YMMV / Thomas & Friends

• For YMMV items related to The Railway Series, go here.
• For YMMV items related to the 2020 reboot, Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go, go here.

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Tropes A-M

• Accidental Aesop: In the episode "Thomas Comes to Breakfast", Thomas's driver tells him that he's doing so well that soon he won't even need a driver anymore! Unaware that his driver was joking, Thomas recklessly takes this to heart and goes out on what he thinks is his own the next day (as a result of a careless cleaner who accidentally meddled with his controls)... an adventure that is soon over when he crashes through the wall of a house, because without a driver, he can't stop. So basically, don't ever take responsibility for your actions or do things without an adult's help, even if they encouraged you to do it, because you'll cause destruction and possibly death.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Emily is very proud of her Big Wheels.
  • The trucks in "Pop Goes the Diesel" moan when Diesel tries to jerk them out of a siding. As well as Duck having a suggestive grin as he "watched with interest."
  • The opening narration of "Double Teething Troubles", particularly with the way it is delivered: "Bill and Ben work in the clay mines and quarries near Brendam Docks. Their work is important, but it can be hot and dirty. Sometimes, this makes the twins naughty." There is a distinct emphasis put on that last word, combined with the description of their work...
  • And the line "Bill banged his trucks hard".
  • "Engines with proper funnels do! You've only got a small one!"
  • From The Movie, Peter Fonda has a little trouble making his lady steam.
  • "Henry smiles all the while he has his Special Coal. Henry's Special Coal makes him very happy."
  • "Ooooh I'm stiff! I'm stiff!, he (Henry) groaned".
    • Made even worse at the end of the episode when the narrator informs us that Henry "asks his driver to rub him down once the day's work is over".
  • The entirety of "Mike's Whistle", both versions, can be read as a long, subtle, drawn-out immature joke. Not the least bit helped by the opening scene in the adaptation, in which Duck's faulty whistle produces what amounts to farting noises.
  • "Something sticky splashed all over James."
  • Trevor's infamous: "Oh yes, I like children" line. Both with Ringo Starr and George Carlin's narrations. JAW2 had a field day with it in his "George Carlin Dubs Thomas the Tank Engine" series where he got a great joke out of it by stitching together Carlin's narration with recordings from his audiobooks of his stand-up bits and having Edward say to Trevor, "You have child fetish and it is not healthy."
• Adaptation Displacement: The show has all but completely overshadowed The Railway Series in popularity and exposure, especially in countries that were exposed to the show first (such as America). It doesn't help that the show has distanced itself from the books after the mid nineties and that the current owners of the Thomas brand only barely acknowledge their existence during anniversaries and the occasional merch, further adding to the displacement.
• All Animation Is Disney: In Japan, some people don't recognize that the show (the classic series at least) is foreign. Though, given some of the shows that are actually from Japan, it's not hard to see why.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Now has its own page.
• Americans Hate Tingle: While a few enjoyed the episodes anyways, many fans from the countries depicted in the "International" episodes of the "Big World! Big Adventures!" era greatly dislike the era and such episodes for having flat, stereotypical characters and flat, stereotypical depictions of those countries.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Ringo Starr was initially unsure of the show, as he believed that kids were more into Star Wars and spaceships than they were talking steam engines. He was pleasantly surprised when the show became a runaway success.
• Animation Age Ghetto: The entire show could arguably fall under this. The show is commonly viewed as a preschool show in the popular consensus, when in reality, at least at first, it was presented more as an all-ages affair, being aired in the same blocks as shows like DuckTales (1987) and Thunderbirds, shows still meant for younger audiences, but not necessarily preschoolers. It wasn't really until the HiT Entertainment era (beginning in 2004), which both modified the show's tonal and storytelling sensibilities into a Lighter and Softer form (reducing both the show's formerly-snappy pacing and volume of Parental Bonus) and marketed the series in association with more squarely preschool-oriented fare such as Barney & Friends and Bob the Builder, that the current cultural perception of the show emerged.
• Archive Panic: The show, as of its conclusion in 2021, comprises 584 episodes, plus a theatrical film and numerous feature-length specials.
• Audience-Alienating Era: The show is often perceived to have gone through at least two of these.
  • First was seasons 8-16, which are divided into two eras that fans refer to as the "New Series" or "HiT era" (Seasons 8-12), which utilized live-action modelwork and the "Nitrogen era" (Seasons 13-16), which utilized CGI visuals provided by Nitrogen Studios (hence the nickname). Episodes from these seasons often followed a simplistic narrative structure (typically dubbed the "three-strikes formula") focalizing an engine making a basic error or failing to deliver a given "special" (typically a gimmicky object packaged in a bizarre manner blatantly inconvenient for transport, such as a fully-inflated forty-foot balloon loosely fastened onto a flatbed) three times (complete with extremely similar dialogue for each incident or "strike"). The character interplay of the first seven seasons was likewise changed into a more exposition-based form of dialogue, typically to emphasize an episode's oft-simplistic moral (a mandate issued by PBS Kids over a creative decision determined autonomously by the writing staff). Circa season 10, the writing staff shoehorned frequent rhyming and alliterative phrases (see also "his boiler bubbled") into scripts. The departures of both veteran director David Mitton (having helmed the modelwork for seasons 1-7) and original musical composers Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell, amalgamated with the more limited creative control ascribed to the show's remaining crew, likewise eroded the show's production values: the sets and cinematography became noticeably more homogenous and simplistic (with noticeably-fewer detailed industrial sets than previous seasons) and the musical scores (chiefly in seasons 8-12) became slow-paced horn-driven fanfares, eschewing the preferred aesthetic of S1-7 altogether. It also didn't help that the new characters introduced from season 9-12 (mostly as a ploy to sell merchandise) usually only receive one spotlight episode to themselves (which nonetheless typically cast Thomas as the central character playing witness to the new character's foibles) before being relegated to infrequent background roles or vanishing altogether, and only Rocky, Rosie, Whiff, and Stanley made it past the switch to full-on CGI.
  • Then, starting with Season 22, there was the Big World! Big Adventures! Era, coupled with a Channel Hop from PBS to Nick Jr. The series changes the writing style again, replaces Edward and Henry in the main cast with new female engines Nia and Rebecca (who are...divisive, to say the least), along with notably being more fast-paced to please younger children with low attention spans, and focus on new gimmicks such as fantasy sequences and animals featuring in most international episodes, all because the franchise had lost a large amount of its market share to PAW Patrol, the changes seemingly being a kneejerk reaction on Mattel's part so they could be more competitive with Spin Master in this segment of the market. The changes were ultimately futile, since the show was cancelled and replaced with "All Engines Go!" due to declining ratings and toy sales.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: With the exception of heavily stylized and deviant adaptations, almost every fan-made story or video based on the series is primarily themed after the first seven seasons or "Arc Productions era" pre-BWBA CGI episodes (seasons 17-21), since they're considered the show's best seasons.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The episode "Rusty and the Boulder" has a few. Gordon's stern face suddenly appears, then disappears, on the boulder, and then is visible on it at the end. There's also a scene of the shed somehow spontaneously catching fire.
  • In Thomas and the Magic Railroad, a talking tumbleweed appears a couple of times. It's there for no reason and the characters never refer to it.
• Bizarro Episode: "Rusty and the Boulder" is an unexpectedly dark episode where a new quarry is threatened by a boulder sitting on a cliff high above it, a boulder that's heavily implied to be sentient and seems to be trying to drive the engines out of its territory. It's a really creepy episode.
• Broken Base: Now has its own page.
• Can't Un-Hear It:
  • Here's a fun challenge: watch episodes narrated by Ringo Starr for the first few years of your life, then when you're older, watch footage of him talking about literally anything else and don't immediately assume he's narrating a Thomas episode. You can't. In fact, if you want to feel particularly uncomfortable, listen his performance in the London Symphony Orchestra version of Tommy where he plays Uncle Ernie, a child molester.
  • Listen to one of George Carlin's stand-up routines after watching an ep with him narrating. The sheer tonal clash will make your head hurt.
  • Many fans going back to read The Railway Series will often hear Ringo or Carlin's narrations in their head when reading them, or, if wanting to have the engines get their own individual voices, will often hear their voices from the CGI shift; notably Martin Sherman's voices for Thomas, Percy, and Diesel.
• Cargo Ship:
  • With most characters being locomotives, the list is long. Thomas/Lady, Thomas/Emily, Thomas/Rosie, Thomas/Molly, James/Emily, James/Molly, Toby/Mavis, Toby/Henrietta, Gordon/Rebecca, Percy/Rosie, Percy/Rebecca, Thomas/Ashima, Timothy/Marion, Luke/Millie, Cranky/Carly, Diesel/Daisy, Rajiv/Noor Jehan, etc. Shipping is a notably taboo subject to discuss outside of certain circles, though.
  • Due to the overwhelming amount of male characters, Cargo Yaoi Shippings are arguably more popular than the above pairings listed. Generally, Thomas/Percy, Edward/James and Gordon/Henry are accepted, either seriously or just for the hell of it. There's also Thomas/James, Percy/James, Gordon/James, Duck/Oliver, Captain/Skiff, Salty/Porter, Duncan/Rusty, Skarloey/Rheneas, and Whiff/Scruff.
    • More rarely, there are Cargo Yuri pairings. The most popular ones seem to be Emily/Caitlin, mostly because of "Best Engine Ever", and Rebecca/Belle, mostly because of "What Rebecca Does".
  • As a side-effect, humanized stories and fan art with many of the above ships are not uncommon, and these are fair game in the general fan community.
• Catharsis Factor: Considering the amount of times they've gotten away with causing accidents that the engines get in trouble for, a lot of moments where the Troublesome Trucks end up getting destroyed when they cause a crash can be very incredibly satisfying.
