The most famous and beloved of Hanna-Barbera's cartoons that isn't Scooby-Doo, this one was set in the Stone Age—sort of—and based about half its humor on prehistoric versions of modern technology. Usually an animal was shown rigged to perform some menial task, eg a baby mammoth used as a vacuum cleaner, a parrot used as a recording device, etc. Said animal usually makes an Aside Comment about their situation.The other half was ordinary sitcom material, springing from the antics of boorish Fred Flintstone, who was constantly hatching insane schemes with the help of his neighbor Barney Rubble and subsequently getting them both into trouble with their wives, Wilma and Betty. Later in the series the Flinstones had a daughter, Pebbles; this inspired the Rubbles to adopt a son, the comically super-strong Bamm-Bamm. Dino and Hoppy were the respective family pet(-asaurus)es.Was the most successful prime-time animated series ever until The Simpsons.Like many very popular shows from the 1960s and 1970s, The Flintstones just would not die. It survived cancellation in any number of subsequent forms, from Saturday morning cartoons featuring teenaged versions of Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles (the latter voiced by Sally Struthers) through a pair of live-action motion pictures, all the way to a breakfast cereal which is still marketed in the early 21st century (and which is the occasion for continuous new Flintstones animation). Not to mention the vitamins...Is also going to receive a reboot via Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. No, really.
The various incarnations of the Flintstones in the media:
Animated Series
The Flintstones (1960 - 1966). Lasted 6 seasons, 166 episodes.
Especially in first episode "The Flintstone Flyer" when Wilma and Betty find out about their husbands feigning illness to avoid going to the opera, in order so they can sneak off and go bowling. What's worse is that Fred and Barney's scheme got surely blown at home in the Flintstone's house, where the two wives became domestically abusive. Wife beater may be considered a serious term, but not sure to say the same for husband beater.
Thanks to Character Development, they both became more sweet-natured, although Wilma isn't above hitting Fred whenever he behaves in an exceptionally bad way.
Anachronism Stew: We have dinosaurs and large mammals living at the same time(depends on your POV), along with modern-esque technology and culture. And they celebrate Christmas.
The Artifact: Ads for the aforementioned vitamins, being marketed to parents, haven't featured the characters in any form other than what appears on the packaging or the product itself in years (preferring to feature footage of active, healthy-looking kids).
Bamboo Technology: pretty much the main thing that makes The Flintstones any different from just setting it in 1960s America, this trope provides much of the humor after the standard sitcom plots and all the silly names. Cars? Telephones? Airplanes? They had 'em. Radio? Television? The only reason they didn't have any electronics more advanced than that was because of when the show was made. If one takes the Fruity Pebbles commercials as canon, then they actually have not only computers and robots, but Humongous Mecha.
Later spinoffs and TV movies usually update the technology equivalents to match when the spinoff/movie was made. Thus the late 1970s The New Fred and Barney Show featured CB radios, 80s spinoff The Flintstone Kids featured video games, while the 90s TV movies I Yabba Dabba Do and Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby feature desktop computers, VCRs, CDs and car alarms.
Big Damn Movie: The first film has ambition, loyalty, betrayal, corporate intrigue, and a climactic battle upon an elaborate makeshift Death Trap. An average episode of the TV series is basically just Wacky Hijinks.
Big Darn Movie: The Man Called Flintstone made at the same time as the Original Series. Originally intended as a multipart season premire, it was adapted instead into a movie parodying the hot Secret Agent genre.
Black Bead Eyes: Some characters, especially Barney and Wilma.
Bowling For Ratings: Fred and Barney are frequently shown bowling, either by themselves or as part of an organized group.
Broken Aesop: In "Samantha", after some ridicule, the wives are determined to prove they can handle a camping trip with Fred and Barney. They are joined by the secretly magical Samantha. The episode ends with everyone thinking Wilma and Betty outdid Fred and Barney, but as the viewers saw, Samantha cheated - using her magic to make things vastly easier for the wives than it would've been otherwise.
