Follow TV Tropes

Following

Western Animation / Shaun the Sheep

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/p11117029_b_v8_aa.png
Life's a treat with Shaun the Sheep!
An Aardman Animations children's program premiering in 2007, Shaun the Sheep is centered on the titular Ensemble Dark Horse from their popular Wallace & Gromit short A Close Shave. This time around, Shaun lives on a farm Oop North with his flock, overseen by a dimwitted farmer and his much smarter dog, Bitzer. The series later got a Spinoff of its own called Timmy Time.

A movie was released in 2015. In this, a series of accidents sends the Farmer, Bitzer and the sheep to a big city (called, wait for it... The Big City), leading to some interactions with a larger temporary cast. (The teaser trailer, which takes a shot at Furious 7, which came out on the same year, can be found here.) The film shares characters, setting and a considerable number of tropes with the TV series, and is also covered here.

A second film, entitled Farmageddon, was announced in 2018 and released theatrically on October 18, 2019. Although initially intended to have the same release platform in the United States, Netflix obtained the rights and the film was released on February 14, 2020.

A continuation series (now subtitled Adventures from Mossy Bottom) premiered on Netflix in 2020, retaining the same format while introducing new characters including a hyperactive Squirrel and a rival farmer and his sheepdog. It later aired on CBBC in the UK in 2022.

The series has also had a few Licensed Games, the most notable being Home Sheep Home.

As with every other in-house Aardman creation, the first five series' of the show (as well as Farmageddon) can be found on BBC iPlayer (UK only).


    open/close all folders 

Oh, life's a trope with Shaun the Sheep!:

     TV series and In General 
  • Abridged for Children: When shown on Disney Channel in the US, most episodes were heavily edited and ended up being of very variable length. Most of the edits concerned the realistically dropping-strewn field that the sheep inhabit as well as instances of Toilet Humour. Some, such as the scene in "We Wish Ewe a Merry Christmas" where the farmer straightens the head on the snowman, which promptly falls off appear to be instances of Think of the Children!. Other, more inexplicable edits were made to fit the show to its allotted slot. In some episodes, the edits were so extensive as to completely break the plot, or reduce the length of the episode to a point where other measures were taken to lengthen the episode, for example by running the opening titles at a reduced speed. This was not a format conversion artifact, since it was present on some episodes but not others.
  • Accidental Bid: Shaun engineers one as the pivot of the plot in "The Farmer's Llamas".
  • Aliens Are Bastards: Played With. One of the Aliens is friendly, but kids of the same species are really annoying.
  • Amusing Injuries: In spades. No one is spared from the slapstick.
  • Animal Stereotypes: The farm animals have about human-level intelligence, but the sheep are dim and easily led, Bitzer regards his master with appropriately doglike devotion, the pigs are greedy and superior, the cat is evil, etc.
  • Anthropomorphic Shift: Shaun and most of the other sheep in "A Close Shave" were portrayed as more brainless, realistic acting animals with more subtle human-like traits. In the series, Shaun (and to an extent the other sheep) are almost on par with Gromit in terms of anthro traits, often walking on two legs, using their front feet as hands or making similar human-like facial expressions. The degree of shift differs between the "farm animals" and the likes of Bitzer and Pidsley. The farm animals are essentially anthro except when the farmer is looking, while both Bitzer and Pidsley have realistic behavioral weaknesses in the form of Bitzer's unavoidable reversion to doglike behavior (including the disappearance of his wristwatch) whenever a stick is thrown, and Pidsley's involuntary reaction to being presented with a ball of yarn. These flaws are mercilessly exploited by the sheep and numerous other characters.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Outside of a cameo character in one episode, none of the rams in the flock have horns. Justified for Timmy and Shaun, who are lambs who haven't developed horns, but even the older looking males such as Nuts are hornless. Played with since hornless rams, while uncommon, do exist.
  • Art Shift: Some of the character models for the second series, particularly that of Bitzer the sheepdog, are quite noticeably different. The replacements were primarily made because of a combination of wear on the old ones and technical improvements as well as the switch to HD video (making fingerprints and wear on the material too obvious). Curiously the third series onwards reverts to using models closer to the early episodes, though the smoother quality and Animation Bump is maintained.
  • Baa-Bomb: No, there are no exploding sheep, but Shaun becomes a human, er, ovine cannonball in "Big Top Timmy".
  • Bee Afraid: Especially when they play tennis with Shaun!
  • Behind a Stick:
    • Shaun and Bitzer hide behind a very narrow tree while trailing a fox who raided the henhouse.
    • The entire flock manages to hide behind a single bush to get away from a swarm of angry bees.
  • Beleaguered Assistant: Bitzer, though not to the extent of poor Gromit.
  • Berserk Button: Don't let the mother Duck catch you with her ducklings, or she will give you a Handbag of Hurt!
  • Big Fun:
    • Shirley is so large she gets wedged in sheepruns and between gateposts, not surprising for the Big Eater. She also makes for a useful trampoline.
    • The occasional Hammerspace.
  • Birthday Episode: "Party Animals" and "Happy Birthday Timmy".
  • Black Comedy: After the sinking of "The Boat", Farmer and Bitzer, recovering from exposure to cold water, watch TV. Bitzer immediately switches it off after inadvertently tuning in to Titanic — at the point when it's sinking.
  • Blind Without 'Em: The Farmer can't see without his glasses.
  • Bowled Over: Shirley does this to the rest of the flock in "Shirley Whirley".
  • Breakout Character: Timmy the lamb due to his innocence and cute design.
  • Butt-Monkey: Literally everyone on the farm. However, Bitzer noticeably is more unlucky than most of them.
  • Cain and Abel: In "Karma Farmer", we learn that the Farmer has a twin brother. OK, he is not evil, but merely a flower power guy who simply doesn't attend to the farmers duties, when the farmer goes on a holiday.
  • Camping Episode: The flock deal with an obnoxious camper in "Camping Chaos". In the end, it turns out to be a Horrible Camping Trip for him.
  • Cats Are Mean: Pidsley is a cat and is antagonistic to the flock and Bitzer.
  • Chick Magnet: The fox when he literally becomes A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. His plans are thwarted in part as a result of Shirley becoming an Abhorrent Admirer.
  • Christmas Episode: "We Wish Ewe a Merry Christmas", and the 2021 special The Flight Before Christmas.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Pidsley the cat disappears after Season 2.
  • Claymation is the production's basic technology.
  • Clothing Damage: Lots of it on "Wash Day".
  • Clueless Boss: The Farmer tended to be portrayed as such, and it was often only through the efforts of Bitzer that things were kept in line.
  • Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: The rooster crows at the beginning of the Morning Routine title sequence, and clearly views it as his job to time this correctly. Subverted in The Flight Before Christmas, in which a turkey throws a snowball at him and takes his place.
  • Combat Tentacles: Inanimate version played for laughs, when the milking machine goes haywire.
  • Comically Missing the Point: In one episode, the Farmer is dancing to a record as the sheep watch through the window. Pidsley attempts to get him to turn around and catch the sheep in their un-sheep-like behavior, but the farmer thinks his miming is just suggesting new dance moves, which he imitates.
  • The Comically Serious: Bitzer.
  • Conveyor Belt of Doom: More like Conveyor Belt of Launch Amusingly into the Air.
  • Couch Gag: The opening credits of Adventures in Mossy Bottom replace Shaun leading the flock in aerobics with a different activity every episode, and also have a variety of odd parcels the postwoman throws to the Farmer. The way Shaun does his hair and the way Bitzer is crushed by the door also may vary.
  • Crazy Consumption:
  • Crazy-Prepared: In one episode, Bitzer flips through his clipboard of ways to get Shirley out - including rocket powered and being on wheels until he found one where she's in a shopping cart.
  • Crossover: Apparently, one costumed character appearance in Japan had Shaun appear alongside Suzy's Zoo: Daisuki! Witzy characters.
  • Cut Apart: In The Flight Before Christmas: After Timmy hides in a present that is accidentally given to Ben's daughter, Shaun breaks into the house and locates a box that looks like the right one. We then cut to Timmy's view of the box being opened ... by the girl, who has sneaked downstairs early and taken it to her room. Meanwhile, Shaun find himself looking at a pair of mittens.
  • Deliberately Jumping the Gun: A Championsheeps short features this occurring twice. It leads to Shaun and the other competitors exhausted from their false starts...excluding Shirley who was the only one not to start too early, thus is not exhausted and finishes first!
  • Dinosaur Doggie Bone: In "Fossils", Bitzer digs up a dinosaur skeleton while looking for his bone. He tries to bite one of the bones, but doesn't like the taste. Later, the completed skeleton is stolen by a pair of stray dogs.
  • Disco: "Saturday Night Shaun," complete with Dance Party Ending.
  • Do-Anything Robot: The robot sheepdog in "Helping Hound" has a remarkable number of gadgets built in, including jet-powered wings and a robot arm holding an enormous hammer that pops out when it is threatened.
  • The Door Slams You: Bitzer in opening theme always gets hit when the Farmer opens the door. Averted at the end of the movie, when the Farmer carefully opens the door to make sure he doesn't hit Bitzer... and then happens anyway when a tired, confused Pig staggers out of the house after the Farmer.
  • Dramatic Gun Cock: Parodied in The Flight Before Christmas: When an angry brass band prepare to attack the Farmer for inadvertently ruining their performance, one woman dramatically cocks her trombone.
  • Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: In "Go, Bitzer, Go!", when Bitzer is in a go-kart race with Lexi, she crashes her kart and is trapped underneath it. He stops to rescue her, and she immediately steals his kart. Subverted when she crashes again, and after a quick glance to make sure she's not hurt this time, Bitzer simply walks over the finish line.