• Character Rerailment: Haha...! No, but seriously, any of the engines slowly became tamer relative to their earlier strong presence of personalities in the long run. (e.g. Henry began as a character often stricken with envy and misfortune and became a character who worried about many things.) From Season 17 onward however, a new writing team was brought on board, reverting back many of the engines to how they used to be and reinforcing its roots in The Railway Series. While characteristics established by the TV series do remain, they are more shrewdly peppered on as Hidden Depths (eg. Edward and Toby are still more fallible and Adorkable than their book counterparts to make them more colourful, but retain their more sensible characteristics otherwise).
• Common Knowledge:
  • In truth, "Gordon Goes Foreign" was intended to be adapted in Season 2, not Season 3.
  • The mainstream media and people outside the fandom believe that Henry was sealed in the brick tunnel forever, with some humourously stating that he died of starvation. when one simple viewing of "Edward, Gordon, and Henry" would show that this is not the case whatsoever. The US dub even clarifies that The Fat Controller was never going to abandon Henry in the tunnel for very long; he was only leaving him there until he learned his lesson.
  • The classic series was not animated in stop-motion. The locomotives were filmed in real-time on a set (Albeit at a higher framerate so they moved faster) and stop-motion was used extremely rarely and only for the humans and animals.
  • The reason "Mountain Engines" was never adapted was not because it was "too dark". It was a combination of the Awdry's fallout, difficulties with merchandising due to the angled coaches, and production dificulties (Culdee Fell would require engines to either have their rear faces removed or redone, and the hilly terrain could make filming difficult).
  • You'll occasionally find reviews on Amazon for DVDs of either the classic series or the HiT era complaining that customers were expecting CGI, and got quote-unquote "narrated still images" instead. Ignoring the fact that they're obviously not just still images, a majority of the show was made using physical sets, not CGI. The show switched to CGI in the late 2000s, and that only lasted a little over a decade before the show was cancelled.
• Contested Sequel: Amongst the Britt Allcroft/David Mitton seasons, Season 5 tends to be the most contentious one amongst fans. Most of the fanbase loves Season 5 for its darker, more cinematic, and action-packed atmosphere and tone, with many fans regarding it as being part of the golden years of the show, if not the show's best season. However, there's also a smaller but quite loud subset of fans who see Season 5 as being inferior to the previous four seasons and blame it for starting the show's Seasonal Rot, due to it shifting away from the laidback tone and railway realism of the original Railway Series books and the first four seasons in favor of "mindless" action sequences and crashes instead, while also being the first season to move entirely away from adapting Awdry's original material in favor of telling its own stories instead (granted, this was a trend that was already occurring back in the third season, but while that season still adapted some Railway Series stories, Season 5 had none whatsoever). Though, this particular case of "contestedness" has been receding with time, especially after successively worse and/or more divisive seasons and eras came after Season 5 and made its problems look comparatively quaint, making it look better and better in the process.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The music video for "Accidents Will Happen" portrays many of the show's nastiest accidents with a cheery, upbeat tune.
• Cry for the Devil: Yea, there's a reason Diesel has several villainous tropes in his character page. But it's definitely a Tear Jerker when he discusses his Freudian Excuse in "Springtime for Diesel".
• Demographically Inappropriate Humor:
  • In "Mavis", an angry farmer tells Mavis "just what she could do with her train." Shove it up her ass.
  • In "Donald's Duck", Duck tells Donald to "quack himself".
  • In "Buzz Buzz", after James' numerous unsuccessful attempts to shoo the bees off his boiler, his driver tells him that all they can do now is fetch another hive from the Vicarage Orchard. The narrator then says, "James' reply was drowned by the sound of buzzing."
  • In "Fiery Flynn", after Flynn soaks Sir Topham Hatt, Den says "Fiery Flynn fudges it!", "fudge" being a family-friendly version of a certain F-word....
  • In "No More Mr. Nice Engine", white stuff splatters all over Sir Topham Hatt, Edward, and Hiro..... thankfully, it's just milk.
  • Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell have confirmed that Daisy is meant to be reminiscent of a sleazy nightclub stripper. Her Leitmotif uses Sexophone and is based on "The Stripper" by David Rose. In fact, Daisy was supposed to have pink buffers that resembled boobs to emphasize her hooker motif. You read that right. A stripper in a show for toddlers. This persona is scrubbed away in the CGI series, though.
• Designated Hero:
  • Thomas in Misty Island Rescue. The most "useful engine" would be allowed to take a special train of logs, and Diesel thinks he's really useful. Thomas says, "No, Diesel! I'm sure the Fat Controller means a really useful STEAMIE. You'll never be that!". Diesel gets furious and runs off with the logs to prove he's as useful as a steam engine. In the end, Thomas never gets called out for insulting Diesel.
  • In Steam Roller, Skarloey and the others make fun of Sir Handel's wheels, and when Sir Handel sticks up for himself, Skarloey makes a plan "to make Sir Handel see sense." He's treated as being in the right for this. This is actually a case of a poor adaptation, as in the original book Sir Handel's boasting had taken place over the course of a while. Thus while this trope still applied to the other engines for starting it, Sir Handel's genuine need to be taken down a peg made him less of a Designated Villain than he was in the TV Show.
  • In "Pop Goes the Diesel", Duck takes an instant dislike towards Diesel for boasting about his lineage (which Duck had been bothering the others by doing a long while before) and sets him up to humiliate himself shunting for trucks. Like with the Misty Island Rescue example, it is only afterwards that Diesel shows his true nasty side by committing Disproportionate Retribution, again, meaning he's not a Designated Villain, but the opposing engine was still Bullying the Dragon. Though like in the case of "Steamroller," this is a somewhat flawed adaptation. As in the book, Duck had become somewhat prideful about his heritage thanks to City of Truro's visit. Which had happened recently at the time.
• Designated Villain:
  • The policeman in "Thomas in Trouble." He might have been relying too heavily on outdated laws, but he was only doing his job.
  • James can come across as this in "James and the Coaches", as he was shown to deserve being in trouble with the Fat Controller for wheeshing on his top hat and bumping the coaches, but he was completely unaware and it's not like the Fat Controller expected that steam would make his hat wet.
  • In "Emily and the Special Coaches", Diesel is made out to be the bad guy for taking the special coaches, but he wasn't even rude to begin with and just said that Gordon isn't the only one who's special and was about to tell Emily his record and Emily just rudely dismissed him.
• Director Displacement: The show is far more associated with its producer Britt Allcroft than with David Mitton, who is the one that directed and wrote most of the classic series episodes.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Diesel has a few fans who believe he isn't a villain. Although he does have sympathetic qualities, he's still a manipulative bully who does baddish thingies for disproportionate revenge or his own amusement.
  • A few fans believe 'Arry and Bert aren't villainous. While their villainy gets toned down and they do have likable moments, they're still bullies who clearly and gleefully tried to scrap Stepney.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • For secondary characters, Duck wins by a landslide, followed by Oliver, the Scottish twins, and Bill and Ben.
  • Salty and Cranky of Brendam Docks locale were among the first key supporting characters created specifically for the show. They became popular enough to stick around throughout the entire series, in spite of several attempts at cast streamlining demoting even key Railway Series characters.
  • Paxton, a non-speaking background character introduced in 2011's Day of the Diesels, was given a much larger starring role in Blue Mountain Mystery which solidified his odd but well-meaning personality. Fans liked the character so much that he's since received several starring roles in Series 17 and 18.
  • Plenty of fans were excited to know that the Flying Scotsman would make his first proper appearance in The Great Race, and hope he will appear again after that.
  • For a literal (probably) non-sentient slab of rock, the Boulder from "Rusty and the Boulder" is considered very memorable by the fans, in part because of how bizarrely frightening its episode is.
  • Derek has a good number of fans due to being an accurate portrayal of his basis.
  • Molly is one of the better-loved characters during the HiT Entertainment era due to her Shrinking Violet personality, which makes her stand out in a crowd of what were otherwise generic Nice Guy newcomers (aside from the occasional Hate Sink like Dennis or Billy). Her popularity might have been why she made more speaking appearances then most of the 9-12 characters, who usually only appeared once with a few cameos later on. To say nothing of how she was a common request for a returnee during the Brenner era - though that unfortunately never came to pass.
  • Despite only appearing in one episode, Smudger has become popular thanks in no part to his use in YouTube Poops, his very memetic laugh, and his surprisingly horrific fate.
  • Granted he was only created for the Wooden Railway line, but Logan became a popular character in many web series and fanfics that often depict him staying on Sodor and becoming friends with Hector, who works with him at the Crosby Coaling Plant.
  • Hiro doesn't appear often in the show itself, but is popular with fans for his backstory and pacifist badassery. He's especially huge in Japan, where he is merchandised and promoted as much as Thomas himself.
  • Despite his extremely limited screentime in "Big World! Big Adventures!" and lack of appearances in the show proper, Beau tends to get love as a Cool Old Guy. He was the first character from the "Big World! Big Adventures!" era of the show to get a Bachmann model, beating both Nia and Rebecca to the slot.
  • While she does have a number of detractors, Rosie's status as the first officially canon female tank engine (Lady has her fans but is mainly non-canon to the main series) meant that she was a prominent part of many fan stories. It also helps that in addition to sticking around until the show's final season, the writers rarely did anything egregious with her in any episodes, and the fact that her basis has a well-known history with Thomas's. In fact, the main reason Rosie received her new red livery in the later seasons of the show was because the creators wanted to spruce her up in response to fan demand for more of her.
• Epileptic Trees: There are some pretty wild fan theories about the inexplicable activities of the seemingly sentient Boulder from "Rusty and the Boulder", not least of which being that it's possessed by the spirit of a condemned engine seeking revenge.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Amongst the sea of international engines introduced in The Great Race, Vinnie has guard rails over his face to resemble the face mask of a football helmet, as well as the rough and antagonistic attitude of a vile bully, which is seen as a bad stereotype of Americans.
