Western Animation / Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness

Spoilers from Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2 are unmarked here.

Sweet!

"Hear the legends of the Kung fu Panda!"

—Po, from the Bragging Theme Tune

The DreamWorks Animation team and Nickelodeon have teamed up to bring the popular characters from their Kung Fu Panda movies to the small screen as Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness. Po the Panda, Master Shifu, and the Furious Five from the film have all returned. They still reside in and protect the Valley of Peace from various threats.

The CGI is of course TV quality, which means it lacks the detail and intensity of the cinema level animation, storylines are more basic than the films given there's no allowance for arcs, and the big name voice actors have largely been replaced with sound-alikes, but the show does keep the basic balance from the three movies: martial arts story with comedy elements.

Has a Recap Page under construction.

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Tropes:

Tropes A-D

• Accidental Unfortunate Gesture: Po back-hands Tigress in 'Hometown Hero'. Tigress is deeply unamused.
  • The main conflict of "Fluttering Finger Mindslip" is kicked off when Po tries out said move, looking down at the scroll and mimicking the steps, while completely unaware that Viper just came in...
  • Due to sleep deprivation from Mr. Ping's sinus problem late last night, Tigress falls asleep on Po, which not only sparked more "Po-Ti" shipping squeals, but it also caused Po to get back-handed when trying to wake her up...and get snored on yet again when no one was paying her any attention.
• Actor Allusion: In the movie, Jackie Chan plays Monkey. In the animated show, James Sie plays Monkey. In another animated show, James Sie played Jackie Chan. Makes sense, really.
• Adaptational Comic Relief: While Tigress is The Comically Serious in the movies, she is generally a suave and confident fighter, while the series tends to convey her more as a hot headed insecure Butt-Monkey.
• A Day in the Limelight: Po is often still the central character, though odd episodes give focus to one of the supporting cast, with even the odd Villain Episode for Fung and Taotie.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Lampshaded when the Furious Five suffer from amnesia.
  Monkey: Hey you...with the...uh...face. Do you know who I am?
  Tigress: No idea. Wait, could you be...Monkey?
  Monkey: *laughs* No, I am a monkey, so obviously my name can't be Monkey, right?
  Crane: I couldn't stand it if my name were just what kind of animal I am. I need a name with real panache!
  Mantis: Oooh, what about Bunny...cup...hat? Does that mean anything?
  • Funny enough, Crane's mother actually calls him Crane.
• Aesop Amnesia: Po seems to have to continually learn the lesson that there are no shortcuts to greatness and he can never become complacent, lazy, or a cheat. "Kung Shoes" certainly exemplifies this.
  • Po has been suffering from this all along, continually forgetting how to be a hero, and that humility and compassion are better than arrogance and being an Attention Whore, but it comes to a head in "Enter the Dragon" when this constant lapse in his judgment leaves the people of the Valley at the mercy of Ke-Pa and even partly contributes to his freedom and those of the other demons. It seems he has finally learned his lesson and it will stick, because of how close everyone came to dying (including himself), although with the show's track record time will only tell.
  • To a lesser extent Tigress who, compared to her characterization in the sequel films, still has some of her Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy personality and standoffish treatment of Po. While Po's own aforementioned Aesop Amnesia often better justifies it, almost as many episodes' dilemmas are worsened by her and the rest of the Furious Five's quickness to distrust or turn on Po again and again, even in cases he isn't to blame.
• Affably Evil: Almost all the villains of the series have a tendency to get chummy with the heroes.
  • Fenghuang. Not only does she banter playfully, act coquettish, and genuinely offer to help train Po, but she saves his life even before she knows who he is or how he can help her.
  • Fung, the leader of the Croc bandits, who tends to be more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and even teams up with Po on several occasions.
  • Temutai, the Warrior King of the Qidan, since being defeated by Po in "The Princess and the Po" has quite a friendly side, attending the Peace Jubilee, and is similar to Po, both of them experiencing difficulty with stairs, finding their olive branch crowns fashionable, and both being frustrated at not being invited to a banquet celebrating an official's promotion. He is even glad to see his nephew Jing Mei take part in a battle with Peng at the Peace Jubilee.
• All Part of the Show: The fans at the Festival of Figurines think Taotie, Po, and Shifu's fight is this, thanks to them ending up on the stage.
• All There in the Manual: The names of one of the Croc Bandits other than Fung and Gah-ri^note Irwin and Scorpion's real name^note Qiong Qi can only be found in this gallery of concept art.
  • In-universe example: The Corridor of Unbelievable Agony has a scroll explaining how to defeat every single trap guarding the Clay Pot of Remembrance. Too bad that Po can't be bothered to read through it.
• Always Someone Better: Peng, "The Kung Fu Kid", is an incredible prodigy who charms everyone who meets him, manages to make Tigress laugh, and is Tai Lung's nephew. Ultimately, however, his introductory episode is focused on Po's reaction. And the nature and reason for Peng's journey.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Mr. Ping in "Master Ping" during his brief but chaotic stay at the Jade Palace, and of course included sharing humiliating anecdotes about Po's childhood with the Furious Five and Shifu.
  Mr. Ping: Po was so cute when he was little! He couldn't say the word 'tomato', he said: 'amamamomo'.
  Po: A lot of babies can't say words...
  Mr. Ping: You were ten.
  • Taotie can be seen as this to Bian Zao.
• Ambiguous Gender: Judging by Mr. Ping's reaction (and their identical character design), the lone female member of the five "creepy" snow leopards who replace the Furious Five is apparently this. Only one or two of them (obviously male) speak, so there is no way of telling "which is which", even if there is and it isn't just a rumor.
  • Going by grunts made when they fight, it appears that it is actually Inverted. The sounds that most of them make are female, with the two who speak seeming to be the only male ones.
  • The Ladies of the Shade is a village of snow leopards who specialize in dancing. The whole village appears to be females-only.
• Ambiguously Gay: Gah-ri of the Croc Bandits, to judge from his love of fashion/interior design, not to mention reading romance novels. When Fung abandons the gang in "Terror Cotta" Gah-Ri is the first to forgive him and hug him, and when Gah-Ri quits the gang in "The Breakup" it's almost like a couple breaking up. Fung himself qualifies as well, given the above.
• Amnesia Danger: "Fluttering Finger Mindslip" has this occurring when the Furious Five meet Taotie.
• Amusing Injuries: Take a shot every time Po goes through one of these. Go on, try it.
• Anachronic Order: "Rhino's Revenge" explains how Chorh-Gom was shut down after Tai Lung's defeat, and sees it re-established as a prison for other villains. It aired in the middle of the first season, after several episodes of villains being sent there and Po himself visiting in "Jailhouse Panda".
  • Further supported by the DVR descriptions. The summary doesn't match but the title does, implying that they released the episodes in a rush without forethought.
• Anachronism Stew: Perhaps inevitable, and thankfully not too prevalent so far, but The Mafia bull lord and the joy buzzer do stand out. Also the joke products in "Owl Be Back".
  • Even though the show is supposed to be set in ancient China, the currency used throughout the series is the yuan, which wasn't adopted as the official currency of China until the late 19th century.
  • Just the hall of helmets in "In with the Old". You've got a Roman helmet, a Greek helmet, Viking, possibly Chinese... and an English copper's helmet?
  • When Mantis is to marry Po and Lu-Shi in "Bride of Po", he uses modern Western wedding vows rather than those of ancient China.
  • In "Shoot the Messenger", Master Kweng commands a blimp, even though airships didn't come into prominence until the late 1700s to early 1800s in Western Europe.
• And I Must Scream: The fate of all the bad guys in General Tsin's "museum": held paralyzed forever, alive and awake but unable to move. It's no wonder they want Revenge when freed.
  • Being dragged off by the jiang shi is certainly played this way, whether it's to become one of them or get taken to Chorh-Gom.
• …And That Little Girl Was Me: The opening legend of "Enter the Dragon'' is told by Ke-Pa himself, ending with the revelation that the demon was sealed "in the body of an evil pig". Cue the reveal of who was telling the story, with his audience all staring at him in disbelief, and mocking him...until he wipes the floor with them.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Naturally, the most skilled fighter at the Jade Palace is the one to get zombified in "The Po Who Cried Ghost". Then Po does a self-inflicted version so that he can fight him.
• Angel Face, Demon Face: The princess' features are sharp, angular and hard while she's still mean and evil. Once she and Po make friends, her features become rounder and cuter.
  • Similarly with Peng, but he's almost always in angel-face mode since he's usually pretty chill. When he gets really, really upset, though, his teeth get emphasized more and he looks genuinely vicious.
• Animal Stereotypes:
  • Both Taotie's jealous friend who stole his magnifier and the Necromancer of "The Ghost Who Cried Po" are goats, partaking of the species' association with evil. Master Yao, on the other hand, plays to the weirdness of the species.
  • All snow leopards shown thus far are on the side of evil (with the Ladies of the Shade being temporary) except Peng...who turns out to have inner darkness similar to Tai Lung's anyway.
• Animation Bump: While the show obviously is consistently lower budget than the movies, it has some flourishes of really fluid and vivid animation for a TV show. "Ladies of the Shade" and "Forsaken and Furious" have particularly dynamic action sequences.
• Arranged Marriage: Apparently, Ping made one of these for Po when he was a baby, with the daughter of his potter friend...so as to receive replacement dishware for free, for life.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Po has started to become a little full of himself in the series. But that usually means he's going to learn a lesson that reminds him to be a bit more humble.
  • Emphasized with Evil Po.
  • Tigress is even worse than how she was in the first film in many episodes, to the point she sometimes struggles grasping any emotion or devotion that is not based around kung-fu.
  Po: You didn't get a lot of hugs when you were a kid, did you?
  Tigress: Hugs are for the weak. I nestled in the warm embrace of my kung fu training.
  • Zigzagged with Peng, who at first is as humble as can be, then becomes mad with a desire to prove himself just like his uncle, then returns to normal after the truth comes out.
  • Zigzagged again in "The Master and the Panda" when Peng goes from attacking Po for murdering his uncle, to backing down and quitting kung fu when he finds out the panda told the truth about Tai Lung, to attacking again thanks to the power of the Gung Lu Medallion, to backing down one last time when he comes to his senses.
  • Invoked when Shifu creates "Dragon Warrior Challenge Day" to help tame Po's ego.
• Arrow Catch: Master Chao does this. Just before being riddled by arrows. He gets better. Apparently lizard skin is very thick.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The list of things Hundun lost because of the Dragon Warrior—his job, his wife, his kids, his house, a pair of goat friends (whom he didn't really like anyway), and a pair of slippers.
  • Possibly as a Call-Back to this, when Taotie tells more of his Backstory to Po in "Bosom Buddies", he reveals he not only has his best friend growing up turn on him out of jealousy, but he was hated and mocked by "my mother, my father, my uncle (who I didn't even like anyway), the guy who always waited on me at the cart wash..."
  • In "Eternal Chord" shows flashbacks of Po losing his balance of harmony with the Furious Five which includes: smacking them with a staff, slamming them from the sky, and giving them an awful spicy breakfast.
• Artifact of Doom: A number of kung fu items are this, especially if they fall into the wrong hands: the Sacred Hammer of Lei Long, the Mirror of Yin and Yang, the Helm of Invincibility, the knife from "Hall of Lame", the magic kung fu shoes, the Gung Lu Medallion.
• Art Shift: As in the original movies, Flashbacks and certain other narrations are traditionally animated.
• Ascended Fanboy: Po maintains that amazement that he is still working with the Furious Five.
• Asian Rudeness: Ming, the spoiled, bossy daughter of the impatient, short-tempered Superintendent Woo.
• Asteroids Monster: The magic kung fu shoes have this property after Po cuts them to pieces.
• As You Know: A rather egregious and inexplicable one in "The Master and the Panda" when, after Peng's return to the Valley forces Po to reveal he is Tai Lung's nephew to Shifu, the panda then proceeds to explain to Tai Lung's own father just what happened when he rampaged and when Po himself fought him. (Perhaps it was simply an excuse to get the obligatory 2D animation into the episode.)
  • Lampshaded in "Five Is Enough". One of Shifu's enemies from his youth returns and begins his monologue, only for Shifu to interrupt him.
  Pai Mei: I remember us when we were young, long ago...
