Happy Tree Friends / Tropes G to Z

Happy Tree Friends Trope Examples
A - F | G - Z

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G

• Genre Blind: Everyone except for Flaky (most of the time) seems blissfully unaware of how dangerous their world actually is.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: In "Mime to Five", while working at Russell's restaurant, Mime turns up the drive-thru speaker loud enough that it causes Pop and Cub's eardrums to bleed and the windows and windshield of their car to shatter, impaling them with the shards and killing them. The camera then zooms out to show that the same thing happened to all of the cars behind them.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Lifty & Shifty, despite their status as thieving criminals, sometimes participate in events, games, or sports without causing any trouble, as seen in episodes like "The Wrong Side of the Tracks" or "Kringle Feast".
• Go Out with a Smile: Happens on occasion. Some noteworthy examples include:
  • Giggles a couple of times; first in one of her smoochie deaths and then as an error in "Aw Shucks!".
  • Petunia at the end of "Wishy Washy", though her smile is...a bit more psychotic.
  • Sniffles in "See You Later, Elevator". It's as if he felt nothing at all when the elevator door split him in half.
  • Shifty in "Buns of Steal", just seconds away from taking a bite out of a bun.
• Goofy Buckteeth:
  • Though buckteeth are rather common within the characters, Nutty tends to be the most outwardly foolish of the gang, especially since his obsession with candy clouds his judgement. He's generally quite hyperactive due to his aforementioned sugar intake.
  • Toothy, of course, stands out visually as his buckteeth are larger and more spaced out than the other characters.
  • As with Nutty, Pop's buckteeth suits his bumbling and melodramatic nature.
  • Ironically averted with Sniffles, despite this being a common nerd stereotype.
• Gorn: The show's specialty.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Mostly avoided, as just about every death and injury, no matter how gory is shown onscreen with no discretion. However, there have been moments where the deaths happen offscreen. The first example of this in the series was in "Nuttin' Wrong With Candy" where Nutty gets trapped under a vending machine as its spiked dispensers lower towards him; the closest one scrapes his eye before we cut away, blood leaking out from under the vending machine. Another happens in "Party Animal" when Flaky, after swelling up due to an allergic reaction, is accidentally popped by The Mole with a pin; we cut away just as the pin pokes her eye and see blood, limbs and other body parts flying across the screen.
• Groin Attack:
  • A rare female example occurs in "Home Is Where The Hurt Is". In one of the most painful-looking deaths in the series, Giggles slides down an incredibly long banister with nails sticking out of the top. She's groin-ground completely in half.
  • Then there's Nutty in his Party Smoochie, where a yoyo trick ends up hitting him in the crotch, grinding until the friction sets him on fire, and he ends up burnt to death.
  • It's implied that the killer Turtle from "Letter Late Than Never" bites Lumpy in his lower areas, too, given how he has plaster over both his crotch and behind in that episode.
• Grossout Show: Though it's more focused on gory details than the usual Toilet Humour, which does still happen on occasion, such as in "Breaking Wind".

H

• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Flippy, Pop, Lammy, Mime, and The Mole all wear only jackets/sweaters. Averted for Disco Bear, Russell and Truffles, however, since they wear full sets of clothing.
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • In "Banjo Frenzy", the prototype Lumpy splits the prototype Cuddles down the middle with his banjo.
  • In "False Alarm", the impact from Nutty hitting Petunia in Cuddles' stolen car causes her lower body to basically explode and her organs to fly out.
  • Though it doesn't kill him immediately, Cuddles in "Mime to Five" is reduced to his torso when he's launched out of a cannon with too much gunpowder. Flaky is then split vertically when she's launched by a trampoline into his outstretched intestines.
  • In "By the Seat of Your Pants", after Fliqpy has killed everyone nearby during the two seconds that Lumpy was underwater, Flaky has been bisected and only her lower body is visible.
  • In "Wrath of Con", Giggles accidentally kills Petunia with a functioning lightsaber this way.
  • "The Wrong Side of the Tracks" has Handy being split lengthways when the rollercoaster sends him through several walls of glass.
  • In "From Hero to Eternity", after Giggles, Petunia, and Toothy are caught in a giant snowball, Splendid tries to stop it with his heat vision, only to split the snowball in half, and Petunia and Toothy with it. Near the end, Lumpy's torso is launched into space by Splendid blowing up his oil tanker.
  • In "And the Kitchen Sink", Pop accidentally turns the garbage disposal on when Cub is in the sink, destroying his legs. Later, while in his out-of-control car, he avoids hitting Lifty and Shifty and they laugh, only for it to turn out they were bisected by the rope that was carrying Cub.
  • Nutty in "Concrete Solution", twice. First, his legs come off from a combination of the bridge collapsing and his stomach being full of concrete, then the bridge tears him apart.
  • Happens to Handy again in "A Handy Nanny" when Pop, not seeing where he's going when he's bringing a bowling trophy home, accidentally knocks an electric fan onto him, shredding his head and torso.
• Halloween Episode: A bunch of these come out per year that turn the gorn dial up all the way. Only one gets the title of that year's Halloween special. Examples include "Without a Hitch", "Peas in a Pod", and "A Vicious Cycle".
• Heart Beats out of Chest: The Ants cause this during Sniffles' death in "A Hard Act To Swallow".
• Helium Speech: Cuddles in "A to Zoo". This being Happy Tree Friends, he later impales his eyeball on the nozzle and inflates his other one, letting out a scream that becomes ridiculously high before stopping altogether.
• Here We Go Again!: A few episodes end this way.
  • "Blast from the Past" ends the same way it starts, with Sniffles about to have a glass of milk before Lumpy convinces him to go with him to the playground. The ending also explains the pool of blood the time machine is standing on at the start; it was another past Sniffles that had been crushed by the falling contraption as the real Sniffles exited.
  • "Pet Peeve" also ends the same way it starts; with Lumpy getting scared by Sniffles' "pet" and spilling bread crumbs on himself, attracting a flock of hungry, hostile birds. The second time around, Lumpy even sighs, knowing what's about to happen.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Splendid seems more than willing to get people killed while going after crooks.
• High-Voltage Death: In the episode "In A Jam", Russell is electrocuted and reduced to ashes by a shorted amplifier at the beginning. Notable for being one of the most cartoony and least gory deaths in the series.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: This happens a LOT. Somebody has a chance to get away, and they ruin it for themselves. Lifty and Shifty are rather prone to this, as is Lumpy.
• Hope Spot: A lot of these happen. Notably, Flaky in "Mime to Five," after falling off of Cuddles' outstretched intestines and rebounding back up from a trampoline, visibly sighs in relief just in time to get bisected by Cuddles' intestine as she comes back up.
• Human Cannonball: Cuddles in "Mime to Five". It doesn't end well due to Toothy misinterpreting Mime's instructions, and therefore putting in two barrels of gunpowder instead of two scoops.
• Human Snowball: Played for drama in "From Hero to Eternity" when Spendid has to save Giggles from this fate. Later, the Giggles snowball sucks Toothy and Petunia in as well. Once Giggles is freed from the snowball, she later finds herself in the same situation again at the end of the episode.

