Series / Mot i Brøstet

The main cast. Top row; Karl and Nils. Middle row: Målfrid and Trine. Bottom Row: Elna and Henry.

Mot i brøstet ("Courage in the chest," a Norwegian phrase) was a Norwegian Studio Audience Sitcom that ran from 1993-1997. The show centers around the temperamental economist Karl (played by Nils Vogt) who, after being fired from his job and left by his wife in the first episode, finds himself sharing his house with two other guys: The happy-go-lucky, but stupid and immature youngster Nils (played by Sven Nordin) and the cunning, but somewhat amoral elderly man Henry (played by Arve Oppsahl).

The series isn't complicated. The first three seasons mainly focus on the conflicts between the three guys as they get used to living together, as well as the various Get-Rich-Quick Schemes that they try out. In the fourth season Karl's girlfriend Målfrid (Siv Anita Andersen) moves in with them, and later on Nils's girlfriend Trine (Hilde Lyrån) becomes a frequent guest in the house too. The final member of the regular cast is Nils's overbearing mother Elna, who regularly comes to visit her son — to the annoyance of everyone else.

Despite only having one regular scriptwriter (series creator Tore Ryen, who wrote or co-wrote most of the episodes), the series had a very high production rate — eight seasons and 141 episodes in five years — and this often shows. The writing has a tendency to get lazy, cliche-ridden and filled with Plot Holes, characterizations are inconsistent, continuity is sloppy, the research is generally minimal and relying on Common Knowledge about whatever the episode in question is about, and the goof-ups are plentiful (the number of Visible Boom Mics is staggering). Critics have never liked Mot i Brøstet, finding it crass and low-brow, and even some of the people who worked on the show didn't think much of their own work.

And yet, mostly thanks to likeable, if extremely flawed, characters, portrayed by actors with genuine charm and screen precense, and partly thanks to unashamedly taking place in a World of Ham, Mot i Brøstet became a huge success with its audience. It's considered the first really successful Norwegian sitcom; certainly the first one to become a franchise with several spin-offs and licensed products, and it's still remembered fondly by many Norwegians today. The episodes are still popular on streaming services, and in 2018, when Nils Vogt starred in a stage show that marked the series 25th anniversary, all the tickets were sold out in a matter of hours.

The success of the series led to several Spin Offs and Sequel Series:

• The first, and most often forgotten one, was the short-lived Spin-Off Radio 2 in 1995. Set in the same universe as Mot i brøstet, the series was about the workers at the titular radio station — and the first episode was a Crossover with Mot i brøstet in which a contest-winning Nils was a guest announcer. Radio 2 only lasted for 12 episodes, partly thanks to creator Tore Ryen not handling the pressure of writing two sitcoms at the same time, and was cancelled without much fanfare.
• The second, and most successful one, was a Sequel Series named Karl & Co, which ran for three seasons and 63 episodes from 1998-2001. After Arve Opsahl started to get health problems and Sven Nordin was tired of working on the series, Mot i brøstet ended with Elna and Henry moving to Spain, Målfrid taking a job in Africa, and Nils and Trine moving into Elna's old apartment to raise their new kids. Karl & Co opened with Karl (now a successful consultant and independent business owner) leaving his old house and moving into a new luxury appartment, where he quickly aquired a new supporting cast: his younger sister Vigdis (Minken Fosheim), wacky neighbour Ulf Rasch-Ludvigsen (Knut Lystad), the lazy cleaning lady Mrs Ruth Frantzen (Grethe Kausland), and the jovial janitor Daniel Smestad (Harald Heide-Steen Jr). Other recurring characters included Karl's glamorous mother (Wenche Foss) and bothersome neighbour Mrs Smith (Turid Balke).
• The third, and most hyped one, was a direct-to-video special in 2000 called "Tusenårsfesten" (The Millennium Party), which kind of serves as a Crossover Finale for both Mot i brøstet and Karl & Co, where the characters from Mot i brøstet (except Trine, because Hilde Lyrån was unavailable) returned to celebrate the turn of the millennium with Karl and the new cast. We also got to meet Nils and Trine's four children, who took after their father and their grandmother in various ways.
• The final, and by far the most hated one, was Karl III in 2009, a Genre Shifted Sequel Series taking place a few years later, where Karl had become a multi-millionaire and lived a life of luxury with his new wife Agnes Marie (Nina Woxholtt) and his deadpan butler Roy Butler (Bjørn Sundquist). This series was a serious shift in tone and style from the previous two series (most notably it dropped the Studio Audience, was no longer set in a World of Ham and tried to be a little more "mature") and was hated by both critics and audiences. It only lasted for one season of 12 episodes before it was cancelled.

