Western Animation / Life's a Zoo

Hello, and welcome aboard Life's a Zoo.tv, the reality show that dares to ask the question, how real is too real?

— Claude, host of Season 1

Life's a Zoo.tv is an award-winning Canadian, Stop Motion animated, fake reality TV series created by Andrew Home and produced by Cuppa Coffee Studios for Teletoon.

Seven anthropomorphic animals are put up in an elaborate mansion to compete in challenges from their host, being "extincted" (eliminated) one by one, until only one remains, and wins the mansion. For thirteen weeks, these seven houseguests have to avoid being extincted in whatever sick and twisted challenges their host throws at them, and more importantly, try not to kill each other... Oh, and Once per Episode, there's a music video.

Getting to know each other a lot more than they want to are...

• Chi Chi (Stephanie Jung): A Chinese panda bear and 5th grade teacher who is by far the nicest person on the show... but not for long.
• Doctor D (Joseph Motiki): A rapping penguin who's ready to ice any mofos who cross him.
• Jake (Kurt Firla): A perverted Canadian pig with delusions of grandeur.
• Minou (Bridget Ogundipe): A Jamaican panther and former supermodel; she's willing to work the camera, and the man behind it to win.
• Morreski (Stephen Kishewitsch): A drunken Russian bear who's lived a full and complex life, if only he can remember any of it.
• Ray (Mike Rowland): An orangutan and a total party animal.
• Rico (Francisco Trujillo): A Colombian crocodile who fits every gay stereotype in the book.

And running this menagerie are...

• Claude (Michael Lamport): Our first host, a smarmy and immoral vulture who could not care less for his job, the contestants, and pretty much everything else about the show.
• Bobbie (Stacey DePass): A seal who replaces Claude in Season 2; don't let her friendly persona fool you, she's even more eager than Claude to see the contestants tear each other apart for ratings.

If the descriptions of the characters didn't tip you off, this show is not for the kiddies.

The series originally aired on Teletoon's Detour block (the Canadian answer to [adult swim]) in 2008, where it ran for 2 seasons and a total of 20 episodes. However, many might also recognize this show from when it became part of Smosh's Shut Up! Cartoons roster in 2013.

Compare to its fellow animated reality TV parodies, Drawn Together and Total Drama.

