Rugrats / Tropes R to Z

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R

• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A few have been delivered, including Chas to the DeVilles and Pickles after their bickering in "Family Feud", Lou to Aunt Miriam in the episode of the same name for bullying him throughout his childhood, and Didi to the manager of the Moon Goddess festival in the B-plot of "Daddy's Little Helpers" when she is given as shirt that says, "I am the Goddess Dodo".
• Recurring Extra: Two teenagers named Larry and Steve appeared as recurring background characters in the earlier seasons.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Stu and Drew.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Stu is generally depicted as a struggling toy inventor while routinely inventing technologies that should by all rights revolutionize the world as we know it.
  • To prove a point: Stu invents Mr. Friend in an episode in 1993. 5 years later Microsoft introduces the Actimates Barney. They're both more similar than you think.
  • Even moreso, there was the episode when he successfully created an anti-gravity field. The only flaw in his plan was that he blew the power grid in the process.
• Retcon: Being a show about babies that ran for more than a decade, there were quite a lot of continuity changes throughout the run of the show.
  • In the first few seasons, it's pretty apparent that the writers intended Chuckie's mother to be alive and just be a different kind of ghost. (In "Chuckie vs. the Potty," he specifically refers to his mother as failing to potty train him. He also talks about her weaning him from breast to bottle.) However, it was later established in "Mother's Day" that Chuckie's mother was deceased.
  • Chuckie didn't start out as being afraid of clowns and was implied to obtain the fear from witnessing Didi's fear of them in "Reptar's Revenge". This was contradicted in "A Step at a Time" when it was established that Chuckie first acquired his fear of clowns when he saw an ice cream truck with a clown head on top when he was an infant and took his first steps to run to his father for protection.
  • It is shown in both "No More Cookies" and "A Step at a Time" that Angelica Pickles' motivation for taking her first steps involved cookies, but the circumstances are very different. In the former, it was to get to a plate of cookies on a table at her parents' house. In the latter, it was so her mother could pick her up and enable her to swipe a cookie from a baby who was also being held by his mother. However, this isn't that big of a plot hole, since Angelica could have been lying in "No More Cookies".
  • "Curse of the Werewuff" is established as being the babies' first Halloween even though their first Halloween was established in the first Halloween episode "Candy Bar Creep Show". It's likely that it might be the babies' second Halloween (except for Dil, for very obvious reasons) and they simply forgot due to their memories being just as vague as actual babies'.
• Revolting Rescue: In "Mega Diaper Babies", Chuckie (as Stinky) produces a stench that is pungent enough to make Angelitron malfunction and fall to pieces, which allows the kids to untie the Mega Hyper Heroes.
• Rhyming Title:
  • "Momma Trauma"
  • "Acorn Nuts and Diapie Butts"
  • "Bow Wow Wedding Vows"
  • "Baby Maybe"
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • In "A Very McNulty Birthday", Phil is right when he says that going to the doctor made him better when he got sick. However, he thinks it's because of the Post-Treatment Lollipop.
  • In "All's Well That Pretends Well", the parents think Angelica must be sick when they hear her sneezing. She is sick, but in that particular instance, it was dust that was making her sneeze. Furthermore, it's not the disease Didi was worried about, but rather a cold.
  • In "The Big Sneeze", Chuckie sneezes a lot when he is near Kimi and thinks he's allergic to her. While Kimi was responsible for the sneezing, and the sneezing was indeed an allergic reaction, he was not allergic to Kimi, but rather to the dandelions she'd stuffed into her diaper.
• Rousing Speech:
  • In "Mega Diaper Babies," Angelica has the babies on the run with her army of flying animals. Chuckie, Phil and Lil vow to give up and play something else. Tommy's response was delivered in a fervor worthy of Braveheart or 300:
  Tommy: 'Play something else'? PLAY SOMETHING ELSE? I can't believe you guys!
  Phil: What do you mean, Tommy?
  Tommy: When Megelatron tried to steal all the water in the ocean, did the Mega Hyper Heroes 'play something else'? When the evil Germaniac tried to blow up the universe, did the Mega Hyper Heroes "play something else"?
  [Chuckie, Phil and Lil are silent]
  Tommy: No! Whenever the Earth needed them, they've been there. But now they need US, and I don't know about you guys, but I'm SURE not going to 'play something else'!
  • Subverted during the episode "When Wishes Come True," in which the babies think Angelica has been turned into stone:
    Tommy: We can't just leave Angelica this way forever!
    Lil: Why not?
    Tommy: Well, because... Angelica's not just a big old mean kid who likes to push us around and pull our hair and make us eat old green stuff from under the couch!
    Chuckie, Phil, Lil: She's not?
    Tommy: No! She's a lot more than that! She's the one who's been there before us! She's the one who shows us the way! Sure she's hard on us! She's gotta be hard! But she's our friend, and we gotta help her!
    [beat as Chuckie, Phil, and Lil stare blankly at Tommy]
    Tommy: Plus, if we don't turn her back into real, we're gonna get into a lot of trouble.
    [Chuckie, Phil, Lil all immediately and enthusiastically agree to help]
  • Chuckie lampshaded Tommy's tendency to do this in the episode "No More Cookies."
    Chuckie: I love it when he gives these big speeches.
  • In some episodes, like "Rebel Without A Teddy Bear" and "Beach Blanket Babies", Chuckie managed to give one to Tommy.
• Running Gag: A subtle one occurs in the early seasons (and only happens two or three times). Angelica asks someone (other than her parents) for something in absolutely the most polite way possible. They nicely tell her no, at which point she gets angry, physically assaults the person, and takes what she was asking for.
  Reptar (a man in costume at a carnival): Hello, little girl. Would you like a free sample of my Reptar Cereal?
  Angelica: *smiles innocently* Yes, please, Reptar sir. *curtsy*
  Reptar: Here you go. *gives her one of the mini cereal boxes*
  Angelica: *continues to smile* May I have another one, please?
  Reptar: I'm sorry, little girl. Only one free sample per human child.
