Series / The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Top row, left to right: Hilary, Uncle Phil, Aunt Vivian, Geoffrey. Bottom row, L to R: Ashley, Will, Carlton.

"Now, this is a story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
An' I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air!"

— The first verse of the show's Expository Theme Tune

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is a sitcom that aired on NBC from 1990 to 1996, created as a vehicle for Will Smith, then known mostly as the popular rapper "The Fresh Prince", to get a break as a bankable actor.

Smith's character, a streetwise young man from Philadelphia that is also named Will Smith, is forced to move to Bel-Air, California with his rich relatives after he pisses off some gangsters. Or, as Will himself explains in the next verse....

"In West Philadelpha, born and raised
On the playground is where I spend most of my days!
Chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool
And all shootin' some B-Ball outside of the school!
When a couple of guys who were up to no good
Started makin' trouble in my neighborhood!
I got in one little fight, an' my mom got scared
She said, "You're movin' with your auntie an' uncle in Bel-Air!"

Needless to say, when he does move in with the Banks family, Hilarity Ensues.

The primary relationship is between Will and his uptight cousin Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro), who is about the same age. Will also gets on his Uncle Phil's (James Avery) nerves more than anyone else, balanced only by Phil's wife, Vivian (Janet Hubert-Whitten for the first three seasons, Darrined by Daphne Reid later). The younger daughter, Ashley (Tatyana Ali), looks up to Will and the older daughter, Hilary (Karyn Parsons), is usually too airheaded to really notice him. Rounding out the main cast is the Banks' butler, Geoffrey (Joseph Marcell), the snarkiest Servile Snarker this side of Alfred.

The show was unique in how it presents a major clash between a stock inner-city teenager and his affluent black family. Unlike The Cosby Show or Family Matters, Will frequently calls out his relatives' upper-class lifestyle, and even suggests that Carlton is white beneath the skin; this is phased out through Character Development when Will sees others discriminate against Carlton that way.

In 2019, a parody trailer for a Darker and Edgier drama reboot of the series unexpectedly caught Smith's attention, and he was impressed enough to announce he would be producing an actual series based on the idea. The new series, titled Bel-Air, was picked up for 2 seasons by Peacock and stars newcomer Jabari Banks. The original series became available to stream for the first time in 2020 on HBO Max; the service also released a Fresh Prince reunion special later in the year.

The series also shares a universe with sitcom In the House, with Uncle Phil, Carlton and Ashley making guest appearances on the show.

"I whistled for a cab, an' when it came near
The license plate said "Fresh" an' it had dice in the mirror
If anything I could say, this cab was rare
But I thought 'Nah, forget it. Yo holmes to Bel-Air...!'"

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This series features examples of the following tropes:

#-E

• The '90s: The feel of the decade is especially notable in the opening sequence for the show.
• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Jazz towards Hilary. Though she did genuinely acknowledge the times he stood up for her, she generally disliked him, and aside from those few moments, he didn't really do anything other than make it clear he wanted to sleep with her. However, it might have gone both ways at some point, as Jazz briefly got married and Hilary subconsciously vented her jealousy of his bride with comments like how she "wouldn't want to see a sweet guy like him get hurt" and threatening his fiancée to treat Jazz right.
  • Carlton:
    • In "Will Gets a Job", Carlton draws the Female Gaze of Ashley's awkward classmate and friend Tina, who struggles to conceal her attraction to him but fails miserably.
    • In "Striptease for Two", he gets a bit of karma for pawning his mother's bracelet as part of a get-rich-quick scheme. The pawn broker is very obviously attracted to him, and gets really pushy about it.
  • Will gets one in "Get a Job" via guest star Chris Rock, who plays both a comedian interested in appearing on Hilary's talk show and the comedian's hideous but very forward sister. The comic is considering not appearing on her show unless someone shows his sister around town, but Will finds his hands very full trying to keep her off, so he goes to lengths to try to get rid of her.
• Aborted Arc:
  • Jackie Ames, played by Tyra Banks, is introduced in Season 4 as one of Will's childhood friends and one of his old flames from his Philadelphia days. They partake in several chemistry-ridden arguments and witty battles throughout the first half of the season, hinting at a possible rekindling of their relationship and possibly giving Will his first stable girlfriend since moving to Bel-Air. However, after Will and Jackie's boyfriend, Hank Farley, engage in a drinking contest over her and their threatened manliness, Jackie gets fed up and asks for Carlton to take her home. She is never seen again after this, with no real explanation as to why she left and where she went other than a passing mention by Will that she's away.
  • Season 6 seems to disregard plot developments from Season 5 such as Will and Lisa's relationship and Vy Smith marrying Lisa's father, Fred, as both are shown to be single and flirting with other people with no mention of Lisa or Fred. However, the last scene from Season 5, that has since been removed from syndication, shows that Will and Lisa broke up presumably because they were now stepsiblings.
• Academic Athlete:
  • Will, at least in Season 1. He is his prep school's star basketball player (and a bit of a general goof off), but is also stated to actually be an avid student. He once mentioned how, while growing up in West Philadelphia, a friend had to stop bullies from attacking him for carrying around his textbooks. This is played with from Season 2 onwards, where he's portrayed as a slacker who is not interested in his academic studies, but is still Brilliant, but Lazy and manages to score higher than Carlton on a standardized test.
  • In "My Brother's Keeper", Marcus Stokes, who acts as a basketball rival for Will, talks about how while he's willing to use a scholarship to get into college, he's meticulously planning out his education, since he already understands how low the odds of being picked up as a professional athlete are, and wants to have something to do afterwards even if it happens.
• The Ace: Will. Which isn't to say he can't muck up, but he's fast-thinking and fast-talking enough to get out of trouble eventually. He's also athletic, popular, a Chick Magnet, and at least in the first two seasons gets great grades without even trying.
• Accidental Pornomancer: Though Will himself is definitely The Casanova, there has been an occasional story about a woman who just wouldn't take no for an answer, or whom sleeping with was just an all-around bad idea. For example, in "M Is for the Many Things She Gave Me", the latter situation happens concerning his girlfriend's mother.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: In "What's Will Got to Do with It?" and "The Client", the two-part episode where Ashley becomes a pop star, the fame quickly goes to her head and she suddenly starts being mean to the entire family, even though she'd never done this before. The entire family naturally gets upset at her suddenly snobbish behavior (except for Carlton, who tries to be her sycophant). At the end of the episode, when her short-lived pop career crashes and burns, Ashley realizes how the fame went to her head and goes back to normal.
• Action Dad: Phil has several of these moments:
  • In "Mistaken Identity", when Phil sees that Will and Carlton staged an obvious Engineered Public Confession, he goes to the police station. When the racist cop refuses to let them out of their cell, Phil unleashes a verbal ass-whoopin' the likes of which the poor bastard had never seen.
  • In "Banks Shot", he out-hustles a pool hustler who tried to cheat Will out of thousands of dollars.
  • When the parents of Ashley's school bully advise that they seek psychiatric help for her in "The Mother of All Battles". Long story short, shit gets real.
  • When Will's father Lou shows up in "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse". As Lou is preparing to leave without Will and he asks Phil to let him know, Phil unleashes a verbal beatdown on Lou.
• Action Figure Justification: In "Soul Train" Carlton is trying to practice to audition to be on the show, but Will wants him to stay away, because he's hoping to land the hosting job, and is afraid Carlton will embarrass him.
  Carlton: And they're going to give you the co-host job based on what? Your love of Don Cornelius dolls?
  Will: It's not a doll, man, it's an action figure. And you got no business even being on the Soul Hyundai let alone the Soul Train.
• Actor Allusion:
  • "Will, there's something you have to learn. Sometimes, parents just don't understand." (cue Aside Glance)
  • "Will, you're only seventeen. You don't have a rep yet." (cue Aside Glance)
  • This bit from "As the Will Turns", after Will's been cast in a soap opera:
  Uncle Phil: Oh, please! They hired you, somebody who's never acted a day in his life, to star in a network TV show?
  Will: It happens! [cue Aside Glance]
  • Another example from the above episode is how Will backs out when he learns the "Jody" his character is in love with is actually a man, referencing his infamous turn as Paul in Six Degrees of Separation^note though the character Paul is gay, Smith reportedly refused to do a kissing scene with another man, saying it would "gross out" his fans.
  • "Vivian, you are so naive. You'd believe that boy if he told you he was a rap star whose latest album just went platinum!"^note DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's album Homebase went platinum in 1991.
  • In response to a character's truthful claim, Will sarcastically snaps, "Yeah, and I just won a Grammy".^note "Summertime" won DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince their second Grammy in 1991.
  • Carlton to Will and Jazz: "I can understand why you're jealous. After all, you two have no musical talent whatsoever!" (cue Will and Jazz looking at Carlton like he's crazy)
  • "Father Knows Best" has Hilary and Carlton arguing over the correct pronunciation of "Porsche". Alfonso Ribiero was in Silver Spoons, wherein his character's father and Ricky Schroeder's character's father had a very similar argument.
  • Any time Carlton dances, it's hilariously dorky. Unless it's to Michael Jackson, in which case he busts out moves worthy of Jackson himself; Ribiero was a backup dancer for Jackson before he was cast on The Fresh Prince.
  • Eric, Hilary's boyfriend of the week in a second season episode, is played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner. He says "Everyone at dinner? I thought that only happened on The Cosby Show."
  • Derek, Ashley's intelligent yet charming boyfriend (played by Jaleel White) is pretty much Steve Urkel in his Stefan persona.
  • Cloudcuckoolander Judge Robertson, played by Sherman Hemsley, gets in a heated argument with Phil once he learns that the latter's running against him for Superior Court Justice, culminating with Robertson shouting "Lionel, show him the door!" before walking up the Bankses' stairs. Hemsley showing up later in the run to reprise his role as George Jefferson makes this hilarious in hindsight.
  • In "Mistaken Identity", Will briefly appears dressed as Freddy Kruger. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince actually made a song about Freddy Kruger years beforehand, and infamously got sued by New Line Cinema because of it.
  • Nicky complains to Will that his father won't allow him to watch Bad Boys (1995). Will's response is, naturally, "Whatcha gonna do?"
  • "What's Will Got to Do With It?" sees Will, having just been booted out as Ashley's music manager, being evicted from his high-rise office by his landlord, who exclaims "I've got the worst luck with tenants!" Said landlord was played by Norman Fell, best known as a certain other long-suffering landlord — Mr. Roper — on Three's Company.
• Adam Westing: "I can take it out on anyone I want! I'm William Shatner!"
• An Aesop: Usually every other episode has one.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: This occasionally applies depending on the situation:
  • Will's bad boy routine has led to him getting many women. On the other hand, there are times when women act repulsed and turn him down. In one episode, his date rejects him in favor of the more sensitive Carlton.
  • Hilary's disgust towards Jazz shows she's not generally into bad boys.
• All Just a Dream: In "Hex and the Single Guy", Will inadvertently gets the family hexed when he mocks the fortune teller doing a séance to communicate with Hilary's dead fiancé, Trevor. The end of the episode leads to a Or Was It a Dream? moment when it plays out exactly like the beginning, much to Will's horror.
• All There in the Manual: The extended version of the theme song, which had six verses and only plays for the first three episodes, reveals that Will flew first-class across the country. The full version of the theme (with a full eight verses) elaborates even further, revealing that Will got out at LAX, and thought the limo driver sent there to pick him up was a cop looking for him, so he hailed a cab. The shortened version of the song (which cuts the middle four verses, jumping straight from his mom telling him he's going to Bel-Air to his calling a cab) doesn't reveal how Will arrived in Los Angeles.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Phil's mother is like this. Bonus points for the fact that Phil is middle-aged, and she manages to humiliate him in front of his children. They all think it's hilarious.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: When Judge Robertson dies, everyone starts badmouthing him at his funeral. Will tries to stop them, and when asked, tells them he's the one who killed Robertson.^note Robertson died from a heart attack after Will told him to drop dead. Everyone immediately starts applauding.
• Annoying Patient: Vivian, near the end of her pregnancy.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • When Will witnesses a murder and is put into witness protection with the Banks family, they are angry with him for it, until he calls Phil out on it:
  Will: What was I supposed to do? Just let Duke's killer get away?
  • Played for Laughs when Phil tells Will, who just quit being a car salesman, that what he does for a living shouldn't just be about money, but pride, personal fulfillment, and giving something valuable to the world:
  Will: You really believe that, Uncle Phil?
  Phil: Yes, son, I do.
  Will: Then how do you explain being a lawyer?
  (Phil is stunned silent.)
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • "Striptease for Two" ends with Will and Carlton explaining to Phil everything they did, which was insider trading (federal offense), pawned off Vivian's diamond bracelet (grand larceny), stripped to get the money back (indecent exposure), and then, finally, they didn't even get the latch on the bracelet fixed. And to top it all off...
  Will: I guess this probably isn't the best time to tell him we ran over the mailbox...
  • In "Robbing the Banks", the Banks get robbed and believe that an ex-con Will hired as a handyman was responsible, only for an officer to come by and tell him that it was really Uncle Phil's law clerk, who was fed up with Phil treating him like a slave. As the officer reads from the confession:
  Officer: Well, according to him, he's sick and tired of getting you bagels, it's not his job to iron your robes, and he said you unfairly accused him of calling 1-900-HORNY.
  Carlton: ...The man is obviously a deviant.
• As Himself: William Shatner. Unfortunately for him, Carlton is a big fanboy.
• As You Know: Played for Laughs when Will gets into an argument with a neighbor who complains about the Bankses' Christmas decorations, and states that the fight will be easy based on how the person sounded. When the neighbor walks in, Will freezes with an Oh, Crap! face as he recognizes him. This works brilliantly for people who watch the show later or just didn't know exactly who he was at the time. Geoffrey turns this into a funny moment, having heard Will's remarks about easily beating him in a fight:
  Geoffrey: Mister Evander Holyfield. (beat) The Undisputed Heavyweight Champion.
• Aside Glance: Often in the first two seasons, courtesy of Will. Always intentional. It is even lampshaded once, in the episode "It Had to Be You":
  Janet: William! What are you looking at?
• Asshole Victim:
  • After Judge Robertson spent his entire campaign lying and smearing his protégé Phil, it's kind of satisfying to see him not only drop dead but everyone is glad he died as they actually came to his funeral to make sure that he really was dead.
  • A dark aversion. In the episode where Will confesses to marrying a girl with the intent of marriage, Phil shows disappointment, and also threatens to hurt Will, in a comedy sequence, set three years later, finds a vicious way to hurt Will. This obviously doesn't happen and is just a joke.
• Attractiveness Isolation: Invoked in "Soul Train" when Hilary complains about being the only one without a date ("I'm a beautiful celebrity and men are intimidated by me").
• Author Appeal: Considering how frequently it was referenced, it's safe to assume at least one writer was a huge fan of The Flintstones.
• Awful Wedded Life: Jazz ends up marrying an ex-con named Jewel and they're absolutely smitten with one another, even trying for a baby. Unfortunately, her domineering and sassy personality coupled with his history of playing the field (even continuing to pursue Hilary a couple of episodes after their wedding) caused problems in the relationship and it's eventually implied that the two of them went their separate ways.
• Bad Future: In "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," Vivian leaves Phil when his political career leaves no time for her. The Banks siblings' each imagine their own future where Vivian and Phil don't get back together:
  • Ashley imagines he's become a lonely, pathetic hermit, while she's still stuck working in a Burger Fool in her middle age.
  • Carlton imagines Phil becoming a Corrupt Politician who would force his son to commit felonies on his behalf, and then throw him under a bus while denying responsibility.
  • Averted with Will and Hilary: The latter just imagines some guy would fall for her if her parents split up, while in the former's imagination, he becomes a middle-aged player.
  • Geoffrey gets his own Imagine Spot in the scene, where he imagines that for some reason, if Vivian and Phil split up, he will become the master and Phil will become his butler.
• Bad Guys Play Pool: "Banks Shots" is dedicated to Will going to a pool hall and getting into debt with thugs, despite Phil's warnings. Phil has to show up to bail him out. It turns out Phil is a pool playing master. He warned Will to stay away because he knows how bad the pool bars get.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: Ashley gets a fast food job in Season 6, and laments having to wear the "same stupid uniform day after day." Geoffrey looks down at his "butler suit" and comments "Gee, wouldn't that suck?"
• Beat Without a "But": Will and Carlton compete for the assistant talent coordinator position on Hilary's talk show, with Carlton immediately telling producer Werner his work experience, education, and other qualifications. When Werner asks Will for his:
  Will: Well, you know, I mean, I don't like to brag...
  Werner: But?
  Will: Oh that's it, I just don't like to brag.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: This pretty much sums up Will's relationship with Jackie.
• Berserk Button: Phil, Will and Carlton all share a common Berserk Button when anyone implies that the Bankses are Category Traitors and somehow less black because of their upper-class lifestyle.
• Bested at Bowling: There's more at stake than mere ego in "I, Bowl Buster". Carlton is thinking about forgoing college to become a professional bowler, so his family must convince him it's a grievous mistake.
• Beware the Silly Ones: His short stature and overall behavior aside, Carlton actually managed to knock out Will in more than one occasion, whether it be by one punch, or even a blow from his elbow. He once even let Will take a fall from a treehouse by releasing the ladder after Will had started descending it, this after having taken yet another dig at Carlton's height. And then there's the time that Carlton meets a bunch of Will's old friends, all of them tough guys, and it doesn't take long for Carlton to be acting and talking as tough and badass as them, having earned their respect and a place in their crew, which leaves Will absolutely baffled.
• Big Fancy House: The Bankses' mansion features both a swimming pool and a pool house, the latter of which is used as an apartment in later years.
• Big "NO!":
  • Will shouting "MAMA NOOOOOOOOOO!" when he finds out that his mother and Lisa's father are sleeping together. He later does this again after he accidentally burns the kitchen down.
  • Carlton does this when Will implies that he killed Lisa in a remote cabin.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Will says this to Carlton in "Day Damn One", cutting off Carlton's explanation as to why he ratted out Will as the one who defaced the alumni desk at school. Will clearly thinks Carlton's "for your own good" excuse is bullshit:

  Will: You're not worried about my own good, you're just worried about yourself.
  Carlton: It may seem like that to you now, but one day you'll -
  Will: Oh, Carlton, SHUT UP!

