Karma Houdini: At the end of "Shut the Pup Up" when it turns out the Talking Dog was wrong about the two men dumping a dead body in Townsville Harbor, there were hints that they actually were mobsters and they're left to go free. When the "wrapped up corpse" turns out to be beef bones they're just as surprised as everyone else.
Kath Soucie: Bubbles' voice in the What A Cartoon! shorts.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" has never been shown in the U.S., not even in the current runs on Boomerang. It is on the complete series DVD set.
Princess Morbucks: Prepare to bow to your princess!
Mojo Jojo: You will bow before me!
Alien Force: And you will now bow down to me!
Knight of Cerebus: What do all the darkest episodes have in common? HIM always makes things darker and edger.
Knights and Knaves: In the episode "Him Diddle Riddle", they come across the "Are you wearing a sombrero?" variant. And they leave it to Blossom to figure out the riddle. And she uses the correct line of reasoning to deduce the "correct" variant. And she gets it wrong. But Him gives them the point anyway, presumably because Blossom has a really good poker face.
Laser-Guided Karma: Things play out very similarly between Buttercup and Ace in Season 1's "Buttercrush" and between Ace and Sedusa in the final season's "Aspirations".
Latex Perfection: Sedusa disguises herself as Bellum perfectly; to their credit, the girls aren't fooled.
Laughably Evil: All of the villains, especially HIM. Mojo Jojo is to a lesser extent.
Whenever the Powerpuff Girls arrive to save the day or do something heroic, they have a little tune that plays.
Many of their most often reoccurring villains have their own theme music as well.
Notable leitmotifs are those of Princess Morbucks, Fuzzy Lumpkins, Gangreen Gang, HIM, and Amoeba Boys.
Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In the Shotgun Wedding episode, in which the Professor tries to learn more about Fuzzy Lumpkins for the purpose of science, he's mistaken for a female of Fuzzy's species (whatever he is), and the Professor ends up nearly marrying him. After the Professor is saved by the Powerpuff Girls, he writes "never speak of this again" on the notepad that he was using... and then eats it. He gets really mad when the Powerpuff Girls tease him about it 10 seconds later.
Like a Badass out of Hell: HIM brings the Rowdyruff boys back to life to defeat the Powerpuff girls.
Limited Animation: Definitely influenced by the style, especially in the earlier episodes.
Lost in Translation: None of the Beat-Alls jokes work in the Swedish dub. The translator doesn't come up with any Woolseyisms, since that wouldn't be possible in Swedish.
Loophole Abuse: "Schoolhouse Rocked". The rules are there's no fighting in school. So Miss Keane suggests to the Powerpuff Girls they "play dodgeball" with the Gangreen Gang instead.
MacGuffin: The Key to the World in "The Powerpuff Girls Rule". The Professor lampshades the utter ridiculousness of the concept.
Magic Meteor: In one comic book story of The Powerpuff Girls, they had to deal with everyone in the City Of Townsville getting powers from a meteor ("Power Play," DC Comics issue #3).
Make Me Wanna Shout: The Girls' Sonic Scream. Bubbles uses it the most frequently, however.
Midair Bobbing: The girls are the queens of this trope; they even do it in unison.
Mind-Control Eyes: Professor Utonium and several others in one episode.
Minor Flaw, Major Breakup: In "Keen on Keane", Professor Utonium ends up breaking up with Ms. Keane because she owns a cat. In his defense, the last cat that the professor had spent any prolonged time with turned out to be an evil mastermind that tried to make him jump off a building.
Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: Ms. Keane inverts this in "Speed Demon", where she goes from a math problem with apples to Einstein's Theory of Relativity and how it pertains to potential Time Travel. It was relevant to the plot, but the class just kinda stared blankly.
Mondegreen: Used intentionally with many, many Beatles lyrics in the "Meet the Beat-Alls" episode.
Moral Dissonance: The Brocolli Aliens' invasion of earth could be justified by the humanity constantly consuming his "kin", and the girls respond with a vicious genocide on the invaders. Mojo Jojo frequently attempts to kill the girls for reasons which are far harder to justify, and he gets beat up and jailed.
In Not So Awesome Blossom, Mojo issues an ultimatum to Blossom in exchange for the lives of her sisters and the Professor, an ultimatum of servitude. Blossom asks "How do you know I won't lie?," to which Mojo responds "Because you're Blossom." They must have forgotten A Very Special Blossom, where she steals a set of golf clubs to give the Professor for Father's Day then not only lies about how she got them but when cornered tried to frame Mojo for it.
Motive Decay: An In-Universe example would be the crook who dressed up like Lucky Captain Rabbit King, who went through so much torment trying to get the box of cereal he forgot he was originally after the stolen jewel hidden in the box.
Motor Mouth: Mojo Jojo. Villainous rants are one thing, but he often does it just for the sake of doing it. He loves to talk so much, he rants even when there's no-one around to listen to him.
Mistaken for Profound: Mayor is running for reelection, spouting his usual, tired lines. Fuzzy Lumpkins gets tired of Mayor's shouting to the crowd interrupting his sleep, so he yells "SHUT UP!", and people act like it's the best campaign slogan ever.
MST: In "Silent Treatment", the girls make fun of the silent movie they're watching, complete with silhouettes in front of the screen.
The entire concept of "Beat Your Greens". What better way to get children of the '90's to eat their veggies by making a race of hyperintelligent, nigh invulnerable broccoli invade earth only to be defeated by Townsville's children banding together and devouring them all into oblivion?
My Friends... and Zoidberg: "The city of Townsville: a place filled with some of the most brilliant, clever, and ingenious criminal masterminds ever to hatch an evil scheme! ...Then, there's the Amoeba Boys."
The girls would sometimes encounter people who call them the Powderpuff Girls or something similar.
Major Glory in particular not only calls them by that name, but he also uses "Sugarpuffs" twice. He also calls the individual girls "Butterdish", "Caboodles", "Blaze'em", and "Bless'em".
Mythology Gag: The exterior of the Pokey Folks retirement home in "Fallen Arches" is what used to be the Hanna-Barbera studio. The numerical address seen is 3400, and the studio was at 3400 Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood.
Naked People Are Funny: In "Nano of the North," the girls set out to fight the microscopic Nanobots, which can melt any object into nonexistence. They discover offscreen that this includes their clothing, causing them to return to the professor in embarrassment ... and in nothing but their hands.
Madame Argentina: Please sit. Narrator: Which the girls did.
Never My Fault: In one episode a cop is fired for being lazy and not doing his job and he assumes the reason he was fired was because the Powerpuff Girls' crimefighting was causing the police department to make cutbacks. He proceeds to capture the girls and try to dunk them in acid.
He actually pulls it off, but then everyone present (including the girls themselves) learn that acid doesn't hurt them.
Doubly Subverted when Mojo Jojo actually repeated one of his previous plans exactly, except for one minor detail that led to the plan's previous failure. The minor detail being to actually try to hinder the Powerpuff Girls from simply beating the snot out of him from the get-go. As Mojo Jojo starts smugly stating how not trying to hinder them, because they overcame it the last time, will make the plan certain to work this time, the Powerpuff Girls respond by simply beating the snot out of him.
Also, HIM explicitly states that he never "gives repeat performances" in one episode.
Mojo wouldn't have been able to set his plan in The Movie in motion without help from the girls.
The first time they use the Dynamo, they end up causing more damage then the monster they were fighting, causing the Mayor to demand that they never use it again.
In the "Fallen Arches" episode, if Blossom didn't called for Captain Righteous and Lefty to fight against the Ministry of Pain, then the elders themselves wouldn't be hospitalized.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In "Forced Kin" Mojo Jojo helps the girls fight an alien, only to find the alien is seemingly using all his own ideas! When the alien defeats the girls, Jojo literally goes ape and physically forces the alien to submit, driving off the threat and becoming the reluctant hero.
In an episode in which Buttercup tries to find her own unique power, she finds out she is the only of the girls who can curl her tongue. Cut to many Townsville inhabitants trying to do the same and failing miserably - among them, Gene Simmons!
The two senior superheroes Blossom coerces to come out of retirement in "Fallen Arches" are caricatures of Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
Series creator Craig McCracken appears twice in "The Powerpuff Girls Rule", as does fellow staffer and his wife, Lauren Faust.
Noodle Incident: In "Him Diddle Riddle," the Girls manage to solve Him's hardest riddle (by far!) neatly during the commercial breaks.
Oddball Doppelganger: Bunny. Same dress design, has a B name, and like the others has a different color scheme to make her different from the other three... Besides the fact that she is mentally handicapped and is very physically deformed.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In Him Diddle Riddle, the trio are given the riddle "In the ear of corn, you will find; happiness, joy, and the ties that bind; squirrels store nuts and birds sing songs; but in the cave of eternity, everyone's wrong; on the limb of a tree, there's a monkey who's free; and there he will give you something for me.". Cut two minutes later to the next shot with the girls exhausted. Him, who is holding an ice cream, even states "I can't believe you got that right. You got the right flavor and everything."
Off To Boarding School: In "Mommy Fearest", Sedusa does this to the girls while disguising herself as a kind woman named Ima Goodlady, that the Professor goes ga-ga for.
Oh Crap: In The Movie, after Bubbles and Buttercup save Blossom from a needle attack by Mo'Mojo by putting a bus in front of her, the attack stops and Bubbles nervously asks, "Do you think he's finished?" before they hear Mo'Mojo say, "No." and get an Oh Crap expression, just as Mo'Mojo adds, "But you are!"
The One Girl: In Cartoon Network's "Staylongers" interstitials (spoof of "Survivor"), Blossom is the only female member of the "Cartoon Cartoon" tribe.
Don't swallow a whole beaker of Chemical X. It has this side effect.
Also, Mojo's monster ape form in The Powerpuff Girls Movie.
HIM's demonic forms in "Speed Demon" and "Power Noia".
Sedusa's giant asp-haired form in "Aspirations".
Opening Shout-Out: The "Run of the Mill Girls" from the episode "Oops, I Did It Again".
Out-of-Character Moment: In "That's Not My Baby!" when the girls try asking Ms. Keane to look after the baby temporarily while they look for the parents, Ms. Keane claims that she's too busy. This is actually a lie and gives the false implication that she hates children, showing the bin next to her desk full of gifts from her students.
Overly Long Gag: Betty, Buttercup's "Run of the Mill Girls" counterpart from "Oops, I Did It Again", goes back to get her schoolbooks as soon as everyone's ready to go to school, causing the rest of her family to wait a long time for her until she comes back with the books. If she had superpowers like Buttercup, she would have gone and came back in no time flat.
The three crooks who wear rather unconvincing Powerpuff Girls costumes in "Powerpuff Bluff".
Mojo Jojo in "Slumbering With the Enemy". Partially averted in this instance, because the girls see through his disguise immediately. Though everyone else is still unaware.
Parody Commercial: The Pickle Patch, from "I See a Funny Cartoon In Your Future".
Paste Eater: In one episode, there's a boy in the girls' class named Elmer Sglue who gets teased for eating paste. A mosquito tainted by toxic waste falls on the paste he was eating, turning him into a giant glue monster who wreaks havoc on the city.
Pie-Eyed: The girls gain these in "Silent Treatment" when they get trapped inside a silent cartoon.
Pietà Plagiarism: Done in "Mommy Fearest" with the Professor and Ima Goodlady after the latter pretends to faint.
The Pig Pen: Buttercup became one for an episode when she refused to take a bath.
Police Are Useless: Subverted and played straight in the same episode, which focused on the Townsville Police Department and how they handle crime in the city. The police are more geared towards handling non-supervillain related crime, but are still grateful when the girls decide to lend a hand. It's played straight, however, with one specific cop, Mike Brokowski, a lazy Ted BaxterJerkass who did nothing but eat donuts and sleep, all the while thinking he was up for a promotion. When Mike finally got fired for his laziness, he blamed the girls saying they take away work from "hard-working cops". The other, more competent police step in to save the day when Mike kidnapped the girls.
Mike (after being arrested): Well, this looks like the story of a good cop gone bad.
Blossom: You're not a good cop gone bad. You're a bad cop gone worse!
Poor Man's Substitute: Craig McCracken originally wanted Jack Black to voice the Gnome in "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" but by the time they got to production he was too busy and expensive, so they instead got Jess Harnell doing a Jack Black-like voice.
"Powerprof" confirmed Bubbles used to wet the bed, much to her embarrassment.
The episode "Pee Pee G's" was about the girls thinking one of them was wetting the bed, but unsure of which it was. It turned out to be Mojo Jojo who, in a completely OOC manner, just wanted to pull a prank on them by spilling water on their bed while they were asleep. Leads to his own Potty Failure at the end of the episode.
Power Nullifier: Antidote X, first appearing in "Slumbering with the Enemy" and later in The Movie.
Powerpuff Girl Hands: The Trope Namer. Lampshaded in "Criss Cross Crisis" when Buttercup switches bodies with Professor Utonium. When she tries to pick up the phone, she can't figure out how his fingers are supposed to work.
Power Trio: The Powerpuff Girls and The Rowdyruff Boys.
Precision F-Strike: Two comic book story titles: "Hell Toupee" (issue #16—also counts as an Incredibly Lame Pun), and "Helliday" (issue #29). Also, in "Shutter Thug" (issue #11), Blossom says "Oh...dam" after said structure collapses on said villain. And finally in "Trick Or Beatings" (#31), the girls are laying a smackdown on the Gangreen Gang on Halloween. Blossom, dressed as a witch, originally had the line "Prepare to be witch-slapped!" before it was changed to a more kid-friendly line.
Narrator: Love is in the air, can't you just feel it?
Mojo Jojo was also turned into a dog once, and left in the pound. A big burly dog woofs at him suggestively. At least it wasn't a human prisoner that time.
Previously On: The episode Just Desserts is a sequel to Supper Villain, which came 16/8 episodes (depending on your definition of an episode) prior. It opens with a recap of Supper Villain that begins "Last week, in the city of Townsville..." Once the recap ends, the actual episode begins with "The City of Townsville!" as per usual.
