Rugrats / Tropes J to Q

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J-L

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Angelica has her moments.
  • In "Sour Pickles," Angelica selfishly refuses to let Tommy play with her kaleidoscope throughout the episode, but at the end, when she sees Stu and Drew make up after an argument, she gives it to Tommy and lets him use it.
  • In a very memorable episode ("New Kid In Town") Angelica stands up to a bully named Josh when she finds out he severely mistreats the babies (according to Tommy, he's much worse than Angelica). She even comes armed with a water balloon catapult.
    Angelica: *launches a water balloon that just barely avoids hitting Josh* The next one won't miss!
    Babies: (overjoyed) Angelica!
• Kangaroo Court: "Pickles vs. Pickles." Though Drew is given a lawyer to defend him, he quickly gives up when he realizes how biased the jury and the judge are against his client. Fortunately, he quickly realizes that it was All Just a Dream.
• Karma Houdini: Angelica manages to pull one in "Barbecue Story," where she deliberately throws Tommy's ball over a fence without any comeuppance. This has mostly been averted since, allegedly because the creators despised the incident.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Angelica bullies the babies, but she usually^note with the exception of "Barbecue Story" gets some kind of mortifying comeuppance afterwards, such as a pizza falling on her head after she lied to the babies that she was a psychic.
• Kick the Dog: Angelica makes a profession out of it. Many adults that the babies obliviously harass also do this to make themselves a Karmic Butt-Monkey.
• Kiddie Kid: Downplayed for Chuckie. He's two and while he mainly behaves like a two-year-old, the only word he can say to the grownups is "No".
• Kids Hate Vegetables: In the episode "Pickles vs. Pickles", after Drew and Charlotte send Angelica to her room without dessert for refusing to eat her broccoli, Angelica sues them. The surrounding media circus warps things and blows them out of proportion and the judge is taken in by Angelica's cuteness and sides with her. Drew goes crazy and is dragged off to prison screaming "I'm a good father!". Of course, it was All Just a Dream, but the episode ends with Angelica being apologized to and it is implied that Drew has a very weak will which Angelica can manipulate this way for every vegetable.
• Kids Prefer Boxes:
  • "The Box" involves the babies pretending the box for Stu's Kiddie Carnival (which he never did get finished) is many different things, including a race car, a rocket ship, and a house (that's half-cave). Angelica can't understand what the babies see in an empty box. At the end of the episode, Stu decides to market a line of cardboard boxes for kids to play with.
  • "Kid TV" involves Stu throwing his half-finished invention at the TV after seeing a commercial from a competitor, breaking the TV as a result. The biggest box he has is just barely too small to fit the TV, so the babies make a TV out of the cardboard box and make their own shows, including a game show, a news program, and a soap opera.
  • A variation of this trope appears in "Momma Trauma," where a man is trying to sell some toy robots, but the kids are only interested in the ball which comes as an accessory.
• "Kiss the Cook" Apron: When he barbecues, Stu often wears an apron that says "Tip The Cook".
• King Kong Copy: Thorg is a giant purple ape that acts as King Kong Expy counterpart to their mainstay Notzilla Reptar.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All
  • Dr Lipschitz. When Didi invites him for dinner, he tries to enforce his methods for raising kids. But when he is accidentally left alone with Tommy and Chuckie, he is unable to stop them crying and throws a tantrum himself.
  • Played with in Angelica's case, but justified because she's only three years old. Sometimes she gives the other babies wrong information on purpose in the hopes they'll believe her. Other times it's show she actually believes what she is saying.
• The Lad-ette: Betty enjoys football, working out, home improvement, and is said to be a very good mechanic. She's also much more outgoing, boisterous, and assertive (not to mention much larger) than her husband Howard. See Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy below.
• Lady Luck: Discussed in the episode of the same name, where Grandpa Lou is gambling and says that Lady Luck isn't with him. The babies take this literally and search for Lady Luck, eventually believing a nurse to be Lady Luck.
• Language Fluency Denial: The babies talk to each other and slightly older children in perfect English but communicate with grown-ups in baby babble.
• Larynx Dissonance: Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Dil were all voiced by women.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Angelica, and "laser-guided" would be an understatement. If it wasn't enough to smite her within minutes of whatever transgression(s) she committed in that episode, the mighty hand of karma seems to reach down and bitch-slap Angelica as hard as possible, usually in ironic or embarrassingly appropriate ways.
  • In "Angelica Breaks A Leg," Angelica gets the idea to feign having a broken leg so everyone will cater to her, which works when the doctor mixes up her x-ray results with someone who did break their leg. After spending the whole episode tormenting Stu and Didi with ridiculous demands, the doctor calls and lets them know Angelica's leg is fine, while shortly after, it is revealed that Charlotte broke her leg for real, so Drew forces Angelica to help him cater to Charlotte.
  • In "Chuckie vs The Potty," she makes fun of Chuckie the entire episode for struggling with his potty training. At the end of the episode, Chuckie successfully uses his kiddy toilet on his own, and Angelica comes in crying that she wet the bed.
  • During the episode "Graham Canyon," Angelica taunts Tommy because she has chewing gum and Tommy can't have any because he's too young. She teases him with "You're too little. You'd just swallow it." Then the car hits a bump, and Angelica accidentally swallows her gum.
  • In "The Shot," Angelica guilt-trips Tommy into telling her his and Hector's plans to escape the doctor's out of fear of getting their booster shots, and then proceeds to snitch them out. After Tommy and Hector are discovered, they both realize shots aren't too scary and had no problem with them, while Angelica could not stop crying after hers.
  • In "The Alien," Angelica tells the babies that Chuckie and his father are aliens, simply because she's jealous since she's too big to fit in the new playhouse Chuckie has. She commits to the lie, and eventually tries to "melt" Chuckie by spraying him with the hose. When she does, Chuckie doesn't melt, and the babies no longer believe Angelica. As the kids join Chuckie in the playhouse, Angelica clutches the hose while screaming "YOU DUMB BABIES!" She then accidentally sprays herself with the hose.
  • In "Chuckie Loses His Glasses", Angelica steals Chuckie's glasses while the latter is counting in a game of hide-and-seek and has him searching everywhere for them. When Angelica puts the glasses on herself, she ends up getting dizzy and sick and vomits on her father's sweater, and he takes her home for both of them to get cleaned up.
