YMMV / Rugrats

YMMV tropes for the Rugrats series

Tropes with their own pages:

• Alternative Character Interpretation
• Harsher In Hindsight
• Hilarious In Hindsight
• Memes

---

For examples applying to the 2021 reboot, see this page.

---

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In the PS1 video game Rugrats: Search for Reptar, this trope pops up during the Golf game stage:
    Tommy: We just gotta get the balls in the hole, and we'll get a whole mountain of ice cream!
    • Not helped by the questionable look of Ice Cream Mountain itself.
  • Lil by way of Children Are Innocent or Irony (the choice is up to you) in "At The Movies".
    "I hate kissing movies. Nothing ever happens."
• Adorkable:
  • Chuckie is gawky, neurotic, jumpy, and sweet-natured. And bespectacled.
  • Stu is good-natured, loves to invent, and bumbling at times.
  • Chas is shy, awkward, nervous and wears glasses.
• Alternative Joke Interpretation:
  • In the episode "The Smell of Success", Chuckie gets his blocked nose temporarily cured and can smell things he never could before. He observes that Phil and Lil smell bad and Tommy says, "You'll get used to it." Some people think that it means Phil and Lil always smell bad because they play in the mud and trash but other people think that it just means they need to be changed.
  • In "Naked Tommy", when Betty snaps at Didi "the sixties are over and we lost" - is she suggesting that she and Didi were merely hippies in their youth? Or that they actually tried to be nudists for a while?
  • In "Chuckie vs. the Potty", when Lou mentions that it took him so long to potty train Stu that he nearly didn't get him into the boy scouts, is he telling the truth, exaggerating, referring to bed wetting, or outright lying?
  • Why did Angelica scream at the end of "Hand-Me-Downs" upon learning that she will have to give away hand-me-downs? Has she fallen for her own lie and now thinks she'll disappear, or is she just being greedy and not wanting to give anything of hers away?
  • At the end of "The Case of the Missing Rugrat", the two wealthy old ladies call Tommy "Bostwick", which was the name of their father whose painting was shown earlier, and then he makes a posh pose. Is he implying he enjoyed living the high life, or imitating the Bostwick painting?
• Anvilicious: The show is not exactly subtle about it's view on so called child "experts" and parenting advice. Nine times out of ten, whenever the show does an episode about child raising advice, it's usually to show how much of a load of BS it is and to hammer home that all kids are different and blanket advice for how to raise every child just does not work. Some of the writers apparently put this in as a Take That! to Arlene Klasky, who was a great believer in such parenting books.
• Archive Panic: 172 half-hour episodes over nine seasons, and that's not including the three movies, the two direct-to-video films adapting the fairy tales "Snow White" and "Jack and the Beanstalk", the short-lived Preschool Daze spinoff, and All Grown Up!.
• Awesome Music:
  • The second movie's soundtrack is nothing to sneeze at.
  • Having Mark Mothersbaugh score the show isn't anything to sneeze at either.
  • "Reptar On Ice" stands out among individual episodes.
  • And "Vacation".
  • "Cynthia Workout" is a very fun song to dance to, despite its somewhat nonsensical lyrics ("Make an omelette, Cynthia!", "Just don't break it; you're only made of plastic", etc.) Its score is very upbeat and jaunty.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Angelica is the biggest case of this. When the show was still airing on T.V, Angelica was actually considered one of the best characters in the series by most fans and critics. Not only was she was one of the reasons the show was so popular, she was the show's only character to make it into TV Guide's 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters countdown. However, by the late 2000s, public opinion turned against her for being too mean to the babies and a sociopath of sorts ^note (But to be fair, this was at the point of where the popularity of Rugrats had long subsided to the point of where admitting that you enjoyed the show, it was considered laughable. When the show started having a resurgence in popularity in 2011, so did Angelica's character to the point of where people not only started having a more favorable opinion of her like they did in the '90s and early 2000s, but she has a large part of the show's fanbase that loves her to where they consider her the real star of the show and has been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap) Another interesting fact is that until around the time the first movie came out, Arlene Klasky didn't like her either, as she found Angelica to be too cruel and not punished for her actions enough. Angelica was also not in her and Gabor Csupo's original plans for the series, but was Paul Germain's idea, as he'd based the character off of a girl who'd bullied him in his childhood. The New Yorker even wrote an article about this, focusing on how Angelica tore apart the K-C staff, until The Rugrats Movie came out, where Klasky recanted her opinions on the character and said she "loved" Angelica, since by that point her character had been softened up considerably.
  • While nearly everyone agrees that Susie is a much-needed example of representation for Black children, the verdict on her is out: is she a refreshing, popular Team Mom who counterbalances Angelica's nastiness, or one of the most blatant examples of positive discrimination in 90's cartoons? It's notable that in her early episodes, Susie had quite a few negative traits. Her very first moment on the show was her screaming and crying that her older brother took her lollipop, and other plots showed her as being quick to anger (as seen when she blamed Angelica for stealing her tricycle without any evidence). As the seasons progressed, though, Susie gradually lost those bad qualities and became more of a saintly, wise character who could do no wrong and was generally a paragon of good to the babies. All Grown Up! went out of its way to give her some flaws (the first episode saw her get conned out of a lot of money), suggesting that the writers wanted to make a more balanced character.