  Shifu: I'm familiar with the story.
  Pai Mei: I know! But I wish to dramatically recount it.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: (Fung: Everyone except Gah-ri, attack! Everyone except Gah-ri retreat!)
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the episode "Huge" Mantis, for once feeling inadequate due to his size, imbibes a magic potion that makes him bigger. He later drinks more in order to save Po, making him grow further. This spurs a jealous Lidong to down the last bit of potion, leading to a showdown between the two colossus's in the middle of town.
• Bag of Spilling: In many of the episodes, Po and/or the villain learn some game-breaking kung fu move or obtain some powerful mystic object or weapon, that never gets brought up again, which is made even more confusing in that enemies seem to remember past encounters.
• Bait-and-Switch: General Tsin has locked Po in the chamber where he paralyzes enemies. The gas is released...only it's released outside the chamber, and is the antidote to free all the entombed villains; Po switched hoses just before he got caught.
• Bash Brothers: Particularly evident in "Chain Reaction", when Tigress and Po chase after Fung.
• Batman Gambit: Junjie is a master of these. First he deliberately tricks Po into watching an advanced kung fu move, blinding him in the process so that he will screw up his kung fu demonstration, disgrace the Jade Palace, and get Shifu removed by Master Chao—after which he then replaces the Five with his own group of snow leopard warriors. Then in "Ghost of Oogway" he impersonates Oogway so as to turn Po and Shifu against each other and make the latter leave the palace as an outdated has-been.
  • Quan the Unkillable has one too: make Po believe he's a weak, decrepit old man just looking for one last exhibition match to end his career with some dignity, convince him to handicap himself to make the match "fair" so that Quan can lose more gracefully...then wipe the floor with Po to make up for his inadvertent humiliation of Quan years ago.
  • Shifu's plan to stop Ke-Pa: pretend to be the one who bears the Hero's Qi, pretend to denounce Po as a worthless, selfish failure so he will leave the Valley and keep the Hero's Qi away from Ke-Pa and the seal, then allow himself to be crushed in the funnel so that Ke-Pa will be weakened and thus able to be defeated by the Five. It fails because he didn't count on Ping's Rousing Speech, or Po's love of carrying the Hero Ball and thus insisting he has to come back and save his master.
  • Po's plan to break Peng free of the control of the Gung Lu Medallion: use the shift stone to appear as Tai Lung, then show him what his uncle was really like (or what he believed he was like) to warn him away from the dark path.
  • Both "Kung Shoes" and "Croc You Like a Hurricane" involve a plan elaborated by Shifu to teach Po the importance of training kung fu.
• Beat Without a "But": Played with in the episode "Sight For Sore Eyes", Mr Ping insists the others go help Po from Junjie. The Furious Five, having already suffered from Po's misbehaviour earlier, are skeptical it's a lie, to which Mr Ping angrily rebuffs, though needs them to finish the "but" for him when loses train of thought:
  Mr Ping: My son may be not perfect. He may be big and loud and clumsy and annoying and impatient and hotheaded and... er, where am I going with this?
  Mantis: But he's not a liar?
  Mr Ping: Right.
• Becoming the Mask: In "Ladies of the Shade", Song is assigned to woo Po so her group of thieves can steal from the Jade Palace. She begins to genuinely like Po however and ultimately pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
• Berserk Button: Calling the kung fu enthusiasts at "the Fest" geeks in "The Maltese Mantis".
• Beyond the Impossible: Three examples
  • Master Yao can do more than Supernatural Martial Arts and perform outright magic such as Time Stands Still and perform physical attacks with his mind.
  • There are techniques called the 'Six Impossible Moves' which would be better named 'six moves that are impossible for anyone Lacking The Gift'. Po and Fenghuang can do them because they have it and this is presumably what fuels the latter's Social Darwinist beliefs.
  • "The Three Needles" is a trick that is repeatedly stated to be impossible. Po accomplishes it by cheating with magic shoes. Which is how Shifu and the others knew that he was cheating.
• Big Brother Mentor: What Po tries to be to Bian Zao—at first lamely, then successfully.
• Big "NO!": Po does this a lot. A LOT.
• Big "WHAT?!": Po and the Furious Five's reaction to getting kicked out the Jade Palace.
• Bittersweet Ending: The series brings the first movie's ending into light. Turns out, with their only prisoner gone, the many soldiers at the prison ended up losing their jobs.
  • Peng's departure from the Jade Palace in "The Master and the Panda", determined to quit kung fu forever because he believed darkness and a thirst for power were a result of Villainous Lineage.
• Blame Game: In "Shoot The Messenger", Po tries to get back a war treaty he unwittingly "autographed". Tigress is having none of it and insists he just admit to Shifu that he screwed up and ask for his help, until Po reminds her that she directed the messenger over to him, thinking he was just another of Po's annoying fans, and thus set off the Disaster Dominoes in the first place, meaning she might also be culpable in Shifu's eyes:
  Tigress: (indignant) Well, but I— He seemed— Wait a second. So now this is my fault?
  Po: Don't beat yourself up. The Dragon Warrior is on it.
  (Tigress bitterly punches a wall and follows Po)
• Blatant Lies: When Po confronts Constable Hu about why he wasn't invited to the head bureaucrat's celebration, Hu and his secretary confer for moment after which she tells Po "He isn't here." while Hu - a highly conspicuous elephant - is in the room with them. When Po points this out, Hu and his secretary confer again, after which she tells Po "He's at the dentist."
• Blind Weaponmaster: Po, after the self-inflicted Golden Lotus Clap. He is still awesome.
• Bloodless Carnage: Exploited in "Owl Be Back" when Po stabs Shifu with a collapsible knife.
• Bragging Theme Tune: Written and sung by Po himself.
• Bread Milk Eggs Squick: In "Present Tense," Po imagines his father's reaction to getting a terrible present. The first mental image he gets is of his dad bursting into tears, the second has him imagining his father disowning him. The last one has Mr. Ping opening his mouth and shooting fire from his mouth at Po.
• Breaking the Bonds: Po, in an awesome moment in "Monkey in the Middle".
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario:
  • Fung and Gah-ri in "The Break Up".
  • Both "The Secret Museum of Kung Fu" and "Forsaken and Furious" have Shifu and the Furious Five reaching the end of their tether. In both Po semi-clutches the Sanity Ball and tries to get them to make amends.
• Brick Joke: At the end of "A Sticky Situation", Shifu mentions that they'll send Taotie the bill for the destruction of the training hall. Sure enough, upon Taotie's next appearance, he's seen receiving it.
  • Another occurs at the end of "Jailhouse Panda": After going the whole episode knowing the Sacred Hammer of Lei Long can crack the ground and set off earthquakes, and a hilarious Hot Potato battle to keep it from touching the ground, it's finally dropped thanks to Po's clumsiness...leaving a bomb-blast crater but thankfully not destroying the Valley.
• Bring My Brown Pants: One of the croc bandits asks Fung if they have time for a bathroom break just before making their move. Once they attack and he's faced with an angry Tigress, he announces "I gotta pee again" and takes off.
• Bring the Anchor Along: In "Has-Been Hero", Crane is captured and tied to a rotating wooden pillar. He escapes still tied to the pillar and uses it as a battering ram to smash his way out of the villain's hideout. Later Monkey uses the pillar as a weapon, with Crane still tied to it.
• Broken Aesop: Oogway and Shifu dismissed Taotie from the Jade Palace because his attempt to combine machines and martial arts "sullied" the purity of kung fu. It doesn't stop them from continuing to use the training hall Taotie helped build.
• Bullying a Dragon: Literally, when the audience to Ke-Pa's story starts mocking him for claiming to be the evil pig holding the demon of legend.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Inverted example from "Has-Been Hero": the day Po wanted to see Quan the Unkillable fight he remembers as the most wonderful, exciting day of his life...but he had inadvertently caused Quan to lose, and in such a humiliating way his career as a fighter was finished, thus leading him to desire Revenge.
• Butt Sticker:
  • "Scorpion Sting" when a possessed Monkey and Po collide with each other during "Sneak Attack Training" Po gets up and turns around shouting for Monkey; unaware that he's stuck to his backside.
  • "Hometown Hero" during Mantis' and Hao Ming wedding, Dosu tried to expose Mantis of not being the Dragon Warrior. But Po sits on him to try to keep him quiet.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes":
  Shifu: When I saw you had taken the shift stone, I came after you.
  Po: [shamefacedly] ...because you thought I'd mess it up.
  Shifu: No. Well... yes. But I was wrong about you, Panda.
• Call-Back: In "Scorpion's Sting", Shifu makes a face similar to Po's "Doooy!" expression in the first movie. Po uses it again himself later.
  • Also appears in "Rhino's Revenge", this time intentionally caused by Mantis.
  • In the first movie's dream sequence, Po had spoken of the Dragon Warrior as being so awesome people would be blinded by his moves. The Golden Lotus Clap does exactly that to anyone who witnesses it performed and doesn't close their eyes. Including the one who performs it.
  • When the Gung Lu Medallion takes possession of Peng in "The Master and the Panda", his eyes burn with fire, making them the same color as Tai Lung's. The following battle between him and Po mirrors Po's final battle with Tai Lung—bouncing down the steps (though without him sitting on the snow leopard), a crater shaped like a combatant (Po this time), him going through the streets in the back of a cart (but without fireworks), and a building being kicked and collapsing.
  • Mantis switching places with his action figure in Kung Fu Panda 2 is referenced in "The Maltese Mantis" when his paralyzed self gets confused for one. The ending of the episode is also a Call-Back to both the first movie and Secrets of the Furious Five—it seems as if they're too late and he is permanently paralyzed, just as it seemed Tai Lung had killed Shifu...but after Po has begged for forgiveness and wished Mantis were still able to move, hit him, and smack him around, Mantis does just that. Because he was faking, using the same "staying-still-for-a-really-long-time technique" from SOTFF.
  • The stilt fighting Po does in "Bride of Po", first with Monkey and then with Junjie, is quite reminiscent of the chopstick fight he had with Shifu on Wu Dan in the first movie.
  • In "War of the Noodles", Ping rejecting one of his customers is a reference to the episode "Sight for Sore Eyes", where he throws out a pig customer for insulting Po. Heck, even the line "...except after lunch, here's a coupon" is the same.
• Came Back Strong: After being killed by Ke-Pa, Po is brought back to life by the peach tree sprout Shifu planted in the first movie, with the Hero's Chi not only restored, but supercharged.
• Cannot Cross Running Water: Variation—the magic kung fu shoes can't touch water, and it doesn't matter whether it's moving or not, thanks to its purity and traditionally magic-blocking/dampening properties.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Po, blinded by jealousy, lies to Peng that Shifu wants him to leave the Jade Palace. This snowballs into Peng almost going on a rampage, a three-way Let's You and Him Fight, and eventually the disruption of the entire Peace Festival into a free-for-all.
• Cardboard Prison: Chorh-Gom, it seems. Not only is Junjie somehow able to escape it off-screen in order to return as Oogway's ghost, but Hundun is able to build prosthetic horns, including explosive ones, out of the things he can scrounge up or is outright given by his guards, and with them escape with ease. Apparently once Tai Lung escaped from it, Chorh-Gom just doesn't measure up any more.
  • To be fair, he (Tai Lung) kinda wrecked the place when he broke out. Although no evidence of this is shown in the series...
  • Lampshaded by one of Fung's men in "Terror Cotta". When Fung and his father are sent to prison, Fung's men rejoin him even though that means they go to prison too because "they spend 90% of their time there anyway". And, naturally, are free again to cause trouble in later episodes.
• Carrying a Cake: Briefly in "Bride of Po" Ping freaks out about his cake being smashed during the wedding brawl...before smashing it into a bad guy himself.
• Cassandra Truth: Po, in disguise and proven to be a Bad Liar, brazens it out and braggingly confesses to Tong Fo his real identity and mission. This sounds so utterly ridiculous to him that he dismisses it, instead assuming "Sheng" to be savvy—until later, when he sees Po fight.
  • Nobody believes he's telling the truth about the jiang shi either until they're faced with them, thanks to Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions.
  • Same with Ping being called a liar for saying that the Qilin existed in Qilin Time...until Po meets the beast himself...but he turns out to be a really Nice Guy.
  • And Ping goes through this again in War Of The Noodles, saying that Hundun bought a noodle shop because he knows of a secret tunnel that leads to the Jade Palace...so he could attack it. Po, who wants to start things fresh with the rhino, doesn't listen to his dad...until he sees the tunnel himself. And Ping was right all along.
• Cats Are Snarkers: Tigress retains her Deadpan Snarker tendencies.
• Catchphrase: Fung the Crocodile Bandit has "looks like we're doing this the hard way!" At one point Tigress points out that he keeps saying it, which causes Fung to get all indignant.
  Fung (hurt): "It's a good line... so... shut up!"
  • He also has "darn it!" and throwing his hat.
  • Po has "That... was... AWESOME!"
• Celebrity Star: It is said that Lucy Liu reprises her role as Viper.
  • James Hong also reprises as Mr. Ping, the only VA to keep his role across all KFP media (movies, shorts, TV series and video games).
• Celestial Deadline: Po's Evil Twin must be reintegrated before sundown or else become permanent.
  • Tigress needed the tea made from the Sacred Sun Orchid before sundown or else she'd die.
  • Shifu and Po must be kept from eating brains until sunrise to keep from becoming a zombie permanently.
  • The seal keeping Ke-Pa imprisoned in mortal form will break when the peach tree dies. Unlike the previous ones, this one isn't met.
• Chained Heat: Tigress and Po in "Chain Reaction".
• Character Exaggeration:
  • Po sometimes comes off as much more arrogant and obnoxiously dim than in the film series, where he is mostly just an occasionally careless FanBoy with a kooky streak.
  • Due to the Denser and Wackier nature of the series, Tigress' role as The Comically Serious is punctuated much more here than far more stoic personality in the films, sometimes making her as much the butt of jokes as Po.
  • The Furious Five's cold and elitist attitude towards Po in the first film was largely out of relateable upset and mostly disappeared as they got to know him, while the show has practically half its episodes devoted to them ostracizing or distrusting him (though due to Po's own increased bad attitude, this isn't always unjustified). In some episodes they even strongly consider not saving his life from the threat of the episode.
• Chekhov's Gun: Shifu had more than one shift stone...
  • The toy knife from "Owl Be Back".
  • The replica mirror from "Bad Po".
  • Dizzy Kung Fu from "Love Stings".
  • Shifu's peach tree sprout that he planted in the first film brings Po back to life after he's killed by Ke-Pa.
  • The shift stone is conspicuously used by Po to disguise himself as Zeng so he can hide from Peng in "The Master and the Panda", just to remind us it exists.
  • The flute in "Terror Cotta".
  • Po's "stilt fu" in "Bride of Po". Particularly his "Pillars of the Ouch" move.
  Monkey/Junjie: Good name!
• Chew Out Fakeout: Shifu, although clearly genuinely angry on some level for Po's Pride and It's All About Me mentality, and how it left the villagers in danger, was for the most part only faking when he dismissed the panda, because he wanted him to be out of danger and keep Ke-Pa from obtaining the Hero's Qi from him.
• Child Prodigy: Peng. Also Master Yao.
• Circling Monologue: Fenghuang does this in "Owl Be Back" while attempting to tempt Po to the dark side.
• Clothes Make the Maniac: In "Kung Shoes", Po buys a pair of magic shoes that enhance his kung fu prowess. However, if the wearer wears the shoes for more than two hours at a time, she shoes start to take over and demand that the wearer do more and more kung fu until they have destroyed everyone and everything around them.
• Cloud Cuckoolander:
  • Master Yao.
  • General Tsin.
  • Taotie in "Bosom Enemies" for a while, due to the Villainous Breakdown brought on by his Humiliation Conga. Turns out to be a case of Obfuscating Insanity.
• The Collector: General Tsin in "The Most Dangerous Po", who capturing the most dangerous villains in China and imprisoning them as his personal collection. Also an example of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game and The Jailer.
• Commercial Break Cliffhanger
  • A particularly fun one in "My Favorite Yao" because it is played literally—Shifu and Po are sent hurtling off a cliff by Temutai and his men. After the return from commercials, they are still falling, they drop out of camera-view to the sounds of screams and smashing...only to reveal they'd simply landed (mostly) safely in the bamboo.
• Comically Missing the Point: As said by Tigress before she clawed out Crane's face in Fluttering Finger Mindslip.
  Tigress: Judging by our fighting skills....we must be bakers..."
• Compressed Vice: Going concurrently with Po being an Adaptational Jerkass, different episodes will have Po displaying a variety of different individual vices, whether it's rudeness, laziness, disobedience, arrogance, bad table manners, or some other dirty/annoying habit that haven't been hinted at in previous episodes. And even after Po learns his moral lesson at the end of the episode, a later episode will have Po display a different vice that's never been foreshadowed before which he has to learn another lesson with.
• Conservation of Competence: Fung the Croc Bandit may be Surrounded by Idiots, but he does have a fair amount of tricks up his sleeves...
  • Evil Po is not only effective as a fighter because he has all of Po's skills and aggression but none of his clumsiness or silliness (he actually manages to sneak up on Shifu), but when he captures the red panda during said Eureka/Oh, Crap! moment, he is surprisingly chilling and menacing.
  • In a more humorous sense, the villagers turn out to be this, to some degree, when they all are taken into Shifu's confidence and attack Po on "Challenge Day" to try and become the Dragon Warrior.
  • The geeks at the Festival of Figurines in "The Maltese Mantis" turn out to be fairly competent in fighting after all when, after the third time of being insulted as geeks, they take out Taotie.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu:
  • The Furious Five themselves fall victim to this. Individually they do well in battle, but if all five of them attack the Villain of the Week at once, expect to see them defeated in rapid succession.
  • Subverted in "My Favorite Yao": even though it is only Shifu and Po, the two most powerful masters at the Jade Palace, they can't succeed in stopping Temutai and his men from getting away with the captured Yao.
  • In the second part of the series finale "Emperor's Rule", Hundun, Fung, Temutai, Taotie, and Tong Fo all attack Po together. Individually, some of these rogues can give Po a bit trouble depending on what they bring to the table but once they gang up on Po altogether, Po dispatches them quickly one after another.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Tigress, hilariously, because she doesn't "trust anyone" and believes herself Properly Paranoid. Exemplified here:
  Tigress: I don't trust them.
  Monkey: You don't trust anyone! You don't trust the mailman and he's been coming here for thirty years.
  Tigress: Planning something for thirty years.
  • General Tsin of "The Most Dangerous Po" has definite shades of this too in his opinions of the government.
• Continuity Nod: Quite a few. The show has no arcs (largely due to Anachronic Order), but does have many call backs to earlier episodes.
• Cool Old Guy: Several characters, both male and female.
  • Shirong, Shifu's father. He can still hold his own in a fight, from bumbling bandits to a spar with his kung fu master son, as well as Tong Fo. He has his limits, though.
  • Kwan the Unkillable in "Has-Been Hero", an aging fighter with dentures and a glass eye. His using a walker turns out to be Obfuscating Disability, as he uses the occasion to get revenge on Po for spiling dumplings on him and humiliating his career, and by the end, Po convinces Kwan that there's no shame in losing if it's for the right reasons.
  • Fenghuang is as old as Shifu, but trounced him and the Furious Five in one move each. She only lost because Po caught her off guard.
  • Needless to say that Shifu qualifies, but we also have three new characters who fit to a T: Master Yao, Mr. Yeung, and Mrs. Gow.
  • Shifu's ex-girlfriend, Mei Ling the Rogue. While she can resort to underhanded tricks and, in order to actually "win", relies on Shifu's inability to bring himself to hurt someone he loves, Mei Ling is a rogue master, and was good enough in her actual fighting ability to impress Tigress.
• Counting to Three: Recurs through the series.
  • Po and Tigress disagree upon whether to go on three, or after actually finishing the count. They eventually see the strengths of each other's styles.
  • The five attack Po on a regular three count.
• Creepy Mortician: In "The Po Who Cried Ghost", except he's perfectly harmless. Nnnnope, he's a Necromancer.
• Criminal Amnesiac: Taotie takes advantage of the Furious Five's missing memory by convincing them that he's their master, leading them against Shifu.
• Crowd Hockey: Happens in "The Maltese Mantis" when Taotie, Shifu, and Po are all trying to find the paralyzed Mantis among the festival crowd.
• Cucumber Facial: Viper in "Shifu's Back".
• Cunning Like a Fox: Master Junjie.
• Darker and Edgier: 'Enter The Dragon' is a good deal more serious and dark than the rest of the series, being closer to the movies in tone. So is 'The Master and the Panda', for the most part.
• Darkest Hour: The peach tree is dead, Ke-Pa has been released and leveled the Jade Palace (mostly because of Po's cocky arrogance), and Po has been disgraced and forced to flee the Valley in shame, only able to camp on a lonely roadside with his father in a makeshift noodle shop. Meanwhile, Shifu is in prison and when Tigress tries to break him out, he refuses to leave since he plans to sacrifice himself to weaken Ke-Pa so the Five can take him out...and Tigress is forced to accept the plan as their only hope. And it even still goes From Bad to Worse, since Po's triumphant return to save the Valley and Shifu ends up bringing Ke-Pa the Hero's Qi, releasing the other demons...and almost gets Po killed.
• Deadpan Snarker: Taotie's son.
  • Tigress has her moments as well.
  • Monkey gets a shot at this in "Sticky Situation."
  Tigress: Romantic entanglements upset one's chi. That's why I avoid them.
  Monkey: Yeah, that's why.
• Death by Despair: What happened to Monkey's mother, sort of.
• Defeat by Modesty: This happens when Po fights Yijiro in "The Way of the Prawn." During the fight scene, Yijiro swings his sword at Po several times, but no marks are shown. A few seconds later, Po's pants fall to the floor. Po then exits in embarrassment, but comes back with a new pair of pants on.
• Delusions of Eloquence: Shirong. Occasionally he manages to get the words right and thus speaks in Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, but most of the time his words are completely made up.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Hundun, all the time.
  • From "Sight for Sore Eyes":
    Po: I'm blind! In my eyes!
• Depending on the Writer: Characterization of almost every regular fluctuates wildly between episodes, and vastly between the movies and this series. Po is hit especially hard with this. Sometimes he's portrayed as a lazy idiot, other times he's an overachieving kung fu genius.
• Didn't See That Coming: Played for Laughs in "My Favorite Yao" when Temutai is taken by surprise by Shifu's Last Request...to dance.
• Disability Superpower: Parodied. Po, after being blinded by the Golden Lotus Clap, seems able to detect his opponent with supernatural senses—but it is because he'd previously eaten a garlic dish. Which Po himself had delivered.
• Disguised in Drag/Dressing as the Enemy: Po has to disguise himself as one of the Ladies of the Shade in order to recover the Dragon Chalice. Unfortunately he keeps slipping out of character.
• Disney Death: Po, naturally. Aided by the mystic powers of the peach sprout.
• Don't Explain the Joke: In "Chain Reaction":
  Tigress: My friends are the twins...Discipline..and Sacrifice.
  Po: Heh..I don't think they'll like me.
  Tigress: *dryly* That's okay, you'll never meet them.
  Po: OH-HOH! You made a funny!
  Tigress: *proud* That was funny, wasn't it? It has meaning on two levels: You can't meet them because they're an abstract idea and you WON'T because you're laz-
  Po: *unamused* Yeah... okay, now you're just wrecking it.
  Tigress: Right...
  • Another, briefer example, in "Kung Fu Daycare": Shifu sends Crane and Viper to "search high and low" for Zan's parents.
  Crane: I'll take high!
  Viper (annoyed): Why do I always get low?
  Crane: Well, because I can fly, and you—
• Doppelganger Link: When Po gets split into light and dark versions of himself in “Bad Po”, both Pos’ can feel pain inflicted on them. Good Po uses this to his advantage in the climax of the episode to stop Bad Po.
• Double-Edged Answer: Shifu's enduring devotion to Oogway and his continued conflict over Po's laziness and tendency to shirk discipline cause one in "Ghost of Oogway".
  Shifu: I can't believe Master Oogway ...
  Po: Would talk to somebody like me?
  Shifu: Yes! No! That is ...
  • Shifu seems to wrestle with answers like these a lot when it comes to Po. Despite his respect for the Panda, he still harbors a little dubiosity about Po's worthiness and Ooogway having chosen him as Dragon Warrior.
• Dragons Up the Yin Yang: Ke-Pa, leader of the demons, is (or at least has the appearance of) a dragon. Which is a rather egregious and puzzling error, since Eastern dragons have always been portrayed as wise, honorable, benevolent creatures to be worshiped, beloved, and held sacred, and the makers of Kung Fu Panda have consistently Shown Their Work otherwise. ^note Buddhist teachings did introduce the idea of malevolence among some dragons, for example that since water can destroy, so can some dragons destroy via floods, tidal waves and storms, with some of the worst floods believed to have been the result of a mortal upsetting a dragon. But this was an extreme minority among dragons, and far from a commonly held view. Apparently they just couldn't resist the symbolism in having the Dragon Warrior opposed by a dragon— or they wanted to have the cool firebreathing effect.
• Dramatic Thunder: No Halloween Episode would be complete without it—it happens every time someone says "strange apparitions". (At first Po finds this rather cool, but eventually even he gets exasperated with it.)
• Dreamworks Face: Po is still making it as seen in above image.
• Drowning Our Romantic Sorrows: Mantis mostly in 'Sticky Situation'.

Tropes E-I

• Early-Installment Weirdness: Most of the series was made before the second film, as a result a lot of the handling of how it continues off of the first film is jarringly different from media afterwards. The plots are much goofier, the characters keep their initial more cynical personalities (sometimes ten fold), and Po has ascended to the most powerful kung-fu master of the Golden Palace to the point of regularly outclassing the Furious Five, while in the films he remains Unskilled, but Strong.
• Earthquake Machine: The Sacred Hammer of Lei Long, capable of smashing the earth apart, setting off earthquakes, or possibly even causing an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
• Easily Forgiven: Po, despite having lied to Peng about Shifu not wanting him at the Jade Palace; apparently being honest about one's Green-Eyed Monster is a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card for almost wrecking the Peace Festival and setting off a second snow leopard rampage. Also, oddly, Temutai forgives him too. Justified as this was the Peace Jubilee - a day of absolving grievances. In Peng's case, he was likely just as ashamed as Po.
  • It's justified in the first episode featuring the villain, Taotie. When Shifu learns that Po allowed his old enemy to gain access to the materials necessary to create a machine to attack them, he is furious and is at a loss of how to punish the giant panda. However, when Po is then flattened by Taotie's machine's giant mallet, Shifu decides that's a good enough punishment.
• Eating the Enemy:Thanks to Po, and evil Pig is able to re-assume his real form, a dragon demon named KeePa. Eventually, he's able to drain Po of his Hero's Chi and free his army of demons. Just as all seems lost for the world, he's able revive himself with the power of a peach tree sapling which also greatly enhances his chi to the point that he can use to vanquish the demons. But after he destroys all his demons, an enrage Ke-Pa comes upon, bent on destroying. After giving him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Ke-Pa then drops him and tries to eat Po as he falls—only to get a face full of superpowered Hero's Chi from the heroic panda.
• Eccentric Mentor: Master Yao. After meditating in full isolation for sixty years inside a box, he's gone full blown Cloud Cuckoo Lander, but maintains the wisdom and awareness to carry out a rather dangerous plan to make Shifu loosen up and live his life each day as if it were his last.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The various names that Taotie gave the amnesia-ridden Furious Five. Whiskers Kitty-Poo, Noodle, Little Britches, etc.
• The End... Or Is It?: At the end of "Kung Shoes", after Po has (maybe) learned his lesson and Shifu and Master Chao congratulate themselves on their Secret Test of Character, Chao is very grateful that the magic shoes were defeated. After they move off-screen, a pair of the shoes is shown still hiding behind one of the pillars...but then the old merchant shows up and cages them before they can escape to cause more trouble.
• Enemy Mine: Po must team up with the leader of the Croc Bandits to rescue his kidnapped brother. Subverted when it turns out to have been a ruse to help Fung to kidnap and hold for ransom the son of a powerful family. Double Subverted when Fung's conscience causes him to go back for Po who had taken the rap for him.
  • He also teams up with General Tsin to take on the unparalyzed villains. Subverted when after defeating them the general is still as crazy and evil as ever. Double Subverted when Po, instead of being his usual naive self, knew this would happen and has him carted off to Chorh-Gom.
• Enemy Without: "Bad Po".
• Energy Absorption: The Mongolian Fire Fist Demon, which gets stronger (and bigger) each time it is hit.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite their rockier friendship with Po throughout many episodes, the Furious Five feel Shifu kicking him out of the Jade Palace for screwing up in "Enter The Dragon" was rather harsh. As it turns out, even Shifu wouldn't go that far, only doing it as a ploy to keep Ke-Pa from taking the Hero's chi from him. When Po earnestly apologises for seemingly dooming everyone, Shifu and Tigress just gently comfort him.
• Evil Chancellor: Meng Tao of "Royal Pain", who is secretly trying to get Lu Kang discredited and his father disgraced so he can take over as Emperor.
• Evil Counterpart: Master Junjie to Shifu, both as a kung-fu master and in design. Also, he's a fox, to Shifu's red panda - a species of animal sometimes referred to as a firefox.
• Evil Is Easy: Unlike Shifu, Fenghuang is extremely willing to leap right into teaching Po 'the good stuff', including the Seven Impossible Moves. She also showers him with praise and calls him a fast learner.
• Evil Laugh: Master Junjie has one—which he interrupts to praise the garlic chow mein.
  • Ke-Pa has a rather good one too.
• Exact Words: Bian Zao doesn't help his dad drag the Iron Claws of Doom up the steps because he asks him to help but, per the oracle, doesn't tell him he has to. He also didn't oil the claws because he'd asked him would he do it, as a favor.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Implied; in the 2D flashbacks of the Sacred Hammer, Po imagines Tong Fo as a huge and hulking warrior, so that when he actually meets him he keeps looking around at empty eye level...until finally looking down.
• Expy: The five "creepy" leopards are, like Mei Ling, based off the Wu Sisters' design. They even carry Wind and Fire Wheels.
  • Heilang and the Lin Kuei are this for Shen's henchwolves from the second movie.
• Eyepatch of Power: Inverted; when Po pretends to be Mantis's sidekick, his costume includes an eyepatch, making him clumsier.
• Face–Heel Turn: Subverted. When, after being told he was rejected by Shifu and the Jade Palace, Peng runs off declaring he will "show them all how strong he is", it looks like he's going to join Temutai and learn dark kung fu at his side. Instead...he challenges him to a Duel to the Death. Of course, if Po hadn't intervened and admitted the truth, this sort of seemingly justified and heroic act could have led to Jumping Off the Slippery Slope...
• Face Palm: used every so often, but the best example is in "The Midnight Stranger."
  Mr. Ping (dressed as the Midnight Stranger, and having beaten up a Bandit with a piece of Asian Cookware): Take a wok, miscreant!
  Po: (face palm)
• Fake Defector: Po in "Owl Be Back". And surprisingly effectively.
• Fake Weakness: Quan the Unkillable's age—he's actually quite the badass.
• Falsely Reformed Villain: Hundun in the episode War of the Noodles.
• Fanboy: Shifu of all people, for Master Yao.
  Shifu, to Temutai and his men: Get your hands off this flawless specimen of Kung Fu perfection! (strokes and fondles Yao's face)
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Unsurprisingly, snakes, as shown in "Serpent's Tooth".
  • As a child, Tigress was kept locked away at her orphanage due to her species. The other (prey) animals considered her a scary monster and she was considered unadoptable. Tigress also didn't know her own strength, which scared people more. As a result of her ostracism Tigress became an angry child. Shifu was called to help tame her temper but he ended up adopting her.
• Fastball Special: Mantis gets tossed around like this occasionally, such as by Monkey during "Owl Be Back".
• Faux Affably Evil: Ke-Pa. It's actually pretty dang menacing.
• "Fawlty Towers" Plot: Utilised multiple times (often with Po instigating it), though perhaps most fittingly in "Mama Told Me Not To Kung Fu", where it is revealed Crane lied to his overprotective mother that he was an inn owner rather than in a dangerous kung-fu profession. Po convinces everyone else to play along and spruce up the Jade Palace into an inn when she visits, with things getting more complicated when she extends her stay, and a group of vicious bandits try to invade the palace.
• Fetch Quest: Tigress comes down with a fever that requires a specific delicate flower to cure. Po and Monkey must seek it out.
• Fictional Disability: Viper was born with no fangs. Her father, who was in charge of protecting his village, was distraught that his only child couldn't carry on the tradition. In order to make her dad healthy Viper learned how to dance. This came in handy when a bandit attacked her father and Viper found out she could fight using her dancing experience for guidance.
• Finishing Stomp: Performed by Master Junjie on Po. Junjie's tiny fox foot barely dents Po's giant muzzle, yet Po is both pinned and visibly straining under Junjie's applied force.
• Flanderization: Po's lazy and obnoxious tendencies are blown way out of proportion in several episodes, and any flak he receives from Shifu and the Furious Five is unjustified at best.
• Foreshadowing: When Po thinks he's going to turn evil in "Owl Be Back", he eventually adopts a very cold, crude and harsh manner of speaking. "Bad Po" speaks the exact same way. For that matter, the fact that one episode after it is "prophesied" that he will turn evil, a mirror brings his dark side to life.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: The majority of the time, the Furious Five would serve as the defeated first wave against the episode's threat before Po saved the day, the exceptions usually being when one of them had A Day in the Limelight in which they would stop the villain after Po underwent The Worf Effect instead. "Ladies of the Shade" and "Crane on a Wire" are rare cases where all of them are portrayed competently and engage in effective team combat as they do in the films.
• Forgotten Aesop: The Aesop from the first movie, that the Dragon Warrior is not a special person and that hard work is the only true way to Kung Fu Mastery is completely forgotten in some episodes and Po is frequently treated as special due to his Dragon Warrior Status to the point that the title is sometimes treated as a Mystical Power Up.
• Friendly Enemy: Constable Hu comes off as this. Sometimes, he and Po are allies, other times, they do end up enemies.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: In "Monkey in the Middle", Wukong has to choose between going on with his life of crime, or going back to save his brother.
  • Also Po, having to decide between the mystical knife or the little pig's father in "Hall of Lame". He chooses the father of course...and of course, Chung Sung Jai Kai Chow was lying when he said he'd let him go.
  • Fung has to choose between helping his father take over China and sparing the lives of his robber band (and Po) in "Terror Cotta".
  • And Po having to choose between marrying Lu-Shi or being the Dragon Warrior in "Bride of Po".
  • Poor Bian Zao. Help his Mad Scientist father conquer the Jade Palace, thereby earning some true quality time with him (and make him proud of him), but betray his new friend Po; or help save Po, the first person to show him caring and treat him like an equal, but betray his own father. Lame. Luckily he manages to Take a Third Option.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Employed by Ping against Hundun. And then Po. Twice.
• Fun Personified: Master Yao, it turns out, once he gets to experience life again.
• Genius Bruiser: In "Chain Reaction" it's revealed that Tigress is very studious and knowledgeable in subjects that aren't directly related to kung fu.
• Genre Blind: Po, thanks to being The Heart and Incorruptible Pure Pureness (maybe), is still too gullible and believes Hundun when he fakes a Heel–Face Turn.
  • He also doesn't see through the fake Oogway.
  • Nor did he understand there would be a price to pay for the magic kung fu shoes.
• Glamour: The shift stone, which allows you to change your appearance simply by concentrating (although you can still see how you really look in any reflection). Interestingly it doesn't seem to require maintaining concentration or even retaining possession of the stone (although the destruction of said stone then destroys all illusions made with it).
  • Junjie, then Shifu, disguised as Oogway's ghost.
  • Po disguised as Zeng and then as Tai Lung.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: Clay Shattering Sound: How Po destroys Bing's terra cotta army in "Terror Cotta".
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In "The Kung Fu Kid", Temutai is invited to the Peace Jubilee. While there are hostilities and even fights, he and Po do gush together about their liking of the olive branch crowns, he has a nice time at the evening feast alongside everyone (except Po), and ultimately things end well overall.
• Gold Digger: Hao Ming, who only wants to marry Mantis for the prestige that comes with being the Dragon Warrior's wife.
• Gray Rain of Depression: While Bian Zao sits on the Jade Palace steps after his father is taken to Chorh-Gom.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In "The Kung Fu Kid", Po's insecurities come to the forefront as he sees everyone being charmed by the younger and more talented Peng.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Evil Po uses Viper as a whip-chain against the others.
  • The real Po also uses her, in a cross with Improbable Weapon User, when she poses as a parasol (with Crane's hat) in "Ladies of the Shade".
• Groin Attack: When Fung and his goons tie Tigress to a tree stump...she does THIS to show a lesson....multiple times.
  • In "Ghost of Oogway", Po does it to himself with the Tri Bo Yao.
  Po: [high voice] ... my consequences.
  • In one of the 'Legendary Training Secrets' snippets on the Nickelodeon website, Po faces off the punching bag and somehow manages to receive this.
  Po: [high voice] I gotta go now...need to get some ice on something...
• Guess Who I'm Marrying?: The plot of "Love Stings", in which Mr. Ping dates a "convicted villainous evil mastermind".
  • "Uh uh ahhh. Never convicted"
• Guile Hero: Surprisingly, Po is this in "The Master and the Panda", using a shift stone to disguise himself as Tai Lung, thus showing Peng just what his uncle was like at the end and what he himself would become if he went down the same path, to the point of trying to make the boy kill him in order to prove to him he had the heart of a hero.
• Halloween Episode: "The Po Who Cried Ghost". Surprisingly accurate in its description of the jiang shi and the Ghost Festival (though that actually takes place at midsummer), though it does include modern ideas about zombies (like Brain Food instead of absorbing chi and a Celestial Deadline to escape their virus—though jiang shi are supposed to withdraw at the sound of a rooster's call, and "sleep" during the day).
• Hammerspace: Po evidently has one of these. In "Princess and the Po," he pulls several board games out of nowhere.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Peng, in "The Master and the Panda". He starts off craving vengeance since he's learned off-screen that Po destroyed Tai Lung; then when he learns Po told the truth about his uncle, he is overcome with remorse, tosses aside his sword, and forswears kung fu; he takes it up again to help Po stop Temutai, only to succumb to the power of the Gung Lu Medallion; and then is finally broken free by Tai Lung himself or so it seems.
• Heel–Face Turn: Song, due to The Power of Friendship, or possibly The Power of Love.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Shifu planned to make one of these to distract Ke-Pa and allow the Five to defeat him while he was weakened. Po actually does make one after rescuing him. Which is why the peach sprout restored him and his qi.
• Heroic Willpower: Required to resist the power of the magic kung fu shoes once they come alive. Po's ability to draw upon it, in this case, isn't just another example of his being The Chosen One or incorruptibly pure hero...but because he refuses to harm Shifu.
• He's Dead, Jim: Playfully subverted in "Scorpion's Sting". Tigress lies on the bed silent and unmoving even after the cure has been given. The Furious Five and Po all bow their heads in sadness. Tigress jumps to her feet, instantly well.
• Hijacked Destiny: Subverted. In "Challenge Day" Master Shifu tells everyone in town that today is 'Challenge Day' when anybody who can beat the Dragon Warrior before sundown can assume the title. Po spends most of the day fending off challengers until he finally loses to Hundun after sheer exhaustion from spending most of the day doing nothing but fighting, losing his title to Hundun. It's subverted in that there is no such thing as a 'challenger day'; it was something Shifu made up in order to try and humble Po and make him realize not to take his title for granted. Unfortunately, losing his title ends up putting Po into a 10-Minute Retirement over being depressed about it and Hundun, upon realizing it wasn't real, proceeds to lock Shifu up and start to abuse his fake title around town. Po eventually realizes that protecting the town is far more important than a title, and proceeds to deal payback to Hundun for the sake of the town.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Po tells Tigress that putting Zan to bed isn't "fireworks science".
  • Po jumps at the chance to play "buddy warrior opera", and calls dibs on the warrior who makes his own rules.
• Honorable Elephant: Constable Hu.
• Honor Before Reason: Po instantly agrees to train Lu Kang because it's the right thing to do and he believes in him, even though if he fails it will bring disgrace not only upon the Emperor but the Jade Palace and everyone in it.
  • Instead of trusting his friend Po and waiting to hear a reasonable explanation, Peng decides that he "betrayed" him by killing his uncle and tries to kill him for vengeance. Perhaps the panda wasn't as Easily Forgiven as it appeared in "The Kung Fu Kid"...
• Horrible Judge of Character: Po isn't very good at reading others. "Good Croc, Bad Croc" points out his gullibility.
• Hostile Weather: The Canyon of the Shrieking Winds. Turns into Weather of War when Po makes use of it to blow the parasol-carrying Ladies of the Shade away.
• Hot Potato: The reversed example, where Po, Tigress, Monkey, the Croc Bandits, and Tong Fo all fight over the Sacred Hammer—the villains to obtain it for themselves, the heroes to keep it from touching the ground. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Also happens with Taotie, Po, and Shifu trying to get away with the paralyzed Mantis in "The Maltese Mantis". (Fitting, considering the Shout-Out of the episode title.)
• Humiliation Conga: Zigzagged in "Has-Been Hero". Initially, it was the (inadvertent) actions of Po which caused Quan the Unkillable to spectacularly lose and have his career ruined, thus leading him to plan his Revenge. After he tricks Po into handicapping himself for their match, he proceeds to give one of these to the panda. Once Monkey and Crane release Po from his handicap, the panda then turns the tables, causing a repeat of Quan's original loss. Crushed, Quan prepares to die, believing he has earned it, that it's what he would do in Po's place, and that he has no way of earning back his honor anyway. But then Po fakes receiving a terrible blow, allowing Quan to defeat him after all, throwing the match as was originally intended and restoring Quan's reputation—but legitimately, without it being about Revenge or a Duel to the Death, thus leaving the Aesop of the episode intact.
  • Taotie receives one of these in "Bosom Enemies", culminating with Po accidentally pulling his pants off. Despite it being an accident, Bian Zao calls the panda on it.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: What General Tsin is doing with all the villains, and wishes Po to join in on as well. Also referenced as a Shout-Out in the episode title, "The Most Dangerous Po".
• Hypocritical Humor: In "Sight For Sore Eyes", Mr. Ping tells the pig lady to go easy on his son, and the lady agrees sympathetically....as soon as Po drops the dishes and she gives him the "No wonder you're not the Dragon Warrior anymore!" line.
• I Am Spartacus: In "The Real Dragon Warrior", Po and Monkey encounter Cheng, a goat who has been teaching the children that he is the Dragon Warrior. When Po and Monkey confront him, he tells them that he grew up in a large family and wanted to be successful like his other siblings, and that he became an Accidental Hero when he tripped and accidentally stopped a bandit, even admitting that the bandits were merely paid actors. As soon as the acting troupe was dismissed, they decided to attack the village for revenge on Cheng. Po swallows his pride and reminds them that in spite of Cheng's past misdeeds, anyone can be a Dragon Warrior. As the bandits come looking for the Dragon Warrior, each of the students stands up for Cheng and says "I am the Dragon Warrior!"
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The Corridor of Unbelievable Agony.
• I Have Your Wife: Lu-Shi of "Bride of Po" is being forced to marry Po and make him step down as Dragon Warrior so that Junjie can take over the Jade Palace by the fact her brother (not boyfriend) Shao is being held hostage.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
  • Between Po and Monkey in "Scorpion's Sting."
  • And between Po and Peng in "The Master and the Panda".
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Mei Li.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: The realization of this is how Peng breaks free of the Gung Lu Medallion's control rather than kill (and become like) his uncle.
• I'm Taking Him Home with Me!: Essentially this was Po's initial reaction to Peng, before Green-Eyed Monster set in.
  Po: Oh please, please can we keep him? Can we keep him pleeeeease? He's even pottery trained!
• I Did What I Had to Do: Most of the first half of "The Master and the Panda" concerns Po fretting in guilt over what he did to Tai Lung, even though the snow leopard (at least in his estimation) was going to kill everyone in the Valley, and had in fact tried to kill both Shifu and him. The Five respond to his distress with this trope, but it isn't until Shifu also reassures him (and admits Po would never have had to do it if he hadn't failed in raising and training Tai Lung) that Po is able to get past it. By the end of the episode, Peng realizes as well that Po had no choice.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: "Ghost of Oogway": Po trudges away from the village. As he trudges, the scene dissolves around him and resolves as the Dragon Chamber of the Jade Palace.
• Idiot Hero: Po louses up a lot, but this can be seen as part of the Myth Arc of Po's Coming of Age through the series.
  • Revealing to someone out for revenge against the Dragon Warrior your own weakness, and those of the Five, while also curing them of theirs, takes the cake, however...
  • Not only does Po seek a shortcut to escape kung fu training (again!) in "Kung Shoes", he doesn't even stay to hear the story behind the magic item in question or its Curse Escape Clause...and naturally violates the Celestial Deadline.
• I Gave My Word: Adhered to to the point of Face Palm by Good!Po.
• Ignored Epiphany: Hundun, after Po saves his life from the falling statue. He then shoves Po out of the way so the statue falls on him anyway.
• Imagine Spot: Bian Zao has a nightmarish one, imagining what will happen to his new friend Po if his father Taotie escapes prison to take revenge.
• Impossible Task: The Test of the Three Needles from "Kung Shoes". Naturally Po finds a way...and naturally, regrets it.
• Improbable Age: Fung's "little" cousin Lidong. Fung even lampshades it: "You grew up..."
• Indy Ploy: In "My Favorite Yao", Po's checklist of how he handles screwing things up references his tendency to use this. He also actually does so when using wild, upbeat music and dancing to lure out Master Yao.
  • Spoofed in "Chain Reaction" when Po's brilliant plan involves falling off a cliff to their deaths^note they're stopped by a convenient tree branch
  Tigress: (as they're falling) Bad idea - bad idea!
  Po: No kidding!
  Tigress: Try planning ahead next time!
• Inherently Funny Words: In 'Jailhouse Panda', according to Po, Tigress dry-heaves when she hears the word 'slurp'. When he points that out while trying to prove that he was the real Po, she does.
• Informed Species: Junjie looks more like Shifu’s species (a red panda) rather than a fox.
• Instant Expert: Po can learn kung fu moves after having seen them performed once (the Golden Lotus Clap, the various moves Fenghuang teaches him). Whether Po is really just this good, his constant study of all things kung fu enabled it, or it's a power the Dragon Scroll granted him once he believed in himself isn't clear.
  Po: Yeah, I'm what you call "gifted".
  • Oddly, he seems to have inherited this somehow from Ping, since the latter manages to properly perform a complex and advanced kung fu move after seeing Shifu perform it once.
  • Everyone seems to be an Instant Expert in the Kung Fu Panda-verse. The years of training that goes into learning secret Kung Fu techniques doesn't seem to be because the moves themselves are difficult to learn, but more that they learn to use them responsibly. (For example, the Fluttering Finger Mindslip.)
  • Subverted when Po tries to use a dual-headed three-prong mace for the first time, and the second, and the third.
• Intergenerational Friendship:
  • Po and Master Shifu.
  • Po and Princess Mei Li.
• Interquel: What this series became when production delays made it miss its intended 2010 premiere year and ended up after Kung Fu Panda 2 was released in 2011.
  • It's apparently gone on past the second film now, as a goat in "Enter The Dragon" mentions the defeat of Lord Shen.
• Inter Species Romance: Difference in species doesn't seem to be an issue in the KFP 'verse.
  • There's Shifu (a red panda) and his on again-off again girlfriend Mei Ling (a dhole)
  • Also Mr. Ping's brief relationship with Scorpion.
  • There's also a goose who is married to a pig.
  • Po himself was arranged to be married to a goat.
  • When he was younger, Monkey had a rabbit for a girlfriend. He later developed a crush on an antelope who turned out to have a crash on Po.
  • Tigress, of all people, had romantic fantasies involving a prawn.
• In the Blood: Apparently, Peng's kung fu skills, since he is just a potter and has no formal training. And is Tai Lung's nephew. As of "The Master and the Panda", he's now afraid darkness and a thirst for power have been inherited too. Tong Fo tries to invoke this in "The Kung Fu Club", where he pushes Peng to poison Po on the threat of killing Lian, while arguing he's meant to be a villain because of this trope. Fortunately, Peng and Po manage to fake the poisoning long enough for Lian to escape and everyone to attack.
• Invention Pretension: Mantis told his village he was the Dragon Warrior because he wanted his former fiancee to regret dumping him. Po allows him to continue the charade.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Used by Hundun on Po.
• It's All About Me: Hundun, who despite the fact Po stopping Tai Lung saved the Valley of Peace ("I don't live there") only cares that this led to the shutting down of Chorh-Gom and him losing his job. Lampshaded by Hundun himself.
  • Sadly, this crossed with Small Name, Big Ego has creeped more and more into Po's characterization as he lets his status as The Chosen One with The Gift and being the center of attention go to his head. Luckily it seems that after his experiences in "Enter the Dragon" he may finally get over this.
• It's All My Fault: In Shifu's Back, Po says this, and Shifu pats his arm gently as if to reassure him. Then...he adds sternly "Yes it is."
  • Also in Croc You Like A Hurricane, when Po's laziness costs the Furious Five and himself to be banished. The following part spoofs this
  Tigress: (Angrily at Po) This is...
  Po: All my fault.
  Tigress: All your...you know what? It's not fun anymore.
• I Will Fight No More Forever: Played shockingly straight with Peng, who is afraid of his inner darkness, to where the episode seemed to imply it was permanent. Until his third appearance where he, along with his girlfriend Lian, operate a kung fu training club to help people protect themselves.

Tropes J-O

• Jail Bake: How Taotie extorts his son's help in escaping Chorh-Gom, in return for "father-son" time—through a whole series of cakes, each one holding a piece of the Iron Claws of Doom for him to reconstruct.
• The Jailer: General Tsin in "The Most Dangerous Po", who capturing the most dangerous villains in China and imprisoning them as his personal collection. Also an example of Hunting the Most Dangerous Game and The Collector.
• Ki Manipulation: Ke-Pa can use these, usually in the nature of levitating, puppet-mastering, and throwing his enemies about, although he also unleashes a particularly massive one to blow up the Jade Palace so as to uncover the seal holding back the demons. Oogway could do so as well, using the Hero's Qi. And naturally, so can Po.
• King of Thieves: Monkey's brother, Wukong, calls himself this.
• The Klutz: Lu Kang.
• Knight of Cerebus: Ke-Pa. The things he does in this episode push 'everything isn't the same anymore' to new levels.
• Kung-Fu Clairvoyance: This happens multiple times throughout the series.
• Large Ham: "TEMUTAI! WARRIOR KING OF THE QI-DAAAAAAN!"
  • Taotie is a double example of this, being both a scenery chewer and one of the biggest pig characters in the show.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The "Fluttering Finger Mindslip" can erase the victim's short-term memory. Overused, it erases...more.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After abusing the Jade Palace's hospitality, disrespecting kung fu (which he had called boring anyway), and turning both the training hall and the Hall of Warriors into a noodle shop (and the Five as his waiters), Ping gets mistaken for Shifu, kidnapped, and forced to train the villains in kung fu.
  • Po himself gets this when his using the Fluttering Finger Mindslip as a shortcut out of doing work and getting in trouble leads him to the Corridor of Unbelievable Agony (which he must go down three times) to find the cure for the Five. All because, again, he tried to take a shortcut in reading the scroll detailing how to navigate the corridor. An Anvilicious aesop that, unfortunately, has yet to sink in.
• Last Request:
  Shifu: I have a last request. I wish to dance.
• Laughably Evil:
  • Lampshaded in "Kung Fu Daycare" when Po and Tigress manage to sneak up on the Croc Bandits while they're kidnapping Zan.
  Fung: Darn it! You guys...Gah-ri? Couldn't you...I don't know, maybe, for once...say something?
  Gah-ri: I'm sorry, I just...couldn't find the words.
  Fung: How about... (screams)
  • In "Kung Fu Daycare":
  Croc Bandit: Hah! You walked right into our trap! Now Fung can grab the kid from the Jade Palace easily!
  Po: Uh...should you have told us that?
  (Beat)
  Croc Bandit: ...No. (runs at Po, who dodges so he runs right into one of his own men)
• The Legend of X: Legends of Awesomeness.....Sweet.
• Lemony Narrator: At the beginning of "Chain Reaction," Po attempts to narrate his underwhelming mission with Tigress, exaggerating everything (of course). Needless to say, Tigress is not amused.
  • He does it again at the start of "The Most Dangerous Game". It seems to be a Running Gag for whenever he is on a kung fu mission.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Po's lie to Peng about Shifu thinking he wasn't good enough for the Jade Palace ends up leading into them having to fight each other (and Temutai)—Peng because he blames Po for getting his hopes up and giving him a dream with his invitation, Temutai because Peng didn't choose to train with him and had wiped the ground with his nephew (and because he was itching for a fight anyway).
• Letting the Air out of the Band: Variation—after Po and Shifu witness the destruction of the Jade Palace and the near-death of the Five, Po weakly and pathetically blows his warning horn.
• Lightning Bruiser: Many of the characters capable of Kung Fu.
• Like Father, Like Son: Turns out to be the case for Fung and his father Bing, right down to Shared Family Quirks. Also a case of Loser Son of Loser Dad. (And it's even lampshaded by them having the same voice actor.)
• Like You Were Dying: The Aesop of "My Favorite Yao", delivered in a wonderfully poetic and beautiful fashion through the metaphor of the hibiscus—"Did you know the hibiscus blooms for only one day? But that day is the most beautiful and wonderful day of all." Also made literal, considering how close Yao, Shifu, and Po come to death. And further extended when Shifu, embracing the lesson, makes his Last Request...a dance.
• Literal Split Personality: Good!Po is sweet, kind, compassionate, polite, and utterly useless in a fight. Evil Po is aggressive, dominant, flawless in battle, clever, and "has no friends".
• Live-Action Escort Mission: Basically the plot of "The Princess and the Po."
• Loophole Abuse: The most powerful of the Furious Five will always turn to evil...but Po is not actually one of the Five.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Mantis gets hit with this hard in "Hometown Hero." Fortunately, he eventually snaps out of it.
• MacGuffin: The Dragon Chalice.
• MacGuffin Escort Mission: This is Tigress and Po's task in "Chain Reaction" with a valuable statue and ruby. With all the "escorting" Po and the Furious Five do, you'd think they were a delivery service or something...
• Made of Iron: Played with. In "Challenge Day" Po allows a chimney to fall on him in order to save a child. Afterward he is alive and seems unharmed—until he reveals he's injured his leg. Despite the fact he uses his crutch later to prove what a Handicapped Badass he is, the injury is neither forgotten about nor brushed off as it would have been in the movie.
• Mad Scientist: Taotie, who specializes in Bamboo Technology.
• Magic Feather: The bean which Po uses to convince Lu Kang he's become a great kung fu warrior. Like just about every example, he ends up losing it...and like just about every example, he ends up realizing he doesn't need it. Mostly.
• Maintain the Lie: "Hometown Hero" reveals Mantis told everyone in his little village he was the Dragon Warrior. When he finds out, Po plays along by pretending to be his Sidekick.
  • In "Mama Told Me Not To Kung Fu", Master Crane had been lying to his mother, telling him that he owns an inn. So when she comes to visit, Po has the others pretend that the Jade Palace is the inn and that they are Crane's employees.
• Mama Bear: Tigress to Zan, eventually.
• Metaphorgotten: Po tries to tell a story to the princess. One of those I Have This Friend stories, that's clearly all about their relationship.
  • Hundun did a few of these too.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In "The Most Dangerous Po", it's not clear if the appearance of Hundun's ghost to appeal to Po for help is a genuine bit of kung fu mysticism thanks to the paralysis or just a product of Po falling and hitting his head.
• Meaningful Echo:
  Peng: You took me into the Jade Palace, you gave me a dream! And now you've taken it all away!
  Tai Lung: Not your fault? Who filled my head with dreams?
  • From "The Master and the Panda", two examples: the repeated mantra of "when push comes to shove..." said first by Po, then Shifu, then Tai Lung, and finally Peng himself; and "underneath all that flab beats the heart of a true hero".
• Meaningful Name/Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Hundun, who is named for the Chinese god of chaos. Subverted in that, while a credible threat after Po has trained him in kung fu, he is still fairly pathetic and certainly not an embodiment of chaos or evil. The Stinger implies, however, that he will be much more menacing and dangerous when he returns for his revenge.
  • The Ladies of the Shade, who are both a dancing troupe that shelter under parasols and a group of thieves who are therefore shadowy and evil.
  • Many of the artifacts, techniques, and other objects in the show have Chinese names that have "Exactly What It Says on the Tin"-type translations in English. For example, the mind-reading technique Nao Yuedu literally means "brain reading", and the group of rat bandits from "The Hunger Game" is called Lao Shu, which means "rats".
• Memento MacGuffin: Lu-Shi has one, a locket showing the portrait of her brother Shao.
• Memory Wipe Exploitation: Po learns a technique called "Fluttering Finger Mindslip" that causes short-term memory loss. Po starts using it to get out of doing chores and being lectured but uses it so many times that it ends up causing full amnesia on the Furious Five.
• Mind Control: Monkey in the Fetch Quest episode.
• Mirror Character: Evil Po has a number of things in common with Tai Lung...
  • Possibly deliberately invoked in "Owl Be Back", when Fake Defector Po has Shifu pinned by the Moon Pool in almost the exact same pose Tai Lung did when he was about to kill him.
  • In "The Kung Fu Kid", Temutai has difficulty getting up all the steps to the Jade Palace, and joins Po in gushing over the olive branch crowns they both wear for the peace ceremony. He also apologizes just as abashedly when their fight almost ruins the Peace Festival.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • Neither crocodiles like Fung, warthogs like Taotie and Bian Zao, nor gorillas live in China. While there are Chinese alligators native to the region, Fung and his bandits are explicitly referred to as a crocs and not gators.
  • In "Camp Ping", Kim the Invincible talked about his victory over a spider monkey in Borneo and even had a tattoo commemorating his victory. While there are monkeys in Borneo, spider monkeys are not among them and are only native to Central and South America. So either Kim misidentified the type of monkey he defeated or, as Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight retroactively has established, the spider monkey could possibly have reached Borneo through international travel on a ship and settled down there before Kim got to him.
  • As far as monkey species go, China has more than a few but none of them include tamarin monkeys. But in "Five Is Enough", we're introduced to a villainous Emperor tamarin kung fu master named Pai Mei who's presented as nothing less than a native of China and an animal version of the legendary Bak Mei. ^note The only conceivable reason the writers might've chosen an Emperor tamarin, which only exists in a small pocket of South America, instead of any of China's native monkeys might be because a tamarin has the appearance of an old man with a mustache and beard and thus, fits the leitmotif of looking like an elderly kung fu master physically.
• Mistaken for Exhibit: Happens to Shifu once, courtesy of Po.
• Mistaken Identity: Happens several times with Good and Evil Po.
  • And again with Ping who, thanks to taking over the Jade Palace as his noodle shop, gets confused for Shifu.
  • And again with Monkey and his older brother.
• Momma's Boy: In Bad Po, Evil Po calls Crane this.
  • This comes true, believe it or not, in the episode Mama Told Me Not To Kung Fu. Crane's mother was obsessed with keeping her son safe and would suffer from a mild heart attack when she saw him doing kung fu. At the end of the episode, however, she was actually impressed with her son's skills and tells him how proud she was of him.
• Monster of the Aesop: In "Po Fans Out", the episode begins with him being taught (via the infamous Chinese finger-puzzle) the "Hero's Dilemma"—that sometimes the way to win is not through physical force but by ceasing to struggle. Later Po discovers that the way to defeat the Mongolian Fire Fist Demon which grows bigger and stronger every time it is hit is by not fighting, refusing to let it hit him.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The magic kung fu shoes, after they come alive, to keep anyone from taking them off.
• More than Mind Control: The Gung Lu Medallion from "The Master and the Panda", which merely brings out the darkest traits, desires, and feelings in the wearer and enflames them until they take over.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In "Master Ping", Ping narrates a tale of "the greatest noodle maker in the empire", complete with the usual 2D animation and mystical effects, just as if it were as exciting and amazing as a kung fu legend. Subverted when Po is shown looking utterly bored while Monkey has fallen asleep in his noodle bowl.
• My God, What Have I Done?: While fighting Peng in "The Master and the Panda", Po instinctively catches him in the Wuxi Finger Hold. Peng immediately calls him on it, but the panda is already horrified.
  • Po says this in Enter The Dragon when he realizes that he put everyone in danger because he didn't warn the villagers in time.
• Mythology Gag: The original characterization for Po as an annoying, arrogant Parody Sue has resurfaced as Evil Po. And, unfortunately, some seems to be creeping into Po's regular characterization too. Possibly because the one who originally called for the change in Po's personality, Jack Black, is not voicing him in the series.
• Naked People Are Funny: The villagers are extremely amused when Po accidentally pulls off Taotie's pants, while he is traumatized (even though there's nothing to see or cover up).
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: After Po accidentally mindwipes the Furious Five:
  Po: It's me...Po!
  Viper: [attacks] Take that, Meepo.
• Necromancer: The goat undertaker (of course) of "The Po Who Cried Ghost".
• Never My Fault: Fung's father Bing, when telling the story of how the secret to raising a terra cotta army was lost, always put the blame on a clumsy, forgetful assistant. In the end it turns out the assistant was imaginary, and it was Bing himself who had lost it.
• Never Say "Die": Zigzagged throughout:
  • The very first episode plays this straight with a brainwashed Monkey trying to "destroy Po."
  • Particularly noticeable in "Master and the Panda" where they go to ridiculous lengths to avoid saying that Po killed Tai Lung.
  • In "Enter the Dragon" when the Ke-Pa the dragon tells Fung "Join me or die."
  • In "War of the Noodles". Hundun tells Po "Panda, it's time to pan-DIE", Mr Ping says "I can't die now, I have to revise my menu!" and Po answers "I'm not gonna let you die, Dad."
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Frequently with Po and other characters gaining powers or a given ability for an episode, often paired with Power Creep, Power Seep. The status quo being god though means you may never hear about said power or ability again.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Po has a tendency to make serious mistakes and misjudgments, then scrambling to fix the results. On the rare occasions it isn't his fault, usually Shifu or one of the Furious Five will screw things up in his place. Uncommonly both will screw up, with the others' abrasiveness to Po for starting a problem only leading them to make things worse.
  • Shifu seemingly does this in "My Favorite Yao", by letting Yao out of his box and thus putting the naive and unworldly Sense Freak in danger. Po calls him on it when he tries to deny it, although in humorous fashion rather than nastily. ("Believe me, messing things up is what I do all the time, and that is one doozy of a mess-up!") This turns out to be a subversion however, as Yao wanted to be let out so he could experience life outside meditation, and to teach Shifu a lesson. Yao himself also seems to mess up when his excited outburst about Po and Shifu's dramatic rescue attempt gets them all caught by Temutai. Again, this was intentional since Yao wanted Shifu to let loose, have fun, and truly live life before he would step in and save the day.
  • Mantis accidentally lets slip to Po in "Kung Shoes" that the only way to complete the Impossible Task of the episode is with magic, thus leading him to the black market and the Artifact of Doom.
  • Ke-Pa deliberately taunts Po into attacking him, despite Shifu's warning—thus knocking the last leaf from the dying peach tree and releasing him from the mortal body he's trapped in.
  • Po convinces Peng to take up kung fu again to help him stop Temutai in "The Master and the Panda". Unfortunately when he gets the cursed Gung Lu Medallion off the water buffalo, the snow leopard is tempted by its power too and nearly goes on a rampage.
  • Lampshaded in "The Spirit Orbs Of Master Ding", where Shifu, by reflex, starts blaming Po for starting the episode's dilemma, forcing Tigress to interject that it was actually her fault.
• The Nicknamer: Po, particularly in "Big Brother Po". Most of them are Embarrassing Nicknames.
• No Escape but Down: Po and a disagreeable Tigress jump off a cliff, while HANDCUFFED, to escape Croc bandits.
• No Flow in CGI: Fur, nor feathers are animated in this, though there is still Po's fat.
• No Sense of Humor/The Comically Serious: Tigress, most of the time. This is made most clear, in a cross with My God, You Are Serious!, when she makes two separate, seemingly funny jokes, in "Love Stings", only for her to reveal she was being serious. Which was a shame, since her "joke" about Shifu's boring speech was perfect.
• Noodle Incident: Crane's story about the ricksaw driver, the teapot and the hot peppers. All we know is that Po and Shifu both hate that one.
• Not Now, Kiddo: In "Hall of Lame", Po keeps brushing off a kid so as to find someone else in town who can give him an awesome weapon for the Hall of Warriors or a quest on which to find/earn one. Parodied in that everything he tries to do is either absolutely lame, or is a case of him mistaking something lame for a genuine threat or quest, and when he finally listens to the kid, this quest too sounds like something utterly ridiculous—rescuing a doll...which is up a bamboo shoot. Of course in the end it turns out to be much more serious than it appears.
  • In "The Maltese Mantis", after Po continually tries to interrupt Shifu's sad story about how he'd always wanted to come to the Festival of Figurines and be a geek but was too afraid to, he finally is able to tell him about the Race Against the Clock situation with Mantis. Shifu responds, predictably enough, with "Why didn't you say so?"; Po's reaction is quite warranted.
• Not So Above It All: Shifu of all people in 'My Favorite Yao' acts rather...Po-like. (Or, as the panda himself said it, 'Embracing his inner Po.')
  • As a follow-up to this, when he forbids Po to go to the Festival of Figurines in "The Maltese Mantis" it's because he doesn't want Po to know that he is going so as to play with his Master Yao action figure.
  • Tigress turns out to have a schoolgirl crush on the title character of "The Midnight Stranger". When she finds out it's Po she is...less than thrilled.
  • "Forsaken and Furious" has the Furious Five and Shifu get into an uncharacteristically childish feud after the former believe Shifu is giving Po too much credit. Ironically Po himself spends the whole episode holding the Sanity Ball and trying to get them to make up.
• Not So Stoic:
  • When she learns Shifu didn't die in "Owl Be Back", Tigress picks him up and spins him around in a bear hug... then fumbles to recover once she realizes what she's done.
  • She does a similar joyous glomp onto Po after his Disney Death in "Enter The Dragon", and again quickly tries to regain her composure.
  • She does it again with Yijiro in "The Way of the Prawn", then realizes what's she doing... only to shrug it off and keep at it.
• Not Used to Freedom: Master Yao has been sealed inside a wooden box for over sixty years, and is extremely energetic and excited about the outside world when let out for the first time.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: In one episode, Po has a dream where he is given advice by his pants. At the end of the dream, he wonders, if his pants are floating in front of him, then what is wearing? Looking down, he lets out a shriek and reaches down to cover himself just as he wakes. Mantis glances at him and asks "The talking pants dream again?".
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: In "Kung Shoes", after Po succeeds in passing the Test of the Three Needles, despite promising Mantis he would get rid of the magic kung fu shoes (he can't), Po cannot bring himself to confess the truth...until each of the Five and Shifu start telling him how proud of him they are, how much he's learned, that he's proven himself to be dedicated and strong, that they want to learn from him now, and he's also given a huge tapestry and the charge to go out across China, saving people and teaching them what he knows. Of course, it's not oblivious at all, since the glowing shoes gave him away and the whole thing was just a Secret Test of Character to get Po to stop cheating and learn kung fu the right way.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Constable Hu who insists on Po and the Furious Five getting permits to use Kung Fu on bandits, even though this would give them plenty of time to escape. He gets better later when he sees his methods are failing to keep the peace.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Ke-Pa threatens to eat and kill all the villagers unless Shifu uses the funnel and the Hero's Qi to open the seal holding back the other demons.
• Offhand Backhand: Po does this while arguing with the amnesiac Furious Five.
  • He accidentally offhand backhands the brainwashed Monkey in "Scorpion's Sting", and does the same thing to Tigress while gesturing in "Hometown Hero". It also happens to the poor statue maker in "Rhino's Revenge", courtesy of his "FLAMING WINGS!" flourishes. Po's an unintentional master of the Offhand Backhand.
  • Tigress' reflexes came into play when Po tapped her in order to wake her up since she WAS sleeping on his shoulder.
• Oh, Crap!: Shifu gets this when Po confesses to accidentally mindwiping the Furious Five.
  • Junjie gets several: one where he realizes Po has used the Golden Lotus Clap to escape the dungeon, immediately followed by Tigress appearing with the rest of the Five: "Hello, Junjie..." The other is when Oogway's ghost appears (or so it seems) to chastise him.
  • Po's face at the very end of "The Kung Fu Kid" pretty much exemplifies this trope. And for good reason.
  • Shifu's face when he tries to have Po touch the peach tree to have his qi restored, as had happened with Oogway...only for the dead, burned tree to collapse into ash and blow away.
    • Has one earlier when he realizes the peach tree was dying, and thus Ke-Pa's seal is beginning to weaken.
  • Pretty much everyone's reaction when Peng puts on the cursed Gung Lu Medallion in "The Master and the Panda".
  • A pretty funny one in "Shifu's Ex" - Shifu and Mei Ling are having a final battle, and Mei Ling has Shifu pinned, when Shifu points out that the Furious Five and Po are right behind her.
  Mei Ling: "Oh darn..."
• Once an Episode: Every episode has an Art Shift to 2D animation, usually to tell a flashback or a dream.
• One-Winged Angel: When the peach tree finally dies, Ke-Pa's seal is broken, freeing him and allowing him to return to his true monstrous form.
• Otaku: The episode "The Maltese Mantis" does a huge send-up of this trope with the Festival of Figurines and its kung fu geeks. The stage recreation of famous kung fu battles is...incredibly painful, the cosplaying is fairly lame, and the typical fan reactions to their idols is, depending on viewpoint, either extremely over-the-top or scarily accurate. The action figure combats, though, are rather charming and even cool in their own way.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Shifu figures out that the animal Po has been learning from is not Oogway when Po relates that Oogway said "awesome", something very out of character for the ancient and cryptic turtle.
  • Immediately subverted, however, when we see the real Oogway's ghost say that very word seconds later.
• Out of Focus: The non-Tigress members of the Furious Five often get the short end of the stick, with Tigress, Shifu, Mr Ping and even some of the villains getting more Character Focus than them. Viper gets it the worst. It takes until the final season for her to even get A Day in the Limelight.
• Overly Long Gag: In "Challenge Day", the bit with Shifu asking Po to fetch him an apple.
  • The part in "The Po Who Cried Ghost" where Po continues to use Offscreen Teleportation to appear in front of Shifu, because he doesn't want to be left alone in the graveyard.
• Only Fatal to Adults: River Fever makes kids 'a little sneezy, little snoozy' and passes after a day or two. Adults struck by the same disease, however, wind up dying unless they drink tea made from the sacred Sun Orchid.
  • Somewhat justified by certain real-world diseases being far more severe in adults than they are in children. One of the most known examples of this is Chicken Pox, which isn't too bad for a child, but as you get older, can have serious consequences.