  • Despite the fact that it turned out to be All Just a Dream, Angelica STILL felt some karmic wrath when she attempted to make the seed in Chuckie's stomach grow. As she watered it and it began to sprout, the vines that came out of the seed grabbed her by the ankle and thrashed her around until she managed to free herself.
  • At the end of "The Trial," Angelica admits to breaking Tommy's clown lamp, and then brags that the babies "Can't do anything about it, because [they] can't talk," before victoriously shouting "I did it, I did it, I DID IT!" Didi hears the entire confession, and Angelica immediately denies it. Didi doesn't believe her.
  • Subverted in the episode "Moving Away." The babies recall how the four of them and Angelica all met one another at a housewarming party for Stu and Didi. Before the occasion, Angelica tells each baby, in private, that the other babies are mean, selfish bullies, for no reason other than so she can see them fight for her own amusement. At the party, her plans goes off without a hitch, and as she congratulates herself for being "a genius," she spots a box of cookies in the neighbor's yard. She then tries to fit through the bottom of a broken fence to get to them, and gets stuck. Soon after, the babies realize that Angelica lied to them about one another, and Tommy somehow deduces that it's because she wanted them to be friends. Grateful towards Angelica, they go and help her get unstuck from the fence.
  • In "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", Angelica takes a CD from Chas (after Tommy initially took it out of the case), and makes Chuckie think it's his fault it disappeared, right down to telling him that the world would be better off without him. Later, after Chuckie meets a guardian angel who shows what life would actually be like without him, Drew discovers the CD, bringing it back and telling Chas that Angelica will be grounded with no dessert for a week.
• Leitmotif: Angeilca has a noticeable one that accompanies all her lies and trickery.
  • Reptar has one as well. It's used even when only his likeness is seen— dolls, cereal, even Tommy's night light.
  • In Season 1 (and possibly 2), when a moose is shown or talked about, the same sound plays in the background almost every time.
  • From Season 4 onward, Spike had a distinctive "goofy" synthesized theme of sorts, that was also sometimes used for Fifi.
  • In some earlier episodes, Boris and Minka had a distinctive Yiddish theme tune accompanying their arrival or some other scene featuring them.
• Limited Wardrobe: Perhaps one of the few western hemisphere cartoons that averts this trope from time to time for no plot-related reason. Tommy wears an orange shirt instead of his standard blue in at least one episode (he also wears shoes and overalls in "Reptar's Revenge"), and Chas, Chuckie and Drew sometimes wear sweaters as opposed to their more recognizable attires.
  • Charlotte in particular seems to be the most frequent rebel to this trope. She wears numerous different outfits, and sometimes even wears curlers in hair despite the fact that her hair is never curly.
• Line-of-Sight Name: In order to con Didi into buying her two toys instead of just one, Angelica claims to have a sister. Seeing a boy playing with a ball across the store, she names her invented sibling "Ballina."
• Literal-Minded: Being babies, the main characters of the show are extremely prone to this trope. For example, Phil and Lil tell Chuckie that what we call a "watch" is called a "time," because when adults wear one, they tend to glance at it before exclaiming "Look at the time!"
• Living Emotional Crutch: The premise of the episode "Together At Last." Didi and Betty have coffee at Betty's house when they notice the twins arguing loudly. Coincidentally, this is right after Didi tells Betty that Lipschitz recommends separating twins every now and then to help them maintain independence. Betty at first is reluctant, but gives in and lets Didi take Lil to play with Tommy and Chuckie, while Phil stays at home with her. Both twins are miserable without each other and spend the rest of the episode trying to get back together.
  • If you stop to think about it, Chas is the most tragic character in the whole show. Up until his and Kira's wedding in Rugrats in Paris, not only is he a widower, he is emotionally dependent on Chuckie. This is best exemplified in "Chuckie's Wonderful Life," where if Chuckie was never born, he would totally lose his mind, with only a sock puppet as his companion. Most of the dream world is over the top Nightmare Fuel, but Chas' downward spiral after his wife's death is believable... and heartbreaking.
• Loose Tooth Episode: In "Tooth or Dare", Susie's older brother Edwin has lost one of his front teeth and received money from the tooth fairy. Angelica wants some money of her own, so she tries to steal Chuckie's teeth, only to knock out one of her own by running into a wall. She's excited until she only receives a dime.
• Lost Voice Plot: In "Cat Got Your Tongue?", Howard loses his voice and Angelica lies that Fluffy stole his tongue.
• Ludicrous Gift Request: Downplayed in the song "We Wish That Today was Christmas", where Angelica wishes for money and Chuckie wishes for a nightlight, which are relatively normal wishes, but Angelica wishes for a truckload of money and Chuckie for a bajillion-watt nightlight. Phil and Lil also want worms, which is semi-unusual.

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• Mad at a Dream: In "Farewell, My Friend," Chuckie's glasses get broken when Tommy leads the other babies to explore Chaz's new greenhouse, and they get spooked by a "Shadow Guy" (Chaz's gardening outfit). That night, Chuckie has a bad dream where he falls off a mountain he and the babies are climbing because Tommy tried to coax him into jumping over a gap by saying "Trust me! I'm your friend." The next day, Chuckie refuses to go on any more adventures, stating that every time he does, something bad happens to him, like breaking his glasses, getting chased by a Shadow Guy, or falling off a mountain. Naturally, Tommy is confused by the "mountain" part.
• Mad Scientist: Stu has a very apparent mad scientist streak, making dangerous and advanced toys that he insist should work properly and a seemingly absent sense of ethics when it comes to technology, even in one instance shrugging off the moral dilemmas of a time machine marketed towards children.
• Malaproper:
  • So much so that Wikipedia used to have an article listing the kids' mispronunciations of certain words. Even 3-year old Angelica (and the 4 year olds she made friends with at a playground one day) would sometimes fall victim to this. In fact, in many episodes, the main plot point arises due to the babies misinterpreting something the adults say and assuming an alternate meaning:
  • Stu once designs a toy clown named "Mr. Friend." The babies mishear this as "Mr. Fiend" and assume that it is a hostile enemy.
