YMMV / Freakazoid!

• Adaptation Displacement: How many kids recognized the "Sneaking Song" from "The Island of Doctor Mystico" as "Carefully on Tiptoe Stealing" from H.M.S. Pinafore? Humorously enough, Paul Rugg would later direct an amateur production of it!
• Adorkable:
  • Dexter has the nervous and socially awkward traits that tend to make nerdy characters like him likable.
  • One of the few traits Freakazoid shares with Dexter is his dorkiness, albeit more with an eye for pop culture.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The ending of the "Fatman and Boy Blubber" sketch can be interpreted as either Fatman and Boy Blubber bullying Louis for his food right after defending him from bullies picking on him for his obesity or forcibly trying to confiscate Louis' sweet buns so that he has a better chance at being physically healthy.
• Base-Breaking Character: Steff. Some fans like her, others can't stand her (mainly because of her Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and Loves My Alter Ego attitude).
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • In a show this nutty, there's bound to be some. Most notably, any Cutaway Gag cutting to some live-action Stock Footage.
  • "The Chip, Part 2" ended with a video of a man wrestling a bear for no reason, if only because Mr. Jack Valenti said it would be featured in the story's prologue.
  • Whenever Cosgrove appears, it's usually so he can invite Freakazoid out to random activities mid-adventure, and then remind Freakazoid to get back to the plot.
• Crazy Is Cool: Freakazoid. He's such a lunatic, even his theme song feels the need to warn you. He's no less awesome for it.
• Cult Classic: The show was not immensely popular on its original run, but was Vindicated by Reruns (thanks to Cartoon Network) and has a pretty damn massive fanbase for a cartoon its age in the modern day.
• Discredited Meme: Candle Jack is discre--Okay, in all seriousness the meme is often regarded as low hanging fruit humor-wise and can cause a text discussion of Freakizoid to devolve into cut-off nonsense. While people still like Candle Jack, a lot are also tired of him and his meme, and nowadays the more generally accepted version is Candlejack appearing to say something in spoiler tags, whether that be turning the initial text into a mid-sentence Non Sequitur or just saying his piece after the last period. Fair enough!
• Ending Fatigue: As noted on the audio commentary, there are several points where "Handman" could've ended, but the short kept going anyway. Tom Ruegger (who wrote it) copped to this trope, but Paul Rugg sincerely believed it made the short funny and that it freed them up to be as silly as possible in later episodes.
  Paul Rugg: If Steven said this was okay, we were golden.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The great Sergeant Mike Cosgrove's underplaying everything is as funny (if not more) than Large Ham Freakazoid.
  • Candle Jack made a big enough impact to spawn his own me- Hey! Didn't you read the entry above? But yeah, I have loyal fans. Thank you very much.
  • Freakazette has quite the fanbase and tons of fanart despite having no lines and only appearing for all of three seconds in the show.
  • Mystico only appeared for about half of an episode, but is regarded as one of the most memorable one-off villains for how utterly loud and bonkers he acts. Being one of the hammiest roles of Tim Curry certainly helps.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why is stone-serious, emotionally blank Sgt. Cosgrove friends with someone as off-the-wall nutty as Freakazoid? Because Freakazoid has enough personality for the both of them!
• Growing the Beard: Episode six, when the show dropped the skits and starting focusing on episodes with real stories in them that developed Freakazoid's main cast.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The end line “He's here to save the nation/So stay tuned to this station/If not, we'll be unemployed…” (and the shot of the cast members in barrels to illustrate this) stops being funny when you realize that this show was canceled before its time due to low ratings.
  • Similarly, Roddy and Freakazoid have the following exchange in "Two Against Freak":
    Roddy: Strength and speed will only take you so far, lad.
    Freakazoid: It got me a second season!
    Roddy: You can't count on that!! Networks are fickle! They can drop you like a man with big oak fingers!
  • The episode "The Cloud" has a running gag in which characters lament the closure of the Motor Boat Cruise at Disneyland. Professor Heiny reassures Freakazoid that the Imagineers will come up with something even better to replace it. Fast-forward to 2018, and the attraction's land is still unutilized aside from the old loading dock being one of the few designated smoking areas in the park, as well as a seating area for a nearby foodstand. The canals for the attraction were also drained and destroyed in 2007.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The series finale's inclusion of Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" has become this due to the crossover episode with Teen Titans Go! in 2020. It made the song true to its word. We did meet again.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Bob Chipman revisited the show in one of his Big Picture segments, and found it an incredible source of Values Resonance. He noted that at the time of the show, most people viewed the internet as the future of how we got information, not a completely screwy place as it was implied to be by Freakzoid being well, Freakazoid. Fast-forward and the Internet, while used for information, is a very screwy place indeed.
  • Series writer John P. McCann would later write the just as wacky but clearly more adult superhero show Lobo. Lobo also has spiky hair like Freakazoid. What makes it even funnier is that Paul Rugg would have voiced Vril Dox's assistant in a family friendly Lobo cartoon before it got retooled to the adult oriented cartoon that stayed true to the comics.
  • In the very first episode when Cave Guy is going on a rampage a narrator suddenly chimes in that only Batman can save the day… unfortunately, his show was on another network (Fox Kids) as opposed to Kids' WB!. Two years later, his show was brought back as The New Batman Adventures and wound up airing on Kids' WB (they had to wait for Fox's contract to run out).