Canon Discontinuity: Dino is a pretty startling example. In his debut episode, he has a different colour, usually walks on his hind legs, and can not only talk, but can act and fast-talk people, with a vocabulary to match. At the end of the episode, he goes home with the Flintstones... and then turns into a dog with only the usual level of cartoon animal intelligence (in that he can understand the exact sentences people say and act upon them, but is never seen to be able to talk).
Childhood Friend Romance: If you go by historic timelines, it could be said that Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were the very first pair for this trope. Upon first meeting as babies, they were the best of friends and had many adventures as they grew up together, eventually falling in love, getting married, and having children of their own. It was even Lampshaded by Bill and Joe themselves during a cameo appearance at their wedding.
Crunchtastic: Their aforementioned cereal. The short-lived Dino Pebbles Cereal, for instance, used "Marshmellow Dinolicious" in their ads, prompting Dino to glomp whoever said it.
Darker and Edgier: The Flintstones animated movie made a few years ago called Flintstones on the Rocks. Fred and Wilma's silly cartoon fighting turned into them being a genuinely unhappy married couple, and the opening scene is them fighting in a marriage counselling session.
Doing It for the Art: As hard as it is to imagine, the first live action movie. For starters, unless they got John Goodman to play Fred, they wouldn't have even bothered trying to make a movie.
Driven to Suicide: A heartbroken Barney attempted this when thinking that the Rockefellers won their court case and were free to adopt Bamm-Bamm, by roping a boulder to his torso from a bridge. Fred saved his life, but caught the boulder by accident and wound up (alive, but grumbling) in the river.
Early Installment Weirdness: The show did not feature its famous `Meet the Flintstones' theme song until the third season.
Mr. Fanservice: In The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, one episode had them entering Bamm-Bamm in a singing competition. But he can only sing in the shower, so they solved this by having him singing while wearing a small green Speedo and soaking himself in water in front of all his classmates. Sadly it wasn't nearly as hot as it sounds though.
Said episode was also a Recycled Script of an original series episode with Barney having a similar singing problem/solution to such.
Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Because a Flintstones which only used creatures that lived during the Paleolithic wouldn't be nearly as interesting, although those kinds of animals are around as well.
Forgotten Phlebotinum: As a baby Bamm-Bamm had super strength, but later in The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show he never used it. It could be explained that he lost it as he grew up, except it later came back in the 1993 TV movies.
Freaky Friday Flip: A number of times, including once where Fred and Dino swap bodies.
The Gambling Addict: Fred is a compulsive gambler. Simply mentioning the word "bet" around him will cause him to get a crazy look in his eyes and start repeating the word over and over in a loud voice:
Getting Crap Past the Radar: Betty apparently kept her pledge paddle, when asked what it was used for she simply took a big swing and said "Whacko"....make of that what you will.
God for a Day: Well more like "Boss For A Day" when Fred is envious of his boss and the Great Gazoo turns him into a boss. He finds that it's actually a burden, since he has to deal with higher-ups, stay late in meetings, etc.
Hair Reboot: In the episode featuring Stony Curtis, when Wilma quickly gets herself cleaned up to meet the celebrity, four quick strokes of her brush are all that is needed to bring her hair to its usual style.
Happily Adopted: Bamm-Bamm is notable for being one of the first examples on a cartoon.
Hey, It's That Voice!: Comedienne Mitzi Mc Call (who with husband Charlie Brill were game show staples of the 70s) voiced Penny on The Pebbles And Bamm-Bamm Show. Mitzi and Charlie had the bad fortune to be the act following The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 (the boys' first appearance on American TV).
Hold Your Hippogriffs: The premise of the whole show is to displace modern stories into a prehistoric setting, so language was obvious to follow.
Horse Of A Different Colour: Dino is just like a dog, except he's a sauropod dinosaur; Hoppy is a kangaroo-like "hopparoo".
Dino's official species is apparently "snorkasaurus".