  • In another episode, the pilot light in Tommy's house goes out. The babies hear "pirate light" and come to believe that the repairman hired to fix it is a pirate coming to raid Tommy's house.
  • One of the most famous examples is in the Hanukkah episode, when the babies mishear Grandpa Boris discussing "the meaning of Hanukkah" as "the meanie of Hanukkah" and assume that he is referring to a mean bully.
• Malevolent Architecture: In one episode, the lever that controls the sauna is right outside the door, and it's positioned in such a way that putting it on its maximum setting causes it to actually block the door, trapping anyone inside.
• Mall Santa: In "The Santa Experience", Angelica cuts in line to see the Mall Santa, and after she tells him the large amount of presents she wants, he tells her he isn't sure he can get them for her. Angelica then rips off his beard and runs through the mall, screaming, "Santa Claus is a fake! Run for your lives!"
• Mammal Monsters Are More Heroic: Often inverted with the kids and the Godzilla Expy Reptar, their favorite character. In "Toy Palace", Tommy and Chuckie get locked inside the titular toy store. Tommy at one point accidentally turns on a life-sized doll of Thorg the ape, which chases him and Chuckie throughout the store. Tommy later manages to turn on a life-sized doll of Reptar, which pushes the Thorg doll into a Time Machine and "saves" the babies.
• Manchild:
  • Stu and Drew occasionally lapse into this, particularly when they fight over things they did to each other as children. The puppet show they put on in "Tommy's First Birthday" is filled with examples.
  • Most of the adults on the show are portrayed as more absent-minded than one would expect a parent with an infant to be. But Stu ranges from "immature adult" during arguments and short feuds with Drew, to what can only be described as "borderline mentally deficient" at seemingly random times. In "The Blizzard," he runs into the kitchen and screams "Yippee, school's been cancelled!" after a big snowstorm, at which point Chas has to remind him that he's 35 years old. In another episode, he rushes to get Chuckie's kiddy toilet while Chuckie is in the bathroom— Didi tells him to "put it down," and Stu puts it down right where he's standing... outside of the bathroom. Even Chuckie probably realizes that the potty doesn't belong in the hallway.
• Manly Tears: Although none of the father figures (save for Grandpa Lou and, to a lesser extent, Grandpa Boris) are conventionally manly, they have their fair share of griefs, and no one mocks them for it:
  • Stu in "Momma Trauma" is sobbing as he recounts how Drew would repeatedly pick on him.
    • And let's not forget "Angelica Breaks a Leg," where he breaks into Tears of Joy upon finding out that Angelica was faking a broken leg, because of all the hell he has been put through due to Angelica's increasingly bratty demands.
  • In "Reptar on Ice," Grandpa Lou is clearly moved to tears by Reptar's romance with the female reporter.
  • In "Angelica's Birthday," Drew also sheds tears as he reads his mother-in-law's birthday card to Angelica, knowing that his dear daughter is starting to become a young lady. Angelica thinks he's crying because there was no money in the card.
  • The episode "Let Them Eat Cake" takes place at a wedding, during which Chas is weeping. Stu tells him to "get ahold of [himself]". One could argue that these are Tender Tears given how sensitive Chas is, but given his Papa Wolf and Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass moments, they also qualify as manly.^note In hindsight, it's also possible that Chas was upset because the wedding reminded him of his deceased wife Melinda.
    • Chas also sheds a Single Tear in the episode "The Smell of Success" when the doctor reveals that the effects of her latest machine, designed to unplug a stuffy nose, are only temporary, which means that, since Chuckie has affected by the machine, he will soon be just as stuffed-up as he was before.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Betty and Howard. To elaborate, Betty's loud and boisterous (generally friendly though unless you mess with her kids), likes pro wrestling, is implied to exercise often, and even at one point runs a 10K marathon. She's good at things like car repair, construction/home improvement, and plumbing, and she's strong enough to lift Phil and Lil each with one hand, by their shirts, at the same time (she may be the only adult in the show's entire run to do so). Howard, on the other hand, is quiet and meek and has been seen more than once (or implied to be) participating in a "feminine" activity/chore. In "The Unfair Pair," Phil and Lil walk into the kitchen as Howard is baking cookies; in "Moving Away," Betty contemplates going to Stu's housewarming party by saying to herself "Well, Howard has a lot of laundry to do..."; in "The Stork," he's knitting and keeping to himself as Didi and Betty become immersed in watching a pro football game. Betty clearly wears the pants in their relationship, but they do love each other as each is quick to defend the other (see the episode entitlted "Family Feud").
• Mass Hypnosis: When the adults go with Grandpa to a bowling championship, the kids are left with a (presumably) teenaged babysitter. When Angelica starts to act up, the babysitter turns on a Dummi Bears movie, which appears to literally hypnotize all of the babies present (except Tommy, who's off-screen when the movie is first turned on). They sing along with the movie in an eerie monotone and say things like "Must... stay... here..." and "Must... watch... bears..." Tommy eventually frees them from the hypnosis by violently shaking Phil, Lil, and Chuckie. He neglects to do so for Angelica, and it turns that she's still hypnotized even after they all go home.
• Medicinal Cuisine: Discussed in "A Very McNulty Birthday", when the boy babies think that the Post-Treatment Lollipop the doctor gives out is what cures sickness, so they try to find lollipops to cure their female friends of their alleged cooties.
• MegaCorp: Charlotte's company, Merge Corp, apparently specializes in company takeovers, hostile and benign.
• Men Like Dogs, Women Like Cats: Tommy has a pet dog while his cousin Angelica has a pet cat.
• Metafictional Title: In combination with Title by Year: An episode called "Reptar 2010", also named for the Show Within a Show that's named for its future setting of 2010.
• Might Makes Right: The entire basis of Angelica's relationship with the babies. Often, when either the babies are asked why they do what she says, or the babies themselves ask HER why they should do what she says, the answer is "Because I'm/she's bigger than you/us."
• Mini-Golf Episode: In the second segment of season 2 episode 5 "Ice Cream Mountain, it's the adults who are playing mini-golf; the babies are more interested in the "Ice Cream Mountain" hole, which is dominated by a giant plastic sundae. They soon discover that it isn't really ice cream, and in doing so they un-rig the obstacle that was preventing Stu and Drew from getting a hole-in-one.
