History WesternAnimation / CarmenSandiego

* ChekhovsLecture: Whenever she hits a new country, Carmen and Player give an infodump about the location (as expected by a show based on a series of educational games); just about everything mentioned in these infodumps will show up in the episodes, whether as plot points, locations, or even background gags.

!!Subpages
[[index]]
* [[MacGuffin/CarmenSandiego MacGuffin]]
* [[MythologyGag/CarmenSandiego Mythology Gag]]
* [[ShoutOut/CarmenSandiego Shout Out]]
* [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome/CarmenSandiego Surprisingly Realistic Outcome]]
[[/index]]

* ShootHimHeHasAWallet: The reason [[spoiler:Carmen's father]] died as [[spoiler:The Chief thought he was pulling out a gun instead of car keys.]].

* SureLetsGoWithThat: In the Season 1 finale, Coach Brunt asks [[spoiler:Carmen about her "partnership" with Chase Devineaux. Carmen doesn't bother to correct Coach Brunt and instead snarks that she prefers working with the law than with evil villains]].

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: While he holds her at gunpoint, Carmen and Gray laugh over their first encounter at V.I.L.E. Academy, where she intimidated him for trying to call her Lambkins.

!!Player, what tropes can you find within this website?

[[AC:General examples]]

* CarmenSandiego/TropesAToF
* CarmenSandiego/TropesGToL
* CarmenSandiego/TropesMToR
** [[MacGuffin/CarmenSandiego MacGuffin]]
** [[MythologyGag/CarmenSandiego Mythology Gag]]
* CarmenSandiego/TropesSToZ
** [[ShoutOut/CarmenSandiego Shout Out]]
** [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome/CarmenSandiego Surprisingly Realistic Outcome]]

->''"Some things possess value other than entertainment, dear reader. Any historic writing such this [[Website/TVTropes website]] belongs to everyone. Its theft would rob the world of knowledge and that would be a true crime."''