  • Similarly, many characters from the "International Episodes" of the "Big World! Big Adventures!" Era (including Nia, to those who don't defend her) are greatly disliked thanks to mainly being one-note stereotypes of people from their respective countries (indeed, many fans from those aforementioned countries are particularly prominent among those critics for the era's insensitivity and utter inaccuracy in its depictions of those characters).
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Referring to Thomas the Tank Engine as "Thomas the Train", "Thomas the Tank", or especially "Thomas the Choo Choo Train" will guarantee you a kick in the rear from the fanbase. This was made into a joke In-Universe. The Season 22 episode “Outback Thomas” had Shane refer to Thomas as “Thomas the Train”.
  • Acting like Henry was bricked up in a tunnel forever is another way to piss off the fandom big time, since no one outside the fandom seems to acknowledge that Henry was let out in the very next episode.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With PAW Patrol, as PAW has beaten Thomas as the most popular preschool brand (in ratings and in toy sales) and fans of Thomas are upset. Thomas fans have also been known to take jabs at PAW Patrol and other modern preschool shows. It doesn't help that from 2018-2019, Thomas aired on Nickelodeon alongside PAW, and Mattel revamped brand starting with Big World! Big Adventures! and the tie-in Season 22 to compete with PAW Patrol and its' contemporaries on Nick and Disney. Both also have the dubious honour of being accused of pro-authoritarian themes, though in Thomas' case it has to do with the series' age. Season 22's new gimmick of inserting wild animals more frequently in the show further proves the attempt to rip off PAW Patrol, as if the change was a kneejerk reaction on Mattel's part to Spin Master's toyline cutting in on their share of the preschool vehicular toy market ^note Mattel is used to having the monopoly on certain segments of the toy market, such as the die-cast car market with Hot Wheels and Matchbox, and the girl's doll market with Barbie, American Girl, and Monster High (and their respective spin-offs). Couple that with PAW merchandise becoming more prevalent, and Thomas merch becoming less of a presence (especially following the demise of Toys R Us), and heritage railways scrapping their “A Day Out with Thomas” events and replacing them with PAW Patrol-based events, and the PAW franchise's commonly-referred title as the "Thomas Killer" is easily becoming true. Surprisingly, it's a pretty one-sided rivalry as PAW fans generally ignore the Thomas fans when they bash PAW Patrol for killing the popularity Thomas had for nearly a decade, even when other preschool shows like Dora the Explorer were constantly beating Thomas in the ratings.
  • A milder but longer rivalry exists with Chuggington as well. Mainly because Thomas fans see Chuggington as more "kiddie" and less mature in comparison and while appealing to preschoolers, is alienating to the rest of the family; unlike Thomas which has generally done a good job appealing to young kids but also can be entertaining to older kids and adults. A lot of Thomas fans also criticize Chuggington for being a lot less grounded in railway realism, as the characters literally bounce off the rails. Some fans blame Chuggington for the Thomas CGI-series making the characters more "animated" in later seasons, mainly the "bouncing"-like body language gestures done by the engines and cars which has sparked a lot of controversy within the fandom (though it's mitigated by the fact that the bouncing in Thomas is much more subtle and graceful compared to Chuggington's more Cars-like physics, and the one time Edward did jump off the rails, it was Played for Laughs and he did so in shock, and not as high as the Chuggington characters tend to). Chuggington was also created by former HiT writers and the show also has a strong merchandise presence that rivals the Thomas merchandise line. Fans have accused Chuggington of trying to leech off of the popularity of Thomas since day one. It also didn’t help that the CGI switchover happened around the same time Chuggington was first released. In Season 22, the physics are also now mostly following in Chuggington’s footsteps, likely causing this rivalry to sink even further. Thankfully due to All Engines Go, Chuggington has gathered some newfound respect from the Thomas fandom.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: It's popular to rewrite "Edward Strikes Out" with one of the big engines (typically James) in Edward's place.
• Fandom VIP:
  • Matt Michaud, better known as Enterprisingengine93 is one of the most recognized fanwork creators. He has an acclaimed series called Enterprising Engines. Mattel even hired him to direct the Thomas Creator Collective.
  • Michael White, also known as WhitehouseFilms, is a fan of the show who knew Andrew Brenner personally. Andrew Brenner invited him to work on the series, and White ended up writing several episodes for seasons 22-24.
  • The Unlucky Tug is renowned for his in-depth video analyses of the show and its characters.
  • DieselD199 is perhaps the most famous content creator, with his TOMICA Thomas and Friends series having amassed 700 million views.
  • The Sodor Island Fansite is a comprehensive fansite about the show and its lore, and have even interviewed several Thomas staff members.
• Fan Nickname:
  • It isn't uncommon to hear fans who've watched Shining Time Station call the narrator "Mr. Conductor".
  • Fans like to divide the series into "eras", with a name for each one.
    • Seasons 1 through 7 are called "The Classic Series", with two "sub-eras". 1 through 5 are the "Golden Age", and 6 through 7 are the "Experimental Era" or "The Gullane Era".
    • Seasons 8 through 11 are known as either "The HiT Era" or "The New Series". Due to Season 12 not being fully CGI, it is sometimes treated as part of it.
    • Seasons 12 to Season 21 are known as "The CGI Era", with two "sub-eras". 12 through 16 are "The Sharon Miller Era" while Season 17 to Season 21 is "The Brenner Era", named after the head writers during those seasons. Seasons 8 through 16, as a whole, tend to be referred to as "The Dark Age" as a whole.
    • Season 22 onwards is dubbed the "Mattel Creations Era" due to HiT Entertainment being folded into Mattel Creations in 2017, or the "Big World! Big Adventures! Era" due to it being added to the show's title. Many fans also refer to it as "The Second Dark Age".
  • The Thomas Wooden Railway is often called the "Thomas Plastic Railway" by collectors, due to the abundant use of plastic in modern sets as opposed to the namesake material (though there are sets that are made solely out of wood for those who can afford them. Wood's more expensive than you think it is.).
• Fanfic Fuel: The fandom has become increasingly well-known for taking characters with either bland or convoluting personalities and rewriting them to be more distinct and consistent.
• Fanon:
  • Since it was mentioned that many engines came and went on the Mid Sodor Railway, Freddie is often explained as one of these, which is how Sir Handel knows him. Alternatively, they know each other from their time at the Peel Godred Aluminum Works, where the latter and Peter Sam worked after the Mid Sodor closed.
  • Whenever the Culdee Fell Railway engines are given unique liveries a la the Skarloey Railway engines, Culdee is pretty much always kept identical to his RWS livery of purple with orange lining.
  • Ivo Hugh is often depicted as purple had he been introduced into the show to complete the rainbow found in the liveries of the Skarloey Railway engines.
  • It is common to see fanon where Mighty Mac were two previously separate engines that were rebuilt as a Farlie after an extreme accident.
  • Although it's not confirmed as to whether or not they're the same character, the troublesome truck in the front of the train that went into the mine in "Put Upon Percy" is often interpreted by fans to be S.C. Ruffey, due to the truck happening to don his face.
  • Fans tend to assume that if Proteus and the ghost engine from Rusty's story in "Duncan Gets Spooked" are real that they are one and the same, with Rusty's story detailing Proteus' death.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Thomas and the Magic Railroad, which attempted to serve as a send-off to the spin-off Shining Time Station and thus ended up being tonally inconsistent with the bulk of Thomas & Friends, such as the engines driving themselves (including the actually murderous Cartoon Creature Diesel 10) due to the lack of humans on Sodor, the railway's roster of steamies suddenly dropping to six engines (even Edward is absent), and portraying Sodor as an almost "toy-world come to life" at the opposite end of Mr. Conductor's "special universe" powered by magic instead of a plausibly-fictional island located in the Cumbrian Sea between the British mainland and the Isle of Man. The film has only ever been subtly referenced once afterwards, though characters Lady and Diesel 10 have shown up in later films, though Lady only appeared in a dream.
    • The latter seasons have not hesitated to make multiple allusions to the film, and there is now a strong implication the film is canon.
  • Due to all the drastic changes to the series in the writing style, main cast and general format, some fans also try to erase the Big World! Big Adventures! era from their personal canon as well.
  • Some have even gone as far as to erase the entire CGI-era from the first twelve seasons and treat it as its own seperate canon instead (in spite of the numerous callbacks to the model-era in later seasons).
• Fanwork-Only Fans: There are a number of Thomas fans who admit to not caring about the TV show itself anymore for a number of reasons, but remain engaged with the franchise through its many fan works.
• First Installment Wins:
  • While later seasons aren't without their fans, the first seven seasons under Britt Allcroft, particularly S1-5, are commonly regarded as being the best by a large portion of the fandom and are the most well-loved overall.
  • The original theme song used for the Allcroft era remains the most iconic and beloved among the numerous theme songs used throughout the years. This could also very much apply to the original soundtrack by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell as a whole.
  • The first narrator, Ringo Starr, is the most well-known and beloved amongst fans and critics. The first US exclusive Narrator, George Carlin, is also highly regarded amongst American fans and critics as well.
  • In spite of the problems and Seasonal Rot it faced later on, the show as a whole remains far more well-liked and popular amongst critics and audiences than its successor, Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • The initial episodes, even those based directly off The Railway Series stories, wavered somewhat in realism for story purposes or studio goofs. The drivers' involvement went in and out depending on the plot ("Daisy" seemingly had an engine stop and start without her driver's involvement, all of one episode after demonstrating the engines' dependence on their workmen) and sometimes engines would suffer Out Of Character Moments (Edward shown subtle signs of an irritable or heckling demeanor as early as Season One). The Reverend infamously expressed distaste for the Season Three episode "Henry's Forest" because of its violation of Rule 55^*Trains stopped on a running(active) line must inform or remind the signalman of their presence. In doses, most fans didn't see this as an issue, or even notice it, but later seasons tended to not pay any attention to railway realism and have OOC depictions of the characters become the default (rather infamously, Skarloey acted like a child during the later model seasons) such that it became distracting.