• Big, Thin, Short Trio: Phil, Will, and Carlton, respectively.
• Big "YES!": This is Carlton's reaction in "Will Steps Out" when he receives Will's chicktionary.
• Bigot with a Badge:
  • In "Mistaken Identity", Carlton has his first encounter with institutionalized racism when he and Will are pulled over by a cop for driving a borrowed Mercedes in a white neighborhood. Despite Carlton's insistence that no prejudice was involved in the incident, he is clearly shaken up by Will telling him just how flawed the justice system is.
  • "Robbing The Banks" has a more lighthearted reference to police racism. When the Bankses' house is robbed, the police are naturally alerted. Will is amazed at how fast they responded to the call and jokes that "they must have thought we was white folks".
• Black and Nerdy:
  • Mostly Carlton, although apparently Will collects Transformers figures and reads comic books.
  • Will was bullied and ostracized at school in Philly for actually studying.
  • Those Beast Wars figures were toy-only characters, properly named, from the first line of Beast Wars toys, before the show had even aired. Historically, the Transformers franchise was nearly dead at this time, and it was the Beast Wars show that revived it. Someone working on the show (Will Smith, himself; several of those are his personal figures) had to be a fan to get that specific.
• Black Comedy:
  • In "Asses to Ashes", everyone who shows up to Judge Robertson's funeral celebrates his death.
  • In "Where There's a Will, There's a Way (Part 2)", Hilary's fiancé, Trevor, is killed during his "extreme" proposal (bungee jumping).
  • An in-universe situation revolves around Will getting shot during a robbery. He spends most of his time in the hospital making jokes about it and his overall demeanor seems to be playful. However, it's later revealed that it's just an act and Will is suffering emotionally from the incident.
• Black Comedy Pet Death: In "Hare Today...", Phil accidentally sits on top of a shoe box containing Nicky's pet bunny, killing it. Him looking inside the box and reacting in horror, and then telling Nicky is all Played for Laughs. Nicky is untraumatized, accepting that it is a part of life, but comically notes, "What a way to go", which is a joke about Phil being fat.
• Black Gal on White Guy Drama: In "Guess Who's Coming to Marry?", Will's aunt Janice is revealed to be engaged to a white man. She never told her family he's white before she introduced him because she knew how they'd react.
• Black Is Bigger in Bed: This scene from “Mother’s Day,”^note The episode in which newlyweds Jazz and Jewel, who are struggling to conceive a child, ask Will to be their sperm donor. when Will shows the Bankses his oversized, bronzed baby shoes:
  Ashley: These are your baby shoes?
  Will: Yeah, I had big feet... Well, you know what they say about a guy with big feet!
  Ashley: [smiling]: No, what?
  Uncle Phil: [Death Glare]
  Will: They... they be sayin... 'Damn, those are some big feet!'
• Black Republican: The Banks family are well-off Republicans, contrast Will's more liberal common man beliefs based on Malcolm X.
• Blatant Lies: In "Father Knows Best", Will arrives at Ashley's parent-teacher conference pretending he's her father, "Raoul", complete with pipe and fake mustache, so that she won't have to tell her parents she has enrolled at a public school. When Miss Sharpe uncovers Will's deception, the following exchange takes place:
  Miss Sharpe: That's a fake mustache!
  Will: No, it's not!
  Miss Sharpe: [rips mustache off] Yes it is!
  Will: No, it's not!
  Miss Sharpe: Look, I don't know who you are, but I'm calling your real parents right now.
  Ashley: Will!
  Will: No, it's not!
  Ashley: Miss Sharpe...
  Will: It's not!
• Blown Across the Room:
  • This happens to Geoffrey in "Will's Misery" when an electric shoe buffer he's using short-circuits.
  • Jazz does this to himself with a defibrillator in "A Decent Proposal".
• Bluff Worked Too Well: In "Will's Misery", Will goes to a remote cabin with his crush Lisa. Lisa proceeds to scare the bejeezus out of him by steadily acting more and more unhinged, even tying him to a chair. Will breaks free while she's gone, only to learn this was all a prank by her sorority, payback for Will's philandering ways. He also learns that cousin Carlton had a hand in the set up. After the main plot has been resolved, Will returns home, confronting Carlton with a harried and disheveled appearance as he tells of the events at the cabin, omitting the revelation of the prank in favor of insinuating he'd killed Lisa in self-defense. This leads to one of the funniest events in the show's run as Carlton's actor, Alfonso Ribeiro, decides to take a sledgehammer to the fourth wall by tearing across all the sets used in the episode and even into the audience while screaming "No! No, no, no, no, no! No!"
• Blunt "No": At the country club, Will sees a beautiful girl who happens to be the daughter of Dr. Mumford. Mumford has the reputation of giving out plenty of Blunt Nos, which earned him the moniker Dr. No, to anyone he's not interested in meeting and declines guys who try to ask out his daughter. Feeling his street-wise personality won't go over with him, Will takes lessons from Carlton on how to act more preppy to impress him.
• Book Ends:
  • The show starts with Will moving out west to attend school in a better environment and ends with the Bankses moving east while Will stays in California to finish his education.
  • The opening moments of the pilot episode feature Will trying to get Geoffrey to call him "Will" instead of "Master William". The closing moments of the series finale has Geoffrey initially saying goodbye to him as "Master William", then finally relenting and calling him "Will".
  • The first season ends with Will and Carlton going all big brother on Ashley's first date. Halfway through the final season, they do the exact same thing with her current boyfriend upon overhearing that they plan to sleep together.
  • A second season episode has Ashley hitting puberty and developing curiosity about sex. There's a scene with her and her girlfriends in her room, deciding what to wear on a date, and later seeking advice from Hilary and Will. All of this is repeated in the above-mentioned episode when she's debating having sex with her boyfriend.
• Both Sides Have a Point:
  • In "Vying For Attention", Vy tells Will that she has needs, too and that if she wants to date a new man (Robert), she has a right to. However, Will points out that she practically started a new family without him and that he feels like a third wheel to Vy and Robert — which is understandable, seeing as although Robert is making an honest attempt to befriend Will, Vy is using her trip more to show off Robert to the family rather than as a bonding opportunity between her, Robert, and Will.
  • In the finale, Will and Carlton are passive-aggressively taunting the other for what they've achieved in life. Though the scene is Played for Laughs, neither one is wrong. Carlton correctly points out that Will's lack of fulfillment is largely his own fault for focusing more on having fun than preparing for his future. Will counters with the equally valid point that Carlton was so focused on his studies he neglected having a social life and after high school had virtually no friends outside of Will.
• Bound and Gagged: Played for Laughs. During a montage in which Will and Carlton are renovating an old apartment, Will gets fed up with Carlton bossing him around so he sticks him to a wall and gags him with an apple he was eating for good measure.
• Brainless Beauty: Hilary's a pretty, rich, spoiled girl who also happens to be an utter airhead and basically incapable of doing anything except shopping and spending her father's money. She casually asks her father for $300 in the pilot episode, gets loads of various jobs with unexplained luck, and eventually gains her own television show as a talk show host.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter:
  • Hilary, although she's in her twenties.
  • Ashley becomes one during the last two or three seasons.
  • Lady Penelope.
• Break the Haughty: Done to Carlton a few times, mostly in the first season when he continues to look down his nose at Will's rough background. Ironically, it also happens to Will when he looks down on Carlton for not being "black" or "street" enough.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Invoked by Will after being abandoned yet again by his father. He tells Phil that he did pretty well without him and that he's going to marry a fine girl and have great kids who he will never abandon.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: One of the best TV shows as far as incorporating this from time to time:
  Will: If we so rich, [camera pans up to studio lights] why we can't afford no ceiling?
  invoked Jazz: So, who's playing the mother this year?
  • There's this gem during the first episode of Season 4, which was when the actress of Aunt Vivian was switched with another. Jazz was talking with Vivian, and is staring at her intently, before finally uttering:
  Jazz: Y'know Miss Banks...since you had that baby...there's somethin' different about you...
  • In one instance during The Tag, Will counter-pranks Carlton by claiming that he killed Lisa, a woman who would later become his girlfriend. She was initially supposed to embarrass him due to how he treats women. The "revelation" causes Carlton to run out of the house shrieking. The camera follows him for over a minute as he runs around the various sets, passes through the studio audience and eventually exits the studio where he hugs Will.
  • In one episode, the family goes to visit West Philadelphia and Will hunts down one of the guys who gave him trouble. When Carlton asks specifically whom he's looking for, Will says:
    Will: The dude that be spinnin' me over his head in the opening credits.
  • In "Sleepless in Bel-Air", Will spends the entire episode trying to cram for a midterm, only to not ever get past the first page. At the end of the episode, he tells Carlton that he got an 85 from cheating off another girl. However, after Carlton asks "You're not really gonna let people think you cheated?", Will decides to redo the scene so that he admits he failed, espousing An Aesop over the importance of studying (although it's painfully clear that Will getting an 85 from cheating is what actually happened). He even gives an Aside Glance afterwards.
  • The fourth season ends with Will deciding to move back to Philadelphia and be with his mother again. The fifth season begins with NBC network executives hunting him down, kidnapping him and forcing him to come back to Bel-Air so the show can continue.
    Executive: What does this contract say?
    Will: "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."
    Executive: That's right. Not Philadelphia. Bel-Air.
    Will: Well, yeah, man, but y'know, y'know, my moms—
    Executive: Get in the van.
    [The executive picks up Will and throws him into the van, labelled "NBC Star Retrieval Unit"]
    Executive: [to van driver] Yo homes, to Bel-Air.
  • When Jazz is astonished to see a much older Nicky, who was just a baby the previous season, Will turns to the audience and makes a growing motion with his hands.
    Jazz: Man, I'm going back to the streets where things make sense!
• Briefcase Full of Money: Appears in "To Thine Own Self Be Blue...and Gold" where Will becomes an intern for a family friend and is told to deliver a bribe to a local politician.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Even though Will acts like a slacker, he is shown to be this on several occasions:
  • In one episode, he scores higher than Carlton, someone who usually gets very good grades, on a standardized test. Will scores in the 91st percentile whereas Carlton scores in the 90th. The thing is, Will didn't even study for the test whereas Carlton studied his ass off. Naturally, Carlton is upset. At the end of the episode, Will calms him down by pointing out that they each have their own strengths — Will did better on some parts of the test whereas Carlton did better on other parts — and their total scores are only one point apart. Also, he says, it's an aptitude test, not something studying ought to help with.
  • Will wins over a Princeton recruiter by solving a Rubik's cube in only a few seconds.
  • Will shows an adeptness for poetry and the piano.
• Broken Aesop:
  • In "Just Say Yo", the moral should obviously be "Don't do drugs". However, as Will never wanted Carlton to do any drugs in the first place, it was actually Carlton's own fault for taking pills from an unlabeled container. The unbelievably stupid way Carlton acts on his own account marks even more important messages: "Don't just take pills when you aren't even exactly sure what it is!", "Don't take pills from an unlabeled container!", and "Don't just assume the dose of pills you need to take!" The Aesop is not really about the willful use of illegal drugs at all.
  • "Vying For Attention" had Will learn to be okay with Vy dating even when Will's not in her life as much. Her next appearance in "Mommy Nearest" reveals she broke up with him because of how Will felt about him, even though he grew to like Robert after giving him a chance. She claims she wasn't sure if she wasn't sure wanted to marry him, which seems odd because she expressed vast hopes of marriage in "Vying For Attention" when Robert wasn't in earshot
• Brutal Honesty: Happens after Will and Carlton come clean about things they did to each other:
  Will: Uh, Aunt Viv, in keeping with this whole honesty thing, this oatmeal kinda tastes like drywall with raisins in it. And Uncle Phil, you shouldn't wear silk no more, because it's like, when big people wear silk—
  [Will gets dope slapped by Philip]
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The bully who attacked Will and got him sent out to Bel-Air in the first place. He's only able to remember Will after Will bounces a basketball off his head.
• Butt-Monkey: Carlton falls into this at times, though Jazz gets into the act.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": A variation in "Take My Cousin, Please", when Will tells Hilary the reason why she should not back out on her date with Professor Burton because of his mole,^note Will points out to her minutes earlier at the opera theater that they and their dates go to that Hilary is really looking for a reason not to move on from Trevor. that Will, who's on academic probation, wanted her to keep seeing him in order to get a passing grade on a test and avoid expulsion:
  Hilary: So, you've been using me just to get a good grade?!
  Will: No! Not at all! A little.
• The Cameo: Often combined with Actor Allusion:
  • Wayne Newton as a Las Vegas casino manager.
  • B.B. King as a down-on-his-luck blues singer.
  • Isaac Hayes as an Isaac Hayes-impersonating minister.
• The Casanova: Will and Jazz.
• Cast as a Mask: The "Fresh Prince: The Movie" episode has John "Fingers" O'Neill (Brad Garrett) appear twice. The first time is in a story about Will and the Banks family going into the Witness Protection Program, the second time in person (when Fingers comes to hassle Will in Bel-Air, Will runs off in terror). The second time, "Fingers" unmasks and reveals himself to be Jazz, out for payback after Will and Carlton used the story to hustle Jazz out of his cash at poker.
• Casting Gag:
  • In "Love at First Fight", Will dates a college student played by Jasmine Guy, who is best known for her role as Whitley on the college sitcom A Different World.
  • In "The Wedding Show (Psyche!)", Will and Lisa run off to Las Vegas in order to elope by having a Shaft-themed wedding. In the end, they decide against it. As they are leaving, Will says this:
  Will: By the way, dude, your Isaac Hayes impression STINKS!!
  Minister: (Isaac Hayes) I-I-I dunno, I thought it was pretty good.
• Cathartic Chores: In "Home Is Where the Heart Attack Is", Carlton, after hearing that his father had a heart attack and is now in the hospital, obsessively cleans the kitchen to avoid having to see him in such a vulnerable state:
  Will: Carlton, what's the matter with you, man? Y-Your father just had a heart attack...
  Carlton: You don't know that! It could be acute indigestion! Even doctors have made that mistake! Does that window look smudged to you?
  Will: Carlton, you're going down to that hospital if I have to knock you out and call an ambulance!
  Carlton: [holds up a trigger bottle] You come near me, I'll spray!
• Celebrity Lie:
  • Early on, Hilary often claimed to be friends with a lot of celebrities as part of her activism and such. By "Deck the Halls", Will gets so sick of it that he tells her to stop lying about it - only to later be surprised to find the trope inverted. Both Evander Holyfield and later Ronald Reagan stop by the house due to the episode's events and personally greet her.
  • In "'Twas the Night Before Christening," Will lies that he's friends with Boyz II Men and promises to get them for Nicky's christening. He didn't know it, but he actually did have some contact with Boyz II Men: he stole Nathan's girlfriend long before they became famous. As a result, they throw Will out of the studio, though they eventually forgive him and sing for Nicky's sake and because it is Christmas time.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Will not only repeatedly references The Cosby Show, and Malcolm Jamal-Warner specifically, but in one episode, he tells a detailed story claiming that Jamal-Warner is a close, personal friend of his who calls him for advice on women. A later episode has Jamal-Warner playing Hilary's boyfriend Eric, who makes a reference to watching The Cosby Show.
  • In "Kiss My Butler", Will references Ben Vereen by name when he talks about Geoffrey's attire. Vereen would later portray Will's father, Lou, in "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse".
  • Ashley is shown to be a fan of both Tevin Campbell and in-universe teen heartthrob Little T (who was played by Campbell).
  • George and Louise Jefferson make a couple of appearances despite earlier episodes having established The Jeffersons as being a fictional show in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air universe. Also, Sherman Hemsley had already made several appearances as Judge Robertson, who at one point made an Actor Allusion joke.
  • In another episode, Hilary references a magazine that has "that supermodel Tyra" (who was then going by Only One Name) on the cover. During the show's fourth season, Tyra played Jackie Ames, one of Will's love interests.
  • Will Smith himself was not exempt from this one. The episode "Hare Today..." opens with Nicky lamenting that he is not allowed to see Bad Boys (1995).
  • "Save the Last Trance for Me" has Geoffrey noting that he got one of his recipes from the "Gary Coleman Cookbook." Coleman himself appeared as his most famous character, alongside Conrad Bain, in the series finale "I, Done".
  • There are several moments when Steve Urkel from Family Matters is mentioned. Jaleel White who is well-known for portraying Urkel appeared in a Season 6 episode as Ashley's close friend/boyfriend.
  • Multiple references were made to Queen Latifah after she'd already made two separate appearances on the show.
  • Will's favourite movie is Shaft. Richard Roundtree made a guest appearance in the first season. Isaac Hayes also showed up as a Vegas Shaft-themed wedding chapel minister, singing a modified version of the theme.
  • Quincy Jones has one abstract reference, and he served as a producer for the show.
  • Sometimes this would even happen in the span of one episode — "Viva Lost Wages" sees Carlton reference Wayne Newton at the beginning of his and Will's trip to Vegas, and later on the two have a meeting with a casino owner... played by Wayne Newton.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The series started off as a lighthearted comedy about the young, funky, foul-mouthed Will Smith living with his rich, stuffy relatives in Bel-Air. The series went on to explore increasingly controversial topics, like racial discrimination ("Mistaken Identity"), fatherhood and abandonment ("Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse"), gun violence ("Bullets Over Bel-Air"), alcoholism ("You've Got to Be a Football Hero"), and even drug use ("Just Say Yo"). The later episodes included several "serious moments" where actor Will Smith cries, screams, or breaks down. There was often no laugh track to end the show, opting instead for a somber, silent cut to the credits.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • The first season had Carlton as a pompous Smug Snake rival to Will, and would more likely provide commentary to Will's wacky adventures than participating in them. Starting in Season 2, after being a Butt-Monkey and having emotional breakdowns, he became the lovable nerdy goofball we all know today, while him and Will became best buds doing almost everything together.
  • In the first season, Hilary is portrayed as a shallow, spoiled, socialite and environmental activist. Season 2 she became just shallow and spoiled, but with more emphasis on her trying to understand the concept of having a job.
  • In the first season, Will, while still being goofy and fun-loving, he was also stated to be a hard-working good student and was apparently bullied at school in Philly for actually studying. In early Season 2, he is Brilliant, but Lazy and manages to score higher than Carlton on a standardized test, without even studying. In Season 3, ("The Alma Matter"), he's stated to be a mediocre student. In college, he's still portrayed as a slacker, introducing his professor to Hilary to improve his failing class or cheating to get a good grade.
  • Phillip was a lot more annoyed with Will in the beginning while Vivian was always defending him. In later seasons Phillip's annoyance with Will was downplayed so that it could explode in spectacular fashion, while Vivian became a lot more sassy and equally willing to put Will in his place.
  • In the first season, Geoffrey was very respectful and gentlemanly, but he eventually becomes a cynical Deadpan Snarker who openly complains about his job with the Banks family, and he's far more prone to making sarcastic remarks.