  • Susie's parents also suffer from the same "needed representation versus positive discrimination" debate. Both of them are wealthy and successful in their careers (Randy is a writer for the Show Within a Show The Dummi Bears and Lucy an OB/GYN), which stands apart from the other parents' struggles and less glamorous jobs (Drew and Charlotte are probably in the same tax bracket, but Randy and Lucy are generally shown as being more loving and attentive to their children than them). The Carmichaels are also shown to be excellent parents who are raising four kids, including one teenager, with very little trouble. Furthermore, Randy has very little characterization besides being good at his work, and in Lucy's debut, she casually rattles off a Long List of everything she's accomplished in her life (including being a professionally-trained French chef and airline pilot) that almost makes her seem like an in-universe Parody Sue. Granted, there's nothing wrong with having successful Black characters in children's TV, but the issue is that unlike the other, more rounded parents on the show, Randy and Lucy are only successful and never seem to make any mistakes.
  • A lot of fans dislike Tommy's younger brother Dil Pickles. They point out that he does very little to contribute to the plot and is often The Load. But there are just as many people who find him adorable and enjoy the moments where he and his older brother get along.
  • Kimi Finster also has a divisive reception, mainly due to making her debut during the show's alleged Seasonal Rot. Generally, the viewers who perceive rot dislike Kimi, while the viewers who don't perceive rot like her. There's also debate among audiences over whether Kimi's fearlessness makes her too similar to Tommy, or whether her short attention span, enthusiasm, and the fact that she's not as sensible as Tommy make her significantly different than him.
  • Chuckie amassed this mostly due to his latter seasons self where his cowardice was Flanderized into being afraid of everything, and it would be Played for Drama far more often than comedy - which makes him The Load to some. But others still love him for being The Woobie.
  • Charlotte, Angelica's mom. Some fans love her for being a Ms. Fanservice type, as well as getting the majority of edgy jokes. Other fans hate her and see her as a Flat Character who does little other than make phone calls to her assistant, Jonathan, for work-related purposes. They also hate her for putting little effort into disciplining Angelica, being one of the reasons why Angelica is spoiled and mean.
  • Didi. Is she a loving mother who sometimes worries about the wrong things but otherwise does care for her children? Or a neglectful parent who never sees her own faults and whose inattentiveness has nearly gotten her sons killed on several occasions.
  • Tommy Pickles is this to some extent, Some fans admire his fearless, adventurous personality and bravery, and feel like he is a typical leader and hero of the show. Some, however, think he is a incredibly annoying brat due to him manipulating his friends to go on his adventures. The fact that he cries in a very large amount of episodes doesn’t help, and as of a result, the number of episodes where he doesn’t cry in a episode can be counted on one hand.
  • Cindy, the teenage barista from "Cynthia Comes Alive". Some viewers find her Unintentionally Sympathetic because she was thrown up on by Dil, had her belly button piercing pulled, was put in charge of six babies despite being a teenager, and was blamed for a mess that was actually made by the babies. Others, however, think she deserved this bad treatment, since she was a very incompetent worker due to her poor customer service, and while the babies did make the mess, she didn't try to stop it.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • "This World is Something New to Me" in the first movie. It's a song sung by the newborns in the maternity ward about the newness of the world outside their mothers' wombs. The song isn't expected because they were wandering around hospital looking for Dil: not a situation where you'd expect a song and if there was one, you'd think it'd be one about looking for Dil. It makes no sense because babies are established not to be able to even speak Baby Language until they're older than three months except for a few words like "mine" and "poopy" and yet here are lots of newborns singin' away. It's also never mentioned later at all and nobody points out that the newborns can talk.
  • How the Toy Palace episode ended, with an animatronic Reptar pushing an animatronic gorilla into a time machine, sending it to the period when Washington crossed the Delaware River. And this wasn't one of the babies' Imagine Spots.
• Broken Base: As gathered from Seasonal Rot below, fan opinion is sharply divided as to when/if the series started going downhill. Depending on who you ask, the show either went downhill once the series was first revived in 1997, after the first movie, or after the second movie. A small group of fans even prefer the later episodes over the original 65 episodes, while others think the show stayed consistent throughout its whole run.
  • A subgroup of this is how the babies are portrayed. Was it better in the beginning where Tommy had several episodes where he was a silent baby who simply got into adventures because he crawled away? Or better in the later seasons when there was a far greater focus on the imagination spots and the babies acted far more mature?