    • As The Unlucky Tug pointed out in his "Sodor's Finest" episode dedicated to Skarloey, his infamous character derailment during the HiT era first started in the Britt Allcroft-produced Season 6. In "Rusty Saves the Day", Skarloey has a defeatist attitude towards the repair of the Skarloey Railway, in contrast to the Determinator aspect of his personality shown in the previous two seasons. This wasn't seen as a serious problem at the time because Skarloey was a minor character that season. The Season 7 episode "The Old Bridge" is infamous for portraying Skarloey as Out of Character, but some fans are more forgiving towards this particular episode because Skarloey was shown to suffer a traumatic experience and was reacting to it. However, Skarloey's characterization from Seasons 9-12 is panned as regression to a child for no good reason beyind HiT thinking he must be a child because he's a small narrow gauge engine, and his episodes from those seasons are often considered to be among the worst of an already Audience-Alienating Era.
  • HiT is often criticized for introducing an abundant amount of characters who only appeared in one episode (usually alongside Thomas) before being delegated to cameos or disappearing altogether, created only for merchandising purposes. However, such a trend was started all the way back in Season 5, with the likes of Thumper, Bertram, etc. (Salty and Cranky are naturally exempt). Even The Railway Series used a palpable number of One-Shot Characters for stories that got no development or even basic personalities (so much so that the adapted episodes had to replace a lot of them with recurring characters for cost reasons). However, most of these characters were one-shot antagonists that had an in-story reason for leaving Sodor, whilst Executive Meddling demanding more Thomas stories prevented the development of other characters, with Bear being a primary example.
  • Before he was stripped of his main character status come Season 22, there were several seasons where Edward didn't have much of a presence or had only a handful of noteworthy roles. Even in The Railway Series books themselves, Edward appeared less and less over time. This is more forgivable because it wasn't until Season 8 that there was a designated group of "main characters". This may even count as a case of Tropes Are Tools to some level, given how often Edward's personality was compromised to reach quota following that, with most of his Season 22-onward appearances, while more sporadic, keeping him mostly in-character.
  • Tying into that, Big World Big Adventures wasn't even the first incident a main engine was moved out of Tidmouth permanently. Toby was relocated to Aresdale End (his original shed) in Season Five, and even before then interchanged between Tidmouth and Ffarquar Sheds. The difference is that, while this naturally omitted Toby from some group scenes, he still had a regular presence and got his own episodes, while Edward and Henry's leave was a clear indication of them being Demoted to Extra outside odd side roles, with Toby himself and even some engines that were almost never in Tidmouth to begin with getting more screentime than them in Big World Big Adventures.
  • A lot of fans complain about "Big World! Big Adventures!" bringing in trains from other countries to make it racially diversive. Never mind the fact that, as far back as Season 12, engines from other countries have been introduced to the cast. The difference is that with earlier examples, foreign characters tended to not get singled out as foreign, and when they did, their exact home was usually never named (flashbacks of Hiro's old home are blatantly in Japan but it is never spelled out, nor is it the focus of his character as a kind-hearted old engine). The "Big World! Big Adventures!" foreign characters tended to have a lot of focus placed on their home country, sometimes to the point of defining their entire character, causing the perception that they were placed in for the sake of Anvilicious diversity themes.
  • Later seasons, particularly those of the HiT era, are often panned for their overuse of Thomas at the expense of other characters. However, episodes adapted from The Railway Series would sometimes throw in Thomas as early as "Edward and Gordon" either because the show is named after him, or because designing a model for a one-shot character would increase costs for no good reason^Example"Grandpuff" and "Sleeping Beauty" are framed as a (true) story told by Thomas to his friends, while in the book they were adapted from, Sir Handel and Peter Sam recollect their time working on the Mid Sodor Railway, and Thomas and co. are absent. However, Thomas' extra roles were usually minor, and there were still many stories where he was absent altogether, making this problem less noticable before the later seasons.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The Thomas fandom and the TUGS fandom go hand-in-hand. This is because of the similar concepts, and the fact that a good chunk of the production team of TUGS also worked on Thomas. The show was even created by David Mitton and Robert Cardona, who were the series' then director and producer, respectively. It's even implied that both shows take place in the same universe (especially with Big Mickey becoming a character in Season 21 after his model was just there as a case of Prop Recycling. There's even clear parallels to his character in TUGS).
    • The incredibly-popular fan series The Stories of Sodor started off as a version of TUGS with Thomas characters, with clear parallels between the characters, and plots being adapted wholesale, mixed with original stories and realistic versions of Railway Series and TV series episodes.
  • There's also a nice overlap with the Theodore Tugboat fandom, given that Robert D. Cardona worked on that show as well as Thomas and TUGS. Theodore is similar to the aforementioned TUGS, but is more kid-friendly.
  • The Thomas fandom and the Transformers fandom have a good overlap, most likely owing to the Trains Formers fan videos.
  • Despite the above-mentioned Fandom Rivalries, there are still some Thomas fans who like Chuggington, and vice-versa.
  • Many Thomas fans are also My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fans, and there are a lot of fanfics and fanart crossing over the two. One reason for this may be because both shows are popular among people on the autism spectrum.
  • Many fans of Mr. Men are also Thomas fans, and fanfics and fanart crossing over the two are not uncommon.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The Japanese love the franchise, so much that they even built a Thomas theme park at the base of Mt Fuji (the very first Thomas theme park, in fact), and got an exclusive PlayStation game titled KidsStation: Kikansha Thomas to Nakamatachi that is surprisingly solid. Not only that, but they even get exclusive promos for the new seasons and specials. The Japanese dub even had individual voice actors for each character as far back as the first season, long before both English dubs had individual voices. The third season of the show was even funded by the Japanese thanks to Fuji Television, who would also later produce a Japanese only TV special titled Thomas and the U.K. Trip. In late 2022, they began a web series that recreates classic episodes with humans in an office setting!
  • It's also huge in Mexico. Canal 5 even aired several Season 23 episodes before the US and UK did.
  • The franchise is also big in North America, where the toy sales alone add up to one billion dollars annually. The show itself also pulls in good ratings, to the point that both times when PBS Kids pulled Thomas off their schedule in the United States ^note first in 1997 when PBS lost the rights to Shining Time Station and again 20 years later with the series as a stand-alone program, many children and parents got upset about the change and demanded its return. The United States also got a similar version of the Mount Fuji theme park in 2015 at Edaville. In Canada, up until the rights to Thomas went to Treehouse TV in 2018, the show was a staple of the TV Ontario schedule (which had happened ever since Shining Time Station premiered in 1989), and there wasn't a day where the station didn't air the show, since Thomas, along with the Canadian-produced Arthur and PAW Patrol, were the three flagship shows of TV Ontario. ^note  When Thomas left, The Ollie and Moon Show took its timeslots. When it moved channels to Treehouse, its' popularity didn't fade, as it became the second most-run foreign show on the channel after Peppa Pig.
• Growing the Beard:
  • While season 1 was and still is well regarded amongst fans, many agreed that season 2 was really when the show began to hit its stride. The season introduced fan-favorite supporting characters such as Duck, Diesel and Donald & Douglas to the show, introduced the concepts of scrapping and the rise of diesels, giving it a darker and more realistic tone as opposed to the simpler, storybook-like tone of season 1, Ringo Starr delivers a far more varied and energetic narration here than in season 1 and thanks to the move from Clearwater Studios to the far bigger Shepperton Studios, the sets are far larger and detailed than in season 1, and the camera is allowed to move around more often, leading to more dynamic and exciting shots compared to the mostly static shots in season 1. Long-standing staples of the show, such as the friendship between Thomas and Percy, the conflict between Steam and Diesel Engines and epic, violent crashes, also begin to be established here as well and would be built upon further in later seasons.
  • After languishing in what was almost unanimously considered to be Seasonal Rot for seasons 8-16, content from 2013 to 2017 was much more well-received thanks to Andrew Brenner. Some may call it a Beard Re-growth. Season 18 and Tale of the Brave have cemented this in the eyes of the fans; the latter has been praised for its character-driven and dramatic storyline.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Ben Small, the first UK voice of Thomas. His voice for Thomas is endearing, but rarely excels past the quirky personality you'd expect from a preschool cartoon character. He puts a great deal of realistic emotion into the surprisingly dramatic Tale of the Brave however. His replacement, John Hasler carries on from this rather well too, especially in the later special features.
  • Many fans were surprised by the foul-mouthed comedian George Carlin's genuinely earnest and warm narration of the earlier US episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Following Edward and Henry’s departure from the main cast, and subsequent replacement by Nia and Rebecca in order to include more female members in the main cast, several examples of this have happened:
    • The final verse of the song "That's What Friends Are For" can come off as much sadder, due to Edward and Henry no longer being among Thomas’ main cast of friends.
    • Season 1's episode "Coal" has a scene of The Fat Controller telling Henry that if he doesn't get better, they will have to get another engine instead of him. Come Season 22, Henry is Demoted to Extra, and his spot in the main cast is taken by Rebecca.
    • Gordon's rude remarks towards Edward ("He should be retired!", "Edward is a waste of steam", "The driver won't choose you again") can come off as this due to, again, Edward being Demoted to Extra and his status as a main character being taken by Nia in Big World! Big Adventures!. So basically, Edward did get retired. To punctuate it, it's Gordon himself that takes his departure from Tidmouth Sheds the worst.
  • In the magazine story Taking Toby, Edward overhears a conversation between two workmen and mistakenly thinks they’re planning to steal Toby. Then in December 2010-early 2011, Toby’s model was stolen from the exhibit at Drayton Manor Theme Park.^note It may not have been such a bad thing given that Drayton Manor is known to not take good care of the props, and whoever took him may be taking better care of him.