  • The Banks family in general was a lot more posh, preferring a weekly tea party, listening to classical music and obsessing over Will ruining their image. This was slowly minimized and they seemed more down-to-Earth with more relatable family issues.
• Childhood Brain Damage: Will asks Carlton if he was deprived of oxygen.
• Children Are Innocent: Well, Nicky anyway. Cousin Bobby, however...
• Chronic Villainy: Geoffrey switches back and forward between plotting against and hating the family and feeling genuine affection for them throughout the series.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Toni, Hilary's friend, disappeared after the first season. Will's friends Tyriq and Cornflake disappeared after the second season. Jackie was seemingly a more long term love interest for Will in the fourth season, but just disappeared halfway through as Carlton took over the campus student union. After that, this happened to basically anyone who wasn't Jazz, Vy, Helen, Werner (who only appeared in the final season), or a member of the main cast. Hattie returns in the final season, but prior to that she hadn't been seen since Season 2.
• Clark Kent Outfit: Carlton may be short, but he could still make a few men feel jealous.
• Clip Show: Every Season (except for Season 2 for some reason) had one.
• Clockwork Prediction: In "To Thine Own Self Be Blue... and Gold", Will takes an intern job that Carlton passed due to it not paying. Will flaunts the perks of the jobs in Carlton's face who heads off in a huff. Once offscreen, Will predicts what Carlton is doing up until he hears Carlton's scream due to him seeing the company Porsche.
• Cloudcuckoolander: All of them have their moments, except Vivian and Ashley.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Carlton and Will believe themselves to be this to each other.
• Cock Fight: The midpoint of a two-parter has Carlton and Will vying for the attention of the same woman.
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: A variant in "Be My Baby Tonight", when Ashley asks Will about sex, he suddenly hears double entendres everywhere. When Ashley's boyfriend comes in for their date, he asks if she's ready. Then, on the TV, Bob Eubanks is heard asking "Where is the most unusual place you've made whoopee?" Then, when Will turns on the radio, all that comes on is the song "I Wanna Sex You Up". Carlton comes in and says he's late for his date with his girlfriend who can "tie a knot with her tongue". You get the picture.
• Colonel Bogey March: "The Peacock Strut", the fight song for ULA.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Geoffrey has his moments. A good example of this is when Vivian is horrified when Will walks in the door with his long-lost father:
  Vivian: Will, honey, you should have called. You really should have called.
  Will: But I called and told Geoffrey to tell you...
  Geoffrey: Mm, I thought it would be more fun this way. And I was right!
• Comedic Work, Serious Scene: This is a very comedic show that even breaks the Fourth Wall at times. In the episode Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse, Will's father returns after 14 years, and Will is heartbroken when he leaves again.
• Compressed Abstinence: In one episode, Phil attempts to lose weight, and he and Vivian force the entire family to be more health conscious as well.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the cold open of "Will's Misery", Vivian and Phil are admiring an artwork of a man literally carrying the world on his shoulders while setting up for an art auction. If you look closely during "Will Steps Out", you can see the same painting hanging in the living room.
  • In "Burnin' Down The House" Will accidentally burns down the kitchen. In the next episode the kitchen is back to normal and nobody comments on it, but around the place are tools and materials that imply it's on the final stages of being rebuilt.
• Cool Old Lady: Hattie Banks, Phil's mother, to the point where Will loves hanging out with her.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: In-Universe example when Will brings up the episode of The Cosby Show, "Where Theo drops out of school." Only it wasn't Theo, but Denise.
• Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Will and Carlton trick Geoffrey into thinking he's won the lottery, causing him to cheerfully dance around and call everyone out before the truth is revealed. In a variation, while everyone forgives him (the boys take most of the blame), he's too embarrassed to return, and is the one that needs to be coaxed back.
• Daddy Didn't Show: Well, he did, but only to let Phil and Vivian know that he wasn't taking Will with him after all.
• Darker and Edgier: Starting around Season 4, the show began veering this territory with plot lines like Carlton losing his virginity to a married, albeit separated, woman, Will nearly losing his sanity after being hexed (although that turned out to be All Just a Dream), Carlton being subjected to brutal hazing for "not being black enough", Hilary posing for Playboy despite her father being against it, Phil having a heart attack, Hilary having to come to terms with her fiancé's death, and Will nearly dying after getting drunk at a party. That was just the first half of Season 4.
• Deadpan Snarker: Geoffrey, who, depending on the episode, is a total smartarse, or simply plays off the next half-baked plan from Hilary. The rest of the family sometimes snarks back.
• Dead Pet Sketch: "Hare Today..." does this with a rabbit belonging to Nicky. Hilary buys a replacement rabbit that looks nothing like the dead rabbit.
• Delicious Daydream: In one episode, Phil's family put him on a strict diet but he eventually gives up when he has a fantasy about a turkey feast.
• Denser and Wackier: Though it wasn't too straight-laced to begin with, the show began heading into this territory starting around season three.
• Description Cut: Will Smith is hosting a behind the scenes episode that starts with him arriving at NBC Studios. He mentions that he forgot his pass, but shrugs it off, "I'm like royalty around here." Cut to him being roughed up by three security guards.
• Depraved Homosexual:
  • Will checks out an apartment, and the landlord implies Will is going to have to have relations with him to stay there.
  • In the episode where Will is in the witness protection program:
    Random Hillbilly: (to Will) So I heard you like dancin'... (grins)
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The closest we ever got was when Will, who was representing himself in court, quoted a few lines from the theme song as his "opening statement" in "Will Goes a Courtin'":
  Will: Your honor... I'm from West Philadelphia. Born and raised. On the playground was where I spent most of my days.
• Disappeared Dad: Will's father Lou left him and his mother when he was four. This was largely ignored until the season four episode "Papa's Got A Brand New Excuse," but was played for significant drama as it became evident Lou was grossly unreliable.
• Disapproving Look: Will liked to give this a lot, especially to Carlton when he acted particularly childish.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Mildly deconstructed in "The Script Formerly Known As...". Will and Hilary accidentally humiliate Uncle Phil on TV and despite being genuinely apologetic, the entire family gives them the silent treatment. The next day, Hilary dedicates her show to her father but ends up worsening his reputation farther after revealing he isn't talking to them for what they did.
• D.I.Y. Disaster: Philip, whenever he tries to fix... well, anything, really. His attempt at ridding the phone of static causes it to quit entirely (though he proudly boasts about getting rid of the static), and trying his hand at fixing the toaster resulted in Geoffrey getting a scratched cornea.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Hilariously subverted in the episode where Aunt Janice brings home a very tall white guy as her fiance. The others start talking about how Janice didn't mention that he was...tall, and they have no problem with people who are tall, and somebody's cousin used to date a girl who was tall, and the boys go to a predominantly tall school, until...
  Will: Am I alone in this, or didn't y'all notice he was white?
  • In the series finale, the normally reserved butler Geoffrey is retiring from his position as the Banks family butler, and he seems just a little too excited about his employer's announcement that he's "officially off duty", with parallels to the freeing of a household slave. Geoffrey was always portrayed as resenting everything the family makes him put up with, and, more generally, American culture has always tended to feel that using a household servant comes uncomfortably close to using a slave. Also consider that Geoffrey is working for his citizenship- which Will and Carlton hid and denied him- the show alludes to not only slavery but indentured servants, who often worked for the right to live in the United States (one way to raise the funds needed for your passage was to agree to a period of indentured servitude in exchange).
• The Dog Bites Back: Geoffrey quits in one episode because he's sick of the low salary Phil pays him and only agrees to come back after Phil offers him a raise. Another episode had Edward Haskell, Phil's law clerk, rob the Banks home after he became sick of the abuse Phil put him through.
• Domestic Appliance Disaster: In the episode "Burnin' Down The House", Will is inspired to try and "poof the flambe" after seeing Geoffrey do it, but his own attempt accidentally burns the entire kitchen to a crisp.
• Doom It Yourself: Phil is an excellent lawyer and an even better judge, but his skills as a handyman are less than impressive. His attempt at fixing the stove burns Geoffrey's eyebrows off, his attempt at fixing the toaster causes a piece of toast to fly into Geoffrey's eye, his attempt at fixing the static on the phone completely kills the line, and his attempt at fixing the sink causes a leak. At one point, Vivian has to use a Lysistrata Gambit to stop him from doing any more damage to the house.
• Doomed Autographed Item: In "Robbing the Banks", Will's prized baseball signed by Willie Mays disappears shortly after he convinces Uncle Phil to hire an ex-con as a replacement butler, leading to him screaming "Where's my Willie!?". It turns out that Ashley borrowed it for practice and washed the autograph off.
• Double Entendre:
  • In "Be My Baby Tonight", Will is on the phone with his girlfriend, when Ashley and her friend Kevin walk in. He then changes the subject to his "book report on Alaska". "And the United States said, you know, I'm thinking of laying a pipeline, are you interested?"
  • In "It's Better to Have Loved and Lost It...", Carlton excitedly tells Will about finally losing his virginity when Ashley walks in. Will and Carlton promptly disguise the subject as a successful business deal, leading to such entendres as Carlton assuring Will he "protected [his] investment". Once they leave, Hilary asks Ashley what that was all about, and Ashley flat-out tells her "Carlton lost his virginity."
  • In "Mother's Day", Will is at a sperm bank to help Jazz and Jewel have a child. Jazz shows up with a card that reads "Heard you had a stroke," which seems like a complete non sequitur until he justifies it by saying, "It was the closest one they had."
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male:
  • In "It Had to be You", Will goes on a date with Jazz's sister who at first seems rather sweet. However, after one date, she completely changes, speaking to him in a rude, snide voice, she tells him where they will go to college, what jobs they will both have, how many kids they will have and what genders, what to eat and what not to eat (saying that if he orders steak now he'll have a heart attack at middle age and leave her with the kids), and when he looks at the waitress to place his order, she yells at both him and the waitress. Later, she chooses his wardrobe and buys him a beeper with the obvious intent of keeping track of him 24/7. When Will tells his aunt and uncle about this, they initially shrug it off. To get rid of her, Will sets things up so that she ends up with Carlton. In reality, Carlton tells her off angrily in a calm manner. When he does, she suddenly does a complete 180 and becomes demure and submissive and polite by the episode's end. She hangs on Carlton's every word, eagerly promises to write apology notes to everyone she has offended by hand and mail them and with one disapproving look from him, apologizes and quickly says she'll deliver them herself.
  • In "Will's Misery" Will dates Lisa only for her to tie him up and pretend to be insane to scare him as a sorority prank to get revenge for his behavior. After he finds out the truth and that Lisa really liked him he quickly forgives her and the two start dating, something that definitely wouldn't have been shown with reversed genders.
• Downer Ending:
  • "Mistaken Identity" ends with Carlton insisting that the police that pulled him and Will over were just doing their jobs, while Will says point-blank that it was because they were two black men driving a fancy car. Carlton asks Phil about it, which Phil says that he asked himself that same question the first time he got pulled over, leaving Carlton's "Police are all good" mentality violently shaken.
  • "Sleepless in Bel-Air" ends with Will announcing to Carlton that he failed his Chemistry Test. This comes right after a fake ending where he tells him that he got an 85%. Carlton rightly calls him out for putting off studying until the last minute; Will was unable to get past "Welcome to the exciting world of Chemistry" for most of the episode due to so many distractions.
  • "Bullets Over Bel-Air" ends with Will, who is in the hospital after a mugging, sobbing to himself after he convinces a furious Carlton to hand him the gun.
  • "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse" ends with a crying Will being comforted by Phil after Will's worthless father once again lets his son down.
  • "Where There's a Will, There's a Way - Part 2": Hilary's boyfriend bungee jumps to propose to her on television, but ends up dead as the bungee cord was too long, and Hilary is watching the whole thing.
  • "Just Say Yo": Will breaks down and apologizes to the family for the drugs he had in his locker that Carlton inadvertently took and almost cost him his life.
  • "Blood is Thicker Than Mud" has Carlton, in spite of the Hell he went through to become a fraternity member, ends up being rejected by the leader due to his jealousy of him allegedly being a sellout for coming from a privileged family. Once he and Will tell the family what happened, a clearly hurt and disappointed Phil remarks on how another Black man could discriminate against his son over his status, even asking "When are we going to stop doing this to each other?"
  • The series finale. Will's cousins all move out and leave for their new lives in the East Coast, Uncle Phil and Aunt Vivian decide to sell the house and move out east too— heck, even Geoffrey goes back to England. Pretty much the whole cast gets on a bus and leaves Will behind.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Ill Will". Will is hospitalized; Geoffrey contemplates slandering the Bankses in a tell-all book.
• Dresses the Same:
  • "Hilary Gets a Job" features Will and Tyriq wearing the same shirt at one point, and the two of them argue over which one should take it back. Cue Hilary walking in, looking the two of them over, and saying "I think you guys are spending too much time together."
  • In "Twas the Night Before Christening", Vy and Helen go to greet each other but stop when they see they're wearing the exact same clothes. Then Hilary comes down the stairs wearing an identical outfit, sees them, and proceeds to go right back upstairs to change.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Invoked by a personal trainer to get Carlton to work out.
• Drop-In Character: Jazz, though he's more like "throw out character"....
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Trevor, Hilary's vacuous co-host and later fiancé, got killed during a botched bungee wedding proposal. On live television. With the entire family watching:
  Trevor: [on TV] HILARY BANKS!
  Hilary: [at home] YES, TREVOR!
  Trevor: WILL YOU MARRY ME— [thud]
  [Beat]
  Will: I ain't no bungee expert or nothing, but I don't think he's supposed to be slamming into the ground like that.
• Drugs Are Bad: "Just Say Yo" has Will being offered amphetamines so he can stay awake, and Carlton takes some from Will's locker thinking they're vitamins and almost dies as a result.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Employed by Will a couple times during arguments with Carlton. In one example, when the two are haggling over how much money Will owes him:
  Will: $60!
  Carlton: $80!
  Will: $60!
  Carlton: $80!
  Will: $80!
  Carlton: $60!
  Will: You got a deal, Daffy.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • When Geoffrey unveiled his hidden shame of leaving England because years ago he was caught taking a taxi in order to win a marathon. After showing them the video, everyone sat in silence for a good ten seconds before bursting into laughter. Geoffrey's not amused. He gets back at them by claiming he never got his green card, which prompts this reaction from the family.
  • Will tended to make plenty of jokes about Uncle Phil's weight. After Phil's heart attack, though, Will and the family remarked in the waiting room that the jokes were suddenly way, way less funny in retrospect.
  • Will used to constantly get on Carlton's case for not being "black enough". However, Will stopped making these jokes when he saw the negative impact this belief had.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the first season, the show clearly hadn't found its feet yet, and many of the early episodes seem rather awkward. In addition, the earlier episodes also dealt more with the show's gimmicky Fish out of Water premise, with the Banks family being full-on snobs and "straight-out-the-hood" Will causing some sort of ruckus within their prim-and-proper lives. The Banks were eventually smoothed over so that Philip and Vivian were more down to earth while the Banks children were more spoiled and naive.
  • The layout of the house was completely different from how it would be in Seasons 2 through 6. The show attempts to explain this as the family having redecorated, but with a change as drastic as this, "remodeled" would've been a more accurate term. The front door remained the same but kitchen was a standalone set. In the second season the original parlor room was gone and replaced with one that had a white walls (better matching the mansion in the establishing shot), a vaulted ceiling, second staircase at the back and merged directly into a kitchen area now twice the size, which became the more iconic family room of the show.
  • The iconic Theme Tune Rap included an extra verse in the first season's first few episodes. The hip-hop focused angle was more prevalent as well, with a couple of other Smith songs filtering into certain sequences.
• Elder Employee: "Hilary Gets a Job" has Will trying to get on the air at a news station and asking an elderly man for help. He then replies, "I'm 60 and I'm pushing a mail cart! Do I look like I can help you?"
• Elderly Future Fantasy: In the episode "Grumpy Young Men", Will has a double date with his crush Valerie, alongside Carlton and Valerie's cousin. After getting fed up with Will, Valerie tells him to go on a walk. Valerie then thanks Carlton for being a perfect gentleman and both share a kiss, which Will happens to see, leading to their conflict of the episode. Later on, both Will and Carlton have a fight, with Carlton knocking Will unconscious. Will has a dream, with both of them being old men living in a retirement home, still in a bitter feud. They both get into a fight, with Carlton having a heart attack and dying, but not before Carlton tells Will he hates him. A remorseful Will laments how he never said he was sorry. When Will recovers, both he and Carlton make up.
• Elephant in the Living Room: "Am I alone in this, or did y'all know he was white? I mean - tall."
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Geoffrey's middle name is "Barbara":
  "It's a family name!"
• Empty Nest: Phil develops a case of this when Will and Carlton are planning on moving out and Hilary is getting married to Trevor. Trevor's death and Hilary subsequently moving back home to cope, coupled with Carlton and Will moving into the pool house, causes this to work itself out to Phil's delight.
• Engineered Heroics: Subverted. To impress his girlfriend, Will has a friend hire a thug to pretend to rob a store, so Will could beat him up and save the day. A real robber enters the store, but Will hams it up, thinking this was the staged robbery. His girlfriend ends up getting pissed that he stood up to a man with a gun.
• Episode Code Number:
  • #6801-#6824 = Season 1
  • #6901-#6924 = Season 2
  • #6951-#6974 = Season 3 (during the Blooper Special in Season 6, Will implied that there were 149 episodes, but the actual count was 148. It's possible he may have gone along with Season 3's numbering, and included the 75 episodes of Seasons 4-6 combined.)
  • #60031-#60061 = Season 4 (for some reason, #60055-#60059 were skipped in the labeling process, and the next Season picked up where the numbering left off.)
  • #60062-#60086 = Season 5
  • #60101-#60124 = Season 6
• Everyone Has Standards: Will is just as disgusted by Jazz and Hilary saying they are going to get married as the rest of the family is.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "The Baby Comes Out", "Sooooooooul Train", "The Wedding Show (Psyche!)".
• Expansion Pack Past: Geoffrey claims to have been butler to both Chuck Norris and Led Zeppelin before his tenure with the Bankses. It also turned out he was a hilariously failed Olympic runner, the "Shame of a Nation", as the documentary on him was titled. The taxi story actually happened to Rosie Ruiz at the 1980 Boston Marathon, and led to much more race security since.
• Expository Theme Tune: The show's Theme Tune Rap is a meme as it functions much like the Rickroll.