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • When the show was first airing, Angelica was one of the most popular characters for being rather humorous despite being a bully. She was the show's only character to be in TV Guide's 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters countdown, but around the 2000s, she started to receive more hatred for being a selfish brat. Depending on which fan you speak to, she's either loved because she suffers enough to balance out her rudeness and she can occasionally show a soft side towards the other kids, or she's hated for her general bullying and ego.
  • When Dil and Kimi were first added to the cast, they were scrappies due to being considered "useless" additions to the cast and in Dil's case, because he was too young to do much. Now, however, they're base-breaking characters. Some still hate them and think they're useless, while others think they're adorable.
• Common Knowledge: There's an idea amongst the fanbase that the reason Chas and Chuckie are nervy is because of Melinda's death. However, this is unlikely— one episode reveals that Chas was afraid of a bearskin rug when he was a kid, with another character remarking, "That's Chas all right!", and "Mother's Day" has Chuckie mention Melinda letting him know he doesn't have to be scared of a butterfly.
• Creator's Pet: Taffy was a babysitter introduced late in the series who everybody on the show loved, but almost everybody watching it hated. She mainly existed so that Amanda Bynes could have another Nickelodeon show to star in.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Grandpa Boris gets so bored watching the Pickles' home movies in the episode of the same title that he can be seen on the phone asking for Dr Kevorkian. The latter was an infamous doctor who was a spokesperson for euthanasia and assisted suicide.
• Delusion Conclusion:
  • The Rugrats Theory has become quite infamous for interpreting the series as one colossal dark fantasy: the babies either dead (Tommy, Chuckie), never existed (the twins), or were taken away by child services (Kimi) and Angelica's imagining the whole thing. Dil is the only one Angelica ever met but because he doesn't behave like Tommy and the other imagined babies Angelica beats him to get him to stop him from crying, causing him to become mentally handicapped.
  • There's also a semi-popular theory that the episodes after "Visitors from Outer Space" are the delusions of Angelica trapped on the planet.
• Designated Villain: In "Silent Angelica", where both Drew and Charlotte tell Angelica they'll buy her a toy if she stays quiet for a half an hour. She genuinely tries to obey them but then the babies decide to exploit this to make a mess, enraging Angelica so much she finally snaps. She ends up getting blamed for the mess the babies made and doesn't get either toy. At the same time, this could be her comeuppance for her Karma Houdini status she had early on in the series.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: "Naked Tommy" ends with a rather tacked-on moment of Tommy suddenly deciding out of nowhere that clothes are actually important and great and that humans aren't animals and need to wear them. Presumably, this is an attempt at countering the fact that every other moment of the episode was devoted to how great being naked feels.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • There are several prequel fanfics that deal with the death of Chuckie's mother Melinda.
  • Angelica getting a sibling is common in fanfic due to her being the lone only child after Kimi was adopted.
  • Stories set after All Grown Up!, usually showing the cast married and with kids of their own.
  • Many fan works like to bridge the ten-year gap between the show and All Grown Up! and write stories set within that time period.
  • Alternate takes on episodes (e.g. "Naked Tommy", but it's set a year in the future and Dil is going naked, or "Slumber Party", but all the Rugrats are present).
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The mystery of how Chuckie's mother died has become a staple of fan theories about the show and many a fan fic for the series.
  • The possibility that Charlotte had a miscarriage in "Angelica's Worst Nightmare" has also led to some fan-fics trying to expand the story.
• Fanon:
  • There's a pretty popular theory that Charlotte had a miscarriage in "Angelica's Worst Nightmare" (instead of just getting a false positive on her pregnancy test), explaining why she didn't have another baby. If true, this would make the episode a pretty somber case of Be Careful What You Wish For, since Angelica spends most of the episode hoping that her mother won't have a baby.
  • The idea that Melinda, Chuckie's mother, died of cancer. This is partially because it's the go-to serious illness in fiction, but also because she's mentioned as having started a diary while she was in the hospital, which points to a progressive, fatal illness that left her cognition intact until the end.
  • Because, before it was established that Melinda was dead, Chuckie mentions her putting him on the bottle being the worst thing ever. Fans have explained this as Melinda putting Chuckie on the bottle because she knew she was dying, and Chuckie finding it bad because he associated it with her death.
  • A lot of people like to imagine Betty DeVille as being a lesbian, due to her butch appearance and default outfit having the female symbol on it. Certain episodes of this show, but especially All Grown Up make it clear that Betty loves Howard very much, and they're arguably the most Happily Married of the parents in the series.
• Fanon Discontinuity: When the series ended depends on who you ask. Before the first movie? After? Before the second? After? After the first series? And even the people who like All Grown Up! don't like to mention the third movie.
• First Installment Wins: Due to the increased tension between the Rugrats and the focus on preteen issues in timeskip spinoff, many fans prefer the original series.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Susie and Angelica hate each other, but that doesn't stop them from being a popular Toy Ship with a lot of fanfics for them. It does help that as the series went on, the two softened towards each other despite the two continuing to argue.
• Friendly Fandoms: The Rugrats fandom and the Recess fandom are very friendly toward each other; a contributing factor would probably be because the latter was created by two Rugrats writers, Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere (And written by their writing team).