Sweden produced its own version of Mot i Brøstet, called C/o Segemyhr, which ran for three seasons from 1998-1999, and then an additional two seasons in 2003-2004. It had the same premise and roughly similar characters, but its own scripts.

Mot i brøstet contains examples of:

• Abandoned Catchphrase: In the first season, Nils was prone to say "Tar det med en gang, jeg!" (approximately "I'll do it right away") when someone asked him to do something. He stopped saying it after a while and got more prone to put things off.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Elna, towards Henry. It varies from episode to episode just how pushy she is and how much he doesn't like her, but the show milks a lot of jokes out of her persuit of him. That said, they do get married in the very last episode of the series...
• Actor Allusion: Henry, on a couple of occasions says "I've got a plan." This was the catchphrase of Egon Olsen, who in his Norwegian incarnation was portrayed by Henry's actor Arve Oppsahl.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Målfrid is introduced early in the first season as Karl's new girlfriend, but quickly becomes the most frequently seen recurring character. Mid-season four she moves in with the guys and from then on gets a Promotion to Opening Titles and is the fourth main character.
  • Trine and Elna go through something similar; they're both The Ghost for a while before making their first appearance on-screen, and get increasingly larger roles as the show goes on. Though only Trine officially becomes a main character and Elna remains "recurring" all throughout the show, by the time the last season rolls around she's essentially the sixth main character.
• All Women Are Lustful: Not that the men aren't pretty lustful as well, but they can't quite match the women. In one episode, Karl wants to show Målfrid a surprise, and she gets downright angry when the surprise is his new car, and not something that has to do sex. She forgives him when she discovers that the car's backseat is a good place to have sex.
• Bad Liar: Nils, which frequently causes problems when he's dragged into a scheme and has to lie. He'll either spend the entire time making Freudian Slips and Suspiciously Specific Denials, or he'll have misunderstood what exactly the lie is supposed to be, or he'll forget that he was supposed to lie in the first place and start talking as if everyone knew the truth already.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Målfrid is the sweetest and nicest character on the show, but she has her limits. Push her too far, and she gets vicious.
• Breakout Character: Karl, the only character from this series who went on to star in the sequel series.
• Cannot Talk to Women: Nils, at the start of the series, gets tongue-tied around pretty women. By the second season, he's pretty much over it.
• Catchphrase:
  • Karl, with his Hair-Trigger Temper, is prone to shout "No! No! No!" while jumping up and down. He's also quick to accuse people of nagging him.
  • Nils says "Fy flate!" whenever he's surprised, astonished or amused; basically it's an extremely mild Norwegian expression, on the level of "dang!"
• Celebrity Paradox: Apparently, all celebrities (even the ones who play different roles in the series) and their respective works exist in the series' universe, it's just that the characters look a lot like those celebrities. In one episode, Henry is informed of his uncanny resemblance to Arve Oppsahl. He reacts with mild annoyance and claims people always tell him that... before winking to the audience.
• Character Exaggeration: Karl's Hair-Trigger Temper got more and more prominent as the series went on. He was always easy to rile up, but in the early seasons he's far more subdued. By the later seasons, barely an episode goes by without at least one huge temper tantrum from him.
• Cool Old Guy: Henry sometimes lapses into Grumpy Old Man territory, but for the most part he's this. He's definitely the smartest of all the regular characters, he's had a long and eventful life, and he's certainly got a bigger spark and zest for life than many of the younger characters — when he's not too tired to bother.
• Deadpan Snarker: Every single major character, and a fair number of minor ones, is this to some degree, and Snark-to-Snark Combat is almost as regular as normal conversations. The biggest snarkers are Karl and Henry — Nils makes more than his fair share of quips, but all too often he is Sarcasm-Blind and his jokes are often based around some Incredibly Lame Pun or other.
• The Ditz: Nils, though it varies a bit depending on the episode whether he's genuinely Too Dumb to Live or just a Cloudcuckoolander who's reasonably bright but just wildly unorthodox and with a brain that runs on Insane Troll Logic. Trine isn't quite as bad; she's certainly better at sensing when a situation is about to blow up, and has more common sense, but she's no genius either. At one point, the two were going to see Dumb and Dumber, and Karl advised them to save their money and just go look in the mirror.
• Dreadful Musician: Nils, for the most part, is portrayed as a terrible singer... though it's more an Informed Attribute, as his main flaw as a singer is that he's too loud. If he manages to control his volume, he actually doesn't sound too bad.
• Drives Like Crazy: Elna, who in one episode is revealed to be an even more reckless driver than her son. Which is saying something.
• Drop-In Character: Elna evolves into this in the later seasons. In the early seasons she only rarely visits the guys' house, but in later seasons she developed a habit of dropping by unannounced.
• Expy: Karl is, as Word of God has admitted, heavily inspired by Donald Duck, just with more adult-rated jokes, a slightly more realistic version of the Hair-Trigger Temper, and a heavy emphasis on wanting to seem more cultured than he really is. Ironically, Karl himself is not a fan of Donald Duck; he thinks cartoons and comics are childish nonsense, and since Nils is a big fan of both cartoons and the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Karl has had plenty of sarcasms or even temper tantrums related to how stupid he thinks Donald Duck is.