  • Eek, a Mouse!!: The Farmer even climbs upon the stool when he sees one in "Hide and Squeak".
  • Evil Laugh: The Fox has a classic villain laugh that's almost begging for moustache to twirl. The fox also has a definite RP accent, making this a possible rare British use of Evil Brit.
  • Extreme Omni-Goat: The goat in "Mower Mouth" eats the farmer's laundry, Bitzer's clipboard and pencil, a rubber tyre and a brick in addition to more normal vegetable fare.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Shirley.
  • Everyone Has Standards: The sheep frequently exploit or inconvenience the Farmer and Bitzer, though they tend to draw the line against outright tormenting them for cruel fun. The Naughty Pigs and the Llamas in "The Farmer's Llamas" have become the sheep's antagonists for this reason.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: A Running Gag on the show.
  • Fainting: Happens separately to the pigs and the rooster upon seeing Body Horror.
    • In "Camping Chaos", the pigs are already repulsed by the sight of a string of sausages Shaun pulled out from a grumpy camper's tent. When they see Timmy, his mom, and Hazel turning it into a jump rope and casually waving at them, they outright faint in horror.
    • In "We Wish Ewe A Merry Christmas", the rooster faints upon seeing a roasted turkey being brought for the main Christmas course.
  • Fat Comic Relief: Shirley. She makes a good trampoline, among other things.
  • Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: All animal characters, including the sheep, Bitzer and the pigs, can switch between quadrupedal and bipedal stance depending on what the scene requires.
  • French Jerk: The Magpie is portrayed as being French, with his body and wing coloration resembling a stereotypical black and white Frenchman's shirt and a French chuckle (oh-ho-ho!). And his habit of stealing everything shiny certainly makes him a jerk.
  • Friendly Rivalry: Shaun and Bitzer have this.
  • Fuzzball Spider: The spider in the episode...well, "The Spider" is just a little black pom-pom with legs and Aardman's trademark bead eyes stuck on. Everybody but Shaun still spend the episode freaking out about it, anyway.
  • Gasshole: The Flock, the Farmer, the Goat, and the Pigs are collectively this!
  • Groin Attack: The goat is on an omnomnoming spree again and Shaun holds the leash. Of course he is dragged along and collides with the assorted botanics.
  • Hammer Horror: Paid homage to in "Bitzer of the Black Lagoon".
  • Hammerspace:
    • Bitzer can pull a walkie-talkie out from behind his back, and pull out his thermos no matter where he is.
    • Shirley's wool holds just about everything.
  • Handbag of Hurt: In "Hard to Swallow", a jealous mother duck packs a wallop with her purse.
  • Here We Go Again!: At the end of "The Farmer's Llamas", after having finally gotten rid of the title animals that he'd accidentally purchased in an auction, the Farmer finds that he's accidentally purchased an angry looking rhinoceros. The end credits show that Timmy ends up befriending the rhino.
  • Hero Antagonist: Bitzer during some of the flock's mischievous moments. He just wants to keep things in order for the Farmer, and is usually fairly friendly to Shaun and the others when they aren't causing trouble for him. Since he's usually the Butt-Monkey in these moments it tends to double as Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist.
  • Hiccup Hijinks: Appropriately enough, the episode title is "Hiccups."
  • Hidden Depths: While Shirley is generally considered to be a Living Doorstop or Big Eater, she switches role to The Big Guy in "Lock Out", nailing Pidsley to the wall with a twirl of a hammer, and to Secretly Wealthy in "In The Doghouse" where she contributes several large wads of cash to pay for Bitzer's new deluxe kennel, while all of the other sheep, having no idea of even the concept of money, have contributed buttons, etc.
  • Humanlike Hand Anatomy: Starting from the second series, Shaun's front hooves have started looking decidedly more handlike while he is standing on his hind legs.
  • I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Shaun dreams of being the first sheep on the Moon until awakened - twice - by Shirley's snoring!
  • Idiot Houdini: No matter what the flock does, Shaun and Bitzer always save them in the end, and generally end up inconveniencing the farmer as well.
  • Instant Home Delivery: Not quite instant, but in the episode "Express Delivery", as soon as Bitzer orders the Farmer's new glasses online, the computer screen shows a graphic of the post van making its way to the farm, like a "track my pizza" app. When the sheep run out to stop it, it turns out to already be within a few miles.
  • Intellectual Animal: Practically everyone on the farm. Curiously, they all fake being dumb animals while in front of the Farmer, except for Bitzer, who doesn't hide using a clipboard to track the sheep or taking his lunch with a thermos of coffee. Consider this is a world where Gromit can be arrested for sheep murder (as opposed to being put down) and publishers print Electronics For Dogs handyman books. Dogs are expected to act more like humans. Besides, if the farmer knew the sheep were (on the whole) just as intelligent as Bitzer but much less loyal, he'd probably put a stop to their adventures.
    • In at least one case, the pigs communicate intellectually with the Farmer, convincing him to let them take over while Bitzer is ill, suggesting he is aware of the animals' capability to some degree (or is merely too air headed to bother). Leads to a case of Laser-Guided Karma since it is also a very rare case the Farmer discovers an animal's misbehavior after the pigs cause a riot with their power, compared to the more good-natured mischief of the sheep.
  • Jerkass:
    • The Naughty Pigs, their sty is often considered out of bounds for the flock.
    • The Llamas in "The Farmer's Llamas" are even worse than the pigs. They outright bully all the other animals, even the pigs, Bitzer and the Farmer. They also wreck everything without a care, and when Shaun tries to stop them, they turn on him with clear intent of physical harm.
  • Jerkass Ball: Shaun in "The Farmer's Llamas", the plot is caused by him having a more mean-spirited sense of humor than usual and hanging around with the aforementioned llamas, to the point of tricking the farmer into buying them in an auction. However he has a Jerkass Realization when the llamas take their behavior too far and even the other sheep are outraged with him.
  • Kids Are Cruel: Shaun and the rest of the farm animals don't have good experience with children.
    • The Farmer's niece is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing that gets the animals into trouble with the Farmer.
    • The alien children from "Alien Encounters".
    • In "Farm Park", the kids abuse the heck out of the farm animals, causing them, even the Farmer himself to hide in fear.
    • Downplayed with Ella in "The Flight Before Christmas". Despite trying to catch the sheep, Timmy sees her as a lonely little girl and gives her a present to make her happy.
  • Knife Outline: In "The Magpie", Shaun's electromagnet, as a collateral, lets the assorted cutlery loose on the farmer, who only narrowly averts a Groin Attack.
  • Last-Second Joke Problem: "The Dog Show" ends with the Farmer driving off and appearing to have gotten away with stealing the trophy after he is caught trying to pass Shaun off as a dog... until the usual ending music is interrupted by police car sirens.
  • Leitmotif: When the Farmer appears, a tuba is played. This is whenever the Theme Tune, other background music, or even a Standard Snippet is used.
  • Living Doorstop
    • Shirley, due to her knack for standing still and eating while oblivious to the world around her.
    • Timmy, who over the course of the two seasons has been used as a paintbrush, chalkboard eraser, table, plug for a ship's horn, pillow, curling stone, and handkerchief.
  • Lookalike Lovers: Lola, Shaun's one-episode love interest from "Two's Company", is basically a female version of Shaun, the key difference being a long blonde mane and eyelashes. This being Claymation, her body was in fact probably quite literally a spare copy of Shaun's.
  • Loud Sleeper Gag: One episode involves the sheep trying to get Shirley to stop snoring or muffle the sound of her snores so they can get some sleep.
  • Loveable Rogue: Shaun. His schemes often involve screwing the Farmer or Bitzer in some way, but he has no harmful intent and occasionally tries to do nice things for them to compensate. Usually the rest of the flock get in on this too.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: The bull falls for the scrap parts cow the sheep built to divert him. When he finally realizes he's been duped, he kicks it into orbit. Of course it comes down on the farmer, making it a rare 3rd party Love Hurts.
