History Series / TheHardyBoys2020

** In the books, Biff's real name is Allen, and he chose his nickname after an uncle he admires. Thanks to getting a GenderFlip here, "Biff" is instead short for "Elizabeth".

** Downplayed for Phil Cohen. In the books, he's one of the Hardys' quieter, calmer friends, and acts as [[TheSmartGuy the group's computer whiz]] in several of the more modern series. Here, he's a far more extroverted, hyperactive {{Keet}} with a MotorMouth, who also serves as the series' resident PluckyComicRelief and most frequent MomentKiller. That being said, he still has a lot of the same interests as his original counterpart, being a major computer nerd who's good at puzzles, cartography, and coding, is the most interested in the new high-tech Sparewell laptop computers, and is part of a nautical club and the school's AV Club.

** Furthermore, since Joe and Biff are both straight guys in the books, they're just good friends and nothing more. Thanks to Biff getting a GenderFlip, she and Joe receive some ShipTease here and are implied to have some feelings for each other in the first season, and in the second season, Biff is instead teased with Phil, another platonic friend in the books.

** Unsurprising considering that Laura Hardy undergoes DeathByAdaptation in this series and her husband and sons are left mourning her murder. This causes all three of them to be less upbeat and cheerful than they were originally, with Frank in particular being moodier and having far more emotional struggles than in the books and Fenton being portrayed as a [[ParentsAsPeople flawed father despite his love for his sons]]. The boys also have serious disagreements with each other at several points that lead to actual fights, and also both have more drama in their love lives.

** Con Riley, the Hardys' most prominent FriendOnTheForce, is instead essentially replaced by Jessie Hooper. Though this is [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in the second season, where Riley is now Jessie's partner on the force.
* AdultsAreUseless: Downplayed, but present, rather like the source material, especially because the Hardy Boys and friends keep the adults in their lives LockedOutOfTheLoop for their safety. Adults like Aunt Trudy and Fenton do help the boys occasionally with their investigations, and their [[FriendOnTheForce Friends on the Force]] come through to arrest the bad guys, but usually after the TrueCompanions have done most of the work finding and stopping them. [[spoiler:A particular example is the series finale, where the four main adult/parent figures--Fenton, Trudy, Jessie, and Brian--are all put in Drew's simulation along with the rest of the world, leaving only the teenage main characters left to stop her.]]

** Biff's parents aren't given names in the books, and like the parents of all of the Hardys' friends, make sparse appearances and are rarely plot-relevant. Here, Biff's mom, Jessie Hooper, is a prominent recurring character, the gang's FriendOnTheForce, and later Trudy's girlfriend.

** Biff's dad, which is why she's so close to her mom, Jessie. More accurately, she's never had one because her mom adopted her, and when Biff starts looking into her bio parents, she learns that her birth dad is dead.

** Jessie Hooper for the Hardys and friends; justified because she's Biff's mom.

* HideYourLesbians: Not entirely surprising for a show that's set in the 80's, the first season plays this straight, where all romantic relationships explicitly shown are het, while the close bond between Trudy Hardy and Jessie Hooper is more ambiguous and could be interpreted as either ShipTease or them simply becoming very close friends. However, refreshingly, this becomes completely subverted by the second season onward: Jessie and Trudy are now dating, and Belinda is explicitly confirmed to be bisexual and is shown to have an ex-girlfriend named Erica.

* MaidenAunt: Aunt Gertrude was the TropeCodifier from the books, so it's unsurprising that Aunt Trudy is this here too, though she seems to be significantly younger than her book counterpart. It becomes subverted in the second two seasons, though, where she's now in a steady relationship with Jessie Hooper, even moving in with her in the SeriesFinale.

** Downplayed for Biff since she fully considers Jessie, who adopted her, to be her mom, but her biological mother counts, having given her up for adoption when Biff was a baby.

** Frank towards Joe, definitely; even more so than usual in this series considering the larger age gap between them. It comes out the most when Joe is briefly taken hostage at separate times by Ern and JB, when he and Biff go missing due to falling down a mine shaft, in the many visions he sees from the Eye of someone trying to hurt Joe, and when they're both being kidnapped by Stratemeyer Global.

