Follow TV Tropes

Following

Western Animation / Goof Troop

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/4c3f3ef0_fc62_4223_ae63_82f5011c4b8e.jpeg

Like father, like son
You're always number one (Yes!)
There's buddies, there's pals (Yeah!)
You always seem to work things out
Can't you see you're two of a kind
Lookin' for a real good time? (A REAL good time!)

Goof Troop is a cartoon from the early Nineties, inspired by the most well-known series of Classic Disney Shorts featuring Goofy. It premiered as part of The Disney Afternoon syndicated block on September 5, 1992. Seven days later, it began airing as part of ABC's Saturday Morning Cartoon block for thirteen episodes. In this series, Goofy is the father of an 11-year old named Max and lives in the suburbs. Goofy also lives next door to longtime Disney antagonist Pete (who in this version has been turned into less of a villain and more of a total Jerkass), his wife Peg, and his two kids, PJ and Pistol. Even so, Goofy is still just as klutzy and, well, goofy as he was in any of the Disney shorts.

Slapstick is the flavor of the day, with all four main characters Goofy, Max, Pete, and PJ regularly taking a lot of comedic punishment and shaking it off with Toon Physics and being Made of Iron.

The series is noticeable for steering away from the Disney Afternoon’s more timeless fantasy, adventure, and crime-fighting shows, instead doing a Slice of Life sitcom with subtle Totally Radical undertones.

Although it was canceled in 1993 on both The Disney Afternoon and ABC, with the latter channel replacing the show with Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) that fall, this series led to the creation of two movies: A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie. Word of God is that yes, they are in the same canon, despite the absence of Peg and Pistol, and the difference between the TV series and the movies like Goofy's and Pete's houses and their location. There was also a video game for the Super Nintendo. As with its fellow Disney Afternoon shows, it received lots of references in DuckTales (2017), with one episode featuring Goofy in a guest role using an updated version of his design from this show (Max and Roxanne are confirmed to exist, though they only appear in photographs).

The show was animated by nine different studios: Walt Disney Australia (twenty-four episodes), Sunwoo Entertainment, South Korea (seventeen episodes), Kennedy Cartoons, Canada (fifteen episodes, plus syndicated intro animation), Wang Film Productions, Taiwan/Thailand (nine episodes Taiwan, six episodes Thailand), Walt Disney Japan (five episodes, two with Animal Ya, one with Tama Productions), Walt Disney France (five episodes), Guimaraes, Brazil (two episodes), Freelance, New-Zealand (one episode, under Disney Australia's supervision), and Moving Images International, Philippines (one episode).


