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  • Accidental Innuendo: "Omens Part One" sees Lion-O and Tygra act out a longstanding Sibling Rivalry by competing in a racing Chase Fight game, the object of which is to climb a tree and ring a bell while fighting off one's competitor. Lion-O announces that he'll ring the bell, whereupon Tygra replies "And I'm gonna ring yours," smiling and tipping a wink. The series' fans, unaware of the phrase's usage in sport (Tygra has threatened to beat Lion-O into a concussion), and remembering that Tygra has previously smiled and winked to explicitly flirt, seized on the exchange's oddly sexual undertone to launch a Not Blood Siblings Ho Yay ship.
  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
    • "Song of the Petalars": "Retreat is cowardice."
    • "The Duelist and the Drifter": "Don't depend on the awesomeness of your sword, depend on your spontaneously generated superpowers."
    • "The Forest of Magi Oar": "Greed will almost always lead to self-destruction."
    • "Ramlak Rising": "Don't let obsession drag your friends down with you."
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the Duelist really a true master swordsman, or is he just a hustler who preys on overconfident amateur swordsmen, using cheap tactics and overwhelming his opponents for a quick win, and not as skilled as his reputation or ego makes him out to be?
  • Anvilicious:
    • "Ramlak Rising"'s "revenge is bad" Aesop.
    • The theme of seeing the big picture and having a wider perspective. A lot of the conflict in the series ultimately stems from people being too narrow sighted to see the consequences of their actions in the long run. It ties into the themes of kindness and mercy being the cure to hatred exploited by evil. Also, never compromising your morals in spite of what's normal or what's logical in the short term.
  • Ass Pull:
    • For some people, the season-end hook-up between Tygra and Cheetara came from way out of left field.
    • For even more people, the revelation that Pumyra is with Mumm-ra.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
  • Pumyra. People like her for being a strong, passionate woobie, or they hate her for acting cruelly and inconsistently. And things got worse after the season finale.
  • Better on DVD: This is rapidly becoming apparent. One complaint against the series is that it's very hard to leap in halfway and know what's going on. The creators have stated that they tried to plot the show into tightly focused, 13 episode arcs because they know how hard it is to get a second season these days and wanted to make sure the audience got a complete story just in case things don't go their way. Some episodes don't really end as much as they just stop only to pick up right where they left off the next week.
    • By Word of God the show is broken up into mini-arcs (of roughly seven episodes apiece, give or take) within the overarching season arc. Of particular note, the episodes "The Pit," "Curse of Ratilla," and "Birth of the Blades" were conceived and written as one single narrative.
  • Cargo Ship: Panthro's only love interest is the Thundertank.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Mumm-Ra once plundered the cosmos searching for the legendary Power Stones in his quest to rule the universe. Commanding an army comprised of a number of races he enslaved using explosive collars placed around their necks, Mumm-Ra ordered the destruction of a star in a highly-inhabited solar system, killing billions in the process, simply so he could use the remains of the star to forge the Sword of Plun-Darr. Defeated and sealed inside a coffin, Mumm-Ra is freed by Grune, and soon attacks Thundera with his army, killing Lion-O's father Claudus and enslaving most of the Thundercats. After taking over Thundera, Mumm-Ra proceeds to torture cleric Jaga for information about the Book of Omens. Resuming his hunt for the stones, Mumm-Ra has his army attack the Elephant village suspected of harbouring the soul stone. After failing to trick Lion-O and his brother Tygra into killing each other, Mumm-Ra frees the sadistic killers Kaynar and Addicus to keep his increasingly disillusioned army under control and has Pumyra, who had fallen in his invasion of Thundera, revived to serve as his spy. In the two-part series finale "What Lies Above", Mumm-Ra has the flying city of Avista attacked to steal the Tech Stone, uncaring that this would cause the entire city to fall from the sky.
    • The Ancient Spirits of Evil are Mumm-Ra's masters and are the ones who give him his powers. They task Mumm-Ra with gathering the Power Stones and ruling the universe in their name, ordering him to destroy the Plun-Darr star and kill billions in order to forge the Sword of Plun-Darr. When the Tiger Tribe summons the Spirits to save them from a deadly plague, the Spirits try to make the Tribe's leader Javak kill his newborn son Tygra because they predict Tygra will become their enemy. When Javak instead sends Tygra away, the Spirits let the plague kill the entire Tribe before cursing them to exist as undead spirits who become savage beasts every night. When the adult Tygra and his brother Lion-O encounter the Tiger Tribe, the Spirits manifest and order the Tigers to kill the brothers.
