what they were saying and what was going on.
• The Strongman: In one episode, the titular stepbrothers convert their home into a fun house. One of the things found here is a strongman who is trying to lift up a feather that weighs a ton. As this happens, Phineas and Ferb are each holding up a 1,000-lb. weight by their feet.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • Random objects explode during the fight scene against the Ninja Vampires in "Doof 'n' Puss".
  • Lampshaded by Doofenshmirtz in "Ask a Foolish Question", asking, "Why does everything explode so easily?" after his building has already exploded twice, and no sooner does he finish this sentence does it go up in smoke again.
• Stylistic Self-Parody:
  • Carl explains he has no sense of smell since he was born without nostrils, alluding to the way his nose is drawn.
  • In the Clip Show episode, Doof tries to use his hand to signal the number 'four' but realizing he wasn't drawn with quite enough fingers, he also stuck out his thumb.
  • In "Run Away Runway" A fashion designer is angry that none of the models can properly wear his new creation, pointing out that only someone with a very long neck could do it, then someone brings Candace.
  • In "Hide and Seek", Doofenshmirtz sees Phineas and Ferb with their friends on camera and mistakes them for a "kiddie TV show".
  • Monogram points out that he can see the smell of Carl's sandwich in "Misperceived Monotreme".
  • Monogram and Doofenshmirtz comment on Phineas having a triangle head and Ferb having green hair in their commentary for "The Chronicles of Meap".
  • In the Halloween episode, Carl notes that his Monogram costume isn't complete because he couldn't put both eyes in the same side of the nose.
  • Monogram wearing sunglasses. (Doofenshmirtz: "Who designed those, M.C. Escher?" Monogram: "He was a Family Friend!")
• Stylistic Suck: Doof'n'Puss - a show Doof pitched to Seth...er, Jeff McGarland. With an insane premise and ridiculous plot. Even the film stock in those segments is grainy and faded.
• Styrofoam Rocks: Played with. When they are constructing their life-sized replica of Niagara Falls, Ferb (on the ground) picks up a boulder and throws it all the way to the top of the structure. Phineas says that even though he knew that that was paper-mâché, the throw was still very impressive.
• Subliminal Seduction: In "Undercover Carl", whenever Carl plays Phineas' catchphrase "Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!" backwards and with the syllables arranged in a random order, it becomes "Lets help Doofenshmirtz destroy the Tri-State Area!".
• Suck E. Cheese's: "Gunther Goatcheese's!" A restaurant in Drusselstein that has birthday parties with bad animatronics.
• Sudden Anatomy: Perry only has teeth when they're needed for an expression. He also only has fingers when he's in his agent mode. Otherwise, his hands are merely little pads.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Specifically for Doofenshmirtz in "Chez Platypus". During the entire episode, he goes on a date with an equally evil girl, falls in love, sings the most adorable Villain Song in history with her, and then says that he has "Never been so happy in his entire life". Then, in literally the last six or seven seconds, he shoots himself in the foot when she is hit by his own abandoned De-Love-Inator and leaves him.
• Sugar Bowl: Meap's Planet. According to him, cuteness is valued above all other things on that place.
• Summon Backup Dancers: Often. In "Rubber Bands and Rubber Balls" the factory has a breakroom specifically for them. Doof also has back-up dancers during his musical numbers. We see him paying them afterwards.
• Super Cell Reception: The title characters use Candace's cell phone in prehistoric times and on Mars. Candace lampshades this in "Unfair Science Fair Redux" by asking "How is it we have bars here?" on Mars.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Lawrence in "Love at First Byte:"
  Lawrence: "Alright, everyone on the dance floor; parents, kids...giant robots. Sure, why not?"
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In "Sidetracked," Agent Lyla (a human) is dangling over the side of a train and Perry tries to pull her up. Since she significantly outweighs him, they both end up falling off.
  • Also, this exchange in "Out to Launch", when Phineas and Ferb ask Candace to jump start their rocket with Linda's car while stranded in space:
  Candace: "What? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Can't you guys just find some old nuts and bolts lying around and Jerry-rig up some kind of machiney-deely-bob and get us out of this situation?"
  Ferb: Candace, we are just kids.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • In "It's About Time":
  Doofenshmirtz: Perry the Platypus! *hides raygun* There's no one else here!
  • When Perry goes undercover at an evil scientist convention, he presents an identification card that includes "Note: Not a platypus."
• Swapped Roles: In "Backyard Hodge Podge", Linda actually sees the boys' recycled material Big Idea, but assumes she's hallucinating due to overwork; Candace, on the other hand, does not see it because Doofenshmirtz's Eye Fog-inator causes her eyesight to become increasingly blurry. When Linda goes to rest and sees the project still there, she still thinks she's hallucinating.
• Synchronous Episodes:
  • "Unfair Science Fair" which deals with the brothers helping Baljeet create a portal to Mars for his science fair. At the end Isabella says that is weird they created it but never used it, but Phineas mentions that they did, but that's another story. "Unfair Science Fair Redux" in the middle of the previous episode (after creating the portal, but before the science fair) and deals with the boys saving Candace after she hastily entered the portal.
  • In "Bubble Boys", Phineas and Ferb create a giant bubble to float around. Before doing so, they ask Isabella for an specific ingredient. "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" deals with Isabella and the fireside girls trying to get that ingredient.

T

• Take Our Word for It:
  • Doof, Rodney and Lawrence once entered a contest to become leader of L.O.V.E.-M.U.F.F.I.N. (Lawrence misread the address of where he was supposed to go and believed he entered a contest to become king of pharmacists) and, after he was hit by a ray that turned him evil, there was an event where each contestant had to scare the others with their evil glare. We never get to see Lawrence's, but all characters who saw it were horrified.
  • When Roger's painting is hit by Doofenshmirtz's Stain-inator, we don't get to see the results, nor do we see what the picture is. We also don't get to see Doofenshmirtz's pictures in his backstory.
  • Offscreen in "Candace Disconnected", the boys build their tallest, heaviest, most interesting project of the summer. The guy from the museum was very appreciative, and Ferb notes he can hardly believe that it fit in the truck.