** CarmenSandiego/{{MacGuffin}}

** [[MythologyGag/CarmenSandiego MythologyGag]]

** ''MythologyGag/CarmenSandiego''

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Tropes A]]
* AbsenceOfEvidence: [[spoiler:How Chase managed to find V.I.L.E.'s headquarters. Their "Valuable Imports, Lavish Exports" front had perfect customs paperwork for all of their activities. However, there was one location they had business in that had no paperwork at all attached to it. [[MissedHimByThatMuch Too bad V.I.L.E. blew up their base a week before he got there]]]].
* ActuallyPrettyFunny: While he holds her at gunpoint, Carmen and Gray laugh over their first encounter at V.I.L.E. Academy, where she intimidated him for trying to call her Lambkins.
* AdaptationalDumbass: Zack and Ivy, though not as bad as Chase, also suffer from this a bit. In the ''Where on Earth'' series the two were some of A.C.M.E.'s best agents and were really the only ones capable of keeping up with Carmen's intelligence. In this series, they act more as Carmen's backup or TheWatson, never displaying the top class detective skills they had their original series. Some of their first dialogue suggests they were just common thieves before meeting Carmen (which is half-confirmed in "The Boston Tea Party Caper"). They do become more capable as the show goes on, however.
* AdaptationalJobChange:
** Downplayed with Chase and Julia. Both are still detectives, but they work for Interpol instead of A.C.M.E. [[spoiler:However, both are recruited by A.C.M.E. in the fourth episode. Chase is later put on indefinite leave to Interpol at the start of Season 2 and is rehired at its finale, after being fired from Interpol.]]
** In ''Where on Earth'', Carmen (back when she was still with A.C.M.E.) mentions Maelstrom was a marine archaeologist before turning to a life of crime. Here, Maelstrom is now a PsychoPsychologist.
* AdaptationalVillainy: Sort of.
** Zack and Ivy go from fighting against Carmen to working with her (though she's undergone AdaptationalHeroism), and season 2 reveals they were trying to avoid being thieves but had to pay off money from a loanshark with this one job that led them to meeting Carmen.
** There's also a character called Player, who works with Carmen and is meant to represent the player character. While in the other series, the player contended against Carmen, here Player is an anti-hero white hat hacker who breaks into computer systems. Originally it was to tell people how to boost their protections, now it is to fight a criminal organization but still using illegal means.
** In the original show Suhara was Carmen’s partner and mentor in A.C.M.E. Here, [[spoiler:it's Shadowsan's real name]].
** And of course, A.C.M.E. is the Law Enforcement organization the protagonists are affiliated with, but here, they're an enemy faction.
* AdaptationExpansion: The novelization ''Who is Carmen Sandiego?'' expands on Carmen's childhood, what happened after she snuck out with the graduates, and her encountering Paper Star in origami class.
* AerosolSprayBackfire: The A.C.M.E agents are all armed with [[InstantSedation knockout gas guns]] that seem to hit themselves or fellow agents more often than the intended targets.
* AllAsiansWearConicalStrawHats: When Carmen has {{Imagine Spot}}s and dreams of a younger Shadowsan [[spoiler:around the age when he found her as a baby]] he is wearing one of these hats. It is revealed when Shadow-san recounts his past from that era and before, he isn't actually wearing one.
* AllPartOfTheShow:
** In "The Sticky Rice Caper", the shadow puppeteers are scared off by Carmen and Tigress. When Carmen and Tigress fight behind the screen, the band resumes playing music and the audience cheers for the "puppetry."
** In "The Fashionista Caper", Carmen recruits Julia to walk down the catwalk with her in a fashion show to protect a set of Medici gowns from a quartet of brainwashed models. Zack and Ivy also jump onto the catwalk to get between the models and the gowns. At the end of the episode, the fashion designer indicates that he wants to hire Carmen to model for him.
** In "The Luchadora Tango Caper", the audience (barring Chase and Julia) assume the wrestling match between Lupe Pelligro and Coach Brunt (substituting for Lupe's true opponent for tonight) is this.
* AllThereInTheScript: The woman following Carmen at the end of the pilot is named Zari, according to the credits. Season 2's premiere implies it is her last name (as the Chief calls her "Agent Zari").
* AloneWithThePsycho:
** Chase finds himself knocked out, handcuffed and trapped by [[spoiler:Coach Brunt in the first season finale. At first he's snarking about them giving him a new keycard, and accusing them of working for Carmen Sandiego. Then he goes OhCrap when Coach Brunt straps a truth extractor to his head, and warns him that if it's on for too long it can cause brain damage. By the time Carmen frees him, he's semiconscious and collapses after activating his A.C.M.E. pen]].
** Carmen tries to avoid this in the season 1 finale, by distracting [[spoiler:Coach Brunt and Shadowsan into leaving Chase alone and tied up. It doesn't work; Brunt figures it out, bars the door too well for Carmen to break, and subjects her adopted daughter to a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown. By the end of it Carmen has several broken bones and needs help to walk]].
* AmbiguousSituation:
** Initially no one is sure if [[spoiler:Gray after his memory is erased is a potential sleeper agent. Player points out the possibility, since V.I.L.E. released subliminal brainwashing at the Sydney Opera House, where Carmen and a rocket scientist were affected. He says that Gray may be a trap for Carmen since V.I.L.E. knew about their friendship. Carmen doesn't believe it, but she thinks it's best to leave Gray in his new life, since if V.I.L.E. knew they renewed their friendship then he could become a target]].
** In the first season finale, it's unclear if [[spoiler:Shadowsan will continue to be a mole for Carmen or if he outed himself by knocking out Coach Brunt]]. This gets resolved early in season 2.
* AmnesiacsAreInnocent: After [[spoiler:Gray]] gets his memories wiped, fears of his being a ManchurianAgent aside, he lacks any of the criminal impulses that led him to sign up for V.I.L.E. in the first place, even worrying that he and Carmen are "the good guys" after she tricks him into helping on a caper. Turns out to be invoked. V.I.L.E. intentionally alters a subjects personality when their memories are wiped to keep them out of situations that would stir up lingering traces of their time with V.I.L.E. [[spoiler:After A.C.M.E. attempts to return Gray's memories in season 4, at his own request, his criminal impulses come back with a vengance and he outright tells Carmen that needing to be the "good guys" was never who he was. He gladly rejoins V.I.L.E., although [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he soon regrets his decision when the heads of V.I.L.E brainwash Carmen so much that she nearly kills Zack]]!]]
* AncientConspiracy: Season 4 reveals that V.I.L.E. is just the latest incarnation of a criminal conspiracy dating back to the Middle Ages.
* AndTheAdventureContinues: The ending of the series: [[spoiler: while Shadowsan has returned home to his brother, Zack and Ivy have joined ACME and are working with them to hunt the remaining free V.I.L.E. operatives, with occasional help from Carmen]].
* ApologeticAttacker: Subverted. [[spoiler:Coach Brunt speaks softly to Carmen when suffocating her and breaking her bones, but it's obvious that while she may not enjoy it, she will do it]].
* ArcWords: "Where in the world... [x]?", usually, a way that characters, even Carmen herself, wonder where she is.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: "The Opera In The Outback Caper" involves implanting subliminals on a researcher as she attends an opera, then triggering them at her workplace outside Ayers' Rock the next day. The nearest city to Ayers' Rock is Alice Springs, which is over 460km away - not a distance one can casually travel for a morning commute after a night at the opera. If the opera house was actually meant to be Australia's most famous one in Sydney, the distance becomes even more implausible - over 2,800km by highway, a 30 hour drive. Yet Carmen apparently makes a round trip in one day.
* AscendedExtra: Agent Zari started out on the show as just another A.C.M.E. agent following Carmen, until season 2 when Chase gets put on leave and she becomes Julia's official partner. The fact that Zari was named in the credits in her first appearance (as stated in AllThereInTheScript) suggests that having her become a recurring character was the plan all along, however.
* AsYouKnow: As Carmen recounts her backstory to Gray, he lampshades that she can skip a chunk of it because he was there. She replies that he doesn't necessarily know her perspective of the events and keeps going.
* TheAtoner: [[spoiler:Shadowsan was the one who rescued Carmen because he witnessed her father being killed by Interpol-- while on an assignment to kill him. He felt pangs of conscience when he and Carmen barely survived the confrontation and brought her to the island. The reason why he didn't want her to become a thief was because he didn't want her repeating her father's mistakes.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes B]]
* BadassBureaucrat: Nigel Braithwaite, aka Roundabout. He's the deputy director of British Secret Service, and a V.I.L.E. mastermind, [[spoiler:who even manages to beat Shadowsan in a sword fight at the end of season 3. Though it's implied Shadowsan let him win, the fact that he even manages to hold his own is impressive.]]
* BaitAndSwitch:
** This topic was taught by Dr. Maelstrom using two brief cases with Tigress as the other person in the demonstration. He acquired her cash, and she acquired his bait, as in worms, bugs, and other slimy and disgusting things people bait animals with.
** In "The Duke of Vermeer Caper", Ivy attempts to drive the getaway van over a rising bridge...but she's unable to do it unlike her brother so she presses the brakes.
** In "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper (Part 2)" it looks like Shadowsan is about to reveal that he's betrayed Carmen...[[spoiler: until he states that Coach Brunt found her in ''Russia'' and not Argentina, thus proving that he's on her side.]]
* BaitTheDog: Gray is the first classmate who's nice to Carmen, and they form a deep bond over how they do in class. Then it turns out he has a ruthless sadistic streak when he tries to gun down an innocent archaeologist and doesn't understand why Carmen would be against killing. In the present, now that he and Carmen are on opposing sides, he threatens to electrocute her if she doesn't answer his questions.
* BatmanGambit:
** Carmen's heist of The Eye of Vishnu was a trick to get the law authorities to investigate the apartment she robbed, and for them to realize it was a V.I.L.E. hideout with all the stolen artifacts hidden there. Julia makes the connection as Interpol investigates.
** Mime Bomb performs one in "The Lucky Cat Caper". When detained by Chase and Julia with a stolen stamp in his possession, he covertly slips the stamp into [[RightUnderTheirNoses Chase's pocket]]. No longer having it in his possession, they let him go, but tail him afterwards - which allows Tigress to steal the stamp back later.
** Both sides pull this off in "The Daisho Caper". Lady Dokuso coats a pair of chopsticks with poison, knowing that [[spoiler:Shadowsan]] will pick them up and use them as weapons. Meanwhile, Carmen tricks Paper Star by having Zack cover a string of paper lanterns with glue, so that they'll stick to her when she tries to use them for origami.
** Both sides again in a big way in "The Jolly Good Caper". [[spoiler:Roundabout plans a heist of England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London for Carmen to foil, relying on her stealing the jewels first in a two-minute window with the security off, only to turn the security back on halfway through and get her arrested, then she'll be turned over to the Cleaners while he steals the real crown jewels. Turns out Carmen's team expected all of it, had Zack and Ivy drive the paddy wagon, recorded Roundabout's theft and planted the jewels in his office, and lured him out into the open where the authorities would arrest him, crippling V.I.L.E.'s ability to get their prisoners released with his influence.]]
* BavarianFireDrill: Carmen accesses the security room by claiming that she's an IT trainee and has to ride the elevator with Ms. Booker.
* BeCarefulWhatYouSay: Shadowsan keeps accusing Coach Brunt of wanting to go easy on Black Sheep aka Carmen. [[spoiler:In the first season finale, it's revealed Shadowsan was the one looking out for Carmen all along, and saves her when Coach Brunt tries to kill her in cold blood]].
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: All of V.I.L.E.'s teachers kept telling Carmen that she needed to control her recklessness and immaturity, with Shadowsan being the hardest on her. She eventually does kick the habit; after she got busted for messing with her class's heist, Carmen bid her time for the next school year and plotted her escape, complete with her open defection and declaration of war on V.I.L.E. Now when she's impulsive, she channels it into letting Interpol agents chase her.
* BigBadDuumvirate: The five leaders of V.I.L.E. serve as the central antagonists, and lead by committee, with no one member having any apparent superiority over the others (although Professor Maelstrom often acts as the group's mediator and spokesman).
* BigNo: Carmen screams this in the second episode right before Crackle tries to kill an innocent man who leads an archaeological dig.
* BigRedButton: When Carmen is resetting the launch commands of the rocket to prevent an unplanned launch, she notes the presence of a big red button, asks what it does and Player explains not to press it until the system reset is complete or the rocket will launch. Subverted when Carmen notes she won't be pressing it.
* BilingualBonus: The EvilDuo, Le Chèvre and El Topo. Le Chèvre means "goat cheese" in French [[note]]("the goat" should be "''la'' chèvre", always female; a specifically male goat is "le bouc")[[/note]], while El Topo means "the mole" in Spanish. Fittingly, "the goat" strikes high, while "the mole" strikes low.
* BitchInSheepsClothing: Gray was kind to Carmen, charming and charismatic. It hides a sadistic and violent streak that no friendship could tame, as Carmen witnessed when he fired on an innocent man. [[spoiler:After his LaserGuidedAmnesia, the kindness is genuine...until his memories are restored, although even then he still maintains a soft spot for Carmen.]]
* BittersweetEnding: The series ends on one. [[spoiler:V.I.L.E. is taken down, Carmen is finally reunited with her mother, Shadowsan returns home to his brother, and Zack and Ivy have bright futures ahead of them as A.C.M.E. agents (with the Chief now trusting Carmen for the most part); however, Gray chooses to cut himself out of Carmen's life permanently, there are still some former V.I.L.E. operatives on the loose (though some have chosen to turn over a new leaf), and there's no indication that Carmen kept contact with Zack and Ivy between leaving them the A.C.M.E. pen and the epilogue, which takes place two years later.]]
* BlackAndGrayMorality: On the black side, there's V.I.L.E. and on the gray side we have Carmen Sandiego and her troupe stealing from V.I.L.E. themselves [[spoiler:and A.C.M.E. trying to hunt Carmen down even though she's technically on the side of good.]].
* BlackTieInfiltration:
** Countess Cleo's training presumably involves this type of heist. This involves teaching her students proper posture, diction, table manners, the ability to absorb talking points about certain matters.
** In "The Duke of Vermeer Caper" Carmen intends to do this to an auction Cleo is hosting for the stolen Vemeer paintings, however Zack ends up meeting the courier Dash Haber first and must go in Carmen's place. This also involves a TrainingMontage with Carmen training Zack to look and act like a proper gentleman.
* BlandNameProduct: According to "The French Connection Caper" A.C.M.E. agents drive "Blanton-Webster" automobiles, which is most likely a bland name version of Aston Martin, in addition to being a ShoutOut to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blanton%E2%80%93Webster_Band The Blanton-Webster Band]].
* BlatantLies:
** Mime Bomb tells Carmen he's stopping to smell the roses while following her following the Bookkeeper. She buys it for a few seconds, only to realize he always seems to be watching people and that he must be a spy and a snitch. She quickly turns and tackles him.
** Carmen tells the Bookkeeper she's ashamed of the pranks she pulled over the years. Cookie buys it hook, line and sinker, allowing Carmen to switch out the hard drive with her tool box.
* BookEnds:
** In the first season, the first and last episode had Carmen in France.
** The end of "The Dukes of Vermeer" has Grey step out of the bus in Australia. The end of "The Opera in the Outback Caper" has Carmen leave on a bus.
** The beginning of "The Boston Tea Party Caper" and the end of "The Need for Speed Caper" have Zack and Ivy walking out of the Carmen Outfitters Factory and talking about what they'd want to install in their new headquarters.
** By season 4, as she and Chase prepare for [[spoiler: a second mission related to the Eye of Vishnu, Julia lampshades how this was the mission that started everything]].
* BrainsAndBrawn: Julia and Chase; the former is the one interested in geography and tries to think of logical conclusions to Carmen's heists, the latter just rushes in and tries to go for the chase.
* {{Brainwashed}}: In episode 6, Carmen and a female scientist get brainwashed into enabling a defective rocket planned to desecrate the Australian Outback.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy:
** V.I.L.E. threatens to do this to Zack and Ivy in "To Steal or Not to Steal", and succeed in the bad endings.
** In the final episodes of Season 4, [[spoiler: V.I.L.E. do this to Carmen, erasing her memories of defecting and suppressing her empathy]].
* BreakTheHaughty: Season 1 is this for Chase Devineaux, as misfortunes pile up on him, largely due to his own arrogance and tendency to rush in without thinking. [[spoiler:It actually turns out good, as it inspires him to show what he can ''really'' do, when he spends Season 2 investigating on his own and tracks down V.I.L.E.'s headquarters by himself, only arriving just a little too late. Upon his reinstatement to A.C.M.E. at the beginning of Season 3, he becomes much more competant over the rest of the series. It also helps that the Chief made him take a defensive driving course.]]
* BrickJoke: Young Carmen accuses Shadowsan of rigging his test (which was to pickpocket a dollar bill from his coat) and states that the coat is empty. Come the season finale, [[spoiler: and a GoodAllAlong Shadow-san admits (slightly annoyed) that yes, it ''was'' empty.]]
-->'''Carmen:''' [[SkewedPriorities I KNEW IT!]]
* BrokenPedestal: Because they essentially raised her, Carmen looked up to Coach Brunt, Professor Maelstrom, Dr. Bellum, Countess Cleo, and Shadowsan and aspired to be like them. Learning that they instructed their students to steal by any means necessary (including killing witnesses) caused her to leave V.I.L.E. -- and, as a result, the only family she's ever known -- in disgust. It also means she left Gray after learning that he was willing to murder. [[spoiler: Shadowsan becomes a RebuiltPedestal when he reveals that he was trying to keep her out of the thief life and wishes he could have gone with her to help]].
* BrokenRecord: In Episode 6, whenever someone who was exposed to the subliminal message at the Sydney Opera House hears it at the aerospace facility, it causes them to go into a trance and repeatedly say "Launch the boomerang.....launch the boomerang".
* ButtMonkey: Chase. Poor, poor Chase. In order: [[spoiler:He takes a 2-story plummet into the bonnet of his car, gets insulted by the Chief in favour of Argent when he joins A.C.M.E. (admittedly justified though it was), tortured by Brunt to the point of being comatose, fired by the Chief as he wakes up from said coma, is told to never talk to Argent again even though she is the only friend the show has revealed he has, gets sent back to Interpol by the Chief who has decided to bust him down to "File Clerk" out of sheer pettiness, spends all his time at work doing boring paperwork, continues his investigation into Carmen in his own time at his own expense and figures out exactly where V.I.L.E. Island is only to arrive one week after they destroyed and abandoned it, finds himself stranded on said island for another week, is rescued when he accidentally burns down his shelter; and is finally fired from his File Clerk job from Interpol upon his return for not turning up for a fortnight.]] Tough times. The length of bare screen alone shown here gives a good idea how much he goes through. Thankfully, things get better for him from Season 3 onwards.
** To some degree, Dash Haber as well. In all his appearances either Zack or Ivy would make a fool of him, and he proves no match for Carmen.
* BullyingADragon: Tigress when meeting Carmen threatened to break her nesting dolls after Carmen beat up Gray during orientation; Gray breaks up the fight by reminding them they're all roommates.
** This happens again when [[spoiler: brainwashed Carmen is on her first mission with her old teammates, and Tigress makes a snide comment. Carmen essentially threatens to disfigure Tigress’ face, and Gray again has to break it up by reminding them they were now professionals not just roommates.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes C]]
* CallingTheOldManOut: Subverted. Carmen seemed to want to tell off Coach Brunt and the other teachers for lying to her, but she never got the chance; Brunt let her off easy for sneaking out with the graduates, and the other teachers put constant surveillance on Carmen. For what it's worth, Carmen was truly sorry for worrying Brunt after all that she learned.
* CardCarryingVillain: Played with. V.I.L.E. masks its real intentions by not disclosing the actual meaning of its acronym to new cadets (going with the name "Valuable Imports, Lavish Exports"). However once they graduate to full operatives, they are inducted into the organization's real purpose, along with learning its actual name: [[spoiler:Villains International League of Evil]]. Inverted with [[spoiler:A.C.M.E., which is the "Agency to Classify and Monitor Evildoers"]].
* CastingGag:
** In ''Series/JaneTheVirgin'' Gina Rodriguez plays the granddaughter of original Carmen Creator/RitaMoreno. She's joked that between these two roles, she's trying to [[Film/SingleWhiteFemale "single Latina female"]] Moreno.
*** Moreno herself cameos as the bookkeeper in the pilot, who provides the new Carmen with her signature outfit.[[note]]New Carmen [[PassingTheTorch STOLE the outfit]] from the bookkeeper.[[/note]]
** Finn Wolfhard is best known as Mike in ''Series/StrangerThings'', who is the Dungeon Master for his friends' game nights, much like the Player.
** Creator/MaryElizabethMcGlynn voices another green-haired authority figure, going from playing Abigail Brand in ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' to playing Coach Brunt in this show.
* CentralTheme:
** Season 3's theme seems to be masks and disguises, both physical (with Carmen and crew encountering masked luchadoras, going undercover at a masquerade, and foiling an attempt to steal some highly valuable masks) and metaphorical (the crew [[spoiler:removing Roundabout's "mask" of being a respectable Secret Services agent]]).
** Most of Season 4 resolves around V.I.L.E.'s attempts to steal gold.
* ChekhovsClassroom: Almost all of Carmen's onscreen V.I.L.E. classes are relevant during her escape. In particular:
** Coach Brunt's fighting class has her state to protect the face else they'll be knocked out. When Tigress is about to attack Carmen (for stopping Crackle from killing the archeological dig leader), Carmen uses his weapon right at the face. She also knocks out Gray by kicking him in the face at the end of the pilot.
--->'''Carmen:''' They never protect the face.
** Carmen uses Professor Maelstrom's bait-and-switch trick to ultimately steal the hard drive with data for that year.
* ChekhovsGun: In "The Sticky Rice Caper" while Dr. Bellum is moving past different screens to find the surveillance shot of Carmen boarding a plane, two of her screens show a rocket's designs and an exploding rocket. Both would prove integral to her next plot in "The Opera in the Outback Caper."
* ChekhovsGunman:
** The Bookkeeper and her annual trips to V.I.L.E. island. Carmen uses her to plot her escape.
** Player became this to Carmen after he hacked into the phone she stole. Thanks to Player's friendship, Carmen was able to escape from V.I.L.E. and plan a counterattack.
* ChekhovsLecture: Whenever she hits a new country, Carmen and Player give an infodump about the location (as expected by a show based on a series of educational games); just about everything mentioned in these infodumps will show up in the episodes, whether as plot points, locations, or even background gags.