• Genius Bonus:
  • In "A Visit From Lipschitz," the song he's humming is the German national anthem. The "dog broomer's" name is Ilsa Umlaut. An umlaut is the little dots over vowels (lïkë sö), found in many languages of which German is one.
  • Lou mentions in a flashback episode that his wife is working for Estes Kefauver's Presidential campaign.
  • In "Mirrorland" Didi comes home with an antique mirror that she claims is a "genuine Louis the XIX." You'd have to be pretty familar with your French history to know that poor old Louis Antoine never actually reigned.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Despite being a stereotype, Boris and Minka Kropatkin ended up being relatable to Jewish viewers of the series, especially those of Ashkenazi Jews. It helps that all three of the show's co-creators were Jewish, as were Boris and Minka's voice actor and actress, so the characters were obviously created with affection.
• Growing the Beard: Not that season 1 was bad, but the show really hits its stride in season 2 where it focuses on all of the babies rather than mostly Tommy. The Animation Bump, Chuckie becoming less of a complainer, Angelica getting Hidden Depths and the other parents' personalities getting fleshed out all happened in Season 2.
• Ho Yay: In "Potty Training Spike," Chuckie offers to be "Spike's other dad" along with Tommy.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Some people ship Chuckie and Kimi together. At least they are only step-brother and step-sister. Tommy and Angelica get shipped, but it's more rare.
• Jerkass Woobie: Angelica in some episodes, like "The Santa Experience" and "Angelica's Worst Nightmare". Other episodes show that she does care for the babies deep down but she hides it behind brattiness and aggression.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Chuckie Finster has been paired with Angelica, Lil and Susie (and more) over the years. Though to be fair, in the original series Chuckie has had Ship Tease moments with all 3 of the aforementioned girls.
  • Tommy in All Grown Up! is also paired with just about every female character the show has.
• Love to Hate: Angelica is such an obnoxious brat that the audience gets joy from seeing karma hit her hard.
• Memetic Molester: Drew is one for no discernible reason, thanks to the efforts of the Barney Bunch and their troll videos.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • Didi's parents Boris and Minka didn't bode well with some viewers, who felt that they resembled the anti-Semitic caricatures published in Nazi Germany and found their stereotypical Jewish behavior offensive. Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hands, absolutely loved them, feeling it was an accurate portrayal of their people (it helps that Klasky-Csupo was founded and run by Jews). Tellingly, Nickelodeon's Jewish then-president Albie Hecht was baffled by this controversy, while his Gentile successor Herb Scannell completely agreed with it and asked that the characters be downplayed.
  • The show's token African-American character Susie Carmichael also has an impressive African-American fanbase, despite sometimes being criticized as a Flawless Token (Word of God says she's supposed to be "the anti-Angelica," and since Angelica is a Know-Nothing Know-It-All Jerkass...). Cree Summer has said she's been thanked for years by people who were glad that a black character was part of their favorite cartoon. She also points out that at the time, it was often the case that white actors voiced characters of other races.
• Moe:
  • It's a show about babies—what did you expect?
    • Chuckie is the prime example; he's a shy and tenderhearted Nice Guy with glasses.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The Pickles Household's doorbell buzz.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • "Chuckie Loses His Glasses" has the infamous scene where Angelica pukes directly into the camera and her father gets drenched in her vomit. It's now a video example so watch it if you dare.
  • Dil throws up on Cindy in “Cynthia Comes Alive”. Whether or not she deserved it, it’s still gross.
  • Phil and Lil's antics can often veer into this. They'll pick up, touch and eat most anything, especially worms.
    • They’re far from the only ones who eat them.
  • Tommy eating his own belly button lint in “Psycho Angelica”.
  • Phil picking his nose in “Radio Daze”.
• Narm:
  • In "Spike Runs Away", the scene where Tommy sobs over Spike being missing loses some of its tearjerkiness when Tommy is drawn with a Volumetric Mouth, but it's still pretty sad to see Tommy so depressed.
  • Another tearjerker scene was in "Regarding Stuie" when Tommy cries, missing when Stu was his father after getting amnesia, but the camera being positioned inside Tommy's mouth as he cries can be somewhat distracting.
• Never Live It Down: While the parents have had some really dumb moments, "The Big Showdown" is one that will haunt the character of Didi forever. Pretty much the entire fandom hates Didi for her cruel actions and this episode tends to be the one people point to when declaring she is one of the worst mothers on TV.
• Nightmare Fuel: See here!
  • In-universe example: the episode when the adults took down Chuckie's crib and replaced it with a bed. The first night Chuckie sleeps on the bed, a monster from under the bed keeps talking to him and telling him that he's going to eat him (not even Tommy heard the voice when he slept over the next night). When Chuckie first investigates, he's frightened, thinking he actually spotted a monster reaching at him, and Chuckie jumps right back into bed, frightened. But as it turns out, the monster was actually [Chuckie's dad] Chas's sweater with one sleeve poking out, and the darkness concealed the cooler colors, making the sweater look threatening.