  • Magic Tool: From the animals' perspective, the Plunger appears to fulfill this role.
  • Mailman vs. Dog: In "Dangerous Deliveries", Bitzer develops a compulsion to chase the postman whenever he shows up. Shaun and the flock try numerous methods to try and help break him of it, but none of them are successful until Shaun does a roleplay with him as the dog and Bitzer as the postman to make Bitzer realize how it feels. It works and Bitzer is cured, even being civil with the postman. Unfortunately, the roleplay ended up causing Shaun to gain the compulsion.
  • Mama Bear: In this case, Mama Duck!
  • Masquerade: The sheep conceal their intelligence from the humans.
  • Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: While the characters make bleats, grunts and other vocal effects, there's no dialogue at all, not even from the humans.
  • Mooning: Unintended. In any case, the view of the farmers backside instantly cures Shirley's hiccup.
  • Negative Continuity: No matter what happens throughout an entire episode, everything goes back to normal in the next. Self-subverts this to an extent in that certain items (most notably hats) that are "acquired" in one episode will reappear in later episodes. Examples of this are the primary plot device of "Bitzer's New Hat", which has migrated to the sheep by "An Ill Wind", and the Russian army ushanka from "Sheepwalking", which also reappears in "An Ill Wind".
  • New Season, New Name: Series 6, airing on Netflix in the UK and US, is subtitled Adventures from Mossy Bottom. It is more dramatic than the previous episodes, with a visual language informed by the 2 films.
  • Noble Shoplifter: Shaun and the flock always leave a hooffull of coins and notes (or what they think are such) when stealing food from characters like the Pizza Boy or the Ice Cream Man. Notably, they do not do this when stealing the Farmer's food.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Directly averted. Shaun always wears a mask while welding, and any animals shown using dangerous tools such as chainsaws or jackhammers are always shown wearing hardhats, safety goggles and yellow safety vests. The show has discovered that this stuff can be funny in itself — especially on sheep.
  • No Name Given: The Farmer, the other human characters (except Ben and Rita in Adventures in Mossy Bottom), the Naughty Pigs, and the flock other than Shaun, Timmy and Shirley.
  • Not So Above It All: Bitzer is sometimes susceptible to this trope, sometimes going along with the flock's antics.
  • Obstacle Ski Course: In "Snowed In", the Farmer uses his house as an outdoor-indoor obstacle course, complete with tripping over the gutter and crashing into his furniture and cat!
  • Parental Bonus: Aardman clearly worked on the principle that parents shouldn't get bored when watching this stuff with their kids, and indeed Shaun has many adult fans who don't even have children.
  • Punny Name: "Shaun" rhymes with "shorn" (as in "sheared") in non-rhotic varieties of English.
  • Put on a Bus: Pidsley the cat, who disappeared after being a prominent character in the second season.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Bitzer, when the other sheep get the "Hiccups".
  • Remember the New Guy?: In The Flight Before Christmas, Ben is suddenly married with a young daughter.
  • Reused Character Design: The farmer is modeled similarly to Arnold Hugh from the short film Stage Fright, which came out a decade before the show premiered.
  • Rummage Fail: At one point during the football episode, the football collides with Shirley and is engulfed by her wool. While retrieving it, Shaun pulls out several other objects before finding the ball.
  • Running Gag: The farmer's blue underpants make numerous appearance, although never on the farmer. Frequently they end up on the heads of characters (usually Pidsley, although they first appear on Shirley), at which point they appear to spontaneously develop eyeholes, except when the plot requires that they don't. They also grow in size in "Lock Out" - Shirley makes use of them as a handy "cat-holder" when she nails Pidsley to the wall.
  • Samus Is a Girl: In "Karma Farmer", one pig wears a bra. The pigs being the pigs (and party animals), the evidence is inconclusive.
  • Sausage String Silliness: For the sheep, at least, when they use it as a jump rope in "Camping Chaos". For the pigs, it is Body Horror!
  • Screaming at Squick: The only cure for Shirley in "Hiccups".
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Absolutely none of the money-seeking adventures actually turn up a profit, such as an accidentally popular roadside pizza joint which lands the sheep a barrel of money, which they don't keep due to one of the sheep running out of firewood and deciding to burn the money to power the oven.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Very detailed King Kong sequence in "Supersize Timmy", with giant Timmy on the house roof holding an unconscious Bitzer while swiping at a duck that is circling his head.
    • Numerous montage sequences, including a faithful-to-Rocky training montage in "Shape Up with Shaun", a similar one in "Bitzer's Basic Training", and numerous equipment assembly montages (examples in "Pig Swill Fly" and "The Magpie"), all with appropriate accompanying musical accompaniment.
    • The pig does Inigo Montoya's left-to-right handed sword switch in "The Boat".
    • A sheep stands at the front of the boat with their arms spread out, re-enacting the most famous scene of Titanic... Until another sheep knocks them off the boat with the sails.
    • The episode "The Big Chase" is to a large extent a homage to the final chase scene in The Pink Panther (1963).
    • "Pig Trouble" makes use of the main musical motif from Babe.
    • Bitzer's musical accompaniment to the farmer's dinner date in "Frantic Romantic" is pure Liberace. The wink to the camera is also a rare instance of the series Breaking the Fourth Wall.
    • Astute viewers will note that Shaun's guitar amp goes up to eleven.
    • In "Off the Baa", the tune of "Nessun dorma" from Turandot can be heard playing in the background as the cabbage-football goes flying through the air, just like in Bend It Like Beckham. However, this in turn is a reference to the BBC's use of this music as the theme for their 1990 FIFA World Cup coverage.
    • The sequence in "Stick with Me" where Bitzer is running from a large ball of glued-together sheep references Raiders of the Lost Ark.
    • "Little Sheep of Horrors" contains many suspense/horror tropes, the clearest of which is the shower scene in Psycho.
    • Alien: Averted, possibly retroactively, in "Take-Away", where there's a discontinuity between the stacked sheep trying to read the map and the bystander running off in horror. The editing is very suggestive of this originally having been an "alien chest burster" parody that was either cut or written out before filming.
    • "Saturday Night Shaun" can be considered to contain either a reference to Saturday Night Fever or a reference to Airplane!'s reference to the same scene.
    • The Great Escape in "Fleeced". As with many references in Shaun, it's lampshaded by the music.
    • Fawlty Towers in "The Visitor", where the alien begins hitting his spaceship with a branch.
    • Futurama, also in "The Visitor", whose spaceship ends up running on sheep droppings (which are small, round black lumps).
    • Mission: Impossible: The show frequently uses a pastiche of the Mission: Impossible theme during some of Shaun's more complex plans. Perhaps the canonical example of this occurs in "Bathtime".
    • "A Grand Day Out" — Aardman gets self-referential in "Troublesome Tractor", in which Timmy has exactly the same problem with a power drill as Gromit did in "A Grand Day Out".
    • During the second season, a pastiche of "Yakety Sax", as used in every The Benny Hill Show chase scene ever, is played over some chase scenes. Notable examples in "Bitzer from the Black Lagoon" and "Cock-a-Doodle Shaun".
    • The first scene of "Cat Got Your Brain", showing the silent shadow of the alien saucer moving over the farm, accompanied by a low rumble, is clearly Independence Day-inspired, although it's technically a little more realistic since British farms do not suffer from Space Is Noisy.
    • Although not part of the series proper, the music video that accompanied the release of an extended version of the opening theme tune ("Life's a Treat" by Vic Reeves) contains many clear references to the music videos of Madness such as their trademark "nutty dance", fezzes and a flying saxophonist suspending from a wire.
    • The Web Game Home Sheep Home 2: Lost in Space has hidden Funny Background Events including the TARDIS and Wallace sealed in Carbonite. As well as a Hurricane of Puns of level titles including "Close Encounters of the Herd Kind", "Star Sheep Enterprise", "Baa Wars: A Ewe Hope", "Baa Wars: The Empire Stikes Baa'ck", "Baa Trek: Sheep Space Nine" and so on.