I

• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each of the TV season's full-length episodes under which the segments are grouped into has its number in its title. The first episode is named "One Foot in the Grave", the second "Lesser of Two Evils", and so on.
• Idiot Hero:
  • Splendid, and how! He has little care for his job and kills more people than he saves.
  • Lumpy, quite frequently. He's the most common "last man standing" of the cast, even at times when he's the cause of it all (although it only happens when it's unintentional).
• Ignorant About Fire:
  • In "Class Act", Toothy, panicked from what's been going on during the play, drops the candle he was holding near one of the curtains, setting it on fire and eventually causing the incineration of the whole building.
  • In "Breaking Wind", Splendid's toxic flatulence covers the earth. Petunia lights a match, apparently unaware that fire and gas don't mix, which sets the world alight.
  • Given the plot of "Who's to Flame?", there are quite a few examples:
    • Petunia talks on the phone while leaning on the lit stove, setting her tail ablaze. Giggles throws a tablecloth on her to extinguish her, which works for a second, but then the tablecloth catches fire too (as does Giggles).
    • After Giggles and Petunia are set alight, Mime tries to call the fire department, but forgets the last number to 911. When he finally remembers, he tries to mime what's going on over the phone. Naturally, Lumpy (who is on the other end) can't understand him.
    • The Mole accidentally hooks the hose up to the fire truck's gas tank, causing gasoline to spurt out and the fire gets even worse. Justified, though, given his blindness.
    • At the end, the Mole lights a match, unaware of the gas leak, which makes the town explode.
• I'm a Humanitarian: There have been several instances where the characters have accidentally eaten someone's organs or blood.
  • Lumpy accidentally ate a heart in Change of Heart.
  • Nutty once took a bite out of Sniffles in Class Act due to thinking he was a candy cane.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens a lot. The most notable example is Flippy's death in "By The Seat Of Your Pants".
• Improbable Infant Survival: Horribly averted with Cub (A Vicious Cycle being one exception), but played straight with non-anthropomorphic animals, including Lumpy's elephant, Toothy's tortoise, and Whistle, which have an extraordinarily good survival rate. Chances are, if an animal plays a major role in an episode, they're not going to die onscreen.
• Inexplicably Tailless:
  • Mime had one in the first two seasons, but lost it during the show's TV run. During the third season of the Internet series, he got his tail back.
  • For perpetual examples, Giggles, Lumpy, Flaky, Cro-Marmot, and all bear characters (type 1), even though their real-life counterparts biologically have tails. In Giggles' case, Word of God has said that her tail is apparently so small, it can't be seen by the naked eye.
  • Inverted with Sensei Orangutan (the Old Master of Buddhist Monkey), who has a monkey's tail while actual orangutans are tailless apes.
• Informed Species: Many of the characters do not look much like their species, mainly because of the Only Six Faces approach to their designs, but there are other reasons:
  • Giggles' only chipmunk-like trait is the diamond marking on her face. Otherwise, she looks like a bear.
  • Whiskers and a lack of visible ears aside, Russell's buckteeth and flat tail make him resemble a beaver more than a sea otter.
  • The Mole, Cro-Marmot, and Disco Bear would never be identified with their species if it weren't for their names. Mole and Cro-Marmot both look like bears, while Disco Bear's orange afro, alongside his golden fur, makes him look like a lion.
• Instrument of Murder: In Double Whammy Part 2, Flippy fights an imaginary version of himself using instruments from a music store, such as recorders and a harp for bow-and-arrows, a cymbal for a shield (and somewhat of a frisbee), a guitar and Flippy gets knocked out by a trap with a piano.
• Iris Out: How almost every episode ends. Few ones like "Party Animal" and "An Inconvenient Tooth" play with it by making the iris chop something from a character when it closes.
• It Was His Sled: Invoked in the blurb version of "Blind Date" after a Running Gag of "Same [insert object here] that Orson Welles used in Citizen Kane."

J

• Jerkass:
  • Lumpy at times, such as "We're Scrooged!", where he's willing to let Toothy die just so he can sell his body parts.
  • Nutty. He's even willing to steal a lollipop from Cub.
  • Lifty and Shifty probably qualify the most. They have no problem stealing from others and even hurting them. In a couple of episodes, Shifty will kill Lifty to save himself.
  • Disco Bear and (to a lesser extent) Splendid also qualify. In both cases, they have been selfish and the cause of others' deaths.
• Jokers Love Junk Food: Nutty is a silly, hyperactive green squirrel obsessed with sweets and candy. Since he lives in a Sadist Show, he will frequently injure or kill himself trying to get even a little bit of candy, which is played for Black Comedy.

K

• Kaiju:
  • In "Wingin' It", Flaky is reading the Safety pamphlet when she uncovers a panel telling the passengers what to do if Godzilla attacks. Later in the episode, a cutaway reveals that Toothy is watching a film featuring the King of the Monsters, when Lumpy's radio equipment messes with the TV Signal, leaving Toothy confused. Finally, at the end of the episode, Flaky is savaged by Sharks on a life-raft, only for the sharks to panic and bolt for it. She looks off into the distance, and finds out that Godzilla is all too real...
  • The titular "Cubtron Z" and an unnamed tentacle monster seen destroying the city.
• Karma Houdini: Flippy often gets away with murdering as his evil self. His good self... not so much.
  • Though the true masters of this trope are The Ants, who always get away with torturing Sniffles. The closest thing they got to Karma was when one of them caught Sniffles' cold.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Lifty and Shifty are uncaring crooks who steal and swindle other people. The show balances this out by giving them some of the lowest survival rates in the series, and they painfully die in almost every single episode they appear in. In the internet series, they die in every one of their appearances, and they only fare slightly better in the TV series.
• Kick the Dog:
  • In "We're Scrooged!", Lumpy drops Toothy into a box of wind-up teeth for him to be mutilated just for a quick buck.
  • Though the Ant family tortures Sniffles in every appearance, what they do in "Tongue in Cheek" takes it up a notch. They use his mind-controlling helmet to force him to injure himself several times before making him disembowel himself.
  • In "Sea What I Found", Shifty leaves Lifty to die in the submarine just so he can have all the gold to himself.
  • In "Gems the Breaks", Splendid intentionally kills The Mole with his Eye Beams just for honking at him.
• Kill the Cutie: When it comes to cute characters, it may as well be Break the Cutie.
• Killer Rabbit: The ducks in Mime to Five, a puppy (and, as it is later revealed, several dozen more) in Doggone It, and the turtle in Letter Late Than Never.