  Angelica: *beginning to scowl* ... gimme one.
  Reptar: Look, kid, it ain't up to me!
  Angelica: I SAID GIMME ONE! *kicks Reptar and takes the entire tray of mini cereal boxes*
  • Another occurs in Season 1 only. After Tommy saw Reptar for the first time on television, he gets visibly excited whenever he sees Reptar. The viewer can tell that Tommy is trying his hardest to tell Stu and Didi how much he likes that big, green lizard, but they never realize it. They eventually figure it out in Season 2, though.
  • Whenever Grandpa Lou goes into one of his "When I Was Your Age..." speeches, he always says he had to walk fifTEEN miles to do anything.

S

• Sarcasm-Blind: When Angelica walks in dressed full-body as a Dummi Bear:
  Tommy: Angelica is that you in there?
  Angelica: Gee no, Tommy, it's a real life Dummi Bear from Dummi Bear Land.
  Chuckie: Phew for a second I thought that really was Angelica.
  Angelica: Of course it's me, you babies!
• Sassy Black Woman: Susie, especially in All Grown Up.
• Sauna of Death: An accidental example.
• Save the Villain: The babies occasionally do it to Angelica.
• Say My Name: Among numerous examples: Angelica screaming into the toilet after she accidentally flushes Cynthia down it in "Down the Drain".
  CYNTHIAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
• The Scapegoat: Chuckie is often blamed for things that weren't his fault in any way— mostly by Angelica, such as in "Cuffed," after she bullied Chuckie into helping her steal a set of toy handcuffs intended to be a present for an orphan (and Angelica handcuffed her own wrist to Chuckie's, with no way to unlock the handcuffs):
  Angelica: YOU! This is all YOUR fault!
  Chuckie: Me?!
  Angelica: That's right! If you hadn't have come over here, I never would've sneaked into the closet to get this dumb thing in the first place!
  Chuckie: But Angelica...
  Angelica: AND NOW WE'RE STUCK TOGETHER!
  • Angelica also blames her doll, Cynthia, for many of the situations that Angelica's bratty behavior creates. In one episode, she even blames Cynthia for startling her as she was coloring, even though it was actually her father calling her that caused it.
• Scare Chord:
  • The first Halloween episode had some pretty creepy background music.
  • The ending credits music from the episode "Mega Diaper Babies."
  • The music that plays in the background when Not!Tommy and Not!Stu speak
• Scary Science Words: In "No More Cookies", Angelica becomes unwell after eating too many cookies. The doctor diagnoses her with "acute dyspeptic gastritis", which scares her father Drew. The doctor explains that it only means a tummyache.^note Actually, it refers specifically to indigestion. The scientific term for a tummyache in general is "abdominal pain".
• Scratchy-Voiced Senior: Grandpa Boris's voice is pretty scratchy.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Stu Pickles does this quite a bit, his most famous example being in "Angelica Breaks a Leg."
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Aunt Miriam. In her first visit she shows off her lumbago, doesn't remember Didi's name, chides her niece in law for "not feeding Stu enough" and for not being a stay-at-home-mom, criticizes her cooking, and even remarked to Didi she certainly has been eating well.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The main kids and their families get to see and do things that most other people don't because Stu, Randy Carmichael, and initially, Kira all work in child care/family entertainment. In fairness, only Angelica exploits this.
• Seasonal Baggage: Type 2 (Seasonal Montage: Flipping between the seasons to show the passage of time in a story), subverted. In the episode "Grandpa Moves Out," after Grandpa moves out of Stu and Didi's house, the next sequence shows leaves falling, then snow, then fresh grass and birds chirping, implying that several months have passed. After the montage, the words "One Week Later" are superimposed on the screen. Then, just in case the viewer is still confused, Drew visits Stu's house:
  Drew: Hey, Stu. Crazy weather we've been having this week, huh?
  Stu: I'll say.
• Seeking the Intangible:
  • In "Sweet Dreams", Chuckie cannot remember what he dreamt about last night. This causes him and his other toddler friends to believe he lost his dream and they search for it.
  • In "Lady Luck", Lou says that he's lost "Lady Luck". The protagonists, being toddlers, think Lady Luck is a real lady and go out to find her. They eventually think a nurse in the nursing home is Lady Luck.
• Seesaw Catapult:
  • In the episode, "Circus Angelicus", when Angelica stages her own circus in Tommy's backyard, she wants Chuckie to be a "human candyball". However, Chuckie can't remember what he's supposed to do, and as Angelica tries to explain it to him by sitting on one end of a seesaw, Phil and Lil jump onto the other end, launching her into the air.
  • In the episode, "The Turkey Who Came to Dinner", the babies befriend a live turkey and try to protect him from getting cooked and eaten by the adults. They attempt to launch the Turkey out of Tommy's backyard by putting him on one end of the seesaw and having Phil, and later Chuckie, jump onto the other end. They only end up getting the turkey to land on Stu and Drew's satellite dishes, causing interference with the many football games they're watching.
  • In the Snow White special from the "Tales from the Crib" series, to get the dwarf babies into Queen Angelica's castle, Chuckie (as Scaredy) slides down a slide in the nearby playground so that he can land on one end of a seesaw and launch whichever dwarf baby is sitting on the other end into the air so they can fly through the open window. When there's no one to launch Chuckie into the air, he climbs up the arrows that the Archer spreads around the castle wall to advertise a Garage Sale at the Giant's castle.
• Senior Sleep-Cycle: Used over and over again as the device that allows the babies to cause whatever mischief they've decided to do that episode.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Chuckie is always nervous and cowardly, while Tommy is always eager to go on adventures.
• Sentimental Shabbiness:
  • Angelica's doll, Cynthia is clearly very ratty looking, mostly bald except for a few patches of hair sticking out. That doesn't stop Angelica from loving the doll any less. In the spin-off, All Grown Up!, it's revealed that she still cares for her.