• Missing Mom: Chuckie's. In early seasons, she was occasionally mentioned, but never seen or heard. On a Mother's Day special episode, it's indicated (but never outright stated) that Chuckie's mom is dead.
  • In the second movie, she's stated to be in Heaven; and this is the same movie Chuckie gets a stepmother.
  • There was also a comic (Whether or not it was meant to be canon or not) wherein Chuckie was standing on a crack, thinking that it's "Step on a crack, bring your mother back". Angelica is about to correct him to how it's break his mother's back, before she has a Last-Second Word Swap, and then stands next to Chuckie saying, "See anything yet?"
• Mistaken for Brooding:
  • In "Family Tree", Chas sees Tommy playing on his own and believes that he's suffering from separation anxiety as the result of his parents being away. Actually, he just happens to be trying to retrieve a toy that had rolled under the hedge.
  • In "Mutt's in a Name", the Finsters' puppy is lethargic, and everyone thinks she's having an identity crisis due to not being named, but actually she has a tummy ache because she swallowed a puzzle piece.
  • In "Happy Taffy", the kids think Taffy is unhappy when they hear her playing off-key music, although she's really just struggling with songwriter's block. They spend the rest of the episode trying to find ways to cheer her up, like giving her "toys" (read: trash) and dancing for her.
• Mistaken for Fake Hair: In the episode, "Tricycle Thief", Susie's tricycle goes missing, and Susie doesn't believe Angelica when the latter says that she didn't take it. One of the lies that Susie reminds Angelica of is the time she told Phil and Lil that their father, Howard's hair was a wig. The twins recall how mad Howard was when they tried to pull it off, but how funny it was anyway.
• Mistaken for Pregnant: In "Angelica's Worst Nightmare," Charlotte Pickles thinks she's going to have another baby when she has read the pregnancy tester. It turns out in the end of the episode that she either read her results incorrectly or had some form of miscarriage and that she and Drew are not having another baby after all.
• Mistaken for Santa: Inverted in "The Santa Experience", when a man in Santa garb shows up, and the adults think he's a pretend Santa they hired, but then he turns out to be the real Santa when the fake one calls to say he couldn't make it, and the visitor turns out to have flying reindeer.
• Mistaken for Thief:
  • In "The Tricycle Thief", Susie thinks Angelica stole her trike, but really she didn't, she just has an identical trike.
  • In "Angelica Nose Best", Angelica eats some chocolate and blames it on Fluffy, which Charlotte believes, so she locks Fluffy in her cat cage.
• Mistaken for Toilet:
  • Inverted in "Chuckie vs. the Potty" in which the twins think Chuckie's training potty is a hat or a bowl.
  • Played straight in "The Big Flush", where the babies get taken to a swimming pool, which they mistake for a giant toilet and try to flush it just for kicks, eventually deciding the diving board must be the flusher.
• Mistaken for Undead: In the book The Rugrats and the Zombies, due to believing Angelica's lie that a Zombie Apocalypse is nigh, when the babies' parents act spacey and lethargic due to Sleep Deprivation, they believe they've turned into zombies.
• Mood Whiplash: Many people were turned off by how dark the first movie got, especially when you realize that they are all under the age of 3. Done completely serious, Tommy almost left his brother to a pack of monkeys in the forest. It can be quite a Tear Jerker.
• Morality Chain: in earlier episodes, Chuckie was often this to Tommy, Phil, and Lil, since they could be manipulated or led astray by Angelica into doing bad things. this is most evident in "Rebel Without a Teddy Bear," where Chuckie is the only thing keeping Tommy from being as much of a mean-spirited, destructive hellion as Angelica.
  • Exaggerated in "Chuckie's Wonderful Life," when Chuckie's Guardian Angel shows him what the world would be like if he had never existed. His entire neighborhood has been reduced to a warzone of misbehaving babies, because "nobody was around to tell them it's not such a good idea."
• Mountain of Food: "Ice Cream Mountain": The eponymous mountain is actually a decoration in a miniature golf course, but babies don't know that and Hilarity Ensues.
• Mouth Cam: An all-too-common trope for this show. Happens when characters are crying, eating, or sometimes even simply talking. Co-creator Paul Germain stated that Rugrats was the Trope Maker due to a scene from the pilot episode using this trope.
• The Movie: Two canon movies and a crossover with The Wild Thornberrys.
• Movie-Theater Episode: In "At the Movies", the parents take the kids to see The Dummi Bears in the Land Without Smiles. While the adults are engaged in the movie (save for Grandpa, invokedwho hates the movie's saccharine tone), the babies wander off to see a Reptar movie, making a mess of the snack bar and the projection room along the way.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: Although the show is aimed at young children, and indeed the infant characters can be relatable for the young demographic, there are numerous Parental Bonuses, as well as enough focus on the adult characters to make them relatable for the adult viewers.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The premise of the show, the kids would explore the basement or the backyard and it became a daring adventure filled with cliffhangers, monsters and other things their wild imaginations would create.
• Mundane Utility: "Toy Palace" has, among its assorted toys intended for children being sold, a working time machine. And this isn't one of the babies' imagine spots.
• The Musical: A live-action one called Rugrats: A Live Adventure from the end of the '90s. Nostalgia Filter heavy.
• Musical Episode: One parodying several older songs, such as "Bicycle Built For Two" becoming "A Trike That Is Not For You," et cetera.
  • About half of "Reptar On Ice" is the actual show and peoples' reactions to it, and the other half is the babies' adventure.
• My Little Panzer: The Reptar Wagon.

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• The Toy Palace. Dear lord, the Toy Palace.

• Naked People Are Funny: The entirety of "Naked Tommy", in which Tommy sheds his clothes to be like Spike, and even entices Phil and Lil to do so. Chuckie, however, doesn't want to. This also forces Stu to make a last-minute invention to keep Tommy's clothes on.
• Nature Tinkling: In "Potty Training Spike", Chuckie doesn't want to use the proper toilet because he has a Shy Bladder so he tries to pee on a tree and asking them to look away, but Didi tells him it's not allowed. This makes them think it's also not allowed for Spike so they try to potty train him. At the end, Spike pees on the tree but Didi says nothing of it so they think they changed the rules again, and then the babies all pee on the tree.
