Tropes:
- Artistic License – Animal Care: The sanctuary workers do not personally interact with Panda. He is kept alone in an over sized habitat with almost nothing to do and is