** Frank towards Joe, definitely; even more so than usual in this series considering the larger age gap between them. It comes out the most when Joe is briefly taken hostage at separate times by Ern and JB, when Joe and Biff go missing due to falling down a mine shaft, in the many visions he sees from the Eye of someone trying to hurt Joe, and when they're both being kidnapped by Stratemeyer Global.

** For that matter, Chet and Callie also get this for Joe, as well as Biff and Phil. At the time that Joe and Biff go missing, things are awkward between Frank, Callie, and Chet, due to the latter two breaking up and Stacy's interference, but they both put that aside to help Frank find Joe and Biff and get them home safely. There's also the way all three older kids promptly rush to save the younger three from dying in a mine, and how Callie quickly comforts and looks after Biff when her mom nearly dies in an explosion.

** For that matter, Chet and Callie also get this for Joe, as well as Biff and Phil. At the time that Joe and Biff go missing, things are awkward between Frank, Callie, and Chet, due to the latter two breaking up and Stacy's interference, but they both immediately put that aside to help Frank find Joe and Biff and get them home safely. There's also the way all three older kids immediately rush to save the younger three from dying in a mine, and how Callie immediately comforts and looks after Biff in Season 2 when her mom nearly dies in an explosion.

** For that matter, Chet and Callie also get this for Joe, as well as Biff and Phil. At the time that Joe and Biff go missing, things are awkward between Frank, Calli, and Chet, due to the latter two breaking up and Stacy's interference, but they both immediately put that aside to help Frank find Joe and Biff and get them home safely. There's also the way Callie immediately comforts and looks after Biff in Season 2 when her mom nearly dies in an explosion.

** For that matter, Chet and Callie also get this for Joe, as well as Biff and Phil. At the time that Joe and Biff go missing, things are awkward between Frank, Callie, and Chet due to the latter two breaking up and Stacy's interference, but Chet and Callie both immediately put that aside to help find Joe and Biff and get them home safely. There's also the way Callie immediately comforts and looks after Biff in Season 2 when her mom nearly dies in an explosion.

** Stacy Baker shows up at the midpoint of the first season as a rival to Callie for Frank's affections, especially since Callie hasn't fully realized her feelings yet and is still with Chet, while Stacy is significantly more forward about her attraction to him. Frank definitely shows some interest in her, especially at first when Callie is still taken and he thinks Stacy's just a sweet new girl who went through a traumatic experience; however, once he discovers her real identity and then sees her true colors and that she's no better than anyone else in the Circle, he firmly rejects her, and she's left with no doubt that Callie's the girl he really likes.

** Gloria outlives her daughter and only child Laura, which greatly saddens her. Especially once she learns that Laura's death was not an accident, but murder. Which makes it all the more devastating when she discovers at the end of the first season that [[spoiler:her own trusted right-hand-man, Stefan,]] was the one responsible.

** Stacy Baker shows up at the midpoint of the first season as a rival to Callie for Frank's affections, especially since Callie hasn't fully realized her feelings yet and is still with Chet, while Stacy is significantly more forward about her attraction to him. Frank definitely shows some interest in her, especially at first when Callie is still taken and he thinks Stacy's just a sweet new girl who went through a traumatic experience; however, once he discovers her real identity [[spoiler:and then sees her true colors and that she's no better than anyone else in the Circle]], he firmly rejects her, and Stacy is left with no doubt that Callie is the girl he really cares for.

*** Meanwhile, Season 2's BigBadEnsemble consists of two women, both of whom are TheSociopath or very close to it, and one man, who is the most sympathetic of them and even makes a HeelFaceTurn in the the following season.
*** Season 3 ''looks'' like it's going to break the trend, but ultimately follows suit: the one irredeemable male villain becomes a DiscOneFinalBoss, [[spoiler:and while it looks like his replacement as BigBad is also a man, it turns out that he's being framed, and the real HiddenVillain and TheDragon (the latter of whom is one of the aforementioned psychopathic members of S2's BigBadEnsemble) are both women]].

** One major [[SubvertedTrope exception]], though, appears with [[spoiler:George and Gloria Estabrook. This ''seemed'' to be the case in the first season with the implication that Gloria ratted out a reformed George to his partners to get him killed, but it was later {{Retcon}}ned to make George both EvilAllAlong and EvilerThanThou, as he was a BadBoss and a psychopath who was willing to kill people working for him to LeaveNotWitnesses. Gloria, meanwhile, for all her many flaws, was a more BenevolentBoss with a distaste for killing members of her staff or [[ThickerThanWater family]]]].