• First-Name Basis: A quirk of this series is that everyone is on first-name basis with the main characters. Their surnames are never used, even in situations where it would be natural to use those surnames. It would be subverted for Karl & Co, where Karl's surname, Reverud, was used quite often, but for Mot i brøstet the characters might as well not have surnames at all.
• The Gadfly:
  • Nils, in a bit of an Manchild way. Though there's no doubt that his stupidity is genuine, there are times where he's clearly Obfuscating Stupidity just because it's funny to see Karl get angry. He'll also cheerfully rile people up with bad jokes just to see how far he can take it.
  • Karl too often gets a kick out of messing with people, especially if those people are Nils, though he's less about making people angry and more about confusing them and make them look like idiots.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: These are plentiful in the early seasons, but show up on occasion in later seasons as well. Usually they are initiated by Henry, though Karl is almost always the one who gets carried away with them.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: This quickly became Karl's trademark. His basic mood seems to be mild annoyance at the world, so it's very easy to get him screaming in anger.
• Hospital Hottie: Downplayed with Målfrid. She's a nurse, and is definitely the sexiest, most sex-positive and least bashful of the characters, but since we seldom see her at work, we seldom see her in her nurse's uniform.
• The Hyena: Nils, who laughs at pretty much everything and especially his own jokes.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Henry, Karl and Nils are essentially in three different generations, but they're still friends. More or less.
• Innocently Insensitive: Nils says and does a lot of insensitive or even offensive things, but it's never done with malice; he's genuinely too stupid and childish to know any better. Karl often attempts to educate him, with varied success... not that Karl is always that much better himself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Pretty much the entire main cast apart from Nice Girl Målfrid. Henry is amoral and has no qualms about lying, cheating or exploiting others for his own gain; Karl has a Hair-Trigger Temper and often lapses into It's All About Me; Nils is mostly a Nice Guy but is often Innocently Insensitive and a little too fond of riling people up; Elna is overbearing and judgmental; and Trine can be self-obsessed and childish. And yet all of them are basically good people who will go out of their way to do the right thing.
• Karaoke Bonding Scene: The series actually had a Karaoke Bonding Episode, in which Nils and Trine break up and get back together again, and a karaoke machine plays a significant part. The episode even ends with Målfrid and Trine singing Da Do Run Run while the entire cast participates in Chewing the Scenery.
• Manchild: Nils is essentially a big kid who's obsessed with cartoons, comics and candy. Trine is pretty much the same, which is why they go so well together.
• Mistaken for Gay: It's three guys living together in one house, in a 90s sitcom. Of course there are plenty of jokes like this. With a dose of Not That There's Anything Wrong with That for good measure.
• Mr. Fanservice: This was actually the reason why Nils was included in the series; to "give the ladies something to look at." Though in the actual show he doesn't get very many fanservicy moments, apart from a handful of shirtless scenes early in the series.
• Ms. Fanservice: Målfrid, on occasion. She likes revealing outfits and is quite open about how much she likes sex.
• My Beloved Smother. Elna, on a good day. On a bad day she's closer to Evil Matriarch.
• Negative Continuity: While the status quo does see some changes over the course of the series, like Målfrid moving in and Nils and Trine getting together, and there are a couple of running subplots in later seasons, for the most part the series isn't much for continuity. Neightbours and acquaintances and relatives come and vanish after one episode, backstories, quirks and even personalities change depending on the episode. Continuity Snarls are very common.
• Nice Mean And In Between: While the three main guys swap roles a little too often for any of them to fit neatly into any of the three categories, the three main girls are a lot easier to classify like this: Sweet-natured Målfrid is Nice, uptight Elna is Mean, ditzy Trine is In-Between.
• No Full Name Given: This show seems to have been very deliberate about not giving out the characters' last names ^note There are two exceptions: Henry gives his last name in an episode where he tries to explain a mix-up at the hospital, and then again in the Series Finale, when Elna's full name is also revealed. Completely averted in Karl & Co, where people will often refer to each other by their last names.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • The other characters theorize that Trine is doing this in order to fit better with Nils — though judging by her behavior even when she's alone, this doesn't seem too likely.
  • Nils is genuinely The Ditz, there's no doubt about that — but occasionally he gives off the impression that he isn't quite as stupid as he pretends to be, and that he's sometimes just messing with people, or trying to get out of taking responsibility for something.
• Only Sane Woman: Målfrid very quickly settled into this role, though she does have her quirks.
• Performance Anxiety: It's a consistent problem for Nils; if he's going to perform for a large audience, he tends to get incredibly nervous about it. Except when he doesn't.