• No Problem with Licensed Games:
  • Rugrats: Search for Reptar for the Playstation has levels based on actual episodes of the show with good graphics and actual voice samples of the cast. It can be beaten in under an hour by adults or teenagers, while keeping the difficulty at a fair pace for anyone within the target demographic. You can guarantee that Let's Play videos uploaded to YouTube will have comments sharing fond memories of this game.
  • Rugrats: Studio Tour is also a decent Playstation game. It has upgraded graphics, an updated hub, and the gameplay presents more challenges without it being too Nintendo Hard. The game also has a more diverse range of levels based on kid-appropriate movie genres (science fiction, racing, westerns and pirates).
  • Rugrats: Royal Ransom for the Nintendo Gamecube and Playstation 2 is often regarded as a diamond in the rough among the series' many licensed games due to having well-designed gameplay and levels, excellent presentation, and actually posing quite a challenge, especially on higher difficulties.
  • Rugrats Castle Capers, released on the Game Boy Advance one year prior to Royal Ransom is also a decent game. The game's plot is similar to that of Royal Ransom, the graphics are well-done and cartoonish like the TV series, there are six different babies to play as, the first five levels can be played in any order the player chooses, with the sixth and final one being unlocked once the first five stages are completed, and it improves upon the flaws of the Game Boy Color games. Levels have the simple "get from Point A to Point B" objective without having to collect a select number of items, the babies are given different forms of Edible Ammunition to use against the enemies, they can get to higher places with ease by using the Human Ladder move, and each level ends with a boss fight against Angelica.
  • Rugrats Adventure Game by Brøderbund. It's actually a well-made point-and-click adventure game (as should be expected from that late developer), although the transitions between scenes and movements are somewhat long. Also, good luck trying to run it on a modern computer; not even Windows XP can run this game, so a virtual machine running Windows 95 or 98/ME is a must.
• Offending the Creator's Own: The portrayal of Tommy's Jewish grandparents Boris and Minka Kropotkin got the show a few complaints from the Anti-Defamation League, who argued that the characters came across as insulting anti-Semitic stereotypes (which eventually led to them being quietly removed). They may have been unaware that the show's co-creator Arlene Klasky is Jewish herself; the show's rather frequent depiction of Jewish holidays and traditions was likely inspired by her own experiences.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: At least, Paul Germain thinks he did. He believes that the show went through Seasonal Rot after his involvement with it ended. YMMV on whether he's right or not, since Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo were also the show's creators and they stayed involved with the show throughout its first run.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • This show more than likely left a few parents suspicious of what their infant children were capable of doing the second they turned their backs on them. Especially so since the parents of the show, while comically oblivious, are often conveyed as making brief and relatable oversights many real adults likely commit without concern of consequences.
  • While "Angelica Orders Out" is a hilarious episode, the idea Stu made a voice changer that can perfectly replicate anyone's voice is terrifying if you think what could be done with it if an unethical adult or teenager got their hands on one.
• Periphery Demographic: Despite the cutesy antics of the babies, the show is quite popular with older viewers, largely due to the sly amount of jokes they seep in through the babies' naïveté and the humorous characterisations and side plots of the parent characters, as well as some well written episodes that touch on surprisingly deep and meaningful family matters, especially in the earlier seasons.
• Popularity Polynomial: Around 2002-03, the show steadily declined in popularity. SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents! were quickly overshadowing it to become Nickelodeon's most popular shows even though Rugrats was still considered Nick's flagship show at that point. Following the critical and commercial failure of Rugrats Go Wild!, the series ended with little fanfare in 2004. Neither the divisive All Grown Up! nor the maligned and very short-lived Preschool Daze helped the popularity of the franchise as a whole. By the early 2010's, Rugrats got more attention again as the generation that grew up on it entered adulthood. As a result, the show has returned to Nickelodeon's schedule in small intervals, new merchandise has been produced throughout the decade (though this time around it gets lumped into general "old school Nick" marketing with other shows from the era) and even a reboot was greenlit by Nickelodeon. So as of today, even though SpongeBob has most definitely overshadowed it in overall pop culture impact, Rugrats has remained a steady franchise in some form or another compared to where it was in the mid-late 2000's.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Far too many examples, unfortunately:
  • Rugrats in Paris: The Movie on the N64 and PS1 in 2000 was a medicore Mini Game Game that didn't even follow the film's plot. Instead, it involved the babies running around an empty EuroReptarLand looking for tickets. The tickets you needed to play the mini games, and there were never enough of them in the park. The games themselves were mostly overly-kiddie carnival attractions like hit 50 targets with pies, do a kart race, and such. To say it was tedious was an understatement. Apparently, you had to collect 100 or so tickets overall to save the Reptar princess or something, but few players got that far^note most turned the game off after five minutes. There was also a lackluster multiplayer mode. Interestingly, the game was made by Avalanche Software, who went on to make the far better Rugrats: Royal Ransom in 2002.
