Series / Best Friends Whenever

Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages... oh wait, you said "scientists"... whoops.

Whenever you need me, I'm right there with you
Whenever there's something you wanna redo
The clock is ticking, but not for me
I'm living in a different reality
Whenever, whenever, wherever...
I'm right there with you!

— "Whenever", by Forever in Your Mind

Best Friends Whenever is a Disney Channel Sitcom that premiered in June 2015. It follows best friends Shelby and Cyd, who develop the ability to perform Mental Time Travel after being exposed to a science experiment gone wrong. It stars Lauren Taylor (on the left in the page image) as Shelby and Landry Bender as Cyd, both of whom are Kid Com veterans (the Netflix / AwesomenessTV version of Richie Rich and Crash & Bernstein respectively)^note Both had also played the leads in a KidCom pilot for Disney Channel called Fairest of the Mall which wasn't picked up, but the network liked their chemistry so much they had them cast in this show.

The show crossed over with both Liv and Maddie and Girl Meets World for each series' Halloween Episode in October 2015. This inducted the show into the Disney Channel Live-Action Universe.

The show got cancelled after 2 seasons.

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Best Friends Whenever provides examples of:

• An Aesop: Much like Gravity Falls, "A Time to Rob and Slam" has: "It's fine to hate something you consider bad. Just don't ruin it for someone who likes it."
• Alternate Timeline:
  • The girls create a minor one in "A Time To Cheat" by making sure their mean teacher never became a teacher, sparing them from a test they weren't prepared for.
  • A much more major and serious one occurs in the episode "The Butterscotch Effect" when they alter the day that Barry didn't get to meet his hero. When they return to the present, Barry, Naldo and the pizza guy are in a rock band instead of scientists/pizza deliverer They attempt to fix this, only to make it much worse as Barry never met Naldo, and thus turned into an anti-social, revenge obsessed emotionless Mad Scientist and Supervillain. Thankfully, they manage to undo the damage.
  • Another alternate timeline is created when Shelby becomes Rob's girlfriend in "A Time to Rob and Slam" which they also undo.
  • In a botched-up attempt to negate the Future Lab timeline, Cyd and Shelby do everything they can to prevent Globo-Digi-Dyne from existing. However, this caused Cyd and Shelby to live far apart. Not only that, but Janet is still a threat. Since Janet caught a good look of them after they took out the lamp and they trapped her in her own trap, she knew who they are and would not rest until she captures them and unlocks their time travel abilities. The girls decide to restore the original timeline and find another way to stop her before she discovers their identities and their time travel abilities.
  • "Epic Girls' Day" features two Alternate Timelines; when Eyd and Shelby take Daisy out to the mall for an Epic Girls' Day, which affects the duo dynamic with neither of the two having a good time and losing Daisy, the two go back in time to the last place saw Daisy but they each saw her in a different place where the other one wasn't, resulting in two timelines one for each of them where the other isn't remembered by Daisy. It's not until Cyd and Shelby simultaneously think about and touch the same mannequin is the right timeline restored.
• All Just a Dream: It's debatable if the events from "When Shelby Met Cyd" happened or not. The epilogue ends with the girls thanking Barry for turning them back to their normal age, until their previous selves show up. Then it turned out to be Barry dreaming, which turns out to be Ronaldo's when he had all ages of Shelby and Cyd behind him.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: A Jerkass prince named Sebastian tries to force Daisy to marry him so he can rule her kingdom.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Chet and Brett are this to Cyd and Shelby, for instance they use their ability of time travel to skip a performance they put on for them. Then when they see that they performed a HUGE number complete with performers and everything, they decide to see what that was about.
• Arc Symbol: The mysterious symbol in the lab in the Bad Future. It appears every time the girls go there, including on the suit of one of the researchers, and most importantly, as the desktop image on Barry's laptop. It's later revealed to be logo of MegaCorp GloboDigiDyne. Turns out Barry is a fan of the company, and has plenty of merchandise. Shelby's family now has dinnerware with this symbol.
• Arranged Marriage: Daisy was promised in marriage when she would inherit her kingdom after parents' deaths, although she does not actually want a husband to be queen.
• Artistic License – Law: Contrary to how popular culture commonly portrays it, children cannot simply walk right into a high school without drawing attention. There is an entire process of joining the school all of which include records of past scholastic involvement. Children or Teens who appear out of thin air, princesses from the The Renaissance for example, would not be permitted to attend classes or dances.