• The Pig-Pen: Nils is a total slob. He's okay with personal hygiene, but he's messy, slovenly and his approach to both cleaning and food is decidedly unhygienic.
• Pregnancy Scare: In the sixth season, there's a double episode where Trine thinks she's pregnant, but it turns out to be a false alarm. In a bit of a twist for the trope, Nils is actually pretty excited about the prospect of becoming a father from the get-go; he has a moment's panic but that passes within seconds and after that he's all on board with the idea. The conflict of the episode comes from Trine not wanting to tell her overly-religious parents about her pregnancy.
  • Funnily enough, her actress Hilde Lyrån did end up pregnant a season later, and rather than incorporate the pregnancy into the show, the character was simply Put on a Bus for roughly half the seventh season, having been made by her parents to go work as an au pair in France. The Bus Came Back for the eighth and final season, at the end of which Trine does end up pregnant for real.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: It's incredible how many celebrities, great experts and well-connected people Henry knows from old, and how many of them he's able to call on to do him a favor when it's convenient to the plot. Often overlaps with I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine, since Henry's actor Arve Oppsahl was a veteran in Norwegian entertainment and had worked with most of the big names of his day, several of whom cameoed in the series playing various friends of Henry's.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Karl in a nutshell. He can never resist lying about his great accomplishments or exaggerate his skills at everything. The slightest bit of success, or even potential success, will inevitably go to his head and he'll start thinking of himself as a total genius and a gift to mankind.
• The Smart Guy: Henry's by far the smartest of the main characters. He's not always on his best game, but his plans and schemes have a much higher success rate than anyone else's.
• Toilet Humor: Shows up every now and again, mostly in the form of someone farting.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Nils has a number of favorites.
  • A majority of the episodes feature at least one scene with the characters at the breakfast table, and Nils's breakfast is almost always corn flakes with banana slices and jam (though he sometimes "spruces it up" by adding chocolate sauce as well). On a very rare occasion he eats something else, and it always surprises the other characters.
  • He likes bananas without the corn flakes and jam too. Several episodes has him gorge himself on bananas, and he's very clear about how it’s his favorite fruit.
  • Outside mealtimes, his go-to snacks are seigmenn (a type of Norwegian soft gummi candy, shaped like little men and coated with fine sugar◊) and potato chips — preferrably cheese-and-onion-flavored, but any type of potato chips will do.
  • He also drinks Coca-Cola, even on occasions when others drink wine.
• Unusual Euphemism: Nils and Trine have a peculiar euphemism for sex: They lift their hands up to chest height and go "Beep-beep!" while squeezing their hands as if they're squeezing a pair of boobs. This kind of Makes Sense In Context, as Nils seems to have taken inspiration from a moment he had before his first date with Trine. He was nervous and askes Målfrid for some advice, whereupon this happened:
  Nils: But Måfrid... when should I kiss her?
  Målfrid: Well, that's kind of hard to say. It's not like there are set times for those things.
  Nils: *thinks about it for a moment* Would have been nice if there were. Then I could just set my watch to beep when the time was right. Like... "Beep-beep! Quarter past eight!" *grabs a sofa cushion, squeezes it and pretends to make out with it, while Målfrid laughs*
• Unwanted Assistance: Nils is definitely the most helpful and eager to please of the main characters. Unfortunately he's also the most careless and most prone to accidents and misunderstandings, so his "help" tends to do more harm than good.
• Visible Boom Mic: Happens frequently, which is probably mostly due to the high production tempo of the series.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Karl and Nils, and to a lesser extent Karl and absolutely everyone in the world. The man has an uncanny ability to be immensely fond of people and at the same time find them horribly annoying.
• Wedding Finale: The series, somewhat surprisingly, ends with Henry and Elna getting married.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In one of Målfrid's first appearances in the first season, she has a pet dog, and the plot of the episode is about Karl getting over his fear of dogs. The dog only ever appears in that one episode, never getting so much as a mention even when Målfrid moves in with the guys in the fourth season.
• With Friends Like These...: With the cast being comprised mostly of Jerks With Hearts of Gold, it's not surprising that they sometimes leap head-first into this territory. They antagonize each other to no end just because they find it funny, and sometimes they don't even seem to be friends at all... and then at the end of the day they'll sit and watch TV together like nothing happened.
• Women Are Wiser: For he most part played straight with Målfrid, who generally plays the Only Sane Woman of the series. Downplayed with Trine, who is notably smarter than Nils, but still a bit of a ditz. Averted with Elna, who thinks she is the most sensible person around but really isn't.
• World of Ham: It's a Norwegian sitcom from the 1990s, featuring several actors and comedians known for their hamminess, and featuring even hammier and more exaggerated celebrities and actors in numerous cameos. The only main character who isn't a Large Ham is Målfrid, and even she does a bit of Chewing the Scenery in a few scenes.