Goof Troop provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    A-F 
  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Happens quite a bit, usually once an episode, with brief moving background shots.
  • Abusive Parents: Pete insults and belittles PJ, browbeats and threatens him, manipulates him emotionally, recklessly, and indirectly injures him, consistently holds him to unrealistic expectations, is excessively domineering in most aspects of PJ's life, and on multiple occasions treats him almost literally like a slave. PJ is consistently played as mistrusting his father even when Pete isn't abusing him.
  • Accidental Misnaming: Mr. Sludge's employee in "A Goof of the People" is named Melvin but his boss constantly forgets and calls him by different names that start with M.
  • Accidental Truth: Madame Zeldarina makes up Word Salad to tell Pete what his good luck charm is. It turns out this Word Salad perfectly describes Goofy, and Zeldarina is surprised Pete managed to find someone who fit that description.
  • Achievements in Ignorance:
    • In "Goof Troop Christmas", a bear has Goofy pinned against the fireplace and Max tells him to grab the shotgun above it. Goofy accidentally picks up the mop right next to it and attempts to fire it. It works.
    • In "Slightly Dinghy", Max assumes that setting the fish finder for "goldfish" will locate the sunken treasure. It turns out that's exactly what it does.
    • In "Where There's Smoke, There's Goof", Goofy attempts to charm a fire hose like a snake in order to break free of it. It works.
  • Acquired Situational Narcissism: Invoked in "Talent to the Max"; Max gets a swelled head due to suddenly becoming good at magic and even unthinkingly dumps PJ who was just trying to protect him from the magic hat. The magic hat in question is a sapient Manipulative Bastard and will resort to Malicious Slander to get its way — which is to control people whose egos get too big because of its influence on their magic abilities.
  • Adults Dressed as Children: Goofy and Pete pretend to be kids in order to play little league in "Take Me Out Of The Ball Game".
  • Aerith and Bob: There's a mix of everyday names and strange names that are also common words. On one hand, we have characters named Max, Pete, PJ (short for Pete Jr.), Rose, Debbie, Douglas, Marty, Bob, Bobby, Roxanne, Stacey, Bradley, and Sylvia. On the other, we have Goofy, Pistol, Giblet, Tooth, Nails, Leech, Coupe, and Tank. Peg sounds like an everyday name but had a common-word source (as a Mythology Gag to "Peg-Leg Pete").
  • Aesop Amnesia: Max sort of goes through this in the episodes where Goofy tells him a story about one of his ancestors. Max always learns an important lesson from the stories and in some cases is even impressed with his ancestor's accomplishments, but he always dreads having to listen to those stories in the next ancestor episode.
  • The Ahnold: Ronald Strudelnosher from the episode "Buddy Building", who notably has the requirements of being muscular and having an Austrian accent.
  • All for Nothing: Many of Pete's endeavors to get money prove to be this.
    • In "Cat's Entertainment", he steals Waffles in order to make him the new mascot of a cat food company in order to get 2000 big ones, only to learn said big ones were bags of kitty litter.
    • In "Mrs. Spoonerville", he enters the Mrs. Spoonerville competition to get the $3000 prize. It then turns out the prize was really 3000 dollars worth of cat food.
    • In "Bringin' On the Rain", he steals water from Goofy to grow a garden and win $5000 dollars in a gardening contest. After he's found out and arrested for hoarding water during a drought (and presumably also for framing Goofy for it) he learns that the contest was a scam to get people to buy seeds.
  • All Girls Like Ponies: Pistol is extremely excited to see the horse Pete won in "Pete's Day at the Races", until the horse trashes her room.
  • All Just a Dream: It's shown that "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra" was all just a sapient horn's dream.
  • Alliterative Family: Pete, Peg, PJ, and Pistol. Most of these came from Alliterative Names of past Pete incarnations except for PJ, who shares his name.
  • Alliterative Name: Peg Pete and Pistol Pete are normal variants, whereas all of the other main characters (other than Max) have Repetitive Names.
  • Amusing Injuries: A staple of the show is for characters to fall victim to slapstick in hilarious ways. It's unlikely for Pete to go an episode without incurring at least a couple, and the other main characters aren't all that far behind.
  • Anachronism Stew: Multiple ancestors episodes have tales that take place before cameras were invented but still have photos in the family album. "Clan of the Cave Goof" is the biggest offender of this, having things like dentists, gag items, and the stock market exist when fire is scarce and wheels don't exist at all, in addition to the typical "cave people and dinosaurs coexisting" variant.
  • Anchovies Are Abhorrent: In "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp", after failing to get an award, Goofy is bummed. Max tries to make him feel better by offering to get pizza with him. Goofy declines, until Max offers to add "the little fishies" to the pizza.
  • Animal Mecha: In "Slightly Dinghy", the fish, getting seriously fed up with the main characters, starts controlling a mecha in the shape of a Threatening Shark to get revenge on them.
  • Animate Inanimate Object: An expressive fire truck in "Where There's Smoke, There's Goof". No other vehicle has a face. There are also the embers in the same episode, the magic hat in "Talent to the Max", the instruments of "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra" and some bullets in "Gunfight at the Okie-Doke Corral".
  • Animation Bump: The animation for the series is all over the placenote . Special mentions include the opening, "In Goof We Trust", most of Walt Disney Australia's episodes and "Goof Troop Christmas." The episodes by Wang Film Productions and Kennedy Cartoons tend to straddle between this and Off-Model.
  • Anticipatory Lipstick: A female Bigfoot attempts to seduce Goofy in the episode "Winter Blunderland", and puts on lipstick to try and kiss him, though it is subverted slightly in that he remains oblivious to her advances and has no clue what she's doing the entire tine, rather than attempting to trying to run away from her kisses.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: The characters sometimes initially don't believe in an episode's fantastic element, despite finding other fantastic elements in other episodes without commenting on it. The ghosts in "Hallow-Weenies" and the Not-So-Imaginary Friend in "Pistolgeist" are examples of the former, while the magic hat in "Talent to the Max" and the horns in "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra" being able to move on their own are examples of the latter. Goofy in a Furry Confusion joke says "I didn't know dogs could talk", but even if we assume that the characters are as human as they claim, the bears in "You Camp Take It with You", the shark in "Cabana Fever", and the ducks in "Goofs of a Feather" can talk, and no one cares. It doesn't help that in some episodes like "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime" and "Midnight Movie Madness", the characters should be skeptical but aren't.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
    • During the first part of Pete's breakdown in "Axed By Addition", he starts out feeling guilty for things like making PJ stay up all night studying, doing menial chores/humiliating things, and then becomes more ridiculous, ending with "I even made him use a handkerchief." Then Pete uses Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick the next time we see him.
    • When Goofy and Pete set up rules in their houses in "Good Neighbor Goof", the last rule Goofy gives Max after various "no contact with the Pete house" rules is "never stick peas up your nose." Goofy prefaces this rule with "lastly, but not leastly."
    • Pete's Fish Finder in "Slightly Dinghy" is set to find three different types of sport fish, and then the last choice is "goldfish."
  • Ask a Stupid Question...: This exchange from "Bringin' on the Rain", after PJ had collapsed into a covered trench behind him back-first onto a pipe:
    Max: You okay?
    PJ: Oh, yeah, yeah. This rusty metal pipe broke my fall!
  • Ass Kicks You: A major part of "Lethal Goofin'" is that PJ beats up bullies by smacking them with his rear end.
  • Assumed Win: Played for laughs with a dash of Dramatic Irony in "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp". Pete assumes that he will win the award for being the best father in the class. When Goofy (unsurprisingly) wins instead, PJ has to try to stifle his giggles.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: From "A Goof Troop Christmas":
    "Y'know, Christmas isn't in a tree, or in a lightbulb....It's in A BEAR!!!"
  • Ate the Spoon: Tasmanian Tar Roast Coffee in "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime" is able to shatter the mug it's in and erode the ground. Peg bought 50 pounds of it because it was on sale.
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: Parodied in "Goofin' Up the Social Ladder" where the butler falls head over heels for Pete Disguised in Drag even though he's still just as unattractive as ever.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Pete basked in this trope, usually to his own detriment. In "O, R-V, I N-V U", he designed the most state-of-the-art RV you could possibly imagine... which then gradually fell apart as soon as he began to drive it.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
    • Pete and Peg have a few of these moments, "Gymnauseum", where Peg chooses Pete over her unwanted suitor, and "Peg o' the Jungle", where Pete goes out of his way to rescue Peg's first anniversary gift from an active volcano, in particular. "Tee for Two" also ends with Peg kissing Pete because of his Pet the Dog moment.
    • It's also shown in "Terminal Pete" that deep down Pete actually does appreciate Goofy's friendship.
  • Bad "Bad Acting":
    • PJ in "Slightly Dinghy". When Max wants PJ to ask his dad to take him fishing, he fits PJ with an ear piece so that he can tell PJ what to say, and reads him a text from a father's day card, to try and sway Pete emotionally. PJ reiterates everything he says in emotionless monotone, including the holiday greeting and signing, and at one point says a convincing "No" and corrects it to an unconvincing "yes" when Pete asks if he means it. It still works, though.
    • Everyone performs a melodramatic parody of A Christmas Carol in "Wrecks, Lies and Video Tape", when they try to convince Pete to stop being a jerk.
    • In "From Air to Eternity" when trying to fool Pete into thinking he's in danger, (which ends up being true anyway, eventually) PJ uses a mixture of emotionless monotone and lines that sound completely sarcastic (but aren't meant to). Much like the "Slightly Dinghy" example, it still works.
  • Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", Peg says stealing the instruments from Goofy is the lowest Pete's ever sunk. Goofy says Peg is not being fair to Pete... because "he's sunken much lower, hundreds of times, thousands of times."
  • Bait-and-Switch Credits: The theme song has an Unreliable Narrator and both versions of the Title Montage give the impression that PJ is a lot better off and happier than he actually is.
  • Balloon Belly: Goofy gets one in "The Incredible Bulk" when he's trying to train for the (nonexistent) eating competition.
  • Banana in the Tailpipe: In "Take Me Out of the Ball Game", to prevent Pete and Goofy from seeing the game they wouldn't be in, Max and PJ fill the cars' tailpipes with cement.
  • Baseball Episode: "Take Me Out of the Ball Game", in which Goofy and Pete enroll their sons into baseball, and Max and P.J. do everything they can to skip out on the entire season.
  • Bear Hug: Played rather darkly in "Good Neighbor Goof". Pete gives one to PJ but it's hardly affectionate — it's all part of manipulating him into doing nearly interminable can crushing so that he won't be able to hang out with Max. PJ's relationship with his father is summed up nicely by him looking very uncomfortable but not squirming, and wobbling helplessly over his boots once Pete lets go.
  • Bears Are Bad News: Played relatively straight in "Goof Troop Christmas" and "Winter Blunderland". Subverted in "You Camp Take It With You", where the bear that everyone except Max was worried would or did eat the boys turns out to be just another father trying to protect and care for his son in the wilderness. Of course, in the latter case, he was a Speech-Impaired Animal and his baby had a diaper. In the ending scene, he actually seems nicer than Pete (not that that's saying much).
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: In "Window Pains", all three adult characters fall from a great height. Pete is in a full-body cast, Goofy has both legs in casts all the way up, and Peg... has her arm in a sling.
  • "Before" and "After" Pictures: In "As Goof Would Have It", in order to try to win money for losing 180 pounds, Pete decides to submit before and after pictures; the before picture is himself, and the after is Goofy. Hence, Goofy has to impersonate him for the rest of the episode.
  • Being Watched: In "Come Fly with Me", PJ tells Max that it might be a bad idea to keep playing on Pete's computer because it seemed like he was watching them. While Max dismisses the notion as instilled paranoia, PJ doesn't know how right he was — Pete was right behind them... as a fly.
  • Believing Their Own Lies: In "Midnight Movie Madness", Pete makes up the lie that the Mutilator is real just to scare PJ and Max. At the end, he is horrified because he thinks Goofy is the Mutilator.
  • Berserk Button:
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Despite being honest and kind, PJ has shown on several episodes that it's not wise to make him angry. Also Peg, who can punch out guys twice her size.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: On very few occassions, Goofy can display a frightening-level of cunningness or fierce intensity that can scare even Pete.
  • Big Eater: Pete, whose eating habits are the focus of both "To Catch a Goof" and "As Goof Would Have It", as well as a major part of "Gymnauseum". Also PJ, which is usually expressed through short jokes:
    Pete: 200 burgers? Must've been all those times I sent him to bed without seconds!
    Peg: I'm worried about PJ. He barely touched his third helping...
  • Big, Thin, Short Trio: The Roadhogs in "Queasy Rider" have this design. The short guy is the leader, the thin guy talks more than he thinks, and the big guy barely says anything at all.
  • Bigfoot: Encountered during a ski trip in "Winter Blunderland". A female who fell in love with Goofy.
  • Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Pete pours a lot of hot sauce, along with mustard, chili peppers, and jalapeño concentrate onto the omelette he's making for Goofy in "Good Neighbor Goof", but he's the one who ends up a victim of it.
  • Bolt of Divine Retribution: Pete finds himself on the receiving end of one of these in "Fool's Gold" after saying he'd go after the gold unless the big man in the sky showed he didn't want him to have it.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The second part of Pete's breakdown in "Axed By Addition" features him feeling guilty for making PJ do more chores and then mentioning that he sent PJ to obedience school for not cleaning his room. When combined with the last bits of his Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, this sounds even worse.
  • Brick Joke: In "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", Peg finds Pete to tell him about the "aliens" that have invaded the city and is carrying a plate of foil-wrapped potatoes half-way through the episode. Once the Petes begin to defend their house from the "aliens", the potatoes are forgotten, only for Pete to find them at the end, mistake them for alien eggs, and smash them.
    Pistol: Oh, so that's how you make mashed potatoes!
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • Every character has done this with the How To Narrator at least once.
    • "Take Me Out of the Ball Game" ends with Max and P.J. fighting the Iris Out and escaping into the other side of it after Goofy and Pete decide their sons should take up football.
  • Bruiser with a Soft Center: Myron from "The Incredible Bulk" is a famously powerful wrestler but is a fairly sweet guy who wants to get out of wrestling to be a full-time professional chef.