F-K

• Famous, Famous, Fictional: A comedic variant in which the "fictional" example is clearly not real in-universe either, instead mentioned as a means of putting down a (real) school deemed second-rate. During the fathers' argument in "The Mother of All Battles",^note which involved Ashley and Paula Hoover were fighting over a boy; with the example cited just after an argument with Paula's mother and Vivian Phil responds to Paula's father, a doctor, bragging about having attended Penn State by saying he would have gone there had scholarships to Princeton, Yale, Wharton and Talladega Tech fallen through.
• Famous for Being First: In "Not With My Pig, You Don't", Uncle Phil's mother tells Will that her son was the first black president of his local Young Farmer's Association. Will is impressed, but Phil doesn't like talking about it because he doesn't find it on par with other civil rights accomplishments ("Puts me right up there with Martin Luther King.").
• Foreshadowing: Jazz has quite the wardrobe, but anytime he appears on screen wearing one shirt in particular, you can bet he's gonna get the heave ho right out the front door before that scene is over; the Running Gag is done using the first occurrence as stock footage, hence the same shirt.
• Flipping the Table: In "Bullets Over Bel-Air", Will takes a bullet for Carlton when the two are robbed on the streets and is hospitalized for it. Still badly shaken by the incident, Carlton angrily flips over a tray of food brought in for Will.
  Will: I was gonna eat that, man.
• Fly in the Soup: A scene from "She Ain't Heavy" had Will and Phil watching a commercial for something called the Sandwich Pocket, which could put all sorts of topping in a sandwich. While Phil is intrigued, Will is disgusted, saying he hadn't heard of anything that gross since "Clarence Thomas found that hair on his cola."
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: In one episode, it's stated that Phil always goes to Halloween parties as a judge. In the end, he simply wears street clothes and says he's "someone who doesn't want to be here."
  Hilary: [at her costume party] Daddy, you need a costume.
  Phil: [in casual clothes, unamused] I'm in my costume- I'm Comfortable Man.
  Ashley: Is he a superhero?
  Phil: Sort of. He has superhuman bill-paying powers, so he gets to dress however he wants.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Among the four main males, Will (the Optimist), Carlton (the Cynic), Uncle Phil (the Realist), and Geoffrey (the Apathetic).
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • The four main males: Will (sanguine), Carlton (choleric), Phil (melancholic), and Geoffrey (phlegmatic).
  • The female side has three of these: Ashley (sanguine), Hilary (phlegmatic), and Vivian (choleric).
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Deconstructed throughout Season 5. Will proposes to Lisa despite only dating for a few months due to wanting to live life to the fullest after being shot. The second half of the season focuses on Will preparing for married life and the jarring shift in what he's accustomed to. Such instances include attending couples therapy and realizing they never had serious discussions on what they want in the future and flaws they never brought up but secretly found insufferable or Will not having stable enough income to support them due to working part time while being a college sophomore who went in undeclared. While they seemingly work through both of these, the last straw comes when Jazz reveals had Jewel broke up due to the fact she was not the person he thought he married which culminated in her cheating on him and warns Will the same will happen to him too. True to form, Will learns Lisa had been hiding secrets from Will. While these secrets were minor, namely that she goes by her middle name and she only pretended to like Will's favorite food and movie, Will realizes that he rushed into marrying her. This hesitation causes Lisa to reveal she agrees and they call off the wedding and break up due to unrelated circumstances, their parents fell in love, on amicable terms.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": In "Asses to Ashes", Will yells at Judge Robertson for running a dirty campaign after Robertson wins, after which Robertson dies. Phil is supposed to give the eulogy, but Vivian tosses it away, forcing him to try to improvise before admitting he's not in a position to do so, having recently lost the election to the man and asked people to speak on Robertson's behalf, only to discover that everyone there is glad to see the man dead. Will's attempt to call them out on this not only falls on deaf ears, but Will even gets a standing ovation when he reveals his role in Robertson's death.
• Funeral Cut: Hilary's boyfriend Trevor appears on television to propose while bungee jumping. Unfortunately, the bungee cord is too long and Trevor impacts the ground. Uncle Phil goes to the phone to call the station and ask about his condition. Cut to the family returning from Trevor's funeral.
• Funny Background Event: In one episode, Phil and Will are fighting in the sound room while Ashley and Carlton are fighting in the control room as to whether or not to listen in. The segments where Ashley turns off the sound definitely fit into this with Will's extremely active motions of anger:
  Carlton: Oh great! Now we'll never know how Will took the news!
• Funny Conception Story: While trying to steal Geoffrey's memoirs, Phil and Vivian note that they include a story about Hilary being conceived at a Sly and the Family Stone concert.
• Gender-Blender Name:
  • When Will joins the cast of a soap opera and reads the script, he thinks the Jodie that his character is in love with is a woman. Then the character comes on stage and is revealed to be a man.
  • When Phil is interviewing potential babysitters, one of the applicants is named Lindsey, which leads the audience to believe it's a woman. But then the camera angle changes, and shows us a muscular man who mentions being released from prison.
• The Generation Gap: Particularly noticeable on the topics of race and civil rights between the three generations of the Banks-Smith family:
  • Hattie is deeply hurt when Philip appears ashamed of his rural Southern roots, and this isn't so odd, but it's more impactful when one realizes that she and Joe were likely the grandchildren of slaves and, in a deeply segregated South, would have had few opportunities available apart from farming, labour, or housework. They would have been doing the very best they could to provide for their child, only for him to grow up embarrassed by it.
  • Vy's anger at her sister Janice marrying a white man is confusing to Will - but interracial marriage would have been illegal in many states in her lifetime, was extremely controversial and stigmatizing for years after that, and was still uncommon in the early 1990s. To Will, who attends an overwhelmingly white school, has white friends, and sees his relatives socializing and networking with white people, Janice marrying Frank is slightly unusual - to Vy, Janice is signing on for a lifetime of exclusion and judgment from both the Black and white communities.
  • Phil gets very upset with Will for suggesting that he's "forgotten his roots", and Viv gets upset with Will and Carlton for not taking their Black History class seriously - both were active in the Civil Rights Movement and while they're sincerely glad that life is easier for their children than it was for them, they both resent that Will and Carlton take those struggles for granted and don't care to learn about them.
• Genius Ditz:
  • Carlton.
  • Will. Tray mentioned how he would hide his textbooks and study times from people back in Philly, lest he be targeted for fights and mocked. It helps said friend was there to protect him. It was based on the real Will Smith being a surprisingly excellent student.