  • In "Rusty and the Boulder", Rusty is anxious about a new quarry disturbing the resting place of a massive, ominous boulder sitting atop a tall mountainside. Before it is inevitably knocked off its resting place, it is implied that it may be sentient on more than one occasion, with a face resembling that of an old man appearing and then disappearing throughout. Five years after the episode debuted The Old Man of the Mountain, a famous rock formation in New Hampshire that resembled a man's profile when viewed from the side, sadly collapsed after years of erosion. Its destruction was deeply mourned as it was considered a symbol of the state; Boulder's story ends on a similarly somber note, seemingly gazing upon its former home with sadness.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "Henry's Forest", despite being a very heartwarming episode, was infamous for breaking a number of railway rules and leading the Awdrys to cut ties with the TV series. But come 2013, Andrew Brenner, author of the original "Henry's Forest" magazine story, is the head writer of the series! (To be fair, though, Brenner's version didn't trample railway safety nearly as badly.).
  • The Season 22 episode "Rosie is Red" takes place on Valentine's Day and revolves around an interaction between Thomas and Rosie. 5 years earlier, this video was released by a Thomas YouTuber named DieselD199, and the Thomas/Rosie interaction is also similar. Some fandom members jokingly named him a “time traveler” due to this.
  • This Parody Fic of The Railway Series book "Thomas The Tank Engine" involves Thomas saying that he wants to see Australia, Tibet, Africa. Come Season 22...
  • In "No Joke for James", The Fat Controller reprimands James for taking Gordon's Express coaches, telling him that he has "caused confusion". A couple of seasons later, it would later become one half of one of the Fat Controller's infamous Character Catchphrase "Confusion and Delay".
  • "What Rebecca Does" has a scene early in the episode where Percy shunted the coaches for Rebecca’s Express train, with Rebecca giggling at him in an affectionate manner, and Percy blushing in response. This comes off as notably hilarious (and/or heartwarming, depending on how you look at it), particularly in the US dub, with the reveal that Rachael Louise Miller (Rebecca’s voice actress) and Christopher Ragland (Percy’s US dub voice actor since Season 19) are Happily Married.
  • In Season 1’s "James and the Coaches", the Fat Controller threatens to paint James blue if he misbehaves. Fans had been wondering how hilarious James would look if he was blue, which became a reality in Season 22’s episode "An Engine of Many Colours", where James' Imagine Spot has him imagining himself in different colours, one of which is blue. Due to his similarity in appearance to Edward, one human even mistakes Blue!James for Edward.
  • In "Thomas and the Trucks", Thomas complains about shunting coaches for the other engines and wants to see the world. He got his wish in Big World! Big Adventures! and Season 22 and onwards.
  • Most of Gordon's daydreams in the Big World Big Adventures are Disney Acid Sequence nightmares where he imagines himself the Only Sane Man in a world gone mad. Come All Engines Go, and Gordon basically foreshadowed his own future.
  Sir Topham Hatt: I'm afraid it will only be silly jobs for you from now on...
  • James colliding with a hot air balloon in "James and the Red Balloon" might seem like an unrealistic gag and part of the series drifting away from its realistic Ripped from the Headlines Awdry-esque approach... until it happenedfor real in 2022 in Wisconsin on the Canadian National Railway.
  • In "Thomas in Trouble", Thomas is shown to be against the idea of having cowcatchers installed onto him. Hilariously, when the Strasburg Railroad debuted the Day Out with Thomas events a decade later, Thomas ended up getting equipped with a cowcatcher due to American laws requiring steam locomotives to have them.
• Iconic Character, Forgotten Title:
  • As the TV series gained popularity, The Railway Series became more frequently called "Thomas the Tank Engine."
  • The TV series itself has never actually been titled Thomas the Tank Engine, despite what the top of this page used to indicate. It used to be Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, and was later changed to Thomas and Friends. Season 22 onwards also adds “Big World! Big Adventures!” to the title.
• I Knew It!:
  • When the Big World! Big Adventures! series was announced, along with Nia and Rebecca taking Edward and Henry’s places respectively in the main cast, fans quickly speculated that Henry would be transferred from Tidmouth Sheds to Vicarstown. With the early Italian airing of “Confusion Without Delay” (Rebecca’s debut), this was confirmed via a brief shot of Henry and Rosie together. Unfortunately, there was no proper In-Universe explanation as to why Henry left, though fans have speculated that it may be due to Henry’s supposed new job of taking Mainland trains more frequently, if the opening scene of Journey Beyond Sodor is any indication.
  • Cinderthomtrooper, a staff member of the Thomas & Friends Wikia, speculated that Rachael Louise Miller would be the voice actress for new Steam Team member Rebecca. Come the release of a Behind the Scenes trailer for S22 on September 2nd 2018, and Miller was indeed revealed as Rebecca’s voice.
  • Another voice actor example. Following the early Italian airing of "School of Duck", and a leaked English voice cast listing for the episode, fans guessed Dexter the mobile classroom coach would be voiced by Mark Moraghan (former Seasons 17-21 narrator). They were indeed right.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains:
  • The community finds Diesel 10, one of the franchise's most famous villains, entertaining to watch for his hammy antics and being played by Neil Crone in Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Dennis from "Thomas' Day Off" is heavily disliked for making Thomas waste his day off doing his (Dennis') jobs for him, and Billy from "Don't Be Silly, Billy" is hated even more for constantly rejecting Thomas' reasonable advice and running out of coal and water as a result. Fittingly, Diesel 10 would go on to be heavily merchandised and make subsequent appearances in the series' specials, while Dennis and Billy were rarely, if ever seen again after their debut episodes.
  • Emily's bossy personality in Seasons 8-16 is disliked, yet 'Arry and Bert are preferred as the murderous diesels they were in their debut episode rather than petty bullies, and similarly, Diesel 10's portrayal in Day of the Diesels where he literally whimpers in front of the Fat Controller is regarded as a huge step down compared to how he was in Magic Railroad.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A good deal of viewers watch the show simply to see the accidents the engines get into.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Thomas, who has been shipped with practically every female character in the show (with Lady, Emily, Molly, Rosie and Ashima being the most notable examples), as well as some male characters like Percy, James, and Ryan.
  • Diesel 10 also gets a lot of shipping. He often gets paired with Lady, Diesel, Thomas, Harvey, Derek, Belle, Henry, Frankie, and the list goes on.
• LGBT Fanbase: As the show's cast was predominantly male (and close to each other) for many years (not to mention James' stereotypical mannerisms), LGBT fans and LGBT ships were inevitable. Aside from gay and lesbian pairings, fans also make gender headcanons like Daisy being BoCo post-transition to female, Lexi being genderfluid, and Rusty being non-binary. The last two don't come without precedent either; a few articles claimed Lexi was genderfluid when Journey Beyond Sodor was new, even though there was no indication that she was in the movie. When Rusty joined the show, Britt Allcroft sought to make him gender-neutral by having no specific pronouns referring to him. However, he has been referred to by male pronouns since the HiT era.
• Love to Hate:
  • Diesel, Depending on the Writer. Several other antagonists such as Diesel 10, Spencer, and 'Arry and Bert also qualify at times.
  • Sailor John is also this, with many considering him the show's best villain period.
• Memetic Molester: Trevor the traction engine gets this treatment from various memes and YouTube Poops because of his Friend to All Children personality combined with his borderline-creepy circus-esque theme tune and how George Carlin voices him in the American version.
• Memetic Mutation: Now has its own page.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Frankie tends to be like this, especially how she's trying to keep the engines both her and Hurricane stay with them forever.
  • Sir Topham Hatt tends to get portrayed online as less of a Benevolent Boss and instead an evil dictator of the island who treats his engines as slaves, with it being common to misrepresent "The Sad Story of Henry" as him leaving Henry to starve to death in the tunnel instead of letting him out the very next episode.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: A deleted scene from Big World! Big Adventures! showed Carlos, a Mexican engine joking about being a sun worshipper, then deploying the Aztec calendar around his face while "Jarabe Tapatío" plays in the background. It was deleted because it could be perceived as offensive, but Mexican fans expressed their approval of the scene and Carlos as a character.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Fans often blame Sharon Miller and most of the other writers for how Seasons 8-16 turned out, when in reality, HiT Entertainment found that the show had to be written in a more educational way to fit PBS programming guidelines. Miller actually has very notable experience as a writer, having worked on several other HiT shows such as Bob the Builder and Mike the Knight. It just happened that Thomas was where she got the worst reputation.
  • Also, the fact is that Sharon Miller only became involved starting with season 9, not 8, so any problems fans had with season 8 being blamed on her was a mistake. She didn't even become head writer until season 12.
  • A rather loud subset of the fanbase blames Season 5 for the show's Seasonal Rot, claiming that its tonal shift, "mindless action", and lack of RWS stories as episodes were what set such rot in motion. In reality, the show's earlier seasons (and even the original RWS) all had darker and/or more action-packed episodes and stories, and the decision to start moving away from the RWS was already happening as far back as Season 3. Additionally, the ACTUAL reasons for the show's eventually going downhill were, aside from that decision to move away from the RWS, Britt Allcroft's creative differences with the Awdrys, and the critical and box office failure of Thomas and the Magic Railroad, leading to Britt's resignation and the acquisition by HiT Entertainment.
• Moe:
  • Percy is treated as the youngest of the steam engines (most of the time, anyway), and his short, round, and roly-poly design is simply adorable. Nigel Pilkington's voice only helps to sell the effect.
  • Molly is a fan-favorite because her being a Shrinking Violet makes her endearing.
  • Rebecca is an adorable ray of sunshine. Her voice is most definitely a wonderful sound.
  • Putting aside the fact that he works at a waste dump, Whiff's glasses and his honest kindness make him quite cute.
  • Cleo, the final vehicle character introduced in the series, who aside from being minuscule compared to the engines is very playful and curious, her high-pitched voice helping to greatly elevate the effect despite the fact she only appeared in two episodes total. The fact that she is very much a newborn in-universe only drives the point home.