** Stacy for the second half of the first season, though she also does at least start at the beginning of the year like the Hardys do. She and Frank bond over the shared experience of being the new kid. [[spoiler:It doesn't last, since she turns out to be evil and flees Bridgeport at the end of the season when her plans fail]].

* TrueCompanions: The Hardy Boys and their friends are the main characters of the series who work together to solve their cases, and are thick as thieves. The group consists of Frank and Joe Hardy, Chet Morton, Callie Shaw, Biff Hooper, and Phil Cohen, and expands to include Belinda Conrad as well for the second and third seasons.

** Con Riley, the Hardys' most prominent FriendOnTheForce, is instead essentially replaced by Jessie Hooper. Though this is [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in the second season, when Riley appears as Jessie's partner on the force.

** All three seasons have at least one male underling get killed by a female current or former employer or partner: [[YouHaveFailedMe the Tall Man by Stacy]] in S1, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness Mack by Angela]] in S2, and [[YouHaveFailedMe Quill]] [[spoiler:and [[HeKnowsTooMuch JB]] by Olivia (on Drew's behalf)]] in S3.

* MythologyGag:
** This show takes place sometime in the 80s, and its "The Hardy Boys" series logo is identical to the logo for ''Literature/TheHardyBoys Casefiles'', a popular spinoff book series aimed at older teens, written from the late 80s to the late 90s. The boys' pose on the series image, meanwhile, complete with pointing a flashlight at the viewer, resembles the Hardys' logo from the ''Undercover Brothers'' series.
** The mid-season finale "A Figure in Hiding" and season finale "While the Clock Ticked" of the first season share their names with two books from the original series.
** The Hardy Boys live in "Dixon City" at the beginning of the series before moving to Bridgeport. Chet later asks the new girl, Stacy, if she's from Dixon as well, and Stacy replies that she's from Franklin. "Franklin W. Dixon" is the pseudonym under which the Hardy Boys books (of every series) are published.
** The boys' Aunt Gertrude goes by "Aunt Trudy", which is also the name she uses in the two most recent book series, ''Undercover Brothers'' and ''Adventures''.
** Frank and Callie have a budding romance throughout the first season, culminating in a BigDamnKiss in the season finale, and are dating by the second season; the two of them are likewise in a relationship in the original book series and ''Casefiles'' spinoff.
** Additionally, in the ''Casefiles'', Callie is far more proactive in helping the Hardy Boys with their cases compared to the earlier books, becoming a competent investigator in her own right and sometimes even the {{Deuteragonist}} to the boys, including saving them several times. All of this carries over to her show counterpart, where she is consistently one of the most savvy and helpful members of the TrueCompanions, and gets the most screentime out of the Hardys' friends.
** A prominent location in the series is "Demon's Paw", which seems to reference the titles of two different books, "Mystery at Devil's Paw" and "The Demon's Den". Season 2 also introduces an additional local Bridgeport legend of "the Skull Mountain at Demon's Paw", adding in another book title reference: "The Secret of Skull Mountain",
** When Joe and Biff visit the tailor in town, he is saying to another customer, "Let's get rid of the bell bottoms. It's not the '70s anymore." The most famous Hardy Boys TV series was ''Series/TheHardyBoysNancyDrewMysteries'', which ''was'' from TheSeventies, and naturally featured quite a bit of bell-bottom jeans and feathered hairstyles.
** The dean of Rosegrave Academy, Paul [=McFarlane=], shares his surname with the longest-running and most beloved ghostwriter of the original book series, Leslie [=McFarlane=].
** The main VictimOfTheWeek that the Hardys and friends try to help in Season 2 is Dennis '''Gilroy''', who likewise takes his surname from Jerry Gilroy, one of the Hardy Boys' main "chums" in the earliest books in the series before he was phased out.
** Stratemeyer Global, a shady conglomerate that serves as the villains of the second season, is named after Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, who created The Hardy Boys[[note]]along with many other characters, such as Literature/NancyDrew and Literature/TomSwift[[/note]].
** TheDragon to the group of rogue Stratemeyer mercenaries, led by Angela Todd, is Mack Malone, which is the name of the villain in "The Mystery of Cabin Island" from the original series.
** The TrueCompanions manage to find Dennis up at the "old mill" in the woods, likely referencing "The Secret of the Old Mill".
** Biff finds her birth mom in River Heights, the town that Literature/NancyDrew is from in the books. This gets even more of a nod in Season 3, where Callie meets and befriends a girl at Rosegrave named Drew, who is also from River Heights.
** In the Season 2 finale, Frank sees a flashback between George and Gloria in which he crypically tells her to always remember "what happens at Midnight" (referring to the sinister "Project Midnight" experiments that the Hardys learned about prior). "What Happened at Midnight" is another original book title.
** In the Season 3 premiere, Gloria's clue to the location of the final scroll involves a painting of a house on a cliff, referencing the second book in the original series, "The House on the Cliff".
** The pool bar and club where JB meets Joe and Frank in Season 3 is called the Yellow Feather, a reference to the original book title "The Yellow Feather Mystery."