  • Brutal Honesty: PJ is surprisingly blunt about the quality of Max's performance in "Talent to the Max", though this may have been because he didn't want Max to be humiliated at the real talent show. He also continually corrects Max when Max denies he looks anything like Goofy in "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp", and says this when Max leads him into a locked trunk in "Shake, Rattle, and Goof".
    PJ: Pretty lame, Max. Even for you.
  • The Bully: There are several bullies that show up in the series to torment Max, PJ, and/or other kids. Most of them are only in one episode, though Leech is in both "Max-Imum Insecurity" and "Buddy Building". Other notable bullies include Duke and the Pharaohs from "Leader of the Pack", Douglas, Tooth, and Nails from "Lethal Goofin'", and Marty from "Puppy Love".
  • Bumbling Dad: It is expected that Goofy is one due to being a dimwit, but Pete also steps into this trope at times because he lacks common sense, one notable occasion being when he gave his son PJ terrible advice on how to impress a girl he liked.
  • Call-Back: Plucking dog hair out of the carpet with tweezers — Pete said he made PJ do it "one time" in "Axed By Addition", but evidently it was more than once, since the task was referenced as something PJ currently needed to do in two later episodes ("Take Me Out of the Ball Game" and "And Baby Makes Three").
  • Calling the Old Man Out: PJ is a bit too meek to confront Pete directly, but he certainly was willing to do it indirectly in "From Air to Eternity". PJ, with Max's help, tricks Pete into confessing to lying about being afraid of heights, after Pete spends the episode causing him serious anguish based on that lie. During the confession PJ pretends to be surprised, but does not shy away from shaming his father when the "new information comes to light."
  • Captain Colorbeard: "Slightly Dinghy" features mention of a pirate named Nearbeard.
  • Captain Obvious: Goofy says "Max is twice as tall as I was when I was half that size!" in "Good Neighbor Goof" as a response to Pete calling Max "little".
  • The Cat Came Back: In "Cabana Fever", Pete saves his boat and saves Goofy's life in the process and then Goofy follows him around, stowing away in his trunk and eating all his snack food, saying he can't leave until he saves Pete's life. Pete begins pretending to be in danger so that Goofy can "save" him, but by the end of the episode Goofy does manage to save Pete from the Determinator Threatening Shark.
  • Cast of Snowflakes: The main characters who are intended to physically take after one another already have different faces and head shapes, and there is significant variance in both the show and movies in how even background characters' ears and faces are shaped, how their bodies are shaped, skin, hair, and even how anthropomorphized the characters are and what animal characteristics they retain.
  • Cats Are Mean: Pete was originally a cat. [1] This would explain why he is antagonistic to the main dog face character.
  • Cement Shoes: Pete and Goofy spot The Mafia killing someone with a cement suit in "Goof Fellas." Too bad Goofy mistakes them for tailors and starts talking to them.
  • Character Catchphrase:
    • Pete ends a lot of his sentences with an exclamation of "See!?" He also has the extremely loudly yelled "PJ!"
    • PJ, being The Drag-Along, will often say either "I don't know, Max" or "I don't know about this, Max", sometimes substituting "man" for "Max."
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: The chestnuts in "O, R-V, I N-V U" are used as a visual aid in Goofy's motivational speech, and then later are used again so PJ can hit buttons from afar in the RV to fend off Spud and Wally.
  • Chekhov's Gag:
    • Goofy's misunderstanding of how much popcorn to make in "Cabana Fever" ends up saving him and Pete from a volcano and a determined shark.
    • In "A Pizza the Action", Pete tricks Goofy into taking a failing pizzeria off his hands to prevent his house from being towed away and get Goofy's towed away in the process. However, when the tow truck driver gets there, he tows Pete's house anyway... because earlier in the episode, Goofy accidentally reversed their mailboxes.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • Goofy's jar of fresh air from "A Goof Of The People", which helps restore Mr. Sludge from being a Muck Monster.
    • Peg's very intense bargain coffee from "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", which Pete uses to protect himself from the "aliens".
  • The Chew Toy: While everyone can find himself on the receiving end of the slapstick a lot of the time, Pete's episodes are based almost entirely on laughing at his misery — though it is mostly retributive.
  • Childhood Memory Demolition Team: In "Tee for Two", Pete wants to tear down the miniature golf course which upsets everyone else in the cast because they had fond memories there. It turns out that the reason Pete wanted to tear it down in the first place is because his memories of it were not so fond.
  • Childish Pillow Fight: In "Midnight Movie Madness", Max and PJ have a pillow fight to settle a dispute about whether Pete is telling the truth about the Mutilator.
  • Christmas Episode: Have Yourself a Goofy Little Christmas (A Goof Troop Christmas). Interesting for a children's Christmas special, it doesn't involve Santa Claus or a very religious setup.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Coupe Hatchback, Max and PJ's new friend, disappears without further mention after one episode ("Buddy Building"), as does Rose Deckenbloom, PJ's crush in "Puppy Love".
  • Class Reunion: One where everyone should get an award in "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp". Goofy has not done anything award worthy... except for being a Good Parent.
  • Clear My Name:
    • In "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", PJ found out that his father was spying on Goofy & Max, and setting traps throughout a race course in order to win a race. PJ then tries his best to deactivate all of his father's traps so that Max and Goofy would be able to win, but fails and is found out by Max, who accuses PJ of cheating without listening to anything he says. He still helps them to win, and subtly reveals that Pete had been spying on them. Max realizes that PJ hadn't betrayed him, and apologizes for not believing him at first.
    • Pete's also been mistaken twice for a criminal; in "The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy", he was kidnapped by robbers but the police thought he was in on the crime, and in "To Catch a Goof", he was mistaken for a notorious burglar and arrested.
  • Coincidental Broadcast: The fortune teller ad that pops up when Pete is trying to figure out a way to avoid his bad luck in "Rally Round the Goof". Combined with The Television Talks Back.
  • Coin-on-a-String Trick: Leech uses a coin on a string to get a free can of soda from a vending machine in the episode "Maximum Insecurity". PJ ends up running into Leech and making the string on the coin break.
  • Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: "To Catch a Goof" has Pete trying to go 17 hours without eating. He starts to hallucinate that the food in his kitchen is talking to him and that his children are food.
  • Come Back, My Pet!: In one comic, Pete replaces his dog with a cardboard robot guard dog after their house gets robbed. Turns out "Card" is actually programmed to let its creator in to rob the house again.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: Goofy is almost completely unaware of how much trouble his own cluelessness and clumsiness causes Pete.
  • Company Cross References:
    • Darkwing Duck appears on Pete's TV from time to time.
    • Goofy doesn't want Max watching horror movies because he remembers how badly he was scared by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which causes PJ to respond incredulously.
  • Competence Zone: 11-year-old boys are significantly less insane than their fathers. Even if Max isn't completely rational, he certainly is compared to Goofy. And though Pete's not a Cloudcuckoolander, PJ has more common sense than the other three boys combined. Max and Pete are in the closest proximity for their sanity, but Max edges Pete out without much trouble.
  • Compressed Vice: Goofy is randomly a Big Eater in "The Incredible Bulk". This is never brought up again. Strangely, the characters who are more consistently played as Big Eaters are astonished by Goofy's appetite.
  • Concert Climax: In "Shake, Rattle & Goof", the story ends with Max and PJ on stage playing Goofy's amplified ukulele. Also the end to A Goofy Movie.
  • Conflicting Loyalty: In "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", PJ makes a promise to Pete not to tell on him and a promise to Max not to share any information. They end up conflicting due to PJ being used as an unwitting spy for Pete. PJ doesn't want to break a promise to his best friend or his dad, but decides to do the right thing and reveal Pete's meddling without officially "telling on him."
  • Conforming OOC Moment:
    • In "Queasy Rider", PJ is among the crowd laughing at Max's humiliation, despite him typically being Max's most loyal supporter and giving empathy responses to most humiliating circumstances, regardless of victim.
    • When Goofy upstages Max at school in "Educating Goofy", PJ decides Goofy is his best friend, presumably because he is more popular than Max now. This in spite of the fact that their friendship has nothing to do with Max's reputation, and is as strong as ever in other places where Max is portrayed as uncool.
  • Conjunction Interruption:
    • Pete uses it against PJ in "Good Neighbor Goof" when he tries to protest being forbidden from seeing Max based on the faulty assumption that Max is exactly like Goofy.
    • Peg uses it against Pete in "Midnight Movie Madness" when he tries to protest apologizing to Max and PJ for scaring them.
  • Conspicuously Light Patch: The most obvious example is when Pete is shoving his competition into a locker in "Mrs. Spoonerville".
  • Continuity Nod: "Goodbye Mr. Goofy" makes an allusion to the pilot when Goofy said he and Max would be "going back to the trailer." One of the few in the series, but the syndication order opted to show the pilot right before it.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Pete manages to go into an active volcano in "Peg o' the Jungle" and, while getting out again is portrayed as difficult for him due to his fear of heights, this is the biggest problem the characters see. There's also a volcano in "Cabana Fever" that does actually cook something... but not the characters dangerously close to the lava.
  • Cooking Duel: Goofy and Pete have a literal cooking duel in "Mrs. Spoonerville", while they have a contest to see who can collect the most garbage for recycling in "Waste Makes Haste".
  • Cool Old Guy: Bob Sparrowhawk from "Major Goof" never wanted to retire from the army, and enjoys playing with the kids to train them for the military, which they love.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mr. Sludge in "A Goof of the People" is a parody of this trope, who happily partakes in over the top illicit business deals while running a factory that makes money just by pumping out waste into Spoonerville, and he can never remember his only employee's name, even when it was the last word anyone said.
  • Costumer: The ancestors episodes feature Goofy telling stories of his identical ancestors, giving excuses to show Goofy, Pete, and occasionally Peg and Pistol in prehistoric, medieval, Victorian, Wild Western, and early 20th century settings and costumes.
  • Counterfeit Cash: In "In Goof We Trust", Goofy found a counterfeit 20 dollar bill. The plot of "Counterfeit Goof" revolved around Goofy's Criminal Doppelgänger and the counterfeiting gang, and involved Goofy unwittingly spending tons of counterfeit money on wallpaper.
  • Covered in Mud: Max and PJ fall into the mud while crushing the cans in "Good Neighbor Goof". PJ later tracks mud all over the house, which leads to Pete finding out that PJ has been spending time with Max. He's not happy about it.
    • In "Midnight Movie Madness," Goofy slips in a mud puddle while trying to get into his house, which Max and PJ have barricaded to stop the Mutilator from getting in. This results in Goofy getting so muddy that Max and PJ mistake him for the Mutilator and refuse to let him in.
  • Criminal Doppelgänger: "Counterfeit Goof" involved Goofy being an exact lookalike for a member of a counterfeiting gang.
  • Crushing Handshake:
    • In the episode "Leader of the Pack", Max rides into a drive-in restaurant in a "car" (actually a grocery cart with a cardboard car in front of it) and with a "babe" (actually PJ holding a cardboard girl over his face). Gang leader Duke comes over to meet Max's babe, and PJ introduces himself as Clarice. They shake hands, with Duke squeezing PJ's hand.
    • In "Gymnauseum", Tan Roadster does this with Pete's hand.
  • Curse Cut Short: Downplayed in the framing device for "Sherlock Goof", where Max is halfway through saying the word "butts" (in the phrase "sitting on our butts") and then changes it to "cushions" to avoid saying it in front of Goofy, pulling a throw pillow over himself in embarrassment.
  • Cut-and-Paste Note: Played with in "For Pete's Sake". Goofy (innocently) decided to use magazine clippings to write the note since his original method failed. Then, Pete accidentally tore it and mistook Goofy for a murderer.
  • Cut a Slice, Take the Rest: In "Clan of the Cave Goof", cave Peg does this for cave Pete, cutting a slice and giving him the rest of the cake.
  • Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: In "Max-Imum Insecurity", Pete says he would sand anyone he caught stealing with his new sander.
  • Dagwood Sandwich: Goofy makes multiple several-foot-tall sandwiches filled with salami, fish, vegetables, and various cheeses throughout "Midnight Movie Madness", but never gets to enjoy any of them thanks to his clumsiness, interruptions from the frightened boys, and Waffles mooching.
  • Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: The Mafia in "Counterfeit Goof" seem to have a pretty cool setup. Too bad that Goofy's mess-ups ended up getting them caught...
  • Damned by Faint Praise:
    • In "The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy", Goofy decides to give Pete a compliment. The compliment in question?
      Goofy: Pete's a swell kinda guy, once you get past his personality!
    • In "Talent to the Max", Goofy tells Max that his magic tricks were "very... tricky." PJ points out that if that's all Goofy can say that means Max's show is terrible.
    • In "Good Neighbor Goof", the example of a good quality about Goofy that Pete gives is that he's never overthrown a foreign government.
  • Dancing Theme: As is fitting for Kennedy Cartoons, the footage in the syndicated opening that isn't taken from the episodes themselves is of Max and Goofy dancing.
  • Dating Service Disaster: Played with in "Date with Destiny". Due to Pete deliberately sabotaging Goofy's attempt to submit a profile to a dating service, he ends up on a "date" with an on-duty contractor. She destroys his house, because she completely misunderstands him.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Occasional episodes focus on Peg or Pistol, including "Window Pains", "Goofin' Up the Social Ladder", and "Peg o' the Jungle" for the former, and "Hot Air", "Three Ring Bind", and "Pistolgeist" for the latter.
    • Waffles gets one in "Cat's Entertainment".
  • Death Glare: Max and PJ in "Waste Makes Haste", when Pete reveals the real objective of their recycling gig with Goofy: Unbeknownst to the other three, Pete was scavenging for a pair of missing golden baby shoes, with the intent of returning them to the owner for a hefty reward.
  • Decomposite Character: In "The Ungoofables", which is a parody of The Untouchables, Eliot Ness is split into two characters: Eliot Goof and Fester Ness.
  • Demoted to Extra: Despite the series having Max, PJ, Goofy, and Pete all getting equal attention, the films are mostly about Max, and, to a slightly lesser extent, Goofy. In An Extremely Goofy Movie, PJ gets more screentime, but Pete appears for about four minutes.
  • Denied Food as Punishment: Downplayed in "Axed By Addition" where Pete mentions that PJ is probably interested in eating 200 Gorilla Burgers because of all the times he sent him to bed without seconds.
  • Department of Child Disservices:
    • In "Date with Destiny", we learn that Social Services technically exists. Of course, they're completely useless, taking Max away from Goofy with almost no investigation into the matter. Perhaps the house being half-demolished would warrant Max being removed for a short time, but he's actually returned even as the house gets even more damaged. Miss Pennypacker does no research into the house Max would stay at. And at the end, she asks Goofy to take her out to dinner on a whim, which just goes to show how unprofessional she is.