  • Lampshaded by Daisy herself when she wonders why she's allowed to attend the school as a new student and not been asked even once to explain her presence.
• Artistic License – History:
  • In "Princess Problems", Daisy says she's been to a Viking wedding. However, anyone will tell you that the Viking age ended way before her time, specifically the mid-11th century.
  • Daisy believed the world was flat in "Epic Girls Day", and stated that people would throw tomatoes at those who believed the Earth was round. However, Daisy's era is long after people have more or less accepted that the Earth is round, (around 1492, Columbus's time), and it's especially jarring since Daisy is from the Age of Discovery.
• Bad Future:
  • Downplayed. The first future that Cyd and Shelby visit isn't too bad, but they regard it as this because they aren't friends anymore.
  • More straightforward, they jump into the far future where they end up strapped to tables after someone apparently discovered their time-travel secret and wants to experiment on them. Though it turns out that this was Barry attempting to remove their powers (though oddly enough the tool used to remove their powers changes every time). Turns out they asked him to do in an effort to prevent an even worse future in which Janet Smythe becomes an evil tyrant and taking over the country two years in the future. When the Future Lab came to pass, it ended up being for naught.
  • In the third episode, they jump into the future to discover that their kitchen has burned down.It turns out their attempts to try to prevent the fire are what partially leads up to the fire in the first place. They decide not to go back another time and prevent the fire after all since the family managed to bond tighter over it.
• Bait-and-Switch: Cyd asks Shelby if she "wanted to relive her first peer—", which causes Shelby to cut her off. Cyd then finishes by saying it was Shelby's first peer counseling session. It's subverted when it's revealed said counseling session was about Shelby's period.
• Big Bad: Janet Smythe in Season 1. She plotted to hunt down the girls and gain the power to time travel, and rule the USA with an iron fist.
• Big Eater: Despite having a slim build and impressive athletic prowess, Cyd often displays a love of food, including always being hungry, and even eating two lunches and partially eating chocolate from the garbage in the episode "A Time to Rob and Slam".
• Catchphrase: Mr Doyle always uses the words "Okay then" when his dramatic announcements or hot gossip fail to elict any reaction beyond incredulous boredom.
• Chekhov's Skill: The ability to "jam" another time traveller's jump from "A Time To Jump and Jam" helps Cyd and Shelby to defeat Janet Smythe in "Fight the Future, Part 3."
• Cold Ham: In the alternate timeline, during the episode "The Butterscotch Effect" Barry, when the girls changed the timeline, became evil. He was very hammy with the fake accent, and weird analogies he spat. Despite this he still was completely stoic.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Averted, as Cyd and Shelby generally only use time travel to solve their own personal problems (which is really understandable, as all of their attempts at heroism have either A) Done nothing (as with Rob) or B) made the timeline worse than it was before (as with Janet Smythe)). After they see themselves from a possible future, and defeat Janet Smythe, they reconsider their role.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Cyd and Shelby change history so that their Sadist Teacher, Miss Nesbit, became a police officer instead. When they travel to the past in "A Time To Jump and Jam", she appears again to arrest Cyd and Jen for stealing.
  • Barry and Naldo's band in "A Time To Do The Butterscotch Effect" is called Heart Rocket, which they mentioned as a great name for a rock band in "A Time To Jump and Jam".
  • Barry's teleportation laser from "Cyd and Shelby's Haunted Escape" was created using the tachyon particles that he collected in "Shake Your Booty."
  • In "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back", Cyd and Shelby make sure to stay together when they travel to 1991, not wanting to risk forgetting each other, as they did in "Shake Your Booty." Also, the Tachyon particles reappear and are collected by Janet Smythe.
    • Also from that episode, in the timeline where GloboDigiDyne never existed, Barry mentions Crabnormal Behavior, the movie he became a producer for in "A Time To Rob And Slam".
• Credits Running Sequence: Very briefly in the title sequence.
• Darker and Edgier: "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back" is a much darker episode than the others. Cyd, a main character, comes dangerously close to being killed in the climax.
