- Aluminum Christmas Trees: "Man has been using iron since the Stone Age." Is this just another Immediate Self-Contradiction and Anachronism Stew-based gag the show regular deals in? No, its counter-intuitively true. The Iron Age marks the point at which people could produce iron from ore in economically useful quantities. Long before then people were using small, precious amounts of it that they smelted by very painstaking methods or happened to find in naturally pure forms like Thunderbolt Iron.
- Fountain of Memes: Synthesizer Patel has become this in the music production community. His wacky claims fitting in perfectly with the synth enthusiasts' often offbeat sense of humour.
- "A synthesizer can recreate the sound of any instrument, except for the basoon, but they're working on that one."
- "As a matter-of-fact, they all come with burglar alarms these days, because you know, crime is so bloody bad these days and those bastards, they steal your synthesizers..."
- Memetic Mutation:
- "What are birds? We just don't know."
is often used as a reaction to weird bird facts or funny bird videos. - Whenever someone online fuses two words together into a new word, someone is likely to say, "Bless you, ants. Blants."
- "What are birds? We just don't know."
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The "Helvetica Scenario", caused when the structure of a calcium molecule collapses and causes a man's face to vanish, with the faceless man banging on a window apparently begging for help from a researcher who's passively taking notes, all while a horrific screeching sound plays. Even though it's very obviously a joke, the idea of a nuclear reaction that can somehow seal all bodily orifices is pure unadulterated nightmare fuel.
- The hand burned by boiling water in the egg experiment. Granted, it's special effect, but it can still make you wince.
- Squick:
- The Brain episode, showing us such biological marvels as the pea brain and a brain in a jar feeding on something.
- In the second series, Jack Morgan gets plastic surgery... consisting of extracting an eyeball, puncturing it, and leaving it stuck to his cheek. Thankfully it's restored by the next episode, but still.
- Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Despite the vast differences between the two series, most fans tend to like them both equally. (It helps that they are both spot-on parodies of equally differing eras of science education programming.)
- Tear Jerker:
- They killed intelligent calcium by depriving it of oxygen.
- In the final episode, "Thanks Hanks... Thanks."
- Even the usually-deadpan narrator seemed regretful when the ants drowned.
"Water, what hast thou donst? Bless you, ants. Blants." - Visual Effects of Awesome: The cheap, aged film look helped a lot, but even so, the blending of stock 1980s footage of Prince Charles into the final episode of season 2 is absolutely incredible.