    • And despite them existing, and PJ's personality suggesting a rough home life, all the mishaps he gets into with Max, and Pete actually doing and admitting to doing bad things to PJ in public places on multiple occasions, nobody looks into PJ's situation. Ever. Presumably because PJ has two parents.
  • Depending on the Artist:
  • Depending on the Writer: Is Pete a callous Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, or is he actually a somewhat decent Jerk with a Heart of Gold? Well, that depends on the episode.
  • Depraved Dentist: Subverted in "Clan of the Cave Goof". It looks like the dentist has a four-foot-long drill that he plans to use on cave Pete, but it turns out to be a watering can shaped like a four-foot-long drill, and the dentist is a competent, compassionate professional.
  • Determinator: The Threatening Shark in "Cabana Fever", which resorts to going onto the shore and digging underground into the crater of a volcano to try to eat Pete. Because he's just that delicious.
  • Did You Think I Can't Feel?: In "O, R-V, I N-V U", Max ends up partnered with Pete on an RV project, and ignores PJ without noticing that he feels lonely and inferior as a result, expecting him to do favors and run errands for them. This exchange occurs roughly two-thirds of the way through the episode:
    Max: Hey, Peej. Take my picture in front of the RV, okay?
    PJ: Take it yourself!
    Max: What's bugging you?
    PJ: You! If you want to be the son in this family, I'll just move out.
    Max: Hey, can I help it if your dad thinks I'm bright?
  • Diet Episode: "To Catch a Goof", where Pete has to go seventeen hours without eating; "Gymnauseum", where Pete has to go on a diet and exercise more; and "As Goof Would Have It" where Pete pretends to go on a diet.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons: In "Great Egg-Spectations", Bubbles's mother is able to breathe fire. Also the "Flame-o-saurus" from "Clan of the Cave Goof".
  • Disguised in Drag: In "Goofin' Up the Social Ladder", Peg is required to provide a women's tennis team to compete against her and her new rich friend, Mrs. Willoughby. Unfortunately, all she had was Pete and Goofy, whom she disguised as women named Petunia and Goofina.
  • Disproportionate Retribution:
    • In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", Pete decides the appropriate punishment for PJ whistling two bars of a song is to threaten to permanently disfigure his lips. Used to indicate just how much Pete hates the song, since he usually doesn't engage in any (intentional) physical harm at all, and Peg does tell him he's out of line.
    • In "Puppy Love", Marty starts bullying PJ regularly as a punishment for spitting on his shoe by accident once.
  • Distinction Without a Difference: In "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", PJ finds out that Pete has been using him to spy on the Goofs and scolds him for engaging in "dishonest cheating." Pete claims that that's not true; he only engages in "honest" cheating.
  • Diving Save: PJ does this to prevent Max from being hit by a moving bus in "Big City Blues" and from being caught in the crossfire of an exploding barbecue in "Where There's Smoke, There's Goof".
  • Do You Want to Haggle?: Inverted in "Shake, Rattle, and Goof". The man at the flea market is willing to sell his entire set of instruments for $65. Goofy says that seems low because he doesn't want Max getting second-rate stuff, and so raises the price. The seller wants to sell them for a low price, so he continues to drive the price down while Goofy continues to raise it, until the seller offers the set for $50, when Max interrupts to accept it. Goofy doesn't notice he "lost" the haggle.
  • Don't Look Down: Pete's fear of heights and needing/failure to abide by this rule is a recurring element that can be played for laughs or for drama depending on the episode. "From Air to Eternity" is mainly about this, given that it focuses on PJ's fear of heights (which is played sympathetically).
  • Dramatic Irony: Many, many episodes run on this. Just a few examples: In "Slightly Dinghy", Max doesn't know that Goofy found the quarter he was looking for even though the audience did before they went on the trip. In "And Baby Makes Three", the audience is aware early on that Peg is selling an expensive house and is planning to spend the profits on her family, but the entire cast (even Pete) is convinced she's having a baby.
  • Driven to Madness: Played for Laughs: A lot of episodes end with Pete Laughing Mad. See "In Goof We Trust" for just one example.
  • Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Max and PJ argue over whose turn it is to be the pilot (neither of them want it) in "Hot Air" and Max pulls this trick on PJ after Pistol interrupts their argument.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: In "Puppy Love", Max cracks a joke about how PJ should go to the school dance with Marty because "you sure see him enough!" PJ is upset by the joke.
  • Dumb Muscle: Tooth & Nails, the bullies who steal quarters from other kids in "Lethal Goofin'", are just working for Douglas.
  • Dumpster Dive: In "Big City Blues", it is revealed that Buster and his friends often eat things they find in the dumpster, which prompts Max and PJ to give him bags of groceries from their houses. In "Puppy Love", PJ dives into a dumpster to retrieve Rose's poem which she had thrown away.
  • Dysfunctional Family: The Pete family. Pete is very selfish and demonstrates a pattern of abusing PJ and spoiling Pistol when he's not neglecting both of them; PJ is frequently shown to be intimidated by Pete (though the degree changes, sometimes having him outright afraid and sometimes having him casually snarking at Pete's mistakes), and is fairly disillusioned with Pete and impatient to leave home, Pistol is a Bratty Half-Pint who's always getting on PJ and Peg's nerves, and Peg is often yelling at Pete for being a jerk or Pistol for being naughty. When PJ is in focus, and occasionally when he's not, it's played more like a Big, Screwed-Up Family.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: One of the kids on the little league team in "Take Me Out of the Ball Game" turns out later to be Douglas Twinkmeyer, the main antagonist of "Lethal Goofin'".
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: It'd be hard to imagine the PJ of "Puppy Love" and An Extremely Goofy Movie abruptly kissing a girl who wanted nothing to do with him, but he at least tries to without in-universe justification in "Axed by Addition".
  • Earpiece Conversation: In "Slightly Dinghy", Max fits PJ with an earpiece and reads him the text of a Father's Day card so that PJ can sway Pete into giving them a fishing trip on his boat. Because Max isn't paying attention, he says "love Max", and PJ repeats it in the same emotionless monotone he says everything else in, but manages to save himself and say he meant he wanted to maximize his time with Pete.
  • Establishing Character Moment:
    • Peg's character is summed-up perfectly in her introductory scene in "Everything's Coming Up Goofy", where she's cheerfully welcoming Goofy back while at the same time yelling at Pistol to put down the slug she's trying to eat.
    • PJ and Pistol's introduction to Max and Goofy establish the former as a Shrinking Violet and the latter as a Genki Girl.
    • The first thing Pete does is chop a model palm tree onto Chainsaw's head for no reason to indicate his jerkass personality.
  • Everybody Hates Mathematics:
  • Evil Duo: Spud and Wally, the crooks who show up in "O, R-V, I N-V U", "Nightmare on Goof Street", and "The Good, The Bad, and the Goofy" to cause trouble for the main cast while bantering with each other.
  • Expressive Ears: Pete and PJ's ears will often droop when they are upset and bend outward when they are annoyed.
  • Expressive Hair: In "Tee for Two", Peg's hair droops when she's sad and bounces right back up when her mood changes to anger.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: While preparing to sacrifice Pete's fishing gear to invite rain in "Bringin' on the Rain", Max and PJ find a strange pipe in the ground, and the Goofs' water going to Pete's house. PJ tries to righteously ask if Max is insinuating that his dad would do something so unethical... cue his Oh, Crap! and meekly saying "For the sake of our friendship, don't answer that."
  • Failed a Spot Check:
    • In "Good Neighbor Goof", Goofy tries and fails to open a treasure chest while Max watches without either one seeing or pointing out the padlock on the front.
    • In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", Pete tries to open a treasure chest with many violent methods because he didn't see and refused to let Goofy point out the key on the left side.
  • Family Business: During several episodes it's clear that Pete intends PJ to take over his business some day, especially when he makes him take over the job for a day in "To Heir Is Human".
  • Fat and Skinny:
    • Pete and Goofy, although neither one is particularly the Straight Man, but Pete is closer. In "As Goof Would Have It", Pete exploits this to try to win money for "losing 180 pounds." This works about as well as is expected.
    • PJ and Max, although both of them play off of each other in a sort of mutual Straight Man and Wise Guy partnership. In an Inversion of the typical roles, PJ is far more cynical than Max is.
    • Outside of the main cast, Spud and Wally also fulfill this role when they show up, though they are minor enough it's not very clear what their roles are, but it appears to follow the show's standard "fat guy is straight(er) man" pattern.
    • Though the firefighters only appear in "Where There's Smoke, There's Goof", they have this design, with the fat Chief being a conman and the skinny sidekick being dense.
  • Felony Misdemeanor:
    • Pete does this to himself in "Axed by Addition", where among legitimately abusive and/or totalitarian behavior Pete admits to, he confesses to the heinous crimes of making PJ use "the manly deodorant" and a handkerchief.
    • In "Waste Makes Haste", pinching is treated like a cruel and unusual punishment, with the rich man's butler begging Pete to hurry and find the booties so he won't get pinched.
  • Female Feline, Male Mutt: Inverted with the male cat, Waffles and the female dog, Chainsaw (usually), not applicable to the Funny Animals.
  • Feud Episode: "Tub Be Or Not Tub Be" and "Talent to the Max" become this after Max thinks PJ betrayed him, due to an outside influence beyond PJ's control. Of course, PJ then goes out of his way to help Max anyway.
  • Feuding Families: The Goof and Pete families on several occasions, most notably in "Good Neighbor Goof" and "Waste Makes Haste", where members of one family either refuse or are forbidden to talk to members of the other.
  • The Film of the Series: A Goofy Movie fits, though there are some major changes including but not limited to the complete disappearance of Peg and Pistol.
  • Financial Abuse: Pete seems to think giving PJ two percent of the profits on his can crushing and paying him and Max five cents for twelve hours of work is fair and reasonable. He also is willing to trick PJ into doing his job for a day just so that his profits don't dip and use his children as free advertising, as well as repeatedly spending their savings on himself.
  • Fire-Breathing Diner:
    • Double Subverted in "Good Neighbor Goof". Pete overapplies hot sauce to Goofy's omelette hoping to invoke this, but Goofy is unaffected and even wants more hot sauce. Then Pete takes a bite and his mouth catches on fire so hard he ends up using all the water in his pool to extinguish the flames.
    • The judges get fire breath from trying Pete's chili in "Mrs. Spoonerville".
    • Aunt Goofelia in "Calling All Goofs" (in)famously makes a chili with this as its stated purpose. It's quite effective.
  • Flowery Insults: What Peg and Pistol do in "Wrecks, Lies & Videotape" after learning Pete stole Goofy's prize.
    Peg: Of all the two-faced, no-good...
    Pistol: Low-down doody-daddy...
    Peg: Pot-bellied, melon-headed...
    Pistol: You-you-you Hawaii-stealer!
    Peg: Vacation stealing KLUTZ!
    PJ: You forgot "slimy".
  • Fly Crazy: "Come Fly with Me" has a fly annoying Pete, and then Pete as a fly annoying everyone, although all he was trying to do was get their attention.
  • Foil:
    • Goofy and Max are both highly optimistic and somewhat reckless. Goofy never has a bad thought about anyone and is Too Dumb to Live. Max, on the other hand, is idealistic but still notices when he and others are mistreated and is a milder Fearless Fool.
    • Pete and PJ are both Butt Monkeys. Pete brings almost everything upon himself, suffers broad slapstick and emotional problems that roll off, has hammy reactions, suffers no truly lasting effects, and is written so you will laugh at his misery. PJ, however, tries to avoid the problems but gets sucked in, suffers more relatable slapstick and tough emotional problems, reacts realistically, has lasting effects as a major part of his character, and is written so you will sympathize with him.
    • Pete and Max are both self-centered schemers, but Pete is brazen about how selfish he is and comes up with schemes that backfire in his face, while Max is more subconscious about it and usually comes up with plans that work, if are a little more elaborate than necessary, with occasional plans that mess up due to things beyond his control.
  • Forced Transformation:
    • In "Come Fly with Me", Pete turns into a fly by becoming fused with the fly swatting software on his new computer.
    • The evil magic hat in "Talent to the Max" transforms audience members into various animals.
  • Force Feeding: In "Axed By Addition", Max straps PJ to a device that feeds him whether he gets a math question right, and hits him in a face with an egg when he's wrong
  • Forgotten Anniversary: "Peg o' the Jungle" mentions this is a common occurrence for Pete — he always forgets and then heads off to get Peg some cheap gift at the very last second. Peg is sick of going through the motions and so comes up with a Zany Scheme of her own to get back at him, involving the rest of the cast disguising themselves as Pete and Peg pretending not to know who her real husband is until he proves himself with a romantic gesture.
  • Former Teen Rebel: Goofy was a notorious biker.
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Lampshaded in "Good Neighbor Goof" where after hitting his thumb with a hammer, Goofy says, "Oh, well, still got seven more good ones left!" And then proceeds to hit even more fingers.
  • Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Max, who doesn't worry about consequences and comes up with all the plans, is the optimist. Pete, who is overtly antagonistic and gripes about everything, is the cynic. PJ, who is skeptical but willing to try the plans, is the realist. And Goofy, who is completely oblivious to most of what is happening, is the apathetic.
  • Framing Device: During the "ancestors" episodes, the main story takes place far in the past, starring an ancestor of Goofy. Each is framed with Goofy telling Max a story from his family album.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: In the episode "Frankengoof". Looks almost identical to Pete, but is significantly more pleasant. To top it off, by episode's end, they keep the Frankenstein Pete while the real Pete is sent away with the monster's creator.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: One of the items that falls out of Goofy's cupboard in "Good Neighbor Goof" is a tiny Bart Simpson head.
  • Fruit Cart: Pete crashes into one in "Axed by Addition" while attempting to chase PJ downhill. The officer who recently cited him for driving on the sidewalk is not amused.
  • Fully Dressed Cartoon Animals
  • Fur Bikini: Peg wears one in "Peg Of The Jungle".
  • Furry Confusion:
    • The two main families include dogs with a pet cat and cats with a pet dog.
    • Max claims to hate dogs in "Max-Imum Insecurity" and Pete claims to hate cats in "Cat's Entertainment" without a hint of irony.
    • A Running Gag involves Pete and cat food (and sometimes kitty litter) with the joke being either that he wouldn't want to eat it or that it would be useless to him.
    • PJ says in "Shake, Rattle, and Goof" that he feels "like a cat in a dog pound."
    • In "Hot Air", Goofy mistakes Pistol's greeting from midair for one from Chainsaw, after which he says, "I didn't know dogs could talk!"