* {{Cliffhanger}}: The end of Season 3 has [[spoiler:The Chief stating to bring Crackle in for interrogation.]]
* CloseCallHaircut: Played with. Paper Star managed to cut the brim of Carmen's fedora during their fight in "The Chasing Paper Caper".
* CloserThanTheyAppear: [[InvokedTrope Namedropped]] by Devineaux as he pursues Carmen in "The Haunted Bayou Caper".
-->'''Devineaux:''' ACME agents in rearview mirror are closer than they appear!
* ConspicuousConsumption: Professor Maelstrom's plan in "The Dubloon Caper" turns out to amount to this. He wants to steal a gold doubloon of great cultural significance just so he can melt it down and make himself a pair of cufflinks that would make Countess Cleo green with envy.
* ContrivedCoincidence:
** The season 2 premiere has Carmen and Shadowsan targeting the same V.I.L.E operation in Brazil which the latter lampshades.
-->'''Shadowsan:''' My efforts to remain invisible have been ruined. Of all the VILE operations to target, did you have to choose this one?
** Zack and Ivy were trying to collect money to pay off a loan shark in the same location Carmen was at, a donut shop.
** The season 2 finale reveals [[spoiler:Shadowsan was at the villa of Dexter Wolfe to assassinate him the same night that Interpol happened to raid the place and shoot his mark dead, even though he himself decided not to go through with it]]. Furthermore, [[spoiler:the shooter herself turned out to be the future chief of A.C.M.E., meaning she was ConnectedAllAlong to both Shadowsan and Carmen]].
* CoolButInefficient: A.C.M.E.'s InstantSedation guns seem like a good way to perform an instant non-lethal takedown on bad guys, but are in practice pretty useless. This is especially shown in "The Stockholm Syndrome Caper." They have very short range, one agent manages to knock ''herself'' out because she apparently forgot that gas spreads[[note]]Which, incidentally, is also a flaw of real-world misting weapons like mace and pepper spray - they can affect the user as well as the target.[[/note]], and [[spoiler:even when Zari gets a direct shot right in Carmen's face it doesn't actually take Carmen down straight away, but allows her to escape on her hang glider just before she passes out, and ends up crashing just outside the city limits]].
* CoolMask: This shows up plenty of times and justified; they do want to keep their identities secret.
** "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper (Part 1)" is set in Carnivale and Le Chevre and Shadowsan wear masks with the former based on a goat and the latter wears one inspired by crows.
** Season 3 is ''riddled' with masks: Lupe Peligro is a luchadora with a multitude of masks and "The Masks of Venice Caper" is about stealing different types of masks -- one of them being the Mask of Agamemnon -- with Carmen and Shadowsan dressed up as if it's Carnivale, and "The Jolly Good Show Caper" is set on Guy Fawkes Day.
* CosmopolitanCouncil: The V.I.L.E. faculty are quite diverse: Coach Brunt is from Texas, Professor Maelstrom is Swedish, Countess Cleo is Egyptian, Dr. Bellum is Indian, and Shadowsan is Japanese. [[spoiler: Shadowsan's eventual replacement, Roundabout, is British]].
* CreatorProvincialism: Despite the fact that neither Carmen nor Player are American they still discuss temperatures in Fahrenheit and speak in a way that implies an American point of view in many ways, such as referencing the 'Fourth of July' as the first example of a holiday with fireworks. Some of this is understandable, as Zach and Ivy are American and many of their infodumping sessions are used to educate the pair on their latest country.
* CruelToBeKind: Shadowsan is the hardest on Carmen when she asks to be accepted into V.I.L.E. Academy, and refused to vote to accept her, because he believes her immaturity and recklessness will put her in danger in the field. Carmen finds it hard to refute his point when she gets busted for tossing water balloons at the Bookkeeper. [[spoiler:Or so he claims; it's actually because he didn't want her to become a thief and throw her life away to please her adoptive family nor follow the path of her true father]].
* CurbStompBattle:
** Carmen not only gets the jump on Chase, but also pickpockets him in the pilot.
** While Carmen can hold her own against her former classmates, her instructors are still far out of her weight class.
* CurbStompCushion: In the first season finale, when [[spoiler:Carmen is forced to fight Coach Brunt, she does manage to last a few minutes while her adopted mother beats the tar out of her. Zach went down in two seconds when Brunt cornered him]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes D]]
* DarkerAndEdgier: Most ''Carmen'' media glosses over the possibility of people getting hurt, with the exception of ''Word Detective'' and ''Where in Time''. Here, V.I.L.E. skips past "possibility" and explicitly engages in attempted murder. But unlike in some other iterations, this Carmen won't stand for it.
* ADayInTheLimelight: Season 2 gives more focus episodes to other characters.
** Shadowsan's history is explained in "The Daisho Caper"
** Zack and Ivy get more focus in "The Boston Caper" (detailing how they met Carmen) and "The Need For Speed Caper" (a continuation of "The Boston Caper")
** "The Stockholme Syndrome Caper" is Ivy's time to shine as she has to fight off two V.I.L.E. henchmen when Carmen's out in the cold.
* DecompositeCharacter: This show has an actual Tigress, when the original was just a false identity created by Ivy.
* DeliverUsFromEvil: A paternal example in [[spoiler:Dexter Wolf, former [=V.I.L.E.=] instructor and Carmen's father]]. Having a child made this villain defect from [=V.I.L.E.=] to be able to raise his child safely.
* DesignatedGirlFight:
** While the show doesn't purely restrict Carmen to fighting female opponents (she briefly mixes it up with Le Chevre in "The Opera in the Outback Caper"), by and large the longest and most intricate fights Carmen will have are against other females (Tigress, Paper Star, and Coach Brunt).
** Averted (though off-screen) when Carmen and Shadowsan challenge Spinkick (male) and Flytrap (female). The new V.I.L.E. operatives choose their opposite-gendered rivals.
* {{Determinator}}: Chase's saving value is that he doesn't give up. While he's chasing Carmen, she does give him a respectful look as he keeps pace with her.
* DidntThinkThisThrough:
** Chase uses the elevator in an antiquated building to get to Carmen. Predictably, the elevator is slow, when he could have taken the stairs. This is followed by his refusal in calling in backup to catch the train Carmen is on. This is essentially Chase’s defining characteristic.
** Carmen sneaks out to join the graduating class on their plane. She then realizes that she didn't think of packing a parachute. Gray is blindsided when she blows her cover to tackle him so they land safely together.
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Carmen's story -- that she was raised in a privileged life by people who loved her and gave her so good an education that she realized they were villains and turned on them -- rings a bell with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_(novel) how children's politics vary from their parents' between generations]]. Of course, most parents [[ComicBook/{{Runaways}} (with rare exceptions)]] aren't criminal masterminds.
* DoubleAgent: Roundabout is a V.I.L.E. agent positioned in a high-rank in the British intelligence services, which enables him to help keep V.I.L.E.'s operations one step ahead of the law.
* DuelingHackers: Player and The Troll in The Jolly Good Caper.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes E]]
* EarlyBirdCameo: The poisoner from Season 2 makes a non-speaking appearance in Season 1's "The Vermeer Caper."
* EdutainmentShow: Despite feeling more like a traditional children's action series, this is still a Franchise/CarmenSandiego series tied to educational teaching giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and trivia about various locations and items is included in most of the episodes as a result. Unlike many other iterations, the info dump after introducing the location does come up later in the episode.
* TheElevatorFromIpanema: Muzak plays during the elevator scene in Episode 2. It is muzak version of ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego'''s theme song.
* EmbarrassingNickname: Brunt was the only person allowed to call "Black Sheep" Lambikins; Carmen beat up anyone else who tried.
* EnemyMime: [[PunnyName Mime Bomb]], a high-ranking V.I.L.E. agent with a mime theme. Even before he became a full-fledged member of the organization, he was using his skills to spy on other students for the teachers. He insists on remaining in character at all times, meaning he mimes out his reports. The teachers wonder who thought it was a good idea to hire the mime as a spy.
* EntertaininglyWrong: When Carmen tells Player that she stole the phone he hacked, he asks if she's a shoplifter and if she was AWOL for being in jail. Which, is actually a logical conclusion to make. She quickly corrects him, and he admits being in a school of thieves makes sense.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: V.I.L.E. is a pretty diverse organization, both among its operatives and in its ruling council.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
** Julia and Chase get theirs in the first episode, where Julia tries to talk Chase about Carmen's motives, whereas Chase ignores her and decides to go all LeeroyJenkins on Carmen.
** In "The Sticky Rice Caper", we get to see Zack and Ivy's characters on the plane trip to Indonesia: we have Zack asking his sis if she got anything to eat, and Ivy show off a bit of her fiery side.
* EtTuBrute: Gray and Brunt take Carmen's defection personally, Gray because they were best friends, and Brunt because she was like a mother to Carmen.
* EvenEvilHasStandards:
** Carmen had wanted to be a thief her whole life, but quits V.I.L.E. in disgust at their willingness to kill people. She then devotes herself to bringing them down... while still being a crook herself.
** V.I.L.E, whatever their ulterior motives, took in an abandoned baby and raised her as their own with a cushy life, a thorough education that made her TheAce, and something close to love. It made Carmen turning on them much harder, because Brunt was a DotingParent and truly cared about her. That is, if what they told Carmen about rescuing her as a baby was true; even Carmen has been questioning the story for a while.
** Gray admits that while he was willing to [[spoiler:return to V.I.L.E, he was horrified that Carmen was basically brainwashed and forced to accept what he had as a choice.]]
* EveryoneHasStandards: In "The Day of the Dead Caper" Carmen meets Sonia, a teenage thief girl who is in the process of being recruited by V.I.L.E. and feels the need to stop her from taking that dark path. She tells Sonia that someday she'll realize V.I.L.E. intends for her to cross a line she'd rather not cross. It seems she finds that line very quickly, upon seeing Carmen [[spoiler:captured and en route to V.I.L.E. headquarters for brainwashing]]. Subverted, as Sonia insists the real reason she turned away from the bad guys is because Carmen, a good guy, is a total badass while the two evil operatives she fought were losers.
* EveryoneHatesMimes: Carmen is nice to Mime Bomb, but no one else respects him, not even the teachers to whom he reports. It doesn't help that he is a spy. Even Carmen turns on him when he nearly thwarts her escape attempt.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Carmen's MissionControl is only ever called "Player" mostly because Carmen first introduced herself as "Black Sheep" and he thought it was a username of some sorts.
* EvilCounterpart:
** Season 2 introduces a V.I.L.E. pair called The Mechanic and The Driver. They are counterparts to Ivy and Zack, respectively. Ivy and The Mechanic specialize in equipment and taking things apart, while Zack and The Driver are both expert drivers in pursuit and evasion.
** Season 3 introduces a V.I.L.E. hacker named The Troll, a counterpart to Player's white hat hacker role.
* EvilDuo:
** The Cleaners, two V.I.L.E. agents that act as enforcers. Their day-to-day jobs are as the school's janitors but they're the ones sent to extract and take out targets.
** There's also the graduates Le Chèvre and El Topo, a duo that never goes on missions without each other (barring "The Chasing Paper Caper" where only La Chèvre appears) that respectively strike high and low.
** Season 2 features The Mechanic and The Driver both of whom work together to steal a super car in the episode "The Need For Speed Caper".
** Otter Man and Moose Boy, another pair of operatives who appear to have worked with each other for some time.
** Season 3 gives us two more graduates, Spinkick and Flytrap. They specifically majored in a class dedicated to teaching them how to catch Carmen Sandiego, and they always fight together.
* EvilGenius: Dr. Saira Bellum is the resident evil scientist and inventor in V.I.L.E.'s faculty. Her inventions include a memory-erasing device for brainwashing.
* ExactWords: During Chase's pursuit of Carmen in "Becoming Carmen Sandiego Part 1":
-->'''Chase''': I order you to freeze!\\
'''Carmen''':''(stops for a {{Beat}}, turns her head toward Chase)'' You didn't say how long. ''(jumps)''
* ExplainExplainOhCrap:
** Carmen talks to the head archaeologist, who tells her that his team is excavating the Eye of Vishnu, a historic relic. She realizes that the graduates are stealing the Eye of Vishnu, even though as the archaeologist says, it has more educational than monetary value.
** Carmen as she's tailing the Bookkeeper runs into Mime Bomb, who mimes that he's "stopping and smelling the roses". Carmen starts to tell Player over her re-stolen phone that Mime watches everything, and "everyone". Cue her tackling him, locking him in a broom closet, and confiscating his lock picks.
* ExtremelyShortTimespan: Season three starts a few days before Halloween and the start of Dia de los Muertos, goes over the weekend into November and ends on November 5th. During this time, Carmen and crew travel from Beunos Aires, Argentina, to Veracruz, Mexico, to Mexico City, to New Orleans, then to Venice, Italy, and finishes the season in London, England in time for Guy Fawkes Day celebrations.
* {{Expy}}: Dr. Jeanine Dennam and [=HelioGem=] seem to be inspired by Elon Musk and [=SpaceX=].
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: In order to be promoted to Faculty Member of V.I.L.E, potential applicants must carry out a successful mission in direct opposition to Carmen. Of course they all fail until Roundabout succeeds. [[spoiler: Then Carmen [[FramingTheGuiltyParty frames him for a crime he did commit]] and gets him arrested, ending his earlier successful promotion.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes F]]
* FamilyFriendlyFirearms: V.I.L.E. mooks carry rods that shoot electric blasts and tasers while A.C.M.E. agents carry pistols that shoot clouds of blue knockout gas. This does get [[AvertedTrope averted]] however during [[spoiler:Interpol's raid on Dexter Wolfe's house, where a younger Chief shoots Dexter after she [[ShootHimHeHasAWallet mistook his car keys for a gun]].]]
** Subverted in that V.I.L.E. shockrods are variable intensity weapons and are fully capable of generating a lethal shock when set to maximum voltage.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** It's Shadowsan who gives Carmen the warning about no turning back if she becomes a thief. [[spoiler:He's the one who helped kickstart Carmen's defection from V.I.L.E. and has his own regrets now for the life he chose and cannot escape from]].
** In the second episode, Carmen's presumed timing isn't right. [[spoiler:She had just left the main building making a beeline to the boat. There was no way she had time to make a detour to the chopper to disable it, or when she would have as she was inside at all prior points in the episode. The only answer is someone else helped her and the only other person present already outside is Shadowsan]].
** When Zack and Ivy meet Le Chevre for the first time (from our perspective), Ivy freaks out when Zack mentions Boston Harbor. The flashback episode reveals that they had actually briefly met him there a few months earlier. While he doesn't seem to recognize them, Ivy has every reason to believe he would.
** The use of the opera ''Theatre/{{Carmen}}'' is more than just a pun. The song they use from it, the Habanera aria, is about the dangers before people and not recognizing it, [[spoiler:such as the subliminal messaging in the attack]] and how the theatrical Carmen is like smoke, unattainable and uncatchable, and pursuing her will lead to tragedy, both befitting the cartoon Carmen's skill at evasion and [[spoiler:her avoiding Gray to avoid bringing him back into danger in the end]].
** When Player is giving the info-dump about Botswana, he tells them to watch out for "tigers in the grass," and Carmen calls him out on joking, since tigers are native to Asia, not southern Africa. Later, she's ambushed by [[spoiler: Tigress in the grass]].
* ForHalloweenIAmGoingAsMyself:
** Ivy berates Zack for assuming V.I.L.E. operatives would do this when he suspects Tigress is wearing a tiger costume (she isn't), but Le Chevre did in fact wear a goat costume.
** Tigress and Paper Star go to a Halloween party in their normal mission uniforms. Tigress insists that "At least a tiger's a thing," since Paper Star's outfit doesn't really resemble anything.
* ForScience: Dr. Saira Bellum, V.I.L.E.'s chief scientist. While she certainly doesn't seem to mind the money and power, her primary interest seems to be in creating lots of fancy toys to terrorize people with.
* ForTheEvulz: This is Professor Maelstrom's entire M.O. In keeping with his name, his main desire is to spread chaos and disorder, with any actual gain being a secondary concern at best. In "The Fishy Doubloon Caper" he plots to steal a gold doubloon which he (incorrectly) believes is worth millions just so he can melt it down and make it into solid gold cufflinks. Later, in "The Chasing Paper Caper", he plots to steal the Magna Carta, not for sale or ransom, but to prove that evil can win out over law and order.
* FreezeFrameIntroduction: When a new character first appears, the scene pauses with a freeze-frame and label with their codename.
* FriendOrIdolDecision: Zack and Ivy have a choice to make in "Need For Speed Caper": whether to continue their escapades with Carmen or go back to Boston under a rich sponsor to race. [[spoiler:They end up staying with Carmen.]]
* FreudianExcuse: A benevolent example; why did every teacher on V.I.L.E. spoil Carmen rotten as a child? [[spoiler:Because her father died trying to defect from them, and they wanted to ensure she would never have a reason to turn on them the way he did. Shadowsan's reasons are to make amends for being a witness to his death]].
* FunnyBackgroundEvent:
** In "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper-Part 2" while Tigress is talking with Professor Maelstrom [[spoiler:confirming Shadowsan and Carmen are working together, Coach Brunt is still seen trashing the faculty room in rage]].
** In "The Daisho Caper" while Shadowsan tells Carmen about his past, Zack and Ivy are on the karoake stage rocking out to [[Music/{{Boston}} "More Than A Feeling"]]
** In "The Deep Dive Caper" Zack and Ivy pose as barristas at [[spoiler:the Chief of A.C.M.E.]]'s favorite coffee shop. Carmen approaches the target and while they talk serious business, Zack and Ivy fail epically at making the target's latte.
--> '''[[spoiler:Chief]]:''' I'm not getting my latte, am I?\\
'''Carmen:''' I wouldn't drink it.
* FunWithAcronyms:
** V.I.L.E. apparently stands for "Valuable Imports, Lavish Exports" since they seem to focus on trafficking stolen goods. Of course, this is a cover for the ''real'' name: "Villains International League of Evil".
** We also get to find out what A.C.M.E. stands for: "Agency to Classify and Monitor Evildoers".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes G]]
* {{Gamebook}}: "To Steal or Not To Steal" is structured this way, with path choices offered periodically.
* GildedCage: V.I.L.E. Island was a tropical paradise in Carmen's words, and also a child's haven where she was treated very well. Eventually she chafed under the restrictions, however, and wanted to become a V.I.L.E. thief officially to gain some freedom.
* GoneHorriblyRight: The way Carmen describes her childhood, one of the top criminal organizations took her in when she was a baby, and raised her with love and a thorough education. It also gave her a sense of compassion, which meant she got a HeelRealization when she saw that her family kills people, and recklessly at that. When she finally enrolled, it gave her an intimate understanding of Bellum’s inventions, Brunt’s fighting techniques, the way Maelstrom’s twisted mind works, and Countess Cleo’s style. While she definitely isn’t able to go toe to toe with the faculty directly yet, her training gives her the ability to identify and target V.I.L.E. locations and schemes.
* GoodFeelsGood: Part of the reason Team Carmen fights the good fight against V.I.L.E. is because they simply enjoy doing good. Shadow-san, in particular, is clearly a great deal happier with Team Carmen than he ever was as a member of the V.I.L.E. faculty.
-->'''Carmen''': Righting the world's wrongs. It's our jam.
* GoodIsNotSoft: [[spoiler:The Chief]] about twenty years ago shot [[spoiler:Carmen's father]] when the latter was trying to flee an Interpol raid with his daughter. In her defense, she was trying to detain a dangerous criminal and notorious thief [[ShootHimHeHasAWallet and she thought he was reaching for a gun when he was really reaching for car keys]], but learning about this [[spoiler:kills any chance of Carmen allying with [=A.C.M.E.=]]].
* GreatDetective: Believe it or not, Chase Devineaux, [[spoiler:who, after getting fired from A.C.M.E., decides to hunt after V.I.L.E. himself. Using only a corkboard, some red yarn, and a few files from Interpol he manages to deduce the location of V.I.L.E.'s headquarters over the course of a month, which is something that A.C.M.E. with all of their technology and manpower couldn't do in 20 years.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes H]]
* HalloweenEpisode:
** With the exception of "The Luchadora Tango Caper", Season 3 essentially takes place within Halloween week with costumes and masks galore. Bonus points, it was released on the first of October.
** "The Day of the Dead Caper" takes place during the titular holiday with V.I.L.E dressing up in costumes.
** "The Haunted Bayou Caper" takes place on the Saturday after Halloween with people dressed up in costumes.
* HardTruthAesop:
** Sometimes to do what's right, you have to turn your back on the people who love you and raised you with compassion.
** If you commit an atrocity that estranges you from your family and later attempt to make up for what you did, you might ''not'' be EasilyForgiven, no matter how far you go to make up for it or how sorry you are. [[spoiler:This is shown with Shadowsan's brother, who doesn't automatically forgive his younger brother for abandoning him for a life of crime even after he returns the swords.]]
** GoodIsNotNice, and sometimes heroes will make costly mistakes. [[spoiler:The Chief is the reason why Carmen's father died, and why Shadow-san brought Carmen as a baby to V.I.L.E. island]].
* HartmanHips: A lot of the female characters have these, namely Carmen and Tigress.
* HeroAntagonist: A.C.M.E.'s objectives are in the interest of global security but they fail to understand what Carmen's activities are accomplishing, which creates obstacles and distrust between the master thief and their agency.
* HeroicBystander:
** In "The Fishy Dubloon Caper", an Ecuadorian archaeologist overhears Carmen's crew trying to find a rare doubloon that has no monetary value but rather symbolic value, and they lie that they're amateur coin hobbyists. She gets suspicious, follows them up the mountain, and helps Carmen when the latter succumbs to altitude sickness. When Carmen finds the doubloon and returns it to her, they shake hands.
** [[spoiler:Hideo, Shadowsan's brother, knocks Zari unconscious with a guard post in "The Masks of Venice Caper".]]
* HeroicResolve: Despite Devineaux being such an incompetent Interpol agent, [[spoiler:when V.I.L.E. are torturing him, he starts singing the French national anthem to prevent himself revealing the truth.]] It doesn't work forever, but it still shows he has depths.
* HiddenInPlainSight:
** As might be expected of a mime, after stealing the $10 million stamp, Mime Bomb sits out in the open reading an invisible newspaper. This being San Francisco, no one pays him a second glance.
** V.I.L.E. as a whole is into this ("[They] never operate without a smokescreen"), choosing to use plots that involve deploying their operation or moving stolen goods in a way that would be beneath notice (such as smuggling rare gemstones out of Brazil by using an amphibious parade float in the middle of Carnival).
** Carmen herself likes to do this, ditching all but maybe one piece of red clothing and redoing her hair when she's not trying to pull a job. However, in a subversion, both Chase Devineaux and A.C.M.E. know her face well enough that she can still be identified even without her red accessories.
** In season 2 Carmen acquires a long-term base of operations, a factory once owned by Carmen's of San Diego, the clothing outlet that she took her name from. The sign is still up, and the building itself is bright red.
** Ironically, despite his status as the V.I.L.E. faculty stealth expert, Shadowsan's old-world Japanese garb doesn't let him blend in well with casual citizens, especially tourists so he acquires a set of less conspicuous clothing during season 2.
* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: "The Fashionista Caper" doesn't say a lot about the Medici family, but does have a comment from Carmen that they were "doing good while looking good." The Medicis did do a lot to support the arts, as Carmen and Player point out, but were otherwise not very good people, and were actually closer to the Renaissance version of TheMafia.
* HollywoodHacking: Player's role in Carmen's team. Also The Troll, his EvilCounterpart, for V.I.L.E.
* HollywoodNewEngland: Zack and Ivy in this series hail from Boston, which also complemented by their thick accent.
* {{Homage}}: In "The Lucky Cat Caper" Zach drives a vintage muscle car in a three way chase up and down the hills of San Francisco, in an obvious reference to the climactic chase scene from ''Film/{{Bullitt}}''.
* HopeSpot: In the pilot, Carmen is hoping that if she talked to Gray one-on-one, then he will understand why she defected and she will get her former best friend back. Gray instead gets an IgnoredEpiphany and prepares to fire on Carmen. She knocks him out and leaves him for Interpol.
* {{Hypocrite}}:
** Tigress criticized Le Chevre for disguising himself as a goat during Rio's Carnival, despite his insistence that it's a costume, not a disguise. Come a Halloween party, Tigress goes as herself, not even bothering with any extra accessories, like Le Chevre did.
** Julia criticzes Chase for practicing his quips for the next time he sees Carmen, despite having done exactly the same thing after her own promotion to A.C.M.E.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes I]]
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: After the initial 2-part premiere, "Becoming Carmen Sandiego" Parts I and II, each episode is named "The X Caper".
* IgnoredEpiphany: Despite the fact that Carmen grappled with Gray for shooting at an innocent man, and later told him off for "stealing lives," Gray can't understand why Carmen would turn on him.
* IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: The final fight of the show turns out to be this between a brainwashed Carmen and Shadowsan.
* ImpossibleTheft: A notable aversion. Considering her origins, it would almost be expected for Carmen to try and steal impossibly large monuments. Instead, all the thefts are plausible, if extreme. The most elaborate theft is all 34 works of Verneer.
* IneffectualSympatheticVillain:
** Otter Man and Moose, from "The Stockholm Syndrome Caper". Moose is DumbMuscle who can't stop blabbing all their plans to everyone around him and ends up [[TongueOnTheFlagpole defeating himself by accident]]. Otter Man thinks of himself as an EvilGenius but that's really just in comparison to Moose; his actual intellect seems to be just average. They're not even beaten by Carmen, but instead by ''Ivy'', who they thought was Carmen, and who bumbles her way through the entire encounter but still easily defeats them. Of course, they lose quite a few sympathy points by participating in one of the most evil crimes of the series - attempting to sell nuclear launch codes to a rogue nation.
** Season 3 gives us the BumblingHenchmenDuo Spinkick and Flytrap. Despite being graduates of V.I.L.E. Academy who specifically majored in a course dedicated to teaching them how to hunt and fight Carmen, they're really not very competent, getting easily beaten by Carmen in all of their encounters with her. They even lose to Sonia, a girl much younger than them who is a naturally talented thief but not trained in combat. They're also easily tricked.
* InnocentBystander: Carmen enacts a DivingSave to rescue the head archaeologist that was kind to her, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
* InSeriesNickname: Carmen has a couple, including:
** "Red", by The Player.
** "The Crimson Shadow" and "La Femme Rouge", by Chase Devineaux. Julia also angrily calls Carmen "La Femme Rouge" if you choose to trick her in the interactive episode ''To Steal or Not To Steal''.
* InkSuitActor: With the exception of Ivy and Zack, a lot of [[https://www.thisisinsider.com/netflix-carmen-sandiego-actors-cast-2019-1 the voice actors look pretty similar to their respective characters]].
* InspectorJavert: Chase Devineaux, the Interpol [[spoiler:and later, A.C.M.E.]] agent that repeatedly attempts to catch Carmen throughout the series.
* TheInternetIsForCats: Dr. Bellum enjoys watching cat videos.
* InterpolSpecialAgent: In contrast to previous iterations, where the main crime-fighting presence was from the A.C.M.E. Detective Agency, Chase and Julia are agents of Interpol. [[spoiler:Both are recruited by A.C.M.E. due to their involvement with Carmen.]]
* ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans: A season 3 episode takes the team to Mexico just in time for the Day of the Dead. Subverted in the next two episodes, though. The very next episode actually does take them to New Orleans, and Player mentions Mardi Gras in his educational exposition about the city, but it's not going on at the time. The next episode after that takes the team to Venice, and they specifically mention that they regret coming all the way to Italy and missing the Carnivale di Venezia. But then played straight in the episode after that, which takes them to London just in time for Guy Fawkes Day.
* ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies:
** Carmen has a chance to go on a date with an [[spoiler: amnesiac Gray]] but decides not to [[spoiler: in part because she fears he might be mind-controlled into hurting her and because she wants him to have a new life without V.I.L.E. getting involved.]] In a subversion, she doesn't actually say this but simply leaves without ever speaking to him.
** She also considers this concerning her search for her mother. The first candidate, who got caught in the crossfire when V.I.L.E. attacked Carmen, was capable of defending herself, but Carmen fears her actual mother (or another person with the same name) won't be.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes J]]
* JerkassHasAPoint: Carmen looks briefly ashamed when Countess Cleo and Shadowsan at different points tell her off for being reckless and immature. Shadowsan is also correct that, despite Carmen working to earn her grade, that she gets favoritism due to being a V.I.L.E. adopted child.
* JustLikeRobinHood: Carmen only steals from thieves and donates the money she makes off her thefts to children's charities.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes K]]
* KarmicThief: Carmen still steals, but only from V.I.L.E.
* KickTheDog: Gray firing on an innocent old man who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time was what broke Carmen's illusions about what V.I.L.E. was really like.
* KillerBearHug: In the season one finale, Coach Brunt tries to kill Carmen with her SuperStrength while calling it their "last hug goodbye". [[spoiler:Carmen is saved by Shadowsan knocking Brunt out.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes L]]
* LampshadeHanging:
** Chase and Julia discuss why a thief would ''want'' people to know that she's stealing, make herself visible, and take the object in question with an audience.
** While listening to Carmen's backstory, Gray comments that he was there for part of it and that she's telling him about events he already knows.
** The V.I.L.E. leaders eventually comment that while Mime Bomb's status as a mime makes him able to be disregarded by the people he spies on, the fact that he refuses to go out of character ever makes it hard for him to deliver reports, as he does so via charades.
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Any V.I.L.E. agent captured by law enforcement is quickly extracted and has their memory erased by Dr. Bellum’s machine. [[spoiler:Like what happened to Crackle.]]
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Carmen's statement that stealing isn't a game can be a reference to the franchise's start as edutainment software. Her followup that it does in fact hurt people could also be a comment on how the franchise has traditionally [[DoNotDoThisCoolThing ignored the harm crime could cause]].
* LeeroyJenkins: Ironically, it's the older agent Chase who does this and not his protege Julia. Rather than call for backup on sighting Carmen, he decides to go after her alone and orders Julia to stay in the car so that she can "learn". Predictably, Carmen evades him.
* LessonsInSophistication:
** While being raised on V.I.L.E. island, likely Carmen received these lessons in her youth when being tutored, or as part of her classes in thief school.
** Carmen must later give Zack these lessons in "The Duke of Vermeer Caper" when V.I.L.E. agent Dash Haber arrives early to a meeting and is looking for "The Duchess," an alias Carmen is using, but Zack opens the door and improvises himself as "The Duke." These lessons range from table manners, to art history, and to diction lessons so Zack won't speak with his native Bostonian accent.
* LetsGetDangerous: [[spoiler:Chase Devineaux is an incompetent agent with an unfortunate tendency to think with his fists instead of his head. His hotheadedness and tendency to shoot first and ask questions later got him fired from A.C.M.E. and sent back to Interpol, along with a demotion from inspector to file clerk. This kick in the pants motivates him to step up his game, and he manages to do in one month what A.C.M.E. couldn't do in 20 years, by figuring out the exact location of V.I.L.E.'s headquarters. Unfortunately [[MissedHimByThatMuch he doesn't make it to V.I.L.E. Island until after the evil organization has already moved out and blown their old HQ to smithereens]], but he still definitely showed that he really did deserve his title of Inspector. He becomes more competent in general from that point onwards.]]
* LetsYouAndHimFight: Prof. Maelstrom invokes this idea to his colleague Coach Brunt in order to break apart [[spoiler:the alliance of the traitors Carmen and Shadowsan]] by revealing to the former that [[spoiler:Shadowsan killed Carmen's father on orders from the leadership council]]. What this plan fails to account for [[spoiler:is the trust the two have in each other allows Carmen to work through her anger and just asks Shadowsan to confirm the details he can, and when third party evidence backs up his version of events, the alliance is stronger than ever. It also helps that unbeknowst to V.I.L.E. that Shadow-san wasn't actually the one who killed him.]]
* LineOfSightName: Carmen bases her alias on the name of haberdashery who made her (or rather Cookie Booker's as Carmen stole it) trademark hat ("Carmen's") and the city where it's located ("San Diego").
* LiteralMinded: Downplayed with Dr. Bellum. She finds figurative language distracting.
* LogicalWeakness: Paper Star can fold paper into deadly throwing stars. That said, her weapon is paper.
** In "The Magna Carta Caper", she's got Carmen on the run [[spoiler:until Carmen leads her out onto the roof of a train, where the wind blows her projectiles off course when Paper Star tries to use them. They're still ''paper'' - making them sharp doesn't make them any heavier.]]
** This is continued in "The Daisho Caper" when Paper Star is about to make some origami out of paper lanterns, [[spoiler:only to find out that they're covered in glue so they're considered useless.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: When Chase demands that she stop, Carmen does... briefly.
-->'''Carmen''': You didn't say for how long. ''(runs)''\\
'''Chase:''' It was implied!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes M]]
* MacGuffin: Basically every single artifact or commodity V.I.L.E tries to steal serving as the plot in most of the episodes throughout the entire show.
* TheMainCharactersDoEverything:
** Chase insists on catching Carmen single-handedly in the pilot, which is the main reason why he fails. If he'd thought to call ahead to have some other police officers stop and search the train at its next stop instead of personally chasing it all the way to Paris, he might have caught her as well as Gray.
** Despite the V.I.L.E. Academy producing forty graduates a year, and has for decades, only one episode in the first season has any agent appear other than Carmen's ex-dormmates (who only made up an eighth of their graduating class), her teachers, or the cleaners, all of whom were introduced in the pilot. Season 2 manages to introduce some other V.I.L.E. field operatives as well as show that V.I.L.E. has grunts beyond their elite thief academy graduates as part of a StoryArc involving [[spoiler: who will take up Shadowsan's place in the council.]].
** The Cleaners not only function as the janitors at V.I.L.E. Academy, they're involved in every other figurative aspect of "cleaning up" for V.I.L.E., from apparently handling a money laundring operation to extracting captured assets. Which would make more sense if there were more than two Cleaners.
* MakeupWeapon:
** The Compact Mirror Tracker allows Carmen to both send info to Player and track targets.
** The Lipstick Flashdrive is a drive disguised as lipstick that can be used to hack into computers and security systems.
* MaskedLuchador: Carmen ends up fighting with them in "The Luchador Tango Caper".
* MasterOfDisguise: One of Carmen's skills, usually involving formal dress wear and casual street clothes, depending on the situation. Chase appears to know her well enough that a simple change of clothing won't fool him if he can see her face.
* MeaningfulName: Inspector ''Chase'' Devineaux is the agent most dedicated to chasing Carmen. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Carmen herself in the first episode.
--> '''Carmen:''' "Chase", huh? Let's see what's in a name.
** It's also a nickname which he gave himself which is a play on the French word "chasser" meaning "to hunt".
* MeaningfulRename:
** V.I.L.E. operatives all take a meaningful codename for themselves, usually either relating to their abilities or their personality. Basically anyone who is with V.I.L.E. is guaranteed to have a name like this.
** Carmen herself was originally Black Sheep but chose a new name reflecting her means of escape from the island (plus it works better on a passport).
* MechaMooks: Several episodes of Season 4 feature Dr. Bellum creating an army of "Robo Robbers" to act as V.I.L.E. operatives free of human error.
* MeleeATrois: Carmen's crew wants to shut down V.I.L.E. and avoid A.C.M.E., V.I.L.E. wants to stop Carmen from interfering in their business affairs and learn more about A.C.M.E., and A.C.M.E. wants both of them brought down (though their relationship with Carmen swings around frequently due to misinformation about her objectives). Sometimes Chase Devineaux also does his own thing in order to try and run down Carmen without any sanction from A.C.M.E. or even Interpol.
* MickeyMousing: Carmen fights Le Chevre to the tune of "L'Amour est ouisou rebelle," each blow set to the tune of the music.
* MilitarySchool: V.I.L.E. Training Academy for Thieves aims to crank out professional thieves into the world. Carmen was initially a student, but she defected after underestimating how the school's ruthless approaches were against her [[ThouShallNotKill morals]].
* [[MistakenForMurderer Mistaken For Kidnapper]]: In the season 1 finale, Carmen is seen alone with the kidnapped [[spoiler:Devineaux]], resulting in the authorities assuming that she was behind the kidnapping rather than trying to rescue the victim from V.I.L.E.
* MortonsFork:
** Either Carmen would have been trapped on V.I.L.E. island permanently as a ward, and remaining under the crooks' influence, or she would voluntarily enter the Academy to become a thief for real... and remain under V.I.L.E.'s influence. [[spoiler:Shadowsan hoped that at least with the former option that Carmen wouldn't become a thief and throw her life away; he didn't intend for her to defect entirely]].
** [[spoiler:Shadowsan]] faced this dilemma with hindsight. [[spoiler:He could either pass Carmen, which would lead her to become a thief, or he could fail her with a rigged exam, and give her another year to pass his class. If he kept failing her, the other teachers would have smelled a rat. And of course, thanks to him goading "Black Sheep" about her failure when she proved she could pick his pockets without a problem and wanted a second chance, she ended up taking the worst course possible for him; to defect and openly turn against V.I.L.E., putting her in even more danger than she was before.]]
* MuggedForDisguise:
** The Bookkeeper is mugged by Carmen after Carmen causes a lockdown demands that she be allowed to leave the island, and none of V.I.L.E. wants her around after she let Carmen pickpocket her. Carmen ties up and gags the Bookkeeper and steals her coat and hat to pose as her long enough to fool the Cleaners.
** Zack's rival Trey is mugged by the Driver, so that the operative can steal the supercar he's intended to test drive.
** Coach Brunt steals the mask from a luchadora to ambush Carmen at a wrestling match.
* MyGodYouAreSerious: A downplayed version when Dr. Bellum calls Zack and Ivy Carmen's "operatives." Carmen corrects her they are her friends getting a chuckle from the scientist. She stops after a moment and realizes Carmen is genuine about her feelings for them and thought Carmen was making "a funny."
* MysteriousPast:
** All Carmen knows about her origins is that a V.I.L.E. agent (supposedly) found her as an abandoned baby in Argentina alongside a set of Matryoshka dolls. [[spoiler:The agent was a young Shadowsan, but he doesn't know any more about her past than that himself.]]
** Her past was finally revealed in the second season finale: [[spoiler:her father was Dexter Wolfe, a V.I.L.E. agent and former member of its inner circle who tried to defect, only for his colleagues to send an assassin (Shadowsan) after him. However, they weren't the only ones after him; the same night Shadowsan went to kill Wolfe, Interpol raided his mansion and he was shot dead by a younger Chief (who thought he was about to pull a gun on them). Shadowsan took baby Carmen back to headquarters with him afterwards, and the faculty decided to raise her as one of their own after she shows potential as a thief. The Matroyska dolls were the only thing that could calm her down.]]
* MythologyGag:
** The inclusion of Interpol harkens back the very first version of the original game, where the player worked for Interpol instead of A.C.M.E.
** Early on, Julia guesses that Carmen may simply be stealing as a form of game. In some continuities such as the previous cartoon, that ''was'' her motivation.
** In the first episode, Chase asks Julia if it's possible for a car to keep up with a speeding train. Julia responds that she's no [[VideoGame/CarmenSandiegoMathDetective math detective]]. Bonus points in that Chase was in that game.
** One of Carmen's classmates points out the absurdity of the various antagonists in the franchise having {{Punny Name}}s, saying that nobody would take them seriously.
** The Elevator Muzak in V.I.L.E. HQ is Mozart's 'Singt dem grossen Bassa Lieder', which was used as the basis for the theme to ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego''.
** Chase is told that he is "no longer a gumshoe" when he's [[spoiler:recruited by A.C.M.E.]]; "Gumshoe" was the lowest rank of A.C.M.E. agents in the games and in the PBS game show.
** [[spoiler: A.C.M.E.'s chief resembles her incarnation from the "Where in the World?" game show and Brøderbund games, albeit with short blonde hair. She also appears through holograms, like the AI Chief from "Where on Earth?" who also had blond hair]]
** While Professor Maelstrom is a psychotic psychologist and not a marine archeologist, as he was in ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego'', the first caper he is seen having Le Cheve and El Topo go after is one involving investigating a sunken ship for lost treasure.
** When posed with the connection between Carmen and V.I.L.E., Devineaux's first thought is, "Ah! She is the ringleader!" -- which she traditionally ''is,'' but when reminded of known facts and differences between them, he agrees that that doesn't add up here.
** "The Chasing Paper Caper" centers around Carmen trying to stop a V.I.L.E. agent from stealing all known copies of the Magna Carta. Stealing the original Magna Carta was Carmen's goal in one episode of ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego''.
** One of V.I.L.E.'s leaders is a Countess, possibly a reference to the Contessa, a recurring villain from ''Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego''?
** Coach Brunt is a big, strong woman with green hair, similar to [[Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego Eartha Brute]].
** Dr. Dennam is listening to a podcast that claims aliens exist. Aliens appear in several different installments of the franchise.
** The Cleaners are likely a reference to [[http://carmensandiego.wikia.com/wiki/Rick_and_Nick_ICK Rick and Nick ICK]], two bumbling janitors from the 3.0 versions of ''Where in the World'' and ''USA''. Their backstory is that they joined V.I.L.E. under the belief that knowing how to "clean up" would make them rich, and so they were assigned to "clean up" the evidence of V.I.L.E.'s whereabouts.
** In "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper (Part 1)", the daughter of the family Carmen is having lunch with (and who is also wearing Carmen's hat) is known as "Isabel", which is the middle name of Carmen from ''Treasure of Knowledge''.
** In "The Deep Dive Caper", the imagined form of [[spoiler:Vera Cruz, potentially Carmen's mother]] wears a red trenchcoat and yellow scarf, just like Carmen in ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego''.
** Completing the interactive special and getting the best ending unlocks a bonus scene involving [[spoiler:the entire supporting cast singing Rockapella's theme song for the [[Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego original game show.]]]]
** Dr. Bellum's Robo-Robbers are similar to the character Robocrook from the [[Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego original game show.]]
** 'Singt dem grossen Bassa Lieder' is heard once again during "The Viennese Waltz Caper" during a heist in Vienna, Austria. Carmen even points this out, remarking that "they're playing my song".
** A triumphant mix of 'Singt dem grossen Bassa Lieder' is played [[spoiler:over the arrest of V.I.L.E. during the final episode.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes N]]
* NeverSayDie: Although characters are placed in deadly situations, characters threaten each others lives, and Carmen's chief objection to V.I.L.E. is their willingness to commit murder, the words "die," "kill," "dead," etc. are never used. The expression "stealing/taking lives" is more commonly used.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
** While Chase bursting in on Countess Cleo's dinner gives Carmen more time to steal the Countess's Vermeer paintings, it also means that he completely misses that all the dinner guests are V.I.L.E. operatives and guests; the Chief isn't amused when the next day they find the mansion burned down, and chews out a sheepish Chase for his obliviousness.
** In "The Opera in the Outback Caper", [[spoiler:scientist Janeanne Denam is given a BrownNote hypnotizing which will compel her to launch her defective rocket when she hears "The Habanera" from the opera ''Theatre/{{Carmen}}''. The crew immediately drives out to Heliogen to stop her. It turns out, Janeanne ''never'' listens to opera when she's working because she gets too emotional, and was instead listening to a podcast on her earbuds, and would likely not have even heard the song when V.I.L.E. started playing it over the lab's speakers. However, being there leads to Carmen starting the launch sequence herself, due to having also heard the subliminal message.]]
** Carmen pickpocketing Devineaux's [[spoiler:A.C.M.E.]] keycard becomes this when [[spoiler: Paper Star pickpockets it from her in turn and brings it back to V.I.L.E., making them aware of A.C.M.E.'s existence. V.I.L.E. erroneously concludes that Chase is Carmen's partner, capturing and torturing him]].
* NiceJobFixingItVillain:
** V.I.L.E. giving Carmen a decent childhood and education while raising her led to her developing a sense of compassion that put her at odds with her family's murderous intents.
** One of Carmen's teachers at V.I.L.E. named Shadowsan [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption ensures her failure]] on an UnwinnableByDesign pickpocketing test while applauding a more unscrupulous classmate's methods because he doesn't approve of Carmen's special treatment by the other teachers. This spurs Carmen towards trying to prove herself by sneaking on an actual caper of her newly graduated class's and realizing the lengths to which V.I.L.E. was willing to go to acquire items, thus prompting her HeelFaceTurn. If the teacher had just tested her normally, Carmen would still be "Black Sheep" and in V.I.L.E.'s pocket for a little longer. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] when it’s revealed he did this on purpose because he didn’t want her to become a thief.]]
** Gray firing on an innocent man, and refusing to listen when she saves the man's life and calls him out for it, led to Carmen's disillusionment and eventual defection. It also ended their friendship when she saw what he really was.
** The fact that V.I.L.E. chose to shelter Carmen from their more brutal nature left her completely shocked and disillusioned with her beloved family, if they had not gone to such lengths to hide their unscrupulousness, she might’ve remained under their thumb and not become their greatest enemy.
** Coach Brunt tells Carmen the truth [[spoiler:that Shadow-san found her when he was sent to murder her father]] in the hopes of driving the two of them apart, and it seems to work for a bit... but when she does talk to him about it and hears his side of the story, it just brings the two even closer.
** [[spoiler:Had V.I.L.E. not promoted the brainwashed Carmen to faculty, she wouldn't have been able to lead law enforcement to their headquarters after being freed of mind control since only faculty would have that exclusive knowledge. Tigress lampshades how bad the decision was, much to the annoyance of the female leaders of V.I.L.E.]]
* NoodleIncident: How Carmen met Zack and Ivy. The most we know is that it had something to do with a V.I.L.E. hideout disguised as a donut shop. Eventually revealed in Season 2's "The Boston Tea Party Caper": [[spoiler:the donut shop was a holding facility for materials V.I.L.E. used for a counterfeiting operation, which the other two thought was a Mob front. They both tried tossing the place the same night and ended up reluctantly teaming up.]]
* NotNowKiddo: Julia forcefully interrupts Chase in the pilot to point out Carmen is right behind them after he speaks disparagingly of her academic background.
* NotSoDifferentRemark: Player and Carmen became friends when they both realize they want to use "evil" skills for good reasons.
* NothingPersonal: Paper Star doesn't have a grudge against Carmen, unlike her other classmates who graduated, because they never had a rocky history. As the novelization details, Carmen would give her extra origami paper when she asked for Shadow-san's class, and complimented her handiwork until [[OhCrap Paper Star beheaded her own paper army with a paper ninja star]]. Ironically, Paper Star is the only classmate who has actually defeated Carmen in a straight fight. Though maybe Paper Star doesn't take it personally because she's a "psychopath," in Le Chevre's words.
* {{Novelization}}: ''"Who in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"'' is an adaptation of the first two episodes delving into Carmen's past.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes O]]
* OffscreenVillainDarkMatter:
** While Carmen remains a thorn in V.I.L.E.'s side, it's implied she's only disrupting a fraction of their operations. Le Chevre, for instance, boasts that he's done more successful missions than Paper Star though we've only seen his failed missions on the show.
** [[spoiler: Averted by the end of Season 2. After two straight years of Carmen disrupting their operations, and being forced to destroy their own lavish headquarters, by the time the season ends, V.I.L.E. has been reduced to meeting in a coffee shop.]]
* OhCrap:
** Coach Brunt reacts this way when Mime Bomb communicates that "Black Sheep" snuck out with the graduates.
** Carmen has this reaction when Gray fires on the archaeologist.
** Zach has this reaction multiple times in the Vermeer caper: when he opens the door and encounters Dash Haber instead of room service and has to dress up as a Duke, when he picks up the wrong drinking glass at the Countess's dinner, and when the palate cleanser before dessert is beluga caviar (he hates fish).
** In the novelization, Carmen has this reaction when she compliments Paper Star's origami miniature army, only for Paper Star to callously behead them with a paper ninja star.
* OnceMoreWithClarity:
** Shadowsan arriving at the pier just as Carmen takes the boat in the two-parter. [[spoiler:When we revisit the scene in the season one finale, Shadowsan reveals he was trying to join her.]]
** In "The Jolly Good Show Caper", as Shadow-san details the plot of how Roundabout was set up, it flashbacks to key points of the episode.
** In "The Beijing Bullion Caper", after Neal is unable to use the unconscious Huang Li's eyes to get past the retinal scan because it's revealed [[EmergencyImpersonation he's actually Zack in disguise]], flashbacks reveal exactly how Carmen's team engineered the switch.
* OncePerEpisode: After the two-part series opener, there is always an infomation dump about either the location or a topic related to what Carmen's gang is talking about. It is usually done by Player conversing with the others about some of the cultural aspects of the location or other tidbits that become {{Chekhovs Gun}}s or [[ChekhovsGag Gags]].
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness:
** Carmen treats her Russian dolls very well, because they're the only clue she has about her past. The day she escapes, she decides to leave them behind on V.I.L.E. island to "travel light".
** The Bookkeeper notes that Carmen for the first time ever has not tossed water balloons at her for the Bookkeeper's annual arrival. It was because Carmen was planning on pickpocketing her and pretended to apologize during their elevator ride.
* OohMeAccentsSlipping: All of the principal cast are voiced by actors who share their character's ancestry. When we get to Australia however (Gray aside), the Doctor's off pronunciation of "Launch the Boomerang" is noticeably jarring. Double points for the fact that the character is hypnotised and is repeating this phrase ''ad nauseum''... and getting it wrong every time.
* OriginsEpisode:
** The two-part pilot serves as this, detailing Carmen's origin in this continuity as an orphan raised by V.I.L.E., and the events that led to her turning on them.
** "The Boston Tea Party Caper" details how Carmen and Player met up with Zack and Ivy.
* OrphansPlotTrinket: Carmen has a set of Russian nesting dolls that V.I.L.E. found by her when she was a baby. They sadly didn't carry hints to her past, though Carmen tried to investigate them. She ends up leaving them behind when she defects, symbolically abandoning the story of her MysteriousPast to make a better future. Then she re-steals them from a V.I.L.E. hideout, and it's revealed to have been a trap that Gray set (though she was expecting that). [[spoiler:The Season 2 finale reveals that they were one of the only things that could calm her down, and Season 4 reveals that her birth mother - still very much alive - held onto the last piece, which Shadowsan used to break Carmen free from V.I.L.E.'s mind control.]]
* OutsideContextProblem: Due to Julia's background in knowing history and archaeology, it makes her better suited to understand Carmen's methods than the action-oriented Chase. Chase of course dismisses her background when she talks about the objects Carmen could steal.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes P]]
* PaperThinDisguise: Inverted and subverted with Carmen. When she's doing a job, she wears very auspicious red accessories (a wide-brimmed red fedora and a red trenchcoat or a red cocktail dress if she's doing something requiring a modicum of formality), along with having her full head of hair sweeping in the breeze. If she's trying to blend in, she wears unassuming civilian clothes (at most maybe adding one red piece) and has her hair done up differently. However, the people who pursue her (A.C.M.E. and Chase Devineaux) don't let simple changes of clothes deceive them and they can still pick Carmen out regardless of what she's wearing by knowing her face.
* PetTheDog: The Bookkeeper has every reason to dislike Carmen, from the water balloon pranks to her recklessness. But she gives Black Sheep genuine advice and shakes her hand.
* PickOnSomeoneYourOwnSize: Carmen, who's the youngest V.I.L.E. student ever, gets into fights with older students and her former teachers.
* PlatonicCoParenting: The titular character was raised since her youth by the five main faculty members of [=V.I.L.E.=]: Coach Brunt, Dr. Bellum, Countess Cleo, Professor Maelstrom, and Shadowsan. Each one takes a different level of intimacy and love towards their ward with Coach Brunt pampering and spoiling the young girl to Shadowsan's standoffish behavior. The rest are somewhere in between. It is a genuinely happy relationship, which makes Carmen's recognition of how evil they could be and her betraying them all the more shocking to, as she puts it, the only family she's ever known.
* PlayfulHacker: The Player, who specifically identifies himself as a white-hat hacker, even using a white fedora as an icon at one point and wearing a white baseball cap in his first conversation with Carmen.
* PoliceAreUseless: Chase Devineaux's sole virtue as a policeman is his determination. But since he never ''thinks'' before chasing after Carmen, he never accomplishes anything. Julia Argent comes across as more competent, but even that is limited to being observant enough to know there are unanswered questions that her partner never considers, but she still never gets a chance to work out the answers or do anything with them.
* PoorCommunicationKills: Seems to be the heart of the conflict between Carmen and A.C.M.E., with constant misinterpretations of the actions and observations of the other leading to fallout and mistrust. Julia has tried to remain the voice of reason between both parties but then something comes along to disrupt that and puts them at odds again. While no one has died, there have been some close calls.
* ProperlyParanoid: Carmen refuses to [[spoiler:put an amnesiac Gray in danger by re-entering his life. It turns out that when V.I.L.E. thinks that Chase is her partner at the Season 1 finale, they end up capturing and torturing him]].
* ProWrestlingEpisode: The episode "The Luchadora Tango Caper" sees Carmen go to Mexico to meet with a luchadora who might be her MissingMom. It averts ProWrestlingIsReal, as the luchadora in question notes that she's scripted to win the next fight and asks that Carmen not tell Zack so as not to ruin the magic for him (though the match goes OffTheRails when [[TheBrute Coach Brunt]] infiltrates the ring using another wrestler's mask).
* PublicSecretMessage: Julia has a blog where she writes about history. In later seasons, she also uses it to secretly communicate with Carmen, coding messages with thoughts about coffee.
* PunnyName:
** Aside from Dr. Saira Bellum, this has mostly been avoided, as lampshaded by Gray's initial attempt at a codename "Graham Crackle".
---> '''Carmen:''' Dude... seriously?\\
'''Le Chevré:''' We are criminals! Who would take us seriously if we had ''puns'' for names?
** Countess Cleo's underling [[{{Spoonerism}} Dash Haber]] may count as a StealthPun, as a haberdasher is a men's tailor. In season 2, he poses as a haberdasher for a fashion show and his weapon is a razor-brimmed hat he can control with a device in his glove, which seems to confirm the intentional pun.
** The name of one character is [[FamilyThemeNaming Vera Cruz]], which could be a subtle pun on the name of the Mexican city Veracruz. Carmen points out that it sounds like an alias. [[spoiler: It was, as the real name of Carmen’s mother was Carlotta Valdez.]]
** V.I.L.E.'s accountant, Cookie Booker. Her job with V.I.L.E. is to "cook the books".
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes R]]
* RaisedByTheCommunity: Carmen Sandiego, then known as Black Sheep, was raised on Vile Isle by the V.I.L.E. staff members who acted as her basic teachers and caretakers.
* RedemptionRejection: Carmen reveals that she wanted to talk to Gray because she believed the memory of their friendship was enough for him to want to join her and turn on V.I.L.E. Gray responds by turning her down and firing his electric gun on her.
* RedGreenContrast: Used extensively throughout the show; red is used to represent Carmen and her allies, while green is used to represent V.I.L.E. This even [[https://storygirl000.tumblr.com/post/186288482741/carmen-sandiego-and-color extends]] to how certain scenes are tinted; scenes where V.I.L.E. has the upper hand or when things are just generally going badly for Carmen are tinted green, while scenes where Carmen has the upper hand or is just doing well in general are tinted red. In fact, this also serves as subtle foreshadowing towards the big twist at the end of season 1: [[RewatchBonus rewatching the episodes]] with the color symbolism in mind means you'll pay more attention to the fact that [[spoiler:several of [[HeelFaceTurn Shadowsan's]] scenes are tinted red]]. It's also significant that in the Season 4 scenes where Chase meets with Julia in her college office, Julia is wearing a red shirt, putting her firmly on Carmen's side while Chase, who is still on the fence but beginning to believe Julia was right about Carmen, is wearing a shirt with a red stripe along the sleeves and shoulders.
* RepetitiveName:
** Trey Sterling's father asks Zack and Ivy to call him Sterling. His name? Sterling Sterling.
** While "Trey" has become a name in its own right, it's also a nickname frequently given to the third generation with the same first name (Senior, Junior, and Trey), hinting that Trey, his father, and grandfather are ''all'' named Sterling Sterling, which would make it a repetitive Repetitive Name.
* ReplacementGoldfish: Not intentionally but [[spoiler:one of the reasons that V.I.L.E. took Carmen in as a baby and spoiled her rotten was in the hopes that she would prove a SuperiorSuccessor to her father, Dexter Wolfe, who defected from them]]. [[GoneHorriblyRight It worked better then they possibly imagined]]
* TheReveal:
** Season 1: [[spoiler:Shadowsan was the one who discovered Carmen as a baby, and he failed her because he thought she could do better with her life than become a thief and a V.I.L.E. agent. He was the one who sabotaged the Janitors' helicopter when Carmen made her getaway, and would have joined Carmen in the boat if he had made it in time]].
** Season 2: [[spoiler:Carmen's father was Dexter Wolfe, a V.I.L.E. operative that Shadowsan was ordered to kill after he apparently defected. However, Shadowsan was beaten to the punch by an Interpol agent -- specifically, the head of A.C.M.E. And her mother is possibly still alive.]]
* RewatchBonus:
** After learning about Shadow-san's true nature, most of what he does in the two-part premiere makes more sense.
** A lesser example, but in "The Fishy Doubloon Caper" Le Chevre surprises Zack and Ivy on their boat, Zack makes a comment about being from Boston and Ivy gives him an angry elbow in the side. This makes more sense after "The Boston Tea Party Caper" reveals that they met Le Chevre in Boston back when they first met Carmen, with Le Chevre apparently not remembering them.
* RightForTheWrongReasons: During the climax of season 2, [[spoiler:Coach Brunt reveals to Carmen what happened to her father in the hopes of driving her away from an ally. It works -- except Brunt was trying to drive her away from Shadowsan, not the Chief.]]
* RightUnderTheirNoses: V.I.L.E.'s standard procedure in committing heists is to do it [[HiddenInPlainSight in plain sight]], usually by using some cultural event as cover for their activities. However, Carmen's knowledge of this from her training at V.I.L.E. allows her to predict when and where they will strike.
* RunningGag:
** There are a few minor ones, like how every time V.I.L.E. is mentioned to have made a food product the flavor is compared to the company name, or how the show loves to show off Zack and Ivy's Southie accents with common phrases that are known to exaggerate it.
** Starting in Season 2, Zack is repeatedly referred to as a Duke, based on his disguise from "The Vermeer Caper". Ivy is similarly referred to as a rocket scientist, thanks to the events of "The Opera in the Outback Caper".
** "Protect the face" comes up repeatedly when Carmen is fighting her former classmates. It's Coach Brunt's first rule of self-defense, and Carmen's go-to maneuver is either attacking the face or threatening to as a distraction. And Shadowsan even gets to use it back on Brunt, taunting her that she didn't do this, when nearly defeating her in combat in "The VILE History Caper".
** Chase simply cannot drive a car without some disaster happening to it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes S]]
* SceneryPorn: The locations are very bright and colorful despite the lineless artstyle.
* SecondEpisodeIntroduction: If you count the opening two-parter as one episode, Zack and Ivy don't get introduced until the following episode (although the back of Zack's head can be seen as he pilots the boat Carmen uses to escape in the very end of the two-parter).
* SequelHook:
** The first season ends with [[spoiler: Chase going to the hospital after having V.I.L.E.'s truth device clamped to his head, The Chief of A.C.M.E. face to face with Carmen Sandiego, Shadowsan revealing his true colors and leaving Carmen with a new V.I.L.E. hard-drive which means more adventures for her and the crew.]]
** The second season ends with [[spoiler: Carmen and Shadowsan discovering that her mother is still alive and setting off to find her, Chase being re-inducted into A.C.M.E. by the Chief as part of their new plan to stop Carmen, and V.I.L.E.'s inner circle searching for a new headquarters.]]
** The third season ends with [[spoiler: the reveal that A.C.M.E. has been keeping an eye on Gray since "The Crackle Goes Kiwi Caper" hoping Carmen would contact him again. Since she hasn't, the Chief is out of patience and ready to arrest him.]]
* ShootHimHeHasAWallet: The reason [[spoiler:Carmen's father]] died as [[spoiler:The Chief thought he was pulling out a gun instead of car keys.]].
* ShoutOut:
** During Carmen's flashback to her childhood, her geography lesson has her identifying [[Music/TheyMightBeGiants "Istanbul, not Constantinople"]].
** V.I.L.E. only graduates forty students a year. Naturally, Carmen once refers to them as [[Literature/AliBabaAndTheFortyThieves the Forty Thieves]].
** When brainstorming codenames, Gray first thinks of [[ComicBook/SpiderMan "Shocker"]] before it gets shot down.
** More than once, Gray puns on Carmen's V.I.L.E. codename with an old nursery rhyme and quips, "Bye-bye, Black Sheep".
** Tigress dismissively called Carmen "Fe[[WesternAnimation/DoraTheExplorer dora the Explorer]]."
** "The Duke of Vermeer Caper" is all about the career of Creator/JohannesVermeer, and how his incredible attention to light and shadow and surprisingly small body of work (only 34 known paintings) make his work highly desirable.
** "The Opera in The Outback Caper" is set during a performance of ''Theatre/{{Carmen}}'' (fittingly enough). The similarities of the characters is referenced often.
** In the scene where Paper Star is introduced, Professor Maelstrom asks her to "[[Film/BringMeTheHeadOfAlfredoGarcia bring him the hat of Carmen Sandiego]]".
** Le Chèvre calls Paper Star "[[Literature/PippiLongstocking Pippi Punkstocking]]"
** The car chase on the streets from San Francisco (from "The Lucky Cat Caper") is very reminiscent of the iconic car chase from ''Film/{{Bullitt}}''.
** Professor Maelstrom's outfit (tan slacks, dark turtleneck, black jacket with white piping) is an exact replica of the one Patrick [=McGoohan=] wore in ''[[Series/ThePrisoner1967 The Prisoner]]''.
** In "The Daīsho Caper", Boston natives Zach and Ivy sing "More than a Feeling" at karaoke, a song by the rock band Music/{{Boston}}.
** In "The Fashionista Caper", Agent Argent is practicing what she'll say to Carmen when she eventually catches her. At one point, she attempts to do a [[Series/CSIMiami Horatio Caine]]-esque one-liner, complete with putting her glasses on and a song similar to [[Music/TheWho "Won't Get Fooled Again"]] playing.
** As of "The Need For Speed Caper", we can add Franchise/CarmenSandiego to the list of franchises that have paid homage to the famous ''Manga/{{Akira}}'' bike slide.
** For that matter, the name of that episode is a shout-out to ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed''.
** Also the episode where Paper Star attempts to steal the Magna Carta is "The Chasing Paper Caper", a shout-out to Music/ThePaperChase.
** As for Carmen Sandiego herself, the ability for her coat to transform into a hang glider is reminiscent to that of [[Manga/MagicKaito Kaito Kuroba]]. Bonus points that they are both thieves who use an alias to steal valuable items in order from them getting in the wrong hands.
** According to "The French Connection Caper" A.C.M.E. agents drive Blanton-Webster automobiles, which in addition to being a BlandNameProduct version of Aston Martin, is also a reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blanton%E2%80%93Webster_Band The Blanton-Webster Band]].
** In "The Big Bad Ivy Caper", Doctor Bellum says that the failures of various V.I.L.E. operatives [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey "can only be attributed to human error"]].
* ShroudedInMyth:
** V.I.L.E. is obsessed over hiding their existence from anyone outside of their organization, to the point of mind-wiping operatives who get captured. [[spoiler: A.C.M.E. can't even definitively prove that they ''exist''.]].
** [[spoiler: A.C.M.E. is even ''more'' mysterious to the rest of the world, with not even ''V.I.L.E.'' knowing anything about them, and they only get a hint that the organization exists late in season 1]].
* SmallRoleBigImpact:
** The leader of the archaeological dig in the second episode. His conversation with Carmen about artifact conservation, and how he was about to die from Crackle's staff, is what causes Carmen to defect V.I.L.E.
** The loanshark from Zack and Ivy's backstory; if he didn't tell them to go after a specific donut shop (that was a front for V.I.L.E's money printing press), then they wouldn't have met Carmen.
* SoftSpokenSadist: Coach Brunt speaks in a low voice when [[spoiler:torturing Chase and attempting to crush Carmen to death]].
* SoundtrackDissonance: In "The Daisho Caper", Shadowsan battles a group of thugs while a karoake machine continues to blare [[Music/ElvisPresley Suspicious Minds]] in the background.
* {{Southies}}: In this incarnation, Zack and Ivy are both thieves from Boston, who have noticeable accents.
* SpannerInTheWorks:
** Shadowsan refuses to show any favoritism to Carmen and it's implied he fails her on purpose so she can't graduate with her class. This led to her defection because she snuck out to spite him and his rigged exam. [[spoiler: It turns out his intention was to keep her from becoming a thief because he was worried she was throwing her life away]].
** Carmen herself became this when she tagged along with the graduates' mission. It led her to save a man's life because he was an innocent and opened her eyes to what V.I.L.E. really was.
** In the Duke of Vermeer caper, Carmen and Player outline their plan to retrieve all 34 Vermeer paintings... and then that got derailed when Zack accidentally opens the doors too soon -- thinking it was room service -- only to meet with Dash Haber, one of Countess Cleo's underlings -- and the group has to change it so that Zack appears as a Duke. In the same episode, Chase crashing Countess Cleo's dinner just before Zack puked at eating caviar (he's known to hate fish) is what gives Carmen and Ivy some extra time to swipe the last painting.
* SpellMyNameWithAThe: The Troll, V.I.L.E.'s EvilCounterpart to Player, protests upon being addressed as just "Troll." Dr. Bellum says addressing him as "The Troll" sounds wrong to her ears. No one seems to have any such problem with Le Chevre or El Topo, which are the French and Spanish equivalent.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: The Netflix subtitles clarify that it's ''Saira'' Bellum this time, perhaps to differentiate her from Sara Bellum from ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls''. Or from bad puns in general.
* SplashOfColor: The intro's first few seconds depicts Carmen's travels in a black and white atmosphere, allowing herself to stand out in her iconic scarlet color in every scene.
* StairsAreFaster: In the first episode, the old-fashioned lift Chase tries to use takes about a minute to make it one story. He lampshades this.
* StealingFromThieves: As part of her revamped character, Carmen is a defector from V.I.L.E. who steals the artifacts they steal in order to return them to their rightful owners. When she can't beat them to the artifact and steal it first.