• Gilligan Cut: So often that it could be renamed the "Fresh Prince Cut":
  Vivian: I'm so happy you guys are here! I was beginning to feel like nobody understood me!
  Vy: Oh, hey! We're family! We love you! *Vivian, Vy, and Janice all share a hug*
  * Cut to the rest of the family sitting in the living room, looking exasperated*
  Vivian: *Rings her bell loudly*
  Family: *Yelling upstairs in unison* STOP WITH THE DAMN BELL!
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: When Will's deciding on whether to "borrow" the car keys and sneak out, his shoulder devil appears. After the devil tells him to take the keys Will expectantly turns towards his other shoulder, only to have his other shoulder devil appear and tell him to take the damn keys already.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Carlton. Actual quote: "Heck, you guys! Heck!"
• Graduate from the Story: Subverted. Will and Carlton graduate from high school in the Season 3 finale, and the episode was written as a potential series finale just in case it came to that, but the show was picked back up and lasted another three seasons.
• Grand Finale: Geoffrey moves back to England to be with his son. Phil, Vivian and their children move to different parts of the northeast. Will stays in California so that he can finish his college coursework.
• Groin Attack: Attempted upon Carlton by a girl who had been bullying Ashley. He had been trying to preach non-violence to her, and immediately before that, said that she could not make him angry:
  Carlton: You know, Paula, even the great Martin Luther King probably drew the line somewhere!
• Grounded Forever:
  Phil: You're grounded for 10 years.
  Ashley: What? But that's not fair.
  Phil: Tell it to the judge... Oh yeah. That's me.
  • And then the next morning:
    Ashley: Dad, the Menendez brothers will be free before I am!
    Phil: The Menendez brothers got home on time!
  • There's also the time when Carlton is grounded until he begins to lose his hair.
• HA HA HA—No: Used many times by Uncle Phil, which is always followed by an explosion:
  Vivian: Will, honey? Run.
• Happily Married: Phil and Vivian. There is a two-part estrangement episode, however.
• Happy Dance: After Will and Carlton trick Geoffrey into believing that he has won the lottery, Geoffrey dances around his room to "For the Love of Money" by The O'Jays.
• Hard Truth Aesop: This series prominently enforced several aesops that few other sitcoms at the time wanted to really touch. For example:
  • Even though racism is very wrong, many people will still experience it in their life no matter their social status, grades, wealth, or who their relatives are.
  • The prevalent belief of "what it means to be black". The series has shown several times how this belief can affect people in multiple ways.
  • If you're fortunate enough to have your loved ones in your life, sooner or later, there may come a time when you may have to see tubes coming out of their nose.
  • If you have help that is readily available for you, and they're willing to help, there's nothing wrong with seeking it.
  • Don't rush to lose your virginity for the sake of social acceptance. In addition, when it's time, make sure it's with the right person.
  • Charity doesn't have to go through an organization, charity can also mean helping out a friend in need.
• Height Insult: Will often pokes fun at Carlton for his short stature. While making a family video for the at the time unborn Nicky, Will refers to Carlton as "the one at eye level".
• Hellistics: In the episode where Will and Lisa are supposed to get married, Lisa's dad complains about some battleaxe of a woman who he had to sit next to on the plane ride there. Then Will's mom arrives and complains about some man she sat next to who called her a battleaxe. Will and Lisa decide to let them have dinner together so they'll start to like each other. Meanwhile, Will is having doubts about his upcoming marriage to Lisa. When he goes to talk to his mom about it, he finds that she slept with Lisa's dad. At the altar, Will and Lisa end up canceling their marriage... and Will's mom and Lisa's dad decide to get married in their place.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Will and Jazz are a... mild version. They even have a break-up episode:
    Will: You're not making any sense, Jazz.
    Jazz: You used to think that was cute.
  • There is also this exchange:
    Will: Look at us, arguing like an old married couple!
    Jazz: So now I'm old?
  • From that same conversation:
    Jazz: Maybe it's because you never take me out anymore!
    Will: Well, maybe I would if you fixed yourself up a little bit!
  • Although Will is slow to admit this, he is also this with Carlton after a while.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Will initially dismisses his Uncle Phil as an uptight wealthy person who lost touch with the black community. Turns out that he was in the civil rights movement and has never stopped fighting that fight, though he does it in different ways. He also retains enough of the brawling and pool-playing skills he picked up during his street days to take on people half his age. Similarly, Uncle Phil judges Will as just a disruptive young street punk, but Will turns out to be an insightful, intelligent and thoroughly decent person.
  • Vivian led a fairly interesting life. She was active in the civil rights movement along with Phil, and participated in the same (occasionally violent) protests. As a young woman, she dropped out of high school to run off with a guy, and cleaned hotel rooms to put herself through night school to earn her degree. She also knows enough about black history to teach the subject at a high school level.
  • In "Mistaken Identity", the person in jail with Will and Carlton has a really good singing voice, as evidenced when he finishes the lyrics of "Go Down Moses".
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: In "To Thine Own Self be Blue...and Gold", Phil discovers that his old college friend, Ernest, decided to bribe a city councilman with a briefcase full of money and uses Will to deliver it. Because of this, Phil returns Ernest the briefcase and bluntly tells him to Get Out!, leaving Ernest to smugly tell Phil that he was always so damned naive.
• High-School Hustler: Will, although most of his schemes are done at home with Phil being the Dean Bitterman.
• Hilarious Outtakes: "I, Whoops, There It Is" is dedicated to this. The episodes of Seasons 2 to 4 also end with the credits playing over the flubs.
• Historical Character Confusion:
  Dr. Hudson: Hey, Malcolm's one of my heroes, too!
  Hilary: Oh, I idolize Malcolm! He's the only reason I watch The Cosby Show.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Sorry, Carlton, but you can't blame Will for your failure to get into Princeton near the end of Season 3 by pretending to be him rather than being yourself for the recruiter.
• Holiday Volunteering: Carlton and Hilary volunteer at a homeless shelter. However, they're purely doing it for their own interests; Carlton wants a note of recommendation to help get into Princeton, while Hilary wants to promote her TV show by filming a sob story for Thanksgiving. After the food runs out, the two pay for a posh meal complete with waiters and Hilary decides not to exploit the poor for one day of the year.
• Hospital Visit Hesitation: In "Home is Where the Heart Attack Is", Carlton initially is terrified of seeing his father after his heart attack over being afraid of seeing him with tubes up his nose. He does soon see him, especially since he was asking for him.
• Hourglass Plot: Invoked between the pilot episode and the series finale. In the beginning, Will is the only person from the east coast (Philadelphia) and the rest of the family are from Los Angeles. In the finale (with the exception of Geoffrey who moves to London), the rest of the family move to the east coast for their diverse reasons and Will stays in Los Angeles to finish school.
• Hug and Comment: After Will and Carlton hug at the end of "Just Say Yo":
  Carlton: Will, you haven't showered yet today, have you?
• Humble Parent, Spoiled Kids: Phil and Vivian are down to earth and well-adjusted people, who are also very wealthy thanks to their careers as adults, especially Phil, a Self-Made Man who overcame the difficulties of the pre-Civil Rights era. Their two oldest children, Hilary and Carlton, are stuck-up and spoiled Upper Class Twits who brag about their family's wealth. This is averted with their third daughter Ashley who is levelheaded like her parents.
• Humiliation Conga: Carlton gets a particularly bad one in a short amount of time in Season 6. First he's fired from his job as assistant talent coordinator for Hilary in favor of Will, then gets rejected from several attempts to pad his résumé, including Bob Dole's campaign headquarters, got passed over for a job he was certain he had in the bag, and ultimately found himself skipping an interview with a Princeton scout to hang out at a local blues bar.
• Hypno Fool: "Save the Last Trance for Me", which sees Will getting inadvertently hypnotized to act like a four-year-old whenever a bell rings. The end of the episode sees Phil turning into one of these as well, barking like a dog.
• I Call It "Vera": "Banks Shot" features Phil's custom pool cue, named Lucille. Phil is hustling a pool hustler, and in the first game asks Geoffrey to hand him "one of those stick thingies." Then, in the second game, where the stakes are far higher, he tells Geoffrey to "break out Lucille."
• I Have No Son!: Inverted with "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse." When Will's Disappeared Dad Lou comes back into his life and hopes to bond with his son, Phil makes it very clear that he has no respect for or trust in him. Lou promises to take Will on a cross-country trip with him, and Phil violently protests, telling Will that Lou hasn't even bothered to call in years and is just stringing him along. Will shouts "Who cares what you think? YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER!" and storms out...which makes it all the more painful when Phil is proven right after Lou abandons Will again
• I, Noun: Almost half of the last season, including the last six episode titles. Of note are "I, Clownius", "Eye, Tooth" and "I, Done".
• Intimidating White Presence: Will and Carlton are thrown into a holding cell on suspicion of being car thieves. There's a white guy in the next cell over, which freaks Will out, because, as he states to Carlton, if there's a white guy in jail, he must've done something truly bad to be there.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Phil, in an episode flashback taking place from before he became a corporate lawyer and still lived in the old neighborhood, is shown to have been svelte, good-looking and carrying a full head of hair.
• I Wished You Were Dead: After Judge Robertson mocked Phil after Robertson defeats Phil, Will turns back and confronts him, culminating in Will telling Robertson that "he can drop dead"—which, much to Will's horror, Robertson promptly does.
• Identical Grandson: Carlton looks just like the younger version of Phil.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The second half of the last season has every episode starting with "I"; e.g., "I, Clownius," "I, Done," "I, Bowl Buster".
  • Sometimes, they would even work in Will Smith's first name into the title of an episode to reflect a pun (i.e. "Ill Will" and "Where There's a Will, There's a Way").
• Ignorant About Fire: In "Burnin' Down the House", Will burns up the kitchen. He spends the episode trying to keep it from the rest of the family and it's played for Black Comedy.
• Infant Sibling Jealousy: Ashley's subplot in the episode where the family thinks about how the new baby will impact their lives. She has a fantasy about the entire family ignoring her and even forgetting her name, as she will no longer be The Baby of the Bunch.
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever someone refers to Will's action figures as dolls, this is his response:
  "They're ACTION FIGURES!"
• Ironic Echo: "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse," where Will's estranged father comes into town, and he and Will reconnect. When they announce that Will's father will be taking him on a road trip, Phil does not take this sitting down. When Will discusses this with him and Vivian, Phil blurts out, "To hell with your father!" He then explains how this was the man who left Will 14 years earlier, and never once thought of him when he grew up. At the end of the episode, where Will's dad gets a new assignment and has to leave Will again, Will finally musters up the courage to admit that Phil was right, and says the same thing he said: "To hell with him!"
• Invulnerable Knuckles: Averted.
  • When Phil punches Ashley's bully's father in "The Mother of All Battles", he immediately shakes his hand in pain and it later is put in ice. The jaw is one of the hardest and strongest bones in the human body, and unlike most of popular culture where a punch to the head does no damage, the average trained person, like Phil, is going to have a sore hand from a punch after the adrenaline rush wears off, unless the person is professionally trained like a boxer.
  • Variant: Will and Carlton get into a fistfight over a girl in "Grumpy Young Men" and the former gets knocked out cold by the latter's elbow, while Carlton's hands were superglued to his own head. Not only do several episodes display that the former is a mediocre fighter, but getting hit by an elbow tends to be more painful than getting hit by a closed fist.
• Irony: Will's mother sends him to Bel-Air because she's afraid of the violence he might face in Philadelphia. It's in swanky Bel-Air that he's shot.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: "The Alma Matter", in which a disastrous meeting with a representative from Princeton ends in Carlton being denied enrollment, and he slips into a deep funk as a result. He happens to watch the trope namer and agrees with the main character, wishing he had never been born. This prompts his guardian angel — Tom Jones — to arrive and set him straight.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Carlton wanted to go to Princeton because his dad went there. He would eventually transfer there in the series finale. Will could have also gone there if he truly wanted to.
• Jerkass: Both Carlton and Will tend to be this way from time to time.
• The Jeeves: Geoffrey is a British butler who is also well-dressed, dutiful, and polite... at least in the first season, before becoming a Deadpan Snarker.
• Jerk Jock:
  • One-shot character Hank Farley.
  • The fraternity Will and Carlton join. Though, they're only this way to Carlton because their leader, Top Dog, doesn't want him in their frat and are fine with Will. Will tells him that he can shove it for leading his cousin along like that.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Except for Nicky, all the main male characters in the show (Will, Carlton, Uncle Phil, Geoffrey and Jazz) could be described as this. Hilary is the female equivalent.
• Just Smile and Nod: When Will and Carlton are about to have a meeting with some record company executives:
  Will: Now remember: agree with everything I say and disagree with everything they say.
  Carlton: Why don't I just smile and nod?
  Will: [Beat] Even better.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Three notable instances, all involving Phil's car:
    • While what Will did was way out of line in "Best Laid Plans", Monique still technically committed grand theft auto by stealing Phil's Mercedes. It's never mentioned if she got arrested for that which is weird because Uncle Phil's a judge.
    • Lady Penelope in "Nice Lady" certainly qualifies, as she turns out to be an arrogant, self-entitled party girl who also resorts to stealing the car to escape Will and Geoffrey's watch when they volunteer to take her to the opera on the behalf of her wealthy father. She then goes to an exotic club where the two attempt to retrieve her before she slips away again, coming home pretending nothing had ever happened. Unlike the previous instance, Uncle Phil suspects that something was up, but decides he'd rather not hear it, and so she receives nothing for her actions.
    • In "Cold Feet, Hot Body", Will is courted and seduced by Denise, who puts on the tears and a sweet face to win him over despite knowing full well that he's already with Lisa. After failing to seduce him in her apartment, Will asks for the keys to the car, which she pockets in her bosom, and he rushes out saying to just keep the car. He may have thwarted her advances, but nothing further is said of whether he gets the car back.
  • The guy who shot Will in "Bullets Over Bel-Air" is never brought to justice.
  • No word is given on whether Jay, the student who gave Will the speed that nearly killed Carlton was ever punished or made to disclose how he obtained it himself.
• Kids Driving Cars: One episode reveals that 14-year-old Ashley has been secretly driving cars ever since she was twelve years old. But it turns out to be a good thing, because nobody else is around to drive her pregnant mother to the hospital to have her baby.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Trevor is killed in a bungee jumping accident while he's proposing to Hilary on TV:
  HILARY BANKS! WILL...YOU...MARRY...ME... (thud)
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • In "Bullets Over Bel-Air", a nameless armed thief holds Carlton and Will at gunpoint while they're at an ATM. He shoots Will after he took the bullet for Carlton and runs away. Because of his actions, it leads to Carlton buying himself a gun as an attempt to protect himself and his family members. Will begs Carlton to give him the gun while he's visiting him in the hospital.
  • In "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse", Will's father visits him and gives him a Hope Spot that he will become a part of his life. Phil and Vivian don't believe him, and sure enough, Will's father tries to leave him behind again. The episode begins lighthearted, but ends with a heartbroken Will promising to make it without his father while breaking down crying. A sad and sympathetic Phil gives Will a Cooldown Hug.