  • The big idea from "Blackout" was never actually seen onscreen, and we never find out what it really is. It is only built in the dark, and the lights come on some times to show Candace is strange situations on it.
  • Whatever was the grand finale for Isabella's birthday party in "Happy Birthday Isabella". We only see it as a shadow, and by the time it is about to be shown, it gets turned into butterflies by Doof's inator. We do get details on it by Phineas later on, however.
• Take Over the World: Doofenshmirtz's goal, restricted to the ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA!, unless he has a more petty nuisance bothering him.
• Take That!:
  • "Look! A sponge and a starfish! There's gotta be something we can do with these... oh, no, that's ridiculous!" Also qualifies as Self-Deprecation, given Dan Povenmire's work on that show.
  • "Quantam Boogaloo" jabs at Moral Guardians by showing a Bad Future in which they get all fun outlawed due to their refusal to change their parenting ways.
  • There was also one directed quite squarely at parents who blame the media for their kids acting bad instead of their bad parenting in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted".
  "Today on "The Morty Williams Show," "My Kid Is Bad, and I Want to Blame Others!""
  • "The Doonkelberry Imperative" is one on American politics, showing Drusselstein being divided thanks to their disagreement on the direction of a machine that produces their doonkelberry supply, causing a doonkelberry shortage.
• Take That, Audience!: In the song "Hey Ferb", Phineas brings up how glad he is not to have spent his summer vacation sitting and watching TV, while "Summer Belongs to You" encourages the audience to "not waste a minute sitting on that chair". Both of these activities are likely to be what the viewer is doing... in order to watch the show.
• Taken for Granite: In one episode Doofenshmirtz's Freeze-Inator temporarily petrifies Major Monogram, so Carl has to give Agent P his assignment. Later on it manages to freeze a Tyrannosaurus that our heroes have accidentally brought back from the past, naturally a split-second before it would have eaten them (and Mom would have seen it). Conveniently, it happens to be in the local museum, so everybody assumes it's just a statue.
• Talking Animal:
  • Candace when she switched bodies with Perry (the Platypus).
  • Olga and Chicago Joe are talking lice.
  • The zebra that shows up in Candace's imagination (and rarely outside of it) now and then.
  • Bizarrely, an otherwise normal talking rooster appeared in "Cheer Up Candace". It is never explained.
  • Somehow, Doofenshmirtz's pet cockroach can speak, at least after being combined with garlic ice cream.
  • A horse sings part of the song in "Troy Story".
  • In "Lost in Danville" alternate dimension Lawrence is a talking polar bear.
  • The insects in "Doof 101", although they're never seen successfully communicating with humans, so Translation Convention may be at work.
  • Played for Drama in "Night of the Living Pharmacists". The only time Perry gets any dialogue is after he's turned into a Doof-zombie and repeats their "lots of me" Madness Mantra.
  • "The O.W.C.A. Files" gives us Maggie the Macaw (justified, as she's a parrot) and Professor Parenthesis, who is a talking flea in disguise. Talking insects appear to be common in this universe.
  • Subverted in "A Hard Day's Knight" when Perry appears to read from a book out loud, but is actually lip-syncing to a recording.
• Talking the Monster to Death: In "The Beak", Phineas and Ferb try this with Khaka Peü Peü when they realize he was only on a rampage because he had never had a "greatest day ever" himself. However, the attempt fails when it turns out Khaka Peü Peü has an opposing concept of a great day than the boys do, and he's instead defeated when a chair is thrown at him from offscreen a few moments later.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: A variation - in "Meapless in Seattle" Linda was listening to french language learning tape, that described what happen right behind her.
  French Audio Teacher: The spaceship is right behind you. Le vaisseau spatial est juste derrière vous. Your children are climbing in the spaceship now. Vos enfants monter maintenant dont vaisseau spatial. Oh, for the love of, will you turn around? Oh pour l'amour de, vous de serait tournez?
  —>Linda: (as Phineas, Ferb, Candace, Isabella, and Meap take off behind her) Well, when is that ever going to come up in conversation?
• Taxman Takes the Winnings: In season 4, "Druselsteinoween", when Doofenshmirtz inherits a Drusselsteinian castle from his great aunt, he enlists Perry to help him find a large, hidden treasure that his Great Aunt has placed somewhere within the castle. After they find the treasure, in the form of bags of money, various local officials comes to his castle and makes Doofenshmirtz pay a bunch of fees for owning a castle. He gives each of the officials a bag of money which leaves him penniless.
• Team Rocket Wins: In the episode "That Sinking Feeling" Dr. Doofinshmirtz manages to get rid of the lighthouse thus dragging the boats away allowing him to get a good nights rest. He even gets mad a Perry for losing and kicks him out of his house. Though, in the Credits Gag, the lighthouse crashes into his building that night, bringing the boats with it, so not a full success.
• Tears of Joy:
  • Candace in "Candace Loses Her Head" when she sees her head added to Mt. Rushmore.
  • Tiana in "Candace's Big Day" toward all the weird additions to her wedding with Bob.
  • Everyone in "Phineas' Birthday Clip-o-Rama!" during Phineas' Rousing Speech, even Candace who cannot bring herself to bust her brother on his birthday.
• Tears of Remorse: In the appropriately titled episode "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", Candace starts crying when her brothers get their personalities and imaginations cleared because of her actions, as she tells them that she's always been proud to be their big sister and begs them to come back.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Phineas is the king of this in "Summer Belongs to You!" where even as bad things keep happening, he won't stop talking.
    Phineas: We might even arrive in Danville ahead of time! Y'know, barring any unforeseen mishaps. *cue boat falling apart*
  • "You can't stop me, Perry the Platypus! You couldn't stop me with a billion Perry the Platypuses!" Cue Doof falling through a skylight, straight into the assembly line making hundreds of Perry the Platypus toys.
  • "This building is so well-constructed, there is no force on Earth that can move it before your mom gets home!" And then it gets hauled away by the moon...
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics:
  • The reverse-engineered -inator in "What Do It Do?" has long eyelashes.