** Frank is portrayed right off the bat at someone who thinks things through before taking action, as he plans and discusses with Joe the best actions to take to win the video game they're playing, in contrast to the more impulsive Joe, who steals the control, jumps right in, and gets a game over, to Frank's exasperation. He also has a close bond with his mom, who helps him practice for baseball, and has no problem being openly affectionate with those he cares about, frequently hugging her and engaging in PDA with his girlfriend.

* FriendlessBackground: This is implied for both Joe and Biff, and likely plays a role in them becoming such fast friends.

** Chet talks about his folks a few times, and they run a farm as they do in the books, but he's the only member of the main friend group whose family members never appear onscreen at any point during the show.

** Biff's dad, which is why she's so close to her mom, Jessie. More accurately, she's never had one because her mom adopted her, and when Biff starts looking into her biological parents, she learns that her birth dad is dead.

* ElaborateUniversityHigh: Rosegrave Academy, a prep school founded by Frank's and Joe's great-grandfather George Estabrook, is an extremely prestigious one for the very best of the best, with a very competitive selection process and housing future leaders of the world. Frank and Callie are both accepted there, but are far less enthusiastic about the idea of attending after learning that it's really a SchoolForScheming and that their admissions were largely due to their connections to Gloria; however, Callie does enroll in a summer program there as a ScholarshipStudent in Season 3 to go undercover. Laura Hardy got in as well when she was a teenager, but chose not to attend.

** Frank is portrayed right off the bat at someone who thinks things through before taking action, as he plans and discusses with Joe the best actions to take to win the video game they're playing, in contrast to the more impulsive Joe, who steals the control, jumps right in, and gets a game over, to Frank's exasperation. He also has a very close bond with his mom, who helps him practice for baseball, and has no problem being openly affectionate with those he cares about, frequently hugging her and engaging in PDA with his girlfriend.

** Joe gets quite a bit: establishing that he likes to mess with his older brother, but can also be overconfident, during the aforementioned video game scene; shown to be street-smart but not interested in school by the fact that he failed math class and has to take summer school largely due to a lack of effort; and also proving that he doesn't take shit from other kids, acting defiant against some bullies and pissing them off further when they insult him, but wins over adults more easily, shown by a woman in the background grinning at his antics.

** Callie Shaw seems to be one, especially since [[MissingMom her mom isn't in the picture]]. She's apparently close enough to her dad that one reason she's a bit unsure about her college plans is because she'll have to leave him behind.
** Belinda Conrad is also close to her father, Brian, and apparently chose to live with him after her parents' divorce.

** Frank and Chet snark almost as much, though in their case they often build on and add to each others' snark.

* AnachronismStew: Lots of examples of this, especially in Season 3 when the Hardys are dealing with a futuristic, high-tech foe, Sparewell Technology. Despite the 1980s setting, there’s many liberties taken.