    • Grune was one of the most respected soldiers of the Kingdom of Thundera who secretly desires the throne. After he and his brother in arms Panthro are sent to search for the Book of Omens, an enraged Grune frees and pledges himself to Mumm-Ra, seemingly killing Panthro in the process. Grune helps lead the lizard army to plunder Thundera and enslave its people, even helping organize the death of the king. As Mumm-Ra's right-hand, Grune occupies the elephants' village, suspected of harboring the Spirit Stone, and threatens the lives of its inhabitants. In the end, he even attempts to betray Mumm-Ra, and as he is being sucked into the Astral Plane, tries to pull Panthro with him.
  • Continuity Lock-Out: It is admittedly, a show that is heavy on plot, light on exposition.
  • Designated Villain:
    • The Duelist. A hustler, yes, and happy to challenge others to a Duel to the Death. But he did win those swords.
    • The Wood Forgers. They first make their appearance rescuing the ThunderCats, only to be revealed as being villainous because they aren't re-planting the trees they use in their paper magic. While that IS a mark against them, they do show themselves to be genuinely heroic, rescuing people and doing good, while Viragor tries to eat the heroes and aggressively attacks anyone he considers an outsider. This could have been a good opportunity to show that both sides had merit, with Viragor convincing the Wood Forgers to replace the trees they cut down and use their resources more sparingly, while Viragor could have learned not to be so openly hostile and possessive about 'his' forest. But nope, the Wood Forgers are just evil and need to be beaten up and driven from the forest, all the good they've done be damned.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Pumyra. Despite her poor treatment of Lion-O including beating Lion-O to a pulp on their first meeting, ridiculing his deepest held values of mercy and kindness, manipulating him into falling into traps that cost him both the Sword of Plun-Darr and the Tech stone, betraying him to Mumm-Ra, trying to kill him again, and otherwise breaking his heart, many in the fandom believe she is a perfect match for Lion-O and that more screen time should be spent bringing her character back from the dead, redeeming her, and exploring her anger so that she can potentially be rehabilitated and refashioned as a love interest and connecting her with Lion-O again. On the other hand, many fans believe that Pumyra is under a form of mind control, a legitimate theory since she was brought back from the dead, meaning it wouldn't technically be her fault. Besides that, the above statement also ignores that Pumyra easily comes around to accept Lion-O's values each time, or at least seems to, depending how much mind control one believes she's under.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • The Thunderkittens were well liked by initial reviewers, and quickly became popular with fans just from the previews and leaks. One review even called them the Breakout Characters of the show.
    • Holding Panthro back for a few episodes only served to make an already popular character a clear fan-favorite.
    • Lynx-O became this as soon as he appeared. One of the most asked questions on Crew of Omens is "When is Lynx-O coming back?"
    • Certain characters who haven't even been confirmed to exist yet in this version are inexplicably popular, like Bengali.
    • The hype surrounding the appearance of Pumyra was insane, and within hours of her design being revealed (in preview clips and concept art released by the production team) fanart and fanfiction started coming in. Not bad for someone who was all but dropped from the original's cast. She even seemed to edge out Cheetara as the fans favorite female.
    • The Cats from the flashback in "Legacy," Leo, Panthera, and Tygus, have a strong following and get lots of fan art.
    • Dobo is well regarded by many for being cool and surprisingly developed.
  • Epic Riff: Still retained in the stripped down Truncated Theme Tune
  • Fan Nickname: "Leona" was the name given by fans for Lion-O's mother. Eventually, the creators confirmed her name was that.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: While Cheetara ends up with Tygra and that does have its fans, most fans prefer to pair her with Lion-O. This is mainly because said fans feel that Cheetara and Lion-O have better chemistry than she and Tygra do and Lion-O's unrequited crush on Cheetara. For example, on Fanfiction Dot Net, Cheetara/Lion-O easily outranks Cheetara/Tygra by a good margin.