  • The female Aqua Primates are pink/red and have long eyelashes.
  • Perry suddenly has long eyelashes when he switches bodies with Candace.
• That Poor Cat:
  • A bird flying into the latest tall project or getting hit with something and giving a pathetic squawk is an occasional running gag.
  • The cat yowl is heard whenever Doofenshmirtz throws something away. He doesn't even have a cat.
  • It's heard whenever Candace throws something away as well. She doesn't have a cat either.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Subverted, as most of the tropes are. When Doofenshmirtz thinks he's insulted Vanessa by saying he'd rather have a son than a daughter, Norm tries to be a surrogate son. Doofenshmirtz repeated refuses to acknowledge him as such, though.
• Theme Naming: All the secret agent higher-up characters (such as Major Monogram, Admiral Acronym and Inspector Initials) not only share the alliterative naming scheme, but they are all also named after glossary terms in language and typography. Similarly, every OWCA agent who gets named typically has the name of "Agent (letter)", with the letter being the first letter of their species (a frog named Agent F, for example).
• There Was a Door:
  • Very frequently lampshaded when Perry breaks into Doofenshmirtz's building by crashing into the window, wall, or the door, up to the point where Doofenshmirtz actually convinces Perry to pay for the broken door. He gives Perry keys, too, and they are repeatedly mentioned. Doofenshmirtz never fails to praise him for using them. There is still generally a trap, though.
  • Prehistoric Doof had a similar problem with Prehistoric Perry. (Along with the Clark Kenting)
• Thing-O-Matic:
  • Doofenshmirtz's inventions always end in some variation of "-inator". He occasionally uses a pair of "-inator" suffixes, with a hesitation before the second one. Lampshaded in "Unfair Science Fair" when Doofenshmirtz flashes back to his first science fair and talks about his very first invention, called simply 'INATOR'.
  Doofenshmirtz: Yeah, I wasn't very clever with names back then so it was just 'Inator'.
  • -inator seems to have been retooled into referring to pretty much any device intended for evil in later episodes. In "Finding Mary McGuffin", Doof refers to his recent purchase as simply an -inator, since he didn't know what it did and couldn't give it a proper name, and in an evil scientist contest, the devices they build are all referred to as -inators. And then retooled again, with every Mad Scientist apparently using their own unique naming convention for their devices. So far, Doofenshmirtz sticks with "-inators", Rodney uses "-izers", and Dr. Diminutive uses "-erators".
• Thinks of Something Smart, Says Something Stupid: When trying to covertly investigate the titular brothers' invention of the day in "Undercover Carl" due to mistakenly thinking it's actually an evil antigravity device, when asked his name, Carl thinks to himself, "Say a cool name, like Nitro Dax or Steel," and then when actually introducing himself, just says "My name... is Carl."
• This Is No Time for Knitting: In the DVD character commentary of "The Chronicles of Meap", Doofenshmirtz is shocked that Candace would play baseball in a life-or-death situation, while Monogram (quite rightly) realizes that she's saving the day.
• This Is No Time to Panic: From "Comet Kermillian", we get this gem:
  Phineas: Can I have everyone's attention? Please don't panic. We're experiencing technical difficulties. Calmly head towards the exit in a calm, orderly—
  A large chunk of structure falls right behind him.
  Phineas glances at the fallen rock.
  Phineas: Okay, now you can panic.
• This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!:
  • From "Journey to the Center of Candace", when the boys find out they're inside Candace's body:
  Phineas: Yeah, we're inside Candace's stomach.
  Ferb: That's creepy on so many levels.
  • And later...
  Phineas: Candace is on her date with Jeremy. That means we're on a date with Jeremy.
  Ferb: Again, creepy on so many levels.
• This Loser Is You:
  • "The Beak's" theme song seems mostly to consist of deriding the listener for not being as awesome as The Beak.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Candace does occasionally benefit from the boys' ideas and gets with Jeremy. Heck, Jeremy may possibly be the physical manifestation of this trope to Candace on the show. Despite all the horrible things that happen to Candace and her futile efforts to bust her brothers, Jeremy's mere presence (along with a kind word or a helpful gesture) would always lift her spirits up somehow. Later, she become his official girlfriend.
  • Every now and then, good things happen to Doofenshmirtz. Although most of those tend to be yanked away, one of the ones the weren't (and usually one of the most satisfying parts of the series) are the times when Vanessa actually acknowledges that Heinz is actually a pretty decent dad, all things considered.
  • A good example is "We're Getting the Band Back Together". While Doof was defeated by Perry, the launch of the giant firecracker burned all the birthday decorations for Vanessa's party, giving the area a gloomy atmosphere that she actually enjoyed. The firecracker also launched him straight to the Love Händel (his favorite band) reunion concert, which he hadn't even been aware was happening and would have missed otherwise.
  • In "Finding Mary McGuffin", Doofenshmirtz manages to get out of being beaten by Perry since the -inator he purchased didn't actually do anything evil, and he even seems to get a chance to bond with Vanessa at the end.
  • In "Happy Birthday, Isabella", Isabella (with some help from Ferb) gets to have her birthday wish — to have time alone with Phineas — come true.
• Time Skip: The episode "Act Your Age" takes place ten years in the future.
• Time Zones Do Not Exist: Averted in the special "Summer Belongs to You", where the kids travel at the speed of Earth's rotation to have a super-fun, twenty-four hour day by taking advantage of the time zones to always be in daylight all day.
• Toilet Teleportation: Perry the Platypus used a secret toilet entrance to get to mission control HQ. Subverted in the closing credits gag on "The Lake Nose Monster (parts 1 and 2)": Doofenshmirtz tries to escape the same way Perry the Platypus did. He vanishes behind a door. The viewer hears a toilet flush sound and sees water coming from under the door. Doof moans "Oh, oh, oh, that didn't work at all. Now I really need to do the laundry."
• Too Dumb to Live: Dr. Doofenshmirtz's utter lack of common sense has, on more than one occasion, put himself into a situation where he would have been seriously injured or killed if he didn't possess Joker Immunity in a world with Toon Physics.