** A couple of examples of Sparewell's highly futuristic technology that comes right out of later decades. That fact that it ''is'' so far advanced is probably supposed to be the justification, but considering the time period, their appearances still majorly stick out:

* AmicableExes: Not at first after Callie and Chet break up, but after the six-month TimeSkip between Seasons 1 and 2, have become this, since they're both part of the Hardys' friend group. It's played with for a bit on Chet's end since he does have some buried resentment about how the breakup went down that makes things feel unfinished, but once he confesses this to Frank and Callie and they apologize to him, he gets the closure he needs and this is played fully straight for the rest of the series. It helps that, by this point, Callie and Chet are each truly in love with other people, and both recognize that they're BetterAsFriends.

* AmicableExes: Callie and Chet remain friends after they break up, since they're both part of the Hardys' inner circle. It's played with for a bit on Chet's end since he does have some buried resentment about how the breakup went down that makes things feel unfinished, but once he confesses this to Frank and Callie and they apologize to him, he gets the closure he needs and this is played fully straight for the rest of the series. It helps that, by this point, Callie and Chet are each truly in love with other people, and both recognize that they're BetterAsFriends.

* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade:
** Unsurprising considering that Laura Hardy undergoes DeathByAdaptation in this series and her husband and sons are left mourning her murder. This causes all three of them to be less upbeat and cheerful than they were originally, with Frank in particular being moodier and having far more emotional struggles than in the books and Fenton being portrayed as a [[ParentsAsPeople flawed father despite his love for his sons]]. The boys also have serious disagreements with each other at several points that lead to actual fights, and also both have more drama in their love lives.
** This applies to their friends as well. Callie and Biff, who both come from two-parent households in the source material, have only one parent here, with Callie's mom having abandoned her and her dad when she was young while Biff has some AdoptionAngst, especially after learning her bio dad is dead. Chet's family is mentioned on a couple of occasions to be having financial struggles with their farm, while Phil--who doesn't really have love interests in the books--has an unrequited crush on Biff as his biggest personal arc in the series. Actually averted for Belinda, though, whose father here is far more loving and stable than her broken home in ''Undercover Brothers''.
* AdaptationalDiversity:
** Since the books were originally written almost a hundred years ago, there wasn't much in the way of racial diversity in the boys' main friend group, who are nearly all white in the books. This series does a better job of diversifying its main cast, as many of them get {{Race Lift}}s: Chet and Belinda are Black, Callie is also a person of color, and Biff and her mother are Asian-American. Some supporting cast members get this as well, such as Belinda's father Brian, as well as Deputy Riley (who is a white man in the books and a Black woman in the show).
** As mainstream attitudes about the LGBTQ+ community have only ''very'' recently become more accepting, only a couple of the most recent books have featured non-straight or non-binary side characters. Despite this series' timeline being in TheEighties, later seasons avert HideYourLesbians with [[AdaptationalSexuality a few main characters who aren't straight]]: the boys' Aunt Trudy and Biff's (now-unmarried) mother are both lesbians here, and get major ShipTease in the first season before getting a RelationshipUpgrade by the second, culminating in them moving in together by the series finale. Belinda, meanwhile, is bisexual, with her main LoveInterest being a guy (Chet) while her ex (Erica) is a girl.
* AdaptationalJobChange:
** In the older books published during the years in which this series is set, Laura Hardy is simply a stay-at-home mom; even in the more recent books that do give her careers outside the home, said jobs so far have been a research librarian (''Undercover Brothers'') and a real estate agent (''Adventures''). In this series, she's a journalist/investigative reporter.
** Similarly, Gertrude/Trudy Hardy was never shown having a job in any of the book series, and lives with her brother Fenton and his family. Here, she lives alone (until the boys and her brother come to stay with her) in the house she and Fenton grew up in with their parents, thus needing some sort of income, and is a painter who displays and sells her artwork in galleries, and later a school guidance counselor.
* AdaptationalLocationChange: While the Hardy family does live in Bridgeport ([[AdaptationNameChange the equivalent of Bayport from the books]]) for the duration of the series after moving there following Laura's death, they start off living in the fictional Dixon City, where Fenton is a police detective at the start of the series. In the books, Fenton was instead a cop for the New York Police Department in his backstory, and the family moved from NYC to Bayport when his sons were still very young after he retired from the force to become a PI.
* AdaptationalMundanity: Inverted. The original ''Hardy Boys'' books are grounded in "realistic" fiction, lacking fantastical or magical elements, while plot points that ''appear'' to be such are proven to actually be a ScoobyDooHoax by the end (or, at most, when dealing with the possible existence of beings such as Bigfoot, the story altogether sidesteps the issue of "proving" or "disproving" its existence and leaves it ambiguous). The only exceptions are the "Ghost Stories" books that are explicitly advertised as being supernatural and non-canon to the main series. This show starts out similarly, but gradually introduces straight-up magical [[ArtifactOfPower Artifacts of Power]] of non-Earth origin, starting with the Eye in Season 1 (which can grant users foresight, provide them with information they otherwise couldn't possibly know, and give them good luck) and expanding to include the Crystal in Season 2 (which stores one's consciousness) and the Core in Season 3 (a massive energy source).