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • The "BlurB!" versions.
  • The "Still Alive Teaser" video, which marks the show's return yet again after "Dream Job"'s release in 2014. It basically lampshades the fans' fear of the show suddenly stopping. Even the web page set up for pre-ordering the Still Alive collection contains more Lampshade Hanging if one takes a look at the text on its home page.
  It's been years since we've last seen the Happy Tree Friends gang. Some say they had fallen out of internet obscurity. Others, that they were trapped in an Error 404 page, never to escape. In some corners, there were whispers - rumors that they might be (gasp!) DEAD! — Still Alive's home page message.
• Lemonade Stand Plot: "Eyes Cold Lemonade" features Giggles and Petunia running a lemonade stand with a faulty sign. The sign rips Giggles's face off and crushes Petunia's head, which results in the now-blinded Giggles making "lemonade" out of Petunia's eye.
• Lethally Stupid: Lumpy is such a lethal moron that, if removed from the show, the death count will drop by half.
• Life-or-Limb Decision:
  • Being one of the most horrific things that could happen to someone, the episode "Out on a Limb" of course makes a joke out of it. One of Lumpy's legs is trapped by a falling tree and he spends the next three days hacking his leg off. With a spoon. After finally finishing, he finds he cut off the wrong leg. And then the spoon breaks, so he has to use a paperclip.
  • In Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna be Ya, Flaky has to stomp on a plank with a nail in it to use it as an improvised snowboard to escape from an avalanche.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: In the now-defunct iOS app Slap Happy, you use a lightning tool to electrocute Cuddles back to life after you kill him in some way, including vertically splitting his body in half with a chainsaw and ripping him apart with spikes (at which his body will be put back together with no signs of scarring).
• Limited Animation: Due to being created at a time when computers still ran on dial up and when Adobe Flash was still at its bare minimum, the animation in earlier episodes was incredibly stiff and wonky. Technological advancements that occurred as the series went on, however, allowed for better and smoother animation quality.
• Long Runner: Beginning in 1999 and lasting up until 2016, a total of 17 years, Happy Tree Friends is one of the oldest web cartoons in history.

M

• Made of Iron:
  • Cro-Marmot, Flippy, Splendid, and Lumpy seem to be able to survive situations and wounds that would kill a normal tree friend (due to being entrapped in ice, serving in the military and being a Flying Brick, respectively), making their deaths among the more gruesome ones in the show. In Lumpy's case, he is the tallest of the main cast, and with the exceptions of Splendid and possibly Evil Flippy, he is the strongest. In cases where Lumpy does not die immediately, he ends up getting injured.
  • Pop and The Mole also seem to die somewhat less than other characters, although this can be attributed to luck more than anything else.
  • Buddhist Monkey is not part of the regular cast; however, he can take far more punishment than the mooks he deals with.
  • Arguably, the entire cast. Despite their bodies coming apart at the seams from the slightest provocation, characters have been capable of moving themselves around even after catastrophic injury, including but not limited to bisection of the head, severing of the lower body, and several cases simultaneous loss of multiple major organs. And if this wasn't enough, there's even indications that their bodies can be restored to functionality even after death, which itself would explain much... especially since you can have a character (example provided was Giggles in the episode Spare Tire) be cut in half and lose a portion of their midsection, and then just replace that midsection with a CAR TIRE of all things, and so long as it is inflated to the approximate width of the rest of their torso, circulatory integrity will be restored. Honestly, absolutely bizarre physiologies all around from top to bottom.
• Made of Plasticine: Happens to almost every character (who died at least once) in the series, on many occasions. Characters are often mutilated or killed by trauma that would not be nearly so serious in real life. A good example for this is when Cuddles trips on a staircase in Sweet Ride and, only for that, gets sliced into pieces. In fact, the HTF Wiki has compiled a list of unrealistic deaths/injuries sorted by character (though it also includes characters surviving things that a person couldn't in real life).
• Major Injury Underreaction: In "In Over Your Hedge", Lumpy initially doesn't reach much to Fliqpy impaling him with two lawn flamingoes. He does scream immediately afterward, but that was at the sight of Fliqpy running at him.
• Man on Fire:
  • At the end of "From Hero to Eternity", the hole in the ground that Splendid creates to get rid of the floodwater he previously produced shoots out lava that sets Giggles' head on fire.
  • In "Gems the Breaks", Lifty and Shifty steal Giggles and Petunia's lemonade stand and leave them Bound and Gagged. Splendid can't get close without them using their Kryptonut to make him sick, so he fires his heat vision at them from space, amplified by a pair of glasses, which burns off the girls' restraints only to set them on fire not long after. It doesn't kill them, but they were most likely killed later by the impact of Splendid's Kryptonut-induced super-vomiting.
  • At the end of "Peas in a Pod", when Lumpy's clones replace everyone else in town, one of them is seen on fire.
  • In "Every Litter Bit Hurts", Lumpy attempts to block the exhaust from his truck with a pinecone, which gets launched out of the pipe, catches fire, gets lodged in the back of Pop's head, and sets him on fire.
  • In "As You Wish", Pop's wish from Lumpy is to fix Cub's ride-on fire engine, but Lumpy sets Cub on fire, causing him to run out into the road where he gets hit by an actual fire engine. He survives, only to get crushed by Lifty and Shifty's van and the giant disco ball that Disco Bear had wished for earlier.
  • In "Who's to Flame?", Petunia's tail gets set on fire. Giggles attempts to smother it with a tablecloth, which also catches fire.
• Mandatory Twist Ending: In almost every episode at least one character dies horribly. Only a handful of episodes contain no deaths and in those, except for the five mentioned above, at least one character suffers grievous bodily harm.
• The Many Deaths of You: Probably half the fun you'll get out of starting a new episode is wondering how many of the characters involved will be dead by the end, and from what.
• Meaningful Name: Everybody has one.
• Medium Awareness: The last segment of "Blast from the Past" re-creates the first official sketch, "Spin Fun Knowing Ya" (in which three of the characters die after being flung off a merry-go-round). Just before Cuddles flies off in this re-creation, he screams what sounds like "Oh my God! I'm gonna die! Not this old death again!"
• Menagerie of Misery: Exaggerated in the episode "A to Zoo", where the cast goes to a zoo. The zoo is bad both for the animals, who have tiny, cramped environments and lax safety and protection; and the guests, with all the animals being fiercely violent and homicidal (resulting in the majority of the episode's deaths) and no security, employees, or first aid being available at any point.
• Mind-Control Device: Sniffles' helmet that he made to control his robot ant in "Tongue in Cheek" ends up unintentionally turning into this. The ants use this to a most horrific advantage.
• Mind Screw:
  • "Blast From the Past". For starters, there's several inconsistencies thanks to time paradox (for example, even though Sniffles was intended to go back in time before his glass of milk had shattered, which was before Toothy broke his arm, a later moment in the episode shows that exact time period to occur after Giggles, Toothy, and Cuddles died on the merry-go-round). What's stranger, the episode is implied to be a prequel to the entire series; the final scene is a recreation of "Spin Fun Knowin' Ya", and before that, Sniffles influenced his ancestor to eat an ant who was his friend beforehand, implying that Sniffles indirectly started a feud between anteaters and The Ants. Yet, Cuddles is also heard shouting "Oh my god, I'm going to die! Not this old death again". And then there's the ending, where Sniffles traps himself in an enternal time loop.
  • "Double Whammy" is probably the most infamous. While the episode revealed Fliqpy as a hallucination, there's still a good number of questions that could be asked regarding the episode's events. For one, how was Flippy battling his evil counterpart using a stapler in a brawl reminiscent of a gunfight?
  • "A Bit of a Pickle" fumbles with the ambiguity revolving around Mr. Pickels' existence. It gives off two separate conclusions; 1. Lammy is schizophrenic and murders her friends without consciously realizing; or 2. Mr. Pickels is real and transforms himself into a seemingly ordinary pickle to avoid the consequences. "Royal Flush" adds more confusion to the situation, with Mr. Pickels killing Flaky without Lammy's help or presence.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • Sniffles, Russell and Lammy (a South American anteater, sea otter and sheep respectively) are out of place in the cast of North American woodland dwellers.
  • Occasionally Played for Laughs. Episodes have had piranhas, alligators, sea lions and an orca appear together in a pond, whales and giant squids on land and a cobra during a camping trip in the woods.
• Monster Is a Mommy: In "Cubtron Z", there's a kaiju sea monster that acts motherly towards Cubtron upon meeting him. Later in the end of the episode, it makes cookies for both him and Pop.
• Mood Whiplash: Most episodes. They often end with a lingering shot of a scene of carnage, or a dead character, then a quick cut to the happy, bouncy theme music and colorful credits.
  • This is reversed in I Nub You. Most of the episode has Petunia and Handy having fun as a handicapped couple, before being abruptly slaughtered by bowling pin machines, complete with a Record Needle Scratch.
• Moose Are Idiots: Lumpy is the absolute epitome of this trope, and provides its page image.
• Multi-Part Episode:
  • "Happy Trails" and "Happy Trails Pt. 2: Jumping the Shark", the respective Season 1 finale and Season 2 premiere, comprise a single storyline revolved around a school bus. The former episode involves Lumpy trying to keep the bus on track as he constantly gets requests from other characters, while the latter has the surviving characters from the previous episode seeking to find a way to escape from a stranded island after the bus crashes into it.
  • The last two episodes of the TV season, "Double Whammy" and "Autopsy Turvy (Double Whammy Part II", revolve around Flippy being made aware of his PTSD and eventually fighting back against Fliqpy.
• Mushroom Samba: Flippy has tea with three pink penguins in his hypnotism-induced "happy place" in "Double Whammy".
• Mythology Gag: In Wrath of Con, Cub is wearing a costume head of Lumpy's original design from the pilot.