L-P

• Lampshade Hanging: One of the best shows at doing this:
  • One example happens right after the other in the Season 5 opener. Jazz asks Will, "Who's playing the mother this year?", referencing Daphne Maxwell Reid replacing Janet Hubert-Whitten as Vivian the season prior. In walks Nicky, who was barely a few months old in the previous season, now at age five:
  Nicky: It's the same mom.
  Jazz: Who are you?
  Will: Oh, that's Baby Nicky!
  [Jazz and Nicky look at each other while Will glances at the camera and makes a "growing" motion with his hands.]
  Jazz: Man, I'm going back to the street where things make sense!
  • Phil once informs Will of how wealthy they are. Will replies "If we so rich, how come we can't afford no ceiling?" as the camera pans up to the overhead lighting.
• Large Ham:
  • Let's face it, a good chunk of the show hinged on Will being this.
  • Carlton evolved into this in later seasons. In fact, both Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro comment on each other's tendency to overact in "I, Whoops, There It Is."
  • Uncle Phil has his moments too, mostly whenever he yells at someone, usually Will.
• Last Disrespects: When Phil's rival candidate dies, everyone save for Will attends his funeral primarily to check if he's really dead. When Will proclaims that he was the one that killed him, albeit through telling him to drop dead, as he attempts to call them out on it, the attendees give him a standing ovation.
• Last-Name Basis: This is how the staff at Bel-Air Academy address their pupils, with the exception of a third grade class.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • "The Fresh Prince Project" has the catchy theme tune in its extended version, and concludes with Will knocking on the front door. The episode then starts inside the house where Geoffrey lets Will inside, dressed exactly as how the opening concluded.
  • In another episode, Will comments that The Cosby Show is having a "hip, street smart niece" join the cast.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Threatened by Vivian to a racist cop who wrongfully locked up Will and Carlton:
  Cop: Could you please sit down? We're busy here.
  Vivian: (taking off her earrings) Oh, honey, we're about to get very busy here!
• Life Isn't Fair:
  • Played for Laughs and combined with a Shout-Out:
  Carlton: Life isn't fair, Will. I mean, was it fair when Bambi's mother died?
  • Played much more seriously during heavy moments, usually with Carlton. One particularly dark moment occurs when Will has been shot.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Ashley and Hilary.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Will invoked this about his bickering with Jazz. Jazz's response, naturally, "Oh, now I'm 'old'?!"
• Like a Son to Me: Phil's entire relationship towards Will, though sometimes reluctantly. In the last episode, he even calls Will his son.
• Limited Wardrobe: While Jazz does have a variety of outfits, in order to keep continuity for a certain Running Gag, he only wears one particular set of clothing prior to being thrown out of the house. This is because they almost never refilmed the punchline.
• Long-Lost Uncle Aesop:
  • In "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse", Will's Disappeared Dad comes back. It ends with him abandoning Will again and Will angrily declaring that he's done with him.
  • In "The Butler's Son Did It", a young man appears claiming to be Geoffrey's illegitimate son. When Will catches him stealing money, he doesn't tell Geoffrey for fear of upsetting him. When Geoffrey does find out, he forgives his son because that's what family does.
• Loophole Abuse: Phil and Vivian push Hilary to move out of the house because they need to move Nicky into it. They expect her to find an apartment as Vivian says she and Phil will pay first and last month's rent for her. Hilary ultimately settles on the pool house, as her parents only said they needed her to move out of the house. When Hilary points this out, Phil turns to Vivian and basically whines that Hilary cheated.
• Mama Bear: Vivian's usually a calm, collected voice of reason when compared to the quick-tempered Phil. But if anyone ever dares to put her children or nephew in any sort of danger, all Hell will break loose:
  • In "Mistaken Identity", Will and Carlton are racially profiled for driving the Mercedes of Phil's law partner, Mr. Furth, in an affluent neighborhood; the two are put in jail where they intentionally give a false confess on live TV in order to alert Phil and Vivian of their situation. Phil ends up having to hold Vivian back when she storms into the prison, starts openly insulting the officers, and when dismissed with a "We're busy", takes off her earrings with a "Oh, honey, we about to get very busy up in here."
  • In "72 Hours", Carlton befriends some tough black men in Compton using his business skills. The group was planning to go to MacArthur Park, an extremely dangerous area, when Vivian shows up to get her son and Will. Upon hearing their plans, she tells all of the young men outright that none of them will be going to MacArthur Park. The biggest of the group, two heads taller that Vivian and with biceps about the size of her head, stands up to protest, and she instantly shut him down: "Boy, do not test me." The huge guy proceedes to sheepishly sit back down.
  • In "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse", when Will's Disappeared Dad Lou came to Bel-Air to reconnect with his son briefly, Vivian's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, unlike Phil. But when she learns that Lou's planning to abandon Will again to go on a business venture, she makes it clear that she considers her nephew one of her own children and isn't going to allow Lou to hurt him:
  "If you walk out of here, don't you ever come back."
• Manchild:
  • Carlton. Quite a few of the episodes revolve around Will trying to break him out of this.
  • Will has his moments such as when he gets a hold of some Beast Wars action figures.
  • Will academically (sometimes) and Carlton socially, in general, so they see each other, but not themselves, this way.
• Massage of Love:
  • An episode has Phil giving Vivian a foot massage as they sit on the couch and hum "Let's Get it On".
  • "Grumpy Young Men" has Will trying to invoke this while on a double date with Carlton. Unfortunately, he picks up on the signal much quicker than his date does, to his chagrin.
• Matchmaker Failure: Vivian mentions that she was once a matchmaker in college and she managed to get many couples married. However when Phillip stated at all the couples separated within five years, Vivian replied, "I just get them to the altar, after that they're on their own".
• May–December Romance: Will with Phil's college sweetheart when she seduces him.
• Medium Awareness:
  • In "Where There's a Will, There's a Way (Part 1)", after Jazz gives Vivian a gift for baby Nicky, he stops to take a good look at her before he says this, which causes Will to give an aside glance:
  "You know, Mrs. Banks, since you had that baby, there's something different about you".
  • In "The Philadelphia Story", Will describes Omar to Carlton as "The dude who be spinning me over his head in the opening credits".
  • "The Philadelphia Story" ends with Will deciding to stay in Philadelphia. The following episode starts with him being kidnapped. Will seems to know the men and asks why they're kidnapping him. The kidnappers respond by saying the show couldn't be called "The Fresh Prince of Philadelphia." He is then shoved into an NBC van.
  • In "Will's Misery", Will convinces Carlton that he had to kill Lisa in self-defense, which results in Carlton hysterically running through every set of the episode and finally into the studio audience.
  • The cold open of "New Game, Same Season" involves Phil lecturing his children on how they didn't have to worry about money. As they leave the room, Will says to the audience, "We so rich, why we can't afford no ceiling?" The camera pans up to reveal the ceiling-less top of the set they're filming in.
• Metaphorgotten: In "It's a Wonderful Lie", Will's friend tells him about a party. His friend tells him he should be careful because he's not single anymore and there's going to be a lot of women. This happens when they have a verbal exchange involving a metaphor about bees:
  Friend: But be warned, there's gonna be females up in there. Girlies swarming like bees!
  Will: Let 'em swarm on, bruh, because I got the queen.
  Friend: Okay. But once the party starts buzzin', you gon' wish your stinger was free.
  Will: The honey is always sweeter at the hive.
  Friend: But you know bees got to go from flower to flower.
  Will: Oh yes sir, but once they start pollinating, then they... what had happened and... Look can we just talk please?
• Mirror Character: Phil and Will are a lot more similar than they realize:
  • Both have a history as The Casanova (Uncle Phil was one too when he was around the same age as Will Smith).
  • Both are major Deadpan Snarkers.
  • Both are afraid of losing their mothers to another man.
  • Both grew up in poor backgrounds.
  • Both are very fast to stick up for their relatives (even the ones they have trouble getting along with) when they need it the most.
• Mistaken for Quake: Once when Phil is caught dancing and again when Will gets a car with a sound system loud enough to shake the Bankses' kitchen:
  Phillip: Oh lord, this must be the big one.
  Geoffrey: Not unless it's down with OPP.
• Modest Orgasm: When Carlton loses his virginity in season 4's "It's Better To Have Loved and Lost It...", images popping up of fireworks, a volcano erupting and a dog catching a frisbee mid-air are this.
• Motive Rant: It happened offscreen, but when Edward Haskell, Phil's law clerk, is arrested for robbing the Bankses' home, he rants to the police about all the crap Phil put him through, which motivated his crime.
• The Mourning After: Hilary was known for having a lot of boyfriends and male admirers throughout the series, until she met Trevor and eventually became engaged to him. After his untimely death, however, she grieved for him and didn't have any more serious relationships for the rest of the series.
• Moving-Away Ending: The series ends with the family moving out of the Banks Mansion, with the Banks relocating to the East Coast for various reasons while Will stays in California to finish college. The last shot lingers on the empty house.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Will passing his "chicktionary" to Carlton is done like a sacred ritual, with Carlton having to kneel and cross his arms while making promises to never reveal the secrets within. Once the ritual is complete, the chicktionary starts glowing orange, and the glow spreads to Carlton's body while he screams about the immense power contained within.
• Musicalis Interruptus: In "Twas the Night Before Christening", Will walks in on Boyz II Men while they are recording their single, "Let it Snow". One of the band members spots him, keeps singing, and signals the producer in the booth to cut the music. This keeps the recording intact.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: From the last episode:
  Ashley: Let's have another toast. To all of us going on with our new lives. And Will.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Will after Judge Robertson dies of a heart attack right after Will tells him to drop dead. Will, however, is the only one who is miserable since almost everyone hated the guy.
  • Will's reaction from the middle to the end of "Just Say Yo...", especially after a tearful and utterly remorseful Will admits to the family that the drugs that nearly killed Carlton were his, but that he had been given them by someone else due to the stresses he had with his job, school and sports wiping him out and just put them in his locker.
• Near-Rape Experience: In a manner of speaking; in one episode, Will's then-girlfriend tells him that she doesn't want to have sex with him because she believes in virginity until marriage. Rather than respect her wishes, he instead tries to trick her into bed by having Jazz set up a fake wedding ceremony for the two of them, which could be counted as rape by deception. He backs down and confesses at the last minute, and she responds by punching him in the face and stealing the car he borrowed from Phil.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: In "The Big Four-Oh", Vivian shows up a pair of girls in her dance class with an impressive routine. She walks out confident, then immediately passes out from exhaustion.
• Never Bring a Friend to an Audition: In "There's No Business Like Show Business", Will accompanies a comic friend to an open mike audition at a comedy club and wins the spot himself due to wowing the recruiter. However, since Will is neither a professional comedian nor has any actual material, he bombs with the audience and said friend saves the day by delivering a funny and well-received set.
• Never Heard That One Before:
  • Will eventually admits that even he is getting tired of all the fat jokes. When his Uncle Phil laments, "Why must I always be The Heavy?", Will just says to himself, "Forget it, that would be too easy."
  • In "Eye, Tooth", when William Shatner walks into the building, someone jokingly says, "Hey, I saw your car outside, I guess you thought beaming down would be too flashy." Shatner's not happy.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Subverted with the death of Judge Robertson. Will and Phil, who agreed to do his eulogy despite being humiliated by him in an election, play this straight, but everyone else at the funeral openly comments about what a lousy guy Robertson was. Will eventually chastises everyone for speaking ill of the dead. One of them asks who he is and Will responds that he's the one who killed him as Robertson died from a heart attack immediately after Will told him to "drop dead". Everybody claps. Will eventually gives up, saying "tough room."
• New-Age Retro Hippie: A friend of Phil and Vivian's who never moved on from the '60s shows up for an episode and has an influence on the kids (especially Will and Ashley). She gives Will a Swahili name, asks where she can plug in her 8-track, and calls Geoffrey "a pathetic servant of the capitalist fat-cats." She also happens to be on the run from the FBI for busting migrant workers out of an internment camp, breaking into government buildings and shredding important documents, and causing general trouble for the South African embassy in Washington. She's ultimately a Black Power variant of this.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: A character played by Darryl Sivad appears as a park ranger, an EMT, and a firefighter. Each time, he appears with a laid back attitude. He also makes several inappropriate jokes during serious moments involving Will and the Bankses.
• New Old Flame: In a Season 6 episode, Ashley debates sleeping with her boyfriend Derek, who, according to their dialogue, is both her longtime boyfriend and her childhood sweetheart. Except he's never been seen or mentioned before in the previous six years of the show.
• New Year's Resolution: In "Hilary Gets a Life", Hilary makes a resolution that she will find a job right after Easter.
• Nice to the Waiter: The family members' treatment of Geoffrey. Vivian and Ashley are the nicest to him (Geoffrey makes it clear Ashley is his favorite of the family, especially when she's still a child), whereas the rest of the family tend to take him for granted, especially Hilary. Phil tries to be professional with him, but doesn't pay him nearly enough for Geoffrey's liking. Will takes him as much for granted as Carlton does, but is also the first to help him out when Geoffrey's got personal issues.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: When Hilary asked Will which episode of her talk show he liked the most, his response is, "The one with the... high school dropout, single mother, former gang member nuns."
• No Fourth Wall:
  • Will occasionally looks directly at the camera, once asks why the Bankses' house has no ceiling, and describes someone as "the dude spinnin' me over his head in the credits", but the pinnacle of this is probably the Season 5 opener. With the last season ending with Will deciding to move home it seems to be setting up for at least an episode of Will choosing between Philly and Bel-Air. Instead, he's working happily at his Philadelphia job when an NBC executive shows up, tells him his contract clearly states "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and bundles him into the back of a van. Roll credits.
  • There's an episode which starts with Will at the pool house playing sax for a girl. When he finishes, he excuses himself for a second and walks out of the house to pay the actual saxophonist, who was just outside. It's none other than Branford Marsalis, who at the time was the bandleader for The Tonight Show. After he leaves, Will comments "there's definitely some perks to working for NBC!"
  • The opening of "Will Gets Committed" has Will staying up late watching TV when Uncle Phil comes in and starts badgering. An irritated Will simply takes the remote and turns him off, then turns to the camera and asks, "Isn't that fly? Don't you wish you lived on TV?"
  • In the final scene of "Will's Misery", Carlton freaks out and runs screaming from the house, loops around the set again and out into the studio audience.
• Noodle Incident: In the series finale, Phil somehow manages to secure Will and Jazz an apartment in under 24 hours. There is no explanation of how he did this, when Will had been searching for weeks to no avail.
• "No Peeking!" Request: In "The Butler's Son Did It", Will tells Carlton, Jazz and Frederick ^note Geoffrey's son to turn around and cover their ears while he goes into his secret stash to pay the pizza delivery guy. Frederick takes a peek, however, and tries to steal Will's cash just as everyone else leaves, but Will arrives back and catches him red-handed.
• No Periods, Period: Two adult women and a girl who undoubtedly has reached the age of menarche before the end of the series, yet this is played completely straight.
• Non-Actor Vehicle: A rare successful example.
• Not Even Bothering with an Excuse: Whenever the kids all come up with an excuse not to do some undesirable task, Hilary finishes up with, "I just don't want to."
  • In “The Butler Did It” Will and Tyriq disrupt a video shoot taking place in the Bankses' living room. Will claims that he was trying to get up to his room, but Tyriq flat out says he was trying to be in the video.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In "Banks Shot", Will loses some money to a pool hustler, and then Phil loses some more trying to get it back. Then, as soon as the hustler agrees to another round at higher stakes:
  Phil: Geoffrey? Break out Lucille.
• Oblivious to Love: Carlton at times. For example, in the episode where he loses his virginity, he is describing his ideal woman to Will. A woman who fits all of the characteristics walks into the store and says she needs to find something, and he says, "Listen, lady, we're talking."
• Odd Friendship: With Carlton. As same-age cousins, the series starts with them spending a lot of time together by circumstance (living together, going to the same school, playing on the same sports teams, etc), but while there's always a sense of familial loyalty beyween them, they're also polar opposites in most ways and generally dislike and get annoyed with each other. It doesn't help that Will is The Ace and Carlton suffers from Always Someone Better issues. As time goes by, however, the two of them bond with each other despite their differences, and by the later seasons, they're openly best friends (if rather Vitriolic ones) who choose to live and spend most of their time together.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The man who hustled Will at pool ends up with this expression when Phil tells Geoffrey to "break out Lucille," realizing that Phil deliberately threw the first game to lure him into a higher stakes second one.
  • In "Father Knows Best", Will pretends to be Ashley's father for a parent-teacher conference. He falls for Miss Sharpe around the time the PTC ends and goes back to attempt to woo her. However, all that ends up happening is her discovering his fake mustache, sending him into a flustered panic where all he can say is "No, it's not!" - even after she rips it off.
• Old Shame:
  • In-universe example: Phil's farm boy upbringing is this to him until it comes up and is resolved halfway through the first season.
  • In-universe example. Geoffrey's secret is that he was a long-distance runner who cheated while representing Britain at the 1976 Olympics. He got ahead of the other racers by taking a cab to the stadium. He was immediately found out and his gold medal was taken away. In England, he is "The Shame of a Nation."
• Once an Episode:
  • Will calling Carlton short and Phil fat.
  • Hilary being a ditz.
• One-Hit Wonder: In-universe example when Ashley started her singing career.
• One Phone Call: In "Mistaken Indentity", Will and Carlton are arrested. Will uses his call to phone Geoffrey, who is so upset about having his day off interrupted he hangs on Will before listening. Carlton calls his dad but Phil and his friends are so entertained by a game on TV they don't listen. Will and Carlton get their attention by making a deal with the authorities: they'll confess if they get to do it during a live broadcast interrupting the game transmission.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • As Geoffrey the butler is a regular character, DJ Jazzy Jeff's character goes by Jazz at all times.
  • In a bit of a strange aversion, one of Will's girlfriends of the week in Season 4 is called Lisa, just one season prior to his season-long relationship with a different Lisa who would become his fiancée. It's jarring on a repeat viewing especially since the earlier Lisa character is treated as if the whole family has known her for a while.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Averted. When Will gets shot, he spends several episodes in the hospital. Just because he only got shot once doesn't mean he is going to walk off getting hit by a bullet.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Jazz, though it's implied that it might even be his given name. Also played straight with his actor, DJ Jazzy Jeff, for much of the run; this is later averted when the show began crediting him under his given name, Jeffrey Townes, after he and the Fresh Prince split.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In one episode, Jazz's stunts lead to Will getting arrested, which jeopardizes Uncle Phil's campaign. Will is so mad at Jazz, he doesn't throw Jazz out of the house, which makes Jazz realize how much he screwed up.
  • A Tearjerker example in "Bullets Over Bel-Air", when Will insistently asks for Carlton to hug him when the latter visits in the former in the hospital, and Carlton initially balks - a marked role reversal from their usual dynamic and uncharacteristic for both of them. As the rest of the scene plays out, it becomes more apparent that Will was feeling more upset and vulnerable than he had been letting on and needed to be comforted, while Carlton had been trying to hide the fact that he was carrying a gun (which Will immediately noticed when they did hug).
  • From the same episode, no one expected Carlton to be in a good mood after watching Will get shot, but when he snaps at Phil and calls his view of the justice system a "fairy tale" before angrily stalking off, that shows he's truly in Heroic BSoD mode and in a very alarming headspace.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: In later seasons, Phil develops a tendency to speak without thinking, often resulting in Vivian storming off and him running after her trying to explain himself. This mostly occurred after the actress change.
• Ordered Apology: Will’s tearful confession to the family that he indirectly was responsible for Carlton’s drug overdose is a result of him being ordered to by Uncle Phil.
• Overly Long Hug: Played for Laughs in "Burnin' Down the House" when Phil eventually sees the kitchen Will accidentally burns down while cooking and having tried to hide it during an important dinner when Phil's boss is invited over. Things work out, Phil stays calm after the discovery and even hugs Will... and then we jump to three days later where Phil is still hugging him with his arm around his neck in a headlock.
  Will: Uncle Phil, are you gonna let me go anytime soon?
  Philip: [calmly, with a serene almost unnerving smile] No, Will.
  [Beat]
  Will: That's cool.
• Palm-Fist Tap: Both Will and Carlton do this.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Phil is this. Some of the most notable moments includes:
    • Phil is known for his anger, but in the episode "Mistaken Identity," when a racist police officer arrests his son Carlton and nephew Will, he sees right through an obvious Engineered Public Confession. When said cop refuses to let them out of their cell, Uncle Phil unleashes a verbal ass-whoopin' the likes of which the poor bastard had never seen.
    • He out-hustles a pool hustler who tried to cheat Will out of thousands of dollars.
    • When the parents of Ashley's school bully advise that they seek psychiatric help for her. Long story short, shit gets real.
    • A few occasions where he threw Jazz out of the house, was when the latter made unflattering advances at Hilary.
    • When Will's father Lou shows up. As Lou is preparing to leave... without Will and asks Uncle Phil to let him know... Phil unleashes a verbal beatdown on Lou not seen since the Mistaken Identity. And it's glorious.
  • Will is one towards Ashley as well especially in the earlier seasons. You don't mess with his youngest cousin. Hilary or Carlton's fine but mess with her and he'll show you he picked up a lesson or two from his Uncle Phil.
  • In the first season, Will meets one known to everyone in their social circle as Dr. No because he's so overprotective that he instantly says "No" to any boy who tries to ask his daughter out, brutally rapid-fire interrogates the kid, and when the hapless and intimidated boy of course can't answer him, declares, "You disgust me, boy. Get out of my sight."
• Paranoia Gambit: Phil does this in response to Will's antics once when they get particularly outrageous (duping a woman into believing he was going to marry her):
  Phil: ...I'm not going to punish you, Will.
  Will: [Beat] ...That's radical, Uncle Phil, but it just might work.
  Phil: I'm not going to punish you today. Maybe not even tomorrow. You see, I need to think a long, long time about what I'm going to do with you. I don't know, it might come to me... pfft, in the middle of the night. Or maybe next week, or, a few years from now. In the meantime, why don't you worry about it? Be afraid, Will... (pulls him in close) Be very afraid.
• Parental Abandonment: Will, who was raised by his single mother in Philly until he was a teenager as his father left them when he was only a small child, dedicating himself full-time to his job as a cross-country truck driver. Will wondered for years of his father's whereabouts, and it was in part because of the lack of a father figure that it eventually became necessary for him to move to Bel-Air with his Uncle Phil and Aunt Vivian, who took him in on his mother's request. Eventually, Will's dad, Lou, inexplicably shows up at school hoping to meet his son, and the two attempt to bond despite Uncle Phil's heated objections, fearing lingering disloyalty on Lou's part. Lou tries to explain that he "felt trapped and scared", and was "not ready", and Will eagerly accepts the chance to travel with him to the anger of Phil, but he eventually comes around because he knows what this means to Will. Lou however again bails on his son, saying a "big job" is up and can't afford space for Will. Devastated, Will cuts all ties with his father, and tearfully accepts Uncle Phil as his true father.
  • Deconstructed with regards to Will and Vy. Vy does not outright abandon Will as Lou did, but she sends him to live with relatives at the other end of the country, which naturally means she can only see him rarely and have a limited role in his life going forward. For most part, Will doesn't resent her for this, and understands why she sent him to Bel-Air, but both are shown having complicated feelings about it at times.
• Parental Substitute: Phil is a better father figure to Will than Will's own deadbeat dad ever was. At the end of the series, Will even admits that he looked up to Phil and wanted to follow his example.
• Parents Know Their Children: When Bel-Air Academy goes coeducational, Carlton and Will are captivated by all of the beautiful new students, Ashley among them. Will recognizes her first.
  Carlton: *awestruck* She's cool, she's hot, she's -
  Will: Your baby sister, man!
• Periphery Hatedom: In-universe example: Dougie the Orange Whale, who is totally not Barney. Will, of course, finds the idea of someone loving everyone to be impossible:
  Will: Dougie... loves everything. People. Am I the only one who finds this disturbing? *starts sarcastically singing to the tune of Dougie's theme song* I love bugs and I love death, I love oozing flesh wounds!
• Perp Sweating: The police inadvertently do this when Edward Haskell, Phil's law clerk, robs the Banks home. When a police officer asks him to move his van because it's double-parked, Edward has a nervous breakdown and immediately confesses his crime.
• Pick Up Babes With Babes: When Will sees how popular a single father at school is, he lies that his cousin, Nicky, is his son. He then embellishes the story even further which causes people to start giving more and more stuff, culminating in a trip to Hawaii because of his "courage". Feeling bad about the situation, Will eventually comes clean and gives everything to a guy with a baby. When everyone leaves, the guy thanks him and adds, "Just between you and me, this isn't my kid. Aloha."
• Please Put Some Clothes On: In a Season 3 episode, Phil runs around the house waking everyone up. Will, once he can see clearly, yells in terror, with Phil quickly clarifying that Vivian is in labor. Will's response, while not saying it outright, just screams this:
  Will: "That ain't what's scaring me! You ain't got no drawers on!"
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: According to Will, Carlton thought Tupac Shakur was a Jewish holiday.
• [Popular Saying], But...: "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but a fifty-foot fall will kill y'all!"
• Poor Man's Porn: In "Mama's Baby, Carlton's Maybe", when Phil and Vivian question who is the father of Carlton's ex-girlfriend's baby, Will says, "I'm sorry, but for those of you just tuning in to Name That Father, this little bundle of joy belongs to a young man who saw The Little Mermaid eight times." While it can be seen as a way to showcase his immaturity, it can also be seen as something else completely.^note And apparently, he's not alone in that stance with that or other Disney animated films, especially those featuring a princess or female protagonist.
• Post-Victory Collapse: Played for laughs in "The Big Four-Oh". After Vivian absolutely crushes her dance audition, she walks triumphantly out the door with head held high... only to collapse from exhaustion when she's out of sight.
• Primal Scene: In a scene where Will walks in on his mom having sex, and screams in terror loud enough to attract the attention of the rest of the house:
  Will: Mom, I just wanna say that I'm hurt. And I don't think that mothers are supposed to... do... what you — (cringes and clutches his face) Oh my God, I just got a mental picture! (starts beating himself over the head) Get out! Get out!
• Primp of Contempt: Brainless Beauty Hilary provides the following examples:
  • In the episode "Bundle of Joy", Hilary imagines what it'd be like to have a new baby sister. In that daydream sequence, we see her treating her sister more or less like Geoffrey, fanning Hilary and shining her shoes. Twice she asks her sister how school was, and in the middle of explaining, Hilary interrupts, first adjusting her outfit and asking if it looks good and the second time fluffing her hair and asking if she should dye it.
  • "Stop Will! In the Name of Love" has Geoffrey leave Hilary in the kitchen while he attends to the baby. Hilary plops some potatoes into the pot and leaves her mitts on the stoves to file her nails. A fire starts on the stove, and Hilary takes a frying pan, smashes it against the fire and goes back to filing her nails as smoke rises. Geoffrey runs back into the room. She tells him there might be something wrong with the stove, before going back to her nails.
• Prison Episode:
  • "Mistaken Identity" has both Will and Carlton arrested. If you ask Will, it's racial profiling, and if you ask Carlton, it's because they were driving really slowly.
  • In "There's the Rub", Will and Phil are mistakenly jailed for solicitation.
• Prodigal Family: In "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse", Lou seeks to reconnect with his son Will after having abandoned him and his mother out of fear of all the responsibilities that paternity ensues. In an apparent subversion, Will is pretty thrilled at the idea but ends with his heart broken all the same because Lou hasn't really changed and ditches him yet again; making it a Double Subverted Trope.
• Profiling: Carlton and Will get arrested for Driving While Black while on their way to Palm Springs, as Carlton is assigned with driving the car of Mr. Furth, a work associate of Phil's. Carlton's convinced that the police are only doing their job, as their behavior was generally suspicious (they were arguing in the car and driving very slowly), but Will believes it's racial profiling, as does Phil. It ends on a down note. Carlton asks Phil, "Dad, if you were a cop and you saw someone driving a car at two miles an hour, would you stop them?" To which Phil responds, "That's what I asked myself the first time I was pulled over." The episode ends as Carlton sits there in a depressed funk, pondering what just happened.
• Punctuality Is for Peasants: In the episode where Hilary invites Lil'-T, Ashley's favorite singer, to her birthday party:
  Will: Cousin Hilary, this party has been goin' on for an hour. When is Little T gonna get here?
  Hilary: Will, you know nothing about celebrities. They always come to parties fashionably late, and for a celebrity, being an hour late is like being a half an hour early.
  Will: Yeah? Well, if he's not here 15 minutes ago, that's his butt.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: In "Reality Bites", Will takes Nicky to see Dougie the Orange Whale perform at the mall, before Dougie's rather foul-mouthed actor decides to take a smoke break, leaving Nicky and the other kids, including Carlton, disappointed. Will then goes backstage to have a "mammal to mammal" with Dougie's actor, who then proceeds to irk Will further with his attitude, to the point where Will calls him a "big orange Moby-Dick". What pushes it into this territory is how Will emphasizes the last word.
• Pushed at the Monster: Played for Laughs in the Halloween Episode two-parter, "Someday Your Prince Will Be in Effect", Will and Carlton are competing for the attention of a girl to bring to Hilary's Halloween party due to a bet they made to be the first to get a date for it. To convince the girl to pick him, Carlton makes up a story that has Will look like total scumbag while out on a date with another girl and Will happily pushing her into a mugger when he threatens the two.
• Put Me In, Coach!: A failed version; Carlton airballs the final shot in a game, after wrestling with Will for the ball. It goes wide right of the basket. Granted, it's not like he didn't have a reason: ever since Will had joined the school's basketball team, his talent caught the coach's eyes in a way that he practically played alone. This went to Will's head in such a way he became a kind of Jerk Jock (on the court only) and Carlton couldn't take it anymore.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Carlton in "Some Day Your Prince Will Be In Effect (Part 2)", though he won the bet by finding a date for the party first, his date turned out to be the shoplifter whom Hilary was mistaken for in Part 1 while Will had a great night with his date and even got her number.