Karl & Co provides examples of:

• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: While Ulf very neatly slides into Nils's old role as Vitriolic Best Buds with Karl, and arguably fits the role even better, he's actually not much like him at all. Where Nils was a childish and slovenly Book Dumb idiot who liked to help people but often didn't bother to put in more than the bare minimum of effort, Ulf is polite, well-groomed (bordering on being a Neat Freak), Book Smart and with a tendency to put more effort into his tasks than he really needs to. While they both like "kids' entertainment," Nils is a fan of Donald Duck, while Ulf prefers the calmer and more poetic Moomins. The main thing they have in common is a tendency towards being Innocently Insensitive, providing a lot of Unwanted Assistance, and Comically Missing the Point, though where Nils is The Ditz first and a Cloudcuckoolander second, Ulf is more of a pure Cloudcuckoolander. When they meet up in the Millennium Party special, they get along very well, though they tend to misunderstand one another.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Ulf's not the most reality-conscious of people; his social antennae are permanently malfunctioning, he frequently draws the most absurd conclusions, and he's always convinced that he's a welcome and appreciated guest in Karl's home, even when Karl is yelling at him to get out.
  • Smestad manages to be even worse. Where Ulf at least tries to follow some kind of common sense (even though he fails spectacularly at it), Smestad works on Insane Troll Logic by default.
• Comically Missing the Point: Lots of characters do this frequently, but Smestad probably does it the most.
• Denser and Wackier: Compared to Mot i brøstet, Karl & Co is notably more high-tempo and cartoony. The jokes are more rapid-fire and the characters more exaggeratedly wacky — and of course it still takes place in a World of Ham.
• The Ditz: Vigdis isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. She never reaches Too Dumb to Live levels like Nils did, but she's incredibly gullible and has a very prominent tendency towards Comically Missing the Point.
• The Diva: Karl and Vigdis's mother. She's a classy, sophisticated lady who knows how to handle most people and situations with ease.
• Drop-In Character: Pretty much all the regular characters apart from Karl. He lives alone in his luxury apartment, and yet the other character just enter and exit the place as they want. He tries protesting this early on but after a while he just gives up and resigns himself to the fact that for some reason his apartment has become the meeting place for the people who live in the building.
• The Ghost: Ulf's wife Magda is often mentioned, but never shown.
• Got Volunteered: Karl has a tendency to get volunteered by friends and neighbors to partake in or even lead all kinds of activities for the inhabitants in the building. He seldom wants to do it (unless the ones who ask appeal to his ego), but always ends up doing it anyway, after a lot of protests.
• Henpecked Husband: Even though we never see her, Ulf is very much under his wife's thumb. Frequently slides into Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male as she's clearly both physically and verbally abusive, and it's all played for laughs.
• Literal-Minded: Vigdis. While Sarcasm-Blind is common for the characters, Vigdis takes pretty much everything literally.
• Motor Mouth: Ulf, who can talk a mile a minute, and will go on at length about any subject if you let him — and even if you don't let him.
• Prone to Tears: Mrs Frantzen cries easily. Smestad does as well, though not as frequently.
• Sarcasm-Blind: A common theme with the majority of the characters, which is one reason for the tonal change. In Mot i brøstet, Karl was just one Deadpan Snarker among many and got into many a Snark-to-Snark Combat. In this show, he is as snarky as ever, but now he's stuck among people who take all his sarcasms literally. The only one who generally understands his snark is Mrs Frantzen, but she's too lazy to really care much.
• Serial Romeo: Vigdis is a female example. She's a notorious romantic who regularly comes up to Karl to introduce yet another new boyfriend, and she's always convinced that this time she's met The One.
• The Slacker: Mrs Frantzen, who is supposed to be Karl's cleaning lady, but spends more time lounging on his couch and watching TV than doing any actual cleaning.
• Ultimate Job Security: The people employed by the apartment building are not good at their jobs. Mrs Frantzen, the cleaning lady, is lazy, and Smestad, the janitor, is incompetent — and yet they stay in their jobs all through the series. Smestad is told to shape up or get fired a couple of times, but he never actually loses his job. Interestingly enough, on one occasion they swap jobs, and both turn out to be better at the other's job than at their own — Mrs Frantzen is a competent janitor and Smestad an efficient cleaner. And then they swap back.
• Wedding Finale: Just like Mot i Brøstet did, Karl & Co ends on a wedding — between Smestad and Mrs Frantzen. Though their relationship is built up a lot better than Henry and Elna's were, as their relationship and wedding plans are a major ongoing subplot in the third season.