N

• Naked People Are Funny: Giggles has seen Lumpy's privates in "You're Bakin' Me Crazy" after his towel drops, and in "Let It Slide" when his swimsuit comes off in the pool.^note When not in an uniform or a similar outfit, he always wears skin-tight clothes, as seen in "You're Bakin' Me Crazy".
• Named After the Injury: Handy is a variation of this trope; despite his name, he has amputated arms, meaning that he has no hands at all.
• Neat Freak: Petunia, particularly in later episodes.
• Negative Continuity: The only way to keep the series going, or else everyone would be dead after about 5 episodes.
  • Oddly enough, there's still the rare, but occasional Continuity Nod. The joint TV episodes "Double Whammy" and "Autopsy Turvy" featured Flippy being cured of his PTSD, which actually seemed to stick for a while until "On My Mind". An episode aired between those two, "Without a Hitch", showed Flaky being afraid to get near him and having visions of him killing her, seemingly implying that she's somehow aware of how she has been killed before.
• Never Trust a Hair Tonic: In "Easy Comb Easy Go", Disco Bear dunks his head in hair tonic after burning his afro. His hair grows back...but in his eyes. Cue Eye Scream when he cuts his eyes off with a razor as he tries to remove the hair from his eyes.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The whole show is frequently marketed as an adorable kids' show about fluffy critters. Trailers are generally made out of the only thirty seconds of each episode that don't involve somebody getting gutted.
• Nightmare Face:
  • Fliqpy's Slasher Smile and demented, always-fully-open eyes that remain pasted to his face.
  • In this example, it's more of a "nightmare partial-lack-of-face"; the Gross-Up Close-Up we receive after Fliqpy cuts out a chunk of Toothy's face in "Party Animal".
  • What's left of Petunia's face after being slammed onto a hot grill by Fliqpy in "Flippin' Burgers".
• Non Sequitur: The aesops, mostly in Season 1, can have no relation to the episodes at all.
• Nonstandard Character Design:
  • Lumpy. He's much taller and skinnier than the other characters, lacks their Pac-Man eyes, Care Bear-esque heart noses and buckteeth, looks the most like his species compared to them, and has Four-Fingered Hands at all times.
  • Sniffles, to a lesser extent. While he has most of the typical character features, he also lacks a heart nose and buckteeth. Instead, he has a trunk-like snout with his mouth at the tip.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In the episode "A Change of Heart," an already dead and mangled Handy is shown in a pilot's outfit next to a dead and rather mutilated orca whale in the middle of a soccer field. No explanation is given (which, to be honest, may be for the better).
  • Near the beginning of "Doggone It", a squid has taken Sniffles, Handy, Toothy, and Petunia captive with no explanation how it got there.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Often employed to give an extra disturbing effect for the characters' fates.
  • The idol of Treasure Those Idol Moments appearing in Lumpy's car after it has caused every other character in contact with it to die horribly. The scene goes black after doing a closeup on the idol in the backseat, with the sound of an unseen car crash.
  • The trope is also sometimes used to emphasize the already disturbing grievous injuries and deaths seen. Nuttin' Wrong With Candy features an already mangled Nutty getting threatened with Eye Scream torture by the vending machine's metal coils and cuts to an outside shot of the fallen machine with blood pooling beneath it.
  • In Happy Trails Pt. 2: Jumping the Shark, we don't see what happens to Flaky, as it goes from the other characters glaring at her menacingly before the scene cuts to a sadistically laughing Flippy pounding a headstone into the ground while the other survivors leer from the shadows. The fact that this was the normal, sane Flippy does not help. And neither does the fact that her death was originally supposed to be onscreen, but was cut for being too gruesome.
  • Keepin' It Reel ends with Fliqpy sneaking up on Lumpy while he's sitting on a chair. Cue Iris Out, followed by something which sounds like impalement.
    • Something similar happens in Wingin' It, which ends with Flaky, wounded but still alive, in the middle of the ocean, and Godzilla roaring offscreen.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Averted in "Better Off Bread"; when Splendid catches a falling Giggles in midair, the impact snaps her spine in half. He obliviously carries her broken corpse around for most of the episode, and it becomes increasingly more mangled from his constant changes in velocity and high-speed flying.
• Nutritional Nightmare: In one episode, Disco Bear enjoys several unhealthy foods in rapid succession, culminating in a deep fried block of butter; he has a heart attack, and in the hospital an X-ray reveals the undigested block of butter blocking one of his arteries.

O

• Odd Friendship: Some episodes, most notably "From Hero to Eternity" and "Random Acts of Silence", imply Sniffles and Nutty may have one. In these episodes, Nutty seems noticeably less hyper than usual, to the point where he actually seems to be winning in a game of checkers the two are playing.
  • In "Party Animal", Flaky is seen throwing a surprise birthday party for Flippy, implying a friendship between them. Notably, even though Flippy comes close to flipping out when Flaky hands him a sharp-looking pie cutter, he actually manages to remain calm (although he does later flip out for different reasons), implying that he trusts her. In "Without a Hitch", however, Flaky is shown to be aware of Flippy's disorder and being (rightfully) terrified of him as a result.
• Offing the Offspring: Many of Cub's deaths are due to negligence on Pop's behalf. However, in "Read 'Em and Weep", Pop intentionally kills Cub by beating him to death with a shovel, thinking he was still possessed.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: One of the only times Flippy ever kills Lumpy (in "Keeping It Reel"), it happens off screen.
• Oh, Crap!: For when death is imminent and the characters are well aware of it. Handy in particular gets an epic one in "Don't Yank My Chain."
• The One Who Wears Shoes: Cuddles and Disco Bear. Russell as well, if peg legs are considered footwear. Granted, Russell and Disco Bear are both Fully Dressed Cartoon Animals, though Cuddles only wears bunny slippers.
• One-Steve Limit: Played straight so far, and we already have at least 25 named characters now. In addition to all of the differently named 20 main characters, there's also others such as Lammy, Truffles, Mr. Pickles, Buddhist Monkey, Sneaky, Moues Ka-Boom, Splendont, and a few others.
• Only Sane Man: Flaky. Considering that, in the world of HTF, pretty much everything can and will kill you, Flaky is right to be scared all the time.
  • Cuddles and Toothy on occasion, though rarely. While Flaky is Properly Paranoid, Cuddles and Toothy are often calm Tree Friends who are sometimes more observant. That being said, it still depends on the episode, as Cuddles is generally mischievous to boot while Toothy is often his partner-in-crime.
• Only Six Faces: Aside from Lumpy and Mr. Pickels, all the characters share mostly the same features (large oval head, mitten hands, pie eyes, heart nose and buckteeth).
• Out of Focus: Post-TV series (regular) episodes show reduced roles for Giggles, Flaky, Mime, and Cro-Marmot, none of them having their own "starring" card yet in the last three seasons of the show's run. While not surprising for Cro-Marmot due to his very limited role and gimmick, this is more noticeable on the other three. Outside of special occasions^note Off-season shorts (Break, Kringles, Love Bites, among other miscellaneous shorts), Smoochies, official video games, holiday tie-in episodes (like Flaky being given the spotlight in "Without a Hitch", a Halloween Episode), they have been reduced to having "featuring" roles or brief appearances. Particularly, Flaky and Mime are absent from the fourth season, Giggles is absent from all Still Alive episodes, while Cro-Marmot has not been seen entirely since the fourth season.

P

• Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females: Inverted. Flaky lacks clothing, Giggles and Petunia had worn clothes, but normally wear only accessories, and Lammy wears wool but no pants. Meanwhile, most male characters usually have at least one piece of clothing, with Russell and Disco Bear wearing a full outfit at best.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In Don't Yank My Chain, Lifty and Shifty disguise themselves as The Mole and Handy by wearing extras of, respectively, The Mole's turtleneck, glasses and mole, and Handy's hard hat. Keep in mind that they're still different species and colors than the Mole and Handy. Officer Lumpy, being Lumpy, competely falls for it and throws the real Handy and Mole in jail.
• Pictorial Speech-Bubble: The storytelling in the show is usually limited to Speaking Simlish and actions, but this is still used on rare occasions. In "Doggone It", for example, Lumpy figuring out that the sound of a whistle is what makes Whistle go crazy is represented by him literally connecting the dots into one in a thought bubble.
• Plot Allergy: Flaky's peanut allergy in "Party Animal". After being hospitalized for it, she ends up accidentally swallowing some more at the party and her quills pop a balloon arch, causing Flippy to flip out.
• Police Are Useless: Lumpy plays this role in more than one episode.
  • In "A Vicious Cycle", Lumpy and Disco Bear are killed by a possessed tricycle. The tricycle hunts Lumpy and finds him... because he is eating chips really loudly.
  • In "Don't Yank My Chain", Lumpy arrests Handy and The Mole for nothing while letting Lifty and Shifty get away with their car. He also forgets to lock them in the jail cell, falls down a cliff, and kills Cuddles by pushing him into a well. Then he dies at the end.
• Potty Emergency:
  • "Happy Trails Part 1". After drinking a lot of juice boxes, Petunia ends up wetting herself when the bus is about to fall off the cliff.
  • Happens to Petunia again in "Wingin' It". While on a plane, much to her horror the bathroom's walls are covered in vomit, but this time she does make it after cleaning up the restroom.
  • Flaky gets this in "Royal Flush", after she eats a sandwich with Mr. Pickels inside it.
  • Lumpy in "A Whole Lotta Love" after eating a lot of beans.
  • Lumpy's elephant in "Junk in the Trunk" while on a walk.
  • Nutty suffered one in "Going Out With a Bang" after gorging himself on candy and fireworks.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Lumpy says one in "Doggone It".
  • Flippy says it in "Autopsy Turvy".
• Pressure Point: The mysterious, faceless Evil Overlord, who keeps sending the ninjas after Buddhist Monkey, uses those to kill i.a. mooks who failed him.
• Propeller Hat of Whimsy: Cub the innocent baby bear wears a red and orange propeller hat.
• Pun-Based Title: Almost all of the episodes.
• Punny Name: Toothy, Lumpy, Nutty, Flippy, Handy, Flaky, Lammy, Lifty and Shifty.

Q

• Quirky Town: Not every episode takes place in a town, but the ones that do (and there is a significant number of those) count. After all, what else would you call a town populated by a Friendly Pirate, a Bungling Inventor, and a superhero, among others?