  • In the episode "And Fan Boy Is His Name", Freakazoid tries to bargain with Fan Boy to leave him alone by offering an autograph picture of Stan Lee and then both dismissing him as someone they never heard of. Fan Boy only leaves Freakazoid when he finds Mark Hamill signing autographs. Now, when you think about it, the routine was funny in and of itself in the 90's because Stan Lee created Marvel Comics, the biggest rival of Warner Brothers owned DC Comics, and Star Wars movies were distributed by 20th Century Fox, one of Warner Brother's oldest rivals. However, as of 2019, Marvel, Star Wars, AND Fox are now owned by Warner's biggest rival of all!
  • Freakazoid once said that the scariest thing would be if Sinbad had a second TV series. Well, that never exactly happened, BUT…
  • Candle Jack: Unexplained entity that kidnaps people who know too much, especially children? Didn't something else like that crop up?
  • The concept of Freakazoid being an internet-themed superhero rings even more true now that his particular brand of absurdist comedy is exactly what Internet culture has latched onto.
  • The Toby Danger short became this when not even a year after it was broadcast, Time Warner's merger with Turner Broadcasting made WB TV Animation and Hanna-Barbera sister companies (and the former eventually absorbed the latter). Hell, Lance Falk has admitted they used Toby Danger to demonstrate how Dr. Quest should sound during casting for the second season of Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures (since WB had gotten Don Messick, Dr. Quest's original VO, to play the Quest Expy Dr. Vernon Danger).
  • This show wouldn't be the last time Jeff Bennett voiced someone known as "The Huntsman"…
  • "Foamy The Freakadog" is a million times funnier when you know Paul Rugg himself had a similar dynamic with his pet chihuahua, Lucky. The irony of it hadn’t escaped him either, as he pointed it out on his blog back in 2009.
    Paul Rugg: Somehow fate has deemed it so. I own Foamy The Freakadog.
  • In the episode "Next Time, Phone Ahead", two clips of the Animaniacs intro are shown. Combine them together, and this becomes an intro that's similar to the one used for Animaniacs on Nickelodeon, minus the pitch-shift.
• Ho Yay: It's heavily implied the only reason The Lobe commits crime is so Freakazoid will chase him.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Lobe. He's thoroughly, unrepentantly evil, and kind of pathetically adorable.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Cosgrove is arguably one in-universe. He can stop any hoodlum by pointing at them and saying "Hey! Cut it out." He even got the Warner siblings to settle down in a comic crossover◊ with Animaniacs, which was recognized as no small feat.
  • And let us not forget, Candle Jack can kidnap anyone who says… DANG IT!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Candle Jack^ExplanationAn Interrupting Meme based on how Candle Jack kidnaps anyone who says his name out loud. The novel nature of the concept resulted in many people online deliberately cutting short any posts where they mention him, making it seem as if he snatched them away mid-sentence.
  • The "You wanna see something strange and mystical?" scene has been getting a lot of usage in YouTube Poops lately.
  • "That's so very very sad."^ExplanationDexter's mom's response to his statement that his computer defines his life. The line became a common reaction clip in response to anything one deems pathetic.
• Play-Along Meme: Candle Jack, from the episode "Candlejack", is a bogeyman-like villain who appears to kidnap children if his name is ever spoken out loud. This inspired a popular Interrupting Meme where fans pretend to be Candle Jack's victims by typing his name in a comment, then cutting off the text to make it appear as though Candle Jack himself has kidnapped them at that very moment. Sometimes, a Non Sequitur will begin from where the original text is cut off, making it seem like Candle Jack also hijacked the user's computer for fun. Did I miss anything?
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Dexter Douglas is Danny Phantom.
  • Roddy MacStew later became the host of The Late Late Show.
• Signature Scene: Freakazoid screaming at Jeepers to get away from him.
• Spiritual Adaptation: While he has made appearances in animated shows, this is probably the closest we'll get to an Animated Adaptation of Deadpool.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Freakazette. A Distaff Counterpart for Freakazoid who not only didn't get a single line, but only appeared for all of three seconds in the entire series, during the "Freakazoid and Friends" song.
  • There was a lot more potential for Toby Danger than just the one short.
  • Deadpan could have easily carried a whole episode, but she only appeared in one pre-credit sequence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The show never focused on the relationship between Dexter and Freakazoid, and it was unclear whether Freakazoid was Dexter unhinged or an entirely separate character (Freakazoid himself acted like Dexter was a different person, but still considered Dexter's family his family). Likewise nothing ever came of Stephanie learning that Dexter and Freakazoid shared the same body.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The pilot episode's depiction of the internet, particularly of how it was obscure and difficult to access.
  • The show is very much a product of the 1990's, with many references to Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Princess Diana, among others.
  • One segment involved Freakazoid doing a "test" of the Emergency Broadcast System. Two years after the episode aired, it was replaced by the Emergency Alert System.
  • And then there's the whole bit about phone companies literally going to war over Bo-Ron — this wasn't as exaggerated as you'd think, the landline phone business was big bucks back then and all the companies were very cutthroat about it; the rise of cell phones promptly saw the bottom fall out of the market in the 2000s.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show's more adult humor proved its downfall. The network promised to deliver the 2-11 demographic to advertisers. It flopped with them, but did well with the 18-34 demographic. Attempts to suggest to The WB to market it as such were completely ignored and the show was canceled as a result.
• Woolseyism: The Brazilian version, specially the hilarious Large Ham provided by Guilherme Briggs as the title character (Briggs states Freakazoid is one of his all-time favorite characters), who even provides some adequate translations - "Better than a Thighmaster!" became "I'm stronger than Mike Tyson!"

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