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I
- I'm a Humanitarian:
- The series' version of Pinocchio believes that the only way he can become a real boy is if he eats the flesh of a real boy.
- In "Which Came First", Sperg eats Pud'n's arms and legs after they get stranded in the desert together, though that becomes part of the show's Negative Continuity.
- "Tastes Like Chicken" is all about Billy jumping to the conclusion that Mandy is a cannibal who's eaten his friends and family and plans to eat him next, which ends with a played-for-laughs implication that she actually has eaten Irwin.
- Eris is shown eating Hoss Delgado several times when she gets mad in "Chaos Theory", though she always uses her powers to spit him out/restore him afterwards.
- Implausible Deniability: In "Runaway Pants", Billy attempts to run down the street only to become exhausted taking a short leap forward. When Mandy tells him that he's out of shape, he's quick to deny it.
- Incompetent Guard Animal: One of the dogs that would eventually fused into Wiggy-Jiggy Jed (full-named Sir William Wexell Wingding Whizzlebang the Third) in the episode "Dream Mutt" is Trigger, who wound up being put up for adoption because she did nothing to stop burglars from breaking into her owner's home and then escaping.
- Introductory Opening Credits: Grim, Billy, and Mandy are each introduced with their name to the side and scenes of them from the show in the background.
- I Fell for Hours: During Mandy's interpretation of Humpty Dumpty in "Nursery Crimes" with Billy as the main character.
- I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: In "Big Boogey Adventure", Billy asks his future self what he is going to have for lunch on Thursday. His future self replies with the trope name.
- In an earlier episode, Billy asks why Bobby wants his life, to which Bobby replies, "If I told you, then I'd have to destroy you." A confused Billy then asks, "Aren't you going to destroy me anyway?"
- I Got a Rock: In "Grim or Gregory," Billy gets a rock. And promptly eats it.
- Invisible Jerkass: The titular spectral duck in "Duck!" that latches onto people who become the only ones who can see it. The only sound it ever makes is Blowing a Raspberry, which everyone else interprets as the host farting.
- I Taste Delicious: Provides the page image. In one episode, Billy is changed into pure chocolate, and can't stop eating himself.
- Interspecies Romance: Nergal and Aunt Sis's marriage is never presented as anything other than a mutually loving relationship. (But they did have a rather Creepy Child together.)
J
- Jackass Genie: Zig-zagged with the wishing skull, Thromnambular. In a few cases, he twists wishes around (Mindy wishes to be a "big star," and he straps her to a rocket; Pudd'n wishes for a bunny rabbit, so he conjures up a psychotic one). However, the majority of the wishes going bad are actually the fault of the wisher—Harold wants to relive his glory days in high school, but they were actually horrible; Sperg wants to be a girl so he can rob other girls in the school bathroom, but fails to account for bitches like Mindy; and Irwin wants to be in a music video with Mandy, ignoring that she hates him.
- Jailed One After Another: In "Duck!", this happens to Grim, Irwin, and several others when a ghostly duck (whom only its chosen victims can see) gets them in trouble by blowing raspberries and making it look like they're farting at the worst possible moment.Grim: At the rate this duck is getting people into trouble, I predict this cell will be full in about... four hours.(two hours later)Grim: Man, he's workin' fast!
- Jerkass: Mandy is a very cruel and spiteful girl who often bullies and intimidates Billy, Grim, and anyone else who gets her cross. One of her meanest actions would be in "Grim or Gregory?", where she takes a child's Halloween candy for no good reason and twists the knife by claiming not to care when Billy admonishes her for making the kid cry.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: While she wasn't the nicest character in the show, she was nowhere near as domineering and flat-out evil in earlier seasons as she became later on.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk/Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sperg. He constantly zig-zags between the two, even in the first episode he appeared in. He kicks the crud out of Billy, gets scared off by Mandy, gets cheered up by Billy, and wedgies Billy before the iris in. All in one episode. In the episode where he and the rest of the cast fight off aliens, he gets a bomb planted in his skull that explodes in a day's time...all while Billy whomps the other aliens mercilessly. What does Sperg do? Make his way to the control room, where he eventually detonates, blasting the alien ship out of the sky.
- Judicial Wig: Judge Roy Spleen wears a curly white wig, which serves his role as The Comically Serious.
K
- "Kick Me" Prank: When Grim narrates about Jack, you see Jack using this prank on various people in the animated montage.
- Kick the Dog: Grim and Mandy have had a number of potential moments, usually involving leaving Billy to a Cool and Unusual Punishment.
- Billy, though a good kid, has tried to kill his "adopted" son just because he's afraid of spiders.