    • The GBC version^note  also from 2000, made by a different developer, was the same thing, just on a miniscule screen and with awful music. You can imagine how that went down.
  • The Rugrats Movie was a clunky platformer for the GB and GBC in 1998. Not following the movie's plot at all, it involves Tommy marching through levels based loosely on the film's set pieces. Controls were difficult, and a ticking timer made the whole experience a pain. Even short parts where you could play as the other babies and ride in mine carts did little to ease the monotony. The sole good thing to say about this title is its nice colour palette on the GBC.
  • Rugrats: Time Travellers was another clunky platformer for the GBC in 1999. The story involves the babies screwing around with a time machine in a toy store^note similar to the episode Toy Palace, except nowhere near as good, of course and being whisked away to stereotypical time periods (Egyptian times, prehistoric times, etc). There were so few interesting historical elements used, one wonders why the developers even bothered with a Time Travel plot. Controls were broken, and the ending was extremely unsatisfying. The only saving grace of this game was its colourful graphics.
  • Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt was an incredibly boring Mario Party ripoff on the N64 in 1999. Despite sporting good graphics for the time, minimal loading screens, and the TV series' actors reprising their roles, it featured excruciatingly slow gameplay, a lack of any sort of mini games (ya know, the main reason people even play the Mario Party series?), a total of three game boards, and repetitive voice clips. It's easily one of the worst games on the Nintendo 64.
  • Rugrats: Totally Angelica on the PS1 in 2001 was yet another Mini Game Game. Starring our resident scrappy Angelica in a lame fashion show, it had crappy mini games, no replayability, and was too easy on the hardest difficulty level. The one review of it on the internet is well worth a read.
    • The GBC version from 2000 is a scaled-down version, lacking Mark Mothersbaugh's soundtrack, O.K.-for-2001 3D graphics, and basically anything that made the console version tolerable. Oddly enough, it had a completely different story^note involving Angelica rescuing Cynthia from Tommy and Chuckie, of all people, and was a tad more polished in a few ways, such as including an actual Boss Battle. IGN has a rather entertaining review here.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • "The Case of the Missing Rugrat" is one of times the adults' Parental Neglect isn't Played for Laughs. Lou accidentally leaves Tommy in the back of a stranger's car while fooling around and ends up losing him when it drives off with his baby grandson in tow. Tommy is kidnapped and nearly adopted by complete strangers as a result of this, with Lou absolutely scared out of his mind trying to find where Tommy was taken to.
  • In "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", an angel shows a depressed Chuckie what the world would be like if he was never born. While horrifying, most of the alternate world has clearly been exaggerated to the extreme, like babies destroying the city and Angelica enslaves Stu and Didi, leaving Tommy to eat garbage. Unfortunately, Chas's fate is disturbingly and heartbreakingly possible. Basically, without a child of his own (and with, as later episodes reveal, the death of his wife) Chas has became a complete shut-in, complete with mounds of empty pizza boxes littering his house. Worse yet, living alone among the garbage has taken its toll on Chas's sanity, as he only talks to a sock puppet who is his only friend. Not only does this stick out in the otherwise overblown dark world, but it seems very much like real life cases of people with crippling depression.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • When the writers moved away from Dil only crying and hitting Tommy and actually gave him a bit more personality (such as "Hello Dilly" and "Tommy For Mayor" as well as the only Dil daydream episode "Dil's Bathtime"), fans began to come around, stating they wished the show had done more with Dil as the baby learning from the babies sooner.
  • Within the show's staff, Angelica was hated prior to her Character Development in later seasons. Arlene Klasky in particular, who stated in excess how much she loathed the character initially, admitted her fondness for her by the time of the first movie.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Out of all the parents in this show, Charlotte gets most of the criticism for her parenting. Fans make her out to be the worst, forgetting the fact that she never left her kid alone in public places and never allowed Angelica to get lost in the woods. What's more is that Charlotte has never had a problem disciplining Angelica, and it's Drew who usually gives into his daughter.
  • Angelica herself gets treated like a monster and described as sociopathic by a lot of fans. This is ignoring the fact that she's three years old and most of her problems are down to indulgent parenting by Drew. She is nasty to the babies, but numerous episodes show that she does have Hidden Depths and cares for them in her own special way, particularly after the original 65-episode order (see Villain Decay below). Not to mention All Grown Up! showing that she did mellow out as she grew older.
  • Barney Bunch videos portray Drew Pickles (of all characters) as a misogynistic homosexual rapist who will do anything to get the satisfaction he needs.
  • Didi also tends to get this in the fandom. Thanks to her worshiping of Lipschitz and her temporary hatred for fan-favorite character Reptar in "The Big Showdown", it isn't uncommon for fanfics to portray Didi as a horrible wife and mother, abusive, or just plain moronic.