• Too Fast to Stop: The titular characters invent supersonic shoes and Candace decides to use a pair of those to be able to be in two places at practically the same time. Unfortunately, hers are "unstable prototypes" and she crashed on the memorial her boyfriend's family erected to a Long-Lost Relative. Twice. Fortunately, she accidentally found the relative on the way to the second crash and the Johnsons were too happy to be upset.
• Too Upset to Create:
  • In "Phineas And Ferb Get Busted", the boys are sent to a reformatory school after their mother catches their latest project. The program was designed specifically to stomp out creative, individualistic spirit in kids, led by a cruel Drill Sergeant Nasty. By the end of it, Phineas and Ferb are shells of their former selves, and can't create anything. Luckily, it was All Just a Dream.
  • In the "Summer Belongs To You" special, in which Phineas and Ferb travel around the entire world to have the longest possible day of summer, they end up stranded on an island. Phineas is so upset that he might fail that he starts snapping at everyone around him and his usual ability to thin up insane solutions on the fly won't work. Isabella has to snap him out of it as he gets more and more desperate.
  Phineas: Look, a sponge and a starfish! There's gotta be something we can make out of this! *throws them away* Ah, no, that's ridiculous!
• Toy Disguise:
  • In one episode Perry, after defeating Doofenshmirtz, landed in front of Phineas and Ferb in his agent persona, luckily the boys' project was making a lot of Perry the Platypus toys, so they simply thought he was a bad prototype.
  • "The Chronicles of Meap": Candace mistakes Meap for a Bangeroo doll the boys made themselves, and takes him for a toy convention.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • The promo for "Candace Gets Busted" basically said it all - it ended up as a small get together, but then escalated into an insane party, and shows Linda grounding Candace. Then it gives a clip of the song "Candace Party" from said episode. Averted in Latin America where the episode is renamed "Candace's Party".
  • "Where's Perry? Part 2" has fallen victim to this as well. Basically, the promo shows Perry in Africa, when we were supposed to be left on a cliffhanger on what happened to him in Part 1.
  • During some reruns of "Phineas and Ferb Musical Cliptastic Countdown Hosted by Kelly Osbourne", Disney Channel played a commercial revealing the #1 song on the countdown, spoiling the episode for those who hadn't seen it. (In case you're wondering, the winning song was Everything's Better with Perry.)
  • Several trailers for "Summer Belongs To You" feature scenes from the final act, without the Sun Beater, as well as the closing concert.
  • Ditto for the Grand Finale, which showcases scenes from the final song that shows flashbacks from nearly every episode. Another trailer for the Grand Finale focused on the fact that Phineas and Ferb were erased from everybody's memory, which doesn't happen until halfway through the episode.
• Translation: "Yes": In Meap's native language, the word "meap" alone can summarize phrases that are much longer in English, such as "Red alert! Red alert! Mitch has the cutonium, and he's on his way there. You must rally the troops, and head him off at the evil fortress. This is war!"
• The Troublemaker:
  • While the titular characters are always happy to do something to help their friends (which usually results in them creating an enormous project that defies a few laws of science), any problems they face in an episode will usually be caused by either Buford touching something he shouldn't or Candace trying to interfere. The boys always forgive them.
  • From Candace's perspective, it is Phineas and Ferb who are the Troublemakers, constantly doing things that could be disorderly at best, and outright dangerous at worst. It isn't that Candace hates or even dislikes her brothers; she simply feels that they're doing things they ought not to do, and thus she tries to have them busted for it, even if for her, Failure Is the Only Option.
• Truth in Television: This gem from "Flop Starz":
  Ben Baxter: By the way, aren't you a little young to be pop stars?
  (Beat)
  Phineas: ...No.
  Ben Baxter: Well, okay then!
• Tuckerization:
  • In "Dude We're Getting the Band Back Together", the band members are named after series creators Dan Povenmire, Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, and Bobby Gaylor.
  • Ferb is named after a friend of the creators, who is also quite talented in building things, but is "anything but silent".
  • Isabella is named after Dan Povenmire's daughter, with the one-time character Melissa being named after his other daughter.
  • Linda and her sister Tiana are named for Dan's sisters.
  • Django Brown is named for Swampy's son.
• The Twelve Spoofs of Christmas: A version of this is performed on the Holiday Favorites album, with each of the main characters singing about the gifts Santa should give them. It Starts with Phineas' "a jet-powered rocket ski", Candace's "two busted brothers", Isabella's "a sash full of patches", and so forth. During the song, Candace's line grows in increasingly frustrated with each passing day, before shouting "Ah, forget it!" on the final line. Also, Doofenshmirtz's fifth day wish begins with "The entire Tri-State Area", but gets progressively more humble as the song goes on, and uses the traditional "five golden rings" on the ninth, before settling on almond brittle at the very end. A shortened version of this song aired on TV with Doofenshmirtz telling to skip to the twelfth day after the third day was sung.
• Two-Teacher School: Jeremy is the only Mr. Slushy Burger/Dog employee we ever see, aside from the manager and a defected employee.
• Twofer Token Minority: Isabella, whose last name is Garcia-Shapiro, implying that she's Hispanic and Jewish. Her mother confirms the Hispanic half (she also says "oy"), and the Jewish half is also confirmed with the Mexican-Jewish Cultural Festival.

U

• Un-Cancelled:
  • Phineas and Ferb was scheduled to end production after the TV movie and third season but the TV movie reeled in so many numbers that Disney brought the show back for another season.
  • Five years after the official Series Finale, it was announced that the series would once again be revived with a fifth season to be released in 2024.
• Unconventional Food Usage:
  • The boys are occasionally knows to use food for purposes other than eating. They use jello to make a giant trampoline, a snow cone machine to create a frozen mountain, and licorice to recreate the Gordian knot, though the purpose for the last one was so it would be easy to escape if the knot experiment went sideways.
  • Perry and Doofenschmirtz have utilized hotdogs and bratwurst as melee weapons, and during a Halloween special, the scientist gained control over cheese and crackers, which he used to attack Perry.