* AdaptationalMundanity: Inverted. The original ''Hardy Boys'' books are grounded in "realistic" fiction, lacking fantastical or magical elements, while plot points that ''appear'' to be such are proven to actually be a ScoobyDooHoax by the end (or, at most, when dealing with the possible existence of beings such as Bigfoot, the story altogether sidesteps the issue of "proving" or "disproving" its existence and leaves it ambiguous). The only exceptions are the "Ghost Stories" books that are explicitly advertised as being supernatural and non-canon to the main series. This show starts out similarly, but gradually introduces straight-up magical [[ArtifactOfPower Artifacts of Power]] of non-Earth origin, starting with the Eye in Season 1 (which can grant users foresight, provide them with information they otherwise couldn't possibly know, and give them good luck) and expanding to include additional ones later, like the Crystal in Season 2 and the Core in Season 3.

** Biff's parents aren't given names in the source books, and like the parents of all of the Hardys' friends, make sparse appearances and are rarely plot-relevant. Here, Biff's mom, Jessie Hooper, is a prominent recurring character, the gang's FriendOnTheForce, and later Trudy's girlfriend.

** Drew Darrow is introduced unabashedly arriving late to a summer class at Rosegrave and then barely paying attention, but when the professor tries to call her out by having her answer the question he just asked, she does so correctly, then snarks that she both was and wasn't listening to him and wins over the other students (including Callie), showing right from the get-go that she's smart, more concerned about what she's doing than what's expected of her, doesn't have any particular regard toward authority figures, tends to respond to snark with snark.

* FromNewYorkToNowhere: The Hardy Boys have lived in the fictional Dixon City, which seems to be the largest in the area, for their entire lives until they move to more rural Bridgeport, which is referred to as a "small town" several times, although it seems to be somewhat larger than some examples. The Hardys are not keen on it at first, but settle in and [[IChooseToStay decide to stay there]] by the end of the first season.

*** Meanwhile, Season 2's BigBadEnsemble consists of two women, both of whom are TheSociopath or very close to it, and one man, who is by far the most sympathetic of them and even makes a HeelFaceTurn in the the following season.
*** Season 3 ''looks'' like it's going to break the trend, but ultimately follows suit: the one irredeemable male villain becomes a DiscOneFinalBoss, [[spoiler:and while it looks like his replacement is also a man, it turns out that he's being framed, and the real HiddenVillain and TheDragon (the latter of whom is one of the aforementioned psychopathic members of S2's BigBadEnsemble) are both women, too]].
** All three seasons have at least one male underling get killed by a female current or former employer or partner: [[YouHaveFailedMe the Tall Man by Stacy]] in S1, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness Mack by Angela]] in S2, and [[spoiler:[[YouHaveFailedMe Quill]] and [[HeKnowsTooMuch JB]] by Olivia (on Drew's behalf)]] in S3.

* PreviouslyOn: Every episode utilizes this (except for the first two season premieres) to highlight which developments and plot points of previous episodes will be most relevant to this one. The Season 3 premiere has the longest one of all, recapping the most important info from the previous seasons.

** Fenton in Season 2 and Joe in Season 3 both state that [[spoiler:Gloria may be a lot of things, but they don't think she's a killer. This is conveniently forgetting that the very crime she's officially arrested for at the end of Season 1 is the murder of Viktor Nabokov. They probably mean that Gloria wouldn't kill her family or one of her own subordinates--as she's a fairly BenevolentBoss who [[ThickerThanWater cares about family legacy]]--but regards outsiders like Viktor as fair game, especially since he was trying to steal her piece of the Eye. Still, they don't vocally make this distinction, just saying she's not a killer, which is certainly untrue]].

