History WMG / Rugrats

At the end of the episode, the younger characters were shown to be in bed when Angelica was on a desert planet. This could also explain the show's declining quality because all episodes after that are the increasingly incoherent fantasies of a three-year-old who is slowly dying of dehydration.
* This Troper believes the episodes after that are actually [[GrowingTheBeard an *increase*]] in quality. And why would Angelica be thinking about those dumb babies with some of them not having herself in?

[[WMG: Brain damaged adults can understand babies in the Rugrats-universe]]

* [[http://funnymama.com/store/120719/93861_v0_600x.jpg Natch.]]

[[WMG: If the original series is ever brought back, Angelica will get a younger sibling]]
[[WordOfGod Apparently, the idea of Angelica getting a younger sibling has been tossed around the Klasky-Csupo before]], but has never actually been played out. I'd imagine it been made into a three-part episode, like ''Acorn Nuts & Diapey Butts'', and this is how I would imagine it: Drew and Charlotte realize they're going to have another baby (for real this time), and when they tell Angelica, they assure that they'll always love her and that she won't be forgotten (like what Drew told Angelica at the end of ''Angelica's Worst Nightmare''). And when Charlotte finally has the baby, I'd imagine Angelica getting a younger sister.

[[WMG: Reptar is a double parody of Franchise/{{Godzilla}} and Film/{{Gamera}}]]

[[WMG: The show doesn't have a floating timeline, the babies just don't have a sense of time]]
The show actually takes place over about two years. Why don't we see the babies age a bit? Why does it feel like the show takes place over the same year? This is all because the show is told through the babies eyes and obviously they don't have a clear sense of time passing around them.

This also explains Didi's pregnancy. Didi has been pregnant since the show started. The babies just didn't realize it, because why would they? They're babies! Dil's birth indicates that nine months have passed between the first episode and the first Rugrats movie. The episodes following Dil's birth up until Rugrats In Paris represent 3 months, thus completing an entire year. Thus, Rugrats In Paris until the show's end represents one year as well.

[[WMG: Angelica is a younger [[Series/{{Glee}} Sue Slyvester]]]]

[[WMG: Stu Pickles worked for or was an engineer of an R&D Department of a military branch]]

[[WMG: Barney is real]]
Chuckie's supposedly imaginary friend from the episode "My Friend Barney" really was an invisible boy who lived in a castle and went to "prisom" because he didn't eat his vegetables.

*** When Angelica asks Drew and Charlotte what it means, they refuse to tell her. If it was "shits", they could have said, "It's a nasty grown up word for poop." But explaining the other one to a three year old? They couldn't tell her where babies come from in the stork episode.

*** Not only that, the pregnancy test looked a bit fantastical. (Unless that was some common home pregnancy test in the 90s.) But still, I can attest to that, especially the whole faulty pregnancy test as mentioned below it's possible that Charlotte misread the instructions so "blue" meant "not pregnant" or "Tainted sample - please try again". I can also attest to how faulty pregnancy tests can give a false positive - when my mom gave a drug test sample at work, they were ''quite'' amused at how she was not only pregnant in her 50s but had a hysterectomy in the past two years.

* It's highly unlikely that a three-year-old, even a spoiled rotten one like Angelica, could put enough pressure on her parents to abort a baby that they both clearly wanted, especially considering the behavior of some of the real-life three-year-olds you see on shows like Supernanny. Depending on how long Charlotte had been pregnant, it's more likely she miscarried (watch Drew squeeze her hand at the end). Or, she could have misread the test instructions (as in, blue means "not pregnant," but she misread it as "pregnant."
** One darker theory I heard coincides with this - The reason that Angelica's so spoiled is because she's a "miracle baby" - Drew and Charlotte had struggles with infertility, and the thought that Charlotte could be pregnant a second time is why they're so ecstatic, but she had a miscarriage early, and that's why she was so sad. (Charlotte probably has a lot of stress in her life and stress ''can'' cause a miscarriage in the first trimester. No idea about her caffeine consumption, but excessive caffeine consumption can also cause miscarriages.)