• Under Strange Management: The title characters, who are "a little big young to be" doing whatever they're doing on any given day have run several businesses and organizations over their many adventures, from a diner to a ski resort to a cartoon studio. Because Phineas and Ferb are hypercompetent geniuses, these businesses are always successful initially. However, due to the nature of the show, they always vanish before the episode is over.
• Underwater Fart Gag: Implied when Buford is sitting in a jacuzzi in "Spa Day" which is bubbling, despite his claim that it's not on.
• Underwear Flag: Buford does this to Baljeet in one episode when the group was camping in the woods. Phineas was also pretty sure that there was no flagpole, so Buford said he would be willing to settle for just stealing Baljeet's underpants. It's also implied Buford stole them off his body.
• Unexpected Kindness: In one episode, the boys' sister Candace babysits Suzy, the little sister of her Love Interest Jeremy. Suzy generally terrorizes Candace, who is frankly afraid of the child, so it comes as a complete shock when the little girl cheerfully gives her a chain of paper dolls. Suzy then explains that she only harasses Candace as part of her efforts to control the big brother she adores. "Since he's not here, I'm off the clock."
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery:
  • The boys' purpose in life is to be creative and inventive. When they're taken to Smile Away Reformatory School and forced to be conformative, they struggle with repressing their imagination, and once they're broken they're miserable shells of themselves. Thank goodness it was All Just a Dream.
  • When Baljeet forced the two of them to help him climb a mountain in "Bully Bromance Breakup" without creating any special gadgets for the task, Phineas seems like he's having a panic attack by the time they reach the top, unable to move on his own and desperately rattling off ideas for inventions that they could have used. Even Ferb, normally The Stoic, says he was about ready to scream.
  • Perry's purpose is to battle and defeat Dr. Doofenshmirtz. When Dr. Doofenshmirtz temporarily gets a new rival in Peter the Panda, Perry's absolutely crushed, and seemingly abandons his role as an OWCA agent until the issue is resolved.
• Unexpectedly Dark Episode: "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" has Candace succeeding at busting her brothers, and they get sent to a military school where they are broken down and stripped of their identities and creativity. Such scenes included being forced to watch propaganda films Clockwork Orange-style, working on a chain gang and faux-waterboarding. It was All Just a Dream in the end, but dude.
• Unintelligible Accent: When the main cast visits London, there are two jokes of this nature about Cockney accents. In one, Candace attempts to gather information about her brothers' activities from someone with a Cockney accent, but needs to use a "Cockney to English dictionary" to translate. In the other, Candace is on the phone with her mother while going through a water slide and her garbled voice from the slide's movement gets mistaken for a thick Cockney accent.
• Unintentionally Karmic: Phineas and Ferb never mean to make Candance look bad in front of their mom with their schemes. In fact, it actually never seems to hit them that she is trying to get them in trouble just to assert herself as their boss or out of jealousy, and they always encourage her to join their wacky hijinks. Nevertheless, them setting up their big plans always drives her to try to tattle to Mom, only for the invention to vanish at the last moment and make Candance look crazy when Mom finally shows up and nothing is there.
  • Perry and Dr. Doof can be seen as this to Candance as well, as it is usually their battles that set off events that prevent Mom from seeing what the boys have done.
• Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: Discussed. When discussing how badly her asking out Jeremy could turn out to Stacy, Candace thinks that Jeremy could laugh in her face, with everybody else present also laughing at her, and the world exploding. An unamused Stacy says that's clearly just a worst-case scenario.
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: Isabella to Phineas, whose crush on him has as of yet not wavered in the slightest. (Well, it did once in "The Beak", but it was back to normal by the end.) In "Act Your Age" she has allegedly put it behind her at the start of high school, but the thought of leaving him behind on the way to college makes her realize she never stopped loving him.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Some of the delivery guys parody this with the "Aren't you a little young..." gag, but the citizens of Danville don't seem particularly surprised when, say, a rollercoaster spanning the entire city shows up out of the blue. In particular (though it's completely understandable, being a secret agent platypus and all) Perry's deadpan reaction to seeing the boys (and Lawrence) fly by on their living room floor (in itself, a Shout-Out to Aladdin) was marvelous.

V

• Vague Age: All of the main characters (minus Candace) are described by Word of God as "under 15".
• Vandalism Backfire: In "Magic Carpet Ride", Heinz Doofenshmirtz explains that when he was young he painted what he considered his masterpiece, and then showed it to his brother Roger, who promptly ruined it (accidentally) by spilling his lunch on it. Now Roger is about to unveil a painting at the City Hall, which Heinz pretends to ruin. Turns out the painting is the one that Heinz made years ago, and that Roger had spend the last 20 years restoring it. Of course, by this moment is too late for Doofenshmirtz to stop his evil plan, and the painting once again gets ruined.
• Verbal Backpedaling:
  • In the clip show, when Dr. Doofenshmirtz realizes his spiel about his MIND-CONTROL-INATOR was caught on-camera, he quickly says, "I meant, 'Mimes control my gator!'" Cut to two mimes and an alligator.
  • He later does the same thing when he's caught saying he will "Enslave the Tristate Area!" and switches it to "Engrave my pie-plate carrier." He then holds up a silver tray he got from his divorce.
• Verbal Tic:
  • Captain Bob Webber, the lifeguard. He has a habit of saying "*snaps fingers* Okay!" and he doesn't even seem to realize it. *Snaps* Ok!
    Candace: (snap) Okay!
    Webber: I don't get it.
• Victory Is Boring:
  • In "S'Winter", when Doofenshirmtz traps Perry in quick-hardening chocolate, he complains that he's not responding to his gloating, or trying to stop him. He even extends the countdown before firing his laser to give him more time.
    "What, you're just going to stand there like a dead fish? I'm giving you a chance to do something here! Honestly, this used to be more fun."
• Virtual Assistant Blunder: In "Candace Disconnected," Phineas and Ferb build Candace an advanced cell phone with a voice-activated transportation app - all she has to do is say "Go to [location]" and the phone will automatically send her to that location. This backfires when she's chatting on the phone with Stacy about an Easter Island documentary and says, "Why would you ever want to go to Easter Island?" The app picks up the last four words as a command and transports Candace to Easter Island.