  • When Thomas isn't being an idiot or jerk, his kindness, dorkiness, and smiling face can be pretty adorable. A defictionalized version of Thomas is featured on The Other Wiki's page for 'kawaii' for a reason.
• Moral Event Horizon: 'Arry and Bert cross it with the very first thing they do on screen- try to smelt down Stepney after he gets lost in the scrapyard.
• More Popular Replacement: Day of the Diesels initially intended to have Diesel 10's original minions, Splatter and Dodge return alongside him. Due to the Merchandise-Driven nature of the series, however, their roles were instead taken by a new pair of diesels of the same line as them, Paxton and Sidney. While these were deemed glorified extras initially, they became regulars under Andrew Brenner's pen and were given more distinct personalities and spotlight episodes, leading them to become among the more popular engines introduced during the CGI era.
• My Real Daddy:
  • While nobody will deny that Wilbert Awdry is the true father of the franchise, Britt Allcroft and David Mitton are undeniably the ones who made Thomas and his friends accessible to a wider audience and into the worldwide pop cultural icons they are today.
  • While Britt Allcroft is the one who produced the original show, many fans argue that David Mitton was the true mastermind of the classic run and the one who made it good, largely due to him having directed and written the first seven seasons, while Britt Allcroft mostly acted as a producer/executive producer for the series up to her departure in Season 6. This view is especially common among detractors of Allcroft's take on Sodor as a fantasy land, as opposed to the semi-realistic location it has been shown to be in the books and most of The Classic Series.

Tropes N-Z

• Narm:
  • Alec Baldwin's narration of the line "Scary Jack Frost!"
  • The Chinese version of Toby and the Stout Gentleman gives us this facepalmer:
    The passengers: Goodbye, Toby! We can't bear to see you stay any longer!
    Toby: [extremely nasal voice] I'm sad.
• Narm Charm: The earlier seasons had relatively poor supermarionation (especially by supermarionation standards) and the entire show was styled more like an animated picture book, with the narrator carrying both the narration and the dialogue. This was easily the most memorable period of the show, and it has both an ironic and unironic following for this reason.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Boiler sludge. The engines find it vulgar to talk about. Those who have seen the stuff in real life know why; It's that stuff that builds up in the tubes of boilers. In-Universe, it is apparently the locomotive equivalent of shit.
  • Whenever we see a close-up of Whiff's Wastedump.
• Older Than They Think: Fans have come down on Whiff for wearing glasses. He wasn't the first, though, as a ballast spreader who appeared in the first illustration of Small Railway Engines (and, bizarrely, received a Wooden Railway toy in the late 90s-early 2000s) also had glasses.
• One-Scene Wonder: At the end of the Series 5 episode "Snow", Gordon pushes a snow machine for a grand total of three shots, and ends up burying himself with it. Despite the overall minuscule importance of this prop, the snow machine has become something of a meme in the Thomas fandom for the fact that we never get a good unobscured view of it, and the fact that a production model or ruler photo^note a reference photo of a prop next to a ruler, intended to allow staff to reference and replicate the prop to an accurate scale of it has never emerged. It even turned out to have an unreleased prototype Wooden Railway toy!
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Two particular examples:
  • The fifth series made the switch to original stories only due to the fallout with the Awdrys. While the direction was again fairly consistent, some feel the quality of the stories themselves declined due to no longer having any Awdry’s Railway Series to adapt from.
  • The eighth season is when many people agree Seasonal Rot started to kick in. While series 5-7 were not adapted from any of the Awdrys’ writings, they did have the same director in David Mitton, while Maidment and Allcroft still had plenty of involvement. Britt Allcroft was also involved less and less after series 5. Starting with series eight, David Mitton no longer directed any episodes and Britt Allcroft had less involvement.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Kikansha Thomas To Nakamatachi is a PS1 game released exclusively for Japanese audiences by Bandai in 2000. The graphics, music, and presentation are all well-done and show-accurate, and the game is loaded with educational mini-games such as counting, memory, correct paths, and creativity. When replaying certain mini-games, certain aspects are changed so they're not the same thing twice. The game is also very simple to play, due to the fact that the D-pad is never used, only the face buttons. It can be played with either the standard PS1 controller or the special KidsStation controller it comes bundled with. Caddicarus gave the game a positive review.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Because the original stories were based on actual events on the British Railway system and the well-done models, train enthusiasts enjoy the show. Also, the show has many older fans who grew up with the show and like to revisit the older episodes, as well as look forward to new ones after such a long run.
  • As mentioned on the main page, the original series is also very popular with people on the autism spectrum, thanks to its straightforward narration and lack of busy visuals, which prevent sensory overload. It's also proven extremely useful in teaching visual cues to children with autism, as the characters' limited facial expressions are usually accompanied by a narration of exactly what emotion they're experiencing. Even the fully animated episodes, while obviously having a greater range of action and expressions, have simple enough visuals that long-time viewers on the spectrum can still enjoy them. There's also a surprisingly expansive amount of background material on Sodor and its engines, which means they're unlikely to run out of material any time soon if it becomes their special interest.
  • There's also a big group of people online who came for all the delicious memes the show spawned.
• Questionable Casting:
  • George Carlin as narrator for a children's series. Just think about that. You would be amazed (but perhaps unsuprised) at how many people have made Thomas episodes overdubbed with some of George Carlin's not-kid-friendly acts.
  • Big Mickey being voiced by Rob Rackstraw has received some criticism, as he made no attempt to imitate the late Timothy Bateson, who voiced Big Mickey in his original show TUGS. These fans believe that Keith Wickham would've been a better choice, noting how close his Edward voice sounds to O.J. (who was also voiced by Bateson).
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Emily was considered to be this by some fans for a while, as her role as the eighth Steam Team member left Duck Demoted to Extra. The "Emily replaced Duck!" issue was acknowledged in a rather cruel light in Season 18's "Duck and the Slip Coaches", where Emily comes to the sheds twice and finds them full due to Duck taking residence for those nights.
  • Nia and Rebecca get a lot of flak for replacing Edward and Henry as members of the Steam Team, and being underdeveloped.
  • Longtime fans of Jack and the Pack have not taken well to Brenda taking Byron's position as the Sodor Construction Company's bulldozer in the Digs & Discoveries special.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Emily eventually regained her Season 7 personality starting from Season 17, as opposed to the Season 8-16 personality she had after Season 7.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • The Fat Controller is a stern, but kind authority figure towards the engines. While he does sometimes blame the engines for accidents that weren't their fault (and even then, it's implied that he's a busy man who doesn't always has the time to look into everything), he's still seen as a father to his engines. However, some fans (and a few media outlets) tend to portray him as a cruel, authoritarian dictator who treats his engines like slaves and punishes them with threats of scrapping (a concept he frequently stands against in canon).
  • Percy gets this treatment In-Universe; Bulgy's Imagine Spot from "Free the Roads" depicts him as a villain who callously forces people to travel via train.
• Sacred Cow:
  • The first seven seasons, but most notably Seasons 2 and 3, which are almost unanimously seen to be the best of the series. There are a number of fans who consider Seasons 4 and 5 to be the best as well, praising the former for its beautiful aesthetic and the latter for its darker tone and the more adventurous storytelling direction it took after the seasons that preceded it.
  • Series 20 is often regarded as the best that the CGI series has to offer, due in no small part to adapting three Railway Series stories that had not been adapted for the TV series up until that point, as well as giving Henry his due Character Rerailment in "Henry Gets the Express".
  • For songs, there's "The Island Song", a beautiful and tearjerking song about the magic of Sodor.
• Sailor Earth: The abundance of British locomotive types has made making original characters extremely easy. Road vehicles, boats, planes, humans, and even non-British locomotives are also no-brainers, to the point that foreign locomotives like Hank, Sam, Bash, Dash and Ferdinand (USA), Luke (Ireland), Hiro and Kenji (Japan), Victor (Cuba) and Millie (France) are canon. The Big World! Big Adventures! series upped the ante, with even more characters from around the world.
• The Scrappy:
  • Charlie, due to his annoying voice and lame jokes, and even outright mean behavior at times. However, he was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in Season 17.
  • The Logging Locos, Ferdinand especially, due to them being obnoxious and over-used during Miller's tenure as head-writer. American fans, in particular, saw them as offensive, as if the show was insinuating that all Americans are stupid, lazy rednecks who carry out dangerous stunts on a regular basis. It's rather telling that when Andrew Brenner took over as head writer and several of the episodes from his first season tried to rescue several character, the Logging Locos simply disappeared from the show entirely.
  • Samson due to his constant Aesop Amnesia being worse than the other characters.
  • Belle and Flynn, due to their unrealistic designs and naive/idiotic personalities.
  • Billy from Season 11's "Don't Be Silly, Billy" due to his impulsive behavior and being rude to Thomas by accusing him of bossing him around even though Thomas is giving him advice. While Billy did learn his lesson in the end, that didn't change the fan's minds about how they felt about him. Since this was Billy's only appearance, fans are relieved not to see him.
  • Dennis from Season 9's "Thomas' Day Off" for just simply being a Lazy Bum who manipulates Thomas into doing his jobs while he slacks off, even though it was Thomas' day off.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Season 8 is often considered to be a step in the wrong direction as it laid the groundwork for the problems found in later seasons. Despite this, it has been Vindicated by History as time went on.
  • Seasons 9-16 get a lot of flak due to the flaws of Season 8 getting worse and becoming much more apparent. We have continuity errors, flanderization, rampant rhyming and alliteration, the narrator Narrating the Obvious, one-off characters being introduced for the sake of merchandising, the most evident amount of railway inaccuracies, and very blatantly poor writing ("His firebox was on fire" comes to mind immediately). Worst of all, it became clear that HiT Entertainment saw the series as nothing more than a marketing machine, and it effectively became a 30-minute toy commercial. However, this got reverted in Seasons 17-21 when Andrew Brenner replaced Sharon Miller as head writer, thus reviving the series’ golden years. Sadly, this didn’t last.