  • Dil is sometimes seen in the fandom as an evil brat who torments Tommy and will always resort to violence. This does ignore the fact that Tommy, in earlier seasons, could be just as bad as Dil in some episodes, and the fact that Dil, only being a few months old, doesn't know better and is too young to understand right and wrong.
• The Scrappy:
  • The babysitter Taffy introduced in the show's last two seasons gets a lot of hate because many saw her as a completely unnecessary Creator's Pet.
  • As far as the classic era is concerned, Dr. Lipschitz tends to be disliked because, while many parents, especially Didi and Chas, rely on him for parenting advice, it is shown that he himself knows nothing about how to raise children (despite his delusions to the contrary).
• Seasonal Rot: While this happened as early as season 4 (when the show was first uncancelled) depending on who you ask, the Kimi era is where this it’s generally agreed to have happened, due to random retcons (such as the babies' first meeting and Angelica's first walk) and recycling plots from earlier seasons.
• Sacred Cow: The show is up there with SpongeBob SquarePants and Avatar: The Last Airbender as one of Nickelodeon's most universally acclaimed shows ever made. The number of people who dislike/hate the show can be counted on one or two hand, and fans can become very defensive if the show is even slightly criticized.
• Self-Fanservice: Discussed in this column by Eric Molinsky, a former Rugrats storyboard artist who says that fanart of the characters as adults tends to render them too attractive and glamorous for the show's "lumpy" Eastern-European style, and shows some art of his of how the Rugrats kids would look like as adults in a way much more characteristic of the show. He later updated the article with a comment that such work isn't bad, it just doesn't fit the animation style the show held itself to.
• Spiritual Adaptation: It can be the closest thing to an animated spin-off of Look Who's Talking as both the series and the film are told from the viewpoint of an infant. Interestingly, the voice of the baby character Mikey of the said film, Bruce Willis, would later voice the character of Spike in the cartoon's The Wild Thornberrys crossover film Rugrats Go Wild!
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: The show wasn't dubbed when it premiered in Portugal in 1992 on SIC. In 1994, they began dubbing the show due to it's popularity.
• Tear Dryer:
  • In "Bow Wow Wedding Vows", Tommy feels like Spike has forgotten about him when he keeps hanging out with Fifi, so he pretends to be happy about it for Spike's sake. After Chuckie asks him if he's really okay with this, he can't keep the ruse up any longer and he breaks down wailing. At that moment, Spike approaches Tommy, causing him to realize Spike hasn't forgotten about him. Spike takes the kids to the shed, revealing that Fifi's given birth to a litter of puppies, and everyone rejoices.
  • In "Moving Away", Angelica hears that she may be moving away, so after the babies talk about how she indirectly caused them to become friends, she tearfully admits that she really likes them deep down, and they all bawl. Drew comes in just then and reveals that they're not moving after all, and the elated babies hug Angelica (to her chagrin).
• Toy Ship:
  • Tommy/Kimi — perhaps because they're both fearless, and/or because All Grown Up! sometimes Ship Teases them.
  • Chuckie/Lil — usually inspired by "I Do", in which they play at getting married.
  • Chuckie/Angelica — maybe because of the "opposites attract" thing, since Angelica is a brat and relatively tough, while Chuckie is sweet and nervy.
  • Tommy/Lil — probably owing to the fact that he's the main character, and she's the main female character who isn't his cousin.
  • Tommy/Chuckie. "Home Movies" has Chuckie depict Tommy as a superhero with a lush head of hair who carries Chuckie around, while "The Odd Couple" pokes fun at the adjustment period roommates — and newly cohabitating couples — frequently go through.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • In general, many of the characters, especially the babies, have weird proportions when it comes to their bodies.
  • Pat Sajak appeared as a guest star in "Chuckie is Rich". Unlike the rest of the cast, he is drawn in a more realistic manner. His semi-realistic design looks almost like a doll rather than a human being.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The first three seasons are chock full of nineties pop-culture references, such as Siskel & Ebert, and Charlotte's cell phone a). being big enough to see and b). only making phone calls. In "Mommy's Little Assets", Charlotte mentions the Clarence Thomas hearings.
  • Part of the show's humor was that the babies can escape from their drop-side cribs which were banned in the United States in 2010.
  • The "Vacation" episode shows Las Vegas as being a family-friendly vacation destination. It was somewhat like this back in The '90s, but has since gotten more raunchy and adult-only. Not to mention the Heimlich & Bob performance which was an obvious reference to the Siegfried & Roy show at the time before they had to cancel their show following Roy's near-fatal injury in 2003.
  • Grandpa Lou was a World War II veteran who told his grandchildren stories of the war. While there were still World War 2 veterans in the early 90s, by the 2020s this generation of veterans was down to a trickle with the youngest veterans being in their mid-90s.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Ilsa the dog groomer just wants to do her job, and it's Didi who hired her. Yet it's Tommy's wild imagination that makes him think Ilsa has sinister intentions, and the babies terrorise the poor woman. It's hard not to feel a little sorry for her when she breaks down crying over how the situation turned out.
