How much good could a woodchuck do if a woodchuck knew kung fu? Not much.
— The series' tagline
Numb Chucks is a Canadian animated comedy produced by Jam Filled Entertainment and 9 Story Media Group for YTV. It was the brainchild of Jam Filled's founders Phil Lafrance and Jamie Leclaire (who also created Crash Canyon) and developed for television by Jono Howard (co-creator of the little-known Yam Roll and one of the main writers for Ed, Edd n Eddy).
The series focuses on two moronic woodchuck brothers named Dilweed and Fungus who live in the town of Ding-a-Ling Springs in a World of Funny Animals. One day, the pair watch a martial arts training video from the legendary kung fu master Woodchuck Morris and become obsessed with kung fu as a result. Inspired by the words of Woodchuck Morris, the duo decide to become great kung fu masters determined to protect their hometown from crime and villainy. Unfortunately for everybody else, neither of the pair are intelligent or competent enough to do very well at martial arts or at heroism. Naturally, chaos and shenanigans ensue as the two attempt (and mostly fail) to save the day with their astounding lack of skill, which forces them to solve just as many problems as they create.
The series premiered on YTV on January 7, 2014, running until December 1, 2016 for a total of 52 episodes over 2 seasons. The first season also appeared in the United States on Boomerang beginning January 10, 2015, but due to being Screwed by the Network there, the second season would go unaired on US linear TV and instead showed up on Tubi years later.
This series features examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: A lot of the characters are reasonably brown and yellow, though of brighter shades, but there are those with colors irregular for their real life counterparts like Quills, a purple porcupine, and Buford, a blue sheep.
- Arrowgram: In "Kung Fear", the Chucks want to contact the lint monster. Not having its phone number, they decide the best way to do so is to shower the town with Arrows on Fire with notes tied to them.
- Arrows on Fire: In "Kung Fear", the Chucks attempt to contact the lint monster by showering the town with flaming arrows with notes tied to them.
- Artistic License – Biology: One episode implies that woodchucks and groundhogs are separate species. In fact, these are two different names of the same animal.
- Autocannibalism: Quills munches on her, well, quills when she's nervous.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: All except Buford, and even he only wears socks.
- Big Dam Plot: Happened in "Beaver Fever".
- Big Ol' Unibrow: Buford is probably the only character in the show to have this.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In the "Driving Mr. Buford" scene where the Chucks leave Buford alone to meet up with dangerous street thugs in a crime-ridden part of the neighborhood."Look Buford, that guy's got piercings and a tattoo, and a tattoo of a piercing."
- Butt-Monkey: Hooves and Buford (though the latter sometimes has it coming). Dilweed and Fungus, to a lesser extent.
- The Cameo: Duck's picture appears in Hooves' high school yearbook in the episode "Chuck Be a Lady". Hooves can be seen with a jigsaw puzzle of the Banana Cabana in the episode "D.E.R.P."
- Catchphrase: Buford has "Oh, crudbuckets!"
- Chained to a Railway: In "The Butt-Kick List", Fungus is Mistaken for Dying. To help him cross something off his bucket list, Dilweed kidnaps Burford and dresses him as a woman before tying him to the railway track so Fungus can fulfill his ambition of rescuing a damsel who has been tied to railroad. Hilarity Ensues.
- The Chew Toy: Again, Hooves and Buford.
- Child Prodigy: Crispin, while just a little kid, has a massive vocabulary and is incredibly mature for his age. In contrast to his father, The Mayor, who is so brain-dead that he never speaks and is borderline feral.
- Also Buddy, who has a massive lab in his house which he uses to capture heroes and villains and paralyzes them so he can have life-size action figures
- Companion Cube: In "Huh Brother Where Art Thou?", Dilweed spends a year hiding in a closet to win a game of hide-and-seek. During this time, he draws a face on a bucket and adopts it as his new best friend (and continually loses staring contests to it).
- Cool Old Lady: Grandma Butternut.
- Counting to Potato: In one episode, the Chucks give a countdown that runs "Five...four...ten...blueberry".
- Deadpan Snarker: Buford can be this at times whenever he deals with Dilweed and Fungus.
- Disproportionate Retribution: "Ghosts Of Chucks Past" shows that Buford's hatred for the Chucks began after they unknowingly closed their door in his face.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In "The Jar of Power", when Dilweed and Fungus rub their fart jar for luck with their arm and leg respectively, Fungus rubs his leg in a rather... questionable position that makes it looks like he's dry-humping the jar.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Buford towards Quills.
- Dirty Old Woman: Grandma Butternut towards Hooves (with a particular liking for his backside).
- Dub Name Change: Dilweed and Fungus were renamed Bruce and Lee respectivly in the French and German dubs of the show.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Quills wanted to join the Pokey Awards but all of her quills got stuck on Dilweed so she suggested that he pretend as her but he's worried that that would be cheating. Fungus pointed out that it wouldn't be because it's technically her quills, earning a Jaw Drop from the two. Rendered moot when Fungus himself tried to join the contest in an even more unconvincing disguise as Quills than Dilweed's.
- Expy: Buford and Hooves seem to have respective traits from Squidward. Buford is a Jerkass, Only Sane Man and Deadpan Snarker. While Hooves seemed to have adopted Squidward's love for gardening, relaxing and being fancy. It's like Squidward's two sides separated and became individual characters.
- Fanboy: Dilweed and Fungus both adore their idol, Woodchuck Morris. Heck, in "The Jar of Power", they were willing to buy a Woodchuck Morris fart in a jar (which was really Buford's fart in it) from Buford in exchange for every single thing they owned.
- Genki Girl: Quills, to a lesser extent.
- The Ghost: Subverted. Woodchuck Morris mostly only appears on television, within hallucinations and/or visions, or Behind the Black but he did appear in person to perform in a benefit concert (with a sax solo to boot) to fund the Chucks' rescue in "The Chucks Get Stuck In A Hole" but as the title implies, the two were not around to see him.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Seamstress: In "Fan Boy", Dilweed gets flung through the air and crashes through a clothesline. He emerges with a towel tied around his neck like a superhero.
- Groin Attack: One of the scene transitions has Dilweed accidentally doing this to Fungus.
- Happens to Fungus at the end of a Banister Slide during a flashback sequence in "Far Encounters of the Dumb Kind", in which he collides crotch-first onto a finial.
- Grossout Show
- Hoist by His Own Petard: More often than not, Buford's attempts to humiliate the Chucks end up rebounding on him.
- Idiot Hero: Dilweed and Fungus, naturally.
- Idiot Houdini: In many episodes, the Chucks get away with mass destruction and hurt others around them due to their stupidity. Buford and Hooves are the main victims of this.
- Inexplicably Identical Individuals: There are beavers that look like Buford and Hooves in Beaverly Hills.
- Jerkass: Buford. He's pretty much rude to everyone else except Quills and seems to hate Dilweed and Fungus. He's also too lazy to help his grandmother with the groceries (although with the way she talks to him half the time, this isn't entirely unreasonable).
- Karmic Butt-Monkey: Buford is a huge Jerkass to everyone around him, but his attempts to manipulate and prank the Chucks always backfire and end with him suffering some form of punishment.
- Knife-Throwing Act: In "Couch Potato", Quills performs a blindfolded knife-throwing act using her quills as the knives and an annoying reporter as the target girl. As she has never done this before, it leads to a nasty accident (off-screen).
- Mistaken for Dying: In "The Butt-Kick List", Buford convinces Fungus that a giant tree is going to grow out of his nose at sundown, and it is played exactly like this trope.
- Negative Continuity: No matter what great disaster befalls Ding-A-Ling Springs, the town and its denizens will be fine by the next episode.
- Only Sane Man: Buford, despite being a Jerkass, seems to be the only person in the show who doesn't believe that the Chucks are actual heroes. Him and maybe Hooves. Quills is also aware that they're not right in the head but she's too nice to entirely avoid them.
- Potty Emergency: Fungus suffers from this in "Big Foot Fungus", when he, Dilweed, Buford and Grandma Butternut are on their way to Crispin's birthday party. As they try to find a pit stop, Fungus is subjected to passing by several instances of watery imagery, including a fountain, waterfalls, a huge toilet made entirely out of outhouses, and a kid pouring lemonade into another kid's cup very slowly. Dilweed tries to comfort him by telling him to think of something else... such as a leaky faucet that they had in their house that continuously dripped. At this point, Fungus gives up on finding a rest stop and tells Grandma Butternut to pull over so he can relieve himself on a tree.
- Rip Van Tinkle: In "Fan Boy", Dr. Sinister and the other victims are freed after being frozen in wax as part of Buddy's collection. They advance menacingly on Buddy, and the doctor says that he is about to do what he has been dreaming of doing for weeks: using the washroom.
- Shout-Out: In "Beaver Fever", the intro to Woodchuck & Beaver shares some similar effects with the squares from The Brady Bunch title sequence.
- Sibling Seniority Squabble: The Chucks couldn't remember who's older in "Age of Ignorance" and argued about it. It's Dilweed, by fifteen seconds.
- Slept Through the Apocalypse: "Far Encounters Of The Dumb Kind" starts with Fungus and Dilweed waking up sometime after an alien invasion started devastating Ding-A-Ling Springs.
- The Smurfette Principle: Quills, along with Grandma Butternut, are the only females of the main cast.
- Squashed Flat: Buford suffers this in "Intelligence Not Included" after being run over by a steamroller.
- Stalking Is Funny if It Is Female After Male: Grandma Butternut stalking Hooves is clearly portrayed as wrong, but for whatever reason he never bothers to stop her.
- Tiny Tim Template: Little Timmy is an orphan who wears part of Tiny Tim's attire, has a British accent, and also speaks in Third-Person Person.
- Too Dumb to Live: Dilweed and Fungus. Seriously, these two make Beavis And Butthead look like rocket scientists.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Buford, surprisingly.
- Villain Protagonist: Dilweed and Fungus in some episodes. See Idiot Houdini above.
- Volumetric Mouth: Fungus can open his mouth wide enough for Dilweed to walk inside.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode "Orange is the New Black Belt," beside the obvious, is a reference to A Clockwork Orange. Dilweed and Fungus are sent to prison after a ban on kung-fu and are subjected to a variant of The Ludovico Technique where they are forced to watch a movie with Woodchuck Morris doing un-kung-fu-ey stuff to redirect their interest to knitting. It didn't work as intended as they knitted violent objects, like a working rocket launcher.
- World of Funny Animals: With the sole exception, of all things, being a cotton candy man in "Swimming Fools".