  • Finally, the “Big World! Big Adventures!” era from Seasons 22-24, which was poorly received. Edward and Henry were removed from the main cast in favor of Nia and Rebecca, who are comparatively much less well-received. The season added faster pacing and nonsensical imagination sequences. The "international" gimmick was disliked for reducing each country to stereotypes, introducing half-baked characters, and forcing lessons downs the audience's throats. To add salt to the wound, these were the final three seasons of the original series, and resulted in a lackluster finale.
• Self-Fanservice: Many humanization fanarts of the characters make them Pretty Boys.
• Signature Line:
  • "Thomas is a Tank Engine who lives at a big station on the Island of Sodor. He's a cheeky little engine with six small wheels, a short stumpy funnel, a short stumpy boiler, and a short stumpy dome."
  • "But I think he deserved his punishment. Don't you?"
  • "Cinders and ashes!"
  • "Bust my buffers!"
  • "You have caused confusion and delay."
  • "Really useful."
• So Okay, It's Average: Seasons 8-12. And then it goes downhill from there. Specials Calling All Engines! and The Great Discovery are almost universally considered to be better than the likes of Misty Island Rescue and Day of the Diesels, but worse compared to Blue Mountain Mystery and King of the Railway.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The restoration of Series 1 seems to suffer from this:
    • In "Thomas & Gordon" alone, there are multiple instances in which camera equipment and set boundaries can be seen on the edge of the screen.
    • The Jump Cut seen in the original cut of "Trouble in the Shed" (when The Fat Controller dons his hat) is missing.
    • "Coal" features an alternate take of Henry arriving at Wellsworth. As he's backing into the siding, he bumps into the station building, then zips forward so the crew can film another take. Meanwhile, Edward remains motionless, even while the sound effects of him backing down onto Henry's train can be heard.
  • The series has a bit of a reputation of having such failures when a crewmember's hand (or other part of their body) ends up on camera.
  • The bee that stings James in "Buzz Buzz" looks really out of place, given that it was made using hand-drawn animation, while everything else was physical models.
  • If you watch some episodes on YouTube, you might see a comment saying that an engine or a truck was actually derailed. Once you see it you can't unsee it.
  • YouTube channel GWR Studios covers a lot of them. Frequent occurrences include stationary engines being slightly derailed, tracks wobbling as trains go over them, goods trains being rearranged from shot to shot, faces not being attached properly, visible blu-tack, paint and stickers peeling, or mysterious holes in models.
• Suspiciously Similar Song
  • Oliver's leitmotif is a pretty blatant sound-alike of John Williams' theme to Indiana Jones.
  • The opening credits of Misty Island Rescue bears an uncanny resemblance to He's a Pirate.
  • Edward's Leitmotif from Seasons 8-12 is very similar to the Percy The Park Keeper Theme.
  • Jack and the Pack's Leitmotif is also slightly similar to the Trumpton fire brigade's Leitmotif.
  • Daisy's theme in the Classic Series is fairly similar to Cruella De Vil.
  • "The Hottest Place In Town" from Journey Beyond Sodor is vaguely similar in tune to "Strange Things" from Toy Story.
  • In addition, while the newer seasons generally ditch the old themes outside special occasions, a few similar off-key tunes seem to perk up here and there:
    • A ragtime piano tune with a very similar arrangement to the original Thomas theme is heard during Glynn's flashback in "Over the Hill".
    • A sinister salsa theme similar in beat to Diesel's original theme is heard during his Malicious Slander montage in "A Most Singular Engine".
    • A riff very similar in arrangement to James' original theme is heard as the engines head to Ulfstead Castle in "Engine of the Future".
  • "The Little Engine Who Believed" sounds sorta similar to "Don't Be A Jerk, It's Christmas" from Its A Sponge Bob Christmas.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: "The Little Engine Who Believed". It's so happy and jolly and cheery - just as a Christmas song should be.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Of the first two listed under The Scrappy: "Not Now, Charlie" has Charlie get called out by all the other characters for his constant joking around; although the Misty Island tunnel is still clearly visible, the Logging Locos haven't been directly acknowledged (outside interstitials) in the Brenner era, but in "The Way She Does It", Daisy wants Thomas to guess what her special job is, and when Thomas asks her is if she's going to Misty Island, Daisy tells him, "No!" in a somewhat negative tone.
  • "Duck and the Slip Coaches" has a running gag in which Emily is unintentionally shut out of Tidmouth Sheds, which is where Duck happens to be at the time in both instances. This was confirmed by Word of God to be a nod to fans who accused Emily of replacing Duck on the Steam Team, which was indeed the original plan, until some accused it as coming across as sexist.
  • For those who hated Emily for her bossy persona in seasons 8-16, "Emily's Adventure" has Thomas straightforwardly telling Emily the reason Elizabeth won't do what she says is because she's a bossy boiler.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The opinion of many older fans once the series was bought by HiT Entertainment and the show was marketed to a younger demographic than previously (with the changes that come with it).
  • Some of the more fickle fans say this about The Adventure Begins, which takes more liberties with the original stories compared to the first few seasons.
  • While the Arc Productions era episodes are mostly considered good, a recurring complaint are their tendency to switch at least one or two characters' voice actors every season. Nearly every character has changed voice actor in either dub or both, sometimes more than once, compared to the Nitrogen era episodes, which kept a consistent cast.
  • Merchandise example; After 25 years, the beloved Thomas Wooden Railway line had been discontinued and replaced with the "Thomas Wood" line, which had many changes, including blockier and less detailed models that were missing large amounts of paint (reportedly due to a consumer study stating that kids thought the old Wooden Railway models were completely made of plastic), compacted models of bigger engines, tenders being simple blocks with details printed on, certain characters such as Annie, Clarabel, and Bertie having their entire mid-sections gutted to fit a plastic figure, and a different track system that is incompatible with track from Thomas Wooden Railway and other brands. Longtime TWR fans and collectors had originally not taken well to this line for these reasons, plus the fact that Edward and Henry were not originally part of it, adding to evidence of them being removed from the Steam Team. While things improved for the Wood line in 2019 when the engine models, while still retaining their shapes, became fully painted, and again when it was announced that Edward, Henry, and Toby would be released for it in Spring 2020, eventually on June 27, 2021, Mattel announced they would be discontinuing the line due to its poor sales. With the Thomas Wooden Railway line making a comeback (albeit in a redesigned form) next year.
  • Another merchandise example, with the traditional die-cast line coming to an end (with the September 2018 announcement of Adventures being discontinued) and being merged into TrackMaster with a new line called "TrackMaster Push-Along" which depicts the models in a similar style to the previous Take-Along/Take N Play/Adventures line, but retooled to be compatible with the TrackMaster line and being free-wheeled unlike the motorised variant, likely due to people complaining over compatibility between different toylines. The engines are now all depicted with the same wheel arrangement, having only six wheels on the main body (though there are some exceptions such as Luke, Dash and Victor, who have four wheels instead), and four wheels for the tenders. Fans viewed this as an even bigger downgrade than the Thomas Wood controversy, and feel that Mattel's days with the brand are numbered.
  • When the first look at the Continuity Reboot's Art Evolution from 3D to 2D was revealed on Twitter on October 12, 2020, it was immediately subject to intense criticism from longtime fans, who took issue with how childish it looked due to the more chibi-esque designs and the Sudden Eye Color design tweaks. Even parents complained about the redesign, many saying their children preferred the older seasons.
    • Enflaming the already intense criticism from the fandom was a summary of a conference call that revealed more details about and changes being made with the reboot, such as the engines having no drivers or firemen and behaving more like preschoolers with the exception of Gordon, the animation being even more cartoony and bouncy than the last few seasons already were, all human characters except Sir Topham Hatt being relegated to background appearances, STH himself being treated as a joke, and Sodor's British ties and influences being effectively scrapped. In other words: a Chuggington ripoff, which is extremely ironic considering many initially accused Chuggington of being a Thomas ripoff. Many fans believe the reboot will finish off the series, which had been flagging in recent years due to stiff competition from PAW Patrol and gross mismanagement of the franchise as a whole on Mattel's part.
  • American Day Out With Thomas fans were not pleased when it was revealed that Mattel had replaced Joseph May’s voice with Meesha Contreras' voice from All Engines Go. There are also older fans who don't like the idea of DOWT Thomas talking at all.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Truthfully the show is prolific at this, due to its Merchandise-Driven push to introduce loads of characters since season 5. Every season since then, aside from 8 and 15, introduce at least one new character, but before the switch to full CGI, there was a great chance that any given new character would fade into the background after their introductory spotlight episode. Egregiously, the three characters introduced in the twelfth season (Hank, Colin, and Flora) appeared in only their respective introductory episodes. This tends to be zigzagged in its treatment of the cast from the original The Railway Series books (Daisy appeared in only three episodes, compared to the books where she became a prominent character, at least until she was reintroduced in Season 20 and got several spotlight episodes; however, minor characters such as Bertie, Harold and Diesel are regulars in the show and have been granted numerous spotlight episodes).
  • Unlike the books, Duke comes to the Skarloey Railway before many of the antics of the engines there have occurred. Much like the books, however, he doesn't get any spotlight after the Mid Sodor Railway stories with him, merely being included in group shots with no exploration of what his new life is like. After his model was repainted into Bertram, he disappeared from the show entirely... and Bertram also never got any focus after his debut.
  • Molly became quite popular but disappeared from the show entirely after the switch to CGI. Some believe that she would have been a much better addition to the main cast than creating Rebecca due to both fulfilling the "shy yellow engine" persona.
  • The international engines from The Great Race have all been stated to only be sticking around for this one special, which automatically caused some fans to view them this way.
    • This feeling was increased to some following the release of the film in UK cinemas, as with the exceptions of Ashima, Vinnie, and Flying Scotsman, most of them are relegated to primarily background roles, only having one or two lines each with some not speaking at all.