    G-L 
  • Gainax Ending: "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra" inexplicably ends with a reveal that it was All Just a Dream... had by the tuba in the episode, who was previously shown to be animate but now has a face and can talk, and complains to his wife about it.
  • Gale-Force Sound: Done in "Shake, Rattle and Goof" when Max and PJ are watching a concert on TV and the sounds from the speakers keep pushing Goofy out of the room.
  • Garden-Hose Squirt Surprise:
    • In "Queasy Rider", Max and PJ are cleaning a motorcycle, when Max makes a comment that because of the motorcycle, he'll be cool (but PJ won't). PJ decides to get revenge on him by stepping on the hose and stepping off of it.
    • Exaggerated in "Where There's Smoke, There's Goof". Goofy steps on the fire hose, and doesn't step off of it until there's enough built up water pressure for the hose to explode and send him flying high in the air.
  • Gender Equals Breed: Pete's kids in a sense. PJ resembles Pete more and Pistol resembles Peg more.
  • Genre-Busting: Wait, is this a Dom Com, an Odd Couple show, or a Slapstick Funny Animal cartoon? It's all of those things with a healthy dose of Mundane Fantastic on top. And these are just the recurring elements.
  • Gentle Giant: PJ is what you get when the Gentle Giant is just 11 years old. He's not too bright, overdominated, insecure — and can bench-press 150lbs, punch out bullies and takes on most of his father's manual labour. He seems totally unaware of his own strength.
  • Gift-Giving Gaffe: Double Subverted in "Max-Imum Insecurity". Pete surprised Peg with a power tool (while talking it up as something she would love) which made her very angry. Then later she found his "real" surprise of her favorite perfume. The perfume was stolen and she was never supposed to find it in the first place, so by the end of the episode she's just as mad as she was at the beginning.
  • Gilligan Cut: In "Slightly Dinghy", PJ does not want to go along with Max's plan to have him ask Pete to take them fishing. Combined with a Lampshade Hanging of his role as The Drag-Along.
    PJ: No, forget it, Max. No way. You cannot talk me into this one. [scene cuts] Every time. How does he do it? Every. Single. Time.
  • Glad I Thought of It: In "Fool's Gold", after Peg says they'll be rich, Pete says, "Not only that. We'll be rich!"
  • Gone Horribly Right:
    • Pete succeeds at causing a massive (simulated) earthquake in the Goofs' house in "Good Neighbor Goof", but it shakes everything into its appropriate place.
    • In of his schemes, Pete use a device to brainwash Goofy into taking anything he finds, essentially turning him into a thief. Unfortunately, Goofy end up stealing everything he came across, linking all the thefts to Pete.
  • Good Parents:
    • Goofy may be embarrassing and weird at times, but he clearly loves Max, and always tries to raise him correctly. As much as Max wishes he'd be a little more normal, he's glad to have Goofy for a parent.
    • Peg as well, even if her husband doesn't fit the bill. She is shown to be reasonable, caring, and protective of both of her children, even if she does often get angry with Pistol.
  • Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Many variations on the trope have been played with throughout the series. Lampshaded in "All the Goof That's Fit to Print". Goofy says this when he attempts to grab a newspaper that just flew off the ledge of a tall building.
    Goofy: This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for gravity!
  • Greaser Delinquents: The recurring antagonist Leech who appears in "Buddy Building" and "Max-Imum Insecurity" is a kid (probably an eighth grader) who goes to school with Max and PJ and bullies them there, but in his spare time his hobbies include harassing random people and shoplifting. He also wears a leather jacket and slicked-back hair.
  • Green Aesop: There's an anti-pollution message in "A Goof of the People". However, it's presented as a Space Whale Aesop for laughs.
  • Groin Attack: Happens often to Pete and PJ.
  • Grounded Forever: In "Axed By Addition", Pete threatens to ground PJ forever if he fails his math test, a threat the latter takes very seriously and even plays sick in order to get in one last day of freedom. Once Pete finds out the truth, he yells at PJ for not guessing he was bluffing... and then says he's grounded forever for that, though he has a change of heart when he finds out that PJ didn't even fail in the first place.
  • Halloween Episode: "Hallow-Weenies", which starts off with trick-or-treating and ends up in a Haunted House.
  • Hand Gagging:
    • Pete does this to PJ in "Winter Blunderland" when he tries to call him out on his hypocrisy for spending a lot of money on a ski trip after refusing to pay him and Max for shoveling snow. He even carries PJ away from the scene to shut him up because he doesn't want Goofy to know he has an ulterior motive for the ski trip.
    • Pete also does it to Pistol in "Mrs. Spoonerville" because he doesn't want the judges to know the only reason she's helping him with the housework is because he promised to pay her fifty dollars. Unfortunately for him, he's less successful this time.
    • Max does it to PJ in "Max-imum Insecurity" because PJ is screaming very loudly and Max doesn't want him to wake up the whole town.
    • PJ does it to Pistol in "Puppy Love" to prevent her from telling Pete about his crush on Rose. When caught, he says he's "helping her swallow her dessert."
  • Handsome Lech: Tan Roadster in "Gymnauseum" is a well-built and fawned-over man who also spends most of the episode hitting on Peg and trying to steal her from Pete.
  • Haunted House: Appears in "Hallow-Weenies". The ghosts inside, a band, don't want to stay but can't leave until they perform their show.
  • Heavy Sleeper:
    • Peg is a subversion in "Goof Fellas". She sleeps through Goofy jackhammering the roof repeatedly, and Pete screaming for him to keep it down, but then wakes up to Pete making a tiny whimper and asks him to keep it down because she's trying to sleep.
    • In "Max-Imum Protection", Goofy and Waffles sleep through a home invasion complete with the burglars setting off every trap in the house, Max screaming, the burglars whining, and a police siren. Eventually Waffles wakes up to the sound of a bubble popping, which in turn wakes up Goofy.
  • Henpecked Husband: Pete, all it takes is Peg to slightly raise her voice for him to back down and do what she says.
  • Here We Go Again!:
    • "Take Me Out of the Ball Game" starts with Max and PJ being made to play baseball and ends with them about to be made to play football.
    • "Fool's Gold" starts with Chainsaw getting covered in specks of gold while burying a bone and ends with Chainsaw delivering a diamond to Pete.
    • Lampshaded at the end of "Waste Makes Haste" by Max after Pete freaks out over a can.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Max and PJ are so close that they do pretty much everything they can together in both the show and the movies and seem to hate being separated. They boost each other up, tell each other the truth about themselves, and help each other out of tough situations. The few moments when they thought they might not be friends anymore, one or both of them would always put in a large amount of effort to make sure that they could stay friends. Then again, they did both have a Friendless Background.
  • Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: The design of the Mutilator, the title character from the recurring in-universe horror movie franchise.
  • Honest John's Dealership: Pete's car dealership, Honest Pete's Used Cars. He sells cars with missing parts, and ones that don't work at all. In "In Goof We Trust", he ends up on the news for discreetly pilfering money from people taking test drives. When PJ takes over his job in "To Heir Is Human", he has trouble selling cars at first because he tells people upfront exactly what's wrong with them.
  • Honesty Aesop: In the episode, "In Goof We Trust", Goofy is named Spoonerville's most honest man, and Pete, who recently got exposed as a fraud on the news, hires him to work at his used car lot to drum up business. When Goofy sells many cars for next to nothing because of his honesty, Pete uses a mind-control helmet to make Goofy as deceptive as he is, but it ends up working too well when Goofy uses Pete's own tricks against him.
  • Hypno Fool: In at least one episode, Pete tries to hypnotise Goofy into doing something for him, but since he's... well... Goofy, he still doesn't understand his commands and screws up.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • In "Lethal Goofin'", Max berates Douglas for hiding behind Tooth and Nails' brawn, and using people bigger than he is to do his fighting for him... right before he tells PJ to "get 'em".
    • In "Max-Imum Insecurity", Pete tells Max and PJ that stealing is completely unethical. A pretty good message, except for the fact that Pete himself is a professional scam artist.
    • In "O, R-V, I N-V U", Max makes fun of Goofy for being clumsy immediately before falling off his skateboard and crashing into a sign.
    • In "Hot Air":
    • PJ gives Pete a hard time about his weight and overeating in "Gymnauseum" along with everyone else, despite being fat himself and established as a Big Eater elsewhere.
  • I Am Big Boned: Pete uses this exact excuse in "Gymnauseum" only for Peg to respond, "Yeah, especially in your head."
  • I Ate WHAT?!:
    • Pete eats a slug to advertise his car lot in "Hot Air" and he ostensibly knows what it is... unfortunately, no one told him it was a real slug. He drinks nearly the entire water cooler afterwards.
    • Goofy accidentally gives Pete cat food instead of chicken soup in "Nightmare on Goof Street". Pete eats several spoonfuls of cat food, and even enjoys it... until he realizes the mix-up, at which point he spits it out in horror.
  • I Can See My House from Here: Goofy says this when shot high in the air from a fire hose explosion in "Where There's Smoke, There's Goof".
  • "I Can't Look!" Gesture: PJ covers his eyes with his hands many times when someone else (usually Pete) gets hurt in front of him and Max also does it occasionally with Goofy.
  • I Gave My Word: In "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", PJ makes a promise to Max not to share any information and to Pete not to tell on him (though at the point he didn't know what Pete was making him promise not to tell on him for). When PJ finds out Pete has been using him as an unwitting spy, he is forced to choose whether to break a promise to Max or his dad. He still keeps his word to the letter to both of them, even refusing to answer Max's request for confirmation that the cheating was Pete's fault.
  • I Have a Family: Pete pleads the shark in "Cabana Fever" not to eat him because he has two kids.
  • I Have This Friend: In "Max-Imum Insecurity", Max and PJ want to gauge how Pete would react if he found out that they stole a bottle of perfume (it was actually Leech who stole it, but he gave it to Max and PJ to guard), so they ask him about a hypothetical scenario. Pete tells them about how stealing is completely unethical and that if he caught anyone stealing he would sand them with his new sander.
  • I Take Offense to That Last One: In "Good Neighbor Goof", Goofy is more offended by Pete calling Max "little" than by the actual insult.
  • Identical Grandson: All past ancestors of Goofy and Pete look identical to them. Goofy's Aunt Goofelia and Angelo look like Goofy with different hair.
  • Identical Stranger: "Where There's a Will, There's a Goof" has Goofy and Pete meeting two guys who look and dress just like them, but the Goofy one has Pete's threatening Jerkass attitude while the Pete one has Goofy's klutzy silliness.
  • Idiot Ball: Usually Pete is a Manipulative Bastard and PJ the Only Sane Man, but in some episodes one or both of them seem almost as dumb as Goofy. "Come Fly with Me" is weird for having PJ act as the Only Sane Man in one scene ("Don't we need the instructions?") and carry the Idiot Ball later in the same episode ("He spelt it backwards", and trying to hit himself in the face with the manual). Max usually avoids the Idiot Ball, however.
  • If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: Zig-Zagged in "As Goof Would Have It". Peg puts Pete on a diet that involves a medication or supplement in the form of a granola bar. Pete fears the taste, but to humor his wife, he tastes one, and they're so good he goes through a week's worth in a single sitting. Peg informs him that they're supposed to be in addition to his three squares a day, otherwise they may as well be candy (this is confirmed by the label).
  • I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!: In "The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy", Goofy tells the kidnappers that he'll tell them where he lives but not where his "next door neighbor, Pete" lives.
  • Imaginary Friend: In "Pistolgeist", there's Inky, a character from one of Pistol's books, who turns out to be very real, and Pistol almost runs away with her.
  • Imprinting: Bubbles, who hatches out of an egg Max and PJ find in "Great Egg-Spectations". Max intends to keep her as a pet.
  • Improbable Food Budget: Even though Pete is a used car salesman, it's still hard to believe they could afford all those huge breakfasts Peg cooks for him every morning.
  • Incredibly Obvious Bug: Parodied in "The Ungoofables". Said Bug is literally an anthropomorphic, man-sized ladybug with a microphone standing behind a door. He's instantly noticed but manages to get away. Only to Be beaten up by his kingpin with a flyswatter afterwards.
  • Innocuously Important Episode: "O, R-V, I N-V U". After the events of An Extremely Goofy Movie, the chestnut speech, in particular the "shell comes off" metaphor, reads as Foreshadowing for PJ eventually showing Hidden Depths and Taking a Level in Cheerfulness in his happy ending.
  • In One Ear, Out The Other:
    • In "Inspector Goofy", Pete (trying to get Goofy a job as a city inspector) claims he has "an open mind" by lifting up Goofy's ears and revealing you can see straight through.
    • In "Come Fly with Me", Pete, having been transformed into a fly, is desperately trying to get Peg's attention and flies into one of her ears so she can hear him speaking. She can hear him, but unable to see where he is speaking from she tilts her head and Pete falls right out.
  • Incessant Music Madness: In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", after Pete wins a trunk full of sentient instruments, they constantly play "When the Saints Go Marching In." Pete goes more and more insane from the song and eventually resorting to trying to get rid of the instruments completely. Pete hates this song in particular because it reminds him of one time he was in a school band and ruined the show during that song.
  • Inept Talent Show Contestant: Max is a double subversion in "Talent to the Max". At the beginning of the episode, he is terrible at magic tricks and likely to lose the talent show. He then finds a magic hat that makes him good at them. However, the magic hat is evil and the only way to defeat it is to admit to being terrible at them, which he does on-stage.
  • Insane Troll Logic: In "Bringin' on the Rain", Pete intends to water his yard thoroughly. PJ objects, since they're in a drought. Pete responds to him by saying that since we have oceans and "the human body is 98.6% water", there can't possibly be a drought. PJ is exhausted enough that he responds with, "Whatever you say, Dad."
  • Instant Waking Skills: PJ in "Max-Imum Protection". Hearing Max ask him for help is enough to wake him and boost him right into action.
  • Ironic Echo Cut: "Good Neighbor Goof" manages to play this for drama... only to be immediately followed by jokes and then go back and forth for the rest of the episode.
    Pete: [angry] Why, I'd recognize those tracks anywhere! PJ!
    [Pete starts climbing up the stairs and the scene cuts to PJ's room]
    PJ: [frightened] Oh man, I'd recognize those footsteps anywhere! Dad!
  • Ironic Fear: Pete mentions his fear of heights on several occasions. This is ironic because Goofy, who has an even harsher relationship with gravity, and is responsible for more than a few of Pete's less pleasant encounters, isn't afraid of heights at all.
  • It Amused Me: In "Midnight Movie Madness", Pete tells PJ that the Mutilator is real and then later on pretends to be the Mutilator to terrify him (and Max) because he thinks it's funny. Peg, on the other hand, does not, and forces him to apologize.
  • It Runs in the Family: Despite Max being embarrassed by his dad, he is just as clumsy at times, and in the movie adopts his father's laugh. Even though PJ is a lot more honest and kind than his father, he still can sell cars just as well. Also, every male member of the Pete family has a phobia of heights.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Pete. Under that blatant jerk is... another jerk.
  • Jerkass Ball:
    • Pete is always a Jerkass, but "Bringin' on the Rain" shows him as worse than usual. He generally will pick and choose which one of Goofy and PJ to torment in a significant way (if either) — in this episode he does both at the same time. He is also crueler to both of them than usual and has no remorse at all in the entire episode. He only eventually relents about Goofy's treatment once caught, and callously acknowledges PJ's as if it weren't a problem twice (to which the Mickey Mousing facial expressions intentionally draw attention).
    • PJ carries one in "Queasy Rider". Generally speaking, he isn't the type to laugh at innocent victims of humiliation, especially not his best friend, but in this episode he does, which doubles as a Conforming OOC Moment. He also has almost no patience for Max being rude to him before pranking him, while he's ordinarily very tolerant.
    • Goofy, Peg, and PJ all hold one in "Inspector Goofy". Goofy by engaging in Selective Enforcement even though he promised not to, Peg by having no sympathy when Pete's kicked out of the house and taunting him with food, and PJ by using one of his two lines to suggest selling Pistol.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Jerkass Realization: Parodied and subverted by Pete in "Axed by Addition". When PJ plays sick, Pete freaks out about how much of a jerk he has been to PJ, with some reasons that make sense and some that are extremely mundane, sobbing confessions to everyone he sees, which creeps out most of them. He then assumes that everything on PJ's list is secretly his fault. He chases PJ home and begs for forgiveness, only to drop PJ carelessly when the phone rings and start being a jerk to him again as soon as he finds out PJ's not really dying.
  • Just Eat Gilligan: Many episodes' problems could have been solved if Pete just stayed as far away as possible from Goofy. "Goof Fellas" comes to mind as the most prominent example, where Goofy almost gets both of them killed by The Mafia.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • The two con men in "Nightmare on Goof Street", who receive no comeuppance for scamming Pete into allowing them to tear his house apart. Subverted in their other appearances, where they're either foiled by Goofy's antics or arrested.
    • The guy who gives Pete the food truck in "Partners in Grime" successfully outcons Pete at his own game and gets zero comeuppance. All the while Pete remains in denial about it until the very end.
  • Karmic Butt-Monkey: Pete is prone to a lot of slapstick and humiliating situations as punishment for his abuse towards his son PJ and scams.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Pete's Establishing Character Moment is to chop down one of his palm tree models onto Chainsaw's head for no apparent reason.
    • In "Maximum Insecurity", Leech proves himself to be a complete scumbag by stealing a baby's lollipop and making a quip on how taking candy from a baby is easy.
  • Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: Pretty much played straight in "Midnight Movie Madness". Pete (intentionally) and Goofy (unintentionally) make it worse for Max and P.J.
  • Kissing Cousins: Downplayed. Max seemed a little too happy to see his cousin, Debbie, and says that "she's hotter than any babe in the Pharaoh's (gang)". He later pretended to date her as part of a plan to eat at a fast food restaurant, despite the fact that PJ could easily have done it.
  • Lampshade Hanging: In "Goofin' Up the Social Ladder", Goofy remarks that he gets along well with dogs, and is almost viewed as one of the family. Obviously, this is a reference to how odd it is that Goofy looks like a dog but acts like a human, and is seen by some viewers as the "missing link" between dog and human.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • Pete is punished by the universe for every transgression without fail, unless the people he harmed take revenge on him, even if it doesn't necessarily happen in the same episode. "Fool's Gold" makes it explicit with a Bolt of Divine Retribution, while "Unreal Estate" had Dutch lampshade it before bargaining with him.
    • "Bringing' on the Rain" has a very satisfying one. Pete frames Goofy for overusing water during a drought and redirects his water meter to Pete's house so as to grow a garden and win a competition. Even though the judge delivers a harsh sentence to Goofy, he realizes that there is no way a man could use that much water and takes him to his house to investigate. Meanwhile, Max gets it in his head to sacrifice Pete's fishing gear to invite rain, and said ritual uncovers the tampered meter. The judge sees the exploded meter on Pete's side of the yard, as well as the rainforest. Pete tries to cover it up by saying it's all weeds he's trying to get rid of, but the judge quickly clears Goofy of all charges, indicts Pete for hoarding water, and sentences him to the same cell that Goofy was occupying. And to rub it in, the flower salesman Pete got his seeds from also gets indicted for mail fraud and running a scam.
  • Last-Name Basis: Due to the Repetitive Names on this show, it's unclear whether Pete and Goofy call each other by their last names or shortened versions of their first names.
  • The Last Straw:
    • In "Slightly Dinghy", Pete piles all of his things into a lifeboat after being told to abandon ship, only to have the whole thing sink upon adding a rubber ducky.
    • In "Major Goof", Goofy drops a heavy backpack and then wipes his forehead with a handkerchief. He throws the handkerchief down and is suddenly light enough to be flung in the air.
    • In "Good Neighbor Goof", Waffles has managed to get a luau pig in a tree branch and plans to eat it while his people are distracted. He pours a few shakes of salt on it, which is enough to knock it to the ground.
  • Latex Perfection: Parodied in "Buddy Building". At one point on their mission, Goofy and Max bump into each other, and then Goofy tugs off his rubber mask to reveal Pete. But then he pulls off that mask to reveal Giblet the Clown, and under that is a cute female dogface person, and then "she" pulls that mask off to reveal Goofy once again, who somehow is able to take off his own face, but Max isn't amused.
  • Lemony Narrator: During the how-to skits, the narrator often gets irritated at Goofy's inability to perform the simplest tasks.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", the end of the race is so close that it requires a photo finish which shows Pete barely winning. However, the photo reveals that Pete was cheating, so to avoid digging himself deeper after yelling at PJ for letting the Goofs "slip right out of [his] booby traps" in front of everyone, he tears up the picture and gives his prize to Goofy. When Goofy thanks him, he says through gritted teeth, "Don't mention it... ever again."
  • Lethal Chef:
    • Don't eat Goofy's "Goofy Burgers". You'll regret it. Goofy also made Pete a peach pit pie and a "shoefly pie" that Peg wanted as far away from her as possible. in spite of this, Goofy has shown that he can be a Supreme Chef from time to time, questionable recipes notwithstanding.
    • Pete has shown to have even worse cooking skills than his neighbor, including making a chili that causes people to spit fire upon eating it.
    • Aunt Goofelia makes chili that deliberately makes everyone's mouth catch on fire.
  • Like Father, Like Son: This general concept is Discussed in the theme song and from time to time in-universe, but the show demonstrates the exact opposite. It's also inverted in the sense that both sons have significantly more in common with each other's fathers than their own.
  • Like Father, Unlike Son:
    • Goofy and Max have some things in common such as optimism and clumsiness, but they're also different in many respects, such as Goofy being stupid and Max being clever, Goofy being selfless and Max being selfish, and Goofy being wacky and Max being serious.
    • In most ways, Pete and PJ are polar opposites. Some of the most obvious trait dissimilarities are Pete's enormous ego and PJ's low self-esteem, Pete being a two-faced hypocrite while PJ is honest to a fault, Pete being a fierce bully while PJ is generally sweet and passive-aggressive at worst, and Pete having a great entrepreneurial spirit but no common sense while PJ is the Only Sane Man who would rather assist in most situations. They're also a Sensitive Guy and Manly Man whose relationship is extremely lopsided.
  • Like You Were Dying: In "Terminal Pete", Pete believes that he only has a few hours to live after hearing from the doctor about his "terminal illness", and so he needs to spend the last hours of his life playing stuntman.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Pete and PJ may sometimes remove their jackets, but for the most part everyone wears the same thing all of the time, with some exceptions.
  • Long List: All the food that Peg finds under Pete's clothes at the beginning of "To Catch a Goof". It contains, among other things, Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs, And a Diet Coke.
  • Look Behind You: The common subversion occurs in "Sherlock Goof". Pete's character, Prof. Inferiority, snags his net on the side of his tub filled with a dangerous solvent intended to kill Sherlock Goof. Sherlock tries to warn him, he doesn't listen, and the solvent gets poured all over the room.
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • Max uses this to aid PJ in both "Everything's Coming Up Goofy" and "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime". In the former, he resorts to asking PJ if Pete forbade him from playing with his tank on the walls and ceiling after he said pretty much every ground in existence was expressly forbidden. In the latter, Pete says PJ is not allowed to move the VCR, but Max notices he didn't say they couldn't plug into it.
    • PJ himself uses this when he accidentally made contradictory promises in "Tub Be or Not Tub Be". He pointedly never actually tells Max and Goofy that Pete was cheating even when directly asked for confirmation. He just makes it impossible to draw any other conclusion by conspicuously knocking the camera out of his hat.
  • Loser Son of Loser Dad: When he's being particularly cynical, Pete seems to consider Max an example, at one point telling Max that he's "just a carbon copy of your old man anyway, a Goof!"
  • Love at First Sight: In "Puppy Love", PJ falls in love with Rose Deckenbloom as soon as he sees her reading poetry.

