History WesternAnimation / SpartakusAndTheSunBeneathTheSea

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Surprisingly,[=Nasty Max/Maxagaze=] the Captain of the pirates turns out to be one. During the Pirates' ADayInTheLimelight episode Rebecca and Matt, after being captured, instigate a mutiny by pointing out how unfair it is for the captain to keep most of the loot (merely by virtue of being the captain) while the rest of the crew get scraps. When Nasty Max eventually wins back the trust of his crew he establishes a meritocratic system of distribution by promising that whoever catches Rebecca and Matt will get the lion's share of the loot.

* {{Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain}}s: The Pirates border on this trope, being comical bumblers who are played for laughs more often than not, but thet have a few too many moments where they're being genuine threats to perfectly fit the trope.

* LargeHam: The pirates, and how. Specially Meedios, who whenever something was about to happen to the group, would start shouting "ALAAAAARRRRRMMMM! ALAAAAAAARRRRMMMM!!" into the nearest microphone.
* {{Leitmotif}}: Several, though of course the pirates' song and Flashbic are the most notable, functioning as character songs for the pirates and Bic and Bac, respectively.

** Much is made about Spartakus, being the finest gladiator ever to roam the strata, but his combat skills are almost never used to solve a problem. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that Spartakus fled his world to escape being a gladiator, and put violence behind him.

* TakenForGranite: The Temple of the Condor features a large number of odd statues... with heartbeats. [[spoiler: At the end of the episode, all the petrification effects are reversed and all the statues wake up.]]

!!This series contains examples of:

* TakeThat: The pirates' PunnyNames in the orignal French version, as well as a lot of the scenery in their lairs, seem to harshly criticize crass, lowbrow mass media that focuses on sex and consumerism.
* VillainSong: See PirateSong above. The Pirates have an especially catchy one, which they sing [[OnceAnEpisode in pretty much all the episodes featuring them... which is to say most of the episodes]].
* VerbalTic: Spartakus has a mild one - he avoids the use of contractions.

* CartoonishCompanions: The Pirates have a much more rotund, cartoonish and caricatural style, standing out sharply in comparison with all the other, more realistic characters.

* [[EternalEnglish Eternal French]]: The civilizations of the surface have been out of contact with the civilizations of the strata for millenia. So naturally, everyone understands each other just fine.

* PirateSong: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtBWrAiWBLc The Pirate Dance]]" is sung every time the Pirates appear in a scene.

* BookEnds: In the first episode when Matt and Rebecca join, they mention they need to be back in time for dinner. At the end of the last episode, when Tehrig drops them off home, their mother is calling them to dinner.

* DemotedtoExtra: Shangor, one of the children of Arkadia. [[note]]and possibly implied to be Shangora's brother[[/note]] He had a pretty big part in the first episode, but after that, he was usually only seen in clips of the first episode whenever Arkana was explaining her mission, or in the background.

** An odd one with Bic and Bac, who seem to have swapped names in the English dub. In the original, Bic is the one with the long ears and Bac the one with the short, round ears, but in the English dub it's the other way around.

* {{Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain}}s: The Pirates border on this trope.

* ShesAManInJapan: As if swapping Bic and Bac's names for the English dub wasn't confusing enough, they also decided to make one of them a girl -- Bic (the one with the round ears, who is named "Bac" in the original) is voiced by a woman and appears to be female, whereas both pangolins were voiced by men and clearly male in the original.

* DubNameChange:

** An odd one with Bic and Bac, who seem to have swapped names in the English dub. In French, Bic is the one with the long ears and Bac the one with the short, round ears, but in the English dub it's the other way around.