• Didn't Think This Through: In "A Time To Double Date", Cyd and Shelby have conflicting events that they both want to go to together, so they use their time travel powers to attend both events. During both timelines, they meet guys that they're attracted to, but because only one timeline can exist, Cyd's meeting gets erased. An attempt to fix this results in each girl falling for the opposite guy. They stick with those results afterwards.
• Disappeared Dad: Cyd is staying with Shelby's family because her parents are on an archeological dig in Peru. Cyd would've come, but she chose not to.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Although The X Factor-generated group Forever In Your Mind do the theme song "Whenever" (Landry Bender isn't a singer, although Lauren Taylor is) Ricky Garcia is the group's lead singer.
• Driving Question: Interestingly for a Kid Com, a couple of these cropped up in the first couple of episodes: Why did Barry's invention cause Cyd and Shelby to time travel and what's the story behind the lab we see in Cyd and Shelby's Bad Future? It's implied that Barry has something to do with it. The other question is, if Barry is obsessed with discovering the solution to time travel, would he go that far?
  • Its further complicated with the reveal the lab belongs to MegaCorp GloboDigiDyne and is a secret project that Shelby's father Norm ends up working on.
  • It's more or less clear after the events of "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back": The girls' attempt to travel to the 90s and forward left behind slowly-vanishing tachyon particles that CEO Janet Smythe collected, starting her obsession with time-travel. This led to the creation of the secret lab that does exist during Cyd and Shelby's time. Sooner or later, she will trace the particles to Cyd and Shelby, discover their time travel abilities, and take them to that lab.
  • Exactly how did Cyd and Shelby get the power to time travel? Naldo's unique hair gel.
  • Season 2: Who was keeping Daisy prisoner in her time and why? So far, all we see is her jailer.
• Engineered Public Confession: Occurs in the episode "Friendship Code" when Dax Fraggins, a fraud pretending to hire underacheivers to work for him when he really steals their websites for his own fame, tries to con Shelby out of her fashion website. After jumping back to before Shelby signed the contract, Shelby Cyd and Barry lure Fraggins into a holographic classroom and make the entire school hear him confess everything he did.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "Girl Code" Shelby asks two male members of the computer club to build a website for her, they agree if she gives them tips as to they can tell if a girl they like is interested in them. One of the tips she gives them is that the girl like touch them on the arm, (which Shelby does) might offer them some treats - at which point she goes home to make them something to eat for the work they're doing for her. Then at home Shelby tells Cyd what she's been doing. As Shelby goes over what she told the boys, Cyd figures out the name of the girl they like a lot faster than Shelby does...
• Failed a Spot Check: Played with in "Jump to the Future Lab": Barry holds up three items with the symbol from The Future Lab with neither Cyd nor Shelby noticing, but then they turn and spot it on his laptop.
  • Also they didn't notice the logo was on all of the dishes in Shelby's house. Something they themselves lampshade.
• Feel No Pain: In "A Time To Double Date", a guy named Drake keeps asking Cyd to punch him in every part of his body and doesn't feel anything.^note Ironically, he does feeling pain when Cyd high-fives claiming that his palms are his "weak spot"
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The Season 2 premiere "Princess Problems" introduces Daisy, a princess from the year 1522 who acidentally got pulled into the present as a result of the events of "Fight The Future, Part 3." Naturally, she doesn't quite get the modern day, though she's slowly picking things up.
• For Want Of A Nail: This is the main theme of The Butterscotch Effect.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: Shelby hates being tickled (especially when the tickler makes the 'ticky, ticky, ticky' noises), but it's the only way Cyd can get her to let her guard down when she doesn't want to do a time jump.
• Freudian Excuse: Subverted with Rob from "A Time to Rob and Slam." At first, it's implied that he's such a jerk because Shelby once broke his heart (and he is shown to have been a pretty nice guy at the time), but when Cyd and Shelby inadvertently change history so that Rob and Shelby are dating, it turns out that he became just as much of a jerk anyway.
• Future Badass: Future versions of Cyd and Shelby show up in "Fight the Future, Part 3" to help take down Janet Smythe. They're both a pair of bona fide action girls.
• Grand Theft Me: How Cyd and Shelby solve the Intangibility problem the teleporter causes (if they can't touch, they can't time jump). Shelby feels especially bad about doing it but goes through with it. Everyone's back to normal after the jump though.