    M-R 
  • Made of Iron: Everyone in the cast to a certain extent, but especially Goofy. Falling from great height does little damage.
  • The Mafia: In "Counterfeit Goof", Goofy is mistaken for a member. They also appear in "Goof Fellas" and want Goofy and Pete killed for thwarting them.
  • Malicious Slander: The magic hat in "Talent to the Max" convinces Max that PJ is trying to steal his act, even going so far as to briefly possess him to "prove" it. Why? Because PJ was trying to convince Max that the hat was bad news, which he was only more sure of after Max accused him of doing something he couldn't remember doing. Max tells PJ he'd rather dump him than the hat.
  • The Man in the Mirror Talks Back:
    • In "Educating Goofy", not only does Goofy's reflection respond to him verbally, but it gives him a hat.
    • When Mop-Along Goofy asks his optometrist who the handsome guy in the mirror is during "Gunfight at the Okie-Doke Corral", his reflection thanks him for the compliment.
  • Meat-O-Vision: In "To Catch a Goof", Pete sees his children as food. In "Gymnauseum", he sees everything as food.
  • Memory-Restoring Melody: In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", Pete's Berserk Button is pressed every time he hears the jazz piece "When the Saints Go Marching In." The song reminds him of a failed band recital during his childhood.
  • Men Can't Keep House: In "Mrs. Spoonerville", which is about Pete and Goofy joining a housekeeping contest, this is played straight with Pete, who is so bad at housework he bribes his children to do it for him, and averted with Goofy, who is shown to be highly skilled in the field of domesticity.
  • Mickey Mousing: Often used even to signal changes in facial expressions. "Midnight Movie Madness", the first episode in production order, uses an entirely-original scene-specific music score by Robert Irving that often utilizes this. Subsequent episodes generally instead use recurring multi-purpose music cues (a standard practice for television animation at the time) composed by Mark Watters.
  • Mirror Character: Pete and Max loathe each other most of the time, but they have more in common with each other than with anyone else on the show: they're both ambitious leaders, fairly self-centered and prone to using other people as means to an end, and far better at coming up with ideas than thinking them through. They'd never admit it though — except in "O, R-V, I N-V U" where they end up bonding so well that a Why Are You Not My Son? situation arises.
  • Missing Mom: Max's mom is not around nor even mentioned. Her absence is made even more telling given Max's best friend has a very prominent Mom. Several episodes (like "Date with Destiny") highlight the fact that Goofy is a single father without mentioning Max's mother at all.
  • Mistaken for Badass: As stated in "Queasy Rider", Goofy was once known as "the Skull". Though apparently nobody knew it was short for numbskull.
  • Mistaken for Dying: In "Terminal Pete", Pete believes he is dying due to a joke, made up by the doctor when Pistol's gopher had snuck into the sheets where Pete was lying on when the X-ray picture was taken, exacerbating some Out-of-Context Eavesdropping of plumbers discussing a broken pipe.
  • Mistaken for Murderer: In "For Pete's Sake", Pete reads a letter from Goofy and thinks that Goofy is out to kill him. It turns out that Goofy was getting him a new hedge clipper in place of the one that Pete had accidentally broken; and that Pete had torn open the envelope, and the letter, improperly.
  • Mistaken for Pregnant: Peg, in "And Baby Makes Three", which came as a slight surprise to Pete. Ironically, Pete started the whole thing himself by telling Pistol she could have a baby brother as soon as her mother got home without paying attention to what he said.
  • Mood Whiplash: "Good Neighbor Goof" is full of this. First, there's the scene where PJ forgets he doesn't have a balcony immediately followed by Pete yelling at him and forbidding him from seeing Max, played absolutely straight. Then PJ delivers one of the most depressing lines in the entire series, only to have that lead into a mild slapstick scene. Then there's the scene where the rules are set up in both houses, which juxtaposes the image of an obviously terrified PJ with Goofy telling Max "never stick peas up your nose."
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: The main cast features a cheerful Nice Guy who only causes problems by accident, a cynical Nice Guy who is harmless except for a few Beware the Nice Ones moments, a Mama Bear who wants what's best for everyone but can be ruthless in enforcing it, a High-School Hustler who both goes out of his way to help his friends and family and takes them for granted, a Bratty Half-Pint who also shows sympathy when it's needed, and a Jerkass who can become a heroic Papa Wolf when the situation calls for it. More traditional villains occasionally show up as one-shot characters.
  • The Movie: A Goofy Movie and its sequel, An Extremely Goofy Movie are spin-offs from the series, taking place years later (the latter of which, when Max is 18 years old and attending college).
  • Muck Monster: Mr. Sludge in "A Goof of the People" is a combination of a Muck Monster and a Corrupt Corporate Executive. Later in the episode, the toxic waste Sludge places in Goofy's garage to ruin his name ends up forming a much more traditional Muck Monster. The Muck Monster is defeated by Goofy's jar of fresh air, which also clears Mr. Sludge of the toxic waste on his body, making him have a change of heart.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: A weird example given that one choice was shown, and the other was merely told. Specifically, either Max and PJ met the year the show ran (shown in "Everything's Coming Up Goofy" and "Good Neighbor Goof", mentioned in "Goodbye Mr. Goofy" and "Pistolgeist"), or they had grown up in the same neighborhood (Mentioned in "Wrecks, Lies, and Videotape", "Tee for Two", "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", and "Goof Troop Christmas"). The latter backstory option however lacks the explanation for PJ's Undying Loyalty towards Max.
  • Mundane Fantastic: A show about characters and relationships in a mundane modern setting also randomly contains at various points sapient horns, an evil magic hat that is capable of hexing people, ghosts, a real imaginary friend from outer space, fire-breathing dinosaurs, trucks and bullets with faces, two Muck Monsters, multiple Bigfoots, Frankenstein's Monster, a zombie, and a character turning into a fly. None of this is ever explained, and the characters just roll with it. It's to the point that the main conflict of the episode with the evil magic hat is an Acquired Situational Narcissism Feud Episode.
  • Muscle Angst: Max goes through some angst in "Buddy Building" because he is really skinny and weak compared to PJ and their new friend Coupe Hatchback, who can bond over weight lifting, which makes him worry about being replaced.
  • The Musical: The first movie is a musical.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • "Wrecks, Lies, and Videotape" involves a parody of A Christmas Carol with Goofy in the Jacob Marley role, just like in Mickey's Christmas Carol.
    • Max is referred to as "Goofy Jr." several times during "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp". Goofy Jr. was Max's prototype's name.
    • Who is (not) flying in "Hot Air?" Goofy. Just like in the Classic Disney Short, "Mickey's Trailer".
    • Peg and Pistol are named after two of Pete's nicknames in the Classic Disney Shorts — Peg-Leg Pete (evil pirate) and Pistol Pete (evil cowboy).
    • In "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", Goofy's mime instructor has cue cards showing pictures, and when it comes to "duck", the image is of Donald Duck.
    • The ducks in "Goofs of a Feather" talk like Donald Duck.
    • "Educating Goofy" has Max deliberately misspell cat as K-A-T at the spelling bee. His predecessor Goofy, Jr. misspelled cat the same way in the Goofy short "Teachers are People".
    • Goofy's Criminal Doppelgänger in "Counterfeit Goof" behaves similarly to Mr. Wheeler from the short "Motor Mania," when he's seen ranting after getting stuck behind Goofy in track.
    • In "Goodbye Mr. Goofy", Goofy blowing a balloon up the wrong way results in him briefly having Mickey Mouse ears.
    • Whenever a character learns how to do something from a book, there's a brief segment in the style of Goofy's classic "How To" shorts, narrated by a dapper sounding Interactive Narrator. And on that note...
  • Narrator:
    • The "How To" Narrator who usually shows up for Goofy's Read the Freaking Manual needs.
    • There's also a different narrator who recites the story in "The Ungoofables" until the others tell him to shut up.
  • Negative Continuity: Goofy and Pete's houses, as well as Pete's boat, get damaged or destroyed frequently, but they are always back to normal by the next episode. Goofy also became mayor ("A Goof of the People") and won the Nobel Prize once ("E=MC Goof"), and then neither was ever mentioned again. Also, Pete ends up abandoned far from home in two episodes in a row ("Frankengoof" and "E=MC Goof"), and the next episode ("Pete's Day at the Races") stars him.
  • Never Say "Die": Almost always averted — the words "dead", "die", and "kill" are actually used a lot. However, in "Bringin' on the Rain", Pete does try to avoid using the word "die" when describing his bogus condition. This is Played for Laughs, however, because Goofy is being Literal-Minded, and Pete uses this to his advantage.
  • New Job as the Plot Demands:
    • Goofy seems to have no regular occupation, freeing him up to be a pizzeria owner, a NASA worker, the mayor, the city inspector, and more at various times which is especially glaring given that he moved to Spoonerville in the first place because of a job.
    • A small, pudgy, dog-eared character model with a squeaky campy voice — named Mr. Huge in his first appearance. He's consistently rich, but the way he made/makes his money varies.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Pete is attempting to get the Goofs out of their house in "Good Neighbor Goof" by simulating an earthquake. He is distraught to discover that the earthquake helped the Goofs unpack and set up their furniture quickly.
  • Nightmare Sequence: In "Max-Imum Insecurity", Max has a nightmare about going to jail for Leech's stolen perfume bottle. PJ says he had a similar dream but his is not actually shown.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Ronald Strudelnasher, a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger who appears in "Buddy Building". An action movie star and 'The Discontinuator', obvious Terminator parody. "Ronald" is even an anagram of "Arnold".
  • Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Pete. Often.
    Pete: Can we get the bunny with the bent ear, ma-ma?
  • Non-Standard Character Design: The buyers in "Unreal Estate" are significantly less anthropomorphized than the other characters, looking much more like actual cats.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", PJ backs Goofy's Bait-and-Switch Comment up, mentioning the "incident with the earless monkey," which, apparently, they all agreed off-screen to never bring up again.
    • In "Buddy Building", Ronald Strudelnosher says to Goofy, Max, and PJ, who are all wearing clown costumes that they are the nicest rescue clowns he has seen in a long time, suggesting that clowns had saved his life once before.
    • Goofy mentions that he was born under a sign that said "Please don't feed the elk" in "The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy", but Pete yells at him before he can give any more details other than "You see, my mother was pregnant at the time..."
    • In "Good Neighbor Goof", Goofy tells Max to be careful with his work cap because "that hat saved my life once!"
  • Not Now, Kiddo: Pete frequently ignores PJ's warnings, and sometimes Pistol's, which was especially troublesome in "Great Egg-Spectations" where there was a dinosaur in the house.
  • Not-So-Imaginary Friend: A character in Pistol's favorite book is revealed to be real at the end of "Pistolgeist".
  • Not-So-Innocent Whistle: PJ does this in "Cabana Fever" when Peg finds that Pistol has been placed in the back of the car with the luggage and after Pistol makes it impossible for people not to know he (accidentally) did it using a Shaped Like Itself accusation.
  • Nuclear Family: The Pete family consists of a mother, a father, and two kids, a boy and a girl, as a contrast for the small single-parent only-child Goof family, but the movies avert this due to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
  • Oblivious to His Own Description: Played with in "Bringing On The Rain". Max and PJ discovers that Goofy's water line had been redirected to Pete's home. Realizing what Max is insinuating, PJ is offended, asking if he really thinks Pete is so dishonest and immoral to steal from Goofy. Almost immediately, PJ stop as he realizes that this is Pete they're talking about, then asks Max not to answer.
  • Obnoxious In-Laws: Peg's uncle, Bob Sparrowhawk, who appears in "Major Goof". Loved by PJ. Disliked greatly by Pete. Whilst Bob isn't actually deliberately mean to Pete, he makes things hard for him.
  • Oh, Crap!: In "Wrecks, Lies and Videotapes", this is Goofy's reaction when Pete lights the fuse of his "safety harness" when he agrees to paint the line on a ramp. This is also Pete's reaction when the structure collapses around him.
    • At the end of "Come Fly With Me", PJ answers the door, then reacts in horror before slamming the door shut. When Pete asks who it was, PJ runs off in terror after answering it was for him. Pete then goes to answer the door, then reacts in horror when it's revealed that at the door were three humanoid mutated flies giving him the neck slit gesture.
  • On a Scale from One to Ten:
  • One Dialogue, Two Conversations:
    • Occurs numerous times in "E=MC Goof". Goofy gets a job at NASA by accidentally submitting Max's well-written science report as a job application. They then believe he's a genius and ask him to train their chimp and help them work on their rocket. Goofy, however, believes the entire time that he is the janitor and the chimp is training him. Neither Goofy nor his bosses catch wise to the others' beliefs.
    • Also happens in "Counterfeit Goof", where Goofy gets mistaken for a notorious counterfeiter and told to "paper the town" (replace the real money with counterfeit money). He thinks they are giving him a budget with which to buy wallpaper and apply it to everyone's house.
    • In "Date with Destiny", Gilda believes she's giving Goofy an estimate for home repair while Goofy believes they're on a date.
    • In "Terminal Pete", Goofy misunderstands the doctor making a joke about how a gopher snuck into Pete's sheets for mispronouncing the word "goner" and thus thinks Pete is truly dying. So does Pete, due to Out-of-Context Eavesdropping.
    • In "The Ungoofables", the crime leaders tell Eliot Goof to "ice" Fester Ness. Eliot Goof had been delivering ice, so he believed they were merely asking him to do that.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted.
    • Two of the main characters are named Peter, one named after the other. However, they get around this by calling one of them by just his initials.
    • There are also at various points in the series several characters named "Bob." There's Bob Sparrowhawk, Peg's uncle from "Major Goof", Bobby Zimmeruski, Max and PJ's new friend in the movies, and just Bob (No Full Name Given), a friend/acquaintance of Max in "Educating Goofy."
    • Melvin is the name of Mr. Sludge's employee in "A Goof if the People" as well as a supporting kid in "Lethal Goofin'."
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In "Axed by Addition", PJ engages in risky behavior, which he's ordinarily against, because he believes at the time he's doomed to be Grounded Forever, and therefore has nothing to lose.
  • Out-of-Character Alert: The monster in "Frankengoof" looks very similar to Pete. His family eventually decides that it's not actually Pete because he's too nice and too willing to take responsibility.
  • Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: In "Terminal Pete", Pete wakes up after his x-ray to hear some plumbers talking about a broken pipe. He misunderstands, and thinks they're talking about him. This is exacerbated when the doctor has One Dialogue, Two Conversations with Goofy while making a joke about Pete having "terminal chest gopher". Pete then believes he's dying for most of the rest of the episode.
  • Out Of Control Popcorn: In "Cabana Fever", Goofy makes enough popcorn to fill Pete's house. Later, Pete gives him a hard time about it while they're on vacation. Eventually, doing the same thing to the volcano lets the two escape from the Threatening Shark in a Chekhov's Gag.
  • Overly Long Gag: Two in "To Catch a Goof". One was a Long List and the other was a fairly lengthy version of Your Television Hates You.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: PJ dresses as a baby in "And Baby Makes Three". Despite the fact that he's a very overweight 11-year-old with fully developed teeth (which Pete found out the hard way), and that PJ "mysteriously vanished" until Max came up with the excuse several minutes later that he was at the store, Pete doesn't realize that the baby is PJ. He says the baby looks like PJ ("back when he was cute") and comments on how absurdly big he is, but that's about it.
  • Parental Bonus: "Wrecks, Lies, and Videotape" refers to an '89 movie, Sex, Lies, and Video Tape.
  • Parental Incest: Downplayed in "Puppy Love". PJ going on a pretend date... with his own mother... As part of a plan to get another girl to like him, but still weird.
  • Parents as People: While Goofy and Pete's (and Peg's to a lesser extent) parenting methods are important to many episodes, there are also a large crop of episodes where the parents go on adventures where the kids are either barely involved or completely absent, including as early as the fourth episode, "Unreal Estate".
  • Pet the Dog:
    • Pete is surprisingly kind to PJ in "Puppy Love", and doesn't have the "one of us is dying" excuse he usually does. Unfortunately, all the nice things he does end up hindering PJ anyway... though by accident.
    • In "Tee for Two", Pete gives a trophy to a kid who tried and failed at mini-golf. Peg gives him a big kiss for this one.
  • Petty Childhood Grudge: According to "Everything's Coming Up Goofy", one of the main reasons Pete hates Goofy is that his clumsiness caused him to lose a football game in high school. This grudge is still active when they both have children around middle school age.
  • Phony Psychic: Madame Zeldarina makes stuff up and uses common sense inferences (and a really well-done ad) to make people think she's legitimate, but is just trying to get as much money out of them as possible.
  • Playing Sick:
    • PJ does this in "Axed By Addition" so that he doesn't have to go to school on what he believes will be his last day of freedom ever. Max actually makes him look very sick because Pete is strict about what counts as sick enough to stay home, which results in him being taken to the hospital and Pete realizing (for the span of fifteen minutes) that he's a bad parent.
    • Pete does this in "To Heir Is Human" so that he can take the day off from work fishing. Pete is his own boss, but he doesn't want to lose the profits for the day, so he tricks PJ into doing his job for him by pretending he's sick and telling PJ that Peg, Pistol, and Chainsaw will be stuck doing bad jobs if he doesn't succeed. When PJ tearfully presents the proceeds to Peg and tells her what he was told, this plan backfires.
  • Please, I Will Do Anything!: PJ didn't perhaps need to grovel at Max's feet in this way in "Axed By Addition" to get him to go through with his "drastic measures" to help him study, but he did. And regretted it shortly thereafter.
  • Politicians Kiss Babies: When being instructed on how to be a successful politician in "A Goof of the People", Goofy is informed that he can get more people to vote for him by shaking hands and kissing babies. Humorously, he gets it mixed up when he shakes a baby's hand and gets punched for trying to kiss a burly man.
  • Poor Communication Kills: PJ's main problem in "Tub Be Or Not Tub Be". A rare in-character example, since PJ is usually timid and unsure and Max is often a bad listener.
  • Porky Pig Pronunciation: The gag of a character having difficulty pronouncing a word before settling on using a synonym is used in the episode "Sherlock Goof", where Goofy has trouble saying the word "simultaneously" and decides to get around it by substituting with "all at once".
  • Preferable Impersonator: "Frankengoof" features a Frankenstein's Monster parody that looks like Pete in green makeup. His family unanimously prefers the monster to him because he's nice and does household chores, whereas the real Pete is a lazy jerkass, to the point where Peg secretly brings the monster home with them instead, which is only undone by Negative Continuity.
  • Private Eye Monologue: Max has one all throughout "Lethal Goofin'", while trying to figure out who Tooth and Nails answer to.
  • Pro Bono Barter: In "Winter Blunderland", Pete pays Max and PJ for shoveling the snow at his workplace... in paperclips. Max and PJ are not amused.
  • Produce Pelting: Goofy is on the receiving end of this when he tells terrible jokes to stall he audience while Pete tries to get Max and PJ free in "Shake, Rattle, and Goof".
  • Properly Paranoid: In "Come Fly with Me", PJ tells Max he feels like Pete is watching them. He's right: Pete is the fly buzzing behind him.
  • Property Line: In "Goof Under My Roof" it looks like Pete owns half of Goofy's house but it's actually the other way around.
  • Punny Name: Local news reporter Biff Fuddled. When he first introduced himself to Pete, the latter responded "I'm a little confused too."
  • Pygmalion Snap Back: What happens when Pete tries to hypnotize Goofy in "In Goof We Trust".
  • Quirky Household: The Goof family. A single parent family with a clumsy idiot as the parent and a snarky, High-School Hustler kid, their bond is phenomenally strong, shown especially well in "Date with Destiny" and "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp".
  • Radish Cure: Max's second plan to get the fathers to allow his and PJ's friendship in "Good Neighbor Goof" is to feud with PJ so intensely that Pete and Goofy decide they don't want their families to feud anymore. After a day and night of constant feuding between the boys, it finally works.
  • Rage Breaking Point: PJ starts out merely feeling insecure due to Pete mistreating him in "From Air to Eternity". Even rejecting him as a punishment for something he didn't do just makes him sad. However, when he finds out Pete was also being a Hypocrite, PJ gets so angry even Max is terrified by his behavior. They then work together to get revenge on Pete.
  • Read the Freaking Manual:
    • Goofy sometimes attempts to read the manual and reads it completely wrong, ending up with predictable results. The narrator often gets annoyed with him for this.
    • On a few occasions, PJ wants to read a manual but no one else does, and so they convince him to ignore it. Invariably, it would have been a good idea to read it. A close variant occurs in "Where There's Smoke There's Goof", when PJ is the only one alarmed by a gauge.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: The judge who sentences Goofy for overusing water realizes that one man couldn't use that much water. He asks Goofy what happened to it, in exchange for reducing his sentence. Goofy honestly says he doesn't know — because Pete said he needed the water for his "medical condition". The inspector then takes Goofy to his house, where he finds out Pete tampered with the Goofs' water meter.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Pete has purple pajamas and pink bunny slippers. And the luxury sports car he wanted in one episode was colored Cherry Pink.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: In "Wrecks, Lies and Videotapes", when Max learns that Pete entered the recorded video himself and thus cheated the Goofs out of their prize, Max gets so angry that his eyes turn red.
  • Remaster: In 2017, the complete series (minus "Counterfeit Goof" for some strange reason) was remastered and released on iTunes in HD.
  • Repetitive Name: Goofy Goof, Peter Pete and Peter Pete Junior (PJ). The show never plays this up — just the opposite, in fact. We know their first names and their last names independently of each other, but the show never calls any of them by their full names
  • Reused Character Design:
    • Buster from "Big City Blues" is a recolor of the sailor from "Cabana Fever".
    • Colonel Carter from "Shake, Rattle, and Goof" looks exactly like a potential version of Mr. Huge, and a job that could work for him, but has a different voice and name.
    • Harry Hatchback and Biff Fuddled are identical in voice and appearance, but not only do they have different names, they also have different roles in the story.
    • The owner of the military supply shop in "Where There's a Will, There's a Goof" looks just like Myron from "The Incredible Bulk" but isn't acknowledged as such.
    • The girls who fawn over Tan Roadster in "Gymnauseum" look just like Duke's girlfriend from "Leader of the Pack".
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder:
    • After PJ and Max locate the pipe sending the water from the Goof house to the Pete house in "Bringin' on the Rain", and Max notices that it's doing so, PJ asks:
      PJ: Hey, what's that supposed to mean, Max, huh? Are you suggesting that my dad would do something unethical or dishonest!? [realization] 'Scuse me, for the sake of our friendship, don't answer that.
    • In "Slightly Dinghy", Max gets the bright idea to ask this question to try to convince PJ to ask Pete to take them fishing:
      Max: Aww, Peej, fishing with your dad! What could be more fun?
      PJ: Eating glass! You got any idea what fishing with him is like!?
  • Rotating Protagonist: The four male characters take turns being in the spotlight, sometimes more than one at a time, and the show's tone changes significantly depending on who is in focus.
  • Rube Goldberg Device: The soda dispenser at the beginning of "Clan of the Cave Goof".
  • Rule of Empathy: In stark contrast to the comical nature of the rest of the show, almost all of PJ's focus episodes are played entirely straight — highlighting just how scared/guilty/self-hating/lonely/resentful PJ feels as a result of his mistreatment. Then we get Pete as The Chew Toy...
  • Running Gag:
    • They really milked the overflowing Out Of Control Popcorn joke in "Cabana Fever", from when it happened, to Pete bringing it up multiple times, and eventually to resolving the plot.
    • The show has tried to force Pete to eat cat food three times ("Cat's Entertainment", "Nightmare on Goof Street", and "As Goof Would Have It"), in addition to blindsiding him with prizes that are only useful for cat owners twice ("Cat's Entertainment" again and "Mrs. Spoonerville").
    • Pete falls off the cliff and into the river in "You Camp Take It with You" so many times even the character himself notices it's a pattern.