[[WMG: Dill was originally intended to have some form of mental retardation.]]
In the first movie, after he's born, all the newborn babies in the hospital are, like the Rugrats, able to talk to each other. Dill does not speak at first, and then barely ever communicates anything to the other babies for the rest of the series. He's a baby even to the babies. The All Grown Up series issued a {{Retcon}}, making Dill just "weird" instead of mentally disabled.
* Also, this is sort of canon, considering the line in one episode of ''WesternAnimation/AllGrownUp'' where Lil said something along the lines of "I wonder what Dil would be like if we hadn't dropped him on his head" while Tommy was spying on them with his digital camera ( ItMakesSenseInContext )

In reality, Chuckie died along with his mother, which is why Chaz is such a nervous wreck. Tommy was stillborn which causes Stu to sit in the basement making toys for his son that never had a chance to live, and the [=DeVilles=] had an abortion. Angelica couldn't decide whether the unborn child would be male or female and thus simply invented the same character in her head twice with different genders.

* Also, Doctor Lipschitz and the psychiatrist the family visits in "Mama Trauma" are actually specialists helping Didi deal with the loss of her child, rather than a child pyschologist. After all, a woman who is so obsessed with her child's actions that she would drag him to a shrink doesn't seem likely to let that same child wander out of her sight constantly.
* Although the Mother's Day episode implies that Chuckie's mother died of an unexplained terminal illness which doesn't explain how Chuckie died with her. It could have been a hereditary illness which was passed on to Chuckie but that's fairly unlikely.

** But, in Piece of Cake, Tommy was not IN it. And why would Kimi feed Fifi at the beginning of Attention Please if she didn't exist? (at the beginning, Tommy is
[[WMG: Tommy is [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Jean-Luc Picard]]]]
During the events of the episode "Toy Palace" (Where Tommy and Chuckie are locked inside a toy store after hours), the series forks into two {{Alternate Universe}}s; one where both Tommy and Chuckie are reunited with their dads, and one where only Chuckie is, as Tommy stumbles into the fully functional toy time machine and is sent forward in time to several years after the events of Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries; where he's taken into the care of a new family, takes on a new name given, and grows up to be the captain of the Enterprise-D.

* This Troper believes the episodes after that are actually [[GrowingTheBeard an ''increase'']] in quality. And why would Angelica be thinking about those dumb babies with some of them not having herself in?

** This doesn't work quite as well because in "A Visit from Aunt Miriam," Aunt Miriam mentions she and Grandpa used to play with kids named Bill and Jill (Phil and Lil). It's possible that instead, Stu was Tommy, Chas was Chuckie, and Betty was a combination of both Phil and Lil (kind of the same way Kath Soucie did the voice acting for both twins). If that's the case, it's quite possible Charlotte was the Angelica for the parents' group, but they don't mention it much because she also married their "Tommy's" older brother. Would've been sort of awkward to bring up childhood dynamics in that case, especially in front of Angelica. Not that she needs any more encouragement to torment the babies, but hearing what her mom used to do might make her think, "Cool; how come I never thought of that?"
*** Don't forget that Betty does have a twin brother named Freddie

Really? Nobody's suggested this before? He even has his own screwdriver!

* If he was one, he would have gone back in time instead of trying to go into Chucky in Inside Story.

[[WMG: All Growed Up is different from ''WesternAnimation/AllGrownUp'' because that's how the babies wanted to be when they grew up]]

* Yup, this one seems pretty flawless. All Growed Up is clearly a fantasy sequence seeing as it ends with them all as babies again. All Grown Up has several differences and there's nothing to indicate that we're not really in the future this time round.

[[WMG: Stu occasionally sells some of his inventions]]

** Didi is also a home economics teacher, it's just not explored much, so she probably provides stable income while Stu's inventions give them a little extra
[[WMG: Charlotte is having an affair with Jonathan]]

If he's gay, why did he marry a woman?
[[WMG: Grandpa Lou holds the Democratic Party responsible for his wife's death]]
In the episode where Tommy is kidnapped, Lou is reading the newspaper and angrily blurts out "Dad-burned Democrats". In a later episode which deals with Stu and Drew as kids, Lou casually mentions their mother was away working on the Presidential campaign of Estes Kefauver, a Democrat who ran in the primaries against Adlai Stevenson. One can easily assume that his wife was a stressed out, politically active Democrat. Since we have no timeline for her death, it can reasonably be assumed that her death could have been caused by stress induced heart trouble. Grandpa Lou then transferred his anger over her untimely death to the Democrats.