• Visit by Divorced Dad: Inverted with Doofenshmirtz, since his daughter comes to live with him on some weekends; most of the time she's with his ex-wife, but she keeps regular contact.
• Visual Pun:
  • Candace admires the way the boys have fitted out her old tree house with all mod cons, and says "And look at all the bells and whistles!", passing by a wall with bells and whistles mounted on it.
  • In "Summer Belongs to You!" and "Ladies and Gentlemen: Meet Max Modem!", Phineas and Doofenshmirtz, respectively, deliver speeches about their intentions on boxes marked 'soap'.
  • In "De Plane! De Plane!":
    Phineas: Pilot's instruments? *looks at the cockpit controls* Check. Co-pilot's instruments?
    Ferb: *in front of several musical instruments* Check.
  • "Voyage to the Bottom of Buford" shows Buford's origins as a bully. The first guy he beats up finishes the fight pinned to a literal clothesline.
• Vocal Dissonance: Meap, when using any of his universal translator mustaches to speak English, has an unexpectedly deep voice.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • Isabella and Baljeet noticeably get higher-pitched voices as the series progressed.
  • Django, after spending much time as a silent cameo, has a deeper voice in "The Inator Method" due to changing voice actors. Just compare this to his last speaking role from "Oil on Candace".
• Voices Are Mental: When Candance and Perry switch bodies in "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?" Cadance can still talk in her usual voice, despite the fact the only vocalization she should be able to make is Perry's little growl. Perry, meanwhile, remains mute (though this might be selective) and can still make his platypus noise, even though humans have a completely different set of vocal chords. When Candace speaks from Perry's body it sounds perfectly normal to her mom.
• Voodoo Shark:
  • In "Buford Confidential", we are given the reason why Buford knows how to speak French: He learned it because he was once in love with a French girl. He then says it was pretty easy, because he knew Latin beforehand.
  • In "A Real Boy", Stacey gives an out-of-nowhere lecture on hypnosis pioneer James Braid. When Candace asks how she knows that, Stacey points to the James Braid poster on Candace's wall.
    Candace: ...Why would I have bought that?

W

• Watching the Sunset: Isabella commented that she would love to watch the sunset with Phineas, who is too busy trying to rebuild a plane. When he gives up and decides to watch the sunset instead, Isabella denies him, refusing to let him give up.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Sergei the Snail is invulnerable to regular methods of trapping agents due to its small size and adhesive slime, but, being a snail, can be captured by a ring of salt.
• Weather-Control Machine: The Gloominator 3000...inator.
• Web Video: Doof has "Doofenshmirtz's Daily Dirt" on his YouTube channel Doof Daily, where he shares his rant of the day (actually week, but then it wouldn't be as alliterative).
• Wedgie: Buford regularly gives them to Baljeet (though Baljeet manages to get one on Buford on one occasion).
• We Interrupt This Program: Invoked by Doofenshmirtz with his Preempt-inator in "The Secret of Success". Then the preempted program is preempted again by an actual breaking news.
  Newscaster: We preempt this current preemption to bring you another preemption.
• Weirdness Censor:
  • To be put simply, 99% of the population of Danville would require an extreme amount of weirdness to be confused/shocked by something, the only exception being Linda and Candace (Though that's usually only if said weirdness is made by Phineas and Ferb)
  • Invoked by Phineas in "Gi-Ants".
    "You know what I like about our friends? We say things like, 'We're gonna douse you in ant pheromones.' And they're just like, 'Okay, whatever'. They're so cool."
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Even ridiculously-tolerant Phineas is annoyed by Buford being a total crybaby in "Voyage to the Bottom of Buford".
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Said almost word-for-word by Stacy in "Moon Farm", before they cook a dish of lamb cobbler for fifteen minutes at 9000 degrees. Subverted in the sense that nothing actually does go wrong, at least on Candace and Stacy's end. Double Subverted when Doofenshmirtz's De-Moisturizer-inator hits it, and then Triple Subverted when Phineas swaps the shriveled mutton with Moon Ice Cream.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Parodied in "She's The Mayor", where the crowd believes that everything Candace says is some kind of metaphor, even her "busting" obsession. Of course, this was lampshaded at the end.invoked
  Old Coot: New Law! If you find any gold it's mine!
  Crowd: Yay for finding gold being a metaphor for... uh, I think were supposed to take it literally.
  • Parodied again in "Brain Drain", in which Dr. Doofenshmirtz at one point gets glued to a turntable and starts an epic freestyle rap about how Perry is controlling his movements using the doctor's own mind control helmet. Of couse, his audience, being a group of teenagers, interpret "there's a platypus controlling me" to mean that there's some kind of authority figure keeping him down.
  Teens: We all got a platypus controlling us!
  Doofenshmirtz: No, just me. I'd stop if I was able. I'm not speaking metaphorically, the platypus controlling me is underneath the table.
• What Does This Button Do?: Perry of all people does this in "Elementary My Dear Stacy" while riding in Agent Double-00's car. It was the eject button.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Some of the destruction wreaked by the boys' and Doof's inventions is never repaired by the end of the episode. One of Doofenshmirtz's rayguns destroyed a dam, releasing all the water behind it. The "Candroid" from the end of another episode was never seen again. And the Ferbot in the garbage truck...
  • Mom's modified car in "The Fast and the Phineas" goes through a car wash, which takes off all the modifications and leaves it sparkling clean (to Mom's absolute delight), but the engine (inside the car) was also modified, and that was not removed by episode's end.
  • In "Bubble Boys" although Candace fails to show Mom the kids floating in the big bubble as it popped, it is never explained what happened to their bubble machine which still stood.
  • In "Run, Candace, Run", Candace has three things to do at the same time: She has to read to kids at the library, attend Jeremy's family picnic, and do... something involving being half of a horse with Stacy. She spends the episode running back and forth between the library and Jeremy’s picnic, but never meets up with Stacy.