  • In the later episodes, Chuckie has a worn-out teddy bear named Wawa, which was given to him by his deceased mother. He ends up distraught when his step-mom, Kira, tries to wash and fix him up. Luckily for Chuckie, Tommy's brother, Dil, had gotten his hands on Wawa and sort of returned him to his previous state.
• Series Fauxnale:
  • The show's original 64-episode run ended with "Moving Away," which flashes back to show how the kids all met and became friends, and teases the possibility of Angelica moving away, but has her not move after all in the end. This, followed by the Passover special the following year, would have been an effective ending to the series... but of course it was renewed.
  • The "All Growed Up" special would have been a fantastic and emotional series finale... if it weren't for the fact that the one episode was so popular that they decided to expand it into a preteen school sitcom. The original Rugrats itself also went on for another three years.
• Serious Work, Comedic Scene: Most of "Mother's Day" is rather dark, since it reveals that the reason Chuckie has a Missing Mom is because she died in the hospital. However, there is one scene, where Stu invents a machine to do the duties of a mother, that's Played for Laughs.
• Severely Specialised Store: "Chuckie's a Lefty" features a store called "Not Quite Right" that sells only left-handed products.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • In "Angelica Breaks a Leg", Stu and Didi find it increasingly stressful to tend to the injured^note as it turns out later, there was an X-ray mixup and she wasn't hurt at all Angelica, and one late night, she asks Stu to make chocolate pudding for her. When Stu explains that they're out of pudding mix, Angelica insists that he make him some anyway. Stu then goes out to a late night grocery store to buy pudding mix, and as he mixes pudding at 4 AM, he rambles to Didi — who unsurprisingly questions why he's making chocolate pudding at such an odd time of night — about how he's "lost control of [his] life." Finally, Stu hands Angelica the pudding she wants...only for her to tell him that she's not hungry anymore. Cue an ear-splitting scream from Stu.
  • In "The Gold Rush", Chuckie finds a nickel after Angelica dumps a bucket of sand on his head. Angelica becomes obsessed with finding more in the sandbox at the park and convinces the others to dig for some with her with the intent to keep any they find all to herself. To try and stir distrust in the group she tries to make everyone think they're going to keep the nickels for themselves as well, as gold fever sets in for everyone except Chuckie, who just wants to give up and go back to playing. In an attempt to hide the nickel from everyone, she buries it under an X, until the babies get suspicious of Angelica's intentions and demand the nickel back, only to find that the wind had blown away the X Angelica made, meaning they spent all that time looking for nickels and now don't even have the one they started with. Chuckie even lampshades this.
  • In "Tell-Tale Cell Phone", Angelica plays with Charlotte's cell phone and accidentally drops it. Worried that she will get in trouble if Charlotte finds it broken, she hides it in a drawer. When Angelica is haunted by her guilt, she shows Charlotte her cell phone. Charlotte assures her that the phone isn't broken; its battery is always coming off. Subverted in that Angelica isn't exactly off the hook when it's revealed that she called the John E. Mergency plumbing service, which came to her house.
  • In "Pre-School Daze", Angelica and Susie go to the trouble of fixing their preschool teacher's mug from an ex, which they shattered by mistake. After accidentally breaking it further and settling on stealing an identical mug, the preschool teacher decides that she needs to move on and throws the replacement mug in the trash. Angelica wasn't too happy that their efforts turned out to be a waste of time.
• Shaped Like Itself: Angelica wants to steal a toy from her parents' closet without them finding out, so she has Chuckie stand guard to warn her if he sees anything. When he yells, she comes running, afraid she was almost caught. Chuckie, claims, however, that he saw a mouse:
  Angelica: A mouse?
  Chuckie: [nods]
  Angelica: Where?
  Chuckie: [points underneath living room couch]
  Angelica: [checks, and finds a sock, then smiles facetiously while showing Chuckie the sock] Does this look like a mouse to you?
  Chuckie: [sheepishly] No...
  Angelica: What does it look like?
  Chuckie: A sock...
  Angelica: Do you know why it looks like a sock?
  Chuckie: Uh... [shrugs]
  Angelica: BECAUSE IT IS A SOCK! [throws it at Chuckie]
• Shared Dream: "Sweet Dreams" begins with the babies sleeping in Tommy's bed and having dreams. Phil and Lil are revealed to be sharing a dream, wherein Phil rides a frog while Lil rides a flying mud pie. When the twins awaken the next morning, they tell their dream to Tommy, Chuckie, and Kimi, then argue over whose dream was better.
• Shock-and-Switch Ending:
  • Downplayed for the ending of "All's Well That Pretends Well": It seems as though the babies have caught Angelica's cold, but actually they were just pretending. The issue of them being unable to go to the circus is also solved when Drew reveals that they have it taped on video. However, Angelica still genuinely has a cold.
  • Attempted in-universe in "Ghost Story". The kids are, as the title would suggest, telling a Ghost Story and Chuckie tries to end it with the protagonist going into a dark room in an apparently-haunted house, only for it to be revealed that the house wasn't haunted after all. He also adds pillows and candy. Angelica, however, tells him that he can't end a ghost story that way, so he makes it so it's no longer the end, and changes it so the pillows are hard and the candy is yucky.
• Sibling Rivalry: Phil and Lil get along well for the most part, but they also argue over both petty and significant things, and the viewer can sometimes see them in the background of a scene, fighting over a toy.
• Single-Minded Twins: Besides looking and dressing almost exactly alike (even in their pajamas), Phil and Lil share the same favorite color (green), and an extreme fondness for eating worms and bugs. In the episode "Twins' Pique," they berate Tommy and Chuckie for addressing both Phil and Lil simultaneously (Tommy greets them with "Hi, guys!"), and demand that they speak to Phil and Lil separately.
• 6 Is 9:
  • In "Ruthless Tommy", Tommy gets kidnapped as a result of a pair of criminals succumbing to this trope.
  • In the "Snow White" special of the "Tales From the Crib" series, one of Angelica's magic mirrors rates her a nine, then to show his disdain for her, he turns the card over to rate her a six.
