Secret Squirrel is a series of Spy Fiction parody cartoon shorts made by Hanna-Barbera in 1965 as the lead segment of a Three Shorts series that also featured Squiddly Diddly and Winsome Witch. It was later revived in the 1990s as Super Secret Secret Squirrel, in another Three Shorts format headlined by 2 Stupid Dogs. Secret Squirrel is a Funny Animal spy. Along with his sidekick, Morocco Mole, He Fights Crime.
Expy: Yellow Pinky is one of Bond baddie Auric Goldfinger. The name is even a synonym.
Eye-Obscuring Hat: Subverted by Secret Squirrel, whose hat brim almost touches his nose, but has two eye holes so that he can see.
Funny Animal: Both Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole, as well as a few others.
Hey, It's That Voice!: With Mel Blanc as the voice of Secret Squirrel, it's no surprise that he sounds like Sylvester in the early episodes, then later like Heathcliff with a lisp! Paul Frees, voice of Morocco Mole and their long suffering Chief Double Q, also provides plenty of voices in addition to Blanc, even using his Boris Badenov voice (of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame) for villains like Yellow Pinky!
Trench Coat Warfare: Secret has something in his trench coat for everything, but he doesn't keep it organized—this makes him too slow to put up much of a fight most of the time.
Action Girl: Agent Penny shows that the Chief's PA is a capable Emma Peel-alike.
An Arm and a Leg: Greg's motivation for villainy is that he's a gingerbread man whose leg was bitten off by the girl who baked him.
Anti-Villain: Platypus only wanted to fire his body scrambler at himself. If only he'd hooked up his extension cord to somewhere other than the Secret Service Solar Energy Station.
Arch-Nemesis: Of all the villains, Dr. O seems to be this.
The Cameo: Snooper and Blabber, as well as a bunch of other HB detective/mystery solving characters appeared in one segment.
Deadly Dodging: Used against One Ton, a rampaging panda whom Secret must stop but isn't allowed to attack. He then puts him under protective custody for endangering an endangered species.
Expy: Goldflipper is one of Yellow Pinky, with a similar voice, wardrobe, & the same obsession with gold. Since Yellow Pinky is an Expy of Goldfinger, this makes him an Expy of an Expy.
Family Unfriendly Death: Greg the gingerbread man gets eaten alive (onscreen no less) by a horde of hungry ants.
The Chameleon it seems. During his breakdown, he's "trapped" in a canvas.
Flash Back: Goes recursive in Scirocco Mole. Secret stops it before we reach evil sperm.
Freaky Friday Flip: Done in the episode Platypus. Minds stay with heads, but heads get shuffled onto the wrong bodies.
Furry Confusion: ...played with. Nobody seems to have pets, but there is a Super Secret Zoo. The exhibits are in prison uniforms, making it more of a Super Secret Prison cunningly disguised as a Super Secret Zoo.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: In "Scirocco Mole", when Morocco, dressed as Scirocco, is walking through a bazaar, he bumps into a guy selling walnuts, causing his stand to fall down in front of him, spiling the nuts everywhere. The seller has his hands together on the spot of the stand next to his crotch and says, "My nuts".
Not to mention to the mole twins' origin story which go far back into the womb.
In "Platypus," a change ray switches the body parts of Secret Squirrel, Morocco and the Chief, with Secret getting Morocco's torso. In reaching in for what he thinks is one of his weapons, he instead takes out a magazine centerfold of a female mole.
"Chameleon" has the chief at an art museum exhibition heading up security (for what is presumed to be the last unstolen painting) and he asks a female patron if she'd be interested in "undercover work".
After being assaulted by One Ton with his own "Psychology in a can" spray, a dazed Secret Squirrel asks Morocco if his Freudian Slip is showing.
Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Hardly anybody wears pants, as Secret quite often demonstrates when pulling open his coat to deploy gadgetry. Being temporarily naked doesn't seem to be much of an issue, either.
Though Chief did seem to be quite embarrassed when it was revealed the bison wore bikini briefs.
And, oddly enough, Secret removes a pair of shorts when changing behind a screen in Agent Penny.
Hey, It's That Voice!: This show seems to deserve a sub-trope to this, as it's loaded with recognizable voices. With Jess Harnell, Jim Cummings, Tony Jay and others, you're bound to think "Secret Squirrel sounds like Wakko Warner!" or "Goldflipper sounds exactly the same as Robotnik!"
Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Queen Bea, a (wait for it) queen bee, is infatuated with Secret Squirrel, a squirrel. Even with anthropomorphism, the latter is several times the size of the former.
Love Potion: Deployed by Queen Bea. Works slightly better than usual, although Secret falls for, amongst other things, his own tail, before countering the effects with the power of hate.
In episode "Agent Penny", he trades it for a variety of likewise indigo low-slung headgear.
In "Doctor O", he actually discards a smashed and broken hat...to reveal an identical replacement underneath.
When Morocco ends up wearing it in "Platypus", it's his nose which pokes through.
Non Sequitur Thud: In "One Ton", after the villain of the same name drops a desk on Secret using his Psychology in a Can against him, Morocco opens one of the drawers and Secret comes out, all bent out of shape, and he says, "Is my Freudian Slip showing?"
Portal Picture: The Chameleon loves to become one with great art. Secret causes him to have a breakdown by exposing him to modern, abstract works.
Puff of Logic: In Quark, Secret uses a dictionary to point out that quarks are a "hypothetical" subatomic particle, and makes the titular microscopic villain disappear.
A goof on Hanna-Barbera's part - by The Nineties, quarks had already been shown to exist. However, Secret could still disprove Quark: quarks are never found alone.
Pungeon Master: Secret is a constant stream of puns, and he's not alone.
Spot The Impostor: Played straight with Morocco and Scirocco Mole, each attempting to demonstrate that he's the bungling one.
The Cameo: Two Stupid Dogs are two of the anthropomorphic guard dogs for the museum in Chameleon. They also appear as their usual selves in Scirocco Mole, along with Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. Agent Penny has an "Undercover Pub" peppered with portraits of Hanna-Barbera crimefighters as well as a cameo by Snooper and Blabber.
Reversing the situation, Secret and Morocco star in a dog biscuit ad featured in a Two Stupid Dogs segment.
Villain of the Week: Aside from "Agent Penny", each episode had a different villain and was named after said villain.
And even "Agent Penny" wasn't a subversion of the trope.
Wacky Racing: Hot Rodney, although with only two characters. Subverted: Secret cheats as much as the "bad guy" does, and ends up losing.
Then again, Secret only "cheated" in response to the bad guy's previous cheating and Hot Rodney crossed a line when he had a thug kidnap Morocco Mole just to force Secret to abandon a race.
We Meet Again: Though Dr. O appears in one episode, he and Secret Squirrel have meet many times before.
Wingding Eyes: The reflections on Morocco's shades often do this; the usual squiggle turning into an exclamation mark is a common one.
The standard squiggles are S-shaped. S.S. standing for Secret Squirrel, of course.
Or Super Secret.
Would Hit a Girl: One Ton threw Secret Squirrel in drags. Though we're not sure if it's because he wasn't fooled one bit.
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