    S-Z 
  • Satellite Character: Depending on the episode, PJ and Pistol can just be there to agree with one of their parents and can be treated as one entity, typically disregarding all of the differences between their personalities and the way they're treated.
  • Scrabble Babble: In "Nightmare on Goof Street", Pete accuses Goofy of this: "If you're gonna make up a word, don't make up such a phony-sounding long one!" However, it's actually averted in that the word Goofy wanted to play is "sesquipedalian," which is defined accurately.
  • The Scream: PJ lets one in "Max-imum Insecurity" when he sees that the stolen perfume bottle that he and Max are hiding has gone missing; the camera cuts to space, where PJ's scream is loud enough to be heard from that far away.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Pete often tries to bribe his way out of many situations.
  • Seal the Breach: In "Waste Makes Haste", the boat springs many leaks, while the characters attempt to block them with their body parts (or with PJ).
  • Selective Enforcement: Goofy in "Inspector Goofy" lets little things slide for everyone except for Pete and the mayor, for whom he writes up citations for even some things like "not enough stripes on a pinstripe shirt" and "operating a camera in a month with an R in it."
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: PJ and Pete respectively. Everything from their personalities to their interests to the way their voices sound follow this pattern. This is part of why Pete's so abusive towards PJ, whom he wishes could be more like him.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • In spite of the fact that it is established that Goofy had not seen Pete or Peg since graduation, and that Max and PJ first met at the age of eleven after Goofy returned to Spoonerville and moved in next door to the Petes, several episodes make references to Max growing up in Spoonerville. And in the Christmas special, Pete declares that every year Goofy wrecks stuff, although that should technically have been Goofy and Max's first Christmas in Spoonerville.
    • Not only that, but the episode "Have Yourself a Goofy Christmas" ("A Very Goofy Christmas") from the movie "Mickey's Once Upon A Christmas", which is said to chronologically precede the cartoon series, while featuring Goofy, Max and Pete as next-door neighbours, they live in two very different houses in a very different suburb than the houses and suburb featured in the series or in the movie(both the series and the movie feature different houses and suburb). And Max appears to be 5 years old at the time and Pete's wife and kids are nowhere to be found. And nothing implies Pete has a wife and kids, which he ought to have. One has to wonder how Goofy and Max ended up living from a suburban house to a trailer and then back to a suburban house again.
    • According to Episode 15 "Wrecks, Lies & Videotape", Goofy never had a decent vacation in his life. The movie averts this as it's revealed that Goofy's recent past generations took their sons fishing, by taking them across the country to Lake Destiny. Goofy appears to have lots of money as to not only take Max across the country and back, but to go to a carnival, fancy hotels or motels, buy somewhat expensive food, visit a cave, go to a baseball game and lots of other stuff all while traveling across the country.
    • In "Educating Goofy", Goofy has not finished grade school. But in "An Extremely Goofy Movie", he had gone to college for three years back in The '70s, and just not finished it. "Educating Goofy" appears to be an anomaly in this regard, as several other episodes (including the pilot) allude to Goofy in high school.
    • A milder example is that in "Goofs of a Feather", PJ wonders how he's going to face his "friends" now that his dad's a "duck-killer". In "Goodbye, Mr. Goofy", PJ reveals that Max is the only friend he's ever had, which, considering his personality and how he behaved in "Good Neighbor Goof", is probably true (and Max knows that Pete is a Jerkass and that PJ isn't). Even stranger, "Goofs of a Feather" has the same writer as both "Good Neighbor Goof" and "Goodbye, Mr. Goofy".
    • Pistol is portrayed inconsistently in regards to age (four, five, and six have all been stated) and grade (kindergarten and preschool have both been stated). The sexes of the family pets are also portrayed inconsistently, though generally speaking Waffles is male and Chainsaw is female.
    • In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", Pete drops the horns out of a plane without trouble, despite the fact that he's afraid of heights in at least four other episodes, one of which uses it as a Running Gag and two where it's crucial to the plot.
    • On a visual level: In "O R-V, I N-V U" and "Nightmare on Goof Street", Spud is fat and redheaded with a short snout and short curly hair and Wally is skinny and blond with a long snout and long straight hair. "The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy" has them trade bodies except for their hair colors and gives Spud a prominent five-o'-clock shadow that never appeared before on either of them. This is probably due to the latter episode being animated by Disney's Paris unit as opposed to the Australian one, which handled their other appearances.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: PJ has been the butt of these on multiple occasions. So has Pete but in those instances it was entirely his own fault.
    • "Axed By Addition", where Max talks PJ into Playing Sick so he can cut school. It was so he could have the best day of his life before being Grounded Forever for getting an F in math — and then it's revealed he got an A.
    • "Slightly Dinghy" where Max convinces an even-more-reluctant-than-usual PJ to ask Pete to go fishing with him so that he can find the treasure of the lake to afford a video game — and not only did Goofy already find the last quarter he needed (which the audience knew), there was also a Worthless Treasure Twist.
    • "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", where Max talks PJ into making a video for his science project instead of building a crude model. PJ is surprisingly not very reluctant, though Max does use Pete's Exact Words to find a loophole after PJ gives up. Max accidentally ends up setting it to a satellite dish instead of recording a video, and after the entire town gets tricked into believing aliens were in town, and Max and PJ come up with a plan to fix it, PJ only has this to say:
      PJ: I'm going to look for those ping-pong balls and start over.
    • "Unreal Estate", where Pete spends his contractor money on a gadget and works with Goofy to build the house — which works about as well as is expected. Then he finally manages to get the house exactly how it needs to be and then it's revealed the homebuyers only wanted the land.
    • "Goodbye Mr. Goofy" where Pete steals Goofy's mortgage money in an attempt to make him move out, it backfires, Pete spends the entire episode trying to give Goofy his money back after it was lost to no avail — and then it's revealed that it was in the ice cream maker the whole time.
  • Shaming the Mob: In an episode that involved a parody of Frankenstein's Monster that resembled Pete, Peg asked the angry mob just what the monster had done to them, any of them, that would warrant them trying to kill it. They couldn't think of a single reason to justify harassing the monster, and consented that what they were doing was shameful.
  • Shaped Like Itself: Who accidentally put Pistol in the car's trunk in "Cabana Fever"? "A certain someone whose initials are P.J."
  • Shell Game: In "Big City Blues", Max gambles away all of his money he could have used for bus fare in a shell game... where all three cups look completely different and one of them is transparent.
  • Shockingly Expensive Bill: In "Bringin' on the Rain", the water bills are very expensive because of the drought. Pete decides to mooch hundreds of gallons of water off of Goofy which results in a bill of over $100,000. Goofy ends up being arrested for two life sentences (though eventually released once the judge finds out the truth) because he can't pay the bill.
  • Shout-Out:
    • PJ makes references to Star Wars, Mad Max and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, amongst other films.
    • "Hot Air" features a python named "Monty", as well as this line from Pistol:
      Pistol: What about Amelia Airhead, and Sally Ride, and The Flying Nun?
    • In the Christmas special:
      • One of the things Goofy lists finding in his trunk is Green Eggs and Ham.
      • Pistol receives a viking helmet for Christmas and refers to herself wearing it as Conan's girlfriend.
      • Pete yells for Goofy to stop singing by saying that it's not an Osmond special.
    • "Frankengoof" includes a few shots that are very similar to those in Young Frankenstein, particularly the castle establishing shot.
    • To The Simpsons:
      • In "Midnight Movie Madness", there is a scene where Goofy goes to the grocery store and checks food out, animated in a similar way to the checkout scene in the opening, complete with similar music.
      • In a Freeze-Frame Bonus from "Good Neighbor Goof", one of the things that falls from Goofy's cupboard is a tiny Bart Simpson head.
    • Pete's get rich quick scheme in "Pete's Day At the Races" is very similar to that in The Producers, where he drastically oversells shares on the winnings of horse he's recently acquired that doesn't appear to have a prayer of winning any race... unfortunately, once Goofy removes a nail in his hoof that was slowing him down, he turns into a world champion race horse and ends up winning. Like with Max and Leo, Pete ends up in prison due to his inability to pay off the shareholders.
    • Pete says "I do believe in ghosts, I do believe in ghosts, I do, I do, I do!" in "Hallow-Weenies", just like the Cowardly Lion does in The Wizard of Oz, except that he says "ghosts" in place of "spooks." In "And Baby Makes Three", he replicates the "and you were there!" speech from the same movie.
    • "In Goof We Trust" contains a lie that one of the cars belonged to Elvis Presley.
    • Sammy the Horse watches an episode of Mister Ed in "Pete's Day at the Races".
    • In "The Ungoofables", Pete's ancestor remarks "Ice, ice, baby..." when he mistakenly learns that Eliot Goof is a hitman.
    • In "Big City Blues", the shady taxi driver whom Goofy and Pete hire during the search for Max and PJ repeatedly says, "Are you talkin' to me!?", a nod to the iconic scene featuring that line from Taxi Driver.
    • Max's new pet in "Great Egg-Spectations", Bubbles, is basically a cross between Elliot and Dino.
    • In "O, R-V, I N-V U", the venue where the RV show is being held also bills "Newt Wayneton" as a clear stand-in for renowned Las Vegas singer, Wayne Newton. It's both visible on a sign in the background and literally shouted out by Max.
    • In "Terminal Pete", the gopher that Pistol befriends basically looks like a slighty off-color version of Gopher.
  • Show Within a Show: "The Mutilator" series (also had a spinoff called "Mutilator on Main Street") complete with Hockey Mask and Chainsaw.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: PJ, the prudent, melancholy, timid Nice Guy and Pistol, the hyperactive, cheerful, bratty Motor Mouth. Pete even treats them differently (see Parental Favoritism).
  • Signs of Disrepair: Exaggerated in "Gunfight at the Okie Doke Corral".. The townsfolk all hang out at the "local salon", getting their hair done, manicures, etc. Goofy's ancestor wipes dirt off the windows revealing that it was actually supposed to be a saloon, and everybody cheers because they don't have to treat it like a salon anymore.
  • A Simple Plan: Whenever Max and Pete don't come up with a Zany Scheme, they come up with this.
  • 65-Episode Cartoon: Ended up getting fourteen more episodes, thirteen of which were aired at an alternate time and one of which was specifically a series finale (excluding the movies).
  • Skewed Priorities:
    • Subverted in "Fool's Gold". Pete actually has to think about what he prioritizes, money or his life, and looks like he's seriously choosing money, but then a second later he yells at Goofy for not saving him from drowning.
    • Played straight in "E=MC Goof". Pete chooses to go after his "space souvenirs"... toward the sun... instead of just being happy the rocket was going down to earth and we don't see him for the rest of the episode.
  • Skyward Scream: "...on account'a because I got conned by a couple of CONNNNNNNNNNS!!!!"
  • Sleeping Dummy: A variation occurs in "Pistolgeist". Pistol has already left the house and Max impersonates her with a wig in bed so that PJ doesn't get in trouble for letting her.
  • Smart Ball: "Rally Round the Goof" has Pistol, a four-and-a-half-year-old girl, being able to convert to military time. Her intelligence for the most part is fairly ordinary for a child her age.
  • The So-Called Coward: Despite being very cautious of most things, PJ has stood up to bullies for Max, and leapt in front of a speeding truck to push Max out of the way when he was paralyzed with fear. PJ also leapt onto the back of a moving RV to rescue Max when he was kidnapped.
  • Space Whale Aesop: From "A Goof of the People" the Green Aesop seems to be "Don't deliberately pollute without purpose or you will turn into a Muck Monster", which makes perfect sense in the Mundane Fantastic setting of the show, and no sense at all in the real world.
  • Speech-Impaired Animal: The bears in "You Camp Take It with You", the shark in "Cabana Fever", and the ducks in "Goofs of a Feather" are treated as animals in-universe, but can inexplicably talk, albeit with some animal noises mixed in.
  • Spelling Bee: One in "Educating Goofy" where it is quickly whittled down to Max vs. Goofy after all the extras lose because they can't take the pressure or play out of turn (and PJ loses because Pete tells him to advertise the car lot instead of spelling the word). The game then continues for a very long time because Max and Goofy are both trying to let the other one win, and in the end Goofy only wins by accident.
  • Sphere of Destruction: The result of Pete trying to use paint thinner to put out a fire in "Unreal Estate". Even Goofy knows that's a bad idea!
  • Sports Dad: Goofy and Pete in "Take Me Out of the Ball Game". Bearing a lot of nostalgia for the sport, they both force their sons into playing baseball, despite neither boy wanting anything to do with it. By the end of the episode though, it becomes clear that the glory days Goofy and Pete espoused so much about may not have been true and that they were just hoping to live their dream baseball careers vicariously through Max and PJ.
  • Spot the Imposter: In "Counterfeit Goof", Max has to figure out which one is Goofy out of Goofy and his Criminal Doppelgänger. He figures it out because the real Goofy steps into a bucket of wallpaper paste as he approaches him.
  • Springtime for Hitler: In "Pete's Day at the Races", Pete wins ownership of a racehorse who can't run, so he gives away shares of ownership in the horse to people who buy cars from his lot. He gives away more shares than he should, but figures its okay since the horse can't possibly win. Goofy ends up fixing the horse's foot, and unknowingly sabotages all of Pete's attempts to prevent it from winning.
  • Stab the Salad: In "Midnight Movie Madness", Goofy grabs a sharp kitchen knife to cut salami and uses a chainsaw to cut down a loose tree branch. Everyone else is rather jumpy due to thinking about the Mutilator.
  • Sticky Fingers: In "Max-Imum Protection", Chainsaw steals and buries all sorts of junk, including PJ's baseball glove, Max's radio, Pete's bench saw, and Pete's boat, cackling happily every time.
  • Storefront Television Display: In "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", Max and P.J. hijack the local TV signal and send out a fake message that aliens are coming to invade the earth. A panicked crowd watches their broadcast on a storefront display, and then see Goofy about to go into his street-corner mime act, with a costume that looks oddly identical to the boys' alien disguises.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: Max and PJ typically serve this in some capacity, though who's who depends on the episode. As a pattern, PJ is more likely to be the straight man, and Max the wise guy, but in some episodes like "Great Egg-Spectations" the roles are reversed.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike:
    • In "Good Neighbor Goof", Pete gives PJ "the family boots" (boots with heavily weighted cement soles). After PJ struggles to walk in them and falls down the stairs, Max arrives and asks, "Family boots, huh?"
    • In "Max-Imum Insecurity", PJ quickly apologizes to Leech for not having lunch money for him to beat out of him because it's Saturday. Max (who had fallen behind) does exactly the same thing after PJ flees.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Aside from PJ's face and Max's head shape, they look like miniature versions of their fathers, while their personalities are completely different. This was lampshaded many times in "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp", much to Max's chagrin.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: The shark in "Cabana Fever" is so determined to eat Pete that it chases him onto the island and to a volcano.
  • Survival Mantra: "It's only a game! It's only a game!" in "From Air to Eternity". PJ first adopts this phrase when playing a virtual reality stunt game to help him cope with his fear of heights, and later uses it again when it's actually false... evidently it's reassuring enough that he manages to skydive unharmed, but not to calm him down when he's being carried away by a storm.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Harry Hatchback in "Buddy Building" is basically Tan Roadster from "Gymnauseum" but less of a Jerkass. Both are attractive rival used-car-salesmen to Pete.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: In "Midnight Movie Madness", Peg asks Pete where he's been. His response (which she naturally doesn't buy):
    Pete: Well, I wasn't out scaring the kids!
  • Take That!: In "All the Goof That's Fit to Print", Pete gets an idea to publish his own newspaper so that he can insert an ad for his auto services without getting any criticisms over his dishonest dealings. He asks Max and PJ how well they do in English. When PJ answers that he has an F in English, Pete then says to himself that his son could do the editorials.