** It's all but outright stated in the first season that George Estabrook's partners, Ahmed and Sergei, had him killed by causing his plane to crash after he had a change of heart about the Circle and tried to flee with his piece of the Eye, and that Gloria tipped them off about this, betraying George, because she was hurt at being passed over as his successor and wanted to become a DragonAscendant after he died. [[spoiler:Then the following two seasons show that George was EvilAllAlong and never turned over a new leaf at all, and not only did he [[FakingTheDead fake his death]], he outright sabotaged ''his own plane'' to do so, rather than Sergei and Ahmed being responsible, and Gloria was always helping his plans come to fruition.]]

* SeriesContinuityError: Both Frank and Olivia bring up in Season 2, on separate occasions, how Anya told the Hardy Boys that the ground they walk on is cursed, making it sound like it was a warning or threat to them specifically. For one thing, Anya only ever interacted with Frank in her two appearances in Season 1--Joe never even met her--and she was fairly kind to him in these encounters. She just bitterly told Frank, Callie, and Chet that the Circle founders' discovery of the Eye "cursed '''this town''', and curses it still", not the boys in particular.

* AdaptationalLocationChange: While the Hardy family does live in Bridgeport ([[AdaptationNameChange the equivalent of Bayport from the books]]) for the duration of the series after moving there in the first episode, they start off living in the fictional Dixon City, where Fenton is a police detective at the start of the series. In the books, Fenton was instead a cop for the New York Police Department in his backstory, and the family moved from NYC to Bayport when his sons were still very young after he retired from the force to become a PI.
* AdaptationalMundanity: Inverted. The original ''Hardy Boys'' books are grounded in "realistic" fiction, lacking fantastical or magical elements, while plot points that ''appear'' to be such are proven to actually be a ScoobyDooHoax by the end (or, at most, when dealing with the possible existence of beings such as Bigfoot, the story altogether sidesteps the issue of "proving" or "disproving" its existence and leaves it ambiguous). The only exceptions are the "Ghost Stories" books that are explicitly advertised as being supernatural and non-canon to the main series. This show starts out similarly, but gradually introduces more and more supernatural elements and straight-up magical [[ArtifactOfPower Artifacts of Power]], starting with the Eye in Season 1 (which can grant users foresight, provide them with information they otherwise couldn't possibly know, and give them good luck) and expanding to include additional ones later, like the Crystal in Season 2 and the Core in Season 3.

** Similarly, Belinda Conrad from the ''Undercover Brothers'' book series is a supporting character largely defined by having a huge semi-requited crush on Frank; here, she is Chet's LoveInterest instead, and is just friends with Frank (and nothing more) once she becomes one of the TrueCompanions.

** A couple of examples of Sparewell's highly futuristic technology that comes right out of later decades. That fact that it ''is'' so highly advanced is probably supposed to be the justification, but considering the time period, their appearances still majorly stick out:

** Laura's mother Gloria Estabrook and grandfather George. In the books, we see practically nothing of Laura's relatives, and she's a regular woman and mother who certainly doesn't come from any sort of rich, shady family.
** Biff's parents aren't given names in the source material, and like the parents of all of the Hardys' other friends, make sparse appearances and are rarely plot-relevant. Here, Biff's mom, Jessie Hooper, is a prominent recurring character, the gang's FriendOnTheForce, and later Trudy's girlfriend.

* ElaborateUniversityHigh: Rosegrave Academy, a prep school founded by Frank's and Joe's great-grandfather George Estabrook, is an extremely prestigious one for the very best of the best, with a very competitive selection process and housing future leaders of the world. Frank and Callie are both accepted there, but are far less enthusiastic about the idea of attending after learning that it's really a SchoolForScheming and that their admissions were largely due to their connections to Gloria; however, Callie does enroll in a summer program there in Season 3 to go undercover. Laura Hardy got in as well when she was a teenager, but chose not to attend.

* FromNewYorkToNowhere: The Hardy Boys have lived in the fictional Dixon City, which seems to be the largest in the area, for their entire lives until they move to more rural Bridgeport, which is referred to as a "small town" several times, although it seems to be somewhat larger than some examples. The Hardys are not keen on it at first, but settle in and [[IChooseToStay decide to stay there]] by the end of the first season.