• Genre Shift: The show is mostly a typical Disney Channel Kid Com in the vein of Wizards of Waverly Place, but there are occasionally episodes that are more like short science-fiction films. "The Butterscotch Effect", "Jump to the Future Lab", and "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back" are examples of this.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: Both Barry and Naldo agree that "Heart Rocket" would be one in "A Time to Jump and Jam." In an alternate present in "The Butterscotch Effect", they've formed a rock band with this name.
• Heroic Willpower: Travelling outside their lifetimes can be very dangerous for Cyd and Shelby, because they run the risk of forgetting each other, and losing themselves to the era. Thankfully, their friendship granted them the willpower to resist these dangers, and they've become a lot better at this in subsequent episodes where they time traveled outside their lifetimes.
• High-School Dance: This is where the Series Finale takes place.
• Holding Hands: Cyd and Naldo hold hands while hiding from Sebastian.
• Identical Grandson: As shown in "Shake Your Booty" both Barry and Naldo are spitting images for their fathers when they were the same age.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The first six episodes are called "A Time To [X]," but then the pattern is dropped.
  • A Time To Double Date
  • A Time to Jump and Jam
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Cyd and Shelby never wanted to be heroes after getting the power to time travel. They've only used time travel to fix personal problems. In "Fight The Future", Cyd and Shelby realized that Janet Smythe has been trying to obtain their powers for her evil purposes, and decide that having time travel powers only caused more harm than good, and opt to have their powers removed. After Janet put their friends in danger, in addition to seeing their future selves and defeating Janet Smythe, they reconsider this viewpoint and joyfully prepare themselves for their next chapter.
• Insult Backfire: see A Good Name for a Rock Band above.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: "Night Of The Were-Diesel." Shelby tries this when Cyd becomes a werewolf.
• Insult to Rocks: A punk album featuring a song that claims that "disco stinks" also has an apology written on it to stink for comparing it to disco.
• I've Heard of That — What Is It?: Shelby does this in the episode "The Butterscotch Effect".
  Barry: Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect?
  Shelby: I've heard of it. But can you explain it in case someone else didn't?
  Naldo: I know what it is.
  Cyd: Me too.
  Shelby: Just let him explain.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: When the girls go back in time to see what event made their classmate "The Rob" become such a jerk, they find out it was because Shelby, being perpetually oblivious to any and all signs that any boy might have a crush on her, accidentally turned him down for a date. After fixing this, they jump back to the present, where Shelby and Rob are a couple... and he's still a big jerk. That's just simply how he is and nothing caused it, so they go back and undo the timeline where he and Shelby dated.
• Knuckle Tattoos: Jen, an old classmate of Cyd and Shelby, has the word "whatever" tattooed on her knuckles. It turns out to be a temporary tattoo that she gives to children at the orphanage and it means that she will do whatever it takes for the kids.
• Large Ham: Shelby. She usually speaks in a loud voice and a enthusiastic tone. It's even lampshaded.more than once.
  • The whole Marcus family can count. The two twins are large hams, because their interactions with each other, such as their fights can be over the top. And there was the episode where they kept dropping the cake.
• Loving Bully: Cyd is implied to have been this to Naldo in the fourth grade when she had a crush on him, as she used to punch in the arm and shush him.
• MacGuffin: The blue beaker that combined with Barry's laser, giving Cyd and Shelby travel abilities. It is Naldo's custom-made hair gel.
• Mental Time Travel:
  • The basic premise of the show. Cyd and Shelby transport themselves into their own bodies in whatever year they travel to, past or future, based on whatever place and time they are thinking of simultaneously after making physical contact. Barry is trying to crack their secret so he can replicate it. However, it's shown they can still take physical objects from one time to another, but not other living beings.
  • In "Shake Your Booty", they perform physical time travel as well, though this turns out to have pretty nasty consequences as if they spend too long in the time period, they actually become part of it, forget themselves, and are unable to come back to the present. It's only through sheer willpower and the closeness of their bond (and a bit of luck) that Shelby and Cyd manage to remember each other, and overcome these effects in time. They do go back once more however this time they don't stay long enough for the problems to emerge.
  • They attempt physical time travel again in Cyd and Shelby Strike Back making sure to stay together so they avoid that problem. However, there are bigger problems in doing so: One, jumping too many times within a time before their births will diminish or weaken their power. Also, just like they did when they physically traveled to the 70s, they left behind Tachyon particles in Janet Smythe's past, and that's how Janet Smythe is on to them.