  • Faux Symbolism: Tygra's backstory has distinctly biblical elements. His father was ordered to sacrifice him by a higher power, but didn't go through with it (Abraham and Isaac) and he was sent away for his own safety to be found and raised by the royal family (Moses).
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • After Tygra/Cheetara became official in episode 13, a lot of angry fans bashed Cheetara and eagerly awaited Pumrya to appear on the show because she deserved him more. Whoops.
    • After the reveal in the series finale, Pumyra's lines take on a disturbing tone. In The Pit, Pumyra's declaration, "I cannot kill my king," comes off more like an order than an expression of loyalty. It would seem that any "mind control" she was under might have been suppressing her anger, and forcing her to be nice, rather than the other way around.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Yup. Already. Of the Sibling Incest variety, no less. Accidental Innuendo or Incest Subtext?
      Lion-O: "I'm going to ring that bell."
      Tygra: "And I'm going to ring yours." *wink*
    • The cell they're locked into has Only One Bed.
    • Claudus and Grune. They certainly seemed close.
    • Likewise Claudus rushing to Panthro's rescue.
    • The flashbacks when Panthro and Grune meet are full of this, starting with Panthro's: "Grune, we've been inseparable ever since that first day we met on the battlefield"
  • I Knew It!:
    • The death of Lion-O's mother in childbirth was one of the major fan theories from the very beginning.
    • Several fans settled on the name "Leona" for the Queen of Thundera before Dan Norton confirmed the crew called her that too.
    • Almost immediately after Panthro lost his arms fans not only theorized that he would get new cybernetic ones, but it's the Berbils that hook him up with them. Guess what happened in the very next episode.
    • A few fans actually did guess that Pumyra would betray the Cats a week before it happened.
  • Informed Wrongness: Lion-O gets hit with this a lot. Even his good decisions land him in the doghouse. Perhaps the biggest example is in "Song of the Petalars", where Tygra constantly gets on Lion-O's case about having the group flee from the hundred-strong lizard army chasing them, rather than engage in a hopeless battle. By the end of the episode, lion-O is convinced that they have to stand and fight, a decision that would have gotten them all killed if Panthro hadn't shown up at the last second.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • The cleric Jaga's seeming death during "Omens Part Two" comes as no surprise to anyone who's seen the original as he spent most of his time there as a ghostly apparition after dying at the start of the series.
    • And now subverted in "Ramlak Rising".
    • And played straight in "Journey to the Tower of Omens" as he sacrifices himself for real to protect Lion-O from Mumm-Ra and get the Book of Omens.
    • Same thing to Claudus's death. Arguably subverted with Grune, who survives the first two episodes.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Tygra jumps between this and The Woobie quite often.
    • Also Pumyra, despite her betrayal at the end.
  • Memetic Molester:
  • Moral Event Horizon: For Mumm-Ra. Stabbing King Claudus in the back? Subjecting wise old Jaga to a Fate Worse than Death? Hiring psychos like Kaynar and Addicus? Bringing about the downfall of Thundera and enslaving its people? Trying to Take Over the World? Oh, no... it's when, in the past, he destroyed a populated solar system to forge the Sword of Plun-Darr that he established himself as a monstrous being. Leo even tried talking him out of it and pointed out that he could destroy an unpopulated solar system, but refused to deviate from the plan the Ancient Spirits of Evil set for him.
  • Older Than They Think: Some younger fans were shocked that Tygra and Cheetara ended up becoming the Official Couple instead of Lion-O and Cheetara. Tygra and Cheetara were canon back in the Wildstorm comics, which had Cheetara and Tygra having children very late in the series (though most fans consider these comics non-canon). The original series had her waffle on the subject.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Lynx-O has a small cameo in "Omens Part Two". Fans were already placing bets on when he returns (possibly with Bengali and Pumyra in tow). In fact, he was planned to return in the second season had it continued.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: The series does have a game for the Nintendo DS. Unfortunately, due to the finicky platforming and controls, the lack of checkpoints, the absence of any voice acting, and the fact that it was released when the Nintendo 3DS was already released, it's clear that Namco Bandai didn't care.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Snarf. Being a less-sentient non-speaking creature means that he's not a nagging whiner this time around. Fan response has been much more positive. Although there are a few fans who enjoyed Snarf's voice in the original and are actually upset he doesn't talk.