• Neat Freak: Chuckie. "The Odd Couple" reveals that he always wants his blocks stacked in size order and his toy village all in place. In a later episode, "Mr. Clean", he becomes paranoid of germs, dons a germ-proof "suit", and tries to keep his friends from playing in dirty places.
• Never Had Toys: One licensed book has Grandpa Lou mention that in his childhood, the only toy he had was a stick and a piece of string.
• Never My Fault: Angelica gets sent to day camp and blames her doll, Cynthia, for suggesting it.
  • In "Passover," Pharaoh (Angelica) blames Cynthia for being drowned by Moses.
  • In "Angelica Nose Best", Angelica blames Spike for knocking over Didi's jigsaw, Fluffy for eating the chocolate, and the babies for knocking over Charlotte's Priceless Ming Vase.
• Never Say "Die": Chuckie's biological mother (never seen outside of flashbacks), Melinda, is deceased, and the show does everything short of saying the actual word to indicate that — including showing her grave. Other episodes, such as "I Remember Melville", avert this. "Stu Gets a Job" even plays it for laughs, with Stu saying that Mozart's wife never asked him when he was going to finish his requiem and Didi pointing out that Mozart died without finishing his requiem.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The promos Nick ran for the show during the early/mid 90's made the babies sound almost like juvenile delinquents who defied authority at every turn. On the actual show, however, they're somewhat mischievous but fundamentally good kids who genuinely care about each other and their respective families.
• New Baby Episode: Subverted in the episode "Angelica's Worst Nightmare". Angelica discovers her parents are expecting another baby, and true to form, she becomes very jealous and eventually frightened by the aspect, especially after a nightmare where her baby brother hates her to the point of trying to eat her. Turns out, Charlotte wasn't actually pregnant, but whether it was just a false positive or a miscarriage is left to the viewer's imagination.
• Nice Character, Mean Actor: A major plot point in "Word of the Day." Angelica gets invited to appear on her favorite kid's show, "Miss Carol's Happy House," hosted by a quirky Genki Girl who claims to be a Friend to All Children, but she sneaks backstage and hears Miss Carol viciously insulting the kids on her show with a dirty word that we never hear. It gets even funnier when Angelica repeats the word on TV, not realizing what it means, and Miss Carol ends up having a complete Villainous Breakdown on the air.
  • Leo in the "Reptar on Ice" episode is the least qualified person to portray Reptar; he can't skate, is not good with kids, and hates lizards and amphibians.
• Nightmare Sequence: I'm not Tommy, hyuck hyuck!
  • I'm not Stu!!!
    • "Was I a funny clown?" "Uhh... not really."
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: "Pickles vs. Pickles" features attorneys named F. Lee Barnum and Mr. Hershowitz.
• Nonindicative Name: Angelica. She's the show's primary antagonist, and is as pure evil as a three-year-old can be. She's even listed as "Devil in Plain Sight" above!
• Non-Nude Bathing:
  • The babies and Stu take a shower with their clothes on in ''Regarding Stuie."
  • At the end of "Naked Tommy", after having spent almost the entire episode naked, Tommy decides to start wearing clothes again, and jumps into the bathtub wearing his diaper and shirt while Chuckie bathes naked.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In "Tommy's First Birthday", Stu and Drew decide to put on a puppet show for Tommy's birthday party. When Lou reminds them "Remember what happened the last time you two put on a show?", Stu replies "Aw heck, Pop, my arm healed and Drew sees almost perfectly out of that eye. Besides, we were only eight or nine years old then."
  • When Tommy gets sick in "Slumber Party", Lou tells the other adults that in order to cure him, they have to turn him upside down and feed him applesauce. Stu objects to this idea, because the last time they tried it, there was applesauce everywhere.
  • In "Chuckie Vs. the Potty", Didi becomes discouraged when Chuckie has an accident after his first unsuccessful attempt to use the potty. Stu assures her that many children weren't potty-trained at the age of two, and reluctantly tells her that he was one of them, much to her shock. Lou overhears and tells Didi that it took so long to potty-train Stu that he almost didn't get him into the boy scouts.
  • The time Chuckie got his head stuck in a sock became a Running Gag.
  • Tommy and Chuckie once "filled the potty with Jell-O so the fish wouldn't get hungry."
  • Howard, to Betty: I'd never forget our anniversary... not after what happened last year. *nervous laugh*
  • Many of Chuckie's seemingly random fears were brought up throughout the series, with no backstory and no further explanation. Amongst them— spandex, putting his feet in his own shoes ("It was dark in them shoes!"), and green Jell-O ("It coulda been alive! It really coulda!")
  • As everyone is going to the wedding of Didi's younger brother, Chas comments "It seems like only yesterday, he was running around in shorts screaming." Stu then replies, "That was yesterday, Chas. Remember the bachelor party?"
  • There was also the time Angelica told Chuckie the guy on the oatmeal box moved in next door.
  • In "The Legend of Satchmo", Stu is revealed to have a had a Horrible Camping Trip over a year before the episode's events, wherein he got lost for three days.
  • This exchange in "Angelica's Birthday", when the babies discover that Angelica is going to dress and act like a baby to avoid responsibilities:
    Lil: If she's a baby, she'll be one of us!
    Phil: And if she's just one of us, maybe she can't push us around anymore!
    Lil: Or steal our toys anymore!
    Chuckie: Or make us wear those frilly panties!
    (Tommy, Phil, and Lil all stare in shock at Chuckie.)
    Chuckie: Um, I don't wanna talk about it.
  • In "Naked Tommy", Stu becomes frustrated when Tommy won't wear his diaper, wanting to be naked like Spike. When Didi tries to assure him that naturism is perfectly natural, he's not sold on this, stating that everyone in his family wore clothes, "Except of course, for Great Aunt Lois, but that's another story."
  • When Charlotte took Tommy and Angelica with her to work in "Mommy's Little Assets", Angelica ended up pressing all the buttons on the elevator which meant they had to stop at every floor before getting to her office (which according to Charlotte, normally takes about 40 seconds without any stops). When they finally reach the top floor, a worried Jonathan says "You said 40 seconds. I thought you had been abducted by eco-terrorists again."