  • We never find out if Perry and Doofenshmirtz get out of the collapsing temple in "The Temple of Juatchadoon".
  • In "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister", after the fun house mirrors scene, Stacy just disappears for the rest of the episode.
  • In "Perry the Actorpus", after Phineas and Ferb are shown spending the rest of the day with Perry, they are not seen again for the rest of the episode. Same happens in "The Mom Attractor" when said invention becomes self-aware from Doof's Baby Cry-inator, and in "Run, Candace, Run" when the boys are testing the speed of light.
• What the Heck Is an Aglet?: The subject of "Tip of the Day", culminating in an in-show awareness concert. The episode ends with everyone getting hit with an Erase-What-Was-On-My-Mind-Inator and in-universe, aglets go back to being just as forgotten as they've always been (except Candace, who was unaffected due to not believing in it in the first place). However, in Real Life, an entire generation of kids now have a catchy song about the shoelace tips.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In "Where's Perry Part I", Major Monogram gets it from no one other than Doof, regarding his (unpaid) treatment of Carl: "Are you sure you are not evil?".
  • In "Lights, Candace, Action", Doofenshmirtz expresses his annoyance at Perry for knocking down and destroying his doors when he doesn't even keep them unlocked. Doofenshmirtz then forces him to pay for the damage.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Doofenshmirtz's answer to every problem is to build a gigantic, gun-like -inator whose only function is to remedy that problem. And even that solution is usually not the reasonable one.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve:
  • Candace signed an agreement not to try to bust her brothers more than once per day. Her mother considered adding a new clause when Candace took advantage of the fact Midnight marks the beginning of a new day.
  • In the New Years episode, Candace relapses and realizes she can try to bust Phineas and Ferb until Midnight, when the New Year officially begins.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: The TV Tropes entry is referenced in "Primal Perry" when Baljeet is inside a machine built by our heroes to test something or other. When the machine starts spinning Buford asks "Is science happening yet"?
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?:
  • Danville is... in the Tri-State Area, obviously. Although the Tri-State Area seems to consist of the greater Danville area and... literally nothing else.
  • Within driving distance of Mount Rushmore, referenced on maps to be simultaneously near San Francisco and somewhere on the east coast, and a supersonic paper airplane's flight away from New York.
  • "Just Desserts" may have finally narrowed it down with the song line of 'There's Escanaba, I can see Montreal'. For those who aren't good with geography, that means their house (and the overall Tri-State Area) are somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, US.
  • In Across the 2nd Dimension, 2nd Dimension Doofenschmirtz, unable to read his watch “with those little hash marks,” declares that his victory occurred “between 3:30 and 4, Eastern Standard Time,” which is, coincidentally when Major Monogram told Perry not to use the hologram on his watch, as he would be showering then. Since Perry was then able to successfully invoke Naked People Are Funny in order to escape, the show’s main dimension is definitely set somewhere in the Eastern Time Zone.
  • The show's wiki has a comprehensive list of all the locations and geographic points of interest in Danville. Have fun.
• White-and-Grey Morality: On the "white" side, Phineas and Ferb are short on flaws, as are many of their friends. On the "gray" side, While Candace is often the antagonist, she's neither evil nor truly spiteful — only impulsive and a bit high-strung, and has shown on occasion that she genuinely cares for her brothers. Buford is a card-carrying bully, but is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who is clearly friends with his "victims". Even the Big Bad Doofenshmirtz is quite Affably Evil, loves his daughter dearly, and is an absurdly Friendly Enemy to Perry. His attempts to take over the ENTIRE! TRI-STATE! AREA! come across as more pretending to be evil to get attention than the evil acts of a power-mad lunatic. Suzy Johnson appeared to be a straight Jerkass in her first appearance, but later episodes revealed that she's a sweet girl whenever Jeremy's not around. The only really unpleasant recurring characters are Doofenshmirtz's parents in his tales of his Hilariously Abusive Childhood (if you consider his stories to be reliable).
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Ferb actually is short (or a nickname) for Ferbs. Dan Povenmire confirmed that Vanessa calling him this when she picks him up in "Act Your Age" was his full name.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: "Phineas And Ferb's Cliptastic Countdown": Major Monogram asks who is writing their lines. Carl responds "Agent M, sir". Cue a monkey with a fedora on a typewriter. Dr. Doofenshmirtz then rants about how none of the kids watching the show are going to know what a typewriter is.
• William Telling: "Picture This" has Buford daring the boys to shoot an apple off his head. In typical Phineas and Ferb fashion, they do — but not as expected.
• Will They or Won't They?: "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" raises the question of whether Isabella will marry Phineas or Ferb.
• Wistful Smile: Doctor Doofenshmirtz often has bittersweet smiles while he reminiscing about his daughter Vanessa's childhood. He often expresses pride in her and her accomplishments, while trying to recapture the simplicity of her childhood.
• Word Salad Lyrics:
  • The boys make a song with meaningless lyrics in the episode "Flop Starz":
    Chicka chicka choo-wop
    Gitchee gitchee goo means I love you
  • Quite a few songs in the series end up like this. A delicious example is "Dance, Baby" from "Candace Disconnected". The moment the song is sung is random and silly, and the lyrics top it off:
    Dance, baby, dance, baby, shake your hips
    Go down to the pier and get some fish and chips
    Groove, baby, groove, baby, motivate your limbs
    Never eat a cactus if you're out of practice
• World of Snark: While it's definitely one of the most idealistic shows on television, a lot of the humor tend to be very dry-witted and nonchalant.
• Worth It:
  • In "She's the Mayor," Doofenshmirtz notes that his latest inator (intended to make a golf game with his brother go by faster) could potentially destroy the universe before adding "But, sheesh, golf? Totally worth it."
  • In "Split Personality", Doof invents the Look-Away-Inator so nobody will judge him if he chickens out on the high dive. He notes that it'll be a problem for brain surgeons or people driving, but insists it's a small price to pay.
  • In the Distant Finale episode "Act Your Age" Isabella says that her first kiss from Phineas was worth the wait.