* StealItToProtectIt: Carmen steals the items VILE is after before they can get to them. Once she is sure VILE has fled, she leaves the items for the police.
* StereoFibbing:
** In "The Fishy Doubloon Caper", Player calls in Ivy and Zack that Carmen needed them, unfortunately notifying her previous classmate, La Chevre. As he walks towards them with a giant fish hook asking if this Carmen was Carmen Sandiego, Ivy and Zack switch between saying San Francisco and San Jose.
-->'''Ivy/Zack:''' ''[simultaneously]'' Carmen Sanfrancisco. / Carmen Sanjose.\\
'''Ivy/Zack:''' Sanjose? / Sanfrancisco!\\
'''Ivy/Zack:''' Sanfrancisco! / Sanjose!
** In "The Himalayan Rescue Caper", Ivy and Zack pose as exterminators in order to delay Player's history exam. When they are asked what the school's infestation consists of, Ivy and Zack switch between saying bees and termites.
-->'''Ivy/Zack:''' ''[simultaneously]'' Bees. / Termites.\\
'''Ivy/Zack:''' Termites! / Bees?\\
'''Ivy:''' Uh, termite bees! A new strain of hybrid insect.
* StockScream: The Wilhelm Scream is heard in "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper, Part 1".
* StoryArc: Season 2 has V.I.L.E. trying to find someone to replace [[spoiler:Shadowsan's position after he defects.]]
* SubliminalSeduction: "The Opera at the Outback Caper" has Dr. Bellum's plan release a subliminal command to [[spoiler: unleash the Boomerang rocket]] when the head scientist hears "L'Amour est ouisou rebelle". [[spoiler: Unfortunately, since Carmen was also there when Le Chevre unleashed the command, she is also commanded to activate the rocket when she was trying to delete its codes.]]
* SureLetsGoWithThat: In the Season 1 finale, Coach Brunt asks [[spoiler:Carmen about her "partnership" with Chase Devineaux. Carmen doesn't bother to correct Coach Brunt and instead snarks that she prefers working with the law than with evil villains]].
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Carmen tries to pull a prank by tossing water balloons at the Bookkeeper, as she did when she was a child. It might have been cute then, but when she becomes a V.I.L.E. student, the action nearly leads to her expulsion.
** Carmen's first attempt to leave the V.I.L.E. academy involved forcing open a drainage grate in the AbsurdlySpaciousSewer. When she tries it again the following year, she finds that the staff (who learned of her escape and how from Mime Bomb) has taken steps to ensure that nobody can get in or out that way again by bolting the grate in place.
** Paper Star may be able to create [[AbsurdlySharpBlade Absurdly Sharp Throwing Stars]] from paper, but they're still paper, and as such, can easily be blown away in the wind.
** As impressive as Carmen's physical abilities are, exploring sunken ships found in the sea followed by walking around Quito, the second-highest capital city in the world, without taking the time to adjust to the change in pressure is a bit of whiplash for the body. She quickly succumbs to altitude sickness.
** Carmen gets subject to a [[spoiler:NoHoldsBarredBeatdown in the first season finale, courtesy of Coach Brunt. Shadow-san convinces her to escape with him because, as he points out, she can't walk on her own and the police will catch her]].
** Chase's continual bumbling and tendency to [[LeeroyJenkins act without thinking]] [[spoiler: eventually causes A.C.M.E.'s Chief to remove him from active duty and replace him with his HypercompetentSidekick Julia.]]
** When the Chief is angry enough to [[spoiler: reinstate him as a field agent]], she still makes him take a defensive driving course before allowing him behind the wheel, considering he's drowned two very expensive vehicles. After he drives the third into the Louisiana bayou, he loses driving privileges altogether.
** During ''The Stockholm Syndrome Caper'', Carmen gives her coat to Ivy to throw off the A.C.M.E. agents. [[spoiler:After crashing her hang-glider in a forest in the middle of winter, she nearly dies from her injuries and exposure, and the next episode shows her spending at least a month laid out, and is easily overpowered by Tigress in a fight.]]
** [[spoiler:It's revealed that the [=A.C.M.E.=] Chief killed Carmen's father in a raid when she was under the impression that he was a murderous thief. Which, to be fair, he was. Carmen decides not to ally with the Chief and lets Player hack into [=A.C.M.E.=] to verify if the story is true. With law enforcement, GoodIsNotSoft and PoliceBrutality is bound to happen when there are violent criminals]].
** The end of "The Daisho Caper" has Shadow-san ask to atone for his sins in regards to [[spoiler:stealing the sword from the museum his brother was the curator for. It ends with said older brother walking away without a word. Just because you decide to amend for your misdeeds does ''not'' immediately equate to EasilyForgiven.]]
** At the opening of "The Fashionista Caper", Shadow-san quickly discovers that walking around dressed like a samurai tends to attract unwanted attention most places. This prompts him to seek less conspicuous clothing.
** Running a massive criminal undertaking costs a lot of money, so if you fail to turn a profit, you could find yourself in the red quickly. Sure enough, Season 2 shows that V.I.L.E. has suffered major financial losses due to regularly taking it on the chin from Carmen.
* SwappedRoles: In season 2, Chase gets put on indefinite leave from A.C.M.E. (because he's a loose cannon who keeps wrecking cars), while Julia goes from merely open-minded and unsure about Carmen, to actively arguing for Carmen's innocence. Season 3 sees Chase reinstated as an A.C.M.E. agent and Julia getting put on leave (because the Chief is tired of arguing with her about whether or not Carmen is a bad guy). Over the course of the season, Chase realizes the truth and goes from being an InspectorJavert for Carmen, to thinking she may not be so bad after all. Chase also gets a scene similar to Julia's from season 2, trying out different one-liners in the mirror for when he catches Carmen.
* SwiperNoSwiping:
** Chase attempts to shout at Carmen to stop to get her to surrender. She lampshades why he thinks that would work.
** Turned against her when she's trying to rescue the Crawfish King from Tigress and Paper Star. She demands they "Hand him over," and they do, handing him over to the Cleaners.
---> '''Carmen:''' "I meant to me." \\
'''Tigress:''' We only play with ''wicked'' witches.
* SympatheticInspectorAntagonist:
** Chase and Julia. They're just trying to stop an obvious cat burglar from stealing priceless antiquities, they don't know her true motives. Even with her good intentions, Carmen is still stealing.
** Without being tied down to Chase and his stubborn tendency to ignore her if a chance to chase Carmen comes up, Julia is able to convey how she feels more easily to the Chief. Although due to season 2 starting out with A.C.M.E. suspecting that Chase was detained and interrogated by Carmen, it takes some doing to get them to see things her way.
* SympathyForTheHero: Carmen momentarily has this look, along with some respect, as Chase keeps pace with her on the rooftops in the pilot.
* {{Tagline}}:
** "[[MythologyGag Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?]]"
** "''Who'' is Carmen Sandiego?" is another promotional take on the classic phrase, emphasizing this series' focus on unraveling Carmen's past.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes T]]
* TemptingFate: In "The Luchadora Tango Caper" Chase brags to Julia that for once he got through a mission without his car getting damaged... right before Coach Brunt jumps out of a window onto the top of the car, crushing it.
* ThatManIsDead:
** Coach Brunt loved Black Sheep like a daughter, but she considers her to be dead, and loathes Carmen Sandiego for killing her.
** Shadowsan states the same when asked about his former name, saying that [[spoiler:Suhara]] was swallowed by darkness a long time ago.
** Carmen invokes this trope when she confronts Gray in "Becoming Carmen Sandiego" after recounting her origin:
--->'''Gray''': Bye bye, Black Sheep.\\
'''Carmen''': Weren't you listening? I go by Carmen now!
* ThouShallNotKill:
** The reason why Carmen decides to turn against V.I.L.E. She witnessed Gray attempting to murder an innocent man in order to LeaveNoWitnesses.
** And near the end of season 4, [[CallBack this is also the reason]] why Gray [[spoiler: gets himself captured and tells A.C.M.E. about Carmen's brainwashing and everything they need to find her, stop her, and restore her to herself--because after seeing her nearly kill Zack, he realizes how far she has been changed from her true self against her will, after he had insisted he never wanted to see her hurt again]].
* ThrillSeeker: Carmen can't resist the thrill of the chase. It's why she kept launching water balloons at the Bookkeeper every year, why she pretends to give Chase a sporting chance to catch her, and why she lets Gray corner her on the train.
* TimeBomb: "The Opera in the Outback Caper"'s [[spoiler: launch of the Boomerang rocket]] is essentially one, although the time seems to count down in real-time.
* TimmStyle: The show's character designs, penned by Keiko Murayama, fits Chromosphere's in-house style of having angular, simple yet distinctive designs with some exaggerated proportions.
* TitleDrop: At the end of the first episode intro, Chase asks the eternal question "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" It happens again near the end of the two-part premiere, as Carmen has just escaped V.I.L.E. headquarters and tells Player to send her coordinates because "I need to know where in the world I am."
* TitleThemeTune: As per tradition for the franchise, though paired with more overt spy themes, slow guitars, and castanets.
* TooDumbToFool: Zack and Ivy in "The Day of the Dead Caper". The villain Ms. Contreras tries to trick them by threatening to destroy a priceless artifact which actually has an electric trap attached to it. Rather than catching the artifact and getting electrocuted [[spoiler:like Carmen had earlier]] the two just watch as it falls to the ground and breaks, with Ivy commenting that she hopes it wasn't worth a lot.
* TotallyRadical: The Troll is Player's EvilCounterpart, a villianous hacker who peppers his speech with outdated memes. His intro splash is the "Deal With It" meme, and he drops "I see what you did there" when Prof. Maelstrom just addresses him by name.
* TrailOfBreadCrumbs: Julia finds [[spoiler: the A.C.M.E. agents that had taken]] Chase in episode 4 by following the trail of mints that Chase had accidentally spilled all over the parking garage floor after getting knocked out. It worked despite the small number of candies in the roll by the fact that he was taken to a utility room less than fifty feet away.
* TraintopBattle: The climax of "The Chasing Paper Caper" ends with one.
* TrashTheSet: At the end of Season 2, [[spoiler: V.I.L.E. evacuate and then blow up their island headquarters after they fear it's been compromised by Carmen and Shadow-san's defections.]] Ironically, [[spoiler:the location was about to be compromised by [[GreatDetective Chase Devineaux]].]]
* TunnelKing: El Topo "takes the low ground" and is a master of FastTunneling operations.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes U]]
* UltimateUniverse: This take on Carmen blends elements from many prior versions: several characters from the mid-90s cartoon, the general setting of the original 80s games (V.I.L.E. is legitimately dangerous, there's a relative lack of {{Punny Name}}s, and the investigators are from Interpol instead of A.C.M.E. [[spoiler:to start with, anyway]]), Chase Devineaux from the late-90s Broderbund games, Jules Argent from the 2000s Learning Company games, while taking new directions of its own, such as making Carmen the ''protagonist'' for once.
* UnPerson: V.I.L.E. [[spoiler:and A.C.M.E.]] agents do not exist anywhere outside their own databases unless they get caught. As a former V.I.L.E. trainee, Carmen also falls into this to an extent - most of the world knows nothing about her beyond what they can surmise from her crimes, and she doesn't know all that much more herself. While most of these people are off the grid because all records about them were redacted, Carmen's records never existed in the first place.
* UnifiedNamingSystem: A.C.M.E. (Agency to Classify and Monitor Evildoers) faces V.I.L.E. (Villains International League of Evil).
* UnreliableExpositor: Carmen admits that all she knows about her origins -- being an abandoned baby in Argentina-- was told by the people who adopted her, and they hid more than one thing about her thief life. [[spoiler:It turns out she wasn't abandoned; her father was ''killed''.]] She claims that the teachers at V.I.L.E. spoiled her rotten and weren't allowed to hurt her, but in "The Sticky Rice Caper" she also says that Dr. Bellum fed her imitation rice that made her cry as a baby.
* TheUnreveal: Player's first name. His teacher refers to him by last name, but any time his first name is about to be mentioned, he's cut off. Player himself is unfamiliar with answering to anything other than Player.
* UnwinnableByDesign: Carmen suspects that her pick-pocketing exam against Shadowsan was one, that she failed to lift the dollar bill from his coat because there was no bill to steal. [[spoiler:She was right because Shadow-san didn't want her to pass.]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: [[spoiler:The Chief]] ends up being this when Carmen's past is revealed. [[spoiler:Carmen's father was a thief who was planning to defect when Carmen was a baby, for her safety and to give her a better life. When Shadow-san was sent to assassinate him, he balked on realizing that the defector had a child. Cue the Chief showing up with Interpol and shooting Carmen's father, forcing Shadowsan to flee with the baby back to V.I.L.E. island. This led to Carmen being raised by the same people her parents were trying to flee, and Shadow-san trying to make amends for his mistake. Carmen, when she hears the story, refuses to ally with [=A.C.M.E.=] and hacks into their system to find out if the story is true]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes V]]
* VanityLicensePlate: The license plate of Chase's [[spoiler:A.C.M.E.]] car is 10-19, the police scanner code for "return(ing) to base".
* VehicleVanish:
** Carmen does this in "The Opera in the Outback Caper" at the end.
** Carmen and [[spoiler:Shadowsan both do this when [=A.C.M.E.=] agents]] are getting close to them in "The Hot Rocks Of Rio Caper Part-2".
* VehicularSabotage: When the Cleaners try to use a helicopter to capture the escaping Black Sheep in the pilot, they find several of the wires to the engine had been cut. [[spoiler:It wasn't Carmen who cut the wires - it was Shadowsan.]]
* VillainRespect: Shadowsan has this expression when Carmen successfully escapes V.I.L.E. island. [[spoiler:It's because she was leaving V.I.L.E. behind for good, which was what she - and he - wanted]].
* VoiceWithAnInternetConnection: Player is this for Carmen.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes W]]
* WasItAllALie: Zigzagged. Carmen knows that Brunt truly loved her, and that the V.I.L.E. Academy gave her the best childhood she could possibly have. She does question, however, how much they hid from her, like that the thieves have no moral code, and if the story of her being abandoned in Argentina was even true [[spoiler:(that much of it apparently is)]]. She bitterly tells Gray her whole life was a lie.
* WaxOnWaxOff: Shadowsan is a Japanese staff member of V.I.L.E. whose class on pickpocketing centers around developing a dexterous, light touch by practicing origami.
* WeaponizedHeadgear: Season 2's "The Fashionista Caper" shows that Dash Haber fights using a hat with a sawblade in the brim, which he can control remotely using a device in his gloves. He calls it The Buzz Cut.
* WeCanRuleTogether: Gray reveals that he has orders to bring in Carmen alive because V.I.L.E. finds her too valuable and competent to just kill or mind-wipe; they'll give her a "pardon" if she comes quietly. He points out that Carmen just wanted to be a thief the whole time. Carmen has a regretful look about what she wanted as a kid, and she makes a counteroffer for Gray to join her. Gray refuses and tries to knock her out or execute her; it's unclear.
* WhamEpisode:
** Episode 4 reveals [[spoiler:Julia and Chase being accepted into A.C.M.E.]]
** Episode 6: [[spoiler:Grey has his memories erased of being a V.I.L.E. thief and Carmen must part ways with him.]]
** Episode 9: [[spoiler:Shadowsan reveals his true colors to Carmen, handing her a new V.I.L.E. hard-drive and the Chief of A.C.M.E. finally meets face to face with Carmen Sandiego.]]
** Season 2, episode 10, [[spoiler:Shadowsan reveals Carmen's past; in that she was the daughter of the former Stealth 101 instructor Dexter Wolfe who was shot --by accident -- by the woman would become Chief of A.C.M.E. After Carmen hacks into A.C.M.E.'s database, Chief declares war on Carmen and reinstates Chase into A.C.M.E. to go after her.]]
** Season 3, episode 5, [[spoiler: Roundabout is captured by the authorities after stealing England's Crown Jewels. Since he was the one responsible for extracting other captured operatives, even though he himself was claimed by the Cleaners, future arrests are more likely to stick. Meanwhile, Chase is starting to realize that Julia was right and the Chief is finally going to get her hands on Crackle.]]
** Season 4, episode 6, [[spoiler: Carmen and the Chief finally see eye to eye again, following A.C.M.E.'s investigation into Carmen's past and Carmen busting V.I.L.E.'s historic vault of stolen treasures from centuries ago. The bond between Carmen and the Chief seems mended, and Carmen is on her way to finding out the truth about her mother... until the Cleaners ambush her and kidnap her, declaring Carmen "belongs to V.I.L.E. now".]]
* WhamLine:
** Pretty much all of the lines [[spoiler:Shadowsan]] says in the climax of the Season 1 finale, [[spoiler: particularly the one where he reveals that ''he'' found Carmen as a baby]].
** "Drop your weapon!" During the finale of season 3, when Roundabout and Shadowsan are fighting, a police helicopter shows up and Roundabout (and the viewers) believe it's for Shadowsan until the officer orders the person they are looking for to drop their weapon and [[spoiler: only Roundabout has a weapon, meaning he's been found out.]]
* WhammyBid: When they're seeking a dubloon that was eaten by a fish up for auction, Carmen tells Zack and Ivy to bid to win. Zack ups a bid from $100 to $150...''thousand''. No one in the auction house knows how to react to that, except the auctioneer, of course. They're spared having to actually ''pay'' that wager by El Topo stealing the fish first. Though having access to V.I.L.E.'s accounts would probably have enabled them to pay it anyway.
* WhatTheHellHero:
** All the teachers in V.I.L.E., despite being revealed to be villains, call out Carmen for her impulsive nature and recklessness. The words from Shadowsan hurt the most since he's the one who failed her.
** ZigZagged. Gray tells off Carmen in Episode 2 for tagging along on the mission and putting his entire career at risk. While he is right that she was reckless and could have gotten them killed, he displays a more ItsAllAboutMe attitude that he didn't show before. And as Carmen finds out, he's willing to commit murder.
** Subverted when Carmen calls out Gray for firing on an innocent man. Gray by this point is open about the fact that he's a villain, not a hero, and he's more concerned that Carmen betrayed him and all of V.I.L.E.
* WhatYouAreInTheDark:
** After she was busting for sneaking out with the graduates and finding out that V.I.L.E. encourages reckless murder, Carmen was given a slap on the wrist: [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking she had her stolen phone confiscated, had the teachers constantly watching and psych-evaluating her, and received a giant hug from a worrying Coach Brunt]]. Carmen could have easily trained to become a thief anyway and ignore her morals, remained the V.I.L.E. equivalent of a MafiaPrincess and never leave the island, or even try to become an InternalReformist as upward as that journey would be. Instead, she bid her time, re-stole the phone, and made her escape an open defection against V.I.L.E. Freedom wasn't enough, and stealing wasn't enough. She was going to take down V.I.L.E. from the outside for lying to her all her life and killing people.
** "The Boston Tea Party Caper" has Zack and Ivy stuffing themselves with the counterfeit money that La Chevre and El Topo are about to get away with. It's enough to pay back their loan and fix up their car. Instead, they decide to recreate the Boston Tea Party and dump the money into the water although they do try to stuff some money under their shirts until Carmen reminds them that they'll be caught by the police.
* WhereDoesHeGetAllThoseWonderfulToys: While Carmen keeping some of the money she steals for operational expenses can account for how she can afford them, no explanation is given as to where and how Carmen acquires all the gadgets she keeps in her coat. Dialogue implies that Ivy is the main gadget-maker of the team, however.
* WhiteSheep: Carmen is this to the thieves that raised her, as she is discriminating in her choice of victims and tries to minimize collateral damage, while V.I.L.E. doesn't care how much harm they do so long as they turn a profit. Amusingly, her code name back when she was a V.I.L.E. agent in training was Black Sheep.
* WholeEpisodeFlashback:
** "Becoming Carmen Sandiego" is the story as to how Carmen became the thief she is.
** "The Boston Tea Party Caper" reveals how Zack and Ivy first met Carmen, which also happened to be Carmen’s first anti-V.I.L.E. operation.
* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: Carmen didn't have a real name growing up; her code name was Black Sheep. Brunt called her Lambikins or Lambsie for short.
* WhosOnFirst: In "The Opera on the Outback Caper", Zach and Ivy have to clarify if they're talking about Carmen Sandiego or ''Carmen'' the opera. [[spoiler:An amnesiac Gray]] thinks that Carmen's being funny when she gives her name, which to be fair she chose out of a hat.
* WhyDontYouJustShootHim:
** Gray corners Carmen in her first-class train compartment and shorts out her communications with Player; he found her because the object she stole had a tracking device. He has orders to bring her in alive, however, and she says that she wanted him to find her. So until the train reaches Paris, Gray interrogates her about why she betrayed V.I.L.E. and left him.
** Carmen is confronted at gunpoint several times by A.C.M.E. agents, but they never shoot. This would make sense if they were holding actual firearms, since they want to capture her, not kill her. However, A.C.M.E. guns just shoot InstantSedation gas, so shooting on sight would be the best strategy. Instead, they just point to her giving her time to use some acrobatics to turn their guns on them and escape.
* WorldOfSnark: Nearly everyone in the show will sneak in a cheeky quip or pun in any given situation.
* WouldntHurtAChild: Even when young Carmen tagged along on the graduation trip, V.I.L.E. just knocked her out and put her on a serious education regiment. [[spoiler:Earlier, they (at least most of them) adamantly refused to kill her as a baby when Shadowsan brought her back from his accidentally-successful attempt to ensure her father was dead. (He didn't actually kill her father, but he did bear witness.) Averted by Maelstrom, however, who casually suggested killing baby Carmen, but got out-voted by the others.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tropes Y]]
* YouCantGoHomeAgain:
** From "The Daisho Caper", [[spoiler:we learn that Shadowsan proved his thieving abilities to V.I.L.E. by stealing one half of the titular daisho - a pair of historic swords once worn by a famous samurai - from the museum where his older brother worked. This estranged him from his brother and means he can't go home even after he risks his life to return the daisho to the museum]]. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Carmen.
--> '''Carmen:''' I'm not sure what's worse, not knowing your family, or... not being able to return to the family you know.
** Subverted in season 3, in "The Masks of Venice Caper". [[spoiler: Shadowsan's brother Hideo, presenting some old samurai masks in a Venice museum, gets the opportunity to see what his little brother and Carmen are actually doing when they stop V.I.L.E. from stealing the masks. He says that he understands his brother is honorable now and is willing to forgive him...but then DoubleSubverted when he says that he still can't accept his brother back at home until after Shadowsan's job is done and V.I.L.E. is defeated for good.]]
* YouHaveFailedMe:
** V.I.L.E. invokes this not for failing to complete a mission (as Carmen thwarts several of them), but for getting captured.
** Although for some reason [[spoiler:Mime Bomb]] gets a free pass. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t speak (and maybe can’t speak), so no law enforcement officials can get much of anything out of him, especially since he only speaks in charades.
[[/folder]]