  • In "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", Chuckie decides to run away after losing Chas' Latvian Folk Dance CD, but his guardian angel tries to dissuade him from doing so. Chuckie asks his guardian angel where he was the time he got his tongue stuck to an ice cube, got his head caught in the back of a weird-looking chair, or trapped himself in a birdcage. His guardian angel retaliates by saying "Give me a break! I'm only two, you know."
  • In "Send in the Clouds", Grandpa Lou is recounting all the times Stu got himself injured in a do-it-yourself home repair project:
    Grandpa: This one I still don't understand! "October 3rd: Changed the light bulb in the refrigerator. Nine stitches and a case of pink eye"?
  • In "Autumn Leaves", the babies mistakenly think that a tree is sick when it starts shedding its leaves, especially Chuckie, who feels responsible for it happening because he spilled his apple juice on the tree. When he tells Tommy that giving apple juice to a tree that isn't an apple tree is like giving bird food to a goldfish, Phil remarks "Oh, so that's why Flippy had to go to the hospital in the potty."
  • In "Opposites Attract", Chuckie meets a boy named Freddie who is even more cowardly than him. When Freddie tells Chuckie about sand lizards, Chuckie tells him off, saying that the only time he's ever been afraid of a sandbox was when he was at Angelica's house and Fluffy mistook Angelica's sandbox for a giant litter box and pooped in it.
• No Matter How Much I Beg: Angelica and the cookie jar.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: In the episode "Tooth or Dare," Angelica is trying to extract a tooth from Chuckie's mouth so she can get money from the tooth fairy. Eventually, she becomes crazed and chases Tommy and Chuckie through the house with a pair of pliers. Near the end of the chase, she runs into a wall after Chuckie and Tommy sidestep her. As she's on the floor, semi-conscious, this exchange happens:
  Tommy: Angelica, are you okay?
  Angelica: *sits up, eyes crossed* Oh, but Daddy, the babies ate all the ice cream sammiches...
  Chuckie: What ice cream sandwiches is she talking about, Tommy?
• Nose Nuggets:
  • In "Tommy and the Secret Club", Angelica composes rude poems about the babies and has them recite them. Lil's starts with, "My name is Boogery Lil. I give all my boogers to Phil. They're yucky and green, you know what I mean."
  • In "Chuckie's a Lefty", when Dil has a cold, Angelica nicknames him "Goo Boy" and advertises him as the "ickiest baby in the world". When Timmy and Teddy McNulty come to see him, they're less than impressed.
    Timmy: That's just a baby!
    Teddy: Hey, my nose runs too!
  • In "All's Well That Pretends Well", when Didi sees the babies with vanilla ice cream on their faces, she mistakes it for snot.
  • In the Snow White parody from the "Tales From the Crib" series, Angelica names Lil's dwarf counterpart Icky because she is picking her nose.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: The show starts with Tommy's first birthday, and all four seasons get featured at least once before Dil is introduced, the last one, autumn, being the one in which Didi's pregnancy is set up. Getting the length of a pregnancy right, they seemingly set The Movie in which Dil is born in the summer yet Tommy and Dil are only a year apart, both before the Time Skip and after!
  • Though they don’t age Chuckie makes several infant-to-toddler transitions such as moving from crib to regular bed, bottle weaning, potty training, and even speaking (a single word). An early episode had Tommy’s parents try to wean him but decide to hold off on it and in the later seasons he moves from crib to regular bed. The twins are seen sleeping over in regular bed so they might have switched over as well.
    • Angelica also wears a diaper under her dress during the first season, and from Season 2 onward, she wears just her polka-dot panties under the dress. Her pajamas also change from typical baby "feety" pajamas to just an oversized Dummi Bears shirt.
• Not Me This Time: One episode has Susie blame Angelica for stealing her brand-new tricycle and punishes her by tying her doll to a balloon and letting it go. Despite the evidence against her, Angelica was completely innocent — Susie's trike was under her porch, Angelica's trike was her own and Angelica's red hands (which Susie thought was from opening her garage's painted doors) were actually from her finger painting an apology letter. Thankfully for Susie, a miracle (or a low-flying plane) gets Angelica's doll back to her and everyone's happy again.
  • Except Chuckie. It was his balloon, and it didn't survive the ordeal.
• Not Now, Kiddo: When Susie first arrives, she can't find her room because her stuff hasn't been moved in. She tries complaining to her mom, but she won't listen.
  • Angelica tries to tell Didi that Tommy had left the doctor's office and her father shushes her, only to later tell her she should have spoken up. See Hypocritical Humor above.
• Not What It Looks Like: At a costume party, Stu and Drew have an argument over who's king of the jungle— Tarzan (Stu's costume of choice) or King Kong (Drew). They eventually decide to "Step outside," or at least Stu does, before Drew closes the door and locks his brother out. He eventually attempts to climb the gutters and enter through an open window on the second story (after knocking on the window, but never knocking on the door or ringing the doorbell). He slips, however, and is hanging off of the gutter by his loincloth as police pull up to the window. He tells them that it's his brother's house. They don't believe him, and he gets arrested (in his Tarzan costume).
• Not Where They Thought:
  • In "Mirrorland", the babies bump into a mirror and land behind it, thinking they've gone through it and landed in a Dark World.
  • In one episode, "The Age of Aquarium", the babies go to an aquarium, but they think they're on a leaky boat instead.
  • In "The Big Flush", the babies go to a swimming pool but mistake it for a giant toilet. They go in search of the flusher, because they think it'd be fun to flush a giant toilet.
  • In "Graham Canyon", Angelica and Tommy wander into a garage, mistaking it for the Grand Canyon.
• Notzilla: One of the recurring Show Within a Show characters was a child-friendly giant monster named "Reptar."
  • One hour-long special even centered around a Reptar-themed spoof of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.
• No, You: Stu, towards Howard, after Didi accuses Betty of stealing Didi's earrings (episode entitled "Family Feud"):
  Howard: Betty, a thief?! That's an absurd proposition!
  Stu: YOU'RE an absurd proposition!

O-P

• Obsessive Hobby Episode: Subverted when Chuckie gets a clown toy. He spends a lot of time playing with it and Lil says he has a problem because he isn't playing with his friends, but then the plot swerves in a different direction involving him becoming scared of it.
• Obfuscating Disability: After watching a soap opera, Angelica fakes breaking her leg so everyone could bend to her every whim. Thanks to a very young doctor, her X-Rays are mixed up and they believe that she DID break her leg. The doctor does realize his mistake later, but not before Stu nearly has a major breakdown. It comes back to bite Angelica when her mother really DOES break her leg.
  • And unfortunately for Antonio Peaches, a football player whose X-Ray was mixed up with Angelica's, the doctor found out his leg was actually broken a little too late.
• Ocular Gushers: Given the nature of this show, the baby characters often cry in this manner.
• Oh, No... Not Again!:
  • Chuckie's usual reaction to when Tommy announces they're going on an adventure.
  • Also the adults whenever they discover the babies are missing.
• One Cast Member per Cover: The Amazon.com on demand DVD box sets had one different character on the cover for each season it had. Season 1 had Tommy Pickles, Season 2 had Chuckie Finster, Season 3 had Angelica Pickles, Season 4 had Susie Carmichael, Season 5 had Dil Pickles (which is particularly odd since he was introduced in the first movie, just after the fifth season and before the sixth), Season 6 had Lil DeVille, Season 7 had Phil DeVille, Season 8 had Kimi Watanabe-Finster, and Season 9 had Reptar. The Paramount re-issues of the first four seasons retain the designs with Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, and Susie.
• One-Episode Fear:
  • In "Down the Drain", Tommy develops a fear of being sucked down the drain and Chuckie used to be afraid of being sucked down the drain but isn't, however, Chuckie's fear comes back when Angelica tells both boys you can get sucked down the drain. It goes away at the end of the episode.
  • In "The Slide", Susie and the other babies help Chuckie get rid of his fear of slides, which he developed after being pushed down a too-big slide.
• One-Liner: After the babies have spent nearly the entire episode running from Stu's latest invention, they successfully defeat "Mr. Fiend." When they turn around, however, they find themselves staring down an entire army of Mr. Fiend dolls.
  Lil: Boy, this is really one of those days, huh?
• Only One Finds It Fun:
  • In "The Mysterious Mr. Friend", Stu makes a doll named Mr. Friend who scares the babies, but Angelica likes him.
  • In "Tommy's First Birthday", the babies try eating dog food, but only Phil likes it.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Subverted in "Miss Manners", when the babies think Angelica is sick when she starts acting polite, but it turns out that she was just practicing etiquette lessons she was taught.
  • In "Who's Taffy?", when the normally friendly babysitter Taffy calls the babies dumb over the phone, they believe she's swapped bodies with Angelica. (She's actually just in a bad mood).
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When the Rugrats mistake a party the adults throw for Angelica's wish of the world to be a circus coming true, they don't notice their parents wearing the costumes. They don't even notice any resemblence.
• Paperworkaholic: Parodied in an early episode in which the babies play "work" and imagine a lot of fun activities that included "Paperwork", which was Phil and Lil shredding paper with a lawn mower.
• Parents as People: Something of an underlying theme, actually, particularly where new parents are concerned. Didi turns to Lipschitz parenting books as her personal Bible, Drew and Charlotte are overcompensating, and Chas is simply trying to navigate raising his son alone. No one is perfect and they're all doing the best they can, with varying degrees of success.
• Parental Bonus: Many.
  • The series seemed built on this in the early seasons, with the adult cast getting subplots with humor relating to adult issues. Just as an example, one episode featured a B-plot of the adults getting together and doing their taxes (Drew, being an accountant, gives Stu some very sound advice about why it's smart to file taxes properly.)
  • The episode "Touchdown Tommy" featured the adults watching the "Ultra Bowl." While the team names are never stated (presumably for copyright reasons), it's clearly intended to portray the Houston Oilers (later the Tennessee Titans) vs the Dallas Cowboys. Drew is wearing a silver shirt with a blue star on it, while Howard's shirt is red, white and blue, with a stylized oil derrick◊ on it, both of which are the main logos for the respective teams. The episode was first aired in late October of 1991, at which point Houston was 4-2 and Dallas was 5-1.
    
    However, despite being in opposite conferences and thus having the possibility of playing one another in the championship (writers get bonus points for creating a matchup that was possible, and somewhat likely, in real life), Houston didn't make it, while Dallas did. Also, in that same episode, right before the game starts, Stu and Howard yell "Come on, Houston!" while Grandpa and Drew respond with "Go get 'em, Dallas!", further reinforcing the point that it does indeed depict Oilers vs Cowboys.
    • "The Stork" depicts Didi and Betty watching, according to them, a game of football between Washington and Buffalo. Didi, at one point, name-drops a player named "Henderson"; Jerome Henderson was indeed playing for the Buffalo Bills at the time the episode aired (the episode debuting on October 23, 1993).
  • In one episode Angelica actually states that she's afraid "^{Sad-man Husany} Saddam Hussein" will invade her clubhouse.
  • In one episode where they thought they were on the moon, Chuckie bit Stu's finger thinking he was a moon alien. He used words Chuckie never heard before.
  • In "Man of the House," Tommy tells Chuckie he's seen his dad "talking to no one" saying "Please, please, let me make a good toy this time! Pleeease!"
  • In the episode "When Wishes Come True" when Grandpa is trimming the bushes he says "Read my clips. No new branches!"
  • In the episode "Home Movies," the babies make their own with crayons. Near the end, Angelica challenges Tommy to make one.
    Tommy. Alright, I'll do it, but I warn you, it won't be pretty. I don't have all my motor skills yet.
  • At Charlotte's workplace, there are two fish named Vesco and Boesky, named after businessmen involved in financial scandals.
  • The lawyer in "Pickles Vs. Pickles" is Mr. Barnum. It's a double bonus because not only does the judge call the lawyer on making the court a circus, it would be remarkably prescient of another trial, this time with a laywer named Bailey ...
  • "Game Show Didi" has Didi on a game show that's most like Jeopardy! (with Alex Trebek voicing host Alan Quebec, no less), although they have the prize showcase Wheel of Fortune used to have. Didi chooses a gold-plated dalmation, a reference to the infamous ceramic dalmation from Wheel of Fortune's aforementioned prize showcase.
  • In "Naked Tommy," when Didi attempts to justify the kids' newfound love of nakedness, Betty scolds her and points out that "The '60s are over and we lost!"