    • Mitigated in the future however, due to the international engines receiving official shorts showcasing their own adventures, as well as the fact that the next special and Season 22, Big World! Big Adventures! continues the international theme, meaning that they would appear again and receive development.
  • Some fans feel this way about Rosie in Season 21. Pre-release material made a big deal out of the change to her livery from pink to red and becoming a more assertive character, leading many to suspect that she would receive A Day in the Limelight as has been the case with several new-era characters. Not so. The episode that dealt with the change, The Fastest Red Engine On Sodor, only gives the repaint as an offhand mention and focuses more on James (and his reaction to Rosie's new color, as he believes There Can Be Only One when it comes to engines painted red) rather than Rosie, with the only really noticeable character trait seen in Rosie is her being more down to earth than in her initial appearances. An episode properly addressing the repaint was in production, but was scrapped due to Mattel wanting to get to the Big World! Big Adventures! soft reboot faster.
  • Noor Jehan, the large diesel from India, has also fallen into this, due to only having two speaking roles out of the four India-based episodes. Fans were originally hyping her after seeing Rajiv's implied crush on her, only for her to do barely anything. Though, there may be a chance for Season 23 to explore her character more. Fans feel Noor Jehan's wasted potential goes against Mattel's claim that they're using the "Big World! Big Adventures!" Series to promote more female characters in the spotlight in an attempt to improve diversity. Charubala, the Indian controller (and first female railway controller in the series) also suffered a similar case, due to her screentime also being very limited.
  • Another Season 22 newbie, Tamika the Australian railmotor engine, also suffered from limited exposure, appearing in only one episode of the entire season. She doesn't return until Season 24, and even then, it's only a one line cameo.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Several stories from the Railway Series never got adapted for various reasons. The main reason was the fallout with the Awdrys after season 4.
  • The Logging Locos' connection to the major industry of logging, which involved lots of interesting, specialized locomotives, is barely touched upon. Bash and Dash were both based on a locomotive with log-hauling gear equipped, and Ferdinand is based on a geared locomotive that was popular for logging operations. However, none of this was ever the character's focus; much of their gear is never used and they are pretty much treated like any other character whose home island happens to have logs (which are said to be special but this stops being relevant after their debut movie) on it. We are also told they were sent to Misty Island because of bad behavior on the Mainland, but outside of a short conversation this is never brought up again.
  • Salty All At Sea has Salty being required to help out on the mainland, which, as of Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, has been confirmed to be England. This could've been the perfect opportunity to finally see the modern-day version of the Other Railway, after it had been mentioned extensively throughout the books and being featured in Season 3. Instead, we just get the Irony of Salty being scared about going out to sea due to the Vicarstown Bridge needing repairs and the hi-jinks that ensure as a result of his fear. In the end, the episode concludes with Salty returning to narrate what happened during his stay on the mainland, except we don't get to hear it. That's it. No flashbacks, no mention of the Privatisation of British Rail (though it's generally assumed the TV series is perpetually stuck in the 1960s). Nothing.
  • "Springtime for Diesel" could've been one of the steps for Diesel to become a better engine thanks to his newfound friendship with Daisy. However, by the next episode, he reverts to his old ways by turning Daisy and Harvey against each other, and the episodes after it has him resume being a Jerkass to other engines.
  • Unlike Edward, Henry does not get a proper story explaining his decision to leave Tidmouth Sheds, simply announcing himself as moving to Vicarstown without us being shown why or given any build-up.
  • Some fans feel that Season 22 had wasted potential due to the reveal that China, Australia and India were the only countries getting featured in the series, leaving no spotlight for countries in Africa, the Americas or Europe. The former was baffling due to an engine from said continent joining the main cast (Nia) and the early pre-release clip of Thomas and Nia talking about zebras (which didn’t feature in the movie) and that African episodes would have served as potential spotlight for Nia. The latter two continents were also wasted potential due to many engines from said continents featuring in The Great Race (along with Carlos reappearing in the Big World! Big Adventures! movie) and Thomas visiting European countries previously in several YouTube shorts. The absence of S22 episodes in Africa and America also caused wasted potential for Kwaku and Beau, two characters from the movie who had minimal screentime and that fans hoped could have gotten more development.
  • A recurring complaint about the Big World! Big Adventures! seasons is the underutilisation of the World Tour element itself. The idea of getting Thomas off Sodor so he can experience new railway networks around the world is a great one, but the focus of his episodes tend to be on surface-level Culture Clash stories rather than anything to do with the unique and quirky railway histories and operations of the places he visits.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure seems to have become this, as The Great Race was highly divisive, while Journey Beyond Sodor, despite being considered an improvement over the latter, it is still divisive.
  • Likewise, George Carlin is all but unanimously considered the best narrator of the US localization, as Alec Baldwin is rather divisive, and Michael Brandon gets more flak from more fans.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Absolutely no one expected Diesel 10 to reappear in Calling All Engines! (along with Lady) despite being sent away; this was because of popular toy sales centered around him. And if The Stinger of Misty Island Rescue would beg to differ (which in turn sets up Day of the Diesels), that scene was a last-minute decision made by Nitrogen, without any narration involved whatsoever.
  • Mike, Bert, and Rex appearing in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure. Railway Series characters hadn't been added to the series since 1994.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Non-fans think this of the faces of the engines themselves. The sometimes emotionless expressions in the model era were unsettling to some, but then the show decided to update to CGI and now it's just downright frightening according to some.
  • Season 12 is pretty odd looking with the combination of models and CGI. Granted, that was when the crew just started using CGI, but they were still using the standard model format in some scenes, and the superimposed early CGI faces (combined with them now lip syncing, but still currently to the narrator's lines) made the engines look rather odd. Season 13 fixed that problem for good where the CGI animation became the full default, allowing it look much more fluent and each character was given a voice actor proper.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Henry, in his first ever story. Oh, come on! Who can say they've never wanted to stay in a shelter while it's raining?
  • Sir Handel in Steamroller. The other engines make fun of him for his Broad Tyre wheels and the episode was intended to be a case of Break the Haughty because he later became boastful about them. However, the other engines were shown making fun of Sir Handle's wheels, before he started bragging about them. Additionally the reason he needs broad tyre wheels is because he kept slipping between the rails. So they're making fun of him because he needs special equipment to do his job. It's the equivalent of antagonising someone who needs a hearing aid, or someone who needs a walking stick because they have a limp.
  • Gordon in "Respect for Gordon". He gets tired of the other engines teasing him and starts demanding respect, although he does it in a bossy manner and this leads him into a nasty accident with the jam tankers, in which the engines teased him for it. After coming back from the works, he apologizes to the other engines, though the other engines didn't apologize for their teasing him about his rattling firebox.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt can come off as a jerk at times. Yes, he's obviously under a lot of stress and has some genuinely troublesome engines in his railway, but on several episodes in which an engine has an accident (ie, Percy's Predicament), he blames THEM for it, even when it was obviously the Troublesome Trucks who were the cause of it. It becomes extra jarring when he does this, since a few episodes have an accident, and the Fat Controller actually reassures the engines it wasn't their fault.
• Vindicated by History: Sorta. While seasons 8-12 were widely panned when they were first aired and were the subject of mockery by many of the fans, these days, fans consider those seasons So Okay, It's Average. Season 8 in particular sometimes is even seen as the last good season until season 17.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: This is apparently more common than you'd expect. Quite a few children mistook Mavis for a male. Skarloey, Rheneas, and Rusty have been mistaken for females before (not to mention Rusty was mistakenly referred to as female by Michael Brandon in the initial television broadcasts of the ninth seasons episodes that Rusty starred in; later airings and DVD releases fixed this). Out of the main cast, James is mistaken as a female disturbingly often (not to mention that he actually was voiced by a woman in Thomas and the Magic Railroad).
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Some of the crashes, especially in the fifth season.
  • Jam Filled's animation for the series tended to look spectacular to most people. An example would be Duncan crossing the viaduct in "Duncan the Humbug".
• Wangst: Henry in "Coal", in which he loudly proclaims that '(he) suffers dreadfully and no-one cares.' James calls him out on it, though.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: There are frequent racial undertones with the steam engines vs. diesels rivalry, as well as allusions to engines being scrapped, complete with train "carcasses" in the background. At least in the classic seasons. By the time of Season 8, the show was softened to appeal to a preschool audience, shifting from the all-ages demographic that seasons 1-7 aimed for. Even after that, there were specials like Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure with Sailor John being shown to be a homicidal maniac, a manipulator, and a frighteningly realistic abuser towards his boat Skiff; and Journey Beyond Sodor, where Frankie gleefully exploits her workers, and Thomas nearly dies by falling into a cistern of molten slag. The Big World! Big Adventures! movie and seasons make the show even more childish, but they managed to get away with Baz and Bernie threatening to kill Sonny in Marvelous Machinery.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: People noticed some heavy conservative undertones in the original series, such as looking down on technological progress like diesel trains or air travel, and the trains getting punished for not doing their job properly, stepping out of their assigned roles or even doing the slightest mistake. The way the trains are being treated, being traded back and forth between people to suit their needs and always forced to work also drew comparisons to slavery. Much of this had to do with the Reverend's own biases, and it was known that he also had a love for the Arthurian tales of kings and knights, and reflected this in the series by having a quasi-feudalistic relationship between Sir Topham Hatt (the king) and the Engines (the knights), but, well, values of old being as they were, this tended to drag along with it the less savory aspects of such a relationship. One aspect that was actually intended, however, was the negative portrayal of Diesels in the early books and shows; their depiction was a direct reflection of Awdry's own grievances with the "Dieselification Era" in Britain in the 50's and 60's.
• Woolseyism: The Slovene dub states that rather than being Scottish, Donald and Douglas are from Jesenice, in the Gorenjska region of Slovenia.

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