  • Taking Advantage of Generosity: Pete generally gets Goofy to do what he wants by making a request that sounds reasonable enough and then going overboard. While with PJ he typically prefers browbeating, he does try to elicit favors from him by making him feel guilty about not doing enough from time to time. He also does it to the one-shot character Dutch in "Unreal Estate" who continues to begrudgingly accept because he's "such a Nice Guy."
  • Talent Contest: Max participates in one as a magician in "Talent to the Max".
  • The Television Talks Back: In "Rally Round the Goof", a fortune telling ad starts talking back to Pete. Eventually the ad says, "I can't read your mind!" to which Pete responds, "Sorry, sorry, I thought you could!"
  • Temporary Bulk Change: In "As Goof Would Have It", Pete becomes the skinny one while Goofy becomes the fat one.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • PJ uses the Rock Bottom version in "Big City Blues". Cue the Rain and PJ saying "There goes my future as a fortune teller..." In a more characteristically pessimistic variation, he asks "Whoa. What's gonna happen next?" in "Waste Makes Haste" to which Max responds, "You had to ask" when their boat starts springing leaks.
    • In "Fool's Gold", Pete resolves to continue going after the gold until the big man in the sky tells him that he doesn't want him to have it. He is then immediately struck by a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
    • In "Window Pains", Pete says he doesn't know how he can get any more miserable. Cue Goofy driving the car Pete wanted from the start of the episode (a gift from Peg), crashing it, and ruining it.
  • Tender Tears: Goofy is the type of Kindhearted Simpleton who is quite easily moved to tears. Of course, this being Goofy, some of his weeping fits overlap with Ocular Gushers and/or Inelegant Blubbering, much to Pete's disgust.
  • Tentacle Rope: The octopus in "Where There's a Will, There's a Goof" holds Pete in its grasp and refuses to let go soon after he and Goofy discover it.
  • Thematic Theme Tune: The theme song definitely suggests that the show is about father/son and best friend relationships. At the same time, however, it has an Unreliable Narrator: the first line of the song is "Like father, like son," which is proven false almost instantly. In both houses. And as for the parts of the song about "best of friends forever", the Title Montage itself is not shy about juxtaposing it with blatant evidence that Pete does not reciprocate Goofy's feelings.
  • Theme Naming: The Pete family. Pistol and Peg are named after incarnations of Pete (evil cowboy and pirate respectively), and PJ (Pete Junior) shares his father's name.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Subverted in "Lethal Goofin'". PJ orders milk at a donut shop and then he and Max leave the shop immediately. PJ runs back in to drink the milk before leaving.
  • 13 Is Unlucky: Played With in "Rally Round the Goof." Pete is superstitious but doesn't want anyone to know, so he joins the 13th annual race held on Friday the 13th, gets car 13 while his race starts at 1:00 pm (which Pistol mentions is 13:00) which also happens to be 13 minutes away from the scene this is all mentioned in, and his family and neighbors will be cheering him from row 13. He wins.
  • This Is My Side: When Pete thought that he owned half of Goofy's house in "Goof Under My Roof", as well as the camping trip in "You Camp Take It with You" before the boys wander off.
  • This Is Reality: "This is a hospital, not a cartoon" in "Terminal Pete" "We're too good for TV, anyway" in "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", and "they're just cartoons. They don't know any better" in "Buddy Building". This show (a Mundane Fantastic World of Funny Animals cartoon) is definitely not more realistic than most.
  • Threatening Shark:
  • Throw the Dog a Bone:
    • "O, R-V, I N-V U": With Goofy's self-esteem-boosting pep talk, PJ is able to show off his knowledge of the RV and save Max from Spud and Wally; a pretty good payoff for being the victim of a Why Are You Not My Son? situation for two thirds of the episode.
    • "Puppy Love": Despite all the hell PJ goes through trying to get Rose to like him, even when Pete is trying to be helpful, he does end up dancing with her. She likes his genuine sweetness.
    • "Gymnauseum": Pete gets to be the romantic winner in one of the few episodes where someone (Tan Roadster) is being an even bigger jerk than he is.
    • "Tee for Two" and "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra": In both, Pete has a Freudian Excuse for his behavior. The rest of his family and his neighbors help him to face the trauma. In "Tee for Two", this leads to a Pet the Dog moment.
    • "Rally Round the Goof": The episode sets up that Pete is superstitious and thinks he's a victim of bad luck. Then when he is in a car race surrounded by the number thirteen in every possible way, he manages to win.
  • Tin-Can Telephone: Max and PJ use one to communicate in "Good Neighbor Goof". Max later uses it to pull PJ into his bedroom through the window after they were forbidden to see each other. The telephone appears again in "You Camp Take It with You", but is useless due to PJ being asleep.
  • Title Drop: The band Max and PJ form in "Shake, Rattle, and Goof" is called "The Goof Troop."
  • Title Montage: The theme song is accompanied by clips from various episodes of the show. There are actually two openings, though repeats tend to favor the latter one, which added clips from some later episodes like "Queasy Rider" (Goofy accidentally walking into a table of pizzas) and "Great Egg-Spectations" (Pete getting flamed by a dinosaur).
  • Title Sequence Replacement: All re-runs on Toon Disney used the second intro (see Title Montage above for more info). Inverted with the DVDs, though; the first intronote  is on most of the episodes on the DVDs, though some, for no apparent reason, have the second one instead.
  • Title Theme Tune: A Thematic Theme Tune that repeatedly uses the title without explanation.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Goofy on many MANY occasions, with "Goof Fellas" being the most extreme example; Goofy approaches a pair of Mafia henchmen, who are in the process of killing someone, because he thought they were tailors, which puts both his and Pete's lives in danger, and then later reveals their identities in front of the don when they almost successfully get away. Pete is this way at times too, considering how many occasions he purposefully includes Goofy in his schemes, despite all the problems he causes.
    • Anyone who buys a car from Pete. His cartoonish dishonesty is right out in the open most of the time, and yet he still stays in business anyway.
  • Too Many Halves: In "All the Goof That's Fit to Print", when Pete starts his own newspaper, Max and P.J. invent a story about a mutant alien that's "half-human, half-rutabaga, half-hamster".
  • Toon Physics: It's Goofy. He wouldn't survive one episode if Toon Physics weren't in play.
  • Totally Radical: Though not as bad as later Disney afternoon shows, the show was very guilty of this. Especially with the main character Max (who does everything from use "hip" lingo to skateboard). And, of course, let's not forget the rap video that opens the first episode.
  • Totem Pole Trench:
    • In "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp", Goofy volunteers to skateboard on the world's tallest half pipe when pro skater, Slammer McTwist, chickens out on doing so. Thinking he'd fail, Max and PJ arrive the next day posing as Goofy, and they actually pull it off very well.
    • In "Lethal Goofin'", Max makes an attempt to sneak past a bully who beats him up every day. He does this by riding his bike with Pistol sitting on his shoulders wearing PJ's jacket.
    • In "Pistolgeist", Max and PJ do this yet again to try to act like Pistol's imaginary friend, Inky, with PJ on top. Pistol doesn't buy it.
  • Tough Love: Pete sometimes seems to believe mistreating PJ will be good for him in the end, as indicated by his apologetic statement in "Axed by Addition".
    Pete: I want you to know all those nasty, horrible things I did to you were only done with the best intentions!
  • Training from Hell: In "Take Me out of the Ball Game", Goofy and Pete put Max and PJ through a lot of torment in order to make them good at baseball. The boys resort to tricking their fathers into thinking they've improved so the training can stop, only to be made to join the team (which they unsurprisingly don't make) and then have to keep their fathers out of the game.
  • Trash of the Titans: Justified in "Waste Makes Haste"; the reason Pete and Goofy had garbage lying around is that they were sorting it for recycling purposes after Max and PJ were doing so at the beginning of the episode. And because Pete was looking for a pair of 24-karat gold baby booties for the wealthiest man in town that had been accidentally thrown out. Of course, Peg is not okay with it anyway.
  • Trauma Button: In "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra", hearing "When the Saints Go Marching In" (and sometimes even hearing about it) causes Pete to panic and/or become more aggressive due to reminding him of a humiliating event in childhood where he choked on that song and the entire audience insulted him for it.
  • Tuckerization: The town of Spoonerville is named after J. Michael Spooner, one of the layout designers for the show.
  • Twice Shy: Rose Deckenbloom from "Puppy Love" is just as much of a Shrinking Violet as PJ is (if not even more so, believe it or not). Thanks to Max, he is able to engineer a situation in which they can dance together, though Pete does make things harder for him (for once, not on purpose!). Eventually he manages to convince her that he likes her by showing that he had memorized her poem, which was... about being a Shrinking Violet. Birds of a Feather, indeed!
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Pete, who is both overweight and ugly, and Peg, the hot mom with an Impossible Hourglass Figure. Pete is also completely insufferable.
  • Umpteenth Customer: In "Goof Fellas", Goofy and Pete are loudly celebrated as the one trillionth customer at a store, which causes problems since they're supposed to be in hiding.
  • Unfortunate Item Swap:
    • In "For Pete's Sake", the detective shows Pete a picture of a bowl of chili, but tells him that it's a grotesquely murdered person. Pete is horrified, until he switched out for the real picture, which looks just as much like a bowl of chili. Then Pete's horrified again.
    • In "Nightmare on Goof Street", Goofy accidentally mixes up the cat food he prepared for Waffles with the chicken soup he made for Pete. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize his mistake until after Pete has already eaten several bites of the cat food.
  • Unreliable Narrator: The singer of the theme song as mentioned under Bait-and-Switch Credits and Thematic Theme Tune. Also, Max in "Leader of the Pack" who tells PJ his cousin Debbie tried to kill him as a baby, and then later denies it.
  • Unreliable Voiceover: In "Pete's Day at the Races", Pete's voiceover says that his horse was really good with his kids and that they love him. It breaks PJ's bed and leaves him unhappily shivering on the floor in one scene and trashes Pistol's room and angers her in the next.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Averted, in the episode "Bringin' on the Rain", public officials are not so stupid that they won't be able to tell something fishy is going on when the house supposedly using tons of water during a drought looks like a desert, while the house next door looks like a tropical rainforest.
  • Upside-Down Blueprints:
    • In "A Goof Under My Roof", Pete looks at a set of boundary plans that seem to say Goofy's house is on half his property. Pete takes advantage of this, tearing down half of Goofy's house and becoming an annoying house guest as he does as he pleases. In the end, Peg reveals that Pete had been looking at the boundary plans upside down: Goofy actually owns half of his house.
    • In "Nightmare On Goof Street", after getting back Pete's dismantled house from a couple of con men, Goofy and Pete race to reassemble it before Peg gets home and finds out. They manage to put it back together, but not without some complications as Peg asks why her kitchen is upside down.
      Goofy: I thought those right angles looked wrong.
  • Verbal Backpedaling: In "Tub Be or Not Tub Be", Pete lets slip that he has cheated with booby traps while yelling at PJ, who looks entirely too smug when his father is forced into doing this.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Goofy and Pete are buds of the one-sided vitriol variety, with Pete being antagonistic and hateful of Goofy, while Goofy is genial and well-meaning.
  • Welcome Episode: The two-part pilot "Forever Goof" ("Everything's Coming Up Goofy"/"Good Neighbor Goof") features the Goof family moving in next door to the Pete family.
  • Welcome to the Big City: Max and PJ have a tough time in "Big City Blues". Max gambles away all his money while PJ spends it all on food that gets immediately stolen by pigeons. They manage to spot some replacement bus fare, but grabbing it results in Max almost getting hit by a bus. Then it rains, they run into a feral cat, they find shelter in a place they aren't supposed to be, and miss the last bus home. Meanwhile, Goofy and Pete are trying to rescue them, getting scammed by a shady taxi driver.
  • Went to the Great X in the Sky:
    • In the episode "Axed by Addition", Pete bemoans that his son has gone to the little playground in the sky when he mistakenly believes that P.J. has died.
    • "A Goof of the People" has Pete tell a bogus sob story about how he used to have a dog named Chester before he went to "the great kennel in the sky".
    • In "Bringing' on the Rain", Goofy ends up in a cell when he takes the fall for Pete wasting water during a drought. When Pete visits Goofy, Goofy asks how the daisy he's trying to grow is doing and Pete answers that the daisy has gone to the compost heap in the sky.
    • In "E = MC Goof", Pete and Goofy end up in danger of flying into the sun. Pete cries that he'll be going to the used car lot in the sky.
  • What Does She See in Him?: In "Gymnauseum", Pete's handsome and charming business rival, Tan Roadster, crushes on Peg, and wonders why such a beautiful woman is with such an unattractive man. Peg is quick to show that she really does love Pete.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • Towards the end of "Unreal Estate", Goofy gets catapulted into the mountains, and that's the last we see of him for the rest of the episode, though he is back again unharmed in most later episodes.
    • In "E=MC Goof" Pete exits the rocket toward the sun to go after his "space souvenirs" and that's also the last we see of him for the rest of the episode. Negative Continuity means he's okay in the next episode, though.
    • At the end of "Date with Destiny", a relationship seemed to be starting between Goofy and Miss Pennypacker and Max seemed fully supportive of his dad dating his principal. She was never seen again afterwards.
  • What the Heck Is an Aglet?: In "Educating Goofy", Goofy starts asking the teacher a bunch of irrelevant questions, one of which is "what do you call those things on the end of your shoelaces?"
  • Who Is Driving?: In "Hot Air": who is flying? Goofy, of course! Wait, he's hanging onto the edge of the plane just like Max and Pete are.
  • Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: In "Hot Air", Giblet the Clown finds Pistol's name ridiculous, and mistakenly calls her "Rifle." When corrected, he responds, "I don't care if it's Bazooka!"
  • Why Are You Not My Son?: In "O, R-V, I N-V U", Pete compliments Max on his insight saying Max reminds him of himself and openly asking why PJ can't be more like Max. He was probably unaware that PJ was listening in on that particular conversation, but later in the episode he blatantly rejects PJ in favor of Max repeatedly. Generally speaking, however, Pete's relationship with Max is just as bad as his relationship with PJ.
  • With Friends Like These...: Zig-Zagged. It often appears that Max is getting a lot more out of his friendship with PJ than PJ is (loyalty, understanding, and good advice vs. selfishness, impatience, and persuasion into trouble), but there are also several points in the series where Max is a very kind and caring friend, and he puts so much effort into their friendship in the pilot that PJ's Undying Loyalty can be justified on that alone.
  • World of Funny Animals: It's a world, filled with funny animals. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Worthless Treasure Twist: "Slightly Dinghy" with its worth "less than nothing" lake treasure, and to a lesser extent the inheritance in "Where There's a Will, There's a Goof" which turned out to be a quartet of unusual sea animals.
  • Would Rather Suffer: When Max asks PJ what could be more fun than fishing with his dad, PJ responds that eating glass would be.
  • Wrench Wench: The contractor, Gilda, in "Date with Destiny". Pete offends her by asking for "the man of the store", and she destroys Goofy's house (due to false information from Pete, see One Dialogue, Two Conversations).
  • You ALL Look Familiar:
    • Most of the time, the show has a Cast of Snowflakes, but in "The Ungoofables", most of the extras look like Goofy in a suit and bowler. This is Played for Laughs when Goofy's character, Eliot Goof, disguises himself as a blonde hula dancer and draws tons of attention to himself while trying to blend in.
    • Invoked in "Peg o' the Jungle" where Goofy, the kids, and the crew of their airplane disguise themselves as Pete lookalikes, and Peg pretends not to know the difference to teach Pete a lesson about his ingratitude to their marriage in recent years.
  • You Are Grounded!: Pete grounds PJ often, and threatened to ground him for life if he failed his math test in "Axed by Addition".
  • Your Size May Vary: Peg's proportions fluctuated a lot. In "Fool's Gold", she was able to fit through a small basement window with no problems, but in "Goofin' Up the Social Ladder" she struggled to fit through a gate with bars about 20 inches apart.
  • Your Television Hates You: Pete's television really hates him in "To Catch a Goof", as the constant channel surfing landing on food was an Overly Long Gag when he was trying to go 17 hours without eating.
  • Zany Schemes: Usually perpetrated by Pete and/or Max, which are generally more successful for the latter than the former due in part to the Competence Zone and in part to Laser-Guided Karma.

Top

An Extremely Goofy Movie

Loving the flowers she got her, Sylvia shows her gratitude by kissing Goofy all over the face, leaving him covered in red lipstick marks.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (6 votes)

Example of:

Main / CoveredInKisses

Media sources:

Report