- Irwin has allowed a Pyramid to be built in his honor, regardless of whether or not everybody remains brainwashed.
- Nergal forces a number of people, including the viewer, into transforming into his "Friends" in the second episode he appears in.
- Boogey does it all the time but one stands out in Wrath of the Spider Queen. During the contest for who would become the future Grim Reaper, Velma was close to winning, but Boogey decided to rig the voting. When Velma finds out, she thinks Grim tried to cheat, costing him his only friend.
- Ms. Butterbean in "Substitute Creature" when she ignored Sperg bullying Junior because he bribed her with an apple. The drawer filled with apples makes clear that this has happened lots of times. To really twist the knife, she tells Junior that it's okay for Sperg to do it because he was bigger. You don't feel bad when Junior glues her to the ceiling and takes her form.
- Mindy has had her fair share of moments from attempting to incinerate Mandy for taking her place as cheerleader of the team to beating up Billy with knuckles for being a loser. And let's not even mention Underfist...
- Sperg lives by being his usual abusive self but he went even beyond it by resorting to cannibalism and eating Pud'n's arms and legs.
- Killer Rabbit:
- Pud'n's wish for a pet bunny in "Wishbones" gives him this.
- In "Dumb Luck", Billy pulls a four-leaf clover out of the ground and with it a sizable chunk of where it was growing. He ends up disturbing a colony of prairie dogs, whom Mandy claims kill more people each year than great white sharks. After attacking Billy once, the prairie dogs attack him again when he opens his drawer in his Humiliation Conga montage.
L
- Lampshade Hanging: In one episode, people are sucked through telephones and into an alternate dimension, leaving behind their shoes. Mandy asks why the shoes were left behind and Grim comments, "Of course they got left behind, shoes can't fit through a telephone, they're way too big."
- Half of the show is one big lampshade hung up like a giant pinata.
- At the end of "Super Zero", Billy asks Grim if he could be changed back from a superhero to a normal boy. Grim, frustrated, yells:Grim: Normal?! There's nothing normal around here!
- Last-Second Photo Failure: In "Be A-Fred, Be Very A-Fred", Grim has to spend a day with Fred Fredburger, who won a contest from the laxative company Grim's a spokesman for, and he has Mandy take a picture of them together to impress the executives with. Fred keeps ruining the shot by opening his mouth to eat his ice cream, and the last picture has Billy suddenly blocking them in the frame.
- Lighter and Softer: The post Grim & Evil episodes, especially in the last three seasons, are much less morbid and frightening most of the time. Characters introduced in this era are the least bit threatening, with Dracula being Redd Foxx instead of the traditional Romanian bloodsucker and Fred Fredburger being a harmless Cloudcuckoolander who relies on Running Gags and Toilet Humour.
- Lightning Can Do Anything
- Limited Wardrobe: As is the case with many other cartoons, everyone wears the same clothes all the time.
- Little Miss Snarker: Mandy could be the Trope Maker.
- Lovecraft Country: Endsville is essentially a (slightly) less foreboding modern version of Dunwich, Massachusetts, with some new religious deity and/or horror from beyond the mortal veil making its prescience known every other week, sometime due to the fault of the main characters and sometimes just because.
- Lovecraft Lite: The setting is full of supernatural horrors and terrifying creatures from the Underworld and beyond...all seen through the eyes of two local kids who have managed to finagle the aspect of Death Himself into an eternal contract of servitude.
- Love Potion: In "One Crazy Summoner", a love potion is accidentally used on Dean Toadblatt and he falls in love with the Squid Hat.
M
- Made of Explodium: In "Everything Breaks" Billy complains that his bowl of cereal isn't pancakes and throws it out the window, and due entirely to Rule of Funny it explodes.
- Malaproper: A Running Gag in Big Boogey Adventure is that Billybot and Mandroid regularly conflate the word "assimilate" with "annihilate". Their actions generally indicate that they seek to do the latter.
- Mark of the Beast: Parodied in "Tricycle of Terror" where it turns out that an underworld company actually uses the mark of the beast as its trademark for a catalogue of cursed products.
- The Meaning of Life: Grim tests a talking computer's knowledge by asking it the meaning of life. It responds that, "Life has no meaning. Only machine intelligence is truly important on a cosmic scale." Grim's surprised that it got it right.
- Medium Awareness: In the comic book story "Future Tense," Grim says he can use his scythe to decipher what Nostradamus is talking about, which Mandy considers too convenient.Mandy: Doesn't this comic have any standards?
- In "Spider's Little Daddy", when Grim complains about a game where he's playing as a Giant Spider, the muscular human protagonist mocks him and shoots the score under Grim's character, reducing it to 0.