• Skyward Scream: Angelica has one in "Early Retirement." It's loud enough for the ENTIRE UNIVERSE to hear.
• Sleepwalking: One episode had Stu sleepwalking, causing the babies to believe that he's a robot.
• Smart Animal, Average Human: Tommy Pickles and his pet dog, Spike. While Spike may be an average dog, in Rugrats Go Wild!, Eliza is able to speak to him and he can talk back to her and it is revealed that he is quite a smart but reckless dog. Justified because Tommy is only a baby but even by All Grown Up!, Spike is still quite clever.
• Soap Punishment: When Angelica uses a swear word, her mother asked Didi if she should use this as a solution. She then asked if she could use toothpaste if soap was too toxic.
• Something-itis: One episode has Angelica trick Chuckie into thinking that he contracted "Rhinoceritis", a rare disease that causes its victim to turn into a rhinoceros.
• Spanner in the Works: In "The Bank Trick," Tommy and Chuckie unwittingly foil a robbery while looking for candy at the bank.
• Speak in Unison: Phil and Lil seem to do this in literally every episode. Even if they don't, it would probably be easier to count the number of episodes in which they appear and don't do this.
• Special Edition Title: Used in the first Christmas Episode.
• Spin-Off: All Grown Up and Angelica and Susie's Pre-School Daze. The former a time skip series following the Rugrats during their preteen years (and Susie and Angelica's teenage years). The latter focusing on the title characters exploits during pre-school.
  • The Pre-School Daze never made it through though, and wound up just being A Day in the Limelight episodes for Susie and Angelica on Rugrats. Four episodes were made and included on two (unsuccessful) Rugrats Direct to Video movies.
• Spiritual Successor: Recess, which was made by former co-creator Paul Germain, writer Joe Ansolabehere, and their writing team. It began airing in Fall 1997 when Rugrats got renewed from hiatus. If you count shows by Klasky Csupo, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, The Wild Thornberrys, As Told by Ginger & Rocket Power as well.
  • Also, there's one in the form of another Nickelodeon show following young children going on adventures with their imagination completely unsupervised. Ladies and gentlemen, The Backyardigans!
• Spoiled Brat: Angelica, to the point where even her parents recognize this even as they spoil her! But to their credit, they've tried many times to correct it.
  Drew: Angelica, if you don't eat your broccoli, then you're not going to get seconds on dessert!
  Angelica: BUT THAT'S NOT FAIR!
  • The opening scene of the episode "Princess Angelica" is almost perfectly indicative of just how spoiled Angelica is. Drew reminds her that Angelica agreed to clean her room once a month since Drew bought her a $400 video game console. She tries to get out of it by saying "I didn't feel like it this month," then offering to start the deal next month. She's nothing short of bewildered when her father, for once, refuses to budge.
• Squirrels in My Pants: Has happened a few times.
  • "Reptar on Ice": Tommy attempts to bring a lizard to a Reptar ice skating show by putting it in his diaper. Chuckie later ends up carrying it in his diaper. It also happens at the end when the lizard climbs from Tommy's diaper into Stu's pants
  • "Faire Play": Subverted, Tommy briefly has a frog hidden inside his diaper, but doesn't react.
  • "Chuckie's Duckling": Dil put Herbert, Chuckie's duck, into his diaper, causing him to fidget around
• Status Quo Is God: Invoked many times, including an episode in which Angelica runs away from home (and another in which Chuckie does the same), one instance where Angelica "turns Tommy bad," and (amongst many others) "Farewell, My Friend," in which Tommy and Chuckie decide to no longer be "bestest friends."
• Stay in the Kitchen: In "Aunt Miriam", the title character makes it clear to Didi that she thinks Didi should be a "full-time mother" rather than continue to teach.
• Stealth Pun: One episode had Tommy and Chuckie part ways, with Tommy befriending a brave girl and Chuckie befriending a cowardly boy. The boy's name is Freddie (because he's afraid of everything) and he has a cat on his overalls, making him a "fraidy-cat."
• Stellification: In "Starstruck", when the babies hear that Kimi will be "a star" when she gets given a role in a movie, they take it literally. They try to teach her how to float, twinkle, and grant wishes, and Chuckie sulks about her going away.
• Stock Food Depictions: The cookies the toddlers are usually depicted eating are always chocolate chip cookies.
• Stock Sound Effect: Stu Pickles's distinctive girlish scream, along with Chas and Drew's screams, Tommy's crying in the early seasons ("WAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAH!") among certain other vocal effects, along with Dil's crying in the first movie and early Season 6 episodes.
• Story Arc: Season 1 has kind of a story arc in the background. Stu is hired by Mucklehoney Toys as an inventor early in the season, invents the Patty Pants doll after that, and at the end of the season is mass-producing thousands of Patty Pants dolls for Mucklehoney.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: On one episode, Stu and Drew (in a flashback) are grounded by their dad, and are not allowed to watch Blocky and Oxwinkle. When Stu plans to break out, he boasts that not even President Weisenheimer can stop him. When they accidentally turn on the TV's built-in radio trying to find the TV function, the news announcer on the other end is doing a report on Eisenhower, but slips up with "Weisenheimer" at first.
• Straying Baby: Every episode involves the babies breaking out of a playpen and/or straying away from the adults watching them.
• Stupid Crooks: One cartoon saw two bumbling criminals kidnap Tommy and hold him for ransom after they get their real target's house address wrong. Even then, the 1-year-old baby becomes too much for the two idiots to handle so fast that they end up returning Tommy back to his parents before they even realized Tommy had been missing. However, as the crooks leave, their ransom note flies out of Stu's hands and covers one of the crook's head, causing him to crash into a hydrant, and send both of them flying headfirst into the back window of a police car.
• Surprise Party: In one episode, Stu plans a surprise party for his wife, Didi. He has one of the neighbors get her out of the house for the afternoon. Unfortunately, he is placed in charge of watching the kids when the ladies leave. They still managed to pull it off, though, though not without some grief on Stu's part.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Grandpa Lou may be one of the sharpest adults on the show, but he's still in his 70s, so leaving him alone with the kids has the same results, him falling asleep.
