Characters / Phineas and Ferb: Main Characters

aka: Phineas And Ferb Heinz Doofenshmirtz

Phineas and Ferb Main Character Index
Main Characters | Youth | Adults | Other Characters | Across the 2nd Dimension Characters

The main characters as seen in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension.

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The main duo:

In General

Ferb (left), Phineas (right)

So stick with us 'cause Phineas and Ferb are gonna do it all!

A duo of stepbrothers who spend their entire summer creating astonishing inventions and having endless fun with their friends.

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• The Ace: There's almost nothing Phineas and Ferb can't do.
• Academic Athlete: Two geniuses with their own athleticism.
• Adorably Precocious Child: In the sense that they are the most worldly-wise of the kid characters in the show.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Candace sees Phineas and Ferb as this due to their childish naivety, though they are a rare example where they don't do it on purpose.
• Badass Bookworm: Phineas has the ideas, Ferb makes the blueprints. In Mission Marvel, the brothers are offered an internship at Stark Industries.
• Born Lucky: "Just Our Luck" shows that Phineas and Ferb are naturally lucky. In the Milo Murphy's Law crossover, it turns out that it's an effect opposite to Murphy's Law that Baljeet dubs "The Phineas and Ferb Effect" - Their mere presence means that things around them tend to work out.
• Child Prodigy: It's been suggested that Phineas and Ferb have been inventing together since when they first met.
• Children Are Innocent: Due to their persistent optimism, Phineas and Ferb are usually unaffected by and oblivious to the world's evil side.
• Crazy-Prepared: Some of their inventions come with unexpected results. As demonstrated by the Swiss army knife, among other things. Whatever tools the heroes need to accomplish their goals, they will more often than not have them on hand.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Ferb does most of the engineering for their projects. Phineas is quite handy with tools.
• Godzilla Threshold: As it turns out they and their inventions are this to Perry, Agent P is fully aware of just what these two are capable of and how they could be a massive help on his missions, but thanks in part to his concern for their safety and the rules regarding his Secret Identity, he keeps them on the sidelines unless things get so dire that he literally has no other choice but to call them in.
• Guile Hero: Being the geniuses they are, it's not surprising they have their moments of this, notably their outwitting of evil!Baljeet and their own trap-infested computer-controlled tower.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: They do everything together.
• Horrible Judge of Character: They think Candace is a Cool Big Sis and are oblivious to the fact that she is always trying to get them in trouble. Even when she straight up tells them that's what she's trying to do.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Phineas and Ferb have blue eyes and a childlike innocence about them, their Child Prodigy tendencies aside.
• Innocent Prodigy: Both brothers are creative and technical geniuses, but use their talents more for their own amusement than anything else. They also manage to regularly figure out the solutions to other characters' problems, while still maintaining an oddly childlike sense of naivete.
• Jack of All Trades: These two display all kinds of skills, different jobs, and are resourcefully versatile despite being children.
• Karma Houdini: Played With as they don't do it with malicious intent, but a running gag in the series is Phineas and Ferb's chaotic inventions disappearing before Mom and Dad get home, with Candace trying to get them in trouble but the parents just viewing the boys as angels, though admittedly they are two of the nicest people you could posibly meet.
• Mad Scientist: They are not crazy, but they do create things like city-spanning roller coaster rides, time machine and tree houses that convert into Humongous Mechas. Phineas even dresses the part, lab coat, gloves, crazy hair and all, in "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!"
• Messy Hair: Both of them have rather unkempt hair.
• Mr. Fixit: Being handy with tools, they are skilled with both inventing and fixing things.
• Nice Guy: They are both very friendly and often use their inventions to help their friends and family.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Both have rather unusually-shaped heads shaped like the first letters in their names; Phineas' is thin and pointy, while Ferb's is long and rectangular.
• Oblivious to Hatred: They believe themselves to be on good terms with Candace, even if it's clear she finds them annoying and rarely supports their projects.
• Person of Mass Construction: Not all of their inventions are massive, but they're certainly capable of building city-spanning creations in less than a day when they feel like doing so.
• Protagonist Title: They are the main characters and both of their names are featured in the show's title.
• Red/Green Contrast: When it comes to making gadgets and building larger-than-life buildings, there's the redhead Phineas, who is the initiator of ideas, and his green-haired stepbrother Ferb, who is an an action-speaks-louder-than-words kind of guy, who are gonna do it all.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Phineas is the energetic Red Oni, Ferb is the quiet and stoic Blue Oni.
  • Both of them are the laid back and cool headed Blue Oni's to Candace's aggressive and neurotic Red Oni (save for when she's being a killjoy).
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Downplayed.
  • You'd think with everything Phineas and Ferb can accomplish over the course of a day, they'd make one of their projects to find a cure to a deadly disease, or to solve world hunger, or something. Unlike the trope namer they're kids; genius or no, it's not really fair to ask them to start solving global problems when they're only... less than 15. Alternatively, the constantly brought-up theme of making summer last may be Phineas acknowledging that his genius comes with responsibilities, and he wants to have as much fun as he can before he gets old enough that it really becomes time to start living up to them.
  • It's been implied in the show that they do make a difference for the Tri-State area with their inventions and schemes. They helped a jobless dancer once and lots of other people, just not the whole world. Some of their schemes are wildly successful business ideas, they helped save Christmas for all of Danville once, and it's been implied that the money they make and spend is a great boon to Danville's economy. When asked if they normally wash the house by raising it up and spinning it, Phineas replies that they usually use a giant bathtub, but that it's being currently used by the city as a reservoir.
• Refuge in Audacity: The reason why their mom never believes Candace. If your daughter said "Your sons are building an escalator to the moon!", would you believe her?
• Sibling Team: Two stepbrothers who are always working together.
• Vague Age: Lampshaded in The Movie, when Doofenshmirtz-2 says he did anything a puppet said when he was their age. Phineas says, "How old do you think we are?" Doof-2 says it's hard to tell with the one eye.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Downplayed: they are savvy in machinery and academics, yet have the interests of typical children.

Phineas Flynn

Voiced by: Vincent Martella (English) ^{Other Languages} Donald Reignoux, (French), Hadar Shachaf-Ma'ayan (Hebrew), Memo Aponte (series, Across the Second Dimension, and Milo Murphy's Law), Marc Winslow (Candace Against the Universe), (Latin America), Manuel Straube (German), Koki Miyata (Japanese), Sam Molavi (Seasons 1 & 2), Benjamin Tesfazion (Season 3), Teodor Siljeholm (Season 4) (Swedish)

Debut: "Rollercoaster"

Every day's a brand new day, you gotta carpe diem!

"I know what we're gonna do today!"

A cheerful boy who's always coming up with wild ideas of what to do over summer vacation, from building a humongous rollercoaster to traveling into outer space to breeding giant mutant sea-monkeys. Even ordinary activities such as running a lemonade stand or making ice-cream sundaes get taken up to eleven when Phineas gets involved.

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• 10-Minute Retirement: When he is brutally brainwashed in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" and when he is unable to come up with a way to escape the island in "Summer Belongs to You!".
• Allergic to Routine: His projects for the summer are a result of this. Note that all his projects and games tend to be a variant of Calvinball.
• Alliterative Name: Phineas^note Pronounced identically to an F Flynn.
• All-Loving Hero: Even to the most hostile of individuals, Phineas exhibits nothing but kindness. Most of the time.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: No canon mention is ever made of Phineas' biological father, though he is officially stated to not be Doofenshmirtz. (There is a mention in the non-canon Star Wars special when long lost' Candace asked Phineas if their parents divorced. Phineas says it's a funny story, and then he starts to tell it, only to be interrupted by the Death Star exploding.)
• Animal Motifs:
  • Fish, present in his bed (a raft with an aquarium with two fish pictures behind it) and arguably his name (Fin, Phineas).
  • Birds, present in the totem in his side of the room, in his physical appearance and his Animal-Themed Superbeing identity ('The Beak').
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: As the Beak.
• Arc Symbol: Triangles, ranging from the shape of his head to appearing in the background of pretty much every episode.
• Badass Adorable: He built many crazy inventions and he's only a pre-teen. He's done a lot of stuff that most kids would merely dream of (even helped save two worlds in The Movie). He can wipe out an army of invading robots with a baseball launcher and a robot dog as effectively as anyone else. He also fought an evil dictator from another dimension solo (however briefly) and lived to tell the tale (or not). In Mission Marvel, the brothers are offered an internship at Stark Industries.
• Bad Liar: In "The Beak", he scratches his ear, stutters and giggles nervously whenever he lies in that episode, and he lies only to Isabella, for that matter. Phineas also lies to Candace in "Out of Toon" and "The Curse of Candace", in the former that the audience loves her as the Big Bad, and the latter to prove that she's not a vampire, but ultimately ends up turning her to dust, i.e. killing her.
• Belated Love Epiphany: "Act Your Age" reveals that Phineas only started to realize his feelings for Isabella after she finally gave up on him and stopped hanging around him all the time.
• Berserk Button: Takes offense to his inventions being called "stupid" and will go on the defense.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • " GET ON THE TRIKE!!!"
  • In The Movie, as well as in "Mission Marvel". The long episodes tend to draw this out of him.
  Buford: I always told [Candace], "Don't ever make Phineas angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry."
  • This eventually gets lampshaded.
  Buford: This must be a special episode. He's yelling at his sister again.
  • This manifests itself in other ways too. Phineas is generally oblivious to malice, but once it gets through to him that he's dealing with a villain, being a mechanical genius means that he can quickly produce a contraption for battle and kick ass with it.
• Birthday Episode: "Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama!"
• Boyish Shorts: Phineas—who is at most ten years old—is always depicted wearing shorts, except in the winter. Meanwhile, his quiet, stoic stepbrother Ferb is shown wearing rolled-up pants. In addition when Phineas builds something, sometimes the person delivering the materials will comment on how young he is to be building it.
• Break the Cutie:
  • In "Phineas And Ferb Get Busted", when Phineas and Ferb are sent to a military school-esque summer camp meant to rob them of their creative tendencies (which it does), or, at least within Candace's dream within Perry's dream.
  • Also in "Summer Belongs To You" when everyone is stranded on an island, Phineas and Ferb are about to fail their plan of following the sun around the planet during the summer solstice.
  • And in the Christmas Special, when all of Danville is inexplicably placed on the naughty list, causing Phineas to briefly question his own morality in the song "Where Did We Go Wrong?".
  • And in "Bully Bromance Breakup", which reveals that he will snap if he's forced to go through a day without building or creating something.
  • He definitely becomes heartbroken in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe, after he and the others get rejected by Candace when they come to retrieve her on Feebla-Oot.
• Cannot Spit It Out: In "Act Your Age", Phineas developed romantic feelings for Isabella during high school, but as he was unaware that she had always had a crush on him, he initially didn't admit his feelings because he thought his love for her would be unrequited.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: He is prone to these, sometimes explaining potential risks in his typical cheerful tone. One knows that things are bleak when Phineas despairs or panics.
• Character Catch Phrase:
  • Whenever Phineas comes up with an idea for an invention, he proclaims "I know what we're gonna do today!"
  • He says "Hey, where's Perry?" whenever Perry disappears off to work and shouts "Oh there you are, Perry!" when Perry returns.
  • [Adult: "Aren't you a little young to be (something both he and Ferb are doing)?"] "Yes. Yes I am."
• Characterization Marches On: His slightly snarky and mischievous streak in early episodes (even more so in the show's original pitch) essentially vanished in later ones.
• Chaste Hero: He is completely oblivious to Isabella's crush. If "Act Your Age" is any indication, he will remain that way for years to come.
• Cheerful Child: He is an innocent little boy with a big, cheerful smile.
• Childhood Friend Romance: With Isabella. Neither of them were brave enough to admit their feelings for each other until college was right around the corner.
• Cloudcuckoolander: "A universal law without chance of appeal?! That's despotism!" (About the law of gravity)
• Complexity Addiction: Literally—he will suffer withdrawal symptoms if he has to tackle a difficult task straightforwardly, without the aid of crazy inventions. Sometimes causes problems for his friends (especially Isabella) when it is clear they would have preferred something simple, but Phineas cannot help going completely over the top.
• Deadpan Snarker: Phineas has a dry wit, though his "deadpan" is so subtle it can be hard to tell.
• Determinator: He believes that nothing is impossible and refuses to give up because of this belief.
• Didn't Think This Through: Phineas' great enthusiasm sometimes leads him to rush into things without thinking about the consequences. Things generally work out, but...
  Phineas: "A brain booster: in hindsight, not our best idea."
• Distant Duet: With Isabella in "Act Your Age".
• Does Not Like Spam: In "Doofapus", it's revealed that Phineas doesn't like zucchini.
• Everyone Can See It: With Isabella. Everyone but Phineas himself seems to know that she has a massive crush on him. By the time they are in high school, Phineas starts to develop romantic feelings toward Isabella as well; though neither of them are initially aware of the other's feelings because the both of them Cannot Spit It Out.
• The Everyman: Varies. In some episodes he's portrayed like this, in others he's a Cheerful Child.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Usually since he gains an idea of what they are gonna do today
  Phineas: Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!
• The Face: Phineas is the one talking with whoever the group needs for their latest "best day ever", from city officials to delivery guys to the Fireside Girls. The best example is persuading Love Handel to reunite for a concert while directing the girls to make a stage. This stands out even more considering his brother Ferb, who rarely ever talks.
• Fatal Flaw: His Horrible Judge of Character and Oblivious to Love tendencies. His optimism and willingness to see the best in others can make it hard for him to determine who are bad people, and cause him to be unaware of Candace's attempts to bust him. Additionally, him being oblivious to Isabella's feelings almost guaranteed the fall of their relationship, as he had to be told about it directly to his face, not to mention after he'd developed feelings for her himself.
• Fun Personified: He puts the fun into inventing.
• Gag Nose: His nose takes up most of his face, making him look like a pointy letter P when seen from the side.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Phineas isn't even street enough for that.
• Hairstyle Inertia: Kept the same Messy Hair from his youth as an adult.
• Heroic BSoD: He tends to fall into these when he is actively prevented from achieving his desires, such as when being brainwashed in "Phineas and Ferb Gets Busted!", or when stranded on a deserted island with no obvious building materials in "Summer Belongs to You!", and when Baljeet decides to climb a mountain without using any of his inventions in "Bully Bromance Breakup".
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • When he sacrifices his memories of Perry as a secret agent so that Perry can remain his pet in The Movie.
  • He sacrifices himself to save Isabella in "Night of the Living Pharmacists".
• Horrible Judge of Character: A side effect of his near-eternal optimism.
  • He doesn't realize Doofenshmirtz-2 (or for that matter Doof-1, but that was more understandable under the circumstances) is evil until he is told.
  • It takes him a lot to figure out that Mitch isn't friendly.
  • Apparently averted with Buford; Phineas regularly refers to him as a "bully", but he rarely seems to actually disapprove of Buford's bullying and apparently sees nothing wrong with having Buford in his social circle and letting him pick on Baljeet.
  • He doesn't know about Isabella having a crush on him until he's told directly. Even then he finds that too hard to believe.
• Identical Grandson: In "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein", he's like the creator of Perry the Platypustein. This is a bit weird, considering how no mention is made of Phineas-stein actually being related to Phineas.
• Improbable Sports Skills: In The Movie Phineas uses his baseball skills to destroy the satellite dish while deflecting Doofenshmirtz-2's shot from the baseball launcher, which is the weapon's rate of fire being able to launch in space.
• In-Series Nickname: Buford often calls him "Dinnerbell" because of his triangular-shaped head. It started as a bullying name, but later became this when he got Character Development.
• Innocently Insensitive: He's almost never intentionally malicious, but his Oblivious to Love tendencies often make him this. There have also been a few rare but noticeable moments where he neglects Ferb's well-being while distracted and injures him by accident. In "Save Summer", the pep talk he gives Candace to help overcome her arachnophobia just makes her more nervous at several points, though it's ultimately successful.
• Irony: in "Act Your Age", Phineas' Unrequited Love Switcheroo.
• Jerkass Ball: He is uncharacteristically harsh to Candace in "Mission Marvel". Later Lampshaded by Buford in "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer".
  Buford: This must be a special episode. He's yelling at his sister again.
• Jerkass Realization: He'll end up having this on the odd occasion he lets his anger get the best of him, notably in "Across the 2nd Dimension" and "Mission Marvel".
• Keet: He is an enthusiastic, energized and overall very friendly, extroverted kid.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: As a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of The Movie.
• The Leader: He's the one who comes up with and leads the kids' projects of the day, the one usually responsible for talking to any outside authorities they encounter, and strongly implied to be the reason why their entire group of friends comes together in the first place. (In "Last Day of Summer" after he and Ferb are wiped from existence, Buford, Baljeet, and Isabella start behaving very coldly towards one another and to Candace, as though they never really became friends.)
• Leitmotif: Two quick glockenspiel dings, followed by an Ethereal Choir whenever he says, "I know what we're gonna do today."
• Loophole Abuse: When he's too young to legally do something, he can often resort to this. For instance, he's too young to drive and thus participate in a motor race, so he has Ferb control the car remotely with a wireless device instead.
• Master of the Mixed Message: It's clear that he considers Isabella to be one of his closest friends, but any romantic gestures on his part are ambiguous at best and unintentional most of the time. "Act Your Age" shows that that he remains oblivious to her crush up through high school, but during which he develops a crush on her.
• Meaningful Name: Phineas is an energetic boy who tries to make summer as fun as possible while making expert use of Refuge in Audacity. Sounds a lot like another boy named Phineas. However, Word Of God claims that he was named after Phi(n)leas Fogg.
• Motor Mouth: In contrast to Ferb's silence.
• Mr. Imagination: In one episode, Buford even lampshades Phineas' ability to bend the laws of physics to his will.
• Nice Guy: He has gotten truly angry only a handful of times in the entire series and managed to recover fairly quickly each time. He even agreed to help his sister bust him once without batting an eye just because it would make her happy, and that was on the one occasion where he even acknowledged that she was trying to bust him at all.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He's enthusiastic about everything, including things that would scare most people. Especially on display in "One Good Scare Ought To Do It!", but even in the standard episodes he gets lines like this:
  "In case we capsize, your seat cushions can function as a headstone!"
  • In "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror", his intended ending to his spooky story was that he and his friends get ripped to shreds by the evil platypuses. He revises it after they all complain for a happier ending.
• No Brows: Though he does have brows, he doesn't have them for most of the time.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Played with throughout the series, to the chagrin of Isabella. The most prominent example has to be in "Summer Belongs to You", with Isabella singing "City of Love" and all.
  • Oh SO unfortunately for Isabella: He can acknowledge openly every OTHER couple and their obvious attractions to each other, but the idea of Isabella liking him never occurs to him. If Act Your Age is of any indication, everyone put two and two together and eventually figured it out, but it didn't bring Phineas out of the dark.
  • In the 2011 movie, he's really happy when Isabella kisses him (albeit really shocked) and it seems like he wants to do/say something else before their memories are wiped, but never gets the chance. The movie just never clarifies whether he liked the kiss but didn't think of it as love, or wasn't really aware of them - which would push his Oblivious to Love status up to eleven.
  • Averted by two alternate timeline/universe version of him, such as from ancient China in "Doof Dynasty", who is shown to have a crush on Princess Isabella. The other is his Star Wars counterpart with Pilot Isabella, Han Solo's rival.
• Official Couple: Phineas wises up after ten years and gets together with Isabella in "Act Your Age".
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If he's ever not happy for an extended period of time, you know things have taken a turn for the worst, or sweet platypus, you are screwed. Lampshaded in "Save Summer":
  Buford: This must be a special episode. He's yelling at his sister again.
• Phrase Catcher: "Aren't you a little young to be (verb)?"
  Phineas: Yes. Yes, I am. I get that a lot.
• The Pollyanna: Phineas has near-constant optimism and a can-do attitude. Because of this, he quite literally can and does achieve the impossible, every episode, with the help of his friends and family. That being said, he can occasionally crack...
• The Protagonist: He appears to have this role although the show features two protagonists.
• Pungeon Master: Phineas has hints of this, mostly in "A-G-L-E-T" and "The Beak".
• Relationship Upgrade: With Isabella, after high school.
• Rules Lawyer: Unintentionally, but Phineas tends to think outside the box and end up coming up with ideas to circumvent restrictions without even realizing he's doing it.
• Sarcasm-Blind: When Candace informs him that she's being sarcastic, he's happily shocked and goes off track complimenting her for her believability.
  Phineas: Well, y'know how we do something new every day?
  Candace: (pulling a priceless false-shocked expression) Noo...
  Beat
  Phineas: ...Oh, well, we try to build some big project, or do something—
  Candace: I'm aware of the concept, Phineas, I was just being sarcastic.
  Phineas: ...Really? Hey, that was pretty good. Wow, I totally fell for it. Ferb, I totally fell for it!
• Shipper on Deck: He's supportive of Candace's relationship with Jeremy, which makes his obliviousness towards Isabella's crush that much funnier (for the audience) and more frustrating (for Isabella).
• Single-Target Sexuality: Even though he took a long time to notice, he never romantically saw any girl besides Isabella.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Phineas talks like this in "Nerdy Dancin'":
  Phineas: (to Ferb) So, brother of mine, what endeavor shall we engage in today?
  (Jeremy walks up to the both of them)
  Phineas: Hey, Jeremy. What's the haps, big guy?
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: Smart Guy to Isabella's Strong Girl. He's good with tools, Isabella is tough and physically capable.
• Techno Babble: Goes into this from time to time when talking about how their inventions work.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: "Act Your Age" reveals that Isabella finally gave up on him when they started high school, concluding that he'd simply never realize that she ever had a crush on him. It was around that time that he started developing feelings for her. Though, she was right in the sense that he actually never did figure it out on his own — he had to be told about her crush on him after high school was over, by his friends, when he was fully convinced that he was stuck in the friend-zone.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice has gotten significantly deeper since the first season, as his voice actor has gotten older. However, the actor does still pitch his voice up a bit for Phineas. In "Act Your Age", a special episode that takes place ten years in the future, his voice naturally sounds a bit more grown-up.
• Voice for the Voiceless: He speaks most of the sentences for Ferb.
• What the Hell, Hero?: To Perry in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, thinking he was just a cover and that Perry didn't really love him and Ferb, not realizing that Perry had been hiding his secret agent identity to avoid being relocated to another family.
• Will They or Won't They?: With Isabella. they do, or rather, Will.

Ferbs "Ferb" Fletcher

Voiced (when he actually talks) by: Thomas Brodie-Sangster (English, 2007-2015), Danny Jacob (English, singing)^note Dan Povenmire and Aaron Daniel Jacob have also done his singing voice at least once, David Errigo Jr. (English, 2019-present)^{Other Languages} Fabrice Trojani (French), Marco Pontillo (Seasons 1 & 2), Diego Angeles (Seasons 3 & 4) (Latin America), John Åström (Show), Ludvid Hasselgren (Candace Against the Universe) (Swedish)

Debut: "Rollercoaster"

Yo, diggin' my ride from outer space...

"Actually lads, I'm not a Brit or a yank. I'm just Ferb."

Phineas' stepbrother and best friend. A quiet and stoic boy who usually says no more than one or two lines per episode. He's also a mechanical genius who gladly helps his brother assemble whatever contrived contraption they need for their latest scheme.

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• Agent Mulder: He believes in curses and is reluctant to try to fight them. He blocked his eyes when he thought Candace was a gorgon, and he backed away when Candace thought she was a vampire.
• Alliterative Name: Ferb Fletcher.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: As the Beak.
• Arc Symbol: Rectangles, ranging from his general body shape to the ones floating in the background.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Ferb may not say much, but it's no reason to underestimate him. See Minored in Ass-Kicking.
• Big Little Brother: Is younger than Phineas by two months despite being taller and more stoic. Downplayed by how slight the age difference is and the fact that it is almost never alluded to in the series proper.
• Chick Magnet: He's surprisingly popular with the ladies, including Vanessa. In "Thaddeus and Thor", Phineas explains to Candace that they don't build to compete, but for fun, with Ferb adding, "And for the ladies..." with a suggestive purr and Eyebrow Waggle.
• Cloudcuckoolander: One episode showed that if you channeled into his brainwaves, all you'd see was a psychedelic swirl of color. Judging by this and other brief glimpses we see into his mind, he is one of the few truly stoic examples of this trope.
• Complexity Addiction: Although his version doesn't exhibit craziness like Phineas, as seen in "Bully Bromance Break Up". He merely states that he was about to scream from not doing inventions.
• Covert Pervert: Despite being stoic and reserved, Ferb does have a slight perverted side, such as when he is joking that he and Phineas make their inventions to impress "the ladies" while making a suggestive expression.
• Deadpan Snarker: Despite the fact that he rarely talks, many of his Once an Episode lines are this. He also pulls off the silent version of this trope quite well.
• Declarative Finger: Ferb is often depicted in this pose, and delivers some of his lines with it.
• Dissonant Serenity: Ferb remains unfazed in the face of things even Phineas reacts to. His "zany serenity" is even lampshaded in "Invasion of the Ferb-Snatchers".
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The one time he's actually bothered by it is in The Beak, where Isabella is amazed at Phineas being the Beak, while Ferb, who was operating the legs, just stops in his tracks, clearly annoyed.
  Ferb: Um, hello? Entire lower-half of superhero here? I guess there's no glory in thighs.
• Emotionless Boy: In addition to not speaking much, he doesn't emote much either, having a straight face almost 24/7. He also rarely gets angry and upset. Phineas interprets them.
• Evil Brit: Only in Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars (and not for more than a few minutes in that).
• Exotic Eye Designs: The eye closest to the camera is small and round, while the eye furthest away is big and oval-shaped. They change shapes whenever his head turns.
• Handy Feet: Another of his numerous inexplicable skills.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When he sacrifices his memories of Perry as a secret agent so that Perry can remain his pet in The Movie. In "Night of the Living Pharmacists", he attacks several of the zombies and exposes himself to them in the process so Phineas and Isabella can continue on.
• Hidden Depths: Who knew he could rap? Plus his mad dancing skills in "Nerdy Dancing". So much that he can moonwalk up a wall! Note that Phineas did not have to look at him when asking about secret second lives.
  "Put your hand down, Ferb."
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: He's treated as a partner instead of a real sidekick, but otherwise fulfills the role of one. He can dance, he can rap, he can play almost any instrument, he's great at video games, he has taken down Buford with one move, he can speak Dolphin and Martian, he has Improbable Aiming Skills. Sometimes it looks as though the only thing he can't do is speak for more than 46 seconds, and even then... Emphasized in "It's No Picnic", which shows that, brilliant as he is, Phineas finds it more difficult to carry out his plans without Ferb around. He also ends up as one to Vanessa in "Vanessassary Roughness".
• Identical Grandson: To Ferb-gor in "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein". He also looks exactly like his grandfather Reginald Fletcher.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In "Ain't No Kiddie Ride", Ferb uses a slingshot to shoot a quarter into the quarter slot of the former children's ride (currently modified to be a working rocket) that Candace was at that moment falling to her doom in.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Ferb can teleport, speaks several languages including Martian, and is able to build anything the plot requires.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Implied in "Druselsteinoween" when Ferb graciously sings the Dance of Romance song for Vanessa and Monty Monogram. Ten years later in "Act Your Age", Ferb and Vanessa are together.
• Kidanova: Ferb makes a quip about how he builds stuff "for the ladies." Ironically, however, Ferb has only shown genuine interest in Vanessa, which could make him the opposite of this trope, so he may have been joking.
• The Lancer: To Phineas.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: As a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of The Movie.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Non-confrontational by nature, but pick a fight with him and he will kick your ass.
• Likes Older Women: He has a crush on Vanessa, who is approximately 6 years his senior. Eventually becomes a May–December Romance when they tie the knot in "Act Your Age".
• Living a Double Life: As mentioned in Hidden Depths, Ferb is living one, given Phineas isn't even looking when he tells Ferb to put his hand down.
• Mandatory Line: Once an Episode, he speaks.
• Manly Tears: He cries in The Movie at the sight of Phineas' second dimension counterpart falsely believing he's reuniting with Perry.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: Ferb takes Buford down in one Vulcan inspired move after he "gets in his face". Likewise although "Vanessasary Roughness" focuses on her as Action Girl he had some bad moves of his own.
• Missing Mom: No mention is ever made of Ferb's biological mother.
• Nerd Action Hero: Many of his most impressive feats require as much physical skill as creative brilliance. He can climb up a building using only plungers held in his hands, for instance.
• No Brows: His brows aren't visible that much.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: His pet chameleon, Steve.
• Not So Stoic: Although he is the most calm and cool-headed character in the show, he is not afraid to let his emotions show sometimes.
• Official Couple: With Vanessa in "Act Your Age".
• Offscreen Teleportation: He has displayed this ability a few times.
• Omniglot: Knows Dolphin, Martian, Japanese and whatever else the plot requires. According to the movie, he's a perfect imitation of Perry. The creators state that that sound is very hard to do, but Ferb's actor did it spot on.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: "Ferb" is short for... something. Lampshaded by Candace in one episode when she states that even she doesn't know his full name. Dan Povenmire revealed on Twitter that his real name is Ferbs, which Vanessa addresses him by in "Act Your Age".
• Out of Focus: True to his nature, he mostly serves in a supporting role not just in regular episodes, but also most of the long specials and even the movie. However, he does get his own subplot in "Summer Belongs to You!" and is Temporarily a Villain in "Phineas and Ferb Star Wars".
• Precocious Crush: On Vanessa.
• The Quiet One: Lampshaded in "Rollercoaster":
  Isabella: Does your stepbrother ever talk?
  Phineas: Ferb? He's more a man of action.
  • He seems to grow out of it a bit as a teenager, if "Act Your Age" is any indication.
• The Reliable One: He's often in the background doing the lion's share of construction for many of the brothers' inventions, and after said inventions are completed he is usually the one at the controls making sure everything runs smoothly.
• Rousing Speech: When his and Phineas' chameleon Steve runs off, and they and Isabella can't seem to find them and are about to give up, Ferb delivers this kind of speech to urge them to keep finding Steve.
• The Speechless: Subverted. He was originally intended to be this.
• Shipper on Deck: Seems to be this for Phineas and Isabella. In Happy Birthday Isabella, he even makes up an excuse so the two of them can spend time alone.
• The Silent Bob: Despite being a main character, he only speaks about once or twice per episode. He also rarely shows facial expressions, but can usually be interpreted by others, especially his brother Phineas. Sometimes they do fail to, though, usually for humorous effect. By "Act Your Age", he seems to have grown out of it a bit, and talks more than usual.
• Silent Partner: He's Phineas' main accomplish and one who barely talks.
• Silent Snarker: Ferb could count since he rarely talks, and spends more time rolling his eyes at the weirdness of his peers. He does some Deadpan Snarking too, though.
• The Smart Guy: He's relegated to this role in the movie when Perry joins the team. Notably, while he does get a few awesome moments of his own throughout the movie and helps out in the final battle with everyone else, he's the only protagonist (including Candace and Doofenshmirtz) that doesn't do anything major in the climactic final showdown with Doof-2.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: He can communicate with dolphins.
• The Stoic: Ferb does not show much facial expression and only occasionally smiles or frowns.
• Stuffy Brit: Ferb kinda counts. He has plenty of warmth, he just shows it as often as any emotion, which is very rarely.
• Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: He revealed that he was able to speak Martian during a trip to Mars.
• Team Chef: Ferb is usually the chef when the gang is up to cooking-related activities.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ferb loves himself a good submarine sandwich. Also, haggis, as revealed in "Where's Perry?".
• Temporarily a Villain: His alternate counterpart in "Phineas and Ferb: Star Wars", after being hit by Darthenshmirtz's Sith-inator. The creators note that this was the only way they could believably start a fight between him and Phineas.
• Tuckerization: Named after a friend of Dan Povenmire and Swampy, who is also quite talented in building things. "Ferb" also appeared as the name of several different characters on episodes of Rocko's Modern Life that Povenmire and Marsh wrote.
• Vocal Dissonance: He has a much deeper voice compared to the other boys; it's more noticeable with his singing voice (which is mostly Danny Jacob, the show's main songwriter).

Other main characters:

Candace Flynn

Candace Gertrude Flynn

Voiced by: Ashley Tisdale (English), Dan Povenmire (English, allergy-affected voice)^{Other Languages} Manon Azem, Gilles Morvan (allergy-affected voice) (French), Christine Byrd (series and Across the Second Dimension), Fernanda Gastelum (Milo Murphy's Law and Candace Against the Universe) (Latin America), Elina Raeder (Swedish)

Debut: "Rollercoaster"

Busted! (Busted!) I don't wanna put the hurt on you,
But you better believe me when I tell you,
That I've finally got the dirt on you...

"You guys are so busted!"

Phineas and Ferb's high-strung older sister. Like most teenage girls, she's obsessed with clothes-shopping, pop music, chatting on the phone, hanging with her friends, and boys (in particular her crush, Jeremy Johnson). Unlike most teenage girls, she's also obsessed with "busting" her brothers for their outlandish schemes. Candace tries constantly to expose their projects to their mom, but every time she comes home, the projects are gone and Candace is left stunned, sometimes leading Linda to forcibly take Candace away or send her to her room. Often, she sometimes approves of the projects and still loves her brothers one and the same.

---

• Absurd Phobia: For reasons unknown, she fears the number seven. She is also arachnophobic, as revealed in "Save Summer", as well as acrophobic.
• Accidental Athlete: Happens to Candace fairly often showing a remarkable athletic prowess of the girl. A good example in "Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama" where she perform impressive stunts to preserve the DVD that contains all the proof she will ever need for all of P&F's projects. We even have a kid asking her for an autograph after all of that!
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: In "We Call It Maze", she lets the praise of "Little Spark" Melissa over her earning fifty Fireside Girl patches in a day go to her head, and she starts talking down to Isabella and thinking she knows how to do everything. After her decisions end up getting the three of them in trouble, Candace is forced to admit she only earned the patches through Phineas, Ferb and Isabella's help.
• Action Girl: With the proper motivation... she once wrestled an alligator as part of a bid to get concert tickets.
• Action Survivor: For most part lacking the inexplicable awesomeness of her brothers (and, much of the time, the ability to casually keep up with them the way their friends often can), she tends to come across as this whenever she gets dragged along on adventures.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • In several episodes, Candace learns that if she just rolled with what her brothers did she would have more fun and less stress. Yet she never stops trying to bust her brothers. A possible justification for this is shown in one episode when the boys enter her mind. At one point, her Id, which personifies her desire to bust her brothers, wipes out part of her memory. If it does this whenever she learns she needs to get rid of it, this could be an Invoked Trope.
  • There are several episodes where she's worried that Jeremy will stop liking her or has stopped liking her for specific reasons. The reasons almost always turn out to be things that don't matter to him that much and there are also plenty of incidents where he catches her doing something bizarre or in a bizarre state after taking some Amusing Injuries and he seems to keep liking her anyway. Nevertheless, she remains very insecure about him in later episodes.
• Aloof Big Sister: She's very distant towards her brothers and spends a lot of her time trying to bust them, in addition to usually only partaking in their ideas if it benefits her.
• Always Someone Better: "Why is that when Phineas and Ferb have an idea, everyone's like, 'Oh wow, you guys are really clever,' and when I come up with something, everyone goes, 'What? Did you say something, Candace?'"
• Animals Hate Her: She was attacked by a lot of animals when she shout random insults to them close to an animal translator. The only animal who appears to tolerate her is Perry.
• Anti-Hero: Although she's rude, loud, joyless, selfish, and just plain dumb, Candace does, at the end of the day, mean well.
• Arc Symbol: Much like Phineas' triangles and Ferb's rectangles, Candace also has a signature shape. Semicircles, like her head seen from the side, or the circles splitting in half in the "Me, Myself and I" song.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the aptly named episode "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister", she takes some of the growth formula the boys invented in order to grow an extra two inches. It makes her gigantic instead.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • We see in several episodes, including "Dude, We're Getting The Band Back Together", that when Candace isn't trying to bust the boys they have a fairly close, loving relationship. Also, when she does bust them in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", we see how much Candace really cares for them, and values their creativity. Of course, all this was in Perry's dream, so it may not count.
  • In the two instances where she actually gets a CD of evidence to bust them, she's forsaken it to save Phineas's life (Traffic Cam Caper)/let Phineas enjoy his birthday (Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama!).
  • The ultimate example of this is in "Summer Belongs to You!". For once, Candace does not bust her brothers and joins them in their escapade to make it the longest day ever (mainly because they are going to Paris, which is where Jeremy is, but she still supports them throughout). When they finally make it home, she ends up hugging her brothers and expresses her love for them in song.
  • It is not until Candace Against the Universe that she outright says that she loves her brothers despite her many attempts to bust them.
• Badass Arm-Fold: She has one in a promo image of her, which is currently her character picture here.
• Badass Boast: "I've got a date with destiny and it's not going to end with a kiss."
• Badass Driver:
  • As seen in "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World" and "Bubble Boys". Made even more amazing with her being a teenager.
  • She's also this on a bicycle, pulling off amazing feats, such as repeatedly jumping on the seat or just not touching the handle at all, while riding it.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Downplayed. She's gotten herself into situations that should have resulted in disfiguring injuries, but all she's ever suffered are Amusing Injuries.
• Beneath the Mask: She's a closeted fan of Ducky Momo, which is apparently so embarrassing that she can't even share it with Stacy or her own mother. Jeremy eventually finds out, but being a nice guy, he's fine with it. Although, in "The Inator Method", she and Stacy play a Ducky Momo MMORPG game.
• Big Damn Heroes: Several times (see Big Sister Instinct), especially in "The Chronicles of Meap" and in special episodes.
• Big Eater: It's implied during Phineas and Ferb's Fantastic Voyage into her body, when they come across some tacos that appear to have been swallowed whole. This is played straight in Knot My Problem, where she eats a giant licorice Gordian Knot, though this is because she was hit by Doofenshmirtz's Eat-It-All-Inator ray, making her feel incredibly famished.
• The Big Girl: If she's with the Fireside Girls.
• Big Sister Bully: Beyond her main goal of trying to spoil their fun and get them in trouble, her usual treatment of the boys ranges from dismissive when they aren't doing any projects to openly hostile when they are, and is often seen yelling and lobbing insults at them.
• Big Sister Instinct: She has claimed that one of the reasons she busts is to protect them. She's also quite willing to save them in more conventional ways when they're really in danger.
• Big "WHAT?!": One of her reactions when the big idea disappears.
• Birthday Episode: "Candace Loses Her Head".
• Black-Hole Belly: In "Misperceived Monotreme" she eats three huge heart-shaped cookies while dismantling the funhouse, but her stomach remains flat. She also eats an entire giant Gordian Knot made of licorice when she's hit by Doofenshmirtz's Eat-It-All-Inator ray in Knot my Problem, again with her stomach remaining flat.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: At times, mainly in regards to proving Phineas and Ferb wrong to her parents.
• Break the Haughty: In virtually every episode, but most prevalent in "We Call It Maze".
• Butt-Monkey: She gets trampled, attacked, lost, scared half to death, and, of course, can never ever get her brothers busted.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': In stark contrast to her brothers getting away with building their project of the day, Candace will always get caught whenever she is involved in a scheme.
  • In Perry Lays An Egg, Linda comes home to find Candace making the boys do her version of the plan of keeping what they think is Perry's egg warm. As a result, she makes her clean up the mess she made in the backyard.
  • In Candace Gets Busted, her attempt at hosting a get-together got out of control and turned it into a Wild Teen Party. The Contrived Coincidence that always saves the brothers fails to save her, and her parents come home to find the ongoing party and promptly bust her.
• Can't Stand Them, Can't Live Without Them: Towards Phineas and Ferb. "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted" sees them get busted and sent to a reformatory school, but after realizing how tiresome and boring her life is without her brothers, she ultimately decides having her moronic brothers around was better.
• The Cassandra: She is constantly trying to prove to her mother that her brothers build all kinds of crazy projects in their backyard, but always fails in providing evidence.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Oh, you two are so busted!"
  • "Bu-bu-bu-but... Bu-bu-bu-but... Bu-bu-bu-but..."
  • "Mom! Phineas and Ferb/the boys are/have [insert Cassandra Truth here]!"
  • "You've gotta see this!"
  • "Hi, Jeremy!"
  • "Stacy? I'm gonna have to call you back."
  • "Will you keep it down? I'm trying to use the [Insert form of communication here]!"
  • "This is the best day ever!" said whenever something good happens to her.
  • "Mom. MOM!"
  • (giddy laughter)
  • "Meap."
  • In early episodes: "PHINEAS!!!"
  • "Candace is out. PEACE!!"
• Character Blog: The official site used to have one (now redirects to the character page and currently the DisneyNOW homepage).
• Character Focus: As one of the main characters, she receives plenty of focus episodes, but it's particularly noteworthy that she's one of the focus characters of the series finale (alongside Doofenshmirtz) and the protagonist of the show's second movie-length feature, Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe.
• Character Tics: Blink or you'll miss, Candace blinks erratically when excited (to the point of being seen as a psycho) when she believes the boys are about to get busted.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Along with her luck to survive, Candace possesses inhuman durability that she tanks lightning bolts, perilous falls, experimental accidents from her brother's invention, etc.
  • Her strength is occasionally proven at a ridiculous level. She even wrestled an alligator twice her size, robot duplicates, as well as lifted her mom, demonstrated by Perry when he was body-switched as seen punching a wall with her bare hands, she is proficient in deconstructing, capable of deconstructing a train cart, and even her brother's inventions, also with her bare hands, literally.
  • She is insanely fast and has a lot of stamina as she can run away from wild animals, run from home to city and vice versa, outrun a giant snowball, Normbots, keep up with a car, and more due to her activities with her brothers.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Candace has a few of these.
• Childhood Friend Romance: She and Jeremy have known each other since they were 11.
• Childhood Friends: She and Stacy have shared an enduring friend relationship. It is unknown when they met or how they became friends. What is known is that their relationship can be traced as far back as the third grade, when they were trying to impress a boy named Billy Clarke, as mentioned in "Spa Day".
• Childish Tooth Gap: In Save Summer, there is a scene where Candace watches an old VHS she made when she was 5 years old. We discover that she had a gap in her teeth making her adorable.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Candace flips out any time Jeremy is seen with another girl or even a guy who just looks like a girl from the back, for that matter.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Her neurotic, paranoid tendencies can make her one, as shown by many of her Imagine Spots.
• Complexity Addiction: She tends to overcomplicate things, just like her brothers. When Stacy says she likes Coltrane, Candace suggests various ideas to approach him, like hiding or pretending to be a talent scout or using a fake mustache. Stacy just goes over and says hi.
• Control Freak: She often polices her brothers to catch them in the act of doing something bustable, and harshly berates them when they do. Lampshaded in "Out of Toon" with her character being a supervillain literally called The Control Freak.
• Cool Big Sis: In the eyes of Phineas and Ferb, at least. A few episodes in the later seasons have her as one to Isabella too, even though they aren't actually related.
• Cosmic Plaything:
  • The coincidences that stop her from busting her brothers make this the only option. In one episode the space-time continuum itself was warped. In another the entire universe expanded. In The Movie, she calls it The Mysterious Force.
  • Not only is she not allowed to actually bust Phineas and Ferb, but she's not allowed to stop trying. Almost all attempts to permanently remedy this compulsion are either thwarted or re-activated the compulsion even worse than before. After all, Status Quo Is God.
• Creator Cameo: Dan Povenmire does her gruff allergy-induced voice when she comes in contact with wild parsnip.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: She is prone to panicking and tends to act rather erratically in general, but time and time again she has also shown capable of amazing feats given enough motivation (most commonly when she's trying to bust or protect her brothers). As a general rule, she's a complete Butt-Monkey when dealing with her obsessions, but when faced with an actual crisis, she's remarkably capable.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Note to those watching the show on their computers or portable DVD players: Please take your headphones off whenever it looks like Candace is going to scream. Your ears will thank you.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: She often trips, slips, Face Fault and loses (or struggles to gain) balance in most of her appearances. She's also not good at roller skating.
• Cute Giant: She becomes this when she grows to 50 feet tall in "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister".
• Daddy's Girl: It's not shown too often, but a few episodes suggest Candace has this kind of relationship with her dad, such as "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World" and "I Was a Middle Aged Robot". And considering the fact that he's actually her step-dad, it's pretty darn cute.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's most often her way of coping with her brothers' antics and being The Cassandra.
• Determinator: Candace never gives up on her objective of busting her brothers, despite the number of failures.
• Depending on the Writer: The depths of her obsession with busting her brothers can vary at times. Sometimes, when they seem to not actually be doing anything, she's glad to have a "day off" from busting them. At other times, she's shown spying on them, just waiting for them to do something bustable. And of course, there was the events of "The Best Lazy Day Ever," where Phineas and Ferb choosing to do nothing all day led to Candace breaking down and questioning who she was.
• Deuteragonist: Shares the role with Perry. After her brothers, she is the most important character on the show. In fact, this delves into Supporting Protagonist territory fairly often, with a lot of the "Phineas and Ferb plots" actually revolving around her attempts to bust her brothers, or something else that she is doing.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • More often than not, Candace simply charges in to try and bust her brothers without thinking, or does things along the way that backfire horribly.
  • Some of her attempts to bust her brothers are terribly ill-conceived. One particularly notable instance is in "Agent Doof", where she tries to get them busted for being turned into babies. Linda of course doesn't believe her, and even if she did, she could hardly punish them for it.
  • In "Meapless in Seattle", she tried to pull a Taking You with Me on the boys by going along with them on their quest and recording it on her phone, so they would all be busted together. However, it doesn't occur to her (or she simply doesn't care) that, as the elder sibling, she would receive a more severe punishment, due to allowing the boys to go on such an adventure.
  • In "Split Personality", Busting Candace attempts to prove Phineas and Ferb's invention divided the original Candace into two by calling Linda and having Romantic Candace talk to her over the phone. Linda immediately assumes Candace is playing some kind of joke on her.
• Disappeared Dad: No mention is ever made of Candace's biological father.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: Subverted. She isn't exactly gifted like her brothers, and she has a Sibling Rivalry with them. But after a few episodes, it'll become clear that the rivalry is one-sided on Candace's end, and her brothers don't think she's disappointing at all. As Phineas points out in "Summer Belongs To You", she takes part in so many of their adventures that she has actually done a lot of cool things: driving monster trucks, traveling through time, becoming the Queen of Mars, and so on. Because of this, they see her as a Cool Big Sis.
• The Drag-Along: Most of the time when she joins Phineas and Ferb's adventures, it's because she considers it to be necessary for her busting plan of the day. However, more often than not she will come away from the experience realizing the she had fun with her brothers. And, when she isn't complaining or getting into trouble, she has her moments of usefulness.
• Drives Like Crazy: She still has her learner's permit, so she hasn't gotten the hang of driving yet. Although her parallel parking has improved.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Gertrude.
• Emo Teen: In "Bee Day", she takes a personality test and finds out she's one of these, and adjusts accordingly with Stacy and Linda's help. At the end of the episode, Stacy reevaluates the test and discovers that Candace is actually a "busting and crush-obsessed older sister type who can't do math".
• Everyone Has Standards: There are a few instances where she decides it's not worth trying to bust them. Also, while she is obsessed with busting them, she would never cause any harm to them.
• Evil Laugh: "Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee..."
  Mom: I worry about you sometimes, Candace.
• Expy: Her obsession with busting a lucky, charismatic brother (and her complete failure to do so every time) is reminiscent of Jeanie from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
• Failure Is the Only Option: If she ever succeeded in busting her brothers, there'd be no show. The few times she does succeed, it's either undone almost instantly, or the project isn't extravagent enough for her mom to see a problem with it. Or it's a "What If?" episode illustrating that the consequences of her success would be really, really bad. In The Movie, she weaponizes this trope to save the day, knowing full well that everything will disappear if she tries to show it to her mom. It works. In "Lost in Danville", the boys also invoke this to stop a threat.
• Fangirl:
  • Of Ducky Momo (a duck who is a popular Japanese children's television show character). Introduced to the show when she was a child, Candace is still a dedicated fan of it at the age of 15.
  • Of Marvel in "Mission Marvel". She even wrote a fanfiction where she taught Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor and Iron Man to ice skate. Closer inspection reveals that she's a Thor fangirl above the others (her comic has her holding Thor's hand and Thor's hammer, she giggles when Thor lets her touch his hammer in the final fight, and screams Thor's name excitedly when he powers up).
• Fatal Flaw: Candace's are her Control Freak tendencies, her willingness to put her own needs first, and her desire to bring her brothers down to her level. Her flaws have even shown to be detrimental to Candace's own happiness and health on more than one occasion.
• Female Rockers Play Bass: In "Mom's Birthday", Candace is seen accompanying herself on the bass. The same episode reveals she plays a variety of other instruments that start with "B". However, "Mandace", "It's No Picnic" and "Last Day of Summer" also show her playing rhythm guitar.
• Fiery Redhead: However her long hair is more orange than red.
• Flanderization: An in-universe example occurs when Candace gets split into two. Both Candaces are defined solely by her strongest usually-shown traits: one is completely romantic and obsessed with Jeremy, the other is mean and psychotically obsessed with busting her brothers. Ironically, these aspects of her personality do actually get more exaggerated as the show goes on, as well as her ditziness.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Her blog (now redirects to the DisneyNOW homepage).
• Genki Girl: Her energy levels can rival her brothers', for starters.
• Girly Bruiser: Candace is a very stereotypical Valley Girl, but is very capable of putting up a fight with the proper motivation.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She exhibits most if not all traits associated with a teenage Valley Girl, yet she can be surprisingly athletic and is a fan of Marvel superheroes.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: The point on the top of her hair gets sharper during her more antagonistic moments.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Sometimes she willingly participates in one of Phineas and Ferbs activities, though intends to bust them once she's through. It did backfire on her once though.
• Gone Horribly Right: Gets a dose of this when she busts her brothers after going back in time. She was expecting the boys would just get grounded for building a homemade rollercoaster, but her actions lead not only to parents banning creativity for children, but also to Doofenshmirtz taking over the Tri-State Area after Candace inadvertently foiled one of Perry's plans to stop him. Of course, she's a huge victim of Aesop Amnesia.
• Guilty Pleasure: Ducky Momo, although it's less of a traditional guilty pleasure and more of a nostalgic attachment for her.
• Hairstyle Inertia: While her face is more mature as an adult, her hairstyle is still the same.
• Hero Antagonist: She dedicates herself to stopping the title characters' plans because their mother (presumably) wouldn't like them, although "Anti-Hero Antagonist" might fit better, as their plans rarely ever inconvenience anyone and she's doing it for her own self-gratification.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • When she sacrifices her memories of Perry as a secret agent so that Perry can remain her pet in The Movie.
  • In "Meapless in Seattle" she throw her cellphone towards the button that closes the ship's doors, preventing Mitch from escaping and giving up her chance to bust her brothers.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Despite having done many amazing things over the summer, she still views herself as not at all special or extraordinary.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Stacy.
• Hidden Depths:
  • In-universe, Candace is established as having a very good singing voice beyond just generic participation in the episodic musical numbers.
  • She also knows how to play twenty instruments, including the bass, the banjo, and the bassoon.
  • Read every single Sherlock Holmes story overnight.
  • She is an extremely fast runner.
  • She's a Marvel fangirl.
  • She goes to law school as an adult.
• His Own Worst Enemy: She's too stubborn to give up trying to bust her brothers, despite all the grief she goes through doing so.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Candace Gets Busted," she actually succeeds in busting herself when her mom comes home.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Despite how she normally treats her brothers, she won't stand for anyone else being mean to them.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • For her coming-of-age, Candace considers herself to be the only mentally mature person in her family, which is ironic, given her erratic and obsessive (bordering on selfish) behavior so common on the show.
  • In her pursuits to get her brothers in trouble, Candace's methods of gathering evidence aren't always exactly legal. Such as breaking and entering, and stealing.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Candace Against the Universe has her admit to herself that she's jealous of the things her brothers can do/get away with, and notes how insignificant she feels in comparison.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: In "Unfair Science Fair: Redux", she manages to convince herself that her friends have all spontaneously abandoned her through a combination of them all being involved in prior engagements and the misinterpretation of a text message. She ends up getting stranded on Mars and becoming the Queen of the native martians... who won't leave her alone, which leads to her realizing her moral for the day.
• Identical Stranger: Princess Baldegunde. Apparently, some elected official named Kevin from an alternate universe is identical to Candace as well.
• Imagine Spot: She's sometimes prone to thinking up highly improbable scenarios in these, such as Phineas and Ferb maliciously tricking her to avoid being busted (even though they don't appear to care or even know about her desire to do so), or the world exploding after she tries to ask Jeremy out.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In both "Meapless in Seattle" and "Last Day of Summer", she saves the day by throwing a small object at some sort of target.
• Improbable Parking Skills: In "Bubble Boys", Candace channels Elwood Blues to pull off a 90-degree Parallel Parking job with her right foot on the dashboard in her mother's temporarily-rocket-powered station wagon.
• Improbable Weapon User: Her hairdryer happens to be extremely strong in Phineas and Ferb's video game. She also uses her own health bar at one point.
• Insistent Terminology: It's not a party, it's an intimate get-together!
  Partygoers: (chanting) CANDACE PARTY! CANDACE PARTY!
  Candace: Don't call it that! It's just a get-together!
  Partygoers: (chanting) CANDACE PARTY! CANDACE PARTY!
  (phone rings)
  Phineas: Hi, Mom! What? (puts finger in ear) What? I'm sorry, I can't hear you over Candace's intimate get-together!
• Iron Butt Monkey: Candace is very durable, having remained uninjured after suffering from perilous falls and even lightning strikes.
• Irrational Hatred: Her animosity towards her brothers veers this way at times; more than once, she's voiced the belief that they intentionally try to ruin her day with their projects, and has openly questioned the idea of them doing something nice for her. When the characters go inside her head to find a lost memory, a murderous looking inner-Candace is seen smashing statues of the boys with a sledgehammer, and her Id, a giant monstrous version of herself, apparently preys on antelope with Phineas and Ferb's faces on them.
• It's All About Me: She tends to fall into this a lot. She'll ditch friends and family alike to spend time with Jeremy, and she'll drop anything for yet another chance at her ill-advised, obviously pointless, spiteful, and self-appointed mission of busting her brothers. Even with that aside, though, the beginning of "Candace's Big Day", when she criticizes her aunt's marriage plans because they didn't involve her, take the cake. Even her own mother nearly called her out on that one.
  Candace: What about my needs?
• It Was Here, I Swear!: Used as a Running Gag in the show.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Candace can be hard to root for sometimes, and her methods of busting Phineas and Ferb may seem excessive. But a lot of the time the boys plans are dangerous and even illegal. It should also be noted that letting such behavior go unchecked often gives children a sense of entitlement. Sure enough, Linda expresses anger at the boys projects' in the Imagine Spots where she sees them, further proving Candace correct.
  • In "Swiss Family Phineas", she's completely on point when telling Phineas he could've built something to transport them back home, and Phineas' argument that their father didn't tell them to do that is... flawed. Her idea of a huge slingshot is also not only considered a good idea, but is actually used in "Summer Belongs to You".
  • She complains about there being "some mysterious force" that makes her brothers' inventions vanish before she can get her mom to see them. It's later revealed in the Milo Murphy's Law crossover episode "The Phineas And Ferb Effect" that Phineas and Ferb do indeed possess an Effect that makes everything go right for them, which explains it.
• Jerkass Realization: She spent most of "Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama" trying to bust Phineas and Ferb on Phineas' birthday until she is touched by Phineas' speech, realizing that it would be cruel to bust Phineas on his birthday and smashing the DVD containing the evidences. She even cries Tears of Remorse before being comforted by Phineas himself.
• Jerkass to One: While she's generally snide, she particularly singles out Phineas, even when she typically goes after both him and Ferb.
  • In Christmas Vacation, she spends the entire special mocking Phineas' belief in Santa, and spitefully tells him Danville being branded naughty is all his fault, breaking his spirit.
  • When she does a nice thing for him on his birthday, only one nickel is counted, communicating that it's the first nice thing she's ever done for him.
  • She doesn't understand how anyone could have a crush on Phineas because of his triangle shaped head, and tells Isabella as much.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Even though she can come across as rude (at least Depending on the Writer), she has proven multiple times that she's quite a good person. Examples consist of accepting Lawrence and Ferb into her family, singing a birthday song to her mother, showing kindness towards her boyfriend and friends, and having a Big Sister Instinct towards her brothers. Additionally, while she's often outwardly very mean to her brothers and much of her life revolves around trying to bust them, on many occasions she shows that she does deeply care for them inside. In fact, she has claimed that one of her reasons for trying to bust her brothers is to protect them from their potentially dangerous activities. Particular highlights include saying she couldn't possibly imagine having better little brothers than Phineas and Ferb and singing about how proud she is of them, as well as destroying the convicting evidence of Phineas and Ferb's projects after the former gave a touching shout-out to her on his birthday.
• Jungle Princess: In "Where's Perry", after she thought that Jeremy had broken up with her, Candace turned to live with monkeys learning their language and how to live in the jungle, starting to act like a primitive monkey and wearing a jungle outfit. Subverting the usual Animals Hate Her trope, she became friendly with animals and joined them in the fight against Carl's robots.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: While she’s a good person at heart, Candace’s attempts to bust her brothers are out of spiteful envy over their talents and ability to get away with everything, and serve no other purpose than getting them in trouble and asserting her dominance over them. With that in mind, it’s much easier to watch her self-inflicted humiliation and failure.
• The Killjoy: Beyond her fanatical obsession with spoiling her brothers' fun at any cost, Candace will almost always scoff at any interests or hobbies Phineas or her parents talk about or engage in. She also snidely laughs in the face of anyone who believes in Santa, even Jeremy before she catches herself.
• Large Ham: She is always dramatically overreacting to everything.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: As a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of The Movie.
• Laugh of Love: She tends to giggle a lot when she's around Jeremy.
• Lawful Stupid: She's obsessed to stopping the kids' "misbehavior" because she thinks she's in charge and because she would never get away with it. Which is odd, because in "Perry Lays an Egg", Candace does create a Phineas and Ferb-esque project that Linda sees, and Linda's only response is asking her to clean it up when she's done, which isn't so much a punishment as it is a reasonable request. Candace even says "Why do you only see mine?".
• Lean and Mean: Downplayed. She's rather thin, but at her absolute worst she's a Jerkass.
• Le Parkour: She seems to have a natural gift for this. "Happy New Year" states that she's started taking lessons.
• Leitmotif:
  • A minor key variation of "Ring Around the Rosie" is often played when she's around. It is mainly based on the Wicked Witch's theme from The Wizard of Oz.
  • A few early episodes would often give her a Scare Chord when she is ready to present the Big Idea to her mom.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Whenever her brothers are in danger... or occasionally during her attempts to bust them.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She’s a little bit of both:
  • She’s the Dark to Stacy’s Light: Stacy prefers to do stereotypical teenage girl things like shopping and read magazines while Candace prefers to bust her brothers (sometimes through manipulation).
  • She can also be considered the Light to Vanessa and Suzy’s Dark: Because she acts more like a stereotypical romantic, fashion and magazine obsessed girly Valley Girl when compared to them. Vanessa is a snarky dark-haired Daddy's Little Villain who dresses in all black and Suzy is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who’ll go to great lengths to keep Candace away from her older brother, Jeremy, out of petty jealousy.
• Limited Social Circle: Lampshaded with prejudice - Candace has only four people on her cell phone phonebook (Jeremy, Stacy, Jenny and Mom).
• Limited Wardrobe: Wears the same red top and white skirt in every episode. She even lampshades this at several points. Though, unlike everyone else on the show, she actually has another outfit she's worn on multiple occasions (other characters have worn different outfits for particular events or songs, but no one else seems to have more than one everyday outfit, except Candace) as seen in "One Good Scare Outta do you Some Good" and "Comet Kermillion" (in the former case she's dressing up to go over to Jeremy's house, in the latter on a date with him.)
• Long Neck: A notable physical trait of hers is her unusually long neck. In the episode "Run Away Runway", Candace becomes a model because she's got a naturally long neck that goes with the high collar on a fashion designer's newest outfit.
• Made of Iron: Has been in situations that should have killed her, like falling down the side of a mountain and hitting every rock on the way down. She's perfectly fine, a little scuffed up, looking like she fell in the dirt.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: "Mom! Phineas and Ferb are covering my dialogue!" "Sure, sure they are, dear."
• Magic Skirt: Thankfully this is being toned down considering all the crazy stunts she does. Lampshaded in "Let's Bounce" , when her mother, after seeing her flip due to Phineas and Ferb's invention, comments "Lucky thing she's wearing a skort."
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Villain is stretching it a bit, but her persistence of busting her brothers does make this count.
  • She once finally managed to, sort of, bust her brothers in "Love at First Byte" and what came of it? They had to pick up towels.
  Candace: Way to make a mockery of my life goal, mom!
  • In "What Did I Miss?", she managed to get a "confession" out of Phineas, as he told Ferb and Linda that he and his friends helped domesticated squirrels to readjust to life in the wild while Ferb was at debate camp. Rather than bust Phineas as Candace hoped, Linda instead congratulated him for helping the squirrels.
• Mistaken for Insane: She suffers from a severe psychosis because she can't convince her mother that her little brothers make a habit of violating the laws of common sense, physics, or current technological progress. Every time she tries to expose them, some remarkably convenient plot device eliminates the evidence just as their mother arrives on the scene. Her mother has commented on this being a delusion.
• Modesty Towel: Candace spends almost the entirety of "Gaming the System" in one that, despite running, jumping, and fighting her way through a video game, stays put. Technically, she even went on her date wearing it under her dress. That must have been kind of uncomfortable to dance in (well, that or she went on the date with nothing underneath).
• Mood-Swinger: During "Such a Beautiful Day", she relentlessly alternates between greatly and happily enjoying her day to getting infuriated with her brothers' inventions while angrily recalling them at the drop of a hat.
• Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: She writes fanfiction of Marvel superheroes.
• Motive Decay: Non-villainous example. Her initial desire to bust her brothers is because she wishes them to be normal. Sometimes, however, her busting obsession comes to the level where Candace is just downright mean, trying to bust them even for crazy ideas that aren't at the level of danger, or going out of her way to yell at them before they've even done anything at all.
• Motor Mouth: Especially when she is nervous.
• Mushroom Samba: Contact with weird moss causes her to see weird things like Perry fighting a pharmacist, and a talking zebra. Both of which are Real After All. Not that she's in the right mind to notice.
  Candace: Why do my nostrils whisper to meeeeee?
• Nervous Wreck: She's a self-described "bundle of unbridled neuroses."
• Never My Fault: In "Attack of the Fifty Foot Sister", she uses Phineas and Ferb's growth potion without their knowledge or consent. When it starts making her grow beyond her desired height, she immediately blames her brothers, claiming "they did this to me".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In the two episodes where she actually succeeded in busting her brothers, the results were... unpleasant. One caused her brothers to be put in a reform school run by a sadistic, Drill Sergeant Nasty type. In a subversion, it was All Just a Dream. In the other, she used time travel to go back to the pilot and bust them for the roller coaster, which caused Doofenshmirtz to succeed in taking over the Tri-State area.
  • In "Mission Marvel", her overeagerness switches the superheroes' powers, rendering them ineffective. Later she accidentally gives Baljeet Hulk's powers, which causes Phineas to snap at her - though in a subversion, Hulkjeet actually turns out to be a valuable asset while fighting the villains.
• No Indoor Voice: She certainly tends to yell a lot.
• Noodle Incident: The time Candace got her head stuck in the sink.
• Not So Above It All: Often gets involved in the boys' projects in a friendly way, even if she's trying to bust them. "It's a Mud, Mud, Mud World" and "Spa Day" are but two examples out of many. In "Finding Mary McGuffin" she actually gives them their project. (To be detectives.)
• Odd Friendship: Sometimes with Isabella and Vanessa.
• Official Couple: With Jeremy. They get together officially in "Summer Belongs to You" and share their First Kiss.
• Oh, Crap!: She often gets this look during busting failures.
• Only Sane by Comparison: She often considers herself the Only Sane Woman, but given her erratic personality it usually turns out to be ironic. She does have a point in that she's the only person on the show who both sees and identifies the potential dangers of her brothers' antics, but she often participates in them or does equally dangerous things when trying to bust them.
  "Sometimes, I swear I'm the only normal one in this family". (She says, whilst dressed like a platypus.)
• Otaku: Candace is a closeted fan of Japanese kawaii character Ducky Momo.
• Our Vampires Are Different: She spends one episode thinking she's a vampire. Considering she turned to dust in the sun afterwards, she was right.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: When you have a brother and stepbrother who can basically bend reality to their whims, it's bound to happen. That being said, she's proven she can shine bright in her own way.
  Candace: Why is it when Phineas and Ferb have an idea, everyone's like "Oh, wow, you guys are really clever!" and when I come up with something everyone's like "What, did you say something, Candace?"
• Pet the Dog: Near literal example to Perry in "No More Bunny Business", after being somewhat of a Jerkass towards him earlier in the episode.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: She is often shown on the phone with best friend Stacy. She seems to carry her cellphone everywhere as well.
• Princess for a Day: Switches places with her look-alike Princess Baldegrunde in "Make Play".
• Rapid-Fire "But!": Her usual response when she realizes the big idea has vanished. Once made into part of a song. Another time she was so much in shock she actually drooled all over herself.
• Redheads Are Uncool: She has ginger hair and is a Butt-Monkey.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Linda's and Stacy's blue. Elaborating on the latter, Candace is the paranoid, loudmouthed teen obsessed with busting her brothers, while Stacy is the Only Sane Woman who (often unsuccessfully) acts as the voice of reason. Fittingly, Candace wears a red tank top while Stacy wears a blue skirt.
• Redundant Romance Attempt: Jeremy obviously likes her just as much as she likes him, but she's so blinded by her own insecurities that she still goes out of her way to make him notice her. In reality, he likes that she acts unhinged out of a deep desire to look after her younger brothers—Jeremy himself is a protective older brother.
• Relationship Upgrade: At the beginning of the show Jeremy is just "that cute guy," but as the show goes on they start dating, then become exclusive, then in "Summer Belongs to You" they refer to themselves as boyfriend and girlfriend and share their First Kiss. Parodied in "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted", where she claims that she and Jeremy are going steady to Stacy, but she feels no need to inform Jeremy of this.
• Running Gag: Her constantly trying to bust her brothers because of their schemes and failing most of the time.
• Sanity Slippage: It's not gradual and it's not regular like most examples, but it's definitely there. Seriously, this girl needs help. She has a psychological need to bust, as it's shown at least twice that she can't go without it. That doesn't smack of good mental health. If it wasn't clear before, the episode "Monster from the Id", which takes place largely in Candace's subconsciousness, seals it. Candace's head is one messed up place.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The neurotic Energetic Girl to Jeremy's laid-back Savvy Guy.
• The Scream: Candace sure likes to scream at the top of her lungs. It helps that Ashley Tisdale, Candace's voice, is very good at screaming.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One of her Catchphrases, whenever she's had enough, and is also used as a Borrowed Catchphrase by other characters is, "Candace is out, PEACE!" while flashing a peace sign.
• Secret Chaser: Her principal role is to try to expose Phineas and Ferb's inventions to Linda.
• Seen It All: As the series continues, Candace becomes less and less phased by the crazy antics her brothers get up to. It gets to the point where, in the episode "Mind Share", she immediately accepts that reptilian space aliens swapped bodies with Phineas and his friends.
  Phineas: Really? You believe that weird story just like that?
  Candace: Yeah, it's been a long summer, kid.
• Selective Obliviousness: In "The Beak", she instantly realized that her brothers were behind Danville's new superhero. However, she scoffed at the idea that they were fighting an actual supervillain, believing they were just playing a game with one of their friends.
• Series Goal: Candace's goal is to bust the boys.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Several episodes, such as "Gaming the System", state that she is very beautiful with a different outfit and hairstyle.
• Shout-Out: Word of God says she was mainly inspired by Jennifer Grey's character of Jeannie from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
• Sibling Rivalry: A one-sided example against her brothers, though when the boys aren't inventing, the three get along just fine.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Candace only has one guy for her: Jeremy Johnson. (With one exception in "A Hard Day's Knight" in which she had a crush on Charles... who happened to resemble Jeremy.)
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Candace's Love Interest Jeremy is so ridiculously nice that he seems too perfect. Which is probably good, because a less calm and understanding guy would probably not be able to handle a girl as neurotic and excitable as her.
• Skewed Priorities: Very prone to this; she tends to consider busting her brothers and/or making a shot at stardom to be more important than, say, the fact that she's currently fifty feet tall. Even when she seeks out Phineas and Ferb for help, she'll immediately switch to trying to bust them the second she sees one of their projects. That said, though, she can generally be counted on to come through in the end. Justified in that, well, she's a teenager.
• Slasher Smile: She uses these often, whenever she's in busting mode.
• Small Name, Big Ego: As mentioned above, she has something of an overinflated ego at times.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Sometimes with her mother.
• So Proud of You: During the Song "Summer Belongs to You", Candace sings about how proud she is of Phineas and Ferb.
• Squee: Both Candace and Stacy have been known to do this whenever they are about to do something exciting. This is especially true of Candace when Jeremy calls her to go on a date.
• Squirrels in My Pants: In "Comet Kermillian", Trope Namer.
• Stalker with a Crush: Candace arguably fits this role, particularly in the early episodes where she does things like photograph Jeremy hundreds of times and watch him through binoculars instead of just walking up and talking to him, not to mention her elaborate lists and scrapbook projects (which are apparently a secret from everyone besides Stacy). It seems it's not in the nature of this family to do things by halves. Not a typical example of this trope in that Jeremy and Candace develop a healthy relationship based on mutual affection. But the affection on the one side continues to be highly obsessive.
• Statuesque Stunner: Candace is 5'8", and only age 15, which would make her a downplayed version of a Huge Schoolgirl. Get to her older and much more shapely future self and...
• Stock Scream: Especially in the first season, many of the screams done by Candace are the same ones.
• The Stool Pigeon: She seems to vary between Snobby Sara, Obnoxious Oliva, Concerned Claire or Petty Patty, depending entirely on the writer.
• Straw Loser: It takes one Butt-Monkey to make the likes of Phineas and Ferb look like winners.
• Stronger Than They Look: Candace has demonstrated remarkable strength on few occasions. These occasions include when was able to cripple an alligator with her bare hands ("Fireside Girl Jamboree") and when she subdued a giant video game boss Buford by smacking him across the face with her in-game life bar ("Gaming the System"). She can perform one-handed push-ups ("I Was a Middle Aged Robot") and she has also been shown to be able to lift and carry her mother with no apparent difficulty.
• Supporting Protagonist: Candace and Doofenshmirtz receive more marked character development than the title characters and, in fact, many episodes would be relatively uneventful if they did not focus on their activities. They even become the protagonists in the Series Finale. In an interview, Dan Povenmire commented that they usually think of it as Phineas and Ferb providing the setting for Candace's story.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Often acts this way, despite not being all that bright herself.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: She certainly thinks of herself as this.
• Taking You with Me: As noted above, she joins the boys on their second adventure with Meap, and records it on her phone, intent on ensuring that they all get busted for it.
• Tagalong Kid: Inverted on the occasions where she joins in her brothers' projects (for varying reasons), such as in "Summer Belongs to You!", since she's the only teen (closest to adult) among her kid brothers and their friends.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Part of the reason she wants her brothers busted. She's shown to be envious of their capability for doing the impossible, and so seeks to bring them down to her level.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Several, usually due to the fact that her brothers seem to have no animosity towards her despite her busting attempts. And Jeremy basically is this trope embodied for her. Despite all the horrible things that happen to Candace and her futile efforts to bust her brothers, Jeremy's mere presence (along with a kind word or a helpful gesture) always lifts her spirits up somehow. Later, she becomes his official girlfriend.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl:
  • Comparably more tomboyish than the more girly Stacy. A conflict which often occurs between the two is how Stacy would rather be doing typical teenage girl stuff like shopping at the mall, while Candace would rather be busting her brothers. In addition, Candace is aggressive, loud mouthed, confrontational, hot headed and not very ladylike, while Stacy is more passive (though she does have her limits as shown when Candace pushes her levels of tolerance for her antics too far), polite, mellow and has a greater interest in shoes than Candace has.
  • Compared to snarky goth Vanessa and war-hardened Candace-2 from Across the 2nd Dimension, she's the girly girl.
• Too Dumb to Live: She's been known to throw herself into dangerous situations during her attempts to bust her brothers. And on more than one occasion, she's actually switched on one of their inventions without knowing what it does (causing her to be shrunk in one instance and turned to liquid in another). If she wasn't Made of Iron, she would be in the Danville cemetery right now.
• Took a Level in Badass: In one episode, she becomes a Fireside Girl, and manages to wrestle an alligator in a sewer and win. In another episode, she becomes a cave girl, and successfully holds her own against some evil killer robots. In the movie, we see firsthand what Candace has the potential to become by comparing her to her 2nd dimension counterpart. And apparently, in about 10 years, she shows her chops as a lawyer by figuring out how to bust someone without evidence.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Grilled cheese sandwiches.
• Tsundere: Type A with her brothers. She is more deredere with Jeremy.
• Unexplained Recovery: She's still around in subsequent episodes after she turned to dust in one episode, revealing she actually was a vampire in it.
• Unfazed Everyman: In spite of her neurotic tendencies, she has seen so many astounding things over the course of the show that they rarely surprise her anymore. Particularly in later seasons, there's an ironic trend for her to remain relatively calm in a real crisis, in contrast to her typical overreacting.
• Ungrateful Bitch: In some episodes, Phineas and Ferb help, save, or otherwise benefit Candace in some way... and she still tries to bust them afterward.
• Unknown Rival: Her brothers - Phineas especially - rarely ever seem to know or care that she's attempting to get them in trouble. Usually, Phineas at best assumes she's just interested in what they're doing, and most times they're unaware she's even involved. They never do anything to stop her, either - her attempts to bust them will fail anyway.
• Valley Girl: Candace talks in stereotypical teenage girl language.
• Victory Is Boring:
  • The episode Phineas and Ferb Get Busted has Candace actually getting Mom to see the boys' antics, which results in them being sent to a hellish reform school. Candace realizes how much she truly loves and misses her brothers, and embarks on a mission to rescue them. (In the end, though, the episode turns out to be a Dream Within a Dream... of Perry's!)
  • "The Best Lazy Day Ever", where Candace realizes she is so defined by busting her brothers that she breaks down when they aren't doing anything bustworthy. She gets better about this after getting together with Jeremy, though.
• Vocal Dissonance: Her allergy to wild parsnips causes her to speak in a deep, raspy, masculine voice (provided by series co-creator Dan Povenmire).
• Weirdness Magnet: To an insane and unfortunate degree.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Some of her Imagine Spots in which she successfully busts her brothers imply this.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Candace has many fears that are revealed throughout the series.
  • She has a mild fear of heights.
  • Ever since the "Squirrels In Her Pants" incident, she developed a huge fear of them.
  • In the special "Save Summer", it's revealed that she's been afraid of spiders ever since she was 5 years old. Part of the plot concerns Candace trying to overcome her fear.
• Wrestler of Beasts: In one episode, Candace has to acquire 50 Fireside Girl patches in one day to win concert tickets. One of the patches she gets is for wrestling an alligator in a sewer.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: As a result of her Cosmic Plaything status, victory is always taken away from her, right under her nose.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Once per Episode, Candace will try (in vain) to convince her mom of her brothers' activities.
• Zany Scheme: Is prone to these. It's especially noticeable in the Christmas Special, with her attempts to find out what Jeremy wants for Christmas, and "The Baljeetles", where she finds out Stacy likes Coltrane, and immediately begins devising one of these to get them together.

Perry the Platypus (Agent P)

Voiced by: Dee Bradley Baker

Debut: "Rollercoaster"

He's got more than just mad skill
He's got a beaver tail and a bill

"Ctrtrtrtrtr..."

Phineas and Ferb's faithful pet. He's a platypus, and they don't do much... or so the boys think. Secretly, he's actually a highly skilled secret agent for O.W.C.A. (the Organization Without a Cool Acronym), and he usually slips away Once an Episode to deal with whatever crazy scheme his arch nemesis, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, has cooked up.

For tropes pertaining to his appearances in Milo Murphy's Law, see here.

---

A trope example? PERRY the trope example!?

• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: "Besides his hat, he wears no clothes"
• The Ace: He's one of the best agents at O.W.C.A..
• Action Pet: A badass secret agent in an agency where virtually all of the field agents are action pets, and have a Fedora of Asskicking as their uniform.
• All Animals Are Dogs: He displays some dog-like traits in his mindless pet mode, though it might well be intentional on his part.
• Alliterative Name: Perry the Platypus.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: All platypuses (platypi? Platypeople?)^note It's actually Paddle are colored a bright turquoise (except for the one seen in Liam's flashback, which is brown).
• Animal Espionage: Secretly Agent P of the Organization Without a Cool Acronym. All other agents in the OWCA are also animals (and on at least one occasion, a potted plant).
• Animal Superheroes: Played even straighter in "Mission Marvel"
• Animal Talk: Apparently, "platypus" and "beaver" are sufficiently-similar languages for cross-species communication. It must be the tails.
• Arch-Enemy: To Doofenshmirtz. Perry's job is to thwart his daily scheme, in fact his entire life seems to revolve around it.
• Aside Glance: Perry is a master of this. Of course, as his nemesis is Doofenshmirtz, he would almost have to be.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite the fact that being a mindless pet is his cover, and despite his serious demeanor as a secret agent, Perry genuinely cares for Phineas and Ferb (and Candace to a somewhat lesser extent) and does everything he can to protect them.
• Badass Adorable: A skilled secret agent who truly loves his host family.
• Badass Biker: He has been shown riding scooters occasionally.
• Badass Driver: He can drive a variety of vehicles, including a banana truck.
• Badass in Distress: Now and then. He has been captured by certain villains (such as the Regurgitator and Doofenshmirtz-2) and on rare occasions needs help getting out of regular Doofenshmirtz's traps.
• Bag of Holding: His hat, in which he keeps many useful tools, which he frequently puts to good use to escape a trap. The hat - along with some other tools - are in turn hidden in his fur, which also serves as a Bag of Holding.
• Bash Brothers: With Phineas in The Movie's final battle.
• Big Brother Instinct: He's normally happy to foil Doofenshmirtz's plan and leave him to escape and defeat him the next time, but any time his plan (indirectly) threatens Phineas and Ferb (or the rest of his family), he quickly beats him and once left him handcuffed to be arrested, though Doof would later escape. This was demonstrated again in the Across the Second Dimension movie when he protects the boys from Platyborg, exposing his identity as a secret agent as a result. It was demonstrated again in the Save Summer special when he helps Doof save the entire world population (including his family) from the wrath of Aloyse von Roddenstein, who ends up being arrested and taken into O.W.C.A. custody.
• Big Damn Heroes: Being the most action-oriented character, he does this part quite often when necessary.
• Cartoony Tail: Has a flat, beaver-like tail. In Real Life, a platypus' tail is rounder and covered in fur.
• Character Focus: Though he has no shortage of screentime normally, the episode "Sidetracked" focuses particularly on him. Not only is most of the episode focused on his B-plot, all the A-plot scenes are shown from his point of view while he is in pet mode and we don't get to see any of the human characters' faces (except when they bend down).
• Civilized Animal: Perry can go from "mindless pet" to "intelligent animal with instincts" to "practically human" depending on both his and the episode's needs. In "Doof 101" Heinz successfully convinces a class of high school students that Perry is simply a small man who happens to look like a platypus.
• Clark Kenting: Doofenshmirtz almost never recognizes him without his Clark Kent-style fedora. It's even started to aggravate Perry, about the third time he wasn't recognized, you can see Perry sigh and slap it on. In Doofenshmirtz's defense, he's justified in that all platypuses, platypii, platypeople, whatever, are superficially identical (with Phineas noting Informed Flaws in all the wrong ones).
  • Doof's evil(er) counterpart in Across the Second Dimension lampshades this by trying to teach him to recognize Perry without the hat, after seeing an instance where Perry engaged in combat while hatless and Doof still didn’t identity him until he put it on. To show how bad Doof-1 is about recognizing Perry, in the movie, he already knew Phineas and Ferb's pet platypus was named Perry and had seen that Perry fighting the Platyborg, and that wasn't enough to make a connection. No wonder Perry got aggravated.
  • In the one occasion Doofenshmirtz did recognize Perry without the hat, he was trying to impress his professor, who said Perry couldn't be Doof's nemesis because he "doesn't even have a hat". Even despite insisting that it's a trick, Doofenshmirtz is convinced within a few minutes that the platypus in his trap really isn't Perry the Platypus.
  • When Perry switched bodies with Candace, the hat was what made Doofenshmirtz (and Major Monogram) recognize Perry. "A teenage girl?" "Perry the Teenage Girl!"
  • "A banjo-playing platypus?" Perry puts on his secret agent fedora "Perry the Banjo-Playing Platypus?!"
  • "What kind of a plumber are you?" "A platypus plumber?" "Perry the platypus plumber?" "PERRY THE PLATYPUS!!"
  • "A platypus balloon?" "A Perry the Platypus balloon?"
  • Taken to a ridiculous extreme in one episode where Doof captures Perry and Perry removes his hat while in the trap. Doof coos over the poor little regular platypus that "mean old Perry the Platypus" replaced himself with and springs the release. Perry immediately attacks and puts his hat back on. Doof's reaction? "I don't know how you got out of my trap, or what you did with that other platypus..."
  • In "Flop Starz", Perry disguises himself using only his hat and a pair of Groucho Marx glasses. Doofenshmirtz mistakes Perry for being a temp, and doesn't recognize Perry at all until Perry takes off the glasses.
    Doofenshmirtz: PERRY THE PLATYPUS?! You're a temp? Are times that hard?
  • In one episode, Doof programs his inator to defend itself against Perry while he leaves to put his evil scheme into action. The inator can't recognize Perry without his hat either, and gets violently dismantled rather quickly.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Ironically he's this to Doofensmirtz despite being his Arch-Enemy, though the two do treat each other as friends when not fighting. Perry has had to save Doofenshmirtz multiple times from accidents caused by his own stupidity.
• The Comically Serious: Perry is more serious-minded and professional than anyone else involved in his plotline, only rarely smiles and often expresses displeasure at Monogram and Carl goofing around or the absurd nature of Doofenshmirtz's plots. But he's still a platypus in a hat busting a ridiculous Mad Scientist.
• Cone of Shame: Worn in "Hail Doofania!" because he fell into a sandpaper factory.
• Crazy-Prepared: The Movie reveals that Perry has a back-up plan in case things get to be too much for him to handle: hand things over to Phineas and Ferb. And just in case they need something to work with, he has every single invention the boys have built on standby. In a similar vein, Perry almost always has something that will allow him to get out of Doof’s daily trap, no matter how absurd it is- and if he doesn’t, he’ll easily think of a way to do so since Doof isn't as smart as he thinks.
• Deadly Dodging: While saving his fellow agents from Normbots, as well as on various occasions when fighting Doof.
• Deep Cover Agent: He acts like a normal pet around his family.
• Detective Animal: His job is to stop Doofenshmirtz and other villains who serve as a bigger threat.
• Deuteragonist: Shares the role with Candace. Perry's adventures as a secret agent make him a Hero of Another Story to Phineas and Ferb, and each episode revolves around his ability to fight Doofenshmirtz and stop his evil plans while preventing Phineas and Ferb and company from figuring out his true identity. It's also implied in some episodes that Perry is sometimes responsible for making the brothers' inventions disappear and foiling Candace's attempts at busting them.
• Distressed Dude: Once an Episode, though there's a lot of Play-Along Prisoner going on.
• Egg-Laying Male: Subverted. His theme song calls him a "semi-aquatic, egg-laying mammal of action". Although this could just be a case of an unreliable singer, or refering to his species in general (only female platypi lays eggs), since he's never actually shown laying an egg. One episode revolved around Phineas and Ferb thinking he did, but this was just a comical coincidence, and the egg wasn't his.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Where he receives his missions and keeps a lot of his secret agent equipment.
• Enemy Mine: In "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer," Perry is shocked to learn that the bald mad scientist Rodney (who is far worse than Doof) has created a machine that will send the entire Earth into a new Ice Age that would endanger billions of lives, even Doof himself is completely horrified by this. Knowing that the cataclysm will endanger his host family as well, Perry willingly helped Doofenshmirtz in defeating Rodney.
• Escape Artist: Granted, this is with some cooperation on Doofenshmirtz's part, as Doofenshmirtz has stated that he purposefully designs traps that can be escaped from. Nonetheless, some of Perry's escape methods have been truly mind-boggling; in "Last Day of Summer", Perry manages to escape thirty consecutive traps. One of the few things he couldn't escape from is Phineas and Ferb's funhouse, which isn't even a trap.
• Everyone Has Standards: Perry had thwarted many of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's schemes, no matter how silly they would get. But when his scheme was learning whale speak, just so he could get back at them for stealing his girlfriend, Perry left in disgust. Also, in one episode where Doof activates some machinery that only opens and closes a lobster cage, he convinces Perry to concede defeat since it's pointless to fight over it, something which Perry concurred by giving Doof a thumbs up.
  • In one episode, Doofenshmirtz 'traps' him by pointing out that they're in a fine dining environment and it would be tacky to cause a scene in a nice restaurant.
• Faceship: His hoverjet is platypus-shaped.
• Fatal Flaw: He dislikes working as a group and prefers to work alone, to the point that he will often take charge and dismiss people trying to help him. This has lead to him getting into trouble on more than one occasion.
• Fedora of Asskicking: It's the uniform of the O.W.C.A. agents.
• Fish Eyes: His default expression when in pet mode.
• Friendly Enemy: In Doof's view, though Perry doesn't usually share it. Doof even once refers to Perry as his best friend (right before he punches him), and claims in "A Real Boy" that Perry feels like family to him. This was also a plot point in an episode where Peter the Panda becomes Doof's new nemesis.
• Full-Name Basis: Doof only ever calls him "Perry the Platypus", and very rarely just "Perry".
• Fur Is Clothing: He has ripped his fur off himself in this fashion occasionally (such as in "Unfair Science Fair").
• Furry Reminder: He may be fully sapient and his mindless pet behavior an act, but he does get to showcase his platypus characteristics on occasion, particularly his swimming ability. In "Primal Perry" he uses his bill to find a buried rock underwater and reveals that, like real platypuses, he has venomous ankle barbs.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: He occasionally hangs out with Doofenshmirtz when he's not being particularly evil.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Agent P is very adept with his.
• Guile Hero: His most prominent skill is his fighting prowess, but it's made clear that he's also smart and does plenty of thinking on his feet.
• Hero Antagonist: From a storytelling perspective, most of his plots revolve around Doof's backstories and goals, and he's the obstacle that must be faced.
• Heroic Mime: Justified, as he's an animal.
• Hero of Another Story: To Phineas and Ferb.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Honestly, he's more this with Doofenshmirtz than enemies.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: To the rest of the O.W.C.A. He's far more badass than even his fellow agents, as demonstrated during the final battle in the movie. In "Save Summer", Monty outright states that Perry is the best agent O.W.C.A. has.
• I Work Alone: He usually works solo, although he hasn't always shown aversion to teaming up with other agents. He did, however, dislike working with Agent Double 0-0, and he tends to be far more competent than other O.W.C.A. agents, so he generally doesn't team-up. He is especially characterized this way in "Sidetracked"; Doofenshmirtz even Lampshades this. His assigned partner for that episode, Lyla, had botched a previous mission of his or so he thought. However, he does successfully collaborate with Lyla after a rough start, and later episodes "Primal Perry" and "Where's Pinky?" show him working better with others. This is explored more in "The O.W.C.A. Files", in which he is put in charge of training some new recruits, but gets fed up with their incompetence and tries to complete the training exercises himself. By the end of the episode, he seemingly leaves them in a huff after a failed mission, but it turns out he did include them in his plan to save the day after all.
• Improbable Weapon User: When not busting out judo moves he tends to grab whatever's handy. This has included a screw, an iPod, a purse, a hot dog...
• Informed Species: Perry only looks vaguely like a real-life platypus, who have rounder beaks, darker fur, and furry tails. They also don't have duck-like feet like he does.
• Killer Rabbit: A platypus who is considered the best secret agent in an organization that recruits a whole host of other animals.
• The Lancer: Becomes this in the movie to Phineas.
• Leitmotif: How many cartoon characters can you name with a badass theme song? All together now! "Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo-bah, doo-bee-doo-bee-doo-bah, PERRRRYYYYYYY!"
• Lightning Bruiser: Or as Doofenshmirtz puts it, a "suave, semi-aquatic personification of unstoppable dynamic fury".
• Living a Double Life: Both a pet and a secret agent.
• Super-Scream: Believe it or not. He escapes from one of Doofenshmirtz's traps this way, though the audience doesn't actually get to hear him singing.
• Manly Tears: Almost always sad when Perry is driven to these, though it has been Played for Laughs at least once.
• Married to the Job: One of the reasons why he will never get a girlfriend.
• Master of Disguise: Many of his disguises are paper-thin ones, but they work. He does have a few others that are truly remarkable, such as a full-body Ferb suit in "Traffic Cam Caper".
• Mysterious Protector: In "Mission Marvel" where he shows up to aid the heroes in disguise without any of them knowing his true identity.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • When Doofenshmirtz decides, all on his own, to stop being evil and make cheese instead, Perry causes him to go back to being evil by eating his entire wheel of perfectly aged limburger without permission. Granted, Doofenshmirtz did say it was irresistible.
  • In "This Is Your Backstory", he gives Doofenshmirtz the final tragic backstory needed to power the Inator when he breaks free from his trap and attacks Doof, who taunts him for doing such a foolish thing, which made Perry feel so guilty of making things worse than ever.
• Not So Above It All: He may seem like a perpetually serious, no-nonsense secret agent, but he is not above having a bit of fun (especially when invited to by Doofenshmirtz), nor expressing amusement at sights that he finds whimsical. At one point when he was being briefed by Monogram, he appeared to be taking notes, only to be revealed later on that he was really drawing a caricature of his boss.
  • The movie has him pee on Doofenshirtz's sofa.
• Not So Stoic: He has his moments, most notably in "Drusselstein Driving Test Waltz".
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Pretends to be a mindless pet when around his owners, and the same goes for his colleagues. It's unclear if this applies to all animals in the setting, or just those trained to be agents of O.W.C.A.
• Only Sane Man: The most professional and mature of the entire cast. Yes, a platypus plays this role on this show.
• Papa Wolf: Is extremely protective of his young owners and a surefire way to anger him is to threaten them. He even is willing to blow his cover as a secret agent to protect them.
• Perpetual Frowner: His default expression is either a mindless look (as a pet) or a serious frown (as Agent P).
• Phrase Catcher: Both "CURSE YOU, PERRY THE PLATYPUS!!!!" from Doofenshmirtz, and "Oh, there you are, Perry" from his owners. Also from his owners, "Hey, where’s Perry?" when they notice he’s gone, which kicks off his B-plot.
  • There's also a recurring gag where whenever someone finds about Perry's secret, the first thing they ask about is the hat.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: He's small, but packs a punch. At one point in the movie, he supports the combined weight of Phineas, Ferb, Candace, and Doofenshmirtz to prevent them from falling into lava.
• Play-Along Prisoner: Even in cases when he could escape from Doofenshmirtz's traps quite easily, he almost always waits for Doof to finish explaining his plans first before attacking. Doofenshmirtz himself is aware of this, and not only does he get upset if an agent doesn't follow this protocol, he purposely designs traps that wouldn't be too difficult to escape from.
  • Sometimes when the trap doesn't work or Doof finds it's too much trouble, Perry just waits until he's done explaining without even being trapped at all.
• Poor Communication Kills: In the movie. He can't tell Phineas that he had to keep his secret agent status a secret to avoid being relocated to a new host family. (He does hand him a pamphlet, but Phineas throws that away instantly.)
• Prehensile Hair: Forms his hair into a working key to uncuff himself.
• Prehensile Tail: There's a variation on this one time when Doofenshmirtz traps him in a supposedly inanimate cat costume but he's still somehow able to use the cat's tail to free himself. His actual tail has this function as well.
• Puzzling Platypus: Downplayed. Apart from the odd person who mistakes him for a duck, or a beaver, most people consider Perry unremarkable.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Whenever he's not fighting with Doofenshmirtz and is just acting as Phineas and Ferb's pet.
• Running Gag:
  • Agent P always has different entrances to his lair and it is rarely the same entrance twice. (Usually, if it is, it is reused footage from his first entrance in Rollercoaster.)
  • Every time someone catches Perry as a secret agent, the first thing they almost always ask about is his hat.
  Candace: Perry has a hat?
• Sapient Pet: At least as smart as the human cast, though he's not allowed to reveal this to his owners (for safety reasons, not all villains are as incompetent as Doofenshmirtz).
• Save the Villain: Often does this when Doofenshmirtz is in life-threatening danger.
• Secret-Keeper: For Monty and Vanessa's relationship.
• Silent Snarker: Despite being intelligent, Perry can't actually speak, and Doofenshmirtz being Doofenshmirtz, he responds to many a scheme with eye-rolling, bored/annoyed looks, and Aside Glances.
• Spanner in the Works: Whenever Candace's plan to bust her brothers is ruined, it's usually an indirect result of Perry ruining Dr. Doofenshmirtz's plans.
• The Speechless: Again, he's a platypus.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: The source of the commonly asked question "Hey, where's Perry?" since he often vanishes in an instant when his owners aren't looking.
• The Stoic: Tends to keep cool most of the time.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: His fedora can be used as a chainsaw, a boomerang, and a Bag of Holding in which he can store even more weapons.
• Tail Slap: He does use his tail as a weapon.
• Team Pet: Phineas thinks of him as a simple pet that is nothing but a mascot for himself and his friends. Perry genuinely enjoys being a pet...except when his owners dress him in funny outfits.
• Toothy Bird: Real Life platypi at his age would only have horny plates inside their bills.
• The Unintelligible: Only speaks in a sound that sounds like a cross between a growl and chattering teeth.
• Weaponized Headgear: He has used his hat as both a boomerang and a chainsaw.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Dr. Doofenshmirtz of all people. In spite of their relation as nemeses, they’re actually rather kind and caring to each other both in and out of your daily jobs.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In Across The Second Dimension Phineas is pretty upset when they first find out, even if they do get over it by the second act.
  Phineas: I'm sorry. I'm just having trouble processing this right now. (Perry gives him a pamphlet) "So you discovered that your pet is a secret agent,"— (throws away the pamphlet) I don't want your pamphlet!!
• Willfully Weak: It's evident that he only uses his venomous spurs against truly dire threats, as Doofenshmirtz hadn't even been aware that he had them until being told such. To be fair, in real life the venom causes severe pain for days on end, and Perry knows everything generally gets wrapped up in a single day and so has no reason to use them on Doof.
• You Are Too Late: Played with Perry several times:
  • In the original pilot, there was a gag in which Doof told Perry he was too late, but then checks his watch to see if it is eleven o'clock. This gag would be reused in "Gaming the System".
  • In the Movie, he attempted to stop Doofenshmirtz from building a machine to travel to other dimensions, only to find out in horror that Phineas and Ferb have arrived in Doof's place and are helping him rebuild the machine. This forces a distraught Perry to act in pet mode, forcing himself to watch as Doof successfully activates his machine to open a portal to the 2nd Dimension.
  • In the "Save Summer" special, upon hearing of Doof's plan to send the Earth into an early autumn with his latest machine, Perry engages into a fight, but Doof uses a mop to swipe him across the room, causing Perry to accidentally activate the machine to move the Earth, just as Doof planned. Even after smacking out Doof with the same mop, Perry realizes too late that he has lost and goes back to O.W.C.A. HQ in shame. He even became more distraught when he learns that the event caused civil unrest, which allowed Doof and his villains of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. to take over the Tri-State Area.
  • In the Series Finale, Perry heads over to stop Doof from creating a new political position to become ruler of the Tri-State Area, but the twist is that Doof finally gets ahead of Perry by planting out 30 traps to keep him busy while creating the position before getting himself elected for it. Following his successful usurpation as Tri-Governor of the Tri-State Area, Doof signs a law forbidding Perry and the rest of the agency to stop him until his term is over. Realizing that he has lost again, Perry becomes extremely depressed, even begging for Doof to reconsider his anti-thwarting law (to no avail).

Dr. Doofenshmirtz

Dr. Heinz "Doof" Doofenshmirtz

Voiced by: Dan Povenmire (English)^{Other Languages} Pierre-François Pistorio (French), Yōhei Tadano (Japanese), Germán Fabregat, Mario Filio (episodes 9–10) (Latin America), Claus Brockmeyer (German), Gilad Kleter (Hebrew), Andreas Nilsson (Swedish)

Debut: "Rollercoaster"

But I'm no longer a hater,
'Cause I got an Inator
And an over-complicated scheme.

"When it comes to havoc, nobody wreaks like me!"

An evil scientist and Card-Carrying Villain who seeks to rule the Tri-State Area... usually. Most of his evil schemes actually involve him building an elaborate invention to wreak low-level havoc (like blowing up billboards that are blocking his view of the city skyline), getting revenge for a petty slight (like shooting tires at an ice-cream man who ran over his foot), or make amends for some trauma from his comically-bad childhood in Drusselstein (like dumping sand on the house of a bully who used to kick sand in his face when he was a kid), or some combination of the three.

Apparently, he's legally considered an ocelot.

Doofenshmirtz also has a prominent role during the second season of Milo Murphy's Law, in which he is destined to become Professor Time and invent time travel. After the events of The Phineas and Ferb Effect, he crashes at Milo's couch and tries to figure out how to be good enough to live up to these expectations. See here for his tropes related to that show. Also, see here for his Self-Demonstrating page.

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♫ Doofenshmirtz's Evil Trope Examples! ♫

• Absurd Phobia: He has many fears, including heights, bats, and... shellfish. His greatest fear? Sentient vending machines taking over the world.
• Abusive Parents: Not him, he's a good (if embarrassing) father to Vanessa, but his parents were a major contributor to his Hilariously Abusive Childhood. His mother immediately regifted his toy teddy bear present to Roger, and his father had him act as a replacement lawn gnome when the Doofenshmirtzes had them repossessed for hours on end.
• Accidental Misnaming: In "Ain't No Kiddie Ride". It's made funnier by the fact that everyone knows and loves his brother with the same exact last name.
• Achilles' Heel: When his plans fail, expect it to come from either a flaw he made during planning or just a Self-Destruct Mechanism- he seems to insist that you can't build an Inator without one, even when it would be counter-intuitive.
• Action Dad: He may be an incompetent villain, but don't even try to hit on his underage daughter unless you want to quickly be teleported to another, monster-filled dimension.
• Affably Evil: To the point of being best frenemies with Perry the Platypus. Even more so in The Movie where he's very polite and affable to the boys when they first meet him, after they offer to fix the Other Dimension-inator. Doof even offers them some food from his buffet.
  • According to his daughter, it's Inverted: he's not an evil guy who acts nice, he's a nice guy who acts evil.
• Affectionate Nickname: He is often called "Doof" for short. It started off as an Embarrassing Nickname when Major Monogram received a memo abbreviating his name, since "Doof" is another word for "idiot". But, later, even Heinz himself has referred to himself this way on several occasions.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: To Vanessa. It takes some Character Development for her to see him as more than an embarrassment.
• Ambiguous Gender: During his time as a Werecow, as typical dairy cows are Always Female.
• Ambiguously Evil: A rare Card-Carrying Villain example. Despite all the Inators he created, some of them are more good or neutral than evil. As the show goes on, it seems less and less like he actually wants to carry out his Evil Plans and more like he just makes them to get attention. Vanessa even calls him "a nice guy pretending to be evil" in the finale. On the other hand, the few times that he has managed to succeed, the results have sometimes been quite horrifying, and he might show a sign of remorse over it.
• Amicable Exes: With Charlene. He doesn't appreciate her snarkiness sometimes, and lets her have it in his songs, but they do get along the majority of the time. To the point of her calling him when she's tied up and can't pick up their daughter. He even thanked her for complimenting him over using bee pheromones to make himself look more 'attractive'.
• Amusing Injuries: He has a fire hydrant stuck in his leg. Apparently it's inoperable because it's too close to an artery.
• Animals Hate Him: Even if they're not O.W.C.A. agents, Doof will rarely have good experiences with animals. Just to name a few examples: he gets pooped on by a flock of pigeons, a whale insults him and steals his date, he gets stung by bees on at least two occasions, and even his own adoptive ocelot mom attacks him (which is apparently still better than how his actual parents treated him).
• Arch-Enemy: To Perry the Platypus. Perry's life seems devoted to thwarting his plans.
• Artificial Limbs: Somehow lost both of his arms. The ones we see in the show are made of titanium.
• Athletically Challenged: He is too uncoordinated to be good at nearly any sports, with his main "athletic" talent being in cup-stacking. He has an entire song where he laments that his "mother's love was always inexplicably linked to kickball", and that while his brother was always a natural, he was too uncoordinated to be good at kickball, rugby, soccer, football, kick-the-can, or martial arts, all of which he tried in an effort to win her love.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Doof has a lot of trouble keeping on track. Naturally, he frequently Lampshades it:
  Doofenshmirtz: "Man, I wish I had that kind of concentration. To be completely focused on...hey, what's that over there?"
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: In one episode, he tries to keep a news clip of him saving a kitty from being seen by his colleagues to protect his evil reputation, for just one example. In another one, Doof was out of ideas so he decided to create a Good-Idea-inator to give him a good idea but, because of the trope, he instead made a Bad-Idea-inator.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Despite his ineptitude as a villain, there were a few times he actually won against Perry:
  • In The Movie, he created a machine to travel to alternate dimensions, which was done with the help from Phineas and Ferb.
  • In "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo'', he becomes ruler of a Bad Future and even gets his own show stopping number, which provides the page image for the Western Animation subsection.
  • In "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer", he created a tractor beam to successfully move the Earth to an early autumn, which allowed him and his fellow villains of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. to take over the Tri-State Area by force.
  • In the Series Finale, he used a series of time loops to predict Perry's moves and defeat him in order to create and successfully run for a new political position to cement his role as ruler of the Tri-State Area. He even signed a law forbidding Perry to thwart him until his term is over, leaving Perry depressed.
  • In "Finding Mary McGuffin", Doofenshmirtz's efforts to find the titular doll does convince Vanessa that he might not be such a bad father.
• Being Evil Sucks: Despite Doofenshmirtz acting as a Card-Carrying Villain it is made clear that in reality, Doofenshmirtz really does not like being evil. Vanessa even points out in the finale that Doofenshmirtz is a good person who is only forcing himself to be evil out of a sense of obligation to his backstory.
• Berserk Button: Sabotaging, or not putting, his self-destruct buttons. Also, anyone but him attacking/harming/imprisoning Perry is another.
• Beware the Silly Ones: His slave-turning inventions in Bubble Boys and Phineas and Ferb's Musical Cliptastic Countdown are rather silly, but apparently effective. And his Make-Up-Your-Mind-Inator supposedly destroyed anyone who couldn't make up their mind, but knowing Doofenshmirtz, it probably only would have cartoonishly zapped them.
• Big Bad: Technically, he's the closest thing this show has to a Big Bad, since he's usually the one causing conflicts, and he's built some pretty dangerous "inators". Tellingly though, multiple episodes have involved more competent villains taking over this role.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He tries, oh how he tries, yet he's just not good enough to get there. (Or bad enough.)
• Big Good: He, of all people is destined to be the legendary Professor Time, the founder of Time Travel. In the present, he's got a long way to go before getting there.
• Birthday Hater: Seeing as how neither of his parents showed up for his birth.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: There's even an episode where he's got Perry cuffed to a table with a laser slowly moving towards him, admits that he got the idea from a movie but never saw how the movie ended, and then leaves. Presumably, this is meant to imply that he saw a James Bond or similar type of movie where the villain uses this trap and then leaves and Doofenshmirtz didn't keep watching the movie long enough to see that the hero escapes after the villain leaves. If he had finished the movie, he might have realized that not staying to watch and make sure the trap worked was a bad idea. ^note  In Goldfinger, Bond only escaped that scenario by talking the villain out of it. He's shown more than once that he's aware that Perry is going to just break out of his traps if he just leaves him in a trap, in fact he expects him to.
• Born Unlucky: Quite literally (and to such a degree that he idly wonders if he and Milo are related). His parents weren't present at his birth.
  Doofenshmirtz: It all started on the day of my actual birth. Both of my parents failed to show up.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: In his and Monogram's DVD commentary for "The Chronicles of Meap", he mentions that he doesn't trust Ferb and therefore dislikes the idea of him dating Vanessa. In "Vanessassary Roughness" some random biker hits on her while stopped at a light. He simply yelled "SHE'S SIXTEEN!" and teleports him to another dimension.
• Bungling Inventor: His inventions do serve their intended purpose most of the time, but almost always have some glaring flaw (often the presence of a self-destruct button).
• Butt-Monkey: It's safe to say that the universe hates him. He takes the brunt of every joke, including his own inventions (his face is so hideous that his Ugly-inator has no effect on him).
• Camp Straight: He's not exactly a stereotypical straight man. That said, he does have an ex-wife (and did date Phineas' mom once, and has dated several women).
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Quite literally. Monogram has sent Perry after Doofenshmirtz several times because Doofenshmirtz didn't appear to be doing anything, and he finds that suspicious.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He treats it like a job description and actually does have a card for an evil organization. Later on, he admits villainy is dumb.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"
  • "Behold! The [WHAT IT DOES]INATOR!"
  • "Ah, Perry the Platypus, your timing is [adjective with prefix], and by '[same adjective with prefix]' I mean COMPLETELY [SAME ADJECTIVE WITHOUT PREFIX]!"^note An example from the Series: "Ah, Perry the Platypus, your timing is impeccable, and by impeccable I mean COMPLETELY PECCABLE!"
  • "Hey, is that [insert band here]?"
  • "It's working! It is functioning properly!!"
  • This exchange that happens whenever Doof recognizes Perry:
  Doofenshmirtz: A platypus? (Perry puts on his fedora) PERRY THE PLATYPUS?!
• Character Blog: During the show's run, he had a Twitter (now defunct) and a YouTube Channel where he hosted "Doofenshmirtz's Daily Dirt" (videos now deleted).
• The Chew Toy: Arguably even more so than Candace. See Iron Butt Monkey.
• Child Prodigy: He created his first inator as a child.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Goofy, eccentric, and overly-dramatic, Doofenshmirtz tends to babble and be rather random.
• Complexity Addiction: Many of his schemes are needlessly complicated. In "Elementary, My Dear Stacy", he goes all the way to England in order to hijack Big Ben and fly it over to Danville so he can use it to tell time, rather than look at his "small" watch. Ironically, when it's pointed out to him that he could just buy a bigger watch, or a wall clock, he claims that going to the store and choosing one would be too much of a hassle.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: In the show's finale he comes up with a plan to take over the Tri State Area by using an Inator to create an actual position for the ruler of the Tri State Area. After this he plans to run for the position, unopposed since nobody but him knows about it, and then take over. This actually works.
• Conspiracy Placement: His building says "Evil Incorporated" and he has his own evil Jingle. It's the page quote.
• Contractual Genre Blindness: Fits this to a T. He's aware about his typical routine... and generally intends to continue his typical routine.
• Crazy-Prepared: 99% of the time he has a trap ready to spring on Perry mere seconds after he arrives. Too bad he never has any ways to stop Perry escaping.
• Creator Cameo: Voiced by Dan Povenmire, one of the creators of the show. He is sometimes used as a variation of Author Avatar, such as being the one to host clip shows and do episode commentaries while remaining in character.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: He speaks with a high-pitched voice with an accent that the creators describe as "vaguely Eastern European."
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Doof once saved his daughter and her friends from an angry swarm of bees.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Perry trounces him almost every time, but he can often hold his own for a little while. It helps that he is physically much bigger than his nemesis.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Happens on occasion with his daily inators.
  • In "Backyard Hodge Podge", he started receiving royalty checks for his technology being used in eye checkups, however he was angry that it was being used for good.
  • He is totally OK with gaining money in a legitimate way as long as he can damage people in any other way. Like selling band-aids legally, but using an inator to papercut people.
  • He wanted to open his own all you can eat buffet and created an inator to make himself extremely hungry and bankrupt the rest. When someone noticed that he ate tons of food without gaining weight, he said he'd make millions selling his inator as a diet implement. Doofenshmirtz dismissed it as a stupid idea.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He lived through one of the most impressively awful upbringings in all of animation, regularly enduring things like being forced to stay still as a statue for days on end by an abusive father. While usually Played for Laughs, when it is Played for Drama, its Played for Drama.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Despite not having a mustache or hat (and wearing a lab coat instead in keeping with his Evil Scientist role), Doofenshmirtz still has many traits where he would fit this trope: exaggerated nose and chin, hunched posture, elaborate crazy schemes, and over-the-top mannerisms. His historical counterpart at the Danville World Fair, however, more than makes up for it by having the mustache and the predilection for tying nemeses to train tracks.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: For the cartoonishly villainous Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. As the series goes on, it becomes clear that Doof isn't actually evil, but a generally pretty decent guy who tries (very badly) to be a supervillain out of bitterness over spending his entire life a Cosmic Plaything. After being confronted about this by Vanessa in the finale, he accepts the truth and willingly reforms.
• Defeat Catchphrase: "Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"
• Determinator: No, he didn't build one, he is one. Despite getting beaten up and having his inventions explode in his face every day, he's almost always up and raring to go with a new inator on the next day.
• Didn't Think This Through: He does this a lot. Most notably in "The Chronicles of Meap", he admitted that his tests showed this exact result, but he went ahead with it anyway.
• Disappointed by the Motive: He's rather ticked upon learning that his alternate self became far more evil and successful due to losing a toy train, when compared to his own childhood misfortunes and that he still has said toy train in his apartment.
• Disproportionate Retribution: A lot of his evil schemes.
• Ditzy Genius: After studying all of his various "-inators", O.W.C.A.'s researchers still can't decide whether he's a genius or an idiot.
• Does Not Like Guns: Doofenshmirtz combines this with Bond Villain Stupidity. Norm lampshades this.
• Does Not Like Spam: Doofenshmirtz finds rice pudding disgusting.
• Drives Like Crazy: During his Drusselstein driving test, to the point Perry was terrified. In most scenarios he drives fine, so it's more likely a quality of the course than of him.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In many first season episodes, Doof's lair was almost always not exclusive to Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, but he had several different lairs, including a few underground lairs, a blimp, an abandoned theater, a castle fortress, a hideout-shaped island, and even at one point, an abandoned vacuum cleaner factory.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: One where he was skating in his underwear and ends in the toilet. A later episode reveals that a remix has been made.
  Norm: It's got ten billion hits! And there's only seven billion people on the planet!
• Enemy Mine: When a villain who is actually dangerous shows up, Doofenshirtz can be counted on to work with Perry to stop them.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He does care about his daughter AND arch-nemesis.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In The Movie, compared to his more evil parallel self, who actually succeeded in conquering the Tri-State Area.
  • Meta example: He calls Radio Disney for their fifteenth birthday, and states that while he could wish them a miserable birthday, he won't because he's "not a monster."
  • He admits that even he finds Liam McCracken's naming his boomerangs crazy. He was also strongly against the idea of Liam actually killing Perry, as he merely just wanted him to be trapped.
  • He also thinks that taking over the world is crazy.
  • He objects to Rodney's scheme to destroy summer and put the world in perpetual winter.
  • Apparently, even he thinks Poofenplotz is more incompetent at being evil than him - and when Doofenshmirtz, who could be called the idiot villain, thinks you're more incompetent than him, you know you've sunk far.
  • He thinks it's pathetic for Monogram not to give Carl any pay for his intern work.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Doofenshmirtz is, to all the effects, a Harmless Villain counterpart to Phineas and Ferb, with his Evil Plans being the evi... mean-spirited counterparts to their Big Ideas.
  • To Candace as well. Both are cursed with bad luck, and are always trying to bust their superior brothers.
  • Invoked on him in Across The 2nd Dimension, with his alternate universe counterpart being much more competent and diabolical to the point where our Heinz is demoted to hostage for not even comparing.
• Evil, Inc.: Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, complete with its own jingle!
• Evil Is Bigger: Subverted. He claims to be 6’2, but his slouched posture detracts a few inches.
• Evil Is Hammy: Sometimes he can be REALLY over-the-top about his role as the bad guy, even bordering into Laughably Evil territory.
• Evil Is Petty: All of his Evil Plans. For instance, mindcontrolling pigeons to poop on his always better brother.
• Evil Laugh: Acting somewhat cliche in classic villain form, he'll commonly burst out in grand maniacal laughs.
• Evil Plan: They're listed in his introduction. One of the show's running gags is how his plans always clean up Phineas and Ferb's inventions by some random coincidence.
• Evil Virtues: Doofenshmirtz displays a few:
  • Ambition: Not to the same extent as some of his rival villains, but attempting to take over the ENTIRE! TRI-STATE! AREA! is still a pretty lofty goal.
  • Determination: Even Doofenshmirtz seems to have realized that Perry will always defeat him and he stands no real chance at taking over, but he tries anyway.
  • Honesty: Doofenshmirtz always honestly tells Perry exactly what his Evil Plan is and why he wants to do it.
  • Honor: Doofenshmirtz treats being evil like a game, and gets very annoyed when other super villains "break the rules", such as by building devices with no self-destruct button, despite knowing that these "rules" are largely responsible for his failures. Subverted, as he periodically breaks those same "rules".
  • Love: Doofenshmirtz loves his daughter Vanessa. He also cares for his robot assistant Norm.
• Expansion Pack Past: He has a massive backstory that's shown piece by piece, and only gets more absurd the more we see. Heck, there is even a episode devoted to reviewing it.
• Expy: If the cloudcucckoolandish protagonist of Project Gee Ke R turned evil and took a fair boost in intellignece, this is how he'd look and act.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Sometimes he successfully achieved his "evil" goals (making a mountain out of the mole hill and getting rid of the lighthouse), but 99.9% times played straight, either by Perry foiling him in traditional fashion, or via Meaningless Villain Victory.
• For the Evulz: A lot of the "evil" things Doof does are for no reason other than for being evil.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: He invites viewers to post questions and suggestions on his Youtube clips, for potential use in future videos.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: If any character (other than Buford) is going to break the fourth wall in this show or Milo Murphy's Law, it's probably him.
• Freudian Excuse: Many of his schemes were influenced by stuff that happened to him as a kid. He even says that "Evil science is like undergoing deep Freudian analysis with a theremin constantly playing in the background."
• Friendly Enemy: Develops into this with Perry, who spends so much time helping him out that sometimes it's hard to forget that they're supposed to be archenemies.
• Funny Foreigner: Is a goofy, bumbling guy with an Eastern European-sounding accent.
• Future Badass: The first episode of season two of Milo Murphy's Law reveals that he will be the one to invent the time travel technology and become a history travelling hero.
• Gadgeteer Genius: For all his apparent stupidity, his inventions do tend to work the way he intends them to, and are often just as improbable as those of Phineas and Ferb's. In fact, on one occasion when the boys accidentally came across one of his inventions (a destructive laser), Phineas was surprised that it could even be built.
• Gonk: Crooked teeth? Check. Long nose? Check. Used as counterpart to the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz parody? Check.
• Good Parents: For all his doting, Vanessa realizes over the course of the series that he's not so bad a father, and even sings a song about it. She even admires of the time Doof taught her to drive well without any incidents.
• Goofy Print Underwear: In "Bubble Boys", Doofenshmirtz wears a pair of Perry the Platypus print undies.
  Doofenshmirtz: For your information, I've had these WAY before I met you.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Though whether he's actually fluent is debatable. If he is, he has a strange sense of humor. His command of the Spanish language is justified with one look at his grandfather, José Doofenshmirtz. (Weird story.)
• Greater-Scope Paragon: In a twist of irony, he's the inventor of time travel, and he went back in time to save Danville from mutant pistachios.
• The Grinch: Inverted. He hates every holiday except Christmas (and Halloween, as we find out later). His Christmas wish is to find a reason to hate Christmas so he can destroy it with proper villainous enthusiasm. It's eventually granted. Which ironically also gives him reason to celebrate the holiday anyway.
• Harmless Villain: Dr. Doofenshmirtz's schemes don't tend to be particularly harmful.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: In "Lights Candace Action", he decides to give up on being evil and become a cheese-maker. He only created the Age Accelerator-inator to age cheese quickly. This isn't a trick. He genuinely intended to do so until Perry ate the Stinky Limburger he'd prepared.
  Doofenshmirtz: I created this for peaceful, cheese-loving purposes! But now you've forced me to wield it in anger!
• Heel–Face Turn: By the time "Act Your Age" takes place, he has given up on doing evil completely. It's revealed to have happened during the events of "Last Day of Summer" after a heart to heart with his daughter Vanessa, where she deconstructs his character and says he's a good guy acting bad due to his childhood and he's not really happy being evil. He says he's going to be good, but has no idea how to be good, which his daughter says she'll help him.
• Hero of Another Story: An odd (and awesome) onscreen example. It turns out that Doctor Doofenshmirtz is "Professor Time", the father of time travel, on, Milo Murphy's Law, thus kicking off the long awaited crossover between that show and Phineas and Ferb.
• Herr Doktor: An Evil Scientist (if a comically harmless one) that hails from the Germanic-styled country of Drusselstein.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Honestly, he and Perry are more this than enemies.
• Hidden Depths: He paints as a hobby, even once attempting to make a career out of it. He would likely have become a prolific artist if his brother hadn't destroyed his magnum opus accidentally. While we never see his masterpiece, the artwork we see includes a hyperrealistic sihouette on the wall and a parody of René Magritte's "The Son of Man".
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: From his parents not showing up for his birth, being forced to be a lawn gnome, being constantly neglected in favor of his younger brother, to him being disowned and having to live with ocelots. It just keeps getting worse and worse with each episode.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His schemes almost always end up self-defeating, even the ones that Perry does not interfere in.
• I Am Not Weasel: He is an evil scientist, but whenever anyone who doesn't know him sees him, they always mistake him for a pharmacist, just because he is wearing a lab coat.
  Doofenshmirtz: Really? Really? Why does everyone always, you know, stampede to that conclusion? Lots of other people wear lab coats, you know. Why can't you say, "Oh, look! A rocket scientist"? Or "a veterinarian"?
  Stacy: Are you a veterinarian?
  Doofenshmirtz: No! But that's not the point!
• Identical Grandson: He looks like a Palette Swap version of his grandfather, José Doofenshmirtz (Weird story.), especially with the mustache Perry gives him in "Perry the Actorpus".
• Impossible Shadow Puppets: He is skilled at making these.
• Improbable Weapon User: Often resorts to Improvised Weapons during his fights with Perry.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Was once thwarted by a potted plant he was using as a Companion Cube when Perry didn't show up. The O.W.C.A. made the plant an agent in honor of this feat.
• Informed Attractiveness: When he is hit by his De-Handsome-inator in "Quietest Day Ever".
• Informed Flaw: Doofenshmirtz's ineptitude is a running gag; the writers often remind us that he purchased his doctorate online. In truth, he single-handedly creates the most powerful inventions in the series. Doof may not have a real doctorate, but he is legitimately brilliant.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Doofenshmirtz once created an inator that turned eggs into dodo eggs because he believed dodos to be like dinosaurs. His reason to sustain that belief was the fact both dodos and dinosaurs were extinct. Makes one wonder how the dodo ended up looking like a dodo instead of a dinosaur.^note Ironically, scientifically speaking dodos are indeed dinosaurs... just not necessarily what the average person thinks of as one.
  • Most his plans to take over the Tri-State Area operate on insane troll logic. He operates under the assumption that doing some very petty thing will allow him to take it over.
• Inventional Wisdom: Applies these to his inventions all the time, most noticeably his need to install self-destruct buttons on everything.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Every day, Perry ends up foiling his plans in some way, leading to the destruction of one of his many -Inators in a massive explosion or something that will bring some harmful treatment to Doofenshmirtz. In spite of this, he rarely ever seems hurt or displays any kind of bodily damage. So far he's survived fiery explosions, being hit by a giant ball of aluminum, the eruption of a volcano, the sinking of his lair while perched over a crocodile's mouth, crashing headlong into his own building several times, and multiple other situations.
• Irony: His life after the series reveals that at some point, he became the inventor of time travel, and effectively saved thousands of lives from mutant pistachios. This is a huge contrast to his supposed evil nature.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite being "evil" and definitely jerkish, he's shown to be a pretty nice guy at times, given how he treats Norm, Vanesssa, Perry (sometimes) and Phineas and Ferb.
• Joker Immunity: Downplayed. Perry doesn't bother to capture Doofenshmirtz and prevent him from launching any more schemes. But this isn't necessary, as Doofenshmirtz is too incompetent to be a Karma Houdini.
• Kavorka Man: He's shown to have date some pretty attractive women over the show especially his backstories and over the course of the show. One of his exes being Linda Flynn.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Why some people think he must work at the drugstore.
• Large Ham: Most often when narrating his evil schemes. In a series that averages at least one musical number per episode, Doofenshmirtz's songs tend to have a full Broadway-style kick line backing him up. There's even a diorama in Danville City Hall of this.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Like the heroes, he gets this at the end of the movie, presumably to remove his memories of Perry's host family.
• Laughably Evil: His Hilariously Abusive Childhood, general incompetence, and awareness of his daily routine are major sources of comic relief on this show.
• Leitmotif:
  • DOOFENSHMIRTZ EVIL INCORPORATEEEEEEED!
  • A very ominous melody usually plays whenever he explains his evil plans and inators.
  • The sad violin music that occurs under his backstories.
• Literal-Minded: Some schemes have included using Norm the Giant Robot Man against Perry, because "The enemy of a platypus is man.", making literal mountains out of literal molehills and leaving a giant carbon footprint with a giant foot made out of carbon paper. One time he painted himself green to be a better gardener until he realized that "green thumb" was a metaphor. Ironically, the green paint missed his thumbs.
  Doofenshmirtz: I know when people say that, they usually mean it figuratively, it's an analogy, bu-bu-but making a point, I can do whatever I want.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Doof has not had a good track record when it comes to his dating life.
  • His first unnamed online date was more interested in Perry.
  • His second unnamed date shared his interest in evil, but was accidentally zapped by his anti-love-inator.
  • Of course, there is his ex-wife, Charlene.
  • Elizabeth had an obsession with whales and actually left him for one, living inside his belly.
  • He once dated Lindana before she had a family.
  • He sent a lot of needy love voicemails to one girl who never returned his calls.
  • He met Rosie on a square dancing website under false pretenses that he knew about square dancing, but she got wise to his lies.
  • Grulinda had a crush on him and showed it by always pouring water over his head, but Doof was going to get back at her because he thought she was bullying him.
• Love Redeems: It is made clear throughout the Show that it's his love for Vanessa, as well as his friendship with Perry, which has prevented Doofensmirtz from becoming a complete monster. It is ultimately Vanessa who gets him to become good.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: "Why, Perry the Platypus, how [Negative Verb Form], and by [Negative Verb Form] I mean completely [Positive Verb Form]!" This was mainly used during the first season and only occasionally used in subsequent seasons. One notable aversion was in "Rollercoaster! The Musical" where Doof says, instead of his original line, "Perry the Platypus, what a surprise. And by 'surprise', I mean 'not a surprise at all'."
• Mad Scientist: Well, actually evil scientist. He does not like the term "mad scientist", as he interprets the term as being constantly angry. A nutjob who makes super science machines. He has a beautiful daughter, too.
• Manchild: He is physically in his 40s, but mentally around 10.
• Meaningful Name: The name "Doofenshmirtz" can be rather amusing to viewers with German knowledge because the first part "Doof" is the German word for "stupid".
• Meaningless Villain Victory: This tends to be the result whenever he scores some minor success.
• Medium Awareness: In the commentary for "The Chronicles of Meap".
• Meta Guy: Doofenshmirtz has become more and more aware of the Fourth Wall as the series has gone along. He live-tweeted the events of "Mission Marvel" on his Twitter during its premiere on Disney Channel and did commentary during commercial breaks when it aired on Disney XD.
• Missing Steps Plan: He will sometimes lampshade the Insane Troll Logic his plans operate on but figures he will figure out some way to take over the Tri-State area after completing the first step to his plan.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Doofenshmirtz admitted to obtaining his degree over the internet with his ex-wife's money.
• Motor Mouth: Especially noticeable considering that the majority of his screen time is shared with a Silent Snarker.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Not all his stories about his childhood fit with each other. The show's wiki manages though.
  • This video also tries to piece it together.
• Never My Fault: Doof blames Perry for his plans failing, even when he screws them up himself. In "That Sinking Feeling" he curses Perry when his lighthouse rocket ends up lodged in the Evil, Inc. building even though Perry had completely failed to foil him that time. Also, when Doof failed to destroy the adult diaper factory, he blamed Perry despite acknowledging Perry had no role on it whatsoever. This comes to a head in "Road to Danville" where he blames Perry for his failures in life, only for Perry to turn around and redirects the pointing finger at him.
• No Object Permanence: Doofenshmirtz can't recognize Perry the Platypus without his hat; if Perry takes off his hat in front of him, he assumes Perry has somehow switched places with a regular platypus. Perry uses this to his advantage all the time.
• Noodle Incident: Oh, so many!
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: He says it a lot after activating his -inators.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Several "what-if" episodes show that, without Perry to stop him, he can potentially succeed in taking over the Tri-State Area.
  • There were also at least two instances where he created machines explicitly so he could kill specific people: one where he created a laser that (among other things) was intended to vaporize morning talk show hosts, and another where he devised a machine that would kill anyone who couldn't make up their mind. The latter example is even framed as a particularly potent threat not only since it'd likely have a death toll easily in the hundreds of thousands, but Phineas will be killed by it as well since he couldn't make up his mind over something that day.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Occasionally, though it can be hard to distinguish from his genuine stupidity.
• Odd Friendship: Despite being enemies he and Perry treat each other as friends when they aren't fighting.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Averted, since he's consistently an inventor and engineer, but a Running Gag is that everyone in town mistakes him for a pharmacist merely because he wears a lab coat, much to his own confusion and increasing frustration.
  Doofenshmirtz: Oh, there they go with the whole "pharmacist" thing again. You know what? I should become one. Yeah, that's what I should do. That'd show 'em. I should become a pharmacist.
• Only Sane Man: Yes he managed to be this in "Save Summer" in L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. as he is the only one who stops to think about how stupid it is to plunge Earth into an eternal winter.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: In the episode "That's the Spirit!", he becomes a werecow due to accidentally combining his brain with a cow's. It's implied that he was later cured, however, seeing as how no mention of it was made again.
• Out-of-Character Moment: In "Elementary, My Dear Stacy" Doofenshmirtz ends up saying something that was clearly intentional on the creators' part:
  Doofenshmirtz: He's P and you're OO, so together you spell-
  Agent Double O: No, they're not O's, they're zeros. Alright?
  Doofenshmirtz: Relax, I was just going to say oop.
• Papa Wolf: Don't mess with his daughter. He'll destroy you.
• Parental Abandonment: Doofenshmirtz's parents couldn't even be bothered turning up for his birth.
• Persona Non Grata: For some reason, the Albanian ambassador's wife filed a complaint against and he "is never welcome in Albania ever again".
• Pet the Dog: Perceived when he saves a cat, and later adopts another one and then gives it back to its real owner. (It had been causing him so much trouble that he had to get rid of it anyway, and then the kid came up to him...)
  "I'm going to have to do the right thing here, aren't I?"
• Phony Degree: Bought his doctorate online. Despite this, his inventions suggest he is legitimately brilliant in some ways.
• Poke the Poodle: One example: building a device that will translate his voice into 'whale speak' so he can insult a whale that stole one of his girlfriends. This plan was so pathetic that Perry decided it wasn't even worth thwarting. Vanessa claims that it's because he's not evil, but a good guy acting bad.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He'd never just build a gun and destroy the Tri-State Area because then he'd have nothing to rule. He doesn't want to Take Over the World because he'd have nothing else to take over.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Increasingly as the show goes on to the point where Major Monogram gets irritated when he calls in sick and sends Perry to start an Evil Plan just so he can stop it.
• Raised by Wolves: He claims he was raised by ocelots after his birth family disowns him. He was even accepted in O.W.C.A. because he is legally one.
• Redemption Promotion: One the rare occasion when he does try to good, he's more successful than when he tries to be evil.
• Rich Recluse's Realm: In the episode "Hail, Doofania", Doofenshmirtz creates the titular floating city of Doofania — in a fit of jealousy after seeing his brother getting elected mayor.
• Royalties Heir: Heinz Doofenshmirtz invented a device that corrects people's eyesight and the royalty checks he receives for this make him feel less uncomfortable about one of his inventions being used to do good.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Doofenshmirtz, following the example of Agatha Heterodyne, has a big lever as a on/off switch for the lights. He also has an obsession with installing self-destruction buttons and other buttons or dials that actually make it easier for Perry the Platypus to thwart Doof's plans.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful!: When he becomes handsome in "Quietest Day Ever". Amusingly, he was irritated at first, because the ability to do this was exactly why he hated beautiful people in the first place. Then he realized he could take over the Tri-State Area that way, and so decided to go along with it.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: His Achilles' Heel, he just can't not put one on things he has. Justified in a special, he puts them over worries that his plans might cause things he doesn't want to happen. He also can be quite mad when Rodney literally didn't put any self-destruct buttons.
• Self-Disposing Villain: He's so ineffectual as a real villain that on the occasions where Perry can't be there to stop him for whatever reason, his own incompetence always causes his plan to fail anyway. On one occasion he was even "stopped" by a potted plant!
• Series Goal: For Doof: Take over the ENTIRE TRI-STATE AREA!!!!!!!!!!
• Sibling Rivalry: A one-sided one with Roger.
• Simpleton Voice: Doofenshmirtz has a bizarre voice that not only tells you in a second that he is a total idiot, but also that he is evil.
• Sinister Schnoz: Doofenshmirtz has a long nose. Sinister, though...
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Several times with Rodney, a prominent rival in doing evil.
• Spanner in the Works: He's pretty much the reason behind the disappearance of Phineas and Ferb's inventions before Mom arrives, and thus saves them from getting busted.
• Stupid Evil: Defied. Doof has stated that just because he's evil, doesn't mean everything he does has to be evil, and is annoyed by the fact that Major Monogram and Perry always assume whatever he's doing must be somehow malevolent (although to be fair, they're usually right).
• Superpowered Evil Side: In "This Is Your Backstory", his plan is to become this. He succeeds for a few moments before Perry turns him back to normal.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: Part of the issues Heinz has with his brother Roger spring from the fact that Roger is more successful in his chosen profession (politics) than he himself is in his, and that mayor Roger Doofenshmirtz is also very popular with the general population.
• Supporting Protagonist: Candace and Doofenshmirtz receive more marked character development than the title characters and, in fact, many episodes would be relatively uneventful if they did not focus on their activities. They even become the protagonists in the Series Finale.
• Take Over the City: Justified; he thinks taking over the world is way too ambitious, so he settles for the small stuff and only ruling the Tri-State Area. In "Flop Starz", he even has a giant map behind him, and he says that he will rule "the entire...", before taking out a magnifying glass and just casually saying "Tri-State Area".
• Team Rocket Wins:
  • In Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo, he takes over the Tri-State Area in the Bad Future.
  • One of his evil plans involved strapping rockets to a lighthouse to send it, and subsequently the ships that follow it away from his lair so he could get some sleep. He launches the rocket before fighting Perry and in the middle of the fight realizes that because he didn't build a control mechanism into it Perry has no way to put the lighthouse back. He immediately points this out to Perry and then kicks him out due to no longer having a reason to fight him.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: As Vanessa points out in "Last Day of Summer", he feels obligated to be a villain due to his horrendously traumatic childhood.
• Thing-O-Matic: Everything he invents. In one episode, he concludes that the thing all of his failed inventions had in common is that they all had the suffix -inator. So he decides to fix this by suffixing his next invention with -NONinator.
• Think of the Censors!: While being terrorised by a bat due to his phobia of them, he asks Norm to do something about it. He responds by throwing the car radio at it and missing. Doof then tells him off for trying to throw a crowbar he was carrying since it would be imitable.
• Too Dumb to Live: Doof's incompetence got himself into serious life-risking cases. Mostly his habit of setting self-destruct buttons where Perry can easily reach them. Once he tried to make a tunnel from Mt. Rushmore to China, forgetting about the lava from the center of the Earth. If not for Perry saving him during those times, he'd have died.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the episode "Journey To The Center of Candace", Doofenshmirtz creates the Make-Up-Your-Mind-Inator, which he intended to destroy anyone who couldn't make up their mind. This is the first time we see Doofenshmirtz plot to commit mass murder, definitely not what we're used to seeing from the guy.
• Toon Physics: Although the show's world in general is fairly cartoony, Doofenshmirtz tends to be put through a ton of especially extreme situations and slapstick, yet will always come out no worse for wear due to Rule of Funny. One standout example occurs "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", where Perry getting hit by the giant tinfoil ball ends up putting him in a full body cast for eighteen months, in contrast to Doofenshmirtz recovering in less than a day. This trope also seems to be the main reason he can build his countless -inators every single day, while the other characters (save for Phineas and Ferb) are at least relatively more grounded in reality.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Almond brittle.
• Tragic Villain: Exaggerated for laughs; practically every episode reveals a little bit more of his awful childhood, with each of his plans being in relation to a particular event. And with how many plans he has...yeah.
• Transplant: After "The Phineas and Ferb Effect", he becomes part of the Milo Murphy's Law regular cast.
• Treated Worse than the Pet: His father loved the family dog more than him and called it "Only Son."
• The Unfavorite: So much that before his brother was born, his father named their dog "Only Son".
• Unfortunate Names: "Doof" is German for "stupid", and "schmerz" is "painful". So Doofenshmirtz can be read as "so dumb it hurts". Fitting, but unfortunate.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His schemes can sometimes have dire consequences;
  • In "Mission Marvel" he builds a Power-Drain-inator to steal the mayorial powers from his brother. Thanks to a misfire, it steals the powers from Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor and Iron Man while they are fighting a group of supervillains. Red Skull later upgrades it to drain matter and intends to use it to destroy the Tri-State Area.
  • Builds a Shift-The-Earth's-Position-Away-From-The-Sun-inator to put the Earth into an early autumn. Rodney is inspired by this to build a Shift-The-Earth's-Position-Away-From-The-Sun-inizor to plunge the Earth into an eternal winter.
  • In the Series Finale he builds a Do-Over-Inator which lets him do over the same day until he's finally defeated Perry. Unfortunetly his tampering with time nearly destroys the universe.
• Villain Episode: As one of the main characters, he has plenty of presence in most episodes, but ones that focus particularly heavily on him include "This Is Your Backstory", "Doof 101", and the A-plot of "Hail Doofania!". He is also one of the protagonists in "Last Day of Summer", the other being Candace.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • In "Finding Mary McGuffin", Perry fought Doofenshmirtz over some machinery that Doof bought from a yard sale which only opens and closes a lobster cage that Doof trapped him in. However, Doof correctly states that there's no point in fighting as the machinery doesn't do anything evil in nature, so he curses Perry for fighting him over such a silly reason. Perry himself is surprised by Doof's insightful reasoning, that he concedes defeat by giving him a thumbs-up before leaving.
  • In the TV film, Doof witnessed Perry (who was going undercover as a mindless pet) peeing on his old couch and brushes this off by telling Phineas and Ferb that he was planning to replace the couch. But when Perry's identity is exposed, Doof realizes that it was a conscious choice on Perry's ending and calls him out for doing such a pointless thing instead of stopping him and the boys from rebuilding his machine when he had the chance. The look on Perry's nervous face pretty sums it up, assuring that what he did to Doof's couch was Nothing Personal on his part.
    • He even finds Doof-2's backstory (losing his toy train as a child) to be completely ridiculous in nature; he even lampshades this to Doof-2 by pointing that he had suffered more tragedies than Doof-2. He even pointed out that Doof-2's so-called 'tragedy' doesn't warrant any good reason of why the latter is better at being evil, but Doof-2 doesn't care as he claims that losing the toy train would've made Doof do a lot better.
  Doof: (annoyed over Doof-2's backstory) That's.... that's it? That's your emotionally scarring backstory? That's your great tragedy?! Dude, I was raised by ocelots, I mean, literally. Disowned by my own parents to raised by Central American wildcats, and you're telling me you lost a toy train?! That's it?! That's all you got?! Really?!
  • In "Save Summer", he finds Rodney's plot to send the Earth into a new Ice Age to be a really bad idea, knowing that it would endanger billions of lives per se; he even lampshades this to Rodney out of complete disgust. Doof later blames Major Monogram for the event; although Doof admitted that he has himself to blame as he was technically the one who created the machine that caused it to happen, he furiously points out Monogram could have actually done something to stop it instead of wasting his time moping over the loss of his job, something that even Monogram concurred.
  Doof: Okay, technically, it's my fault. But if you're weren't sitting around in a cold alley whining to rats and feeling sorry for yourself, this whole situation wouldn't have gotten so out of control! Before, I was a regular evil scientist, and now, suddenly, I'm part of this big organization of supervillains bent on world domination! I'm not comfortable with that! The point is you should've been there to stop me, and YOU WEREN'T!!
• Villain of Another Story: A very strange version of this trope where we do see his story on-screen; however, he has only met the main duo in Across the Second Dimension, "Night of the Living Pharmacists", and Candace Against the Universe, all of which were on friendly terms.
• Villain Song: He explains a number of his plans in song.
• Villains Out Shopping: He is frequently seen engaging in non-villainous activities, including picking up dry-cleaning, ordering food from the neighbouring restaurant, or taking up his old hobby of painting. Admittedly, those everyday activities often result in some minor annoyance that leads to his latest evil scheme.
• Villainous Rescue: It's more common for Perry to have to save him than vice versa, but he does have his moments (notably in "Oh, There You Are, Perry" and the end of "Primal Perry"). He even does this for Phineas, Ferb, and Perry in the TV film.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Perry are this. They fight like cats and dogs, yet they buy each other Christmas presents (Perry gives Doof his favorite sweets, Almond Brittle, and Doof gets Perry a vase), play chess together, go bowling together on Thursdays and Perry has a key to Doofenshmirtz's House. Perry will, on occasion, even help him out with said evil plan - such as putting together an unday shrinking device and a birthday party for Vanessa.
• Vocal Evolution: Whilst still croaky and high pitched, his voice had a lot more emphasis on his accent in earlier episodes. In later episodes after season one, his voice's croakiness is more emphasized than his accent, the contrast made more notable in "This Is Your Backstory", which uses archive audio from Season 1.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: With Vanessa.
• Wants to Be Hated: This is one of the big reasons why he's an Evil Scientist, to the point that in a couple of episodes where Perry the Platypus has quit hounding his footsteps because he's fed up with this assignment or been replaced by another agent, the doctor actually acts like a jilted lover and begs Perry to return.
• "Well Done, Dad!" Guy: He does his best to earn his daughter's affection, eventually with some success.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Considering how many of his Freudian Excuses revolve around his Hilariously Abusive Childhood.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He asks Monogram if he isn't actually evil after learning that Carl is an unpaid intern.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: As explained in several episodes, the alimony he receives from his ex-wife helps him pay for his inators. It also helped pay for his Morally Ambiguous Doctorate.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Perry was stuck in Candace's body in one episode and it made their ensuing fight awkward.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Shown especially in The Movie, where Doofenshmirtz-2 has no qualms about it. In fact, the few instances where he does run into some of the main kids (again, the movie and "Bully Bromance Breakup") show him getting along rather well with them.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Sometimes, such as when he assumes that the reason for his failure is because all his contraptions have the suffix "-inator".
• Zany Scheme: His villainy is more 'zany scheme' than actual evil. Like the time he made a device to make people clean out all-you-can-eat buffets so his own Drusselstein-themed all-you-can-eat restaurant, where people won't each much because Drusselstein food is disgusting, can make money.

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