    • "Tour de Mossy Bottom" has the farmer play a donut-themed racing game taking place on a rainbow road.
    • "Pond Life" has the sheep's attempts at stopping the fly tippers with a trampoline suddenly shift to a game of Pong.
    • While gather parts to make a superhero costume in "Super Sheep", Shaun comes across a cutout of the the Bat-symbol, only to move it aside.
    • In "Space Bitzer", the astronaut Bitzer meets in space is revealed to be an elderly dog, who is an obvious reference to Laika.
  • Shown Their Work: In "The Magpie", Shaun builds an electromagnet to get the stolen metal items back from the thiefish magpie. Wait, is Shaun just explaning the law of Biot-Savart on the blackboard? Of course, that doesn't hinder the makers from applying a hefty dose of Hollywood Magnetism due to Rule of Funny - it works on all metal (the shiny stuff the magpie loves probably will be silver or aluminium) and in the end Shaun himself gets a magnetic personality.
  • Silent Snarker: Bitzer, and Shaun to an extent.
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Adventures From Mossy Bottom introduces neighbouring farmer Ben and his collie Lexi, who are much better than Farmer and Bitzer at everything.
  • Slapstick: Inspired greatly by silent era physical comedy.
  • Sleepwalking: An episode — "Sheepwalking".
  • Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Intellectual Animal (though the flock is often minus the intellectual part).
  • The Speechless: Everybody. The animals bleat, grunt and bark respectively, and even the humans speak in unintelligible Simlish. This slips slightly in the later episodes from the second season - the farmer's accent shift coincides with his becoming borderline intelligible (albeit for only a word or two) and Shaun's own voice changes slightly from "always a sheep" to sounding human in when it comes to screams, cheers, etc. The Fox also makes much clearer English words.
    • Even Talking with Signs is avoided, and printed material shown in the show is either solely pictorial or conveys no information through the text (which is often nonsense words, with letters sometimes mirrored or inverted). (The show is broadcast all over the world — Aardman claims 170 countries — and the speechlessness surely helps with localisation.) Curiously, though, the movies have a bit more English-language text in places, though not very much.
  • Spinoff:
    • This show is a spin–off of Wallace & Gromit, and has its own spin–off in the form of Timmy Time.
    • A 45-minute stage show launched in Cairo in 2015. It toured Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia and other Asian countries. A 20-minute show designed to play in shopping malls has played in Jakarta and Beijing.
  • Standard Snippet: Frequently used, depending on the theme of the episode:
    • La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) in the episode "The Magpie", naturally.
    • "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" is background music for "Party Animals".
    • The background music for "We Wish Ewe a Merry Christmas" is a medley of Christmas carols.
    • When the pigs fly — in a plane — in "Pig Swill Fly", "The Ride Of The Valkyries" is played.
  • Stealing the Credit: In "Shaun the Farmer", Shaun has to do all the work as the farmer is sick. Bitzer shamelessly claims it in the end...until the farmer discovers the wrecked tractor everyone forgot.
  • Strong Family Resemblence: In The Flight Before Christmas, Ben and Jin's daughter, Ellie, looks exactly like a smaller version of her mother, except a lighter shade of Ambiguously Brown, and with basically the same hairstyle, only a Messy Hair version without the streaks.
  • Summation Gathering: Parodied in "CSI: Mossy Bottom", in which Shaun gathers together all the suspects who had reason to steal Bitzer's whistle and then accuses each of them in turn, pointing out a piece of evidence ... which they have an explanation for. Eventually the whole thing turns into a big fight which Bitzer stops by blowing his whistle. Turns out he put it in his hat for safety and then forgot.
  • Superhero Episode: "Super Sheep" has Shaun inspired by a comic book to cobble together a costume and use a leaf-blower as a jetpack to defend the flock from the pigs.
  • Super-Speed: The squirrel on the farm can take this to Time Stands Still levels.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After the Farmer tasks Bitzer with putting his birthday party invitations in the postbox, he decides to show off to Shaun by throwing them in like shurikens. Sure enough, he completely misses with all of them due to not looking at what he was aiming at and ends up ruining them.
  • Synchronized Morning Routine: The opening credits show a rooster crowing. We then go to Shaun, Blitzer and the Farmer all getting up and getting ready for the day; with the Farmer shaving, Blitzer putting on deodorant, and Shaun blow drying his wool. Blitzer then stands to attention as the Farmer leaves the farmhouse and gets hit with the door in the process, while Shaun leads the other sheep in aerobics. Finally, Blitzer grabs a cup of tea while the Farmer unlocks the barn and the flock immediately starts acting like normal sheep. Two variations on the scene also appear in The Movie. Over the course of the series, more variations have popped up, culminating in Adventures in Mossy Bottom having the aerobics scene being switched to cycle between a few other scenes.
  • Team Rocket Wins: One pig is thrown out of the sty by his colleagues for giving Timmy his ball back. Shaun gives him shelter and does a My Fair Piggy routine on him. Seems to work...until the pig makes a pig sty out of the sheep shack and it all comes out to be a clever plan of the pigs to let the sheep look bad...and get the ration of rotten apples back.
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Played straight and averted. In a flock of sheep almost all the members will be females; besides Lola, all the sheep look like normal sheep, with nothing to point out their gender. Timmy's mum does have curlers, a play on a stereotypical housewife.
  • Tightrope Walking: In "Big Top Timmy".
  • Toon Physics: Many standard examples, such as characters being briefly suspended in air before falling, and various items being launched into the air to implausibly high altitudes, or staying up for an improbably long time.
  • Torches and Pitchforks: In "Supersize Timmy", although the trope is subverted somewhat by one of the "villagers" turning up with a lamp rather than a torch.
  • Totem Pole Trench: In "Take-Away", and also in the movie.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: The Flock love pizza and ice cream!
  • Tuft of Head Fur: While the rest of the sheep on the show have completely black heads, the titular Shaun has a tuft of white wool on his.
  • Unabashed B-Movie Fan: Both the farmer and the sheep seem to like low budget horror films.
  • Unconventional Vehicle Chase: In "The Big Chase".
  • Unstoppable Mailman: After the sheep clamp the postwoman's van to stop her delivering the farmer's new glasses, she decides to just deliver them on foot. The sheep don't make it easy, however, but she manages to overcome everything that they throw at her.
  • Unwanted Assistance: As the Farmer ultimately reacts to Bitzer in "Bitzer's Basic Training".
  • Virtuous Character Copy: The Robot Dog in Helping Hound is this to Preston from A Close Shave. Both are robot dogs who act as antagonists to Shaun, but the robot dog in Helping Hound is just strict and doesn't try to kill Shaun or anyone else. He also doesn't rebel against his human master.
  • Villains Out Shopping: Literally. Even the fox has to get his groceries from somewhere.
  • Vomit Discretion Shot: In "Shaun the Farmer". (And it would be hard to animate with plasticine anyway...)
  • Web Game: A Platformer called Home Sheep Home, with three sequels (all numbered 2, so maybe one sequel with two level packs): Lost in London, Lost Undeground and Lost in Space.
  • Wind Turbine Power: In "Ill Wind", upon seeing how high the electric bill was, the Farmer decided to build a windmill to power the farm. At first it worked fine, but when Shaun and the others started having fun by riding its blades, the wool of one of them ended up getting tangled around it, disrupting the Farmer and Bitzer's program on television. Then when Shirley jumped on, she ended up causing the thing to swing back and forth before falling off, causing the mill to spin so fast, it caused a power surge.
  • A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Literally, the fox in "Foxy Laddie".
  • You Don't Look Like You: During the second season, Bitzer's puppet was redesigned with more detailed fur and his mouth, chest and stomach were coloured white. The creators later switched back to his old puppet after negative reactions from fans.