R

• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The Tiger General from Operation Tiger Bomb actually fought Fliqpy on equal terms, even managing to land multiple hits. It didn't save him in the end, but he's still the only one to give Fliqpy a run for his money.
• Rasputinian Death: If a character isn't killed instantly by something, chances are they'll go through quite a few more injuries before finally dying. The most well-known examples of this include Sniffles in "Tongue in Cheek", Lumpy in "The Choke's on You", and Flaky in "Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!"
• Record Needle Scratch: Occurs in this Christmas short and in "Ipso Fatso" when Disco Bear realizes he's fat.
• Recycled Animation: Character animations are reused so frequently that the wiki has compiled a list of these instances.
• Red Shirt: Sniffles and Mime become this figuratively and literally in Something Fishy.
• Reduced to Dust: Has happened to Toothy twice:
  • In "Easy Comb, Easy Go", when Disco Bear's hair spray creates a hole in the ozone layer, the resulting beam of radiation instantly disintegrates Toothy and he gets blown away on the wind.
  • In "Mime to Five", after filling a stunt cannon with two barrels of gunpowder, it explodes and launches him into a support beam, turning him to dust on impact.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Sniffles, resident bookworm and inventor, creates some rather useful inventions. Most of his creations backfire when being used by idiots. Although he sometimes tends to come up with incredibly over-complicated solutions to simple problems, like building a Drill Tank to rescue Cub from a well, despite the fact that a longer rope would have been just as, if not more effective. Of course, he isn't immune to the Idiot Ball, despite his intelligence. Sometimes borders on Science-Related Memetic Disorder.
• Reset Button: "Better Off Bread".
• Road Runner vs. Coyote: Sniffles vs. the Ants.
• Rotating Protagonist: The show features a total of 22 main characters, and every episode stars at least one of them. While the ratio is far from equal (for example, Lumpy has a lot more starring roles than Splendid), all the characters get their share of the spotlight. This even applies to Cro-Marmot, who's just an inanimate caveman frozen solid in a block of ice.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: In the opening credits of Swelter Skelter, "Starring" is spelled "Staring".
• Rule of Funny: The main explanation for some of the less logical deaths.
• Running Gag:
  • In most of the TV episodes where Pop and Cub appear but don't star, Cub is killed by the other characters' antics and Pop is left crying over his remains. For example, he's crushed by Disco Bear's treadmill, ran over by Lifty and Shifty's van, burned by Splendid's laser beam and torn apart by Sniffles' falling ladder.
  • Starting with "Eye Candy", Toothy just keeps racking up the eye injuries.
  • Whenever Handy can't do something because of his lack of hands, he'll give the camera an annoyed glare and growl irritatedly. Other characters have also borrowed the expression at times.
  • Giggles seeing Lumpy naked. It happens once in "You're Bakin' Me Crazy", then again twice in "Let It Slide". The BlurB! of the latter lampshades it.
    Giggles has seen Lumpy's moose knuckle a lot.

