History WesternAnimation / RescueHeroes

* TenMinuteRetirement: In "When It Rains, It Pours", Ariel, after rescuing a hiker during a forest fire, accept a job to become a spokesperson for the National Safety Council in order to teach kids about safety. [[spoiler: After a while, she starts to miss being a Rescue Hero. Ultimately, she rejoins the team and decide to create a website to teach kids about safety.]] Out of all the other Rescue Heroes, Rocky was the one who was ''not'' happy about Ariel leaving.

** Wendy is uncomfortable with water rescues [[JustifiedTrope due to a near drowning incident in her past.]] In "Tidal Wave", she ends up putting her fears aside to do her job, partly due to [[ThePowerOfTrust how much she trusts her partner for the job, Gil Gripper]].

** Wendy is uncomfortable with water rescues due to a near drowning incident in her past. In "Tidal Wave", she ends up putting her fears aside to do her job, partly due to [[ThePowerOfTrust how much she trusts her partner for the job, Gil Gripper]].

* NoAntagonist: As a general rule, there are no true villains on the show. The heroes combat accidents and natural disasters. While an accident may be someone's fault, it is none-the-less an ''accident'' and not due to anyone's deliberate malice. However, "A Whale Of An Adventure" is a notable exception: there, the crisis is made much worse by illegal whalers who knowingly ignore a warning about a mined area of the sea, and deliberately jam signals to avoid detection.

* NoAntagonist: As a general rule, there are no true villains on the show. The heroes combat accidents and natural disasters. While an accident may be someone's fault, it is none-the-less an ''accident'' and not due to anyone's deliberate malice. However, ''A Whale Of An Adventure'' is a notable exception: there, the crisis is made much worse by illegal whalers who knowingly ignore a warning about a mined area of the sea, and deliberately jam signals to avoid detection.

* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: In "A Bridge Too Far", Rocky calls in Bob Buoy for a bridge rescue and puts Ariel on the ground instead of in her chopper, to his teammates' puzzlement. As it turns out, Ariel's Spanish skills make her more useful in communicating with the Spanish-speaking locals and Bob ends up being vital in rescuing passengers who got trapped in a train car that fell into the river and two passengers who get swept away by said river.

* NoAntagonist: As a general rule, there are no true villains on the show. The heroes combat accidents and natural disasters. While an accident may be someone's fault, it is none-the-less an ''accident'' and not due to anyone's deliberate malice.

* ColdOpen: Nearly every episode begins with a minor rescue before the main plot kicks in. Sometimes these were completely unrelated to the bulk of the episode, but occasionally they would set up something major with the episode's theme. For example, "Twister" starts off with a professor who goes back into a burning building to retrieve his research, foreshadowing the conflict with Rocky having to decide between his life and a material possession.

** Bizarrely, and perhaps in an unintentional example, the theme tune from the first season shows up at the beginning of "Going With the Wind" (which was a third season episode; the second and third seasons had a completely different title theme from the first). This likely was the result of the fact that the music library didn't change from the design styles, but it can still be jarring if you knew the show long enough.

* BigDamnHeroes: The Rescue Heroes.

* BigEater: Rocky.

* IdiotBall: Any time someone deliberately ignores safety guidelines.

** There was also Carter from the episode "The Chilling Championship." Him and the rest of his basketball team are on a bus that is dangling off a bridge. They are told to stay put until the rescue team arrives, but Carter decides to try and back the bus up himself, thinking that it will make him a hero, but it just makes things worse. Then when the team is all out of the bus, Carter goes right back inside to grab the trophy just as the bus plunges into the river.
** The episode "Twister" starts off with the Rescue Heroes pulling some scientists out of a burning building, and one of them actually ''runs back into the building'' to grab his research. Even after they save him, all he cares about is his research going up in flames, until Rocky tells him that what he did was crazy. Then when the scientist sees how worried his wife and son were, he realizes that Rocky was right and he thanks the Rescue Heroes for saving him.

* InformedJudaism: The Waters family doesn't even get this in dialogue; just showing a menorah in their house when Wendy is worrying about Rocky in "All Alone for the Holidays".
* ItsAllMyFault: Rocky is hit with this in the movie when it's revealed [[spoiler: that his behavior in an earlier rescue resulted in Billy contracting a potentially fatal poisoning.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: Avery Ator in "Up, Up and Uh Oh".

* MamaBear: You can bet that if a woman has or knows of a child in danger, she'll be this trope. This includes a random civilian in "When It Rains, It Pours" who deliberately tells her rescuers that they can't leave because she and her boyfriend saw some Boy Scouts on a hike that have not returned; she's quite insistent the Rescue Heroes go after them.

* PunnyName:
** Rocky Canyon, Ariel Flyer, Jack Hammer, and many more. This even can apply to non-Rescue Heroes such as Avery Ator, Ariel's main rival in aviation.
** Particularly egregious is movie-exclusive Maureen Biologist (mentioned in dialogue and heard but not seen). Three guess what her job is.

* {{Tomboy}}: Ariel.

* TrueCompanions: The Rescue Heroes team. Highlighted in the MissingEpisode "Lava Alarm" where Billy is gently scolded for putting himself at risk to save a parrot.

* WholeEpisodeFlashback

*** One possible explanation is that the scene in question has to do with extreme sports, exciting but not dangerous. While the show had a library of background music for action scenes, these were most always used for rescues, so their use in that scene could have been confusing. Additionally, it could be a ContinuityNod for longtime viewers [[ParentalBonus (or parents of longtime viewers)]].

*** One possible explanation is that the scene in question has to do with extreme sports, exciting but not dangerous. While the show had a library of background music for action scenes, these were most always used for rescues, so their use in that scene could have been confusing. Additionally, it could be a ContinuityNod for longtime viewers [[ParentalBonus (or parents of longtime viewers)]].

* {{Hypocrite}}: Jake realizes he's being one in "Four Alarm Fire and Brimstone" when he begins the process of holding a grudge against his "little brother" Nick for coming along on a rescue and putting himself and his little brother in danger when he had tried to get Nick to forgive the neighborhood boy who accidentally burned down Nick's house with fireworks earlier in the episode. [[HypocrisyNod Jake's quick to acknowledge this and apologize once he figures it out]].

* HeroicBSOD: Billy has one of these in "Storm of the Century"; while it's fairly downplayed compared to most other examples, it's probably the episode that contains the biggest screw-up of any hero. [[spoiler:First off, he abandons higher priority work to try taking after his father who is in a position that Billy knows good and well he won't be able to handle alone, and after Billy already snapped at Wendy earlier on for bringing this subject up. He also ends up taking the Hyper Jet, which has up to this point been established as a prime tool for the heroes that they couldn't get along very far without, and he uses it to help out a single person. As if that weren't enough, the wind storm ends up picking up enough that the ship's electrical system gets badly damaged, completely cutting him off from all radio communication and losing all signal, and in the process gets the both of them lost. Top this off with him trapped in the jet with only his father, already [[IAmNotMyFather upset enough at him for not taking the path he was expecting Billy to take]], and getting badly injured from the impact of the jet's landing, and you can just see the look of utter defeat and despair on his face. Fortunately, he gets better once him and his father are able to set aside their past tensions.]]

* GagLips: One that ''isn't'' PlayedForLaughs. In the first season, Rocky Canyon and Jake Justice have noticeably bigger lips than the other characters, and both are black....yeah. Thankfully, they both have normal lips in the second and third seasons.

* GagLips: In the first season, Rocky Canyon and Jake Justice have noticeably bigger lips than the other characters, and both are black....yeah. Thankfully, they both have normal lips in the second and third seasons.

* DarkerAndEdgier: TheMovie is notably a lot darker than most episodes of the show. Most noteworthy is the fact that it deals with the idea of TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, where a series of lightning storms have the potential to collide and lead to the Earth's destruction. Even if you gloss over that though, it also deals with Billy's potentially fatal poisoning and Rocky not only being grounded for his failures, but [[spoiler:[[MyGodWhatHaveIDone learning he's at fault for Billy's poisoning.]]]] While the show always dealt with deadly situations, it never did it on a level this up close prior.

The Rescue Heroes Global Response Team is a team of [[EmergencyServices emergency rescue specialists]] (firefighters, police, mountain climbers, divers, spelunkers, etc.) who are on call at a moment's notice to travel to the sight of major emergencies anywhere in the world and deal with them, usually employing a variety of [[MerchandiseDriven high-tech vehicles and equipment.]] All this is directed by astronaut Roger Houston, who watches over the world from a space station. Conceptually very similar to the classic series ''[[{{Series/Thunderbirds}} Thunderbirds,]]'' but set in the PresentDay. Contrast with ''Series/TomicaHeroRescueForce'' and ''Series/TomicaHeroRescueFire''.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Jake realizes he's being one in "Four Alarm Fire And Brimstone" when he begins the process of holding a grudge against his "little brother" Nick for coming along on a rescue and putting himself and his little brother in danger when he had tried to get Nick to forgive the neighborhood boy who accidentally burned down Nick's house with fireworks earlier in the episode. [[HypocrisyNod Jake's quick to acknowledge this and apologize once he figures it out.]]

* ADayInTheLimelight: Roger in "Houston, We Have a Problem".

* EmbarrassingFirstName: Rocky's real name is Richmond as mentioned in "Cave In".
* EmbarrassingMiddleName: Jack's is Percy as mentioned in "Sibling Blowout".

** All the Rescue Heroes towards the kids they rescue but Rocky gets bonus points for [[BigBrotherMentor mentoring]] the current members of his old high school basketball team and training the towel/water boy in basic emergency response, the latter of which ends up saving the entire team after their bus crashes on a bridge in mid-winter.