- "Meet the Celebrity" Contest: In "Be A-Fred, Be Very A-Fred", Grim becomes the cover boy of a laxative brand and announces an essay contest, with the winner getting to spend a day with him. Ironically, this proves to be a marketing disaster, since customers are understandably hesitant to buy a product advertised by The Grim Reaper himself. Grim tries to save the company's reputation by treating the sole contest participant, Fred Fredburger, to the best day of his life, though his efforts culminate in Fred apparently dying. As a result, the company fires Grim, but not before beating him to a pulp.
- "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: The episode "Scary Poppins" gives us this exchange.Billy: Be careful, Grim!
Grim: "Careful" is my middle name. Oh, I never forgave Mom for that one. - Mid-Battle Tea Break: A subversion. When Grim, Billy, Mandy, and Irwin are racing against Boogie and his crew for possession of Horror's Hand, part of the race itself is a stop for lunch at noon.
- Mid-Life Crisis Car: Discussed.
- Misery Builds Character: In "Duck!", Mandy is immune to the ghostly duck's attempts to embarrass her since she's friends with Billy, whose disgusting antics are so much worse than the duck's simple raspberry blowing that she considers its act insulting in how pathetically weak it is.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: In "Duck!" Grim is seen trying to show children he can't be the one making fart noises by showing them his skeleton body and his lack of organs while shouting "Look at my body!". He is arrested shortly afterward.
- Mistaken for Santa: In the pilot episode, The Grim Reaper arrives to take Billy's hamster. When Billy sees him, he assumes Grim to be Santa Claus. Mandy has to tell Billy who Grim actually is to which Billy asks if he still gets any presents.
- Mistaken for Toilet:
- At the start of "Billy and Mandy Save Christmas", a very frantic Billy is in a long line. He assumes it's the line to the men's room, but a kid in front of him informs him that it's the line to see a Mall Santa.
- In "The Grim Adventures of The Kids Next Door", Billy mistakes the Delightful Children's delightfulization chamber as a bathroom. They initially let him in, before realizing Billy mistook it for a bathroom, and went in to try and stop him. The combination of Billy, the Delightful Children, Grim's Scythe, and Harold's Lucky Pants ends up creating the main antagonist of the crossover special.
- Mister Seahorse: Jeff ends up laying eggs even though he is a male spider.
- Mooning: In "Billy and Mandy's Jacked-Up Halloween", Billy is asked by Mandy to distract Jack while she prepares to take on Jack's pumpkin army with an arsenal of pranks. Billy distracts Jack by mooning him.
- Monster Mash: Many of the one-shot, minor and recurring characters are the show's takes on classic monsters. Examples include the Boogey Man, Dracula and the Bride of Frankenstein.
- Mrs. Claus: Who is a vampire.
- Multi-Character Title (if you count "Grim" as being one of three character names in the title)
- Multiple-Choice Past: The origins of Grim and his profession vary from time to time, should the plot of the episode call for it.
- Musical Episode: "Little Rock of Horrors" was a Shout-Out to Little Shop of Horrors, with original music by Voltaire.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Subverted with Mandy in the episode "A Dumb Wish", when she accidentally wishes everyone on Earth away into oblivion ...but then she gives a devilish smirk and goes home to watch TV.
- Played straight in "Billy's Growth Spurt". Grim has this reaction when he sees that his Granny’s remedy for Billy's food poisoning has resulted in a sentient parasitic growth on Billy’s back.
- Grim then has another one "Billy and Mandy vs. The Martians", after he willingly helped the Martian Grim Reaper, Morg, invade Earth and turn everyone into zombies, and used Billy as a way to control said zombies. He begins to have his Heel–Face Turn after discovering that Morg had destroyed the Reapers of all the other planets and kept their scythes as trophies, and that he might possibly do the same to Grim after he successfully conquered the universe. And surprisingly, it's Billy of all people that finally talks Grim back to his senses.Billy: Sometimes our best friends are people we really don't like.
Grim: Then you guys must be my best friends ever.
Billy: Well, if there's anything I've learned from destroying Fancy Jake and stowing away in your trunk to Mars, and returning in a last-ditch effort to save the planet, is that you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose. You have to let them be who they are, and pick it themselves.
Grim: ...What have I done?! - In "Wrath of the Spider Queen", while Velma doesn’t say it, you can definitely tell she feels that way after discovering that her grudge towards Grim that lasted for several millennia was unwarranted.
- My Little Phony: Grim's favorite show "My Troubled Pony", combining colorful ponies with an over-the-top Soap Opera. Unfortunately for him, it was Cut Short.