S

• Sadist Show: How else can you describe it? Enjoyment essentially comes from watching a group of hapless woodland critters horribly burn, maim and torture themselves and each other.
• Sapient Eat Sapient:
  • A running plot, especially in the earlier episodes featuring him, is Sniffles, being an anteater, attempting to eat a family of ants sapient enough to pray before dinner, play with toys... and defend themselves in resourceful, gory, and downright vicious ways.
  • Downplayed, but Fliqpy is on a few occasions shown to enjoy the taste of his murder spree victims' blood, dipping a french fry in Cuddles's blood in "Flippin' Burgers" and taking a bite out of the cookie he just gutted Shifty with in "Easy for You to Sleigh". While he is a bear, none of the other bears in the cast, including his good side, show any such appetite (at least on purpose), so it's likely just another facet of his Ax Craziness.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: Bees are occasionally a cause of death, most notably with Nutty in "Sweet Ride".
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Several characters. Funnily enough both Splendid and good Flippy.
• Self-Deprecation: In the "blurb" version of "We're Scrooged!", during a scene where Cuddles is playing with a robot, the blurb reads, "in the future, this robot will write better jokes than us!"
• Semiaquatic Species Sailor: Russell the sea otter is a pirate.
• Serial Escalation: Much of the gore, naturally, but the worst case is when Lumpy created such a huge display of lights for Christmas, that he not only set several characters on fire, but even The Mole had to shield his eyes.
• Serious Business: "Class Act" is the subject of a great deal of debate in the fandom. Major points of dispute include whether or not Toothy was responsible for the fire that burned down the school, and whether or not Splendid, Cro-Marmot and Flippy died in the explosion. The answers were later confirmed as no (sort of; everyone involved in the play is considered responsible by Kenn Navarro, Toothy included) and yes.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Mime to Five" is one the few in the series that is not also Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Flippy, who even has "triggers" that set him off, from the time that he fought in the W.A.R.
• Shock Party: In "Party Animal", a party is thrown for Flippy, but Nutty drinking the punch sets off a chain of events that results with Flaky accidentally popping several balloons. Cue the war flashback. Cue Fliqpy. Cue the bloodbath.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Almost every episode, although some prominent examples are the depressingly hard to watch "Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna be Ya", where Flaky goes through a lot of self-imposed pain just to survive, and "Double Whammy" wherein Flippy goes through a lot of trouble and has an epic battle with his demons, finally overcoming his PTSD...just in time to get roadkilled by a chicken truck. There are exceptions, such as "Dunce Upon a Time" and "Junk In the Trunk".
• Shout-Out: See here.
• Silent Snarkers: Both Petunia and Giggles are this towards Disco Bear.
• Single Tear:
  • Giggles does this in "Helping Helps" when she sees that there's a massive tidal wave coming right at her and there's no escape.
  • Flippy does a happier version in "Party Animal" when the animals throw him a surprise birthday party.
• Smash Cut: Used in "False Alarm" when Nutty buys a dump truck full of candy from Lifty and Shifty. As Nutty opens his arms waiting for the candy to fall on him, it abruptly cuts to a heart monitor in a hospital and shows that much of the candy impaled him.
• Sneeze of Doom: Giggles has one in the Valentine's Day Smoochie that blows her brains out the back of her head. The blood forms the shape of a heart on the wall behind her.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: How Pop still has legal custody over Cub is anybody's guess. He couldn't pay enough attention to his son, yet nobody bats an eye. Lumpy as well; he's usually a "babysitter" who has to look after the smaller Tree Friends. What person is trusting a Lethally Stupid moose who summarizes Moose Are Idiots just by existing?
• Sole Survivor: Several episodes with a decently large cast end with one survivor. Note that this isn't every episode with only one survivor, just the ones with so many deaths that the lucky living character stands out:
  • Pop in "And the Kitchen Sink".
  • Lumpy in "Aw, Shucks!", "Junk in the Trunk", "Remains to be Seen", "See You Later, Elevator!", "Ski Patrol", and "Snow Place to Go".
  • Cub, in "Cubtron Z", although that required reviving him first.
  • Splendid in "Breaking Wind" and "Wrath of Con".
  • The Mole in "Buns of Steal" and "Every Litter Bit Hurts".
  • Flippy in "Flippin' Burgers" and "Keepin' it Reel".
  • Mime in "Who's to Flame?".
  • Giggles in "Dunce Upon a Time".
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The series is scored using mostly happy and jaunty music typical of cutesy kids' shows. Even when the inevitable carnage occurs, the music remains upbeat, though it gets mixed in with upbeat Scare Chords whenever something gruesome occurs. It is quite jarring to say the least.
• Space Is Cold:
  • One of Cuddles' various deaths that Sniffles tries to prevent in "Blast from the Past" is when Lumpy accidentally launches him into space on a seesaw that Sniffles oiled up, followed by Cuddles instantly freezing and getting shattered by a passing satellite.
  • Sniffles himself is frozen in space during one of his dreams in "Dream Job", only he's shattered by a fast-moving space rock.
• Speaking Simlish: They do speak English, it's just almost always rendered barely intelligible. Many times, you can make out actual words, without the consonants (see Medium Awareness above for one example).
  • Nutty is an exception; most of the time, he just laughs madly or says "Ooooh!". The only time the audience gets to know what he's said is in "As You Wish" ^note "Random Acts of Silence" has him whispering something to Sniffles; "I wish I had a scrumptious lollipop!"
• Special Edition Title: The Theme Tune is done in minor key in Halloween episodes.
• Species Subversives:
  • Cuddles may be a rabbit, but he's not a Shrinking Violet like the stereotypical rabbit — in fact, he's a daredevil, placing him in another rabbit stereotype.
  • Petunia is a skunk, but she's the opposite of a Smelly Skunk — she wears an air freshener and a flower accessory, is a Neat Freak, and takes several showers a day. Played for Drama though, since she's implied to have OCD.
  • Flaky is a porcupine, but rather than being fearless, she is cautious and timid (not unlike porcupines in real life). On top of that, her quills are absolutely useless in defending her from predators.
• Spoof Aesop: Every episode ends on a Stock Aesop or saying of some kind, which has little to no relation to the events of the episode barring a pun of some kind.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Lumpy, Sniffles, Lifty, and Shifty in the TV Series. While the average character has three "starring roles" at maximum, these four characters managed to surpass this number. Lumpy has the most starring roles, clocking in at sixteen, while Sniffles has six. Lifty and Shifty have at least four. On the whole, Lumpy is the biggest case of this in the TV series, as he shows up in all episodes except two, those being "And The Kitchen Sink" and "Easy For You to Sleigh".
• Standard Snippet: The opening bars of "Scotland, the Brave" are heard during W.A.R. Journal when Fliqpy is mowing down the tigers with his bagpipes-cum-machine gun.
• Status Quo Is God: Despite the number of times that the main characters have been killed and the horrific ways in which this occurs, they'll always be alive and well by the next episode.
  • Flippy is an interesting example because, no matter how many times he went on a bloody rampage as Fliqpy, nobody (besides Flaky, as of "Without A Hitch") seems to be aware of his disorder and what triggers it. And while Flippy managed to overcome his PTSD in the "Double Whammy" two-parter, later episodes show him snapping and turning into Fliqpy again.
• Stepford Smiler: Flippy is Type C.
• Stock Animal Diet:
  • Played straight with Cuddles, Sniffles and Russell, who enjoy carrots, ants and seafood respectively according to their species (rabbit, anteater, otter).
  • Nutty, however, averts this, preferring candy, and in fact has never been shown eating nuts like most squirrels. Splendid is actually the one who plays this straight, as he was shown about to eat an acorn in "Helping Helps".
  • Also averted with Lumpy, who has a varied diet but is especially shown to favor meat and sandwiches, despite being a moose.
• Stock Audio Clip: The show frequently recycles character voices and background music to the point where the wiki has compiled a list of these instances.
• Stock Beehive: Nutty, in the episode "Take a Hike", finds a rare purple-colored variety. Bonus points for the spilling honey hitting his forehead.
• Stripped to the Bone: Happens on occasion.
  • In "Something Fishy", Russell's piranha eats the flesh off his head.
  • In "Breaking Wind", Flaky is reduced to her skeleton after being blasted by Splendid's massive fart.
• Subverted Kids' Show: Given the hate mail the producers have received from angry parents, probably one of the most effective in this regard.
• Sudden Anatomy:
  • The characters regularly go back and forth between having four-fingered hands and hands that look like oven mitts, even within an episode.
  • They normally have featureless feet without toes, but Lumpy gained two large, hoof-like toes for one scene in "Every Litter Bit Hurts"...and then he was given three toes for a surfing scene in "Wipe Out".
  • Sniffles' mouth appears and disappears, depending on his expressions.
• Sugar Apocalypse: Happens routinely. "Class Act" has half of the forest critters die when the school they were watching a Christmas play in burns down. The other half dies when the school explodes.
• Sugar Bowl: Their tree town is very pretty and happy, a first world forest nation as it were. Pity it goes down in flames every fifth episode.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Flippy and Fliqpy subvert this - it turns out in "Double Whammy" that Flippy is every bit as competent as Fliqpy.
• Sweets of Temptation: Nutty is obsessed with candy and will do absolutely anything to get it. This nearly always leads to him getting horribly maimed or killed, although it never sticks due to Negative Continuity. One example is the episode "As You Wish", where he wishes for a giant lollipop, tries to swallow it whole, and promptly chokes to death.