• Merlin Sickness: Both Shelby and Cyd come down with this in "When Shelby met Cyd", after going back and spending quite a while in their five year old bodies. According to Barry, due to not being used to such a major jump, their bodies are having trouble restoring equilibrium, causing them to de-age. This ends up causing them to both physically and mentally regress, and if not cured within a short time will leave them permanently young. Barry manages to find a cure, but it only restores Shelby, who realises that Cyd won't change back because her fear of growing up is holding her in this state. It's not until she comforts Cyd and convinces her she'll be there to help her every step of the way that Cyd is also cured.
• Miles Gloriosus: Cyd starts hanging out with a street-tough classmate named Jen from sixth grade when she found out Shelby lied about them not being invited to her Slumber Party. The friendship is short-lived, however, when Cyd realizes that Jen isn't tough at all but very emotional and cowardly as she started crying whilst they were arrested and the tattoos on her knuckles came off because they are temporary and she gives them to children at an orphanage.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Whenever the girls jump back in time or to the future, selfies they take or looking into mirrors show the appearances they had (or will have) at that time, and said appearances is what people see. However, they (and the viewers) see them in their present (or future/past relative to said time frame) selves. Played with in "Shake Your Booty", when they appear exactly as they are because they didn't have counterparts from The '70s to jump into.
• Mood Whiplash: The scenes of the Future Lab tend to be a pretty huge departure from the show's comedic bent. They're like something out of a horror movie or, perhaps more appropriately, a science-fiction film.
• The Napoleon: In sixth grade, the Alpha Bitch Bianca was short, even for students in her year, and Cyd even wondered why anyone was afraid of someone so tiny. However, she was flanked by two taller girls, and what made her ruthless and intimidating was that she takes videos of kids doing something embarrassing, and makes them into something even more embarrassing.
• Never Say "Die": Bluntly averted in "Revenge of the Past":
  Sebastian: Tell me where Daisy is or else!
  Shelby: Or else what?
  Sebastian: You die!
• Never Trust a Trailer: In a promo for "Night Of The Were-Diesel", a shot of Cyd's eyes glowing gold is actually reversed footage of her returning to normal.
• No Periods, Period: Averted in "A Time to Jump and Jam". May be the first show in Disney Channel history to actually mention periods. In a subverted Bait-and-Switch, no less, where Cyd asks Shelby if she "wanted to relive her first peer—", which causes Shelby to cut her off. Cyd then finishes by saying it was Shelby's first peer counseling session. It's subverted when it's revealed said counseling session was about Shelby's period.
• Now I Know What to Name Him: Shelby unintentionally inspires Barry's dad to name his son "Barry" in "Shake Your Booty".
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Shelby never seems to understand when a guy likes her.
  • Naldo also never knew that Cyd had a crush on him in the fourth grade.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: In "When Shelby Net Cyd", Naldo is unaware that Shelby is referring to him when she talks about Cyd's fourth grade crush, including his love of wearing hats and Cyd punching him in the arm to shush him.
• Only Sane Man:
  • More or less juggled amongst the cast, but most commonly held by Shelby and Barry. Shelby is more emotionally sane, while Barry is more sane logically, for the most part.
  • Shelby's father Norm has some shades of this, being the only one to call out his families eccentricities.
• Opposites Attract: A double platonic version, its acknowledged in the first episode Cyd and Shelby have very little in common, but this is the reason they get along. The one thing they do have in common besides Time Travel is that they fangirlishly like Liv Rooney and Austin Moon. Likewise Barry and Naldo have equally little in common, and yet they still hang out regularly and are very close.
• Overly Long Scream: Literally happens in the middle of every episode when Shelby and Cyd find out something bad and proceed to start screaming at the camera and viewers whilst overlapping each other. However, their screams last the entire commercial break in every episode, so we recommend you to cover your ears for this one.
• Parental Neglect: The third episode reveals that even before Cyd's parents left, they weren't exactly the best parents. Even if Cyd could've joined them as "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back" has shown, she chose not to.
• Plot Device: The big laser in Barry's lab, which gave Cyd and Shelby the ability to time travel.
• The Power of Friendship: The girls' ability to time travel runs on this. As long as their friendship is strong, they will be able to go back and forth within time.
• Powers in the First Episode: Cyd and Shelby receive their time travel powers in the first episode and learn how to time travel for the first time.