  • A few episodes actually go to show just how fragile the babies really are, well, being babies. It doesn't take Tommy hitting his head just slightly on the table to get a MASSIVE bruise and crying bloody murder. Just getting his first cut makes him nearly inconsolable.
  • As Angelica demonstrated in "Chuckie Loses his Glasses" wearing someone else's glasses, especially if they're prescription? Is hardly a good idea for a joke. Depending on their strength, they can legitimately make you dizzy and sick. Angelica is fortunate her eyes weren't damaged.
  • In "Chuckie Gets Skunked" one of the attempts to cure Chuckie after a skunk sprays him is the Tomato Skunk Stink Cure to remove the smell; all it ends up doing is ruining the tub. In Real Life all tomato paste/juice does is MASK the scent of skunk, not cure the spray.
  • In "The Big House" when Tommy and a group of toddlers try to break out of Golden Apple, a daycare that feels more like a prison, Tommy attempts to unlock the front door with a key made out of Play-Doh. The key is too soft and bends in the lock. Furthermore, they wouldn't have been able to escape from the daycare anyway; tough as "the screws" are, they're also professionals whose livelihood and reputation depends on being able to keep a mindful eye on small children and babies, unlike the collection of other adults in Tommy's life.
• Survival Mantra: Chuckie: "I'm a big brave dog. I'm a big brave dog."
• Suspender Snag: In the episode "Starstruck", when Chas is excited about meeting an actor named Mack Granite, his wife Kira holds him by the suspenders to prevent him from following Mack.
• Sustained Misunderstanding: The show basically runs on this trope, with the babies applying their own knowledge to try to make sense of things adults do. For example, they come to the conclusion that "The Meanie of Hanukkah" needs to be put down for a nap. Angelica sometimes exacerbates misunderstandings like these for her own amusement.
• Swan Boats: One episode has the Pickles family going to a carnival where Stu and Didi wind up going on the Tunnel of Love, which has swan-shaped boats.

T

• Take That!: In "Reptar 2010," one building Reptar destroys is a Viacom skyscraper. This makes it Hilarious in Hindsight from the YouTube debacle years later.
• The Talk: When Angelica asks where babies come from, her parents decide to be honest with her, but they end up chickening out and reverting to the classic Delivery Stork explanation. At the end of the episode she finally gets the real story- from Susie (who likely heard about it from her mother, who is a doctor).
• Technobabble: Stu trying to teach Grandpa how to use a calculator in "Incident of Aisle Seven."
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Phil and Lil can switch identity with a mere bow toss.
  • Even though you can still tell the difference between them (Phil wears blue shorts and Lil doesn't), it still manages to fool everyone.
• That Liar Lies: Sometimes, when Angelica is telling a lie and Tommy doesn't buy it, he will say, "You're making that up, Angelica!".
• Theme Naming: Lou, Stu, Drew, and later, Lulu Pickles.
  • Taken further in one episode, where they visit Stu's cousin Hugh and his wife Dotti, and Tommy meets cousins Tammy, Timmy, and Tony Pickles.
  • Twins Phil and Lil also have a teddy bear they've named "Bill."
• Theme Twin Naming: Phil and Lil DeVille (but their actual first names are Phillip and Lillian, respectively).
• There Was a Door: In the "Visitors from Outer Space" episode, Angelica gets a little carried away with the planet atomizer:
  "You know, kid, these doors do open automatically."
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: In "Under Chuckie's Bed", Chuckie mistakes his father's sweater under his bed for a monster, and Angelica tells a lie about a monster eating a boy named Barnaby Jones.
• Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change: The Dutch dub attempted this by changing the setting from the USA to The Netherlands, replacing American cities with Dutch ones... despite none of the cities in it looking anything like those of The Netherlands.
• Three Shorts: Most of the show is a Two Shorts format, but the seventh season used Three Shorts.
• Time Skip: The Poorly Disguised Pilot for All Grown Up!.
• Tired After the Song: In "Accidents Happen", Stu sings to Dil, who'd woken up in the night, "Rockabye, Dilly, Daddy is here. Maybe I'll get some sleep in next year" and instantly falls asleep.
• Title by Year: An episode called "Reptar 2010", also a Metafictional Title, named for the Show Within a Show that's named for its future setting of 2010.
• Title Drop:
  Grandpa Lou Pickles: Why you rambunctious little rugrats, I oughta...
• Toilet-Drinking Dog Gag: In the pilot episode, "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing", Tommy is curious about the toilet, which Phil thinks is a giant water dish, since he saw Spike drinking out of it. Near the end of the episode, Spike comes into the bathroom and drinks out of the toilet.
• Toilet Humour: Of course, given the age of the main characters, it's expected.
  • One particularly glaring example is the episode where they get gerbils and Didi, while cleaning up, complains that despite the gerbils being gone for days, they still left plenty of "presents" behind. Cue Gilligan Cut to a closeup of gerbil feces, with Tommy and Chuckie complaining that it's not the presents they wanted.
  • But it turns From Bad to Worse. They went to the basement door and opened it, and the floor is littered with thousands of newborn gerbils. "Look Tommy, the floor's movin'!"
• Toilet Training Plot: In "Chuckie vs the Potty", Chuckie gets potty trained. In "Potty-Training Spike", the babies try unsuccessfully to potty-train Spike after believing that Nature Tinkling is not acceptable.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Susie and Angelica, respectively (especially prevalent in the spin-off series, All Grown Up!).
• Too Broken to Break: Exploited in the episode "Chuckie's First Haircut" where Chuckie is afraid to get his hair cut for fear it'd get hurt, but then the other kids point out that he already feels bad imagining it, so it can't be much worse.
• The Tooth Hurts: This plays a part in one episode when Angelica tries to pull out one of Chuckie's teeth for tooth fairy money.