• Wunza Plot: A fugitive semi-aquatic special forces amateur stage magician framed for a crime he didn't commit- the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln - joins forces with a rogue trillionaire inventor extreme fighting champion from the future. Together with the aid of R.I.C.K., their super crime-fighting high-tech talking rickshaw, they'll bring hope, justice, and varying degrees of aquaticness to a tri-state area in peril. Together, they are...Doof 'n' Puss.

X, Y, Z

• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The guys who sing the "Squirrels in My Pants" song are named 2 GuyZ N the Parque on the soundtrack album (yes, they were in the park and there's two of them). May have been a Shout-Out to *NSYNC.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • In "Chez Platypus", Doofenshmirtz's girlfriend ultimately gets zapped by his anti-love laser. Especially cruel in that this happens at the very end of the episode, right after the Love Song Of Awesome.
  • Irving gets one in "Not Phineas and Ferb". He manages to trick his haughty older brother Albert into believing Baljeet and Buford are Phineas and Ferb despite Paper Thin Disguises. When he tries to prove that he was able to fool Albert, though, he's foiled by the fact that the holographic Eiffel Tower they had been using as a fake project has since been replaced by the real Eiffel Tower, making Irving look like the stupid one. This leads to Albert giving him a wedgie and dragging him home.
  • Candace gets a particularly bad one in "Invasion Of The Ferb-Snatchers": Phineas and Ferb are fixing an alien's spacecraft and open an ostentatious launch platform in the backyard. Candace sees this and gets her mother, who even mentions that she can see it...but she's actually a Mobile-Suit Human for the tiny alien.
  • Worst one for Candace yet: in "A Real Boy", Candace SUCCEEDS... then Linda gets zapped by Doof's "Forget-inator" while the boys' device is in the air, then when the boys land, Linda sees again, then is zapped while they're out of sight again ...this repeats a few more times until Candace's post-hypnotic suggestion to forget about busting her brothers kicks in again leaving Linda to wander off right after a final zapping.
  • "Candace Gets Busted", where she's the one who gets busted. Doof's inator temporarily removes all evidence of the (unintentional) party that'd occurred, only to return it just moments afterward.
  • It even happened to a one-shot character: Professor Ross Eforp in "My Fair Goalie". He came up with the idea of Football X-7, but he was forced into hiding because Britain's anti-palindrome atmosphere at the time, with his name being discovered to be a palindrome. He nearly comes out of hiding when his creation was realized, but was forced back when he found out people still rallied against palindromes.
  • Anytime when it looks like Isabella is going to a romantic moment with just Phineas, something happens to ruin that moment. Notable examples include "Summer Belongs to You" and "Canderemy". She finally gets a moment in "Happy Birthday Isabella".
  • In "Love at First Byte", Norm becomes attracted to a Fembot and even manages to impress her. However, it's later revealed that said fembot belongs to Rodney, and the dislike between him and Doof promptly turns the budding romance into a Star-Crossed Lovers situation.
  • Candace gets another bad one in "Tri-State Treasure: Boot of Secrets. After several trades from one dealer to another to get the antique baby rattle to obtain a rare Ducky Momo collectible she can't afford, Candace is ready for the final trade to get her dream souvenir... but then the baby rattle is hit by Doofenshmirtz's De-Age-inator, undoing all the patina and returning it to pristine condition. Because it's not an antique anymore, the dealer denies the trade, causing Candace to scream, "WHYYYYYYYYY!!!"
• Ye Olde Butchered English: In "The Belly of the Beast":
  Lawrence: Let's Check-eth it out!
  Linda: Check-eth it out? Really?
  Lawrence: I stand by my Old English.
• You Are Grounded!:
  • Played straight with Candace in "The Secret of Success"; when she attempts to show Linda the ATV, she mentions she was driving it which causes Linda to assume she drove a car without adult supervision, resulting in her being punished.
  • Implied at the end of "Candace Gets Busted" when Candace ends up busted for the intimate get-together and she tells Phineas and Ferb that she will see them in a week.
• You Are the New Trend: In Run Away Runway, Phineas and Ferb become designers, with their Summer All The Time collection. The collection consists of the clothes that Phineas and Ferb wear in almost every episode - so Phineas and Ferb are the newest fashion. Later on, when Doofenshmirtz creates his clone army, as they enter the Googolplex Mall, everyone thinks that the outfit he's wearing has become the newest fashion - so Doofenshmirtz becomes the newest fashion.
• You Can See That, Right?: In one episode, Linda is the one who sees the extravagant thing of the week Phineas and Ferb are doing and, not sure if what she's seeing is real or not, phones Candace for confirmation. When Candace shows up, she's hit by Doofenshmirtz's Fog-Eye-Inator and states she's seeing nothing, making Linda sure it's not real.
• You Didn't Ask: In the episode where the family is stranded on a deserted island, the boys build a massive, intricate treehouse for 'shelter.' When Candace points out that they could have built a way off the island in the time it took to make the treehouse, Phineas answers that that's not what they were asked to do.
• You Fool!: At the end of "Invasion of the Ferb Snatchers", Candace once again fails to bust Phineas and Ferb, and she laments her apparent hubris in believing she could succeed in doing so.
  Candace: I was a fool! A foooooool!...
• You Must Be This Tall to Ride: L.O.V.E.-M.U.F.F.I.N. once held a contest to pick a leader, and this was a rule for the entrants. Sorry, Doctor Diminutive, they can do that 'cause they're evil.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Oddly subverted in "Perry Lays an Egg". Perry never actually laid an egg, but Phineas didn't seem to find it odd that his male platypus had seemingly laid one.
  "Congratulations, old boy, you're gonna be a — hey, where's Perry?"
• Zerg Rush: Baljeet and his copies in "Primal Perry" intend to do this to Buford, but the machine that allows the copies to exist is destroyed before Buford is seriously hurt.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Basically the premise of the special "Night of the Living Pharmacists", when Doofenshmirtz turns Roger into a mindless clone of himself. Due to the excess energy from his -inator, the transformation starts to spread. Eventually, everybody in Danville has become a Doof zombie.

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