Tropes P-S

• Painting the Medium: At one moment, during the exciting chase sequence after Temutai and his men, Master Yao observes, "How dramatic!" He continues to make such comments all throughout the ensuing failed rescue attempt and following battle.
• Panthera Awesome: Tigress, Peng and his girlfriend, The ladies of Shade and Jungjie's leopards.
• Papa Wolf: Po becomes this for Mei Li in "The Princess and the Po." Thinking of giving her away as a slave? Not going to happen.
  • Mr. Ping may not be a warrior, but insulting his son is a Berserk Button severe enough to make him throw out a customer ^note (Even if he gives her a coupon) and manhandle one of the Furious Five without blinking. He also does a surprisingly good job defending Po in "Master Ping".
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In "Hometown Hero", Po hides from the villagers in Mantis' hometown by holding a bamboo branch in front of his face. It actually works.
• Pass the Popcorn: Monkey, chowing down on noodles while he watches Po and the pig warriors trash the noodle shop.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: In "Father Crime", Shifu's Con Artist father peppers his speech with these to bamboozle his marks.
• Played for Laughs: The supposed "signs" that Po is turning evil, since they are not only ridiculous, most of them are things he's always done.
  Po: I've been wearing the same pair of pants for three days!
• Power Copy: Much like in the movies, only taken up to eleven, Po can copy almost any technique after seeing it once or a handful of times.
• Precocious Crush: In "Jailhouse Panda," it is revealed that Tigress had a crush on Shifu (her adoptive father) as a teenager.
• Pro Wrestling Episode: "Has-been Hero"
• Production Foreshadowing: In the Cold Open of "Bad Po" Po trains against a bunch of enemy targets, with a civilian hidden among them in the form of an old nannygoat. Fast forward to Kung Fu Panda 2 and the reveal of the Soothsayer held captive by Lord Shen...
  • At one point in "Jailhouse Panda" Po actually pulls off the Disc of Destruction.
• The Promise: Monkey made one to his mother to look out for his brother and preserve the family name, thus explaining why he'd take the fall for Wukong's thievery.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: One of Fung's Mooks has to keep reminding him that his name's Gah-ri, not "Gary".
• Pun-Based Title: "The Princess and the Po" is of course a pun on The Princess and the Pea.
  • "Love Stings", as a Shout-Out to Love Hurts.
  • "The Maltese Mantis".
  • "Crane On a Wire".
  • "Bride of Po".
  • "Croc You Like a Hurricane", from Scorpions's Rock You Like a Hurricane.
• Quieter Than Silence: When Po goes back to return the magic kung fu shoes and finds the black market gone, a lone ornament rolls across the ground in lieu of a tumbleweed.
• Race Against the Clock: That's the driving plot of a few episodes:
  • Tigress catches River Fever, a disease which is mild for children, but deadly for adults. So Po and Monkey have to acquire the Sacred Sun Orchid to make a tea to cure her before sundown or she'll die.
  • After Po overuses the Fluttering Finger Mindslip on the Five, their memories begin to deteriorate. Po has an hour to use the Alabaster Pot of Remembrance to restore their memories before they forget even how to breathe.
  • Bad Po must be reintegrated into Good Po before sundown or else it becomes permanent.
  • Mantis has only an hour to be unparalyzed in "The Maltese Mantis" before it becomes permanent.
• Rage Against the Mentor: The Five in "Forsaken and Furious", for not being given the proper credit for their exploits.
• Recurring Character: Fung, the leader of the Croc Bandits, and Taotie, the Gadgeteer Genius who holds a grudge against Shifu and seeks to destroy Kung Fu in general.
  • Temutai now as well.
  • Also Junjie and his leopards.
• Recycled Premise: "Bad Po" is basically the Tiger talisman from Jackie Chan Adventures. And considering both Monkey's movie and TV VAs...
• Redundant Rescue: The rescue of Master Yao is this, since he could have rescued himself at any point (and in fact this is clear from the start once Shifu tells the story of just how much Yao knows of kung fu). It's even lampshaded when Shifu Hand Waves Po's objection that Yao will be fine because he's a kung fu master "of the mind, not the body." Except Yao is so powerful he can do physical moves with only his mind. That's okay though, because the whole point of the rescue was to teach Shifu a lesson about how to live life to the fullest. And to have fun. (Yes, it manages to be a rare example of playing this trope straight and dramatically, while still being hilarious.)
• Regularly Scheduled Evil: Ke-Pa of "Enter the Dragon" is only kept sealed so long as the Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom lives, at which point he will once more break free to Take Over the World.
• Relative Error: The goat Po thinks is Lu-Shi's boyfriend, whom he has to rescue from Junjie, turns out to be her brother. The confusion is not helped by her having his picture in a locket.
  Po: I thought he was your boyfriend!
  Shao: Gross, bud.
  (Lu-Shi slugs him in the stomach)
• Remembered I Could Fly: Ping, literally, when Hundun drops him.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Croc Bandits, technically. Fung's cousin, Lidong, decidedly more so. Oogway is gone, so the lone nice reptile besides Viper is Master Chao.
  • Fu Xi in "Serpent's Tooth".
• Retcon: Despite what the Kung Fu Panda website and ''Art of Kung Fu Panda'' stated, Chorh-Gom was no longer only Tai Lung's prison. This was never particularly believable to begin with (a massive fortress just for him was built in rapid time after the rampage?), and without any indication how much time has passed since the first movie (the second is implied to occur after a Time Skip) it is possible it could have been repaired and new/former prisoners brought there since his escape. But considering the number of questions this raises, viewers could be forgiven for having their Willing Suspension of Disbelief tested and it does seem to undermine the Rule of Cool. Oh, and either there's an unlimited number of rhino warriors out there to re-staff the prison, or despite the Family-Unfriendly Violence of the first film none of the guards were killed during the escape.
  • The episode "Rhino's Revenge" reveals that they re-opened the prison after Hundun was defeated and incarcerated there. Keeping Anachronic Order in mind helps and it makes sense they'd need somewhere to put villains (though where were they put before Tai Lung's escape, then?).
  • When Taotie was first introduced it was revealed that he had been the one to partner with Shifu to design the Jade Palace training hall. The Kung Fu Panda website, however, had stated this role was performed by a Master Golden Takin. ** "Kung Fu Daycare" seems to have done this with Tigress and Shifu's relationship when he trained her. In the movie it was shown that he was a stern master who never showed approval over Tigress martial art progress but in the episode Tigress has a flashback with Shifu with a young Tigress and is shown to be warm and kind with a gentle smile.
  • Apparently as of "The Master and the Panda", Tai Lung had a personal sword...which we never saw him carry, wear, or use in the first movie. He did have one in the original character designs depicted in The Art of Kung Fu Panda, making this a Continuity Nod—but since it was cut from the final design, its appearance now is...odd.
• Reveal Shot: Po's traveling to General Tsin's compound (complete with Lemony Narrator) is actually revealed to be him just walking in front of a painting being carried behind him.
• Right Behind Me: When Po's talking about skipping a few scrolls to get to the awesome techniques, Viper tries to warn him that Shifu's just arrived.
  • As Shifu is figuring out what's going on in "Bad Po", the Evil Twin comes up behind him...
  • As Po is trying to convince Hundun he isn't hiding anything from him, and keep him from learning he is the Dragon Warrior, the statue built in his honor is right behind him. He even poses like it.
  • Four times in "The Po Who Cried Ghost"—the viewer can see the hand coming out of the grave to grab Po's paw before he does (but it's just the creepy undertaker reaching for his shovel—at least that's what he says); the viewer sees the first jiang shi behind Po before he does; Po comes to tell Shifu he's learned his lesson and won't be scared of or believe in ghosts anymore, not knowing there's one behind him; and finally, he goes into great detail describing the ghosts to Tigress and Monkey, not knowing there's a whole troupe of them behind him and thinking they're reacting (badly) to his description.
  • The Furious Five come up behind Po when he's playing with his action figures in "The Maltese Mantis"...right as he's having Tigress's figure praise him (and possibly declare her love).
• Rogues Gallery: Fung & the Croc Bandits, Temutai, Taotie & Bian Ziao, Hundun, Tong Fo, Junjie & his Snow Leopards, Lidong, Fenghuang
• Royal Brat: Mei Li, until it's revealed that she is really just a Lonely Rich Kid.
• Rule of Funny: Characterization changes on an episode by episode basis depending on what would make the situation funnier.
• Rump Roast: Po suffers flame on his tail traversing The Corridor of Unbelievable Agony.
• Rummage Fail: When Po tries to show Tigress he's got the ruby from the stolen statue, he accidentally pulls out his Tigress action figure instead. Once again, Tigress is not amused.
• Run or Die: Hey, even the Furious Five have to flee at times.
• Running Gag: Po tends to land on the Furious Five a lot.
  • Likewise, people - usually Po - falling down the hundreds of steps to the Jade Palace.
  • In "Good Croc Bad Croc", Chung Sung Jai Kai Chow's name.
    • Which is followed up on in "Hall of Lame", with Po being excited he got it right.
  • Despite the fact of her name AND her voice, characters often tend to mistake Tigress for a guy, or, as Princess Mei-Li put it, "The mean man with the stripes", lampshading the Viewer Gender Confusion associated with the character.
  • The apple scene from "Challenge Day."
  • Tigress feeling the need to keep others at arms' length in the first movie has been amped into outright neurosis, played for laughs throughout the series. A few examples include confusing the simple act of being offered a towel by a spa employee as an attack, and having a thirty-year-long vendetta against the Jade Palace mailman...
  Monkey: You don't trust anyone. You don't even trust the mailman, and he's been coming here for thirty years!
  Tigress: Planning something for thirty years...
  • And continues with her aversion to children. "A necessary step on the way to adulthood..."
  • Mr. Ping plugging his noodle shop whenever he can.
  • The Qilin offering Po some snacks during their conversation.
  • Any time the Urn of Whispering Warriors appears, Po is going to knock it over and smash it.
  • Fung mispronouncing Gahri's name as "Gary".
• Sacrificial Lamb: If not for Po's intervention, this would have been Princess Mei Li's fate.
• Sadistic Choice: In "Hall of Lame", Po has to choose between grabbing the mystical kung fu weapon (and thereby get his "awesome" trophy for the Hall of Warriors) or the doll which means so much to the little pig he was helping. He is forced to Take a Third Option when he ends up falling from the broken bridge instead...only to reappear pulling himself up to safety with one of the items. And you all know which one.
• Saying Sound Effects Outloud: Po.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The journey from Chorh-Gom to the Valley, which had been previously established as taking anywhere from a week to a month, seems much shorter now for Taotie, Hundun, and Shifu and Po in the Tong Fo episode. The trip to Temutai's compound also seems to be much quicker these days, considering how often he shows up in the Valley and how quickly Shifu and Po get there in "My Favorite Yao". See the Fridge page for more details.
• Scooby Stack: "Jailhouse Panda": Po and the Croc Bandits do one as they try to escape prison.
• Sealed Army in a Can: The terra cotta army Fung's father makes in "Terror Cotta".
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The demons of "Enter the Dragon", sealed by Oogway beneath the Jade Palace.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Ke-Pa, sealed in the body of "an evil pig" so long as the Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom lives.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Assuming he wasn't merely faking all along, this is Taotie's excuse for returning to evil again in "Bosom Enemies", because Po persisted in relegating him to the position of "assistant" to the Dragon Warrior. That is, until he sees what present Po gave him...
• Secret Test of Character: General Tsin pulls one of these when he first meets Po. But then it turns out what he was actually testing was Po's willingness to help him cross the line and hunt down and paralyze villains, and when Po refuses the test becomes real, since he's convinced if Po isn't with him he's against him.
  • Shifu, as well as the Furious Five and Master Chao, pull one of these on Po in "Kung Shoes" to teach him the value of hard work and training over taking shortcuts. Unfortunately it blows up in their faces thanks to the dangerous magic shoes he uses to pass it.
• Sense Freak/Sensory Overload: In "My Favorite Yao", Master Yao after being let out of his box. Hilarity Ensues.
  Yao: Your apple, it is so delicious! It is the best thing I have eaten in 65 years!
  Yao, sticking almost his whole body in a rhino's mouth: Your breath, it is so foul and awful. (gags) I love it!
• Separate Scene Storytelling: Once per Episode.
• Series Continuity Error: Supposedly this series happens between the movies, but it contradicts them quite often.
• She-Fu: The female masters in the series, of course.
• Ship Sinking: "Ladies of the Shade" with Po being shamelessly shipped with Song. However, the Ti Po fanbase was left unfazed.
  • When Tigress finds out that Po was the "Midnight Stranger" she'd been fantasizing about, she gets a horrified look on her face and walks off saying she's going to throw up.
• Ship Tease: Has its own page
  • Turned on its head when Evil Po openly (and rather disgustingly) flirts with Tigress.
  • Also implied, however, between Po and Song of the Ladies of the Shade. It remains to be seen if she was merely a one-episode fling since she intends to be off running the troupe, if the writers will keep playing the tension back and forth between Song and Tigress, or if this is a whole different continuity than the movies.
  • Let's not forget how Tigress fell asleep on Po, of course.
  • When Tigress, suspicious of Lu-Shi's motives, tries to dissuade Po from marrying her in "Bride of Po", Po immediately assumes she's jealous and tries to "let her down easy", claiming what they had was all in her imagination. Her denials are...less than convincing.
• Shipper on Deck: Those two bunny girls who annoy Tigress on her sick bed.
  First: So do you love Po?
  Second: Is Po your boyfriend?
  Tigress: What? No!
• Shot in the Ass: Po and his butt full of darts...and third degree burns. Ouch.
• Shout-Out: In "Rhino's Revenge", Po states that Crane's weakness is to sweep the leg.
  • Irwin, one of Fung's henchmen, is apparently named after Crocodile Hunter host Steve Irwin.
  • In "Sight For Sore Eyes," Monkey fights a snow leopard and goes in a brief drunken-like swaying stance after making himself dizzy during a move (or simply goes into the stance intentionally, it certainly seems that way), in what is likely a reference to Drunken Master - given Monkey's voice actor in the movie (as well as his voice actor in the show, who has also played a character who, in understatement, heavily references Jackie Chan and his movies)
  • In "Kung Shoes", the shoes which won't ever come off (if worn for more than two hours) and force their wearer to keep doing kung fu until they die/destroy everything and everyone they love is reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Red Shoes".
  • The scene at the start of "The Master and the Panda" where Temutai has dug up the chest containing the cursed Gung Lu Medallion is quite reminiscent to the layout of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Ark of the Covenant is dug up, right down to the appearance of the chest.
  • Po channels Lou Costello several times in "The Po Who Cried Ghost," particularly when he first encounters what he thinks is a Jiangshi - his petrified wheezing attempt to call for help is straight from the candle scene in "Hold That Ghost."
  • In The Maltese Mantis, Po swatting at mechanical toys Taotie sent after him on a pole is a reference to King Kong (1933). Also, when Po has been pinned to the wall by the overenthusiastic kung fu fans and Taotie is about to get away with Mantis, he appeals to them for aid by saying "Help me, you're my only hope!"
  • Fenghuang's new fighting talons in Crane On A Wire are similar to the battle claws from Guardians of Ga'Hoole.
  • In The Secret Museum of Kung Fu, Po and the Five are going on a road trip using Mr. Ping's Noodle-Mobile, driven by Shifu. After a rocky start down a few flight of steps, Shifu stoically utters, "I'm a good driver." This is a reference to Rain Man, and the actor who played the title character (and said the phrase in the first place), Dustin Hoffman. He also plays Shifu in the KFP films.
• Shrine to Self: Junjie has one built when he replaces Shifu, commemorating his (mostly) off-screen defeat of Shifu — several statues, a painting, a tapestry, a teapot...
• Sick Episode: "Scorpion's Sting", oddly selected as the first episode aired.
• Sidekick: Po pretends to be this to 'Dragon Warrior Mantis' in "Hometown Hero".
• Silver Fox: Mei Ling, being Shifu's ex-girlfriend gives an implication of age. Besides Shifu still being head over heels for her, she has two (much) younger men swooning over her upon her arrival.
• Slipped the Ropes: Slipped the Stocks: Good!Po could have left the stocks at any time, but didn't because he gave his word to Evil Po that he wouldn't.
• Slow Clap: Chung Sung Jai Kai Chow, after Po and Fung attempt to escape.
• Smash the Symbol: The statue of Po as the Dragon Warrior is threatened by Hundun, but is actually destroyed by Ke-Pa. This is important, considering Po's need to overcome his Small Name, Big Ego tendencies.
  • After breaking free of the Gung Lu Medallion's control in "The Master and the Panda" and deciding he had too much darkness and thirst for power in him to use kung fu again, Peng also breaks apart his uncle Tai Lung's sword.
• Something Only They Would Say: Po uses his knowledge of Tigress and Monkey to prove to them who he is, after he's lost the shift stone and can't remove his Glamour.
• Something Something Leonard Bernstein: Alluded to. The Theme Tune appears to be something Po came up with on his own and is kind of a work in progress. As a result, the last verse goes:
  He lives and he trains and he fights with the Furious Five
  Protect the valley, something something something alive!
  • Tigress' attempt at the 'Princess Ceremonial Dance Song'.
• So Proud of You: Bian Zao gets this twice, once from Po and once from his dad. Which causes major guilt when he has to choose between them.
• Spaghetti Kiss: Subverted when Song tries to set this up with Po while eating noodles. He ends up with her entire head in his mouth.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Mantis' girlfriend Hao Ming is marrying him with the lie about Mantis still unrevealed. Po begs them to skip this part so the marriage can happen before the lie is revealed.
• Squick Invoked in-universe as Po's reaction to Ping and Scorpion dating.
• Status Quo Is God: Justified as a result of the series running during the course of the first trilogy and being unable to veer too off-course from whatever the movies established. Whenever Po learns some unbeatable game-breaking move, by the next episode it's like it never existed; any character development he gained during the episode will also be lost. However, characters occasionally mention past encounters with each other, and their statuses (like if they were in jail before) usually remain consistent. It wouldn't be until the first trilogy finished that future KFP animated spinoffs like Paws of Destiny and The Dragon Knight would be able to experiment more and take Po's life in new, different directions.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: In "The Master and the Panda", Po tries to fall asleep...blinks once, twice...and then Peng is standing right over him, glaring.
• Stock Punishment: In the archive room, used by Evil Po to keep Good!Po prisoner (and safe from being used as a weapon against him). There's also a smaller version, for the original prisoner's son, which gets used on Shifu.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Po goes gaga over the ceremonial olive branch crown and wants to wear it at a jaunty angle. Turns out Temutai has the exact same fashion sense.
  • Of all things, Shifu and Po also have something in common: a love of playing with famous kung fu warrior figures.
  • Both one of the fans at "the Fest" and Ping not only don't think his Dragon Warrior costume needs work, they comment on him getting the belly fat right. On a related note, both Po and Shifu come up with the idea of appearing there as cosplayers merely dressed as themselves to keep from being recognized.
• Sue Donym: While it isn't based off his real name, the alias Po adopts while infiltrating the Ladies of the Shade is...particularly failworthy.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes/Glowing Eyes of Doom: For the wearer of the cursed Gung Lu Medallion in "The Master and the Panda".
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Although Taotie becomes good friends with Po in Bosom Enemies, has a Heel–Face Turn after opening Po's gift and saves Po's life from the robot he sent after him, he's still arrested and sent back to prison for backstabbing him and trying to kill him.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Fung isn't particularly bright, but he's a heck of a lot smarter than his minions - he spends a decent chunk of his scenes raging at how moronic they are.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In the episode "The Kung Fu Kid", Po and Shifu meet a young boy named Peng, who displays great kung fu skill and seems to be a prodigy at it, and they take him to the palace. Does anybody else think Peng looks a bit like another young kung fu prodigy we've already met?◊
  • It's not just the fact that Peng and Tai Lung look stunningly alike. The similarities throughout Peng's introduction episode are uncanny. A young snow leopard with great aptitude for kung fu (with Peng taking it further by having no formal training), with dreams of becoming the Dragon Warrior, who displays a nasty temper when he feels Shifu does not approve of him. Even during the three-way fight near the end of the episode, Peng attacks Po in the stomach, where his fat prevents any damage. And of course, Po trying to make Peng listen to reason at the end, and finally a difference comes in when Peng does calm down and listen to reason, unlike Tai Lung in the movie. What is oddest is that, other than a brief look of shock from Shifu when he first meets Peng and asks him his name (ironically calling him "son"), neither he nor Po bat an eye at his appearance or abilities. Luckily instead of a Hand Wave, the similarities are then explained when Peng says he wants to continue his journey of finding his Uncle Tai Lung.
    • Some of his moves during the fight with Temutai and Po are also rather familiar, such as when he scales the tent poles or is flung about into the walls. Also:
  Peng: I can't believe you think I'm not good enough, that I'm not strong enough! Well I'll show you, I'll show you how strong I am!
  • Heilang and the Lin Kuei wolves, of the Wolf Boss and his pack from Kung Fu Panda 2.
• Synchronization: Po and his Evil Twin in "Bad Po". Hilarity Ensues when he uses it to literally beat himself up.

Tropes T-Z

• Take a Third Option: How Bian Zao solves his moral dilemma—he helps his dad...by making his machine malfunction "accidentally" and then helping him escape, so that Po will make it out unscathed.
• Take Our Word for It: When Crane breaks out a picture of an adult victim of River Fever, all viewers get is Po's horrified reaction - and hesitant query of "I...is that a pig?"
• Team Rocket Wins: In "Croc You Like a Hurricane", Fung and the croc bandits ascend from low-tier crooks to the new defenders of the Valley of Peace when they get trained in Kung Fu by Master Jia. They even become the new Furious Five by order of the emperor! Later, it is revealed that the message from the emperor was fake and Jia was actually Shifu in disguise, who was trying to teach Po a lesson in why he should take his training seriously and not be lazy. The croc bandits eventually become lazy themselves sitting around in the Jade Palace with nothing to do, which allows Po and the Furious Five to beat their tails once more and stay the defenders of the valley.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Po attempts to enforce this trope in "Forsaken and Furious" after Shifu and the Furious Five get into a feud, pretending to need rescuing after getting caught in a runaway kart. In fact being pushed by kids. Very, very slowly. Needless to say, this doesn't work.
  Po: *badly acting* Guys! Master Shifu! Quick! Put aside your differences and work together to SAVE MEEEEEE!
  Mantis: *unimpressed* Are we supposed to buy that?
• Teleport Spam: Zombie!Shifu does this to Po, Tigress, and Monkey.
• Temporary Blindness: The Golden Lotus Clap's effect on any who don't close their eyes or look away.
• Tempting Fate: Crane being determined to keep the lattice safe at Po's wedding, and then concluding it will stay that way...just before he himself gets slammed into it, bringing it down.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Happens to Shifu twice; the first time is an Enforced Trope (leading to his imprisonment and impending execution), but the second is played straight. Until he subverts it, as usual, with a Big Damn Heroes moment.
  • Peng has one in "The Master and the Panda" when, after learning that Po had been telling the truth about Tai Lung, he vows never to use kung fu again because of what it did to his uncle and goes back to making pottery. Ends when Po needs his help to stop Temutai, though this turns out to be something of a mistake.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Hao, Mantis' ex girlfriend, has long eyelashes, a bustline, spots of pink blush and lipstick. Mantis himself has a moustache.
  • Fenghuang wears lipstick on her beak.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Po can be this to the Furious Five sometimes, given how often they have to put up with his antics.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Po gives a blistering one to Mei Li after she manages to hit his Berserk Button by insulting his friends.
  Mei Li: My stuff is gone and it's all your fault!
  Po: My fault? It's my fault? You wouldn't stay in the tree, you let the bandits get away, you dumped the last of our water, and you picked on my friends.
  Mei Li: How dare you!
  Po: I dare, because when something's wrong it's wrong. I don't care how royal highness-y you are. You are mean, rotten, bossy, and bratty and nobody likes you.
  • In "Chain Reaction", Tigress gives Po a harsh one about how he thinks everything's a game to him and that he was the wrong Dragon Warrior. Po responds quietly with this:
  Po: Tigress, you may be a great warrior...but you stink at friendship...and...fun...ship. (Pause...before he leaves angrily) I'm outta here!
  • Tigress also gives a jealous Po one in "Way Of The Prawn" for caring more for fighting than actually helping people. This makes Po resolve on helping free the samurai prawn from bandits.
  • In "Rhino's Revenge", Hundun goes on a raging rampage against the Dragon Warrior when he finds out that Po is the Dragon Warrior:
  Hundun: Ha, ha, Your real weakness, Po is not the kick, it's your heart. It's as big and sappy as an old sappy plum tree filed with plum sap.
  Po: At least I have a heart; but all I've done is been kind! And all you've done is blame me for your rotten life! And guess what?! I love plum sap! How 'bout that?!
  Po: [after Hundun attacks him] : I dodged the kick! I dodged the kick! Sweet! Not sure if you realize this, but I just dodged all your Swirling Lynx Round Kicks! You know what your weakness is, Hundun? You stink at friendship.
  • Shifu gives a vicious dressing down to Po after he fails to evacuate the villagers in a prideful moment in "Enter the Dragon" before exiling him. Played with as it was secretly just a Shoo the Dog tactic to get Po away from Ke-Pa. To put it into perspective, even the Furious Five, who were equally annoyed with Po at first, actually feel extremely sorry for him when Shifu's finished tearing into him.
  • In "The Break Up", Fung and Gahri give each other one.
  Fung: You know what, Gary? I'm sick and tired of your know-it-all attitude and your "fancy words" and your book reading, with your eyes. You're the worst croc bandit ever!
  Gahri: Fung, I am tired of your insults, your insensitivity, what's up with that? And your constant mispronunciation of my name!
  Fung: What?
  Gahri: It's Gahri! Gahri!!
  Fung: Oh, yeah? Gahri? Well I think I've found the solution to your problem!
  Gahri: Me too! I quit!
  Fung: You're fired!
• The Rest Shall Pass: Po when he tries to reconciliate his blunders....or when he's trying to attempt five pull-ups on a bamboo set. Once again, the keyword was 'attempt'.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  Taotie, after his unlubricated Iron Claws of Doom fail and the Five are about to overwhelm him: I hate this part!
  • And the Dragon Warrior challenge day episode, Po as he braces himself to have a chimney land on him to protect a rabbit child. "Oh, this is gonna sting."
  • Tigress in "Chain Reaction" when Po jumps off the cliff while they're chained together.
  Tigress "Po, what are you — (beat) Oh darn."
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Po, who is a very peculiar example of this trope. Namely, in some episodes, he plays this trope down to a T, such as when he constantly used the Fluttering Finger Mindslip to get out of duties, chores and trouble, and when he got jealous and lied to Peng about Shifu not wanting him in the palace to make Peng leave. What makes Po a peculiar example of the trope is that he takes the level in jerkass for just that one episode, then does repent and works to fix the trouble he caused, and then he takes the level of jerkass again in another episode, repeating the process. In still other episodes, he's either as nice as can be or, if he does make a mistake, it's out of clumsiness or ignorance rather than jerkishness.
  • Really almost everyone does at some moment, except for Shifu (but that's only because Shifu's dickery in the first movie is hard to top). The worst moment is when Po demonstrates one of the Seven Impossible Moves and everyone in the Jade Palace suddenly ceases to trust him just because the master who initially invented these moves turned evil and despite everything they went through together. When all of the Five reject him and refuse to listen (as he's trying to tell them their master Shifu is in danger), simply because they believe Po screwed up and thus got Shifu and all of them thrown out of the palace (instead of letting him explain Junjie said it was okay for him to watch the masters' exhibition) also takes the cake. At least this one led to Ping reading them the riot act.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Tigress is a subtle one. Since the TV series is mostly a transitional point from the first movie to the second, she still has some of her Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy traits in tact, though is showing signs of defrosting and expressing humility (like Shifu, her nasty streak in the first film is hard to top). Within the course of the show itself, she goes from barely tolerating Po (and still resenting him for being chosen as Dragon Warrior in the earliest episodes) to having a more blatant caring side towards him in some later episodes (likely as a Character Check to the second movie which had been released by that point in production).
• Toothy Bird: Or in this case, toothy bugs. Mantis and the other mantises all have teeth. Crane, however, does not.
• Tomboy: Tigress, so much so that doing anything stereotypically feminine is outside her skillset. She tries to sing and do the Ceremonial Princess Dance in "The Princess and the Po" and can neither dance nor sing.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: Peng and his girlfriend created the Kung Fu fight club so that the villagers could learn to defend themselves. Po is very eager to help them train.
• Trickster Mentor: Master Yao, in a sense. While not deliberately tricking anyone, he does allow his kidnapping, numerous chase scenes and battles, and the near execution of himself, Shifu, and Po, all to teach Shifu a lesson about truly living life. And because after all those years of constant meditation and isolation, it's a lot of fun.
• Twitchy Eye: Seems to be a side-effect of having the "Fluttering Finger Mindslip" performed on you.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Shifu in "The Most Dangerous Po". Po has just discovered a great general is actually insane and out-of-control, kept him from meting out a Fate Worse than Death to all the show's villains, and locked him up (after he almost suffered the same fate!) so he can't do that to anyone else...and all Shifu cares about is the fact Po locked up a great general and lost the Jade Palace one of its biggest financial backers.
  • Tigress isn't safe from this either. In The Way Of The Prawn, Po's interference in the mission leads her to snap at Po for caring only about wanting to fight. So Po decides to help the prawn samurai fight against the rebels and win this...and Tigress, instead of congratulating Po, congratulates the prawn samurai. This could be because Po was afraid Tigress would be angry at him for helping when he messed up in the first place.
    • The latter, however, averts this in thanking Po for helping him at the end of the episode.
• Unreliable Voiceover: Subverted. When Su is telling the story of how she and her troupe came to be homeless and on their own, the species of the warlord changes—because Po jumps in assuming he was a rhino, leading to Su having to correct him. Double Subverted, however, since the knowledge that Su is actually a duplicitous thief makes everything she says suspect anyway.
• Villain of the Week: Any villain who isn't Taotie, Temutai, the Croc Bandits, Junjie, or Hundun.
• Villain Over for Dinner: In the episode Love Stings, Mr. Ping reveals he's now dating someone and soon after, Po discovers that his dad's special somebody just so happens to be Scorpion, who's right there in the kitchen with them.
• Villainous Breakdown: Ke-Pa has a fairly impressive one after Po shows up alive and re-seals the demons.
• Villain Reveals the Secret: In "Sticky Situation" after Po accidentally trashes the training hall, he enlists Taotie (who he doesn't yet know the bad blood of between him and Shifu) to repair everything before anyone finds out. Taotie plays along, and instead converts the hall into a Humongous Mecha. Being his usual petty self, he also gleefully blabs on Po to Shifu and the Five upon revealing himself, even giving them a moment to grill him before he starts his attack.
• Violence Is Not an Option: In one episode, Po faces a demon that gets bigger and stronger when you fight him, absorbing the power of each hit he gets. Po eventually defeats him by not fighting, letting the demon expend all his power trying to hit him until he's small enough to be captured.
• Visual Pun: While trying to defend the pig princess from the croc bandits, she gets flung around like a football.
  • When Po is introducing his dad to the Ladies of the Shade, he literally points at him with the noodle-shop arrow sign...which also has Ping's picture on it.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Po and Tigress, Type 1. Seriously, they argue non-stop all through "Chain Reaction."
• Wake Up Fighting: In "Master Ping", Ping is staying at the Jade Palace has has kept the Furious Five awake with his sinuses. During training, Tigress falls asleep leaning against Po. When Shifu asks someone to wake her up, Po nudges her and is immediately dealt an Offhand Backhand.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Po and Tigress in "Chain Reaction".
• We Can Rule Together: Fenghuang says as much to Po.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Shifu to Oogway. And Oogway says it, just not where anyone can hear it.
  • Bian Zao to Taotie. He finally tells his son he's proud of him...for helping break him out of prison.
  • And Fung to his father Bing. He finally tells his son he is proud of him just before they're both carted off to jail again.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: General Tsin. His methods leave a lot to be desired, he's more than a little loony, and he tries to force Po help him by threatening him with the same fate if he refuses, but it can't be denied that most if not all of those he's captured are truly dangerous and evil, and even if they don't deserve such a fate, holding them in Chorh-Gom doesn't seem to be doing much good...
• Wham Episode: At the end of The Kung Fu Kid we learn...Tai Lung has a nephew who's searching for him.
  • Both "Enter the Dragon" and "The Master and the Panda" qualify as well. Aside from the destruction of the Jade Palace, a major Attention Whore/What the Hell, Hero? moment for Po, and Po's (temporary) death, both episodes confirm Tai Lung is dead, and the latter episode reveals (maybe) that he was truly evil and irredeemable at the end. It also ends with Peng leaving, deciding to give up kung fu forever because he believes the darkness and thirst for power are inborn for him too.
• What the Fu Are You Doing?
• What the Hell, Hero?: As if lying about being the Dragon Warrior to win fame (and a woman's heart) isn't bad enough, Mantis continues to allow Po, in disguise as his "useless" sidekick, to stand in for him in his fights with his rival until the panda is left utterly battered and beaten—all so he can keep romancing Hao Ming. Po calls him on it big-time.
  • Mr. Ping calls out the Furious Five when none of them are willing to help Po retake the Jade Palace.
  • Shifu gives a blistering one to Po after his failure to warn the townspeople to flee to safety (because it would make him look like a coward and ruin his reputation) results in them becoming innocent victims of Ke-Pa's villainous threat. (And, to a certain extent, because Po had helped Ke-Pa get free by trying to fight him instead of summoning the others, then inadvertently finishing off the peach tree). Some of this was fake in order to keep Po and the Hero's Qi safe and out of Ke-Pa's reach, but...
• Whoopi Epiphany Speech: Ping gives a heartwarming one to remind Po of what he's always had and never lost (and the movie's original Be Yourself aesop), so that he will believe in his kung fu again and go back to save the Valley and Shifu.
• Widely-Spaced Jail Bars: In "The Secret Museum of Kung-Fu" Viper the viper is hung from a chain with the cuff around her neck, but neither the villains nor the Furious Five, including Viper herself, notice she could just slither out of it because she is a viper. Lucky that Po just learnt the Handcuff Trick, eh?
• Wistful Amnesia: A comedic version. The Furious Five don't remember their names or what animals they are, and try to help each other in this condition. Hilarity Ensues.
• With Catlike Tread: Po's first 'Dragon Warrior sneaking mission'. Complete with running commentary and cutting in front of his tailing target. Ironically enough, Mantis still doesn't spot/confront him until they're practically at his village.
  • He seems to have learned to be a little bit more successful, as he manages to follow Shifu silently into Temutai's compound to rescue Yao, and doesn't give them away. (Of course they still fail. That time.) On the other hand, he does so by, in Shifu's words, "not doing what you normally would do".
• With Friends Like These...: Sadly a recurring formula throughout the show is the for the plot's conflict to be caused by either Po acting inconsiderate or self centered towards one or all of the Furious Five, or them ostracizing him for anything ranging from such bad behavior to some completely petty triffle.
• The Worf Effect: With the possible exception of A Day in the Limelight episodes, no matter what the enemy, they will usually rip through the Furious Five like tissue paper in order to establish themselves as a serious threat. If that doesn't do it, expect Shifu to be easily tossed around as well. In episodes not specifically about Po, he can get this treatment as well.
• Worf Had the Flu: Temutai attempts to justify his first loss to Po by claiming that he had a head cold. He bungles his Bluff roll.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Both Po and Quan the Unkillable perform wrestling moves in "Has-Been Hero", including the Stone Cold Stunner.
• Wuxia: Thanks to the fact jiang shi can fly, teleport, and go through walls, the fight between Zombie!Shifu and Zombie!Po becomes this.
• Yandere: Mei Ling to Shifu. Figuring that he would have no choice but to crawl back to her if the honor of the Jade Palace was broken, she goes so far as to frames him to his students - the irony being that he would probably have acted on his feelings if she didn't pursue him so dishonestly in the first place.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Po's attitude about Taotie after he had his breakdown and Despair Event Horizon—giving him a purpose in life again by designing weapons and inventions for Po and the rest of the Jade Palace. It seems to work...for a while.
• You Go, Girl!: When the Croc bandit leader 'attempts' to interrogate Tigress. Keyword is attempts.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Basically most of Tigress' reactions to Po's blunders.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: When Po defeats Fung yet again in "Terror Cotta", and Fung insultingly dismisses his men for failing too many times, they decide they're now "Po's gang". With predictable results, as he tries to train them in non-criminal activities or, well, anything.
• You Said You Would Let Them Go/Unhand Them, Villain!: Lu-Shi to Junjie regarding her brother Shao. He claims to be an honest and honorable villain, but won't keep his word because she failed to do her part (through no fault of her own—Po just got cold feet). When she pushes it, he then goes on to be honest after all...by following his Exact Words and letting Shao go—to fall on the burning coals.

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