    Shaun the Sheep Movie 

The movie version of Shaun the Sheep provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Abbey Road Crossing: Done twice by the sheep in the Big City.
  • Amnesia Episode: One of the main conflicts of the film is that the farmer gets hit on the head by a Belisha beacon, losing his memory.
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: Gender is the least of the potential problems, but when two sheep don a female Totem Pole Trench disguise to distract Trumper, it plays out like this trope, complete with a Kiss of Distraction.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: Shaun had become bored with the daily routine on the farm and wanted a change up in his day. Unfortunately, he got more than he bargained for when he and the others had to track down the farmer in the city.
  • Big Bad: Played with in the case of Trumper, the Animal Control specialist. While not responsible for the farmer's Easy Amnesia (as it turned out, Shaun and company did that by accident), his efforts to pursue the animals radically affect the plot and he becomes the primary antagonist of the film.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The sister cities of The Big City all have names translating to "Big City".
  • Book Ends: The film ends with the Morning Routine from the opening scene, only this time, everyone is happy with day-to-day life.
  • Bull Seeing Red: Trumper, wearing a prominently displayed item of red clothing, gets tossed by the bull at the end.
  • Captivity Harmonica: Played by the goldfish in the pound.
  • Central Theme: Appreciate what you have and who you have, because one day you will lose it.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The farmer's diagnosis report becomes crucial in helping Shaun and the others realize why he didn't recognize them.
  • The Coconut Effect: The sheep do this, complete with coconuts, when they are trying to get the farmer out of Big City via a horse costume.
  • Construction Vehicle Rampage: In the climax, the insane Trumper uses a farm tractor equipped with grabber, the vehicle that Shaun drove at the beginning of the film, to try to push the shed that has the heroes inside into a nearby rock quarry.
  • Contrived Coincidence: You can pretty much make a Drinking Game from how often this happens.
  • Counting Sheep: Invoked by the sheep as part of their plan to retrieve the farmer — they bring a section of fence to where he is and take turns jumping over it until he falls asleep (along with everyone else in the vicinity).
  • Creator Cameo: Nick Park is caricatured into the film as a bird watcher whose cover gets blown when the out-of-control trailer knocks over his tent. He also stands out from the other human characters, not for being more realistic, but for being modeled in the style of Park's more famous Wallace & Gromit series.
  • Crisis Makes Perfect: When Shaun tried to operate the tractor earlier in the film, he ended up trashing the barnyard. Later, during the climax, when the farmer, Bitzer and the sheep are about to fall in a quarry in a shed, Shaun manages to operate it perfectly in order to save them.
  • Cut Apart: When the sheep are carrying out their plan of freeing Shaun and Bitzer from Animal Containment, the two hear them working outside. However, when they pull down the cell wall, it's revealed that it's actually the wall of a prison cell. Shaun and Bitzer are on the other side of the alley.
  • Delicious Distraction: Bitzer twice. With bones of course.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Shaun and the other animals reach this when it looks like the farmer has abandoned them and they can't go back to the farm. Until they discover that the farmer had lost his memory.
  • The Determinator: A villainous instance; when Trumper gets really annoyed at being embarrassed by Shaun and the others, he becomes seriously dangerous and hard to stop.
  • Diabolical Dogcatcher: Trumper, of course. Averted by the rest of the Containment Centre staff.
  • Disney Villain Death: Subverted with Trumper, who first seems to be tossed into the quarry by a bull, but actually he flies above the quarry and into a pile of dung.
  • Easy Amnesia: Suffered by the Farmer, driving much of the plot.
  • Face Palm: Done by Shaun a few times.
  • Fakeout Escape: Shaun and Bitzer escape from their cell in the pound by drawing a photorealistic hole in the wall with chalk and hiding under the bed. When Trumper comes in to investigate, Shaun, Bitzer, and Slip sneak out behind him and lock him in.
  • Feedback Rule: The rooster crows through a megaphone and winces from the feedback.
  • Flat "What": One of the few intelligible words in the film - and not spoken by a human!
  • Foil: Trumper is this to the Farmer. Both of them are human and handle animals in their profession. However, the Farmer is a kind man that loves his animals like his own children while Trumper is a bully that picks on them. To highlight how the sheep view the negatives in each man, they only view the Farmer as a mere demon for ruining their fun at worst, while they outright view Trumper as the Grim Reaper as he's preparing to kill them all.
  • Genre Savvy: In keeping with the series, Shaun's a cut above the rest of the flock. When they all start imitating a random person in the fancy restaurant, Shaun realizes trouble is on its way when he belches. He frantically tries to stop his flockmates, to no avail, and that's where the trouble starts.
  • Great Escape: Aardman seems to love this trope, and it reappears in this film — the "prison" being an animal pound, of course.
  • Hey, Wait!: When the sheep leave a clothing store in disguise, Trumper stops the last sheep who's disguised as a woman...because "she" forgot her purse.
  • Inspector Javert: Trumper's pretty much this from the first frame. He won't stop until the rogue sheep are in custody, dead or alive.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Double subverted with Trumper. While his hero-wannabe tendencies add to his pathetic nature and are somewhat humorous, he's much viler than even the pigs, who were, at worst, annoying bullies. He treats the animals that he imprisons very cruelly in a way that isn't played for laughs, and in the climax, he attempts to outright murder the farmer, Bitzer and all the sheep.
  • Knuckle Tattoos: A dog in the animal pound has BARK and BITE tattooed on his knuckles, to complete the Pounds Are Animal Prisons look.
  • Lampshade Hanging: During the climax, there's a sign reading "Convenient Quarry".
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
    • One of the sheep wears Timmy the lamb as a backpack - visually a real-world Shaun backpack.
    • When trouble starts in the restaurant the pianist starts playing that classic tied-to-the-railway-tracks theme.
    • A QR code in the corner of the "Mr. X" billboard goes to the real-life Shaun the Sheep website when scanned.
  • Logo Joke: The letters of the Aardman logo are painted on the sheep (two of which are out of order), with Timmy as the star.
  • A Minor Kidroduction: The film starts with a home movie of a teenaged Farmer looking after Shaun the lamb and Bitzer the puppy.
  • Mustache Vandalism: The pigs to the portraits in the farmhouse while the Farmer is away. Played for Laughs when they panic upon seeing him outside and while cleaning up the mess, one of the pigs starts cleaning them off the portraits, only to accidentally scrub out a real one and paints a beard to replace it.