  • Cindy the teenager working at the Java Lava. While she wasn’t a good employee for her poor customer service skills (she should have been fired for that alone), she still didn’t deserve the torment she got under the hands of the babies (because they thought she was Angelica's doll turned human). They even try to pull out her belly button ring, which could have had gruesome results if this weren't a children's cartoon. She's fired when the babies make a mess, and Betty chews her out for stooping low enough to blame them (even though they were responsible - and one teenager versus six hyperactive infants is not likely to be able to keep things tidy).
  • Stu gets this quite often when you think about the franchise as whole. The man is a constant Butt-Monkey who really tries his damn hardest to balance his work and family life (far more than any other parent can say) but is constantly looked down on and blamed whenever anything goes wrong (such as the first and third movies). His fun, loveable personality boarding child-like makes it hard to see how everyone thinks he's a screw up and feels more like bullying.
  • Angelica, amazingly, comes this many times when her demands (such as simply wanting to enjoy a TV show) are completely reasonable but the adults with their lousy parenting allowing the babies to bug and harass her. One particular example of her being unintentionally sympathetic is in the episode "The Word of the Day". Angelica genuinely didn't know that the word she was repeating was a swear word. Not only do her parents refuse to even tell her what the word is, so she can adjust accordingly, no one thinks to ask where she learned the word.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Angelica is The Friend Nobody Likes and the babies all fear her. Yet for years she was one of the show's most popular characters.
• Values Resonance:
  • "The Clan Of The Duck," where Chuckie and Phil wear Lil's dresses with a hugely positive message about not conforming to gender stereotypes. That was in 1997!
  • Chuckie offering to be "Spike's other dad" with Tommy in the episode where the babies try to potty-train their dog. Granted, it's still a joke, but it otherwise doesn't say there's anything wrong with someone having two dads. Similarly, one episode has Lil saying about another girl "She's going to marry me because we're both so pretty!" It's Played for Laughs since the other babies are arguing over the same girl, but it doesn't say that girls marrying other girls is something weird or wrong.
  • Lil is also quite unconventional for a female character in a 1990s cartoon. She enjoys doing gross boyish things like playing in the mud with her brother, while also happily playing with dolls and enjoying some girly things too. She's not pigeonholed into the Tomboy or Girly Girl box because of it.
  • Lil's mother Betty is also refreshingly unconventional. She's The Lad-ette and the more masculine member of the De Villes, while Howard has more attributes associated with femininity. Betty however is treated with lots of respect in-universe, and shows that an unconventional woman can still be a loving wife and mother if she wants. This continues into the spin-off, where the boys talk up times that Betty has saved the day and it's clear that she and Howard have a very loving marriage.
  • "The Shot" is about Tommy getting a booster shot. The importance of keeping children up to date with immunizations is still relevant today in light of the Anti-Vax movement that popped up in the mid-2010s. Also, boosters became available for COVID-19 starting in late 2021 during the pandemic (with the vaccines themselves now available for those aged 5-11 in the same timeframe), so it's still reasonable.
• Viewer Name Confusion:
  • Kimi has a Japanese name. It's frequently mistaken for a variation on "Kimmie" (even on closed captioning) and many fanfics give her a "full name", despite "Kimi" being her full name.
  • Chuckie's name is sometimes spelled Chucky by fans who don't know better.
  • Chas Finster's nickname is sometimes spelt "Chaz", with a Z, by fans.
  • Some viewers think Dil's name is spelt Dill.
• Vindicated by History: The show garnered a lot of internet hatred during the Dil and Kimi eras alongside Klasky-Csupo's other cartoons at the time, due to flanderizing the baby talk, and many people thought that it was over-saturating the network. But in later years, those seasons are as held in high regard as the seasons before those. It's gotten to the point of where people have hardly noticed the changes (minus additional characters) that happened throughout the show's run and think that the show has been consistent in quality and not nearly as bad at over-saturation as SpongeBob SquarePants or Fairly OddParents.
• The Woobie:
  • Chuckie certainly has his moments especially during the Mothers Day episode. You could argue he's this in just about every other episode. (Well, maybe not the earliest ones when he was a bit of a Bratty Half-Pint.)
  • Tommy in "Weaning Tommy", when he is being weaned, in "Regarding Stuie" after he thinks that he'll never see his father again due to Stu getting amnesia and thinking he was a baby. However, Tommy's woobiest role is in the first movie when he feels unappreciated whilst his parents spend a lot of attention to Dil.
  • Chas, due to his nervousness and the fact that his (first) wife died.
  • Angelica was a regular one in "In The Naval" when her favorite toy is eaten by a marlin, her father refuses to listen her because he's too distracted by fishing, and her attempt to get it back gets her punished by Drew.
  • Stu in "Angelica Breaks a Leg", most notably the scene were he makes Angelica chocolate pudding at 4:00 AM only to discover she doesn't want any. His reaction when he hears that her doctor got the X-rays mixed up? Tears of Joy.

---