* MeaningfulName: Inspector ''Chase'' Devineaux is the agent most dedicated to chasing Carmen. {{Lampshade|Hanging}} by Carmen herself in the first episode.

* MeaningfulName: Inspector ''Chase'' Devineaux is the agent most dedicated to chasing Carmen.

{{Lampshade|Hanging}} by Carmen herself in the first episode.
--> '''Carmen:''' "Chase", huh? Let's see what's in a name.

[[folder:Tropes A to F]]

[[folder:Tropes G to L]]

[[folder:Tropes M to R]]

* MeaningfulName: Inspector ''Chase'' Devineaux is the agent most dedicated to chasing Carmen. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Carmen herself in the first episode.

[[folder:Tropes S to Z]]

->''"Some things possess value other than entertainment, dear reader. Any historic writing such this [[Website/TVTropes website]] belongs to everyone. Its theft would rob the world of knowledge and that would be a true crime."''
----

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Carmen's story -- that she was raised in a privileged life by people who loved her and gave her so good an education that she realized they were villains and turned on them -- rings a bell with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_(novel) how children's politics vary from their parents' between generations]]. Of course, most parents [[Series/{{Runaways}} (with rare exceptions)]] aren't criminal masterminds.

** In the original show Suhara was Carmen’s partner and mentor in A.C.M.E. Here, [[spoiler:it's Shadow-san's real name]].

* AllAsiansWearConicalStrawHats: When Carmen has {{Imagine Spot}}s and dreams of a younger Shadow-san [[spoiler:around the age when he found her as a baby]] he is wearing one of these hats. It is revealed when Shadow-san recounts his past from that era and before, he isn't actually wearing one.

** Carmen tries to avoid this in the season 1 finale, by distracting [[spoiler:Coach Brunt and Shadow-san into leaving Chase alone and tied up. It doesn't work; Brunt figures it out, bars the door too well for Carmen to break, and subjects her adopted daughter to a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown. By the end of it Carmen has several broken bones and needs help to walk]].

** In the first season finale, it's unclear if [[spoiler:Shadow-san will continue to be a mole for Carmen or if he outed himself by knocking out Coach Brunt]]. This gets resolved early in season 2.

* AndTheAdventureContinues: The ending of the series: [[spoiler: while Shadow-san has returned home to his brother, Zack and Ivy have joined ACME and are working with them to hunt the remaining free V.I.L.E. operatives, with occasional help from Carmen]].

* TheAtoner: [[spoiler:Shadow-san was the one who rescued Carmen because he witnessed her father being killed by Interpol-- while on an assignment to kill him. He felt pangs of conscience when he and Carmen barely survived the confrontation and brought her to the island. The reason why he didn't want her to become a thief was because he didn't want her repeating her father's mistakes.]]
* BadassBureaucrat: Nigel Braithwaite, aka Roundabout. He's the deputy director of British Secret Service, and a V.I.L.E. mastermind, [[spoiler:who even manages to beat Shadow-san in a sword fight at the end of season 3. Though it's implied Shadow-san let him win, the fact that he even manages to hold his own is impressive.]]

** In "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper (Part 2)" it looks like Shadow-san is about to reveal that he's betrayed Carmen...[[spoiler: until he states that Coach Brunt found her in ''Russia'' and not Argentina, thus proving that he's on her side.]]

** Both sides pull this off in "The Daisho Caper". Lady Dokuso coats a pair of chopsticks with poison, knowing that [[spoiler:Shadow-san]] will pick them up and use them as weapons. Meanwhile, Carmen tricks Paper Star by having Zack cover a string of paper lanterns with glue, so that they'll stick to her when she tries to use them for origami.

* BeCarefulWhatYouSay: Shadow-san keeps accusing Coach Brunt of wanting to go easy on Black Sheep aka Carmen. [[spoiler:In the first season finale, it's revealed Shadow-san was the one looking out for Carmen all along, and saves her when Coach Brunt tries to kill her in cold blood]].
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: All of V.I.L.E.'s teachers kept telling Carmen that she needed to control her recklessness and immaturity, with Shadow-san being the hardest on her. She eventually does kick the habit; after she got busted for messing with her class's heist, Carmen bid her time for the next school year and plotted her escape, complete with her open defection and declaration of war on V.I.L.E. Now when she's impulsive, she channels it into letting Interpol agents chase her.

* BrickJoke: Young Carmen accuses Shadow-san of rigging his test (which was to pickpocket a dollar bill from his coat) and states that the coat is empty. Come the season finale, [[spoiler: and a GoodAllAlong Shadow-san admits (slightly annoyed) that yes, it ''was'' empty.]]
-->'''Carmen:''' I KNEW IT!
* BrokenPedestal: Because they essentially raised her, Carmen looked up to Coach Brunt, Professor Maelstrom, Dr. Bellum, Countess Cleo, and Shadow-san and aspired to be like them. Learning that they instructed their students to steal by any means necessary (including killing witnesses) caused her to leave V.I.L.E. -- and, as a result, the only family she's ever known -- in disgust. It also means she left Gray after learning that he was willing to murder. [[spoiler: Shadow-san becomes a RebuiltPedestal when he reveals that he was trying to keep her out of the thief life and wishes he could have gone with her to help]].

* ButtMonkey: Chase. Poor, poor Chase. In order: [[spoiler:He takes a 2-story plummet into the bonnet of his car, gets insulted by the Chief in favour of Argent when he joins A.C.M.E. (admittedly justified though it was), tortured by Brunt to the point of being comatose, fired by the Chief as he wakes up from said coma, is told to never talk to Argent again even though she is the only friend the show has revealed he has, gets sent back to Interpol by the Chief who has decided to bust him down to "File Clerk" out of sheer pettiness, spends all his time at work doing boring paperwork, continues his investigation into Carmen in his own time at his own expense and figures out exactly where V.I.L.E. Island is only to arrive one week after they destroyed and abandoned it, finds himself stranded on said island for another week, is rescued when he accidentally burns down his shelter; and is finally fired from his File Clerk job upon his return for not turning up for a fortnight.]] Tough times. The length of bare screen alone shown here gives a good idea how much he goes through. Thankfully, things get better for him from Season 3 onwards.

** The season 2 premiere has Carmen and Shadow-san targeting the same V.I.L.E operation in Brazil which the latter lampshades.

** The season 2 finale reveals [[spoiler:Shadow-san was at the villa of Dexter Wolfe to assassinate him the same night that Interpol happened to raid the place and shoot his mark dead, even though he himself decided not to go through with it]]. Furthermore, [[spoiler:the shooter herself turned out to be the future chief of A.C.M.E., meaning she was ConnectedAllAlong to both Shadow-san and Carmen]].
* CoolButInefficient: A.C.M.E.'s InstantSedation guns seem like a good way to perform an instant non-lethal takedown on badguys, but are in practice pretty useless. This is especially shown in "The Stockholm Syndrome Caper." They have very short range, one agent manages to knock ''herself'' out because she apparently forgot that gas spreads[[note]]Which, incidentally, is also a flaw of real-world misting weapons like mace and pepper spray - they can affect the user as well as the target.[[/note]], and [[spoiler:even when Zari gets a direct shot right in Carmen's face it doesn't actually take Carmen down straight away, but allows her to escape on her hang glider just before she passes out, and ends up crashing just outside the city limits]].