  • Mythology Gag
    • Scenes at the beginning and end recreate the Morning Routine that is the TV show's opening sequence.
    • At one point, Timmy disguises himself as a plush backpack. Shaun backpacks were the most popular piece of merchandise featuring the character's likeness (one was famously worn by Scary Spice).
  • Named by the Adaptation: The farm and its general location are referred to as "Mossy Bottom" here.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The marketing made it look like the farmer would be asleep in his trailer during the whole film.
  • No Name Given: The farmer is simply referred to as "Mr X", due to the name on his hospital bracelet. The salon's famous client is also never referred to by name.
  • Nobody Here but Us Statues: To hide from Trumper when they first encounter him, Shaun and the sheep stand still in front of a poster with two people in a grassy field.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Trumper appears to be at first a textbook stray-catcher antagonist, but when he gets out his special equipment and demonstrates its power by toasting a teddy bear with it, things take a much darker tone.
  • Oh, Crap!: Trumper gets this at the end where he first realizes that he's about to face the animals' owner. He then gets another one when he thinks he's going to drop into the rock quarry and then a bigger reaction when he's actually sent straight into a pile of manure.
  • Parental Bonus:
    • Look closely at the background of one scene, and you can see a poster advertising something called Breaking Dad. Another scene has two sheep in protective clothing experimenting with chemicals and creating a bluish substance.
    • In Trumper's office, there is a picture of Trumper riding a horse shirtless. How many kids are likely to understand the reference?
  • Pounds Are Animal Prisons: The animal pound in which Shaun ends up is pictured like this, with tattooed inmates and even an insane Hannibal Lecter cat. This is an effect of Trumper being in charge, because he is only interested in catching animals and doesn't want to see them adopted, even going so far as to kick a sign that reads "Adopt a Stray Day" to the curb. After Trumper's departure, the pound is shown to be a much nicer place.
  • Prisons Are Gymnasiums: The poodle at the pound is lifting weights with a chew toy.
  • Pun: The sheep chorus is referred to as the "Baa baa shop quintet" in the credits.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Trumper seems like this at first - until he kicks down the "Adopt a Stray Day" sign, indicating that he's more in it for the animal cruelty than to get animals out of hazardous situations.
  • Quick Draw:
    • Trumper practices his, in a Shout-Out to Taxi Driver.
    • Whereas Shaun escapes with a literal quick-draw gag in the style of the Quick Draw trope image.
  • Repeat After Me: To get them to blend in at the restaurant, Shaun tells his fellow sheep to copy one of the customers. Unfortunately, they copy every motion from dropping silverware on the floor to burping.
  • Running Gag: The Evil-Eye Dog, never changing expression from one scene to the next. Turns out he's a cardboard stand-up. The real dog escaped some time ago, Shawshank Redemption style.
  • Shout-Out:
    • One of the publicity shots for the hairdressing salon has the farmer doing a Wolverine pose with a pair of clippers.
    • The aforementioned Breaking Bad references.
    • Also the aforementioned Taxi Driver reference.
    • Trumper: crawling out from under the wrecked Caravan red eyes and all .
    • The animal shelter houses a cat who mimics Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs – in a film starring sheep and an animal control officer trying to silence them.
    • The goldfish in the animal shelter makes a dancing performance like the one in Fantasia.
    • During the credits, it's revealed that the creepy staring dog in the pound was actually a cardboard cutout, with a hole in the wall leading to outside behind it.
    • Trumper's red safety glasses in the climax have a HUD that directly parodies the Terminator's.
    • As "Mr. X"/the farmer's haircut skills go viral, there are blink-and-you-miss-it pictures of the farmer in style of Nyan Cat and the Doge meme. There are also parodies of the Obama Hope poster and Banksy street art.
    • With the city only ever being referred to as "The Big City", the film is literally "Sheep in the Big City''.
    • The Rottweiler with "Bark" and "Bite" tattooed on his paws references The Night of the Hunter.
    • The Celebrity with Hair Trouble bears a startling resemblance to Baby Ray in The Fifth Element.
    • The song "Search for the Hero Inside Yourself" by M People is played in one scene. It was also featured in an episode of Father Ted that centered around a sheep.
    • A group of characters watch a television which is emitting the distinctive theme tune of Morph, one of Aardman's early stop-motion animation successes (which had recently been revived when this came out).
    • One of the animals caught by Trumper appears to be Vince from Rex the Runt.
  • Spit Take: Right before the credits when the farmer turns on the television the next day and sees himself and the sheep on the news. Cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the sheep outside.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Shaun and his friends travel to the Big City to find the farmer. They are in effect Sheep in the Big City.
  • The Stinger: The credits finish rolling to reveal that the cockerel with the sign saying "THE END" is still there, fiddling with his mobile phone. As soon as he realizes the credits have gone, he turns the sign round to reveal "GO HOME" written on the other side and leaves. Seconds later, one of the sheep comes on to hoover the floor.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: As shown in the credits sequence, after Trumper is fired, the animal pound becomes much more humane and the specimens are much better treated.
  • Totem Pole Trench: Used by the sheep as a disguise.
  • Uncatty Resemblance: At the end, Slip is adopted by a bus driver who shares her snaggletoothed smile.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The plan to get the Farmer home at the end is said on-screen, but not in a way the audience can understand it.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: All the people in the city tend to cheer Trumper when he captures animals as they all hate animals as much as he does. The only people who aren't fond of harming animals are the workers at the containment unit who later change it into a protection unit
  • Voiceover Letter: Played with when Shaun finds Slip's farewell letter at the end. As he reads it, there is a voiceover from Slip — which is the same unintelligible doggy noises as everything else Slip says in the film.
  • Wham Shot: When the doctors are showing the farmer flashcards, he then sees one of a farmer dressed exactly like him, only for him to not recognise it. He's then marked down for "memory loss".
  • What the Hell, Hero?: This is clearly Bitzer's behavior towards Shaun for being the cause of the farmer getting lost in the city.