[[WMG: The Babies are actually Aliens... the Nhar-Gh'ok from Invader Zim in fact]]
This can explain how Tommy and the others can talk. Plus it was confirmed by the writers of Invader Zim that originally, Tommy Pickles was going to be one of the alien babies from the episode "Plague of Babies" but was removed for obvious reasons, but this could be the one possible explanation of how the babies are capable of talking and why they must keep it a secret from the adults.

[[WMG: The episode "Brothers Grimm" was a dream/apprehensive fantasy sequence by the 'Rats]]
That would explain the wide tonal shift in this episode, not to mention a compressed vice that was not even hinted at before, as well as the Family Guy-esque throwaway gags such as Stu breaking his back molars from clenching his jaw from stress, which is treated with much less seriousness than the show would normally have done (that's assuming that his teeth aren't fake, as a fic I read somewhere posits that he knocked out most of his teeth in an inventing accident, although it was just a fanfic), and Didi finishing that house cozy, seriously, a house cozy, that covers the whole house. Additionally, the tree house that they build, which is kept at the end of the episode, is pointedly gone in subsequent episodes. This show always seemed to me to have at least a King of the Hill level of realism, taking the old series largely in broad strokes, and this episode just seems out of place and is the only episode that suffers from FanonDiscontinuity for this troper.

[[WMG: Tommy can speak a little]]

[[WMG: The series takes place during the early 90s]]
I'd say around 1991 or 1992. Unlike other series it didn't have a floating timeline. It stayed where it was set, like WesternAnimation/PepperAnn. There are little to no things in the show that would be odd in the early 90s.. The sequel supports this by being set ten years in the future but seemingly being set in the early 2000s.

It explains why he falls asleep at the drop of a hat. He's a victim of narcolepsy, though it's a mild case since most of the time he's functional.
* Actually, that's just part of being old. Granted... he ''does'' fall asleep a little ''too'' quickly.

* Possibly less noticeable in his baby days, since a lot of the traits, such as his unusual fears and attachment to comfort object Wawa, could be explained as a two-year-old being a two-year-old. However, this theory becomes more plausible in All Grown Up, when Chuckie is 12. His highly specialized interests in/obsessions with Armadillo Dave and Yu-Gotta-Go cards provide evidence, as does his increased social awkwardness, especially around girls. He also doesn't seem to have lost some of those unusual childhood fears.

[[WMG: Chaz and Chuckie are related to Muriel Finster of Recess.]]

Chuckie seems to like Dummi Bears, not so much Tommy, but Kimi?

[[WMG: Kira Watanabe-Finster was deliberately based on Yoko Ono]]

* You sure the "Downfall of the show" wasn't just "By the time Kimmi appeared, the target demographic who was maybe 5-7 when the show started was now 14-16 and therefore much more interested in stuff like ''Series/AllThat'' or the stuff on Toonami"?

[[WMG: Rocko, the cool guy from "Little Dude" is an illegitimate son of Drew's]]

[[WMG:Angelica Pickles is Albertine.]]

Think about these. They both have blond hair, they are both kids, and they're cloths are purple and orange. (in fact, they're similar) What if Angelica wished for her family to let her do what ever she want and her cat died? These made her very upset so much that her soulgem darkened quickly and she became the witch Albertine. Anja may represent the baby because she's naive. Think about it.

[[WMG: Chuckie saw a scene from Creator/StephenKing's It.]]

[[WMG: The identities of the two mysterious adults in "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing"]]

* Lil: Spends some time as a professional athlete (perhaps even a figure skater, considering her more girly tendencies later in the series) and then sets up a scholarship foundation for well-rounded young women (such as girls who like girly-girl things, but also love bugs). :)

* Dil: Stars in a couple of Tommy's films, and writes a self-help book for those who believe they've been abducted by aliens.

Aside from the possibility of her being a Parody Sue, what if Lucy, in fact, isn't as perfect as she tries to convey? We see very little solid proof to back up her apparently extensive list of talents and accomplishments, and aside from the obvious fact that she is, in fact, a successful doctor and mother, we very rarely see her preforming any of her claimed "talents" or using any of her accumulated skills in-show. She claims to have created the replica of the Tiffany lamp, but, actually, she purchased it--something that's probably not hard to do when you're an accomplished heart surgeon and your husband is the writer of a probably world-renown kids show. She simply didn't want to get upset in front of the new neighbors, so she quickly fabricated the ability to simply create a new one. She didn't actually guest lecture at the Cordon Bleu, and by no means did she actually create the Eiffel Tower jello mold with her bare hands; she either used a pre-made mold, or it was, in fact, given by a neighbor who actually did lecture at the Cordon Bleu; she simply loved the prestige of such a position and fibbed, hoping Did wouldn't catch on or know who actually made the mold. Her time in the Peace Corps as well as earning her Commercial Pilots License were just things she happened to think of and wound up sharing, despite having not done either. We did, of course, see her blues record in All Grown Up, so whereas that probably wasn't a lie, she and her husband may have exaggerated a little; after all, it's hard to be an apparently famous singer, even in the past, without any of your children knowing--there would have been interviews, songs on radio stations, gossip rags wondering "where is she now?". Plus, it's hard to believe it just never came up while Suzy was pursuing her own singing career. She probably had a small cult following and did see some success in her days as a singer, but she probably ultimately decided to become a doctor and raise her family, instead, once she'd gathered enough money from her record sales to attend college and med school. Basically, Lucy is an accomplished doctor with a history in music, but the rest of her talents? Exaggerations and lies made up to make herself seem even more amazing.

[[WMG: ''Rugrats'', ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys'', ''WesternAnimation/AaahhRealMonsters'', ''WesternAnimation/AsToldByGinger'', ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'', and ''WesternAnimation/RocketPower'' all take place in the same universe]]

Aside from all of them being owned by Klasky-Csupo (minus Arnold), we have had canon evidence that at least Rugrats lives in the same universe as The Whild Thornberrys and Aaah Real Monsters. It's not hard to assume that the other shows are in the same world, based on the similar art styles they have. They also occur more or less in the same time period (90s-early 2000s) and their stories are pretty basic slice-of-life stuff (barring Thornberrys and Monsters, but since they're canon already, we can assume a little bit of magic also takes form in this world), minus some wacky adventures here and there. It's easy to assume at some point the characters all came to a point where they were at a similar age (at least, All Grown Up! would occur at the same time as Ginger).

[[WMG: Charlotte and [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnold Miriam Pataki]] are sisters]]

[[WMG: Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become Gremlins]]

However, this resulted in a lot of rewrites by Hollywood suits, which Tommy was not happy with. The violent draft of the film with Billy’s mother’s head falling down the stairs was actually an early, much darker REWRITE of Tommy’s film. His original vision would have been much less misanthropic or dark than even the final cut of Gremlins. The execs decided to save Tommy’s concept of a “spider-like” Gremlin for a sequel, and distorted a line that described the Gremlins as ‘evil clowns’ and made the monsters full of slapstick. The original script also had another good Gremlin inspired by Reptar, but this character was deleted. They decided the story needed a clear human antagonist, and combined Charlotte and Angelica’s worst traits to create Mrs. Deagle. Tommy felt it was not fair to make two of his relatives into a one-dimensional villain, but things got worse. Dil was aged down to become Pete, because the producers wanted a little-kid character. They decided to make Kimi white and into the protagonist’s girlfriend. Tommy balked at the execs deleting Chuckie’s character from the film, because he was supposed to undergo a lot of character development and demonstrate courage. He was also supposed to have a sensitive monologue about always being scared since his mother died…which the execs turned into a joke about the death of the love interest’s father. The last straw was when the writers whitewashed the characters he based on his Grandparents, Boris and Minka, especially because he wanted a Christmas movie that showed not everyone celebrates Christmas, but it’s still a time for family. The script, written just after Boris and Minka passed away, was Tommy’s tribute to them. The Boris character was originally going to discuss the legends of the Dybbuk in the movie and compare them to stories of Gremlins from WWII. The studio felt this content made the movie “too ethnic”, would distract from the Christmas theme, and might also be too stereotypical, so the characters were reworked into the Futtermans. When Tommy was fired from the project, the Futtermans were killed off, but retconned into being saved when test audiences complained. By the time the film had been shot, the only characters who bore any resemblance to those in the original script were Billy, his parents, and Gizmo. The rest, as they say, is movie history.

* [[WMG: Angelica based her [[ImaginaryFriend imaginary friends]] on the babies. This is why she is able to understand them.]]

[[WMG: Melville didn't really die]]

[[WMG: Tommy wasn't really sick in "Slumber Party"]]

[[WMG: In the real ending of ''Reptar On Ice'' (which we don't see because the babies interrupt the show), Reptar's bride is StuffedIntoTheFridge]]

[[WMG: The revival will feature a "Next Generation" of Rugrats]]

[[WMG: Drew is 36]]

[[WMG: Reptar is a double parody of Franchise/{{Godzilla}} and Franchise/{{Gamera}}]]

* Actually, that's just part of being old. Granted... he ''does'' all asleep a little ''too'' quickly.

* Or a brother, or nephew.

* Well there's an early season 1 episode where it shows [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness Didi is afraid of clowns]]. She goes nuts when a clown approaches her. Chuckie is there and doesn't seem phased. There's a theory that phobias are caused by seeing someone else react to something - therefore Didi could have given Chuckie his fear of clowns.

In no other part of the Reptar franchise does he have a human wife. Having him get married would make him [[ComicBook/TheNightGwenStacyDied too happy]] and [[ComicBook/OneMoreDay make him feel too old.]] The last part of the show we see before the babies interrupt it has Reptar's wedding being crashed by soldiers trying to attack him for his mass destruction. If the show hadn't been cut short, the bride would have been killed in that attack: either accidentally caught in the crossfire or TakingTheBullet for Reptar. Then Reptar would have unleashed a RoaringRampageOfRevenge on the soldiers, dealing them a spectacular defeat. The babies' interruption saved a lot of kids in the audience (and Grandpa) from being traumatized by the deeply BittersweetEnding of the show as written.

And Angelica's biological father is Jonathan, not Drew. Drew is completely aware of this because he has never consummated his marriage and Charlotte is a beard. [[TheBarneyBunch Drew is gay after all]].

[[WMG: The babies in Rugrats don't exist and are products of Angelica's imagination because her mother ignores her and her relationship with her father is shallow and parasitic.]]

[[WMG: [[CountryMatters THIS]] is the word Angelica kept using in the Miss Carol episode.]]

* I always thought it was [[PrecisionFStrike this one]], because it fits the covering noises better and it's the most commonly used of the main curse words.
** Since it was in reference to the kids "Little...." it was probably either Little Cunts or Little Shits
** Now that I'm a grown up, I agree that it was definitely... well, as Didi said, [[CountryMatters ewww.]] When Angelica asks Drew and Charlotte what it means, they refuse to tell her. If it was "Shits", they could have said, "It's a nasty grown up word for poop." But explaining the other one to a three year old? They couldn't even tell her where babies come from in the stork episode.
*** If that's the case, then I'm calling FridgeBrilliance, because that's the perfect explanation for why they couldn't explain it.
*** Have to disagree here since a sharp-eyed viewer can clearly see Angelica start to make the 'f' sound before the camera cuts away from her when she's onstage. It's short but it's there and in no way looks like she's starting to say...[[CountryMatters yeah]].

[[WMG: Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become [Film/Gremlins] ]]

[[WMG: Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become ''Film/Gremlins'' ]]

[[WMG: Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become [[Film/Gremlins]] ]]

[[WMG: Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become[Film/Gremlins] ]]

[[WMG: [Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become[Film/Gremlins]]

[WMG: [Tommy Pickles wrote a Hollywood screenplay that originated in fuzzy memories of his childhood, but the film was reworked to become[Film/Gremlins]]