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This series provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: Initially, Chi Chi was described as very sickly, and threw up a lot; after the first episode and the plane challenge, this was never brought up again.
• Accidental Pervert: While Jake and Ray watching Minou shower was very intentional, Morreski was tricked into walking through a door leading into her bathroom.
• Addiction Displacement: When the houseguests have their respective addictions taken away, Jake partakes in everyone else's addictions.
• Affably Evil: The hosts, especially Bobbie; Claude acts nice, but he clearly doesn't like his job.
• The Alcoholic: Morreski is almost never seen without a bottle of vodka.
• Alien Abduction: When Claude trapped everyone in the "Amazing Maze", Ray believes he's been abducted by aliens; at first he thought it was awesome, until he figured that: Alien Abduction = Anal Probe.
• Amusing Injuries: Pretty much everyone gets injured during the course of the show, especially Ray. Subverted with Minou, who ends up in a body cast, and remains in it for the rest of the show.
• All-Stereotype Cast: The houseguests either represent caricatures of their species, their nationality/ethnicity, both, or in Rico's case, their sexuality.
• Anal Probing: (See Alien Abduction Above)
• Animals Lack Attributes: Lampshaded in "2D or Not 2D", when the budget is cut, forcing the show to be produced in a low-budget 2D animation style, Jake is the first to notice that he lacks any genitals of any sort.
  Jake: "So, it appears in 'Cartoon Land', you don't have to anatomically-correct. I'd do something about it right now, if I had the balls!"
• Animal Stereotypes: Played straight with Chi Chi, Claude, Dewey Dewson, Jake, Minou, Morreski, and Ray; subverted with Bobbie, Doctor D. and Rico.
• Annoying Patient: Everybody except Chi Chi towards Chi Chi when they get food poisoning from her food; except it wasn't her fault, Ray added something a little extra to Chi Chi's cooking.
• Bad Liar: When Chi Chi appears to be pregnant, Morreski and Ray admit that they might be the father; Jake also admits to it, not because he might be, but because being the father of her child would mean they had sex, which they didn't. Also, while footage of Morreski and Ray making out with Chi Chi is played during their confessions, Jake lampshades it by saying they're probably showing a video of them right now, but there is no such video.
• Bandage Mummy: Minou, after walking out of an airplane with no parachute.
• Bawdy Song: Jake's entry in the talent show.
• Bears Are Bad News: Subverted, Chi Chi is the nicest person on the show, and Morreski is awesomeness personified as a drunk Russian bear.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ray learns the hard way to not sneak up on Chi Chi.
• Big Eater: Chi Chi
  • Minou is the opposite, and is bulimic.
• Big "NO!": Morreski does it when he opens the fridge and doesn't find any vodka.
  • Ray does it much better in the Fake-Out Opening to episode 13 when Morreski dies after telling him that he (Ray) is his (Morreski's) father.
• Body Horror: Jake shows why there is no such thing as Do-It-Yourself liposuction.
• Bouquet Toss: Used to determine who escaped extinction, and moved onto the final three. Chi Chi caught it, flattening Rico in the process.
• Bowdlerization: When the series joined Shut Up! Cartoons, a lot of the profanity, drug references, and sexual content were censored.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Fed up with the houseguests, the producers have Bobbie do this.
• Break the Cutie: Chi Chi, after she realizes how badly the show corrupted her.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In one episode, Ray makes a mention of the DVD version of Life's a Zoo.tv, and how he's doing voice over commentary on it; that very voice over comes on and tells Ray he's about to get totally screwed over by Jake in the next scene.
  • Seriously, the final episode of the first season demolishes the wall.
• Camp Gay: Rico.
• Casanova Wannabe: Jake talks big, but evidence suggests he's never been with a real woman.
• Cats Are Mean: Minou, though her treatment of Jake is very justified; she actually wins a niceness challenge, which says a lot about everyone else.
• Censor Box: In "Rayland", Jake gets a growing box, covering his erection, when he starts explaining about an erotic fantasy he wanted to enact, much to the disgust of Doctor D and Minou.
• Citizenship Marriage: Or more specifically, a marriage to avoid being extincted: Chi Chi, Jake, Ray and Rico were left, and two of them had to get married to avoid being extincted; Chi Chi held marriage as more sacred than that and refused to get married, and completely heterosexual Jake and Ray had no intention on marrying Camp Gay Rico, who they feared would abuse the scenario, so they married each other!
• Cold Open: All episodes had an introduction, usually given by Claude or Bobbie.
• Compressed Vice: Doctor D. and Rico were shown to be addicted to cigars and coffee respectively, though neither was shown as an explicit addiction until the Going Cold Turkey episode.
• Confession Cam: In the form of an instant photo booth.
• Cool Old Guy: Morreski.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Chi Chi and Rico took part in a cook-off, where the ingredients were chosen by the other houseguests; since Chi Chi and Rico would have to eat it, the others chose the nastiest things they could think of: liverwurst, toothpaste, chili peppers, mystery liquid (see below), and some "fresh herbs".
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Doctor D., no really. Subverted in that Doctor D. is the badass, but in reality he's a nerdy shoe salesman named Dewey Dewson, but wanted to become a gangster rap star, and became Doctor D. When the deception is revealed, he goes back to being Dewey, until someone hits his Berserk Button, playing the trope straight.
• Crying Wolf: When Doctor D. discovers Bobbie's deeply hidden secrets, she outs him as a nerdy, shoe selling, rap-star wannabe fraud, and invokes this trope saying that nothing he says should be trusted.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: When Jake goes crazy and pulls pranks on the others, Minou, Morreski and Rico make various declarations of how they'll torture and kill him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Minou, especially when Claude was pulling some stupid stunt on the houseguests.
• Death by Genre Savviness: In the first episode, Claude has everyone jump out of a plane, but it turns out the plane is fake, as it would be too expensive, and they would get sued for having inexperienced sky-divers jumping out of a real plane. When Bobbie takes over, she repeats the plane stunt, but Minou wants no part of it and walks off; right before Bobbie reveals it's a real plane.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Doctor D. was a shoo-in for the talent show, but he was pegged to go last, and was worried that the others would turn off the audience before he could hit the stage; so he and Rico, as his manager, sabotage everyone else. Chi Chi was royally pissed at not getting to finish, so she rushes the stage during Doctor D's performance, gets into a rapping duel with him, and proceeds to lay a serious beat down on his ass.
• Double Standard: In "Random Acts of Niceness", the contestants are eliminated from the challenge when they are caught being rude to, or snapping at, someone else. Chi Chi, Rico, and Minou insult their housemates in private, and get away with it. On the other hand, Jake is eliminated after calling Minou a "dirty, filthy girl" while fantasizing about her, despite his comments not only being private ones, but also a product of "pleasant thoughts", as he puts it.
• Dramatic Thunder: Happens when Bobbie lays down the law. Parodied when she claims it's a gift she has, followed with more Dramatic Thunder; that one was a fluke.
• Drugs Are Bad:
  • Jake suffered an overdose on various minor substances like alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, which he was using as a replacement for his addiction to sex.
  • At least two times we see that sleeping pills should not be mixed with alcohol, the second time caused Chi Chi to lose her memory.
  • Minou was using anti-depressants to win a niceness contest, and it was definitely affecting her by the end of the episode.
• Easy Amnesia: Thanks to a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills, Chi Chi falls unconscious, and awakens the next day with no memories.
• Egg Sitting: Bobbie has the houseguests perform an egg sitting challenge for Mother's Day. Jake realizes that the point of the competition is not who takes better care of their egg, it's whose egg cracks first, and gets to work trying to sabotage everyone else.
• Embarrassing Cover Up:
  • Chi Chi walks in on Jake when he's trying to rig an Internet poll for the show by voting for himself, and Chi Chi thinks that he's "sexing computer".
  • Another time Ray claims to be "downloading some internet porn" to cover the fact that he's selling Chi's belongings online.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As cruel as Bobbie can be, even she's uncertain about brainwashing the houseguests, though that doesn't stop her from going through with it.
• Everybody Knew Already: The winner of Life's a Zoo.tv is chosen by a vote of the losers, who have to choose between Chi Chi and Jake. We see them making their votes, and the name of who they vote for is bleeped out to maintain the secret, but it's obvious who they are voting for.
  • The only one who isn't bleeped out is Minou, who is now The Unintelligible due to her full body cast that also covers her mouth; but it's still obvious who she's voting for, even if Morreski doesn't.
• Everything's Messier with Pigs: Jake, let's leave it at that.
• Evil Power Vacuum: When Claude is overthrown by the houseguests, they try to make their own ending, but argue over who gets the mansion, who gets screwed, and who gets "screwed"; and that's when Bobbie takes over.
• Expansion Pack Past: Morreski was once a mechanical engineer, a doctor, a ship's captain, and is ordained to perform weddings. After leaving the show, he is shown being a postman, a sandwich artist, a door-to-door window salesman, and a referee for women's wrestling.
• Explosion Propulsion: Morreski builds a still when his vodka is confiscated by Claude; at the end of the episode, it explodes, sending Jake flying though the roof.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Claude and Bobbie's attempts at improving the houseguests.
• Fake-Out Opening: Episode 12 had one which shows Life's a Zoo.tv as a much different show than the normal reality show it is. A lampshade gets hung on it when we switch to the houseguests watching the phony promo, and Ray comments on how cool that show looks.
  • Episode 13 had a slightly subtler example, which was a normal intro by Claude, but had segments that were not actually in the show.
• Far East: In one episode, Jake is trying to woo Chi Chi, and becomes a walking Japanese trope machine; too bad for him that Chi Chi is Chinese.
• Feathered Fiend: Claude is a vulture, and acts as you'd expect.
• Flanderization: Inverted, due to the show being scripted, the characters start out as flanderizations; when Jake tears up the scripts and frees everyone, the houseguests become deflanderized.
• Foreshadowing: In a Halloween themed episode, Chi Chi screams and everyone comes running, Ray comments that it sounded like Chi Chi found Minou's severed head; guess what Morreski pulls out of the fridge.
• Forgotten Birthday: Justified in that since none of the characters knew each other before hand, no one knew when Chi Chi's birthday was; although it still ends up being one of the worst days of her life, and all attempts to tell the others it's her big day go unnoticed or are interrupted.
• Funny Animal: Everyone on screen, though they live in a human world; the voice over guy is apparently human.
• Funny Foreigner: Much of Chi Chi and Morreski's humor come from her weak English and his stories from the homeland.
  • Minou and Rico are Jamaican and Columbian, but their humor comes from being the Alpha Bitch and Camp Gay.
    • Rico isn't really Latino at all; it's all part of the Camp Gay act the producers have him doing, but he's really growing into the part.
• Game Master: Claude and Bobbie.
• Gangsta Style: Doctor D.
• Going Cold Turkey: Claude has a rehab challenge, where he takes away each of the houseguests' vices:
  • Chi Chi - junk food
  • Doctor D. - cigars
  • Jake - his sex doll
  • Minou - her makeup and wigs
  • Morreski - vodka
  • Ray - video games
  • Rico - coffee
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Everyone has the same kind of white eyes with black pupils, except for:
  • Ray's eyes are permanently blood shot, a sign of his manic behaviour, and his marijuana addiction.
  • Morreski, whose schlera are somewhat yellowish, a sign of his alcoholism.
  • Doctor D. wears sunglasses that hides his eyes, which are like everyone else's; a hint that he's not who he says he is.
  • Claude has brown irises, making his eyes less cartoony than the others.
  • Bobbie has seal eyes, large black pupiless orbs, and is the most evil character on the show. (Well, maybe second to Jake...)
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In "2D or Not 2D", after a genre change to a Saturday Morning cartoon show, Doctor D finds he can't swear anymore.
• Grammar Nazi: The houseguests don't face extinction, they face "extincted".
• Groin Attack: Ray gets it from Jake when they find the secret control room, and Jake justifies it by saying it was in the script.
  • Minou threatens Jake with this a couple of times, though she aims for "cutting his testicles out with a spoon" territory.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: When the houseguests are turned into cartoon characters, Ray tells the others to punch him, stab him and blow him up, demonstrating how cartoon characters are invincible; he regrets it when he's smashing his head with a frying pan as he changes back to normal.
• Hold Up Your Score: Rico holds up a "10" after he does a dance number, and catches Morreski in his arms.
• Idiot Ball: If there was such a thing, Ray would have it Krazy Glued to his ass.
  • Morreski really got this hard when the houseguests were trapped in the maze that was closing in on them, they figure out that the walls close in when they get angry or mistreat each other; Morreski says he realized the maze was responding to their negative emotions a long time ago, but he didn't tell them because they were too stupid. Oops!
• If I Can't Have You…: When Chi Chi wins the mansion, sore loser Jake takes off and sets up a bomb to destroy the mansion; the joke's on him when Chi Chi forfeits the mansion, and Jake takes off in a mad dash to stop the bomb. He can't stop the fuse, so he rushes everyone else out before the mansion goes BOOM!
  • A lesser example happens when Morrseki wins a Plot Coupon for a free picnic, while Claude locks the fridge, leaving everyone hungry. Minou goes to Morreski's room to steal the coupon, but Morreski catches her, so she throws a nearby bottle of (what else?) vodka at him, and it destroys the coupon.
• In a World…: Episode 12 starts with this.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: The names of the two hosts are: Bobbie and Claude.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Jake, the only reason anyone could possibly like him is because he's so pathetic. Considering almost everything he's done to Minou counts as sexual harassment or assault, from peeping on her in her shower, to sneaking into her bath with a camera^note though he was completely crazy at the time, to using a niceness challenge to pester her for sex and groping her without retaliation; it's pretty clear that if he succeeds in his plans, he'd catapult clear over the Moral Event Horizon.