    Farmageddon 

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Bait-and-Switch:
    • Shaun and Lu-La spot a bike parked beside a dumpster. The next scene shows them riding in the dumpster.
    • When Lu-La tries to start the spaceship, the start-up device is missing. It seems like Lu-La has discovered this and rummages through the ship for an alternative, only to start whacking the controls with her teddy. It quickly dawns to Shaun that Lu-La is only a young child who has zero idea how to actually pilot the ship.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: Downplayed, but as a result of Lu-La being even more chaotic and mischevious than he is (and not understanding they're trying to avoid attention), Shaun becomes visibly exaserbated with her and tries to lay down the law. It takes scolding her in a way Bitzer very often does him to finally make her simmer down a little and take "No" for an answer.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Bitzer uses a cannon from one of Shaun's previous antics to stop Agent Red's mecha.
  • The Cameo:
  • Cassandra Truth: As a little girl, Agent Red witnessed aliens arriving on her planet first hand. She tells about it on Show-and-Tell the next day, only to get laughed at, and have been spending her whole life trying to prove their existence ever since.
  • Covert Group with Mundane Front: Agent Red's organisation is based under an automatic carwash. It turns out to have a sign saying "SECRET BASE" behind the carwash one.
  • Crappy Carnival: Most of the effort and expense in the Farmageddon theme park went on making an impressive sign. Once you get past that, it's a poorly put-together village fete with a cheap space gimmick (the coconuts in the "alien coconut shy" are painted green, the ball pit is called a "meteor pit" and so on). Possibly the worst attraction is "See the Moon!" which consists of an arrow pointing up.
  • Crop Circles: While joyridding in the Farmer's tractor, Shaun and Lu-La end up making a bunch of these. It's what inspires the Farmer to build Farmageddon.
  • Escape Route Surprise: Blitzer, trying to escape from the Secret Base, runs into a room and slams the door. It turns out to be the lunchroom with half a dozen agents present.
  • Hazmat Suit: All Agent Red's minions wear them, apparently at all times.
  • Homage: to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Particularly the concept of Lu-La trying to go back home.
  • Innocent Aliens: Lu-La is friendly, but very rambunctious and causes a lot of mayhem, seldom listening to any of Shaun's warnings to behave and lie low. It turns out this is because she is only an infant who unwittingly got lost while messing around with her parents' spaceship. She doesn't actually know how to pilot it.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Bitzer is even more of a Control Freak at the start of the movie, but he is right that the sheep are constant troublemakers. Shaun ends up getting A Taste Of His Own Medicine when Lu-La proves even more destructive and relentless than he is, and when both of them defy Bitzer again when he tries to figure out how to handle the spaceship, they end up crashing it and stranding Lu-La. Bitzer gives a remorseful Shaun a Death Glare that perfectly reads I Warned You.
  • Letting the Air out of the Band: As Also Sprach Zarathustra approaches its climax, the Farmer unveils Farmageddon. The triumphant chords instantly fade away as the customers realise just how disappointing it is.
  • Lighter and Softer: Compared to the first movie where Trumper was willing to kill the sheep just to catch them, Agent Red only wants to catch Lu-La to prove that the aliens she saw as a child were real. Once Lu-La's parents show up who happen to be the very same aliens she saw, Agent Red just hugs them and stops her pursuit.
  • Logo Joke: A Sheep plays a keyboard which makes different parts of the Aardman logo light up, in the first of several shout-outs to the "lights and sounds" bit in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
  • The Men in Black: Agent Red's organisation. Red herself sports the full dark-suit-and-sunglasses look.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Shaun accidently crashes and destroys Lu-La's spaceship when he ignores Bitzer's instructions and pushes the pizza option on the food dispenser too many times.
  • No Biochemical Barriers: Lu-La is able to breathe Earth air and eat Earth food just fine. She even has tastes one would expect from a human child, preferring candy and pizza, and being grossed out by Stock "Yuck!" foods.
  • No Name Given: The government agent remains nameless but subtitles reveal it to be "Agent Red".
  • Parental Bonus: The film is chockful of sci-fi references that will go over kids' heads.
  • Reactive Continuous Scream:
    • An interesting variation where when Shaun first sees Lu-La, he gives off a bleat of shock, which prompts Lu-La to repeat almost the exact same bleat.
    • Another one happens when the Farmer realises he's on the alien ship at the same time as Lu-La's parents realise they have a stowaway.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Several names and signs referencing sci-fi authors (such as George Orwell) are placed everywhere.
    • There are a lot of musical cues of the theme to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
    • The theme tune for The X-Files can be heard inside Black Site. It is also a password to get in deeper to the secret base, as the voiceprint security system on Agent Red's office is unlocked by whistling it.
    • To 2001: A Space Odyssey:
      • Bitzer spends much of the movie in a spacesuit that’s very like the outfit worn by the Pan-Am flight attendants in the film.
      • The Farmer would be putting Roswell’s Jam on his toast, but said toast has burnt, and is shot from an angle that makes it look like a black monolith.
      • When the flying saucer passes a space station, the incidental music plays The Blue Danube. When the Farmer presents Farmageddon, it plays Also Sprach Zarathustra.
    • At the Farmageddon theme park, the Farmer dresses as Zapp Brannigan.
    • Several to Doctor Who:
      • At the opening of the Farmageddon theme park, the sheep disguise themselves as Daleks to sneak inside. A clay version of the Fourth Doctor comes out of a porta-potty, only to run back in when he sees the Dalek!Sheep. Shaun even bleat's the Dalek's catchphrase. Both Tom Baker and the estate of Terry Nation get thanked in the credits.
      • The Blue Porta-potty is also seen spinning through space, just like a certain police box, in the end titles.
      • When Lu-La is looking for her navigator, she pulls out a Sonic Screwdriver.
    • Lu-La’s dive into Shirley’s fleece and subsequent emergence is perhaps the most family-friendly “alien chest-buster” sequence ever.
    • To The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
      • The supermarket in the town is called “Milliways”.
      • The end titles are in a style that recalls both the animated “computer graphics” from the 80s HHGTTG TV series (which were created by Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman) and the style adopted in the HHGTTG.
      • The end titles also feature a green planet with a grinning mouth and arms.
    • The government sidekick robot could be WALL•E's long-lost cousin.
    • To E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial:
      • The Hazmats are based on the alien hunters in the film.
      • Shortly after Shaun and Lu-La decide to ride a dumpster rather than a bike with a basket, the dumpster goes flying into the air, leading to a Full Moon Silhouette against a pub mural.
    • The guy in the spacesuit painting the outside of the space station might be one to the original title sequence of Red Dwarf.
    • Briefly heard on a radio is a snippet of 'Forever Autumn' from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.
    • Blink and you'll miss it, the grease stain in the empty pizza box Shaun looks at near the start is the Alien Writing from Arrival
  • The Stinger: A mid-credits scene shows Bitzer playing frisbee with the Flock, and the Farmer trying out his new tractor, which is subsequently destroyed by the aforementioned frisbee. The Farmer starts shouting, and Shaun, Bitzer and Timmy cling to each other in fear. The post-credits scene sees one of the Hazmats, who reveals himself to be Professor Brian Cox, and starts playing "Things Can Only Get Better" on a keyboard, only for Timmy to walk in and unplug it with a "Shhh!"
  • Stock "Yuck!": When Shaun is playing with the flying saucer food machine, he has an understandable "Yuck" reaction to the lunch options, but yucks even louder when the third option is broccoli. Lu-La agrees.
  • Weird World, Weird Food: The first two options on the flying saucer's food machine are a blob of stuff with eyeballs and a three-eyed snail. The third is broccoli, which Shaun finds even more repulsive.

"Baa"

Alternative Title(s): Shaun The Sheep Movie, A Shaun The Sheep Movie Farmageddon

Top