• Parental Obliviousness: The parents aren't even aware of the shenanigans their kids get into in every episode.
• Parental Neglect: The parents in the show clearly love their kids, but aren't the best at paying attention to them. To their credit, they do have the appropriate reactions when the kids go missing or get into trouble, but after so many times you'd think they'd wise up to the fact that their kids are clearly gifted and need more restraint and supervision than a mere playpen.
• Parrot Expo-WHAT?:
  Stu:: Presenting the Bonkomatic Baby Bumper!
  Didi: The Bonka-whosit Baby-what?
• Personality Swap: In "Angelica For A Day," Chuckie and Angelica swap personalities while an increasingly weirded-out Tommy tries to turn them back. Turns out to be All Just a Dream.
• Petty Childhood Grudge: A running with Drew and Stu. If they start arguing one of them (normally Stu) will bring something bad the other did to them, and then the other brother will bring something else. Normally they keep arguing in the background while the babies continue their adventures.
• Phone Aholic Teenager: Alisa Carmichael, Susie's older sister, is rarely seen without her cell phone.
• Pig Latin: In one episode ("Superhero Chuckie"), after Angelica sees the actor playing Captain Blasto "fly" on a rope, she asks him if he can do it again without the rope, and the actor whispers to her, "Ix-nay on the ope-ray, kid."
• The Pig-Pen: Phil and Lil love the idea of eating insects and playing in mud.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Downplayed with the twins. Phil wears blue shoes and has a pair of blue shorts under his overalls. Lil wears pink shoes and a pink bow on her head.
• Pirate Girl: There was an Imagine Spot (stemming from a game of make-believe) where the babies were pirates. Naturally, Angelica plays the role of the evil pirate captain.
  "Prepare to be bored!"
• Pity the Kidnapper: Tommy gets captured by two guys in "Ruthless Tommy", but Tommy ruins their hideout, so they give him back to his family while apologizing a lot, but his parents hadn't even realized he was missing.
• Plot Allergy: In "The Big Sneeze", the babies believe Chuckie is allergic to Kimi, as he sneezes every time she gets near him. Fearing the adults will get rid of her if they find out, they try to keep Chuckie away from her. It later turned out that Kimi was carrying a dandelion, which she was planning to give to Chuckie as an anniversary present.
• Poke the Poodle: Tommy's idea of being bad is... throwing an empty cup of juice on the floor.
  Angelica: "First of all, when you knock over your juice, you do NOT drink the juice first."
  Tommy: "But I didn't want to make a mess!"
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: All Grown Up was merely intended to be a fun episode, but because it was so popular they considered it a proof-of-concept pilot.
• Poorly Lit Pareidolia: Two episodes:
  • "The Legend of Satchmo": Chuckie walks through a backyard at night, and imagines the windows of houses as scowling faces and the shadow of a tree as a chomping monster.
  • "Under Chuckie's Bed": Chuckie - his father having traded in his crib for his first bed - is afraid to sleep in it because he sees a monster underneath it. Turns out, it's just his father's sweater.
• Porn Stash: There is an episode which centers around the babies trying to get into Phil and Lil's father's locked desk. Once they do they empty the contents and for a split second you can see a magazine with a woman dressed as a bunny on the cover.
• Potty Emergency: Being around the normal potty-training age, Chuckie urgently has to pee from time to time, including several times in "Chuckie Vs. the Potty", and at the end of "A Dose of Dil".
• Potty Failure: Happens twice in "Chuckie Vs. The Potty". The first time is when Chuckie pees on the floor after he gets off the potty after sitting on it for a long time. The second is when Angelica wets herself after Chuckie goes to the bathroom properly for the first time at the end of the episode. Justified in that both these characters are around the normal potty-training age. Lou did mention to Didi that Stu took a lot longer, though (but it's hard to tell if that was true because he commonly tells tall tales).
• Powder Gag: In "All's Well That Pretends Well", Angelica takes a dusty feather duster and tries to sprinkle dust all over Chuckie to make him sneeze. However, Spike steals the duster and plays with it, so the dust ends up landing on Angelica and making her sneeze.
• Power Outage Plot: The episode "Let There be Light" focuses on the babies' nightlights going off due to a power cut. The babies then decide to go to the fridge, since they think that's where light comes from.
• Present Peeking: In "Regarding Stuie" the babies had Stu, whose mind had been reverted to that of a baby thanks to bump on the head, grab a box high in the closet which they thought contained Christmas presents.
• Pretending to Be One's Own Relative: In one episode, Angelica imitates her mother Charlotte over the phone to order food.
• Pretentious Pronunciation: In a nod to A Christmas Story, in "Meet the Carmichaels", as Susie's family is moving in, one of the movers drops a box that says "fragile" written on it, and he asks his coworker what "fra-gee-lay" means.
• Priceless Ming Vase:
  • In the episode where Tommy visits the post office, there is a package that, if you pay attention, is labeled "Ming Vase," being sent through the mail. Predictably, it is shattered in the process.
  • Angelica also knocks over a vase in "Angelica Nose Best" but blames the babies.
• Prone to Tears: The babies are seen crying very often on the show, but to be fair, they are just babies.
• Prone to Vomiting:
  • Played straight for Dil, who often spits up due to only being three months old.
  • Downplayed for Chuckie, who sometimes barfs when dizzy but not as often as Dil.
• Psycho Poodle: In the episode, "Spike Runs Away", when Spike runs away, Stu and Didi decide to get Tommy a replacement pet. One of these is Cuddles, a very aggressive poodle belonging to Mr. Fillihulster, one of their neighbors. Cuddles constantly barks and growls angrily at Tommy and Chuckie, breaks his toys, steals any time he might have had with Stu and Didi from him, and demands they give her what food they do have. According to Didi, when Mr. Fillihulster took her back, she bit him the minute she got inside the door. Tommy sums her up best;
  Tommy: Chuckie, I knew Spike! Spike was a friend of mine! And let me tell you something, that poople is no Spike!
• Pumpkin Person: In the Hiccup Hijinks episode, Angelica creates a "scream machine" to scare Tommy's hiccups away. The "machine" has a humanoid shape, and a Jack-O' Lantern decoration forming the head.
• Punny Name: Dil Pickles.