  • The revelation that the show was scripted, and Jake wasn't in full control of his actions only mitigates it, as it was only exaggerating his negative traits; after the Deflanderization, he is still clearly a perverted loser.
• Intoxication Ensues/Mushroom Samba: To win a niceness challenge, Minou takes anti-depressants, and eventually eats the whole bottle. First she starts hallucinating, thinking a plant is Chi Chi, and starts licking wallpaper; then she talks to people with a sunny polite disposition whether she's insulting or complimenting them.
  • Jake had a Mushroom Samba when he suffered from extreme sleep deprivation, believing a papaya was a living being that was in love with him, and everyone else was conspiring to take her away from him.
• Ironic Hell: When Jake wakes up in Claude's maze, he notices the all-white walls and believes he's in Heaven; but noting the lack of certain things like "topless angels", he believes that he is actually in Hell.
• Irony: Some of the contestants were extincted in competitions where they should have had the advantage.
  • Chi Chi won the right to choose who gets extincted, but she chooses herself.
  • Minou lost a weight loss challenge.
    • Extra irony because Jake was planting chocolate around the house to sabotage everyone else, and it worked on the one opponent he didn't want extincted.
  • Doctor D. lost a musical talent competition.
  • Chi Chi lost a niceness challenge; the truly ironic part is that she loses her temper because she gets fed up with everyone else's (especially Minou's) faking.
  • Rico lost an interior design challenge.
    • Ray won it by not competing, instead he went nuts and redecorated a room in his own insane way as a Take That! to the whole contest.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ray, more of a juvenile goof-off than a jerk, but has put himself on the line to help the others, such as leaping into action to stop Jake from jumping to his death; although, in that case he was trying to push a bed with Doctor D. lying on it to break Jake's fall, and missed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Jake convinced the others to make a sit-com, saying it would benefit all of them; but he makes himself the main character, and may have done it for the sole purpose of getting Minou to give him a back rub and say "you're my daddy".
• Jerkass: Almost everybody, but dishonorable mention goes to Jake and the hosts.
• Joker Immunity: Letting any of the characters go would ruin the dynamic, so none of the eliminations done during Claude's run stuck; and there were no long term consequences, like jail time, for any of the blatantly illegal things going on. Lampshaded as the reason why Minou was allowed back: they'd lose their male demographic.
• Karma Houdini: Bobbie gets almost no retribution for the crap she put the houseguests through, except for a bottle of champagne full of laxatives; unless she got blown up in the finale.
• Latex Perfection: When everyone disguises themselves to look like Morreski, they all look and sound very convincing.
• Love Triangle:
  • Although Doctor D. and Jake have imagined having a threesome with Chi Chi and Minou, only Morreski actually does the deed, though in that case, Chi Chi was in the middle of the triangle.
  • When the show was down to Chi Chi, Jake and Ray; Chi Chi had immunity, so Bobbie let her decide who gets extincted, by way of a three-way date.
• Manipulative Editing: Jake edits together scenes from the Confession Cam to make it look like everyone else likes him, but it's done comically bad.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Deliberately done.
• Mobile Maze: Used as a challenge.
• Momma's Boy: Doctor D. it becomes more pronounced when he reverts to Dewey Dewson..
• Mood-Swinger: The point of the niceness challenge wasn't who's the nicest, it's who can keep from totally losing their temper, leading to most of the houseguests getting angry, stopping before they go too far, and acting overly nice to make up for their outburst.
• The Mourning After: Jake was completely heartbroken when he thought Minou was dead, until he laid eyes on Bobbie. Subverted as this is Jake we're talking about here; he really only mourned Minou because she was the only hot female on the show, once Bobbie showed up, Minou was nothing special, as well as (presumed) dead.
• Ms. Fanservice: Minou has not done anything about the cameras in her bathroom.
• Must Have Caffeine: Rico, but unlike Chi Chi and Morreski who are shown as addicts through the whole show, this only comes into play in the Going Cold Turkey episode.
• Must Have Nicotine: Doctor D. loves his stogies, but like Rico, this only shows up as an outright addiction in one episode.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Happens to Chi Chi, twice: one when she sees how the show has corrupted her, she throws away her immunity and extincted herself; and two when she won the mansion, she forfeits it.
• Nailed to the Wagon: Happens to the entire cast in "Self Helpless" when all the housemates are forcibly deprived of their addictive vices.
• Never Say "Die": Averted and Inverted.
  • Averted in the second episode when Jake goes crazy and annoys the others to the point that Minou, Morreski and Rico want to kill him.
  • Inverted in that the show uses the term "extincted" (death of a species) to refer to (non-lethal) elimination from the show.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Subverted in that the three main females are mammals, but have no visible mammaries due to the art style, and the only one with visible breasts (and nipples) is—horrifyingly—Jake.
  • Played straight with Doctor D.'s mother, complete with bouncing.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Most of the characters are mammals, but any hair is very human like, not just extra long fur.
  • Subverted and played straight with Minou; she has hair but it's actually a series of wigs, but there are traces that she used to have hair, possibly losing it due to her bulimia.
  • Occasionally Chi Chi wears a wig, but otherwise has no hair.
  • Bobbie has a full head of hair.
  • Chi Chi's father has black hair, while Ray's father has a long beard, but in his case it could pass as extra long fur.
  • The straightest example is Doctor D.'s mother, she's a penguin with curly brown hair.
• Not Quite Dead: The last episode has a segment called "Not Dead Yet", which showed what each of the extincted houseguests were doing in the intervening weeks; significant for Minou and Rico who were badly injured when they were extincted.
  • Ironically, the one character who may be Killed Off for Real, is Bobbie.
• Not What it Sounds Like: Doctor D. once passed Minou's room hearing Morreski telling her to hold the shaft firmly and make a tight seal with her lips; he was actually giving her flute playing lessons.
  • Which is actually bad advice for playing a flute, you blow over the hole, not into it.
    • Unless it relates to how Minou was going to pay for the flute lessons.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: In the very first challenge, Morreski pulls this on Jake.
  Morreski: I am not sharpest knife in cupboard, but I not born tomorrow.
• Oh, Crap!: Jake, when he realizes that the losers are going to vote on who wins the mansion, right after he badmouths them.
• Older Than They Look: Bobbie hides it well, but she is over 50 years old.
• Only One Name: Almost everyone is known only by their first names; Jake reveals his last name is Oswald or Oswalt (the closed captioning says "Oswald". The Other Wiki says "Oswalt").
  • Bobbie's real name is Cassandra Zimmerman.
  • Doctor D.'s real name is Dewey Dewson.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: When Claude blows the budget on a big advertising campaign, the show needs to cut back, and changes to a 2D animated cartoon; and when a new sponsor is found, it changes to a home and garden show.
• Parental Incest: When the houseguests take over the show, Jake comes up with the idea of making a sit-com, with himself as the father, and Minou as his "hot adopted teenage daughter"; while Minou agrees with the characterization, she is disgusted by the suggestive dialog.
• Pixellation: Ugh, Jake again.
• The Pollyanna: Chi Chi comes close, but even she has succumbed to temptation.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: Subverted when Jake beats Ray at Rock Paper Scissors; being a pig, Jake has hooves and can only make "rock", so he has to psych out Ray to make him keep choosing scissors.
• Potty Emergency: Happens to Bobbie thanks to a laxative-laced bottle of champagne.
• Pride: When Minou wins a challenge, the prize is her weight in gold, she refuses on the grounds she doesn't want to get weighed on national television, again.
• Put on a Bus: Claude
• Reality TV Show Mansion: The houseguests are trying to win said elaborate mansion, which has a main hallway with two twisting staircases; several bedrooms, some with their own bathroom; a stocked bar in the TV room; a swiming pool; a billiard room; a spa and casino, which the houseguests were not told about until the very end; hidden rooms and passageways with a hidden treasure; A TV studio; a complicated maze in the basement; and an elevator with a death trap in it.
• Really Gets Around: While it's suggested that Minou is the type to sleep her way to the top, she is only shown using her feminine wiles twice; once on Morreski, and once, which led to actual sex, on Chi Chi. When she achieved celebrity status, Chi Chi became this, until her My God, What Have I Done? moment.
• Refuge in Audacity: This whole show probably counts, as most of you probably wouldn't believe half of anything on this page unless you saw it yourself; otherwise, Jake.
• Released to Elsewhere: When asked what happened to Claude, Bobbie says he took another job offer; while she might be hinting that he was fired, Claude didn't like the job, and with the houseguests revolting, he might have quit.
• Rich Bitch: When Minou first arrived, despite getting the best room (possibly in all of Saskatchewan), she rants how it is still beneath her.
  • In the "Not Dead Yet" segment, the announcer explicitly stated that Minou was on the show because every show needs a "glamorous bitch", and she didn't disappoint.
  • Rico can fill the role when Minou isn't around.
• Running Gag: Several mentions of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
• Sadist Show: If it wasn't for Chi Chi, this would fit perfectly.
• Series Continuity Error: A sub plot for the musical competition episode is that Minou has no musical talent, and spends the episode trying to learn anything so she can perform, and settles on playing the flute; a previous episode shows that she already knew how to play the flute.
• Shout-Out: The fake opening for episode 12 contains several movie parodies.
  • Rocky Horror Picture Show: Ray bursts out of the kitchen cupboards on his motorcycle.
  • Soldier: Morreski tells Minou he is going to "kill them all!"
  • Campbell's Chunky Soup: Ray can't decide between a fork and a spoon.
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark: Rico runs from an enormous Chi Chi who is rolling down the hallway.
  • Basic Instinct: Being interrogated by Jake and Ray, Minou crosses and uncrosses her legs.
• Sketch Comedy: Episode 14 devolves into this, at least until Bobbie comes in to get the show back on track.
• Snapback: During Claude's run, none of the eliminations stuck.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: When everyone (except Chi Chi) is trapped in the maze, they let out a "What The F..." before being cut off by Chi Chi's oven timer.
  • Similarly, Jake's Bawdy Song in "Dr. D Plays House" has its more explicit lyrics conveniently censored by microphone feedback.
• Spot the Imposter: Morreski or No Morreski, a game show where each of the contestants is trying to convince Claude that they are Morreski.
  • Jake wins, beating the real Morreski, convincing even Morreski's own mother that he is "Morreski".
• Straight Gay: Rico, the producers asked him to "gay it up a bit", and he likes it so much he doesn't stop.
• Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: "Shakin' That Ass" by Doctor D., with a music video featuring Chi Chi, Minou and himself in a threesome; due to her legs, Minou did the ass shaking.
  • A remixed version starred Morreski, with Doctor D. relegated to "back up", and added Bobbie to the mix.
• Subverted Kids' Show: Make that Double Subverted, Bobbie tries to take the raunchy houseguests and make Life's a Zoo.tv into family friendly viewing. Naturally, it falls on Ray to drop kick that idea into the toilet.
  Jake: "Kids are watching this s***?"
• That Came Out Wrong: Minou, when Doctor D. interrupts her beauty treatment.
  Minou: You've never seen a girl get a facial before? Oh, that didn't come out right.
• There Can Be Only One: Initially subverted when characters extincted during Claude's run always came back; played straight when Bobbie took over.
  • And the winner is... Minou, or at least she was supposed to win when Claude had rigged the show.
  • And the real winner is... Chi Chi, but she decides she doesn't want the house and forfeits it.
  • And so the winner is... Jake, who was so frustrated over losing that he planted a bomb in the house, and blew it up.
  • And so the house goes to... Ray, who bet $100 on a 48,000:1 long shot that Jake would win, and used his money to rebuild the mansion and host his own TV show.
• Time-Passes Montage: When Chi Chi extincts herself, Ray goes into shock over losing his girlfriend and lies on the couch in the fetal position, while the camera shows Rico cleaning, a New Year's Eve party, Doctor D. and Jake playing basketball, and Jake, Minou and Rico playing music. Afterwards, Ray grows a long beard. Morreski then reveals it's only been 10 minutes, and Ray is wearing a fake beard.
• Title Drop: Being a fake reality show, the hosts do it all the time.
• Token Good Teammate: Chi-Chi, especially as the episodes go on, seems to be the most morally sound of the whole cast, Jake being the prime example
• Trademark Favorite Food: Morreski is almost never without a bottle of vodka.
• Tsundere: If you're on her good side, Bobbie is warm and pleasant; otherwise she's cold and heartless.
• Twist Ending: during Claude's run of the show, the entire thing was scripted, EVERYTHING, right down to the exact lines the houseguests were saying. Ray discovered the secret control room, and when Jake tears up the script, he frees everyone from the control, and they take over the show; Claude is kicked out as host, and the houseguests try to write a new ending. Eventually, a new host takes over, Bobbie, and tries to run Life's a Zoo.tv, correctly.
• Uncancelled: On Teletoon, the show was on hiatus in between episodes 13 and 14, which also divides when Claude and Bobbie hosted the show; as a result, some consider it as two separate seasons, with Claude hosting the first season (episodes 1-13) and Bobbie hosting season 2 (14-20).
  • It also doesn't help that the iTunes store lists the first 13 episodes as Season 1.
• Urine Trouble: Mystery liquid!
• Vodka Drunkenski: Go on, take a wild guess!
• What Did I Do Last Night?: In “Big Brother, Where Art Thou”, everyone, with the exception of Chi Chi, wakes up in an empty white room, and all of them respond with a Precision F-Strike. The episode ends with the other houseguests trapping her in the same maze they were stuck in after she insulted them. Chi Chi wakes up confused, and has no idea where she is and how she got there.
• Who's Your Daddy?: One episode centered on Chi Chi being pregnant and wondering who the father was: Ray, Morreski or Jake. Turns out it was neither, Chi Chi just had gas.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: When everyone else gets sick from eating Chi Chi's soup, Jake makes the greediest demands on an overworked Chi Chi; but when she leaves his room, it's clear that he isn't sick at all.
• Yiff: If you haven't figured it out by now...

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