    • Also WilyKit and WilyKat, for those who found them annoying in the original.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Tygra. Shown as Jerk with a Heart of Gold who is both a rival to and a loyal supporter of his brother Lion-O in canon. In fanon, considered by some to be a villain eviler than Mumm-Ra, ostensibly because of his treatment of Lion-O, but chiefly because of shipping preferences.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Like with all fandoms, but in this case, it was a three-way battle: Lion-O/Cheetara vs. Tygra/Cheetara vs. Lion-O/Tygra. Tygra/Cheetara wins.
  • Squick: Pumyra kisses Mumm-Ra's hand (okay, gauntlet, but close enough) when she reveals her allegiance to him, and he, the guy who brought her back to life just to serve as his puppet, calls her "beloved." Ewwwww!
  • Stoic Woobie:
  • That poor Swordmaker, so very heartwrenching to see his dreams so mercilessly crushed. That awful purple man made the cute bunny sad!
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • Before the first episode aired, people who grew up with the original '80s show denounced the reboot's Animesque character designs, though the original series' designs were pretty Animesque in their time.
    • When a clip revealed that Mumm-Ra has his own tank in episode 6, some people flat out stated the show may be ruined because of it. Talk about jumping the gun.
    • The Latin American Spanish dub received lots of flak, due of the fact it was dubbed in Venezuela (due to WB's internal politics about Spanish voice acting in Latin America and also for cost reasons) and not in Mexico like the original one.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Cheetara after choosing Tygra over Lion-O. You can't really blame Lion-O for harboring resentment and jealousy over her and Tygra after all the mixed signals she sent him throughout the first few episodes. Furthermore, when the three of them are attacked by Mumm-Ra's three generals, she opts to surrender when Tygra is captured despite the fact that doing so won't save either of them.
  • Vindicated by History: The show garnered a more positive reception following Teen Titans Go!, due to being much closer and more faithful to the original. This is helped by the fact that it was cited as one of the influences for Voltron: Legendary Defender, which is seen as the show's Spiritual Successor, along with Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. This was further heightened when a new reboot titled ThunderCats Roar was announced, in addition to io9 stating that the 2011 reboot was ahead of its time. It still remains divisive among long-time fans of the original, however.
  • Wangst: Tygra and Lion-O's angst over their competition for Cheetara's attention revolves around their need for her to confirm that she's "chosen" one of them without directly telling her their feelings, (and risking her explicit rejection), their Sibling Rivalry and mutual jealousy of one another, and Cheetara herself not being clear on where her affections lie. Passive-aggressive teenagers!
  • The Woobie:
    • Lion-O, let's recap. So far Lion-O has lost his father, his mentor, his surrogate father Captain Tunar. Also, his surrogate little brother Emrick the Petalar. Later, he Did Not Get the Girl, and to top it all off now he's dead! MAN! the poor guy might as well be wearing "Kick Me" on his back or something!
    • Tygra too - his birth mother presumably dies, his birth father sends him away from home to protect him, his adopted mother dies in childbirth, and then his adopted father dies. He grows up knowing he will lose his kingdom to his little brother and feeling like he doesn't belong, and when he finally finds his real home, everyone in it dies, including his birth father, leaving him the last tiger. In his own words: "Tell me, Lion-O, is it my destiny to lose everything I care most about?"
      • Lion-O assures him that Tygra won't lose him at least. Nevermind that in the previous episode Tygra nearly did lose Lion-O.
    • The thunder kittens Wily-Kit and Wily-Kat considering that they watched their father die saving them and their mother from a tornado and also the fact that the reason they left home was to find a way to provide for their mother and their younger siblings to have resources to live on. Keep in mind that they're children that have to endure these burdens as well.
    • Pumyra, who wasn't always a fighter. She was sold into slavery after the fall of Thundera first in a mine and later as a gladiator under Dobo in The Pit. When she chews Lion-O out over everything that's happened and how she holds him responsible for her and the other refugees suffering she almost breaks down in tears (and in the next episode we get to see firsthand the hell she lived in). There's been plenty of Manly Tears in the show, but seeing a strong, independent woman break down like that is a first.

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