Q-S

• Rags to Riches: Will can count how many times Jazz cooks up some harebrained scheme to get them rich.
• Raw Eggs Make You Stronger: In "The Philadelphia Story", Will prepares to fight the guy who spun him on his head on the opening credits. He goes through a full Training Montage, complete with drinking raw eggs. He then instantly spits them out and faints.
• Really Gets Around:
  • Before settling with Lisa, Will pretty much had a different girlfriend per episode.
  • Prior to dating Trevor, Hilary's sometimes hinted to be quite promiscuous. For example, after finding pregnancy pamphlets in the trash (they're Ashley's, who took them home to learn about the consequences of sex before she actually has any), the following conversation ensues between the parents and the three oldest kids:
    Phil: Alright. Who's pregnant?
    Will: Hey, not me!
    Carlton: Not me.
    Hilary: (beat) I'm gonna go out on a limb and make that unanimous.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Phil gives several of these speeches to different people over the course of the series.
  • In "I, Clownius", Will gives a literal one to Juggles the Clown after he holds up a courthouse to display his "comedy" routine.
• Recurring Extra: In seasons 4-6 Daryl Sivad would show up in random episodes as an odd, incompetent civil servant, ranging from a paramedic to a park ranger to a suicide crisis negotiator. His mannerisms are consistent enough that he seems to be the same character, but nobody acknowledges him as such.
• Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: In "Fresh Prince, the Movie", Will and Carlton tell Jazz about the time that the family got put into witness protection because Will got on the wrong side of a hitman. Will convinces some of his new neighbors, a bunch of stereotypical rednecks, to help him fight the hitman, but by the time he shows up, the neighbors are in a drunken daze as Will helplessly repeats the code word that was supposed to signal The Cavalry.
• Reset Button: Season 4 ends with Will moving back to Philadelphia. It's reset in two minutes flat in the next season's opener, and is heavily lampshaded: he's kidnapped by NBC executives to get tossed back into Bel-Air.
• Retcon: Ashley's age is inconsistent in season 1. She describes herself as being nine years old in one episode, while Will says she's ten in another. "Just Infatuation" has Ashley celebrating her 12th birthday and for the rest of the series, she ages appropriately.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: Phil tries to talk Hugh Hefner into cutting Hilary's Playboy spread by asking him what he'd do if his own wife posed for his magazine, or if his daughter got involved in it. Hefner replies that his wife was Playmate of the Year and that his daughter runs the empire.
• Rich Language, Poor Language:
  • Will's West Philadelphia-born and -raised Ebonics versus Carlton's Prep and Hilary's Valley Girl. In the episode "Clubba Hubba," Will successfully (at first) imitates Carlton's accent in order to impress the notoriously judgmental father of an attractive girl at the country club.
  • Phil's Prep versus the Southern twangs of his North Carolina-born parents.
• Right Behind Me:
  • A non-funny version. Phil yells at Will for revealing his humble beginnings to a newspaper, unaware that his increasingly hurt and angry mother is standing behind him until she finally blasts him for being ashamed of his upbringing.
  • In another episode, Phil is boasting about how he stands up to Vivian if and when she tries bossing him around, only to look downright terrified when she sharply speaks up. To make matters worse, this is the second time in the episode that this has happened.
  • When Will complains to Carlton about Phil, ignoring Carlton's warning of "Will ...", thinking that Carlton just doesn't appreciate him bad-mouthing his father, until he takes a step and back and bumps into Phil.
• Ripped from the Headlines: In the sixth season, Phil has the chance to preside over a big trial involving a woman who secretly provided prostitutes to big Hollywood parties. While this was largely based on the Heidi Fleiss case from the year prior, it also allowed the show to spoof some aspects of the concurrent OJ Simpson trial.
• "Risky Business" Dance: Geoffrey does this, dancing through the Bankses' living room.
• Running Gag:
  • Jazz (wearing a white and gold dashiki) being thrown out the front door of the house. Notably, the Jazz-being-thrown-out gag is Stock Footage (with the sprinkler noise later added in). Only twice was the sequence reshot, including an instance where he gets thrown out along with a Bill Cosby cardboard cutout. The episode in which it happens shows him doing the take over and over again during the credits bloopers.
  • The Carlton Dance has remained a very popular gag, and Alfonso Ribeiro is frequently asked to perform it. This includes his 2014 appearance on Dancing with the Stars.^note When he hosted Catch 21, however, he apparently had an agreement with GSN where he wouldn't have to do it.
  • Carlton saying "Pardon my French..." only to say something that isn't a swear.
• Sad Clown: Will. When his father walks out on him, his veneer of indifference completely cracks:
  Will: How come he don't want me, man?
• Sassy Black Woman: Vivian and all her sisters, Hattie Banks, Jackie (played by Tyra Banks), Deedee (played by Queen Latifah), Jewel (though she's arguably more scary), and sometimes Lisa.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: When Carlton's ex-girlfriend comes back with a baby she claims is his, Will explains to Phil and Vivian that the baby belongs to "a young man who has seen The Little Mermaid eight times."
• School Bullying Is Harmless: When Ashley is bullied by another girl, it turns out to have just been a misunderstanding, and they talk and reconcile.
• Scream Discretion Shot: Quite a few times and always Played for Laughs:
  • In "The Big Four-Oh", after Will casually tells Uncle Phil that in Aunt Vivian's dance classes, all the younger male dancers will be lifting the female dancers in places that their husbands had long forgotten about, a now worried Phil cries out "VIVIAN!!" loud enough to hear from the outside of the house.
  • In "The Baby Comes Out", from the outside at night we hear a frantic Uncle Phil running around the house and screaming at everyone that Vivian was in labor. Will then encounters him and screams himself, not out of panic, but at the sight of Uncle Phil naked.
  • In "Grumpy Young Men", after Will put superglue in Carlton's pomade in retaliation for his date being attracted to him instead, he apologizes and decides to help free Carlton's hands, which are stuck to his own head. We then see a shot of the house, a loud, ripping noise and Carlton screaming in pain.
• Self-Serving Memory: "Will Goes A Courtin" has Will, Carlton, and Phil tell their sides of the party incident that brought them to court in the first place. Phil paints himself as a meek father dealing with a rambunctious Will and Carlton and the salacious party they throw. Will and Carlton, on the other hand, paint themselves as proper gentlemen coordinating a calm get-together and having to deal with the short-tempered tyrant that is Phil.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Carlton and Will.
• Servile Snarker: Geoffrey. It occasionally gets to a point where you have to wonder why Phil doesn't fire him. Geoffrey does have his kindly moments, however.
• She Is All Grown Up: Ashley in the later seasons, though Phil is reluctant to accept this.
• Shout-Out:
  • Though Will Smith's birth name is "Willard", his character's official name is "William". Occasionally, people will call him "Willard", under the guise of giving him a hard time.
  • The music that plays when Will and Carlton enter the courtroom in "Will Goes A-Courtin'" is the Perry Mason theme ("Park Avenue Beat").
  • "Edward Haskell," the name of Phil's two-faced, brown-nosing law firm assistant who later burglarizes his home in "Robbing the Banks," is a reference to "Eddie Haskell", the name of Wally Cleaver's two-faced, brown-nosing best friend on Leave It to Beaver.
  • The training montage in "The Philadelphia Story" is a shout out of Rocky.
  • The Carlton Dance is based on Courteney Cox's dancing from the Bruce Springsteen video for "Dancing in the Dark".
  • The gorgeous mother of Will's Girl of the Week who seduces him is named Mrs. Robertson. Not identical, but similar enough to make the reference obvious.
  • The cold open of "Will Steps Out" homages a classic scene from Cyrano de Bergerac, where Cyrano humiliates the Viscount de Valvert for a weak jab at his nose by pointing out every possible way it could've been done better — after enduring yet another of Geoffrey's fat jokes, Phil decides it wasn't clever enough and begins to list examples, acting appropriately hammy as he stalks forward until he's got Geoffrey backed up onto the countertop.
    Phil: Well, I mean, there are just so many more interesting ways to say it. You could be... poetic. "His corpulent flesh rolls around his bones like a thick chocolate pudding." Huh? Or scientific! "He is so huge that food comes to him from the gravitational pull alone." (Chuckles) OR, you could be QUIZZICAL! "Is that your head, or is your neck blowing a bubble?" You could be ribald, ironic, vaudevillian, whatever — but be creative! (Voice drops an octave) You got that?
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In the first few episodes, Will mostly wears more bright colored and hip outfits to signify how out of touch he is with his relatives in Bel-Air. In the last episodes, especially the series finale, he is shown to be wearing more neutral and mature clothes to show how much he has grown.
• Silly Prayer: In "The Fresh Prince Project", when Ashley is asked to say grace at dinnertime, she raps it instead:
  ''Hey there, Lord my name is Ashley Banks,
  My family and friends wanted to give you some thanks,
  So before this dinner is all swallowed and chewed,
  Thank you Lord for this stupid food!''
• Single Serving Friend:
  • Will's Philadelphia friend Ice Tray (played by Don Cheadle) appears in one episode in the first season and never again after, even for events like Will's wedding.
  • Same thing happens in "Ain't No Business Like Show Business" where his friend Keith visits.
  • When the Banks family visit Philadelphia, Will and Carlton reconnect with his old gang of friends with no mention of Ice Tray or Keith.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Nicky goes from a baby to six over a season break:
  Jazz: "I'm going back to the street, where things make sense!"
• So Proud of You: In the Grand Finale, Phil tells Will that he considers him to be his son. Considering Will's real father, that means a lot coming from him.
• Stacy's Mom: Deconstructed even before the song came out. Phil's friend from college, Janice, visits and Will starts dating her daughter Wendy. One night, Janice seduces Will and the entire encounter is treated as repulsive and when the truth comes out, it ruins three relationships: Will's with Wendy, Phil's with Janice, and Janice's with her daughter.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • The fourth season begins with Hilary engaged and preparing to move out and the boys moving out as well, since they are going to college. By the episode's end, Hilary's fiance is dead and disaster has struck at the boys' new apartment, leaving them all back at home. There's still a small difference: the boys stay at the poolhouse and pay rent to Uncle Phil instead of living in the main house like before.
  • Season 4 ends with Will moving back to Philadelphia. The next season started with NBC studio execs showing up to kidnap him and drag him back to Bel-Air, and the whole thing is never mentioned again.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: A recurring theme of some episodes.
• Straw Feminist: In the Season 6 Thanksgiving episode, Ashley suddenly becomes a feminist despite never showing any signs of this before. The other (female) characters are exasperated at her and keep telling her to shut up. This is ridiculed to the point that when the others are saying Amen at the dinner table, she says "A-woman".
• Straw Loser: Carlton wasn't supposed to be a loser early in the series, but he's gradually flanderized into an immature dork who just can't compete with Will. In Season 1, he was actually implied to be quite popular in his school, but in one of the later episodes, Carlton himself says he was always a loner and a "dweeb" in high school. Of course, we didn't actually see much of Carlton's (or Will's) life at school in the early seasons, so we only have Carlton's word to go on regarding how popular he was at that time. Once we do start seeing more of school life, it's apparent that he really isn't very popular; this would lead one to deduce that Carlton's claims to popularity were more a case of Unreliable Narrator.
• Stylistic Suck: A funny variation as the Carlton Dance is meant to look ridiculous and Carlton is generally made fun of for dancing that way. The truth is that you can see there is actually a great deal of coordination required and the few times Will performs the same dance, you can tell he isn't quite as smooth at it.
• Sub Text: Played for laughs in "Best Laid Plans". Will wants to talk about sex with Phil, but he can't say it outright, so he says he wants to talk about "cars". Phil understands the situation and they start to have a real conversation about cars and how to be "responsible while driving", until Phil simply can't take it anymore:
  Phil: No sex before marriage.
• Sucks at Dancing: Played with. Will thinks he's the man when he starts dancing, but always gets negative reactions when he does. He once got thrown out of a club because he was that bad. Carlton, on the other hand, is often mocked for being a bad dancer, but as aforementioned, the Carlton Dance actually requires good coordination, and Carlton has been shown to bust out moves rivaling Michael Jackson himself on certain occasions.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • "There's No Business Like Show Business" has Will accompanying a comedian friend to an audition to an open mike night and ends up getting the job himself due to impressing the talent scout. You'd think that because Will is a well-known jokester with others, he'd flawlessly wow the crowd, right? Absolutely not: he's neither a professional nor has any real material and he predictably bombs with the audience.
  • In "Father of the Year", Philip takes Vivian on a vacation away from the baby so they can have some time together. At one point, he tries to seduce her...only for her to fall asleep on him before anything happens and he's unable to wake her up. Since caring for an infant is a lot of work, she's exhausted instead of aroused or relaxed.