Tusenårsfesten provides examples of:

• Amicable Exes: Karl and Målfrid may no longer be together, but there's no bad blood between them at all — though Karl is a little shocked when he learns that she has a new fiancée.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Trine is the only Mot i Brøstet character who doesn't appear in the special, because Hilde Lyrån was busy. Weirdly enough, she's not even referenced at all here; Nils appears to be alone with his four kids with no mention of where their mother is. Grete Kausland was also unavailable at the time, so Mrs Frantzen is likewise absent and unreferenced.
• Crossover Finale: It's the last hurrah for Mot i Brøstet and it's a crossover with its spin-off.
• Friend to All Children: Smestad gets along famously with Nils's kids.
• Foreign Fanservice: Målfrid's new fiancée Malcolm is African and very easy on the eyes. Vigdis immediately develops a crush — and is extremely thrilled to find out that he has three brothers.
• Generation Xerox: Nils now has four kids, and three of them follow this trope almost exactly: Two of his three sons are pretty much mini-versions of Nils, while his one daughter is like a junior version of Elna (she's even named after her grandmother). The final son is more of a mix of his father and grandmother, which essentially means he's half casual slob and half uptight Killjoy.
• Loony Fan: Elna is portrayed as one to Queen Elizabeth I, who (portrayed by actor Jeannette Charles) happens to be on the same flight as Elna and Henry. Elna tries to sneak into first class and gets up to all sorts of hijinks in order to get the Queen's autograph, but needless to say it doesn't work out. (She still brags to the others about meeting the Queen afterwards, though.)
• Millennium Bug: Joked about. In the intro, Smestad is trying to prepare for this by fixing the elevator, because if the elevator starts thinking it's 1900 the house inhabitants are screwed: "This house wasn't even here in 1900!"
• Mistaken for Gay: When Ulf hears that Karl and Nils used to live together, he thinks they were boyfriends. Nils thinks this is hilarious; Karl does not.
• Out of Focus: Henry doesn't do a whole lot in this special other than sit on the sidelines and snark at everyone else. This was probably because Arve Oppsahl wasn't in the best of health at the time.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: It's pretty obvious that Tore Ryen missed writing for Nils, and that it was a big deal to get Sven Nordin back for one last time, because he gets by far the most attention of the Mot i brøstet characters — arguably he gets the most attention of all the characters in the special.
• Theme Twin Naming: Not surprisingly, Nils's triplet sons are named "Ole, Dole & Doffen", the Norwegian names for Huey, Dewey and Louie.

Karl III provides examples of:

• Darker and Edgier: The series tries to be this, with a more satirical and cynical slant. Unfortinately, audiences just found it Bleaker and Duller.
• Genre Shift: From Studio Audience multi-camera sitcoms set in a World of Ham and featuring broad humor, to a subdued. single-cam Darker and Edgier satire. It doesn't work.
• Meaningful Name: Roy Butler... works as a butler.
• Servile Snarker: Roy Butler is a subtle and soft-spoken version.