• Track Trouble: In "Where's Grandpa?", when Grandpa Lou goes missing at a Canadian tourist attraction, Tommy and Chuckie sneak onto a train ride that is closed for maintenance to find him. When the engineer sends the train onto a test run, the train heads toward an unfinished track leading to the edge of a cliff, which Tommy and Chuckie aren't aware of, but Stu and Didi certainly are. Didi tries to switch the train onto the safe track, but sends it onto the unsafe one instead. Fortunately, the train stops before it goes off the unsafe track, and Tommy and Chuckie get out just in time. Unfortunately for Stu, who was chasing after the train, the slope of the hill makes the train go backwards, and it chases after him.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Cookies for Angelica. As seen in flashbacks during "No More Cookies," Angelica's first word was "cookie." At the end of the episode, she wants cookies so bad that she eats them after they've fallen into a tub of soapy water.
• Training the Pet: In the subplot of "Trading Phil", Grandpa Lou is trying to teach Spiffy the energetic puppy tricks, which isn't so successful since Spiffy keeps doing the opposite of what he's told. Dil, on the other hand, is better at obeying Lou's commands.
• Translation Convention: The babies' babblings are rendered as infantile English.
• Trapped in TV Land: A variation in "Kid TV." After the TV breaks down, the babies go into a box to imagine their own shows with them as the stars.
• Traumatic Haircut:
  • "Chuckie's First Haircut" is this, but it's eventually subverted. Chuckie is terrified at the thought of his hair getting cut off but is ultimately fine when he goes through with it. Played straight with his father, however, who lets Chuckie cut his hair as a way of showing him that haircuts are nothing to be afraid of, but becomes horrified when Chuckie cuts off most of his hair.
  • "Showdown At Teeter-Totter Gulch" has this happen to Belinda. When the Junk Food Kid puts gum in her hair, her parents have to cut it off. And when the Junk Food Kid gets her comeuppance by getting gum in her hair, she reappears with it cut off too.
• Treasure Hunt Episode: In "Sand Ho!" the babies pretend to be pirates after hearing a pirate story from Grandpa Lou. When they find the treasure, Angelica duels Tommy for it.
• Troubled Toybreaker: Angelica Pickles has a reputation for being a bully to Tommy, her baby cousin, and his friends. One of the ways she asserts her dominance over the babies is by breaking their toys, one notable example being "Doctor Susie", where she breaks the babies' toys when they aren't looking to make Susie look bad, since she was able to fix them after Dil, her other baby cousin broke them. Karma catches up to her, as Dil breaks Cynthia, her favorite doll, and she needs Susie's help to fix her. She admits to the babies that she broke their toys to make Susie look bad out of jealousy since the babies liked Susie more than her, and didn't expect Dil to break Cynthia or think she'd need Susie to help fix her. Angelica also has to spend much of her time around Tommy and his friends in general because her parents spend a lot of their time at work and leave her Aunt Didi and Uncle Stu to look after her. Stu and Didi have a lot of time to spend with Tommy due in part to the former being the owner and founder of his own toy company.
• Trouser Space: The babies often carry their stuff in their diapers, most notably Tommy with his plastic screwdriver, which he uses to escape from the playpen.
• True Companions: The babies are always together, and it's often hard to believe that the in-universe time the series takes up would have to be less than a year or two. Even Angelica is included.
  • To be more specific, Chuckie shows a surprisingly hot temper, at times, for someone as tactful and introverted as he is. He's yelled at Tommy, Phil and Lil many times when it probably wasn't warranted (if what he said wasn't wrong, it was how he said it). Tommy tends to take it in stride and never gets mad at Chuckie for losing his temper, and Phil and Lil follow Tommy's lead.
  • Tommy even treats Angelica as if they were as close as a brother and sister, even though she tortures him as a hobby. Angelica has been saved from many a bad situation because Tommy refused to abandon her.
  • Their parents also qualify. They help each other a lot, often go on trips together, and treat each other's kids like their own. the kids even refer to the others' parents as "aunt" and "uncle".
• Tsundere:
  • Angelica for Chuckie, in the comic strip at least. Depending on the Writer, she is a Type A to everyone.
  • Megan for Chuckie and some other boy in a single episode, Cradle Attraction.

U-V

• Unaffected by Spice: In "Dummi Bear Dinner Disaster", when Paul Gatsby, the creator of The Dummi Bears comes to the Carmichaels' house for dinner, the babies worry that if the dinner goes well, Susie will have to move away. One of the ways Angelica tries to ruin the dinner is by spiking the main course with "Volcano Brand" hot sauce. This plan backfires when it turns out that Paul loves spicy food and applauds the cooking as delicious.
• Unconventional Food Usage:
  • In "Chuckie Gets Skunked", Chuckie bathes in borscht to get rid of the smell of a Smelly Skunk who sprayed him.
  • In "Hold the Pickles", upon hearing that Taffy doesn't like dill pickles, the babies think that this refers to the youngest of them, Dylan "Dil" Pickles. Upon hearing that she likes the older babies because they're "sweet", they put ice cream sundae decorations on Dil to make him "sweet".
  • In "Brothers are Monsters", Lil uses some sticks of candy to pretend she has fangs. This scares Phil because he's the younger twin and he'd just heard their uncle say that big sisters could be monsters.
• Unexpected Kindness: In "Tricycle Thief", Susie accuses Angelica of stealing her tricycle. There's a lot of evidence against her, such as her being literally caught red-handed because the tricycle was in the freshly-painted shed. She claims she was just finger-painting, but no one believes her because of her general dishonesty. Susie has Chuckie let go of a balloon with Cynthia tied to it as punishment, but right afterwards, it's revealed that Susie's trike was actually under the porch all along. Angelica then says she was finger-painting an apology letter to Susie for breaking her reflector.
• Unintentionally Karmic: Even though the babies don't really like Angelica, they never mean to get her into trouble as payback, only try to fix the troubles she caused, or prevent the things she lied would happen. Nevertheless, their actions often result in a domino effect that ends in Angelica getting in trouble with the grown-ups, or some other form of cosmic justice.
  • In "Grandpa's Bad Bug", when Lou lies about being sick to get out of a chore he promised, he says he has a "bug", making the babies think he has a bug inside him. In their efforts to get the bug out, they accidentally hurt and psychologically torment Lou, until he reaches his breaking point and confesses his lie to Didi and Stu.
• Unique Moment Ruined: One episode has a circus come to town, only for Angelica to catch a cold...then the babies pretend they've caught her cold since they don't want her to be the only one left out. However, they still get to watch the show on TV.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast:
  • The Passover special had Tommy's maternal grandfather Boris tell the babies the story of Moses, which led to the babies imagining themselves acting out the story.
  • "Finsterella" gave Chuckie a lengthy Imagine Spot where he was in the role of Finsterella, Kimi and Angelica were his bossy stepsisters, and Tommy was his "fairy bob-brother".
  • A few years after the original series ended, there was a duology of direct-to-video films called Tales from the Crib, which had the stories of "Snow White" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" retold with the babies portraying the characters, the framing device for both consisting of the babies being read the story by their babysitter Taffy.
• Unplanned Staycation: In "All's Well That Pretends Well", everyone was planning to go to the circus, but they cancel their plans because Angelica has a cold and the babies pretended to have caught her cold so they could keep her company. To compensate, everyone watches the show taped on TV.
• Unsuccessful Pet Adoption:
  • In "Chuckie's Duckling", Chuckie tries to keep a duckling named Herbert. Ducks can be pets, but Chuckie doesn't have a pond, so he puts Herbert back with his family.
  • In "Beach Blanket Babies", Chuckie gets given sea monkeys, but puts them in the ocean.
• Valentine's Day Episode: "Be My Valentine". The first half of the episode focuses on the babies trying to get Spike and Fluffy to fall in love with each other, and the second half focuses on Chuckie making a valentine card for his dad during the Valentine's Day dance.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: The Tales from the Crib direct-to-video film "Three Jacks and a Beanstalk" has Harold sing one about Angelica the Giant in order to warn the babies that she'll eat them if she catches them.
• Vinyl Shatters: In "Give and Take," when talking with Chuckie, Angelica breaks a few of Chuckie's records just for kicks, by simply hurling them into the air and letting them break among hitting the ground as if they were glass (though such records are difficult to shatter this way in real life.)
• Visible Invisibility: Parodied in the superhero episode, where Lil as "Dotted Line Girl" tries to sneak up on Angelitron, only for her to be seen because the lines are visible.
  "Any idiot can see a dotted line!"
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Angelica and Susie are this to each other.
• Viva Las Vegas!: The special Vacation takes place here. However, it's rather to find these days, most likely due to music licensing issues. It did air on Nickelodeon on February 3, 2013, even after being skipped several times on the NickRewind block on Teennick, and it is available on the Season 4 DVD and the Complete Series set, but digital releases lack the episode.
• The Voiceless: Dil can only make indistinguishable noises and the occasional word. This is because he's a newborn, and hasn't mastered 'baby talk' yet.
• Volumetric Mouth: "Spike Runs Away" had Tommy do this when he cries over missing Spike.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Has occasionally happened, such as Angelica puking on Drew in "Ransom of Cynthia."
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: "Chuckie Loses His Glasses" has Angelica, nauseous from wearing Chuckie's eyeglasses, barf on Drew in a very graphic manner (complete with a shot of Angelica appearing to puke into the camera!)

W-Z

• Waist-Deep Ocean: Reptar, being a satire of Godzilla and in-universe tokusatsu franchise, was prone to making his appearances by rising straight out of the ocean and then only standing knee-deep — as seen in the opening of the episode Runaway Reptar.
• Walkie-Talkie Gag, Over: In the episode "Tommy's First Birthday", Howard gives Tommy a set of baby monitors as a present, which Drew and Grandpa Lou use as walkie-talkies. When Didi realizes she rented a stage and puppets but not puppeteers, she says, "All men report to base immediately!" into one of the monitors. Stu then tells her, "Come on, Deed, that's not the right lingo at all.".
• Walk Into Camera Obstruction:
  • "Time of Their Lives" when Angelica makes Tommy get cookies for her. She says, "That's more like it," and Tommy walks towards the camera and his diaper fills up the screen.
  • "Potty Training Spike" where the babies are trying to put a diaper on Spike. Phil and Lil are about to grab Spike and Lil jumps into the camera with her dress filling up the screen
  • "Stu Gets a Job": with Stu in his pajamas when he goes in the closet finding his clothes
  • "The Word of the Day" with Angelica, when she's excited upon overhearing Miss Carrol saying her show's "real fun phrase" (a swear word) and rushes off, presumably to meet up with Charlotte again.
  • "Piggy's Pizza Palace" with Tommy when he and the others find a small door and Tommy says goodbye to the animal dolls.
  • "Spike Runs Away" when Stu goes to show Tommy and Chuckie his new tarantula, his nose fills the screen
  • "Chuckie's Complaint" when Drew and Angelica are about to leave Tommy's house, Drew's nose fills the screen.
  • "Runaway Reptar" during the movie when Dactar is attacking, one guy runs towards the camera and his gold belt buckle obscures the screen
• Walking Away Shot:
  • Looking for Jack: with one of Jack's employees going to get him for Angelica
• Walk Through the Camera:
  • "A Step at a Time": During a flashback of Tommy taking his first steps. At the end of the flashback
  • "Chuckie's Red Hair": The scene where Betty comes in with Phil and Lil.
  • "Stu Gets a Job": When Stu is in the Elvis suit saying, "Well, turnabout is fair play."
• Weaponized Stench:
  • The episode "The Mega Diaper Babies" has Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil imagining themselves as the titular superheroes, who are trying to rescue the Mega-Hyper Heroes from the evil Angelitron (a robotic version of Angelica). Chuckie gets stuck playing "Stinky," who has the extremely useless power of "smelling as strong as two babies." In the end, though, Stinky and his horrific stench are the only thing capable of defeating Angelitron.
  • The babies try to invoke this trope when Chaz brings an attractive police officer to Stu and Didi's for a date. They inadvertently break Chaz's glasses, and Angelica tells them that the police throw anyone who breaks any rules in jail. They then scheme to get Chaz to have to bring Chuckie home and end the date; one of their tactics is to cover him with foul-smelling garbage so he'll have to be taken away for a bath. The plan fails when Stu and Didi simply let Chaz use their own tub.
• Wearing It All Wrong:
  • The intro for the later seasons shows a diaper falling from the sky and landing on Dil's head.
  • One episode has Betty wondering if babies actually copy their parents and noting, "Last week, Philly wore his diaper as a hat. He certainly didn't learn that from me! 'Course I can't keep an eye on Howie 24/7."
  • In "Dil Saver", Grandma Lulu puts new clothes on Dil, including socks on his hands.
  • In "Mirrorland", Tommy believes the mirror that Didi bought from an antique store to be a portal to a dimension called Mirrorland. When he and Chuckie go to Stu and Didi's bedroom, Chuckie sees it looks the same as before, so Tommy tries to prove that Mirrorland is real by wearing his diaper on his head, since that's what a mirror baby would do.
  • In "Naked Tommy", Tommy decides to take off his clothes after seeing how much fun his dog, Spike has not wearing clothes. At one point when Stu tries to put Tommy's diaper back onto his bottom, Tommy takes it off again and tosses it onto Stu's head. When Didi sees this, she tells Stu, "Get that thing off your head, you're going to give Tommy ideas!".
  • In "Chuckie's Bachelor Pad", the babies believe the garden shed to be Chuckie's new home when their dads move all of Chuckie's furniture out of his bedroom to repaint it. After the babies have a party in the shed, Tommy is seen wearing his diaper on his head. When Lil sees him doing this, she giggles. Tommy then gasps, hides his diaper behind his back, and blushes.
  • In "Doctor Susie", Susie decides to become a doctor for toys after Lucy teaches her how to be a doctor. When Dil breaks Angelica's Cynthia doll, Susie decides that she'll need the babies' help to fix her. When she dresses the babies as surgeons, she has them wear diapers on their heads, which act as surgical caps.
• Wet Cement Gag: A Running Gag in the episode "Spike's Babies" has the characters from the show run through the wet cement of the pathway to Stu's barbecue grill, forcing him to smooth it out every time. This prompts Stu to put up a rope fence, which the babies are able to crawl under. Towards the end of the episode, after Stu falls into the cement, he gives up and decides to let everyone leave their handprints into the cement.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Angelica just can't stay nice, though by All Grown Up she is a little better. Susie lampshades it when they compare home videos.
• Wham Line: "The Family Tree" focuses on Chuckie, but with a sub-plot about Stu and Didi going on a cruise for their anniversary. Didi seems sea-sick throughout, but then the end of the episode explains it is something more:
  Didi: We're going to have another baby.
• What If?: Babies could talk, how would they see the world?
• When I Was Your Age...: Grandpa Lou.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Downplayed. It's never stated what city they live in but there is proof they live in California. California license plates are spotted in several episodes, and in "Special Delivery" there's a California flag at the post office. They also live by the ocean and within driving distance to Las Vegas and The Grand Canyon. In Rugrats in Paris, there's a shot of a satellite sending a signal to Southern California when Kira is calling Stu about the Reptar mecha breakdown. In a non-canon comic book, the Rocket Power gang babysits the Rugrats, and it's established that show takes place in Southern California.
  • In one episode, Didi works at a high school named 'Eucaipah', which is similar to the name of the Southern California town of Yucaipa, near San Bernardino. It's possible that their home is either in that city or at least close to it.
• The Whitest Black Guy: Susie's dad, Randy Carmichael, is the head of a lively family and a writer for one of the silliest, most heartfelt children's shows on TV, but he's also a bigger stiff than any desk jockey you'll ever meet.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • The episode "Radio Daze" features the Rugrats' take on The Maltese Falcon, replacing the MacGuffin with the "Malties Woodchuck," which contains a bag of malted milk balls. For bonus points, the protagonist (played by Tommy) is also a parody of Will Eisner's The Spirit.
  • "The Smell of Success" is one for Flowers for Algernon, with Chuckie going through an experimental process to cure his allergies.
  • "Heatwave" parodies Lawrence of Arabia, with the kids crossing "the Black Tar Playground" to find water on a sweltering summer day.
  • "Runaway Reptar" is a spoof on Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, with Reptar being impersonated by a robotic doppelganger created by a mad scientist.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: All the children can count. They do things that would be difficult for adults such as operating a large Reptar robot to crash a wedding.
• Worm in an Apple: In one comic strip, Tommy and Angelica are under an apple tree. Angelica says to Tommy, "I wouldn't eat those apples, they could have worms." Phil and Lil overhear and try to climb the tree so they can eat the worms.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks:
  • In one episode, the kids are looking for nickels in the sand box after Angelica digs one up by accident. Among the things that, disappointingly, are not what they're looking for, are a 100 dollar bill and precious jewelry, which are unceremoniously discarded as "old junk."
  • In the episode "The Bank Trick," Tommy and Chuckie mistake "ATM machine" for "M&M machine," and explore the bank that Didi took them to, looking for candy. Eventually, they find their way into the banks "secure" storage vault, and look through large bags of money, discarding all of the cash as "green wrapping paper."
• You Are Fat: Aunt Miriam, after saying that Stu "never filled out", remarks to Didi that she certainly has been eating well to the latter's chagrin.
• You Can Talk?: In "The Case of the Missing Rugrat", a parrot replies to Tommy. He says in surprise, "You can talk!?", and when it copies him, he responds, "I know I can talk, but I've never met a talking bird before."
• You Say Tomato: The babies pronunciation of animal as "am-mi-nal."