• Puppy Love: When Cyd was in 4th grade, she went through a phase where she had a crush on Naldo. To show it, she used to shush and punch him a lot and called him 'hat boy', but Cyd has grown out of it. When Cyd regressed to age 9, she went through it again.
• Red Herring: The Tachyon particles that Barry collected at the end of Shake Your Booty? It was believed to be tied to be tied to the "Future Lab" plot but nope, they were used for a new invention Barry made for the plot of a Halloween Episode. Not quite though. Turns out Cyd and Shelby leaving behind tachyon particles had critical importance much later on. When they time traveled to 1991, them traveling away left behind tachyon particles that Smythe collected, and that's what started the future lab timeline. This means when she traces them, she will capture them and cut them in half.
• Ripple-Proof Memory: Neither girls memories are affected by the changes they cause.
• Running Gag:
  • Shelby and Cyd's "Time Selfies". Whenever they travel to another time period, they look at themselves on their phones in order to see how they look in that time.
  • In "The Butterscotch Effect", characters going "Wait...what?" before Cyd and Shelby travel back in time
• Secret-Keeper: The only people who know Cyd and Shelby are time travelers are Barry, Naldo and Shelby's grandma. Of course, if they told anyone else, no one would believe them without proof (though Big Bad Janet Smythe discovering Tachyon particles already tips her off that there are time travelers in existance).
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: In "A Time to Say Thank You", Cyd and Shelby's attempts to avoid the fire they see in the future simply cause it to occur.
  • In "Jump To The Future Lab", by trying to see if Shelby's dad is involved with the future lab, they inadvertently got him promoted to head of the project in the future lab.
    • Furthered in "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back". By jumping back to try to stop Janet Smythe from starting the company that created the future lab, they leave behind tachyon particles that Janet collected, possibly inspiring her to create the future lab.
• Senseless Sacrifice: in "Fight The Future Part 2" Cyd and Shelby sacrifice their time travel abilities in an attempt to prevent the Bad Future where Janet created a dystopia. However, their sacrifice ended up being in vain, because with them no longer useful, Janet resorted to kidnapping Barry and Naldo, and confiscating their lab equipment.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Naldo and Barry respectively, even if the latter is a bit of a stretch of "Manly Man."
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Occasionally. Granted, their messing around in the past is often the cause of things going wrong but still valid.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few.
  • One episode is called "The Butterscotch Effect"
  • From that episode, Barry (in an alternate present where he and Naldo never became friends) acts and looks like Dieter from 'Sprockets'.
  • GloboDigiDyne is one to Cyberdyne, the company from the Terminator franchise.
  • "Cyd and Shelby's Haunted Escape" has Diesel in a spider-dog costume at one point.
• Spell My Name With An S: "Cyd" is a rather unusual spelling of that name.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In "A Time To Cheat":
  Cyd: This looks like my actual hair. Did you get this out of my brush?
  Shelby: Well I certainly didn't yank it out of your head while you were sleeping like a hair-plucking nutjob.
• Stable Time Loop:
  • It was a time traveling Shelby who was responsible for influencing Dennis to give Barry's name.
  • Turns out the girls physically traveling to 1991 left behind their tachyon particles that Janet collected, and that's what started the Future Lab Timeline.
  • "Jump to the '50s" centers around creating one: Cyd and Shelby learn that two time-traveling teenage girls set up Shelby's grandparents, realize it must be them, and travel back to do it. Furthermore, the reason that Shelby's grandmother is coming to visit in the first place is because she knows that they're due back from their jump.
• Take That!: Barry Live Audience app in "Jump To The Future Lab" is one to TV shows that use a live audience and/or laugh track and how cheesy/interruptive it can be.
• Teen Genius: Barry, who invented the machine that gives them time travel powers, but there was one more thing that was missing in the equation.
• Teleport Gun: How Cyd and Shelby get all the way to New York from Portland, OR, with the same laser that gave Cyd and Shelby the power to time travel.
• Thematic Theme Tune: "Whenever" by Forever In Your Mind (whose lead singer is Ricky Garcia who plays Naldo, making this also a case of "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune)
• Theme Twin Naming: Chet and Brett, both names rhyme although Brett's name has an extra 't'.