** "The Hot Rocks of Rio Caper (Part 1)" is set in Carnivale and Le Chevre and Shadow-san wear masks with the former based on a goat and the latter wears one inspired by crows.
** Season 3 is ''riddled' with masks: Lupe Peligro is a luchadora with a multitude of masks and "The Masks of Venice Caper" is about stealing different types of masks -- one of them being the Mask of Agamemnon -- with Carmen and Shadow-san dressed up as if it's Carnivale, and "The Jolly Good Show Caper" is set on Guy Fawkes Day.
* CosmopolitanCouncil: The V.I.L.E. faculty are quite diverse: Coach Brunt is from Texas, Professor Maelstrom is Swedish, Countess Cleo is Egyptian, Dr. Bellum is Indian, and Shadow-san is Japanese. [[spoiler: Shadow-san's eventual replacement, Roundabout, is British]].

* CruelToBeKind: Shadow-san is the hardest on Carmen when she asks to be accepted into V.I.L.E. Academy, and refused to vote to accept her, because he believes her immaturity and recklessness will put her in danger in the field. Carmen finds it hard to refute his point when she gets busted for tossing water balloons at the Bookkeeper. [[spoiler:Or so he claims; it's actually because he didn't want her to become a thief and throw her life away to please her adoptive family nor follow the path of her true father]].

** Shadow-san's history is explained in "The Daisho Caper"

** Averted (though off-screen) when Carmen and Shadow-san challenge Spinkick (male) and Flytrap (female). The new V.I.L.E. operatives choose their opposite-gendered rivals.

** There's also the graduates La Chèvre and El Topo, a duo that never goes on missions without each other (barring "The Chasing Paper Caper" where only La Chèvre appears) that respectively strike high and low.
** Otterman and Moose Boy, another pair of operatives who appear to have worked with each other for some time.

* {{Expy}}: Dr. Janine Dennam and [=HelioGem=] seem to be inspired by Elon Musk and [=SpaceX=].

* FamilyFriendlyFirearms: V.I.L.E. mooks carry rods that shoot electric blasts while A.C.M.E. agents carry pistols that shoot clouds of blue knockout gas. This does get [[AvertedTrope averted]] however during [[spoiler:Interpol's raid on Dexter Wolfe's house, where a younger Chief shoots Dexter after she [[ShootHimHeHasAWallet mistook his car keys for a gun]].]]

** It's Shadow-san who gives Carmen the warning about no turning back if she becomes a thief. [[spoiler:He's the one who helped kickstart Carmen's defection from V.I.L.E. and has his own regrets now for the life he chose and cannot escape from]].
** In the second episode, Carmen's presumed timing isn't right. [[spoiler:She had just left the main building making a beeline to the boat. There was no way she had time to make a detour to the chopper to disable it, or when she would have as she was inside at all prior points in the episode. The only answer is someone else helped her and the only other person present already outside is Shadow-san]].

* FreudianExcuse: A benevolent example; why did every teacher on V.I.L.E. spoil Carmen rotten as a child? [[spoiler:Because her father died trying to defect from them, and they wanted to ensure she would never have a reason to turn on them the way he did. Shadow-san's reasons are to make amends for being a witness to his death]].

** In "The Daisho Caper" while Shadow-San tells Carmen about his past, Zack and Ivy are on the karoake stage rocking out to [[Music/{{Boston}} "More Than A Feeling"]]

** If you commit an atrocity that estranges you from your family and later attempt to make up for what you did, you might ''not'' be EasilyForgiven, no matter how far you go to make up for it or how sorry you are. [[spoiler:This is shown with Shadow-san's brother, who doesn't automatically forgive his younger brother for abandoning him for a life of crime even after he returns the swords.]]

** [[spoiler:Hideo, Shadow-san's brother, knocks Zari unconscious with a guard post in "The Masks of Venice Caper".]]

** Ironically, despite his status as the V.I.L.E. faculty stealth expert, Shadow-san's old-world Japanese garb doesn't let him blend in well with casual citizens so he acquires a set of less conspicuous clothing during season 2.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Carmen looks briefly ashamed when Countess Cleo and Shadow-san at different points tell her off for being reckless and immature. Shadow-san is also correct that, despite Carmen working to earn her grade, that she gets favoritism due to being a V.I.L.E. adopted child.

* KillerBearHug: In the season one finale, Coach Brunt tries to kill Carmen with her SuperStrength while calling it their "last hug goodbye". [[spoiler:Carmen is saved by Shadow-san knocking Brunt out.]]

* LetsYouAndHimFight: Dr. Maelstrom invokes this idea to his colleague Coach Brunt in order to break apart [[spoiler:the alliance of the traitors Carmen and Shadowsan]] by revealing to the former that [[spoiler:Shadow-san killed Carmen's father on orders from the leadership council]]. What this plan fails to account for [[spoiler:is the trust the two have in each other allows Carmen to work through her anger and just asks Shadow-san to confirm the details he can, and when third party evidence backs up his version of events, the alliance is stronger than ever. It also helps that unbeknowst to V.I.L.E. that Shadow-san wasn't actually the one who killed him.]]

** Despite the V.I.L.E. Academy producing forty graduates a year, and has for decades, only one episode in the first season has any agent appear other than Carmen's ex-dormmates (who only made up an eighth of their graduating class), her teachers, or the cleaners, all of whom were introduced in the pilot. Season 2 manages to introduce some other V.I.L.E. field operatives as well as show that V.I.L.E. has grunts beyond their elite thief academy graduates as part of a StoryArc involving [[spoiler: who will take up Shadow-san's place in the council.]].

** Either Carmen would have been trapped on V.I.L.E. island permanently as a ward, and remaining under the crooks' influence, or she would voluntarily enter the Academy to become a thief for real... and remain under V.I.L.E.'s influence. [[spoiler:Shadow-san hoped that at least with the former option that Carmen wouldn't become a thief and throw her life away; he didn't intend for her to defect entirely]].
** [[spoiler:Shadow-san]] faced this dilemma with hindsight. [[spoiler:He could either pass Carmen, which would lead her to become a thief, or he could fail her with a rigged exam, and give her another year to pass his class. If he kept failing her, the other teachers would have smelled a rat. And of course, thanks to him goading "Black Sheep" about her failure when she proved she could pick his pockets without a problem and wanted a second chance, she ended up taking the worst course possible for him; to defect and openly turn against V.I.L.E., putting her in even more danger than she was before.]]

** All Carmen knows about her origins is that a V.I.L.E. agent (supposedly) found her as an abandoned baby in Argentina alongside a set of Matryoshka dolls. [[spoiler:The agent was a young Shadow-san, but he doesn't know any more about her past than that himself.]]
** Her past was finally revealed in the second season finale: [[spoiler:her father was Dexter Wolfe, a V.I.L.E. agent and former member of its inner circle who tried to defect, only for his colleagues to send an assassin (Shadow-san) after him. However, they weren't the only ones after him; the same night Shadow-san went to kill Wolfe, Interpol raided his mansion and he was shot dead by a younger Chief (who thought he was about to pull a gun on them). Shadow-san took baby Carmen back to headquarters with him afterwards, and the faculty decided to raise her as one of their own after she shows potential as a thief. The Matroyska dolls were the only thing that could calm her down.]]

** One of Carmen's teachers at V.I.L.E. named Shadow-san [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption ensures her failure]] on an UnwinnableByDesign pickpocketing test while applauding a more unscrupulous classmate's methods because he doesn't approve of Carmen's special treatment by the other teachers. This spurs Carmen towards trying to prove herself by sneaking on an actual caper of her newly graduated class's and realizing the lengths to which V.I.L.E. was willing to go to acquire items, thus prompting her HeelFaceTurn. If the teacher had just tested her normally, Carmen would still be "Black Sheep" and in V.I.L.E.'s pocket for a little longer. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] when it’s revealed he did this on purpose because he didn’t want her to become a thief.]]

** Shadow-san arriving at the pier just as Carmen takes the boat in the two-parter. [[spoiler:When we revisit the scene in the season one finale, Shadow-san reveals he was trying to join her.]]

* OrphansPlotTrinket: Carmen has a set of Russian nesting dolls that V.I.L.E. found by her when she was a baby. They sadly didn't carry hints to her past, though Carmen tried to investigate them. She ends up leaving them behind when she defects, symbolically abandoning the story of her MysteriousPast to make a better future. Then she re-steals them from a V.I.L.E. hideout, and it's revealed to have been a trap that Gray set (though she was expecting that). [[spoiler:The Season 2 finale reveals that they were one of the only things that could calm her down, and Season 4 reveals that her birth mother - still very much alive - held onto the last piece, which Shadow-san used to break Carmen free from V.I.L.E.'s mind control.]]

* RedGreenContrast: Used extensively throughout the show; red is used to represent Carmen and her allies, while green is used to represent V.I.L.E. This even [[https://storygirl000.tumblr.com/post/186288482741/carmen-sandiego-and-color extends]] to how certain scenes are tinted; scenes where V.I.L.E. has the upper hand or when things are just generally going badly for Carmen are tinted green, while scenes where Carmen has the upper hand or is just doing well in general are tinted red. In fact, this also serves as subtle foreshadowing towards the big twist at the end of season 1: [[RewatchBonus rewatching the episodes]] with the color symbolism in mind means you'll pay more attention to the fact that [[spoiler:several of [[HeelFaceTurn Shadow-San's]] scenes are tinted red]]. It's also significant that in the Season 4 scenes where Chase meets with Julia in her college office, Julia is wearing a red shirt, putting her firmly on Carmen's side while Chase, who is still on the fence but beginning to believe Julia was right about Carmen, is wearing a shirt with a red stripe along the sleeves and shoulders.

** Season 1: [[spoiler:Shadow-san was the one who discovered Carmen as a baby, and he failed her because he thought she could do better with her life than become a thief and a V.I.L.E. agent. He was the one who sabotaged the Janitors' helicopter when Carmen made her getaway, and would have joined Carmen in the boat if he had made it in time]].
** Season 2: [[spoiler:Carmen's father was Dexter Wolfe, a V.I.L.E. operative that Shadow-san was ordered to kill after he apparently defected. However, Shadow-san was beaten to the punch by an Interpol agent -- specifically, the head of A.C.M.E. And her mother is possibly still alive.]]

* RightForTheWrongReasons: During the climax of season 2, [[spoiler:Coach Brunt reveals to Carmen what happened to her father in the hopes of driving her away from an ally. It works -- except Brunt was trying to drive her away from Shadow-san, not the Chief.]]

** "Protect the face" comes up repeatedly when Carmen is fighting her former classmates. It's Coach Brunt's first rule of self-defense, and Carmen's go-to maneuver is either attacking the face or threatening to as a distraction. And Shadow-san even gets to use it back on Brunt, taunting her that she didn't do this, when nearly defeating her in combat in "The VILE History Caper".

** The first season ends with [[spoiler: Chase going to the hospital after having V.I.L.E.'s truth device clamped to his head, The Chief of A.C.M.E. face to face with Carmen Sandiego, Shadow-san revealing his true colors and leaving Carmen with a new V.I.L.E. hard-drive which means more adventures for her and the crew.]]
** The second season ends with [[spoiler: Carmen and Shadow-san discovering that her mother is still alive and setting off to find her, Chase being re-inducted into A.C.M.E. by the Chief as part of their new plan to stop Carmen, and V.I.L.E.'s inner circle searching for a new headquarters.]]

* SoundtrackDissonance: In "The Daisho Caper", Shadow-san battles a group of thugs while a karoake machine continues to blare [[Music/ElvisPresley Suspicious Minds]] in the background.

** Shadow-san refuses to show any favoritism to Carmen and it's implied he fails her on purpose so she can't graduate with her class. This led to her defection because she snuck out to spite him and his rigged exam. [[spoiler: It turns out his intention was to keep her from becoming a thief because he was worried she was throwing her life away]].

* StoryArc: Season 2 has V.I.L.E. trying to find someone to replace [[spoiler:Shadow-san's position after he defects.]]
* SubliminalSeduction: "The Opera at the Outback Caper" has Dr. Bellum's plan release a subliminal command to [[spoiler: unleash the Boomerang rocket]] when the head scientist hears "L'Amour est ouisou rebelle". [[spoiler: Unfortunately, since Carmen was also there when Le Chevere unleashed the command, she is also commanded to activate the rocket when she was trying to delete its codes.]]

'''Tigress:''' Sorry, we only play with ''wicked'' witches.

** Shadow-san states the same when asked about his former name, saying that [[spoiler:Suhara]] was swallowed by darkness a long time ago.

* UnwinnableByDesign: Carmen suspects that her pick-pocketing exam against Shadow-san was one, that she failed to lift the dollar bill from his coat because there was no bill to steal. [[spoiler:She was right because Shadow-san didn't want her to pass.]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: [[spoiler:The Chief]] ends up being this when Carmen's past is revealed. [[spoiler:Carmen's father was a thief who was planning to defect when Carmen was a baby, for her safety and to give her a better life. When Shadow-san was sent to assassinate him, he balked on realizing that the defector had a child. Cue the Chief showing up with Interpol and shooting Carmen's father, forcing Shadow-san to flee with the baby back to V.I.L.E. island. This led to Carmen being raised by the same people her parents were trying to flee, and Shadow-san trying to make amends for his mistake. Carmen, when she hears the story, refuses to ally with [=A.C.M.E.=] and hacks into their system to find out if the story is true]].

** Carmen and [[spoiler:Shadow-san both do this when [=A.C.M.E.=] agents]] are getting close to them in "The Hot Rocks Of Rio Caper Part-2".
* VehicularSabotage: When the Cleaners try to use a helicopter to capture the escaping Black Sheep in the pilot, they find several of the wires to the engine had been cut. [[spoiler:It wasn't Carmen who cut the wires - it was Shadow-san.]]
* VillainRespect: Shadow-san has this expression when Carmen successfully escapes V.I.L.E. island. [[spoiler:It's because she was leaving V.I.L.E. behind for good, which was what she - and he - wanted]].

* WaxOnWaxOff: Shadow-san is a Japanese staff member of V.I.L.E. whose class on pickpocketing centers around developing a dexterous, light touch by practicing origami.

** Episode 9: [[spoiler:Shadow-san reveals his true colors to Carmen, handing her a new V.I.L.E. hard-drive and the Chief of A.C.M.E. finally meets face to face with Carmen Sandiego.]]
** Season 2, episode 10, [[spoiler:Shadow-san reveals Carmen's past; in that she was the daughter of the former Stealth 101 instructor Dexter Wolfe who was shot --by accident -- by the woman would become Chief of A.C.M.E. After Carmen hacks into A.C.M.E.'s database, Chief declares war on Carmen and reinstates Chase into A.C.M.E. to go after her.]]

** Pretty much all of the lines [[spoiler:Shadow-san]] says in the climax of the Season 1 finale, [[spoiler: particularly the one where he reveals that ''he'' found Carmen as a baby]].
** "Drop your weapon!" During the finale of season 3, when Roundabout and Shadow-San are fighting, a police helicopter shows up and Roundabout (and the viewers) believe it's for Shadow-San until the officer orders the person they are looking for to drop their weapon and [[spoiler: only Roundabout has a weapon, meaning he's been found out.]]

** All the teachers in V.I.L.E., despite being revealed to be villains, call out Carmen for her impulsive nature and recklessness. The words from Shadow-san hurt the most since he's the one who failed her.

* WouldntHurtAChild: Even when young Carmen tagged along on the graduation trip, V.I.L.E. just knocked her out and put her on a serious education regiment. [[spoiler:Earlier, they (at least most of them) adamantly refused to kill her as a baby when Shadow-san brought her back from his accidentally-successful attempt to ensure her father was dead. (He didn't actually kill her father, but he did bear witness.) Averted by Maelstrom, however, who casually suggested killing baby Carmen, but got out-voted by the others.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[OriginsEpisode Who]]'' on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?[[note]] '''Left to right:''' [[WrenchWench Ivy]] holding [[SurveillanceDrone Red Drone]], [[GetawayDriver Zack]], [[TheHero Carmen Sandiego]], [[MentorArchetype Shadowsan]], [[TheRival Tigress]][[/note]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[OriginStory Who]]'' is Carmen Sandiego?[[note]] '''Left to right:''' [[WrenchWench Ivy]] holding [[SurveillanceDrone Red Drone]], [[GetawayDriver Zack]], [[TheHero Carmen Sandiego]], [[MentorArchetype Shadowsan]], [[TheRival Tigress]][[/note]]]]

!!''Carmen Sandiego'' provides examples of:

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[OriginStory Who]]'' is Carmen Sandiego?[[note]] '''Left to right:''' Ivy holding Red Drone, Zack, Carmen Sandiego, Shadowsan, Tigress[[/note]]]]

->''"Some things possess value other than entertainment, dear reader. Any historic writing such this [[Website/TVTropes website]] belongs to everyone. Its theft would rob the world of knowledge and that would be a true crime."''

->''"Some things possess value other than entertainment, dear reader. Any historic writing such this website belongs to everyone. Its theft would rob the world of knowledge and that would be a true crime."''

->''"Some things possess value other than entertainment, dear reader. Any historic writing such this website belongs to everyone. Its theft would rob the world of knowledge and that would be a true crime. "''

----

* BareYourMidriff: Tigress dresses like this a few times in season 4, once when visiting Egypt with Cleo, and again [[spoiler:she ties up her orange top while in prison at the end]].

* {{Leitmotif}}: Paper Star has one. It’s an IronicNurseryTune.