T

• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: The show loves this trope; whenever a character narrowly avoids harm, you can be sure that something horrible will happen to them in the following seconds. See Bait-and-Switch above for a few examples.
• Take Our Word for It: Apparently, Flaky's death in Happy Trails Part 2 was too gruesome for even Happy Tree Friends standards, which was why it was cut out.
• Take That, Critics!: They refer to people who are offended by the show as "big babies".
• Team Dad: Lumpy usually fills the "adult" roles in many episodes, playing chaperones, drivers and whatnot. Too bad for the other Tree Friends in his care.
• The Unintelligible: It's very hard to understand a lot of what most characters say, and while they do usually speak in English, it can take a few views to interpret it. This was probably because the show was originally an internet series.
• There Will Be Toilet Paper: The result of The Mole's attempt to shave in "Blind Date".
• They Killed Kenny Again: The entire cast, though Splendid (who's an almost invincible superhero), Cro-Marmot (who's encased in ice), and Fliqpy (who's usually the cause of death) die less than the others.
• Threatening Shark: The sharks that frequently show up in beach episodes or episodes involving the ocean.
• Throwing the Distraction: Sniffles throws a rock to escape The Crack in "Idol Curiosity".
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: What causes the events of "Read 'Em and Weep".
• Toon Physics: Comes into play occasionally.
  • A particularly heinous example would be in "Eye Candy", where once Toothy accidentally rips his eye out of his socket, the optic nerve's length allows it to reach a tree branch and then tie itself into a knot.
• Tongue on the Flagpole:
  • In "Tongue Twister Trouble", Sniffles gets his tongue frozen to a lake after trying to eat an ant.
  • In another episode, Giggles and Petunia get their lips frozen to Cro-Marmot's ice block after trying to kiss him.
• Tongue Trauma:
  • In Giggles' Valentine smoochie, she tries licking an envelope and gets a paper cut so severe that the tip of her tongue falls off.
  • A series of horrific things get inflicted onto Sniffles' tongue in "Crazy Ant-ics", "Tongue Twister Trouble", and "Tongue in Cheek". He also gets his organs ripped out by his tongue in "In a Jam".
• Torture Porn
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mime is seen eating peanuts in several episodes (though he dies by choking on one in "Happy Trails"), and Lifty and Shifty are seen stealing meat several times. Just before they become meat.
• Trees into Toothpicks: In one episode, Lumpy destroys an entire tree for one toothpick.
• Twist Ending: The characters are rarely killed by the most likely and obvious cause - all too often it's something else that causes it.
• Twitchy Eye: Flippy gets one right before he flips in "Party Animal".

U

• Unexpected Kindness: In "Without a Hitch", Flaky fears that Flippy will turn into his evil Fliqpy self and murder her. Throughout the episode, she keeps imagining scenarios where Flippy kills her. However, he's nothing but helpful to her; he replaces her tire with a new one, and later, he tries to cut her out of her seat belt (which she was tied up in). This doesn't stop her from attempting to kill him out of paranoia, though.
• Unexplained Recovery: The characters die in every episode and inexplicably come back to life in the next.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Very commonly, a character will see another character die. It's a 50-50 shot whether they'll treat it with the appropriate horror or disgust, or barely even notice.
• Uvula Escape Route:
  • In A Hard Act to Swallow, the ants lasso a rope to Sniffles' uvula and attempt to climb their way out. Unfortunately, their weight tears it off.
  • In "Get Whale Soon", Russell and Lumpy attempt to escape a whale's mouth by poking its uvula. But the whale holds in its puke and foils their plan.

V

• Vague Age: Used to the creators' advantage to depict characters as either children or adults, depending on the episode (Lumpy, Disco Bear, Flippy, Pop and Cub are excluded from this).
• Vengeful Vending Machine: An episode has Nutty try to buy a candy bar from a vending machine, but it gets stuck. He manages to somehow rip his own arm off pulling on the stuck candy bar, before the machine falls on him and finishes him off gruesomely.
• Visual Pun: The Mole has a mole on his face.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Used a lot, most notably in the episode "Gems the Breaks".
  • Vomit Discretion Shots appear too, though, in the form of letting the camera stay focused on where the character's upper body was before it went down.

W

• Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: The episode "Whose Line Is It Anyway" is spelled "Who's Line Is It Anyway" on the title card.
• Watch Out for That Tree!: Dream Job features this in a more gruesome way in one of Sniffles' dreams. Bonus points for this scene being a George of the Jungle Shout-Out.
• Weight Woe: Disco Bear experiences this in "Ipso Fatso". In a sense, he gets his wish to lose weight at the end when he's decapitated and The Mole unknowingly weighs his head on a scale after it lands in a watermelon cart.
• Wham Episode: The ending of the aptly titled "Double Whammy", where Flippy is confronted by his evil self. Then "Autopsy Turvy", which turns out to really be "Double Whammy: Part 2". Eventually subverted, since it looks like it didn't affect the status quo after all.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: "Aw Shucks!" shows us a photo with Lumpy dressed in a pink and somewhat frilly dress◊ for a few seconds. (Actually, it was a Little Bo Peep-themed cardboard cut-out tourist-amusement.) Cro-Marmot also has done this, when he was playing dress-up with Cuddles and Toothy in "Double Whammy, Part 2".
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: While Flaky is a coward in general, she seems especially terrified of baby chicks for some reason. Though one can't blame her after "Take a Hike" where she accidentally kills a chick, and a bird snatches her up and uses her corpse for a new nest.
• Wingding Eyes:
  • Lumpy gets the dollar sign variation in We're Scrooged! three times. On the third iteration, a dollar sign also appears on his tongue. Lampshaded in the "Blurb" version, where the blurb reads, "$ eyes is a sign of serious illness."
  • Petunia gets the heart variation in I Nub You.
  • Mime gets the dollar sign variation in Mime to Five, followed promptly by unicycles (he'd been wanting to raise money for one throughout the entire episode).
• Women Are Wiser: Compared to the males, the four main female characters (Giggles, Petunia, Flaky, Lammy) are among the kindest and most observant characters in the series, but it depends on the episode:
  • Giggles is a sweetheart who tends to be optimistic and helpful, but she will be quick to lose her temper if one harms the enviorment.
  • Petunia is a Nice Girl who cares about others, but her OCD often makes her act irrationally, to the point of committing suicide.
  • Flaky is cautious and tends to be justified in that regard, but her paranoia has pushed her to insanity a few times.
  • Lammy is friendly and caring to a fault and seems to be the only one who's aware of Mr. Pickels' existence, but whether or not Lammy is schizophrenic and actually doing the killings seems to be ambiguous.
• Woodland Creatures: The entire cast (except Russell and Lammy) is made up of forest animals, and many times they reside in trees, hence the Tree in the show's title.
• World of Ham: The entirety of the main cast counts, although some characters do tend to ham it up more than others; Nutty, Cuddles, Lifty and Shifty, Lumpy, Russell, Disco Bear and Mime are the most prominent examples.
• World of Mammals: The characters are mainly woodland mammals except for the sapient ants that Sniffles tries to predate and a chameleon from the special Ka-Pow! Operation Tiger Bomb.

X

• X-Ray Sparks: Virtually every time a character gets electrocuted, their skeletons show.

Y

• Yawn and Reach:
  • The Mole does this to Lumpy in Blind Date. Lampshaded in the Blurb version.
  • Nutty imagines doing this to the gumball machine he's dating in Sucker for Love.
• Your Mime Makes It Real: Mime seems to be able to do this in some episodes. For example, in Easy For You to Sleigh, he somehow knows his invisible safe has been stolen, and in several other episodes, his mimed things make sounds. In I Heart U, he even manages to kill Petunia wih a mimed arrow.

Z

• Zombie Apocalypse: The plot of "Remains to be Seen" hinges on the characters being fatally exposed to toxic sludge and becoming zombies as a result. Lumpy, the Sole Survivor, manages to defeat the undead army, but has somewhat become a Zombie Infectee himself (his arm, which got bitten off during the battle, attacks him as the episode ends).

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