• The Reveal: A beaker with Naldo's unique hair gel hit by Barry's laser was how the girls got the power to time travel. Now Barry wants to figure out how to synthesize it.
• The Un-Hug: Shelby and Barry have a very awkward hug, and Cyd lampshades it.
• They Would Cut You Up: This happens to Cyd and Shelby in a Bad Future, though it's not clear who is experimenting on them or how they found out about the girls' time travel abilities. It's Barry and he's actually trying to remove their powers because they asked him to, in order to prevent the real Bad Future where Janet altered time and made herself a tyrant of the United States.
• Third Party Stops Attack: Sebastian is about to kill a defenceless Shelby when Cyd picks up the sword lost earlier and blocks his swing. After being trounced mightily, Sebastian tries to stab Cyd in the back with a dagger and is knocked out by Shelby with a steel mug.
• Too Much Information:
  Barry: Naldo, why were you eating a hot dog in my tuxedo?
  Naldo: Because I wasn't going to eat a hot dog naked.
  Barry: It's really my fault for asking.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Cyd and Shelby, respectively.
• True Companions: Shelby Cyd Barry and Naldo.
• Villain Ball: It's clear Janet Smythe anticipates getting her hands on Cyd and Shelby once she finds them, yet she should know better than to leave their arms free, allowing them to jump. She did design the future lab, but it was poorly designed.
• Weirdness Censor: Cyd and Shelby appear out of nowhere in a school in the 1970s and no one notices a thing. They also pull out their cell phones (which haven't been invented yet) and no one sees them.
• Wham Shot:
  • The logo on the suit of the mysterious figure in The Future Lab is the desktop image on Barry's laptop.
  • At the end of "Diesel Gets Lost In Time", it turns out that Barry is the person in the Hazmat suit in the future lab.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Back To the Future Lab" introduces Globo-Digi-Dyne, the MegaCorp where the laboratory Cyd and Shelby end up in is and complicates the matter of whose experimenting upon them further with Shelby's dad being revealed to now be working on that project. It also introduces Janet Smythe, who is the True Big Bad.
  • "Cyd and Shelby Strike Back" one-ups the above by having Cyd and Shelby travel back to 1991 to try and prevent Globo-Digidyne from ever existing, only to create a Stable Time Loop that causes the Future Lab timeline in the first place.
  • Each episode in the "Fight the Future" arc: In Part 1, it turns out that Barry was in the Hazmat suit, attempting to remove Cyd and Shelby's time travel powers at their request. Furthermore, they were trying to prevent an even worse future where Janet Smythe rules the world. In Part 2, the girls remove their powers, but Janet captures Barry and Naldo to force them to help her gain her own powers. In Part 3, Janet succeeds in gaining time travel powers, but Cyd and Shelby short them out. Also, Future Badass versions of Cyd and Shelby show up to help defeat Janet.
  • "Princess Problems" starts off Season 2 with a bang: During their battle with Janet Smythe in "Fight The Future, Part 3", the girls opened a time rift. In this episode, a princess from the year 1522 comes through it. At the end of the episode, she chooses to stay rather than return to her time, where she's a prisoner.
  • "Epic Girls' Day" reveals a previously unexplored aspect of the girls' powers. If they both try to travel to different points in time, each girl will end up in a different timeline where they traveled to their intended destination.
  • "Revenge of the Past": Sebastian shows up in the present, looking for Daisy. The gang eventually manages to send him back, but Shelby ends up stuck there, without Cyd. They get her back, but then Daisy volunteers to marry Sebastian in order to protect her friends. Just when you think it's heading for a Downer Ending, the show ups the ante by having all four of the main cast members travel back to 1522.
• Women Are Wiser: Played with, of the cast Barry is the smartest but he possesses an incredibly low emotional intelligence, Naldo is the stupidest but he does possess a pretty high emotional intelligence, and Cyd and Shelby exist squarely in the middle between the two, with both possessing an average intelligence and normal emotional intelligence (Shelby is normally the more sensible of them, but she can be a bit naïve).
  • Of Shelby's parents this is inverted, Norm seems brighter than his wife Astrid, for instance pointing out the absurdity of things like Chet and Brett icing cakes in their bedroom while Astrid considers it simply be part of their creative spirit.
    • As of "The Butterscotch Effect" it seems as if this is played with between Shelby's parents, considering Norm thought his college meal plan was a lunch scholarship.