YMMV / Fantastic Four: The Animated Series

• Awesome Music:
  • The first season opening theme. Bouncy, cheerful and relentlessly catchy.
  • The second season theme, meanwhile, is an orchestral theme that exemplifies Marvel's first family.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Chances are good if you grew up with the series that Beau Weaver, Lori Alan, Quinton Flynn, and Chuck McCann are the voices you hear when you read the FF's adventures, while Simon Templeman is the voice of Doctor Doom. Ditto for Tony Jay as Galactus.
• Complete Monster:
  • Terrax initially appears to be merely the Jerkass replacement as Galactus's Herald once Silver Surfer defects to Earth, but reveals himself to be considerably worse. Starting as the bloodthirsty tyrant Tyros, with an all-but-stated harem and a predilection for personally executing prisoners, he willingly sells out his planet and race—including his own family—to Galactus in exchange for the Power Cosmic, laughing and grinning as the destruction ensued. In "When Calls Galactus", Terrax grows envious of his master's power, longing to be a king once more, and deceives him into eating the poisonous planet Antos in an assassination attempt, leaving him near-dead; he then travels to Earth and holds the entirety of Manhattan hostage, forcing the Fantastic Four to fight and kill Galactus with the threat of suffocating the entire island if they refuse. When this takes too long, Terrax storms Galactus's ship in a final assassination attempt.
  • "To Battle the Living Planet": Ego is the titular Living Planet and a galactic menace characterized by extreme pettiness and selfishness. Confronting Galactus—who considered Ego a threat to the wider galaxy—and fighting him to a stalemate, Ego agreed to a ceasefire if the former provided him with thrusters to faster traverse the galaxy, secretly fixing them to spread death and destruction as he saw fit. Coming to Earth, Ego mistakenly assumes it is under Galactus's protection and causes multiple natural disasters on its surface, rendering Thor comatose when he attempts to intervene and later attempting to drown the Fantastic Four when they intervene as "vengeance" against his sworn enemy. A being so dangerous he forced Galactus, Thor and the Fantastic Four to ally with one another, Ego's only reaction to the Devourer's arrival was sadistic pleasure at finishing what he started.
  • "Prey of the Black Panther": Ulysses Klaw is a demented Mad Scientist who has proclaimed himself master of sound. Ten years ago, Klaw and his band of mercenaries discovered the hidden nation of Wakanda. Klaw demands the king of Wakanda, T'Chaka, gives him Wakanda's supply of vibranium, so he can power his sonic weapons. When T'Chaka refuses, Klaw guns him down and orders his men to burn down a nearby village. Klaw threatens to murder T'Chaka's young son T'Challa, but T'Challa takes Klaw's sonic weapon from him and uses it to drive Klaw away. Klaw returns 10 years later and begins to attack Wakanda with a machine that creates sonic creatures. Klaw intends to have these sonic creatures trample Wakanda into dust, so he can take the vibranium for himself. Klaw seemingly dies in a battle against the Fantastic Four and the Black Panther, but he survives and is transformed into a being made of sound. Klaw uses his new sonic powers to attack the Black Panther and Fantastic Four, and attempts to destroy a village.
• Continuity Lock-Out: There are some cases where the writers seemed to assume most of the kids watching the show were familiar with the comics, and thus didn't bother explaining things in detail. A big example is the Ghost Rider's guest spot. He shows up out of nowhere with zero foreshadowing, gets no real explanation about who he is, where he comes from or how his powers work, and then just takes down Galactus and leaves. It could count as a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, even Ben lampshades it, saying "I've gotta stop drinking Aunt Petunia's pink lemonade" after GR leaves.
• Growing the Beard: Season two. The first season contained painfully bad, low quality animation that resulted in the characters looking too stiff and making weird poses in-between a mediocre frame rate. Furthermore, the designs lacked detail, the colors used were outdated and too bright and cheery, and characters continually went "off-model". The stories were tired and clichéd and had none of the wit, drama or characterization as seen in the various Stan Lee comics. This was compounded by frequent herky-jerky lines of dialogue, over-explanations, and annoying supporting characters such as a pesky British landlady voiced by Stan Lee's wife Joan. The second season improves on all of these: a new animation studio results in better character designs and higher quality animation, the writing and dialogue become much stronger, and most of the annoying characters from season one are now absent.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In "Incursion of the Skrulls", the Thing is seen playing a video game where the Skrulls invade New York. The first things the Skrulls are shown doing in-game is blowing up the World Trade Center, a wince-inducing moment considering the eventual fate of the towers.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The ending of the episode "Incursion of the Skrulls" has Mr. Fantastic give the Skrull video game thing to a boy who looks like a younger version of Toad as he appears in X-Men: Evolution.
  • In the episode "The Silver Surfer And The Coming Of Galactus Part 2", The Thing says that the Fantastic 4 was going to Disneyland. In 2009, Disney would buy out Marvel Comics.
• Informed Wrongness: The Thing trying to kill Doctor Doom in "And A Blind Man Shall Lead Them" is played up as him crossing a line, but seeing Doom repaid the rest of the Fantastic Four by trying to blow up New York just to kill them, Ben wanting to kill Doom feels like it was the right choice.
• Magnificent Bastard: See Marvel Animation.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Puppet Master's historical abuse of Alicia's mother, and Alicia herself, proves him to be an unpleasant Starter Villain.
  • Terrax selling out his own planet, own race and even his own family to Galactus, then laughing as the destruction ensues and surfing away with a Slasher Smile.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Super Skrull" shows the titular enemy first draining the Torch's flames away, then burning him. And the result looks rather much like realistic massive 4th-degree burns, with Johnny lying smoking on the ground, his skin and tissues an even, featureless, molten-solidified, carbonized, black and dry texture. This impression is further reinforced by how distressed Susan sounds seeing it. It turns out that it wasn't really all that bad after all, naturally enough, but the first few seconds are still horrible.
  • Terrax selling out his own planet to Galactus. Then he surfs into space with a Slasher Smile.
• So Bad, It's Good: Johnny's Human Torch rap in "Mole Man" and Ben/The Thing's "Clobberin' Time" rap in "Super Skrull" are both ridiculously cheesy, but at the same time fit their characters very well. Though these almost certainly also fall under deliberate Stylistic Suck. Bonus points for Johnny doing an approximation of the infamous "Kennedy Kick" during his number.
• Vindicated by History: Though the first season is still looked on unfavourably, the second season's massive improvements have led to reviewers looking on the series as a whole much more kindly.

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