T-Z

• Take That!:
  • Will criticizes Dougie, a talking anthropomorphic animal kids' show host, for always being happy and loving everything. Hmmm...
  • * In "The Alma Matter", after an angry Carlton confronts Will over why Princeton wanted him as a student, he begins to randomly quiz about various things. He then asks who said that "It's better to die at your feet than to live on your knees",^note The quote being said by Emiliano Zapata only for Will to reply, "I'm guessing it wasn't Madonna".
  • In "Community Action", when Jazz tries to move into the Banks' mansion, Will quips that he's about as welcome there as "Mike Tyson at a beauty pageant". At the time the episode aired, Tyson was in prison for raping Desiree Washington.
• The Talk: Happens in one entire episode involving Ashley's curiosity about sex.
• Talk Show Appearance:
  • "A Night at the Oprah" has the family going on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Phil hopes it could be a boost to his campaign for Supreme Court Judge, save for a jealous Will who didn't receive a ticket due to not being an immediate family member. Their dirty laundry makes it onto the air after Will is let on by a sympathetic Oprah and devolves into the family squabbling including screaming matches, an on-camera breakdown from Hilary and Will fighting an audience member who insulted his mother, ultimately resulting in hurting Phil's campaign chances.
  • In "Will's Up the Dirt Road", Will gets a job as a journalist and hopes he can make a book called Celebrities' Houses... at Night, where he takes pictures of celebrities houses at night. However, the publisher takes one of his photos and spins it where it appears Jay Leno is polluting the water with oil, with Leno suing Will. Will sneaks onto Leno's show and clears up the mess.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In "Deck the Halls", after Will overdecorates the house, he yells at the neighbor who calls them to complain, demanding they meet face to face so he can confront them. When the guy shows up, it's Evander Holyfield, the heavyweight champion of the world:
  Will: (upon meeting him and dusting his shoulder) N-Nice champion.
  • In "Mama's Baby, Carlton's Maybe", Carlton's ex-girlfriend returns and Carlton tries to get back together with her saying he's ready for an adult relationship. When she comes in, she brings her baby whom she claims Carlton is the father of. Thankfully, he wasn't.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: The candidates applying for the job of babysitting Nicky are rather scary-looking individuals... and Jazz, who mistakes the job for taking care of Hilary.
• Terrible Pick-Up Lines: Will uses a bad pickup link on a girl and gets a smart-ass remark in response:
  Will: Would you like some fries to go with that shake?
  Girl: Sorry, I'm on a no-fathead diet.
• Theme Tune Rap: Hands down the most famous example ever.
• Themed Wedding: Will and Lisa eloping in Vegas to a chapel that specializes in theme weddings. They've chosen a Shaft-themed wedding with the real Issac Hayes as a pastor. When the couple decides to break it off, Will dismisses Hayes as an impersonator.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: In "Community Action", Jazz lives in the Bankses' house for a couple of days and greatly abuses their generosity:
  Jazz: I sleep naked with the window open. I hope that don't bother you.
  Will: No, that's cool with me. You're sleeping in Carlton's room.
• This Is Reality: After Carlton tells off Top Dog in "Blood Is Thicker Than Mud", it looks like Top Dog will be mostly a Karma Houdini for his hazing of Carlton. His second-in-command quickly puts him in his place by pointing out he doesn't have free range just because he's the leader, and vows to have him removed from the fraternity for abusing his power.
• Threatening Mediator: In "Grumpy Young Men", Will and Carlton are bickering because the girl Will likes kisses Carlton in front of him. Phil tells the two that they either settle their differences or he will do it himself.
• Threatening to Cut Ties: At the end of the episode "Poppa's Got A Brand New Excuse", Vivian makes it quite clear that if Will's father bails on Will again, he is not to come back. Will calling him by his real name instead of some familiar title makes it quite clear the feeling's the same for him.
• Timeshifted Actor: An episode had a flashback to before the Banks became rich, in which every major character excluding Ashley, who wasn't born at the time of the flashback, were played by different actors. However, at the beginning of "Sooooul Train" where the cast are watching an old videotape of Vivian and Phil's appearance in the eponymous show, they are played by the same actors.
• Tiny Schoolboy: Carlton during high school and then college much later.
• Title Sequence Replacement: When TBS reacquired the rerun rights in 2007, the network switched the opening theme out of the intro for the closing theme, shortening the intro in the process. To a longtime fan of the show, it was very jarring, especially when TBS had rerun the show several years earlier with the original theme intact.
• Token White:
  • Kellogg "Cornflake" Lieberbaum functioned as this in the first two seasons, being Will's only recurring friend at the school. Will would also occasionally have a different white friend at school, though most didn't last long as characters.
  • Will's aunt Janice married a... um... tall man, who would eventually become so accepted by the family that he and Will would make jokes about Carlton being the token white member of the group. Said "tall" man lampshades this in a later episode at a ski resort when Janice complains that they (the family) are the only black people they see there. The "tall" man remarks, "Don't be silly. Everywhere I turn, I see another black person", after which Janice almost falls down laughing.
• Tough Love:
  • Phil. A perfect example occurs in "Just Say Yo." Carlton mistakes amphetamines (a recreational drug known as "Speed"), that he finds in Will's locker, for vitamins, and ends up in the hospital. When Will admits to Uncle Phil that the drugs came from his own locker, he has an emotional breakdown out of guilt. Despite the fact that the normally jovial Will is beginning to cry, Phil forces Will to come clean in front of the whole family. After the fact, with Will sobbing over the possibility that he could have seriously hurt Carlton, Uncle Phil embraces him as the episode ends.
  • Played for laughs when Carlton, Hilary and Ashley tried this on Will. Will blames himself for Judge Robertson's fatal heart attack. Instead of standing up for himself like Carlton thought he would, he breaks down crying and runs away.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Invoked in "You'd Better Shop Around". Will is offered a weekend job selling cars which eventually turns into a full-time job. Despite being an ideal employee, the job leads him down this path and makes him drop out of school. It's best illustrated when he goes from being extremely reluctant to fire an under-performing employee especially learning of his home life to pretending to fire people just for his own amusement. This is justified as his boss, while nice to him, is a callous Bad Boss to his other employees. Thankfully, he gets better at the end when his mom forces him to quit and Phil tells him that after college he'll be able to do something more fulfilling.
• Training Montage:
  • Played straight in a Season 1 episode, when Carlton gives Will etiquette lessons.
  • Parodied in the Season 4 finale, when Will returns to Philadelphia (which is appropriate, since that's Rocky Balboa's hometown): after he finishes climbing up the staircase of the Museum of Art, he starts celebrating, but he's so tired that he faints — and then some guy comes by and steals his wallet and his hat.
• Tracking Shot: In "Just Say Yo", the camera follows Will when he walks back into the prom to find Carlton high on speed and dancing.
• Tuckerization: A minor case during the final season. Werner, the producer of Hilary's talk show, was named after Fresh Prince producer Werner Walian.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Phil isn't ugly, but he's definitely overweight. But in true Dom Com style, in Vivian, he has a gorgeous, svelte wife. In fact, given the recasting of Janet Hubert-Whitten with Daphne Maxwell Reid, he technically gets two. Unlike most cases, the difference is acknowledged, thanks to Will's constant teasing and Vivian's occasional gentle ribbing, and Vivian makes a point of telling Will that Phil's weight does not bother her "one bit".
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: In "It Had to be You", when Jazz mentions that he has a sister, both Will and Phil imagine Jazz in drag at different points. When they finally meet Janet, she turns out to be a very beautiful woman.
• Unfortunate Names:
  • "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" has one of Phil's business associates introduce himself to Will as "Whitey", on account of his white hair — but Will refuses to call him that, for fear Whitey will "call me the other thing" in response.
  • Dr. Whitehorn, the marriage counselor in "Will Is From Mars...":
    George: Hey, Whitey!
    Dr. Whitehorn: My name is Dr. Whitehorn.
    George: Yeah, yeah, Horny! Where do we sit?
• Unusual Euphemism: Will's aunt shows up with a fiancé who is unexpectedly white. The various adults discuss their surprise seizing on the fact that he is "tall" in order to avoid sounding prejudiced to their kids. They are quick to say they have no problem with "tall" people, though. This is subverted when Will asks if they noticed he was white.
• Upper-Class Twit: Hilary to a T. Hell, the entire Banks family save Nicky qualifies, though they all get moments that subvert it.
• Uptown Girl: Geoffrey fell in love with a woman who moved next to the Bankses' mansion. Everything was right until he learned she's rich instead of a servant. What really troubled him wasn't her money but her social class.
• Urban Legend: The subtext behind the ending scene of "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse" has taken on a life of its own:
  • The most common story is that Will Smith drew from his experiences with his own deadbeat dad. However, in Real Life, although his parents did separate when Smith was young, his father continued to have an active role in his upbringing and was even the person who encouraged his rap career. Some sources instead cite Smith drawing experience from his friends, many of whom had deadbeat dads of their own although he had not.
  • Another common story is that Smith adlibbed his ending monologue. This hasn't been independently verified by anyone connected with the show, although many cite James Avery's clearly blindsided reaction as evidence of this. What is known is that Avery was greatly impressed by the raw emotion of Smith's performance, complimenting his acting skills after the scene had concluded.
• Very Special Episode:
  • "Mistaken Identity": Will and Carlton are pulled over trying to get to a fancy party by a cop who doesn't believe that two black teenagers would be driving a luxury car for someone. After Uncle Phil bails them out (and threatens to sue the police force for discrimination), Will gets mad at Carlton for siding with the police and declaring that "they were just doing their job" while Will thinks the whole thing is a sign that there are racist cops out there who profile anyone who isn't white.
  • "Mama's Baby, Carlton's Maybe": Lark Vorhees (Lisa from Saved by the Bell) stars in this episode where Carlton nearly becomes a victim of paternity fraud because he's too afraid to admit he's a virgin.
  • "Just Say Yo": Will is given speed so he can pass his classes, but he has no interest in it and just tosses it into his locker. Then Carlton, desperate to get rid of a pimple, finds the drug and mistakes it for vitamin E. He gets tripping high, dances wildly at the senior prom, then collapses and nearly dies. Will is then declared a hero for rescuing Carlton and Carlton gets reprimanded for taking pills that weren't meant for him, but Will ends up in trouble when it's revealed the speed was his.
  • "Blood is Thicker Than Mud": A fraternity Will and Carlton are trying to join discriminate against Carlton for being a black guy who acts white.
  • "You've Got to Be a Football Hero": Will's love interest's new boyfriend challenges him to a drinking contest; he gets drunk and passes out. Rather than say something along the lines of that "alcohol is evil", the episode decries the stupidity of abusing alcohol for the sake of respect and machismo.
  • "Home Is Where the Heart Attack Is": Uncle Phil ends up in the hospital with a heart attack and Carlton obsesses over the household chores because he doesn't want to confront the fact that his father is near death.
  • "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse": Will's deadbeat dad (played by Ben Vereen) comes back, only to abandon him again. The ending shows Will breaking down over the realization that his real father just doesn't love him.
  • "Bullets over Bel-Air": Will and Carlton get robbed at an ATM. While Will ends up in the hospital after getting shot, Carlton decides to buy a gun to protect himself, despite not knowing the first thing about using a gun.
• Virgin-Shaming: Deconstructed. Carlton has no shame about being a virgin, but the repeated pressure from Will and his friends, along with meeting his ideal woman, causes him to sleep with her the first chance he gets. While initially elated, he later finds out the woman was separated from her husband and has since reconciled with him. Carlton ends up devastated, and even Will feels guilty after the fact for pushing him so hard.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Will and Carlton are a textbook example. They are regularly at odds with each other, and Will spends most of his time picking on Carlton, but they are still best friends. If they weren't this at first, they become much closer in later years.
• Viva Las Vegas!: Season 6's "Viva Lost Wages", which sees Will and Carlton on their first trip to Vegas. Carlton ends up gambling away every last penny he and Will have, leading to the two entering a dance contest in the hopes they'll win $1,000 and be able to pay their way home.
• Wealth's in a Name: Will's rich relatives have the last name Banks.
• Wearing It All Wrong: "The Fresh Prince Project" has Will, an urban kid from Philadelphia, wearing a suit with the cummerbund around his chest at a dinner party throw by his wealthy Aunt Vivian and Uncle Phil.
• Wham Line:
  • In the pool hustler episode when Phil is playing pool badly:
    Phil: [nervous] Geoffrey? [serious] Break out Lucille.
  • Will asks Phil this when his father leaves him again:
  "How come he don't want me, man?"
• Wham Shot: Literally in "Bullets Over Bel-Air". This is also true concerning the ending when Will opens up Carlton's gun and finds that it was loaded.
• What Are You in For?: Oddly, Will ends up fielding this question as a hospital inpatient.
• The Whitest Black Guy: Several characters, most notably Carlton and Geoffrey:
  • Carlton is a stereotypical preppy, aspires to attend an Ivy League university, enjoys dancing to the music of Tom Jones, and idolizes Macaulay Culkin and William Shatner. Will used to give him endless grief about it.
    Carlton: Wait 'till we come downstairs in these tuxes. People may not think we're twins, but I'll bet they'll think we're brothers.
    Will: You know, I don't think you'll have to worry about anybody mistaking you for a brother.
  • Used a bit more seriously in the episode "Blood is Thicker Than Mud", where Will and Carlton try to join an all-black fraternity. Although they're both hazed, Carlton's hazing is more severe than Will's. Even after he endures everything they put him through, the pledge master, Top Dog, still refuses to let Carlton join because he believes that Carlton is a "sellout". Carlton absolutely tears into him about how being black is not the only thing that defines him. Will quits in disgust when he finds out. After they return home and tell Uncle Phil and Aunt Vivian what happened, Phil laments: "When are we going to stop doing this to each other?"
  • Geoffrey is a black British man and has more in common with the Servile Snarker butler archetype than the typical American black man. This fact doesn't go unnoticed.
• Why Waste a Wedding?: Will and Lisa decide not to get married during their wedding ceremony, so Will's mother and Lisa's father get married instead.
• Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour: A variant in "The Baby Comes Out" — in the opening scene, involving a view of the house from outside as the lights start to come on in the middle of the night, Will gets woken up by his uncle Phil in full Panicky Expectant Father mode as he's screaming for everyone to get up because Vivian's baby is coming. Turns out it was a false alarm, but Will still goes from half-asleep to fully awake and screaming when he sees Phil because, as he puts it, "You ain't got no drawers on!". The next morning, Will complains that he can't handle these false alarms anymore — "I mean, getting woke up in the middle of the night by a naked man running around the house."
• Won't Do Your Dirty Work: In "Papa's Got A Brand New Excuse", Will's deadbeat father Lou returns hoping to repair their broken relationship. Unfortunately, Lou has to cancel plans for his and Will's cross-country road trip. He reveals this to Phil, who was already weary about Lou coming back into Will's life. When Lou asks Phil to tell Will he is cancelling the trip on Lou's behalf, Phil tells him that he won't do his dirty work for him.
• World of Snark: A large dose of the humor comes from the funny one-liners delivered by the characters towards another, even Hilary and Jazz can snark pretty good if the joke calls for it.
• You Owe Me: There are several typical examples throughout the series but "Bullets over Bel-Air" delivers one of the most serious invocations of this ever in a sitcom:
  Will: I saved your life, man. I saved your life, YOU OWE ME! Now give me the gun, Carlton.
• Your Costume Needs Work: In "The Wedding Show (Psyche!)", Will and Lisa almost get a quickie Vegas Shaft-themed wedding, but come to their senses at the last minute. As they're leaving, Will tells the priest that his Isaac Hayes impression sucks; the priest, played by Hayes, says he didn't think it was that bad.

---

"I pulled up to a house 'bout 7 or 8
An' I yelled to the cabbie, 'Yo, holmes! Smell ya later!'
I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel-Air!"