** Unlike Frank, who had his girlfriend Emma and possibly at least some of his baseball teammates, Joe isn't shown or stated to have had any friends when living in Dixon City at the start of the series, as the only interaction he has with other kids consists of retaliating against some bullies. It's hinted that being WiseBeyondHisYears makes it easier for him to connect with older kids (like Frank, Chet, Callie, and Belinda), and even adults like JB, than with those his age, with Biff and Phil seeming to be his first real friends in his age group.

* LocalHangout: Wilt's Deli. The gang meets there many times throughout the series, and Frank even gets a part-time job there. Wilt also becomes an ally to the boys, telling them about gossip he's heard from around town and in his store, and even hiding them in the back of the store when corrupt Bridgeport police officers are looking for them.

** Gloria outlives her daughter and only child Laura, which greatly saddens her. Especially once she learns that Laura's death was not an accident, but murder. Which makes it all the more devastating when she discovers at the end of the season that [[spoiler:her own trusted right-hand-man, Stefan,]] was the one responsible.

* PreviouslyOn: Every episode utilizes this (except for the first two season premieres) to highlight which developments and plot points of previous episodes will be most relevant to this one. The Season 3 premiere has the longest one of all, recapping the most important and relevant info from the previous seasons.

** Fenton in Season 2 and Joe in Season 3 both state that [[spoiler:Gloria may be a lot of things, but they don't think she's a killer. This is conveniently forgetting that the very crime she's officially arrested for at the end of Season 1 is the murder of Viktor Nabokov. They probably mean that Gloria wouldn't kill her family or one of her own subordinates--as she's a fairly BenevolentBoss who [[ThickerThanWater cares about family legacy]]--but regards outsiders like Viktor as fair game, especially since he was trying to steal her piece of the Eye. Still, they don't vocally make this distinction, just saying she's not a killer]].
** It's all but outright stated in the first season that George Estabrook's partners, Ahmed and Sergei, had him killed by causing his plane to crash after he had a change of heart about the Circle and tried to flee with his piece of the Eye, and that Gloria tipped them off about this, betraying George, because she was hurt at being TheUnfavorite who was passed over as his successor and wanted to become a DragonAscendant after he died. [[spoiler:Then the following two seasons show that George was EvilAllAlong and never turned over a new leaf at all, and not only did he [[FakingTheDead fake his death]], he outright sabotaged ''his own plane'' to do so, rather than Sergei and Ahmed being responsible.]]

* TrespassingHero: Throughout the course of the series, the TrueCompanions commit quite a bit of various flavors of trespassing during their investigations, such as breaking into people's houses and offices to snoop when they're not there numerous times, ignoring "No Trespassing" signs to venture onto private property, and sneaking into public buildings after closing hours.

** In the second two seasons, once Phil starts hanging out with Joe and Biff a lot more, the three of them also make one of these when they're together. In this case, despite Joe and Biff having had ShipTease in the first season, they mostly don't for S2&3; meanwhile, Phil has a one-sided crush on Biff.

** Since the showrunners didn't know when making the first season if there would be any more, it's by far the most standalone of the series, with the mystery and {{Driving Question}}s of the season wrapped up fairly neatly by the end of it. While there are some {{Sequel Hook}}s that wouldn't have gotten follow-up if the series hadn't been renewed, they're not directly related to the case that the boys solve, and the ending still would have worked perfectly fine as an AndTheAdventureContinues-style SeriesFinale. Made even clearer by the fact that there's a six-month TimeSkip between the first and second seasons, and the S2 premiere is the only other episode besides the series premiere to not start with a PreviouslyOn segment, since there isn't anything pressing left to solve from Season 1.

** It's also implied that one of the reasons Joe [[OddFriendship gets along with JB as well as he does]] is because the latter is an adult who actually ''does'' respect and admire the Hardy Boys' skills as detectives without brushing them off as "just kids", especially considering how many times they give him valuable intel throughout the series. The few times he doesn't believe something they tell him truthfully, it's because he has reason to think they're lying to him, rather than not taking them seriously.

** A couple of examples of Sparewell's highly advanced technology, which is probably supposed to be the justification for it; still, considering the time period, it's unlikely that these things would look like that: