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  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The musical numbers that occur once or twice an episode, albeit on purpose. A notable one is when everyone starts singing conversational French after ordering a croissant.
    • Perhaps the ultimate example is "Oh Dance, Baby", where Bret starts singing karaoke, entirely in Korean, about the difficulty of being in love. Or something.
      • The karaoke number is a reference to an earlier joke in the episode, where Murray got the guys an off-screen "gig" at open-mic karaoke night.
    • Sometimes this even happens within a song, like with Dave's completely out-of-the-blue rap verse in Sugarlumps.
    • Interestingly, Mushroom Samba song Prince of Parties is not one: in fact, it is actually probably the only song in the series that is directly referenced in a later episode: "If you party with the party prince, you get two complimentary after-dinner mints!" sings Bret, wearing the costume from Prince of Parties, in the second-season song Sugarlumps. A BLAM referencing another BLAM... so meta...
      • All the sudden song numbers seem to exist in the same alternate reality, or rather in Bret and Jemaine's heads. Word of God says they have No Social Skills, but can communicate exactly what they're thinking through their songs.
    • The wallpaper-skin reference from I Told You I Was Freaky is shown to have actually happened shortly after the song ends.
  • Cult Classic: Though nominated for an Emmy, the show never achieved widespread fame or attention due to its particularly oddball sense of humor, and the series ended after just two short seasons. Fortunately that didn't stop the show and band from gaining such a devoted fanbase that when the duo begins one of their infrequent tours, tickets typically sell out in minutes.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Murray, due to his tendency to dominate almost every scene he appears in.
    • On an equal level of scene-stealing, Dave.
  • Fridge Brilliance:
    • In the song "Hurt Feelings", Jemaine laments about how his family forgot to call him on his birthday. His next line in the song is "The day after my birthday is not my birthday, mom." At first, this just seems tragically hilarious. However, New Zealand is 17-18 hours ahead of the USA's east coast. Ergo, she actually called him two days after his birthday!
    • The rhyming structure of the song "Carol Brown" actually foreshadows the episode's ending: Keitha was nothing but a thief... a.
  • Harsher in Hindsight
    • During his lifetime, "Bowie" was just a silly little pastiche written because they couldn't get the man himself to cameo. Now that he's passed, it's more like an affectionate tribute after he ascended to a higher plane of existence. Even sadder is he died on Jemaine's birthday.
    • In-Universe. Jemaine dumps a woman with a fetish for Art Garfunkel impersonators, only to realize that the whole thing was pretty kinky for him too after it's too late.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • "Hurt Feelings" is all based around the joke that rap is the last genre where you'd hear a song about getting your feelings hurt. Nine years later, rapper Mac Miller, who, along with Drake and Post Malone, was part of the growing trend of "emo rap," released an album with a song also called "Hurt Feelings."
    • Kristen Wiig is cast as a love interest to the guys, who aren't sure if her name is "Barbara" or "Brah-brah". In Wonder Woman 1984, her character's name is in fact "Barbara".
  • Ho Yay:
    • Pops up in Jemaine's "Bret, You've Got it Going On" song: "Why can't a heterosexual guy tell a heterosexual guy that he thinks his booty is fly?" Not to mention the fact that Jemaine confessed in the song to putting a wig on a sleeping Bret and spooning him.
    • Then there's this line from "Sally Returns", when Bret is tickling Coco:
    Jemaine: Hey, Bret, how come you don't tickle me anymore?
    • In "New Fans", when a woman wants to have a threesome with Jemaine and Bret, Bret is willing to stay and have sex if and only if Jemaine is there too. Later, we find out that they did end up having the threesome.
    Bret: I won't do it.
    Jemaine: What, you're not doing it?
    Bret: No way.
    Jemaine: Well, if you're not doing it, I might do it.
    Bret: Are you gonna do it?
    Jemaine: Yeah, why not? I'm gonna go for it.
    Bret: Okay, let's do it.
    Jemaine: No, don't do it. What? Don't do it. I'm gonna do it.
    Bret: Okay, let's do it.
    Jemaine: I'm not gonna do it if you do it. Are you doing it?
    Bret: You're not doing it?
    Jemaine: No.
    Bret: Okay, I won't do it.
    • Their cultural tastes are a bit suspect as well: their role models are David Bowie and Prince, both known for their androgyny, and Bret's favourite film is the notoriously homoerotic Top Gun.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Arguably, Albi the Racist Dragon.
  • Nightmare Fuel: This show is light on scares but Bret as a singing severed head at the end of "Petrov, Yelena and Me" is sort of disturbing.
  • Retroactive Recognition
  • Special Effect Failure: Deliberately used for humor in the music video for "Ladies of the World" (not to be confused with the segment of the show set to the same song): Any time the video calls for either of the duo to do a rollerskating stunt while lip-syncing or otherwise facing the camera, it's clearly a stunt double with one of their faces digitally pasted on.
  • Stoic Woobie: Bret and Jemaine seem to experience nothing but failure over the course of the series, yet they're completely nonchalant up until the final episode.
  • Tearjerker: Now has its own page.

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