Identical Stranger: Fred's lookalikes J.L. Gotrocks (in "The Tycoon") and Rock Slag (in The Man Called Flintstone movie). Not to mention his robot doppelgangers in "Ten Little Flinstones".
Incessant Chorus: The end of "The Hot Piano" involves Barney and a troupe of policemen who keep singing "Happy Anniversary" to Fred and Wilma, much to Fred's annoyance.
Incessant Music Madness: Fred and Wilma find the perfect maid/cook, and everybody's happy—except that Fred keeps singing (badly) an inane song he made up. The hired help finally quits.
Possibly a sendup of the sort of people who coo over babies and find their every smelly fart to be evidence of what an exceptional child they have on their hands. "Oooh, look at him grip my finger! Feel how strong he is!" Well, this kid really is.
Ink Suit Actor: James Darren, Tony Curtis, Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York gave voice to their cartoon likenesses on the show.
Invisible to Normals: Gazoo is invisible to everyone but Fred and Barney, and later, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.
Intellectual Animal: Dino, in his debut episode. He reverts to a standardly intelligent non-talking cartoon animal in the next episode he features in and stays that way.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: No matter the series, movie or special, Fred always falls into this trope.
Jumping Out of a Cake: In "Frantic City", the cake at the Water Buffalos' convention was supposed to have showgirls inside. It had their angry wives instead, rolling pins in hand.
The "I Yabba Dabba Do" special played with this when the woman supposed to jump out of the cake at Bamm-Bamm's bachelor party walked out because she wanted more money. This leads to Barney being forced to substitute.
Man in a Kilt: Pretty much every male character wears a prehistoric man-kilt.
Meaningful Name: In The Movie, the character of Sharon Stone was so named because the Producers had hoped to get the actress Sharon Stone to play her (they ended up with Halle Berry instead). Which becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when you consider that in the 2004 Catwoman movie, Halle Berry's Catwoman fights a villain played by Sharon Stone.
Mythology Gag: In the live-action movie, Fred is mistakenly named as "Flagstone" a couple times. The Flagstones was the original planned name for the series.
It was changed to "Flintstones" because there was a comic strip called Hi And Lois (co-drawn by Mort Walker) whose family was named the Flagstons.
It has been said that Bamm-Bamm was inspired from Ubble-Ubble, the cave boy in the Ruff & Reddy story arc "The Chickosaurus Caper."
Nice Kitty: Subverted: Barney sees a Bantydactyl and cheerfully says "Here, pussy pussy" to it until it cheerfully opens its mouth and grabs him leaving only his feet exposed.
Never My Fault: In "The Astra' Nuts" Fred and Barney go to get their physical, but Betty gives the wrong address and they end up accidentally enlisting in the army. Of course Wilma and Betty blame them for "bollixing" it up.
Never Sleep Again: In one episode, Wilma, Betty and Barney are led to (falsely) believe Fred has an ailment that will kill him if he falls asleep. Also, he must not be informed of this or he'll die too. The gang uses increasingly creative methods to keep Fred awake.
No Accounting for Taste: Fred isn't a bad personper se, but he's not putting as much effort into the marriage as Wilma, who is often forced to suffer his tantrums and schemes. Subverted in one of the movies, though, where Fred had to struggle to get Wilma's favor back after a fight during a holiday trip.
No One Could Survive That: The Green Goose and his henchmen, as Fred and Barney trapped them inside the doomsday missile/rocket, which is launched into space, that Fred set it to. The screen fades to black just as the rocket is about to ascend into space.
The Only Ones: Fred and Barney in The Man Called Flintstone, when Rock Slag and the Chief were incapacitated, and their double agent XXX is really The Green Goose.
The Other Darrin: Hanna-Barbera voice actor Daws Butler replaced Mel Blanc as Barney Rubble for a few episodes in 1961 while Blanc was hospitalized following a near-fatal car accident. (The Hanna-Barbera publicity department, however, did not acknowledge this, and Blanc was still listed in the closing credits.)
In addition, Gerry Johnson replaced Bea Benaderet as Betty Rubble in the show's fifth and sixth seasons when Benaderet left to concentrate on her role as Kate Bradley on Petticoat Junction. Johnson died soon after ''The Flintstones'" ended its ABC run and would be replaced in 1971 by Gay Hartwig.
Alan Reed lent his voice to Fred for the final time in the debut episode of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics. He died soon after and would be replaced by Henry Corden.
Panty Shot: Pebbles in a couple of viewer participation segments of the NBC Flintstone Comedy Hour.
Wilma had a panty shot in a one-page comic in an issue of Scooby-Doo (Archie series). She's wearing a fancy new dress that subsequently gets eaten by moths.
Pretty in Mink: Fred is having some sort of problem, making him almost completely lethargic. Wilma buys an expensive fur coat of "genuine Siberian mammoth", knowing the cost will make Fred freak out. That and their clothes are most likely all animal skins.
Punny Name: Pretty much every character or locale on the show has one, based on some variant of "rock" or "stone." Also, "Barney Rubble" (nearly always shortened to "barney") was Cockney rhyming-slang for "trouble" long before movies were invented.
The Spanish dub version changed everyone's names for no apparent reason, but still followed this trope. The Flintstones (who should have been called Los Pedernales) were instead called Los Picapiedra (the Stonecutters). Made even stranger because occasional characters with the last name Pedernal DID appear in this version!
The original Hungarian dubs also renamed almost all of the characters (most famously Fred Flintstone & Barny Rubble to Kovakövi Frédi & Kavicsi Béni, and Wilma & Betty to Vilma & Irma, in keeping with the rhyming-theme the dub had going on), but the dubs of later spin-offs and movies restored the original English Flintstone surname. Could get confusing, since there were at least three kind of dubs, with wholly different voice-casts.
A Robot Chicken sketch parodied the phenomenon when a deliveryman rattles off a long, awkward URL mishmashing Amazon.com and at least three shoehorned rock puns. Fred looks at him for a minute and he says, "Look, not all of these rock puns are easy."
Scout Out: one episode features the Cave Scouts who all decided to go camping in the same valley that Fred and Barney decided to go camping in.
Show Within a Show: Several; none particularly important or prominent — just parodies of then-current shows. Captain Caveman comes to mind , in Flintstone Kids.
Jackie Gleason, who starred in The Honeymooners, thought the resemblance was too close for comfort so he filed a plagiarism suit against Hanna-Barbera.
Sleeping Single: The early seasons; although the show was the first animated show to portray a married couple sharing a bed later on.
Somewhere A Paleontologist Is Crying: Dinosaurs may or may not have coexisted with humans: one POV says that mammals that existed up through the Cretaceous were small and rodent-like. Of course, that hardly matters.
The Sponsor: Fred Flintstone once joined Eaters Anonymous, and his sponsor would grab whatever food Fred got a hold on while giving the group's secret call, "Gobble, gobble, gobble!"
Thick-Line Animation: The early episodes when the animation drawings were hand-inked on cels. Later on they switched to xerox and the line art got thinner.
Tsundere: Wilma is a Type B, a sweet and adorable housewife who only explodes when Fred goes Jerkass.
Turn Out Like Their Fathers: As teenagers, Pebbles is often a schemer that gets in way over her head and Bam-Bam is a loyal accomplice prone to urging caution.
Every couple to appear on the show, really, with the exception of the second generation of the leads.
Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm eventually got married and had fraternal twins... much to the surprise of Fred and Barney who were expecting them to have only one child (Fred wanted a boy, Barney a girl).
Vocal Evolution: Barney has a high nasally voice in the earliest episodes.
Watch Where You're Going!: Happens a few times in the series. One person is running, and literally runs into someone else because neither were paying attention.
Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Barney. By the time of some of the later shows, Barney is shown to be working alongside Fred for Mr. Slate's quarry.
Wild Child: Bamm-Bamm, in the live action film, was found with wild mastadons.
Wraparound Background: One of the most famous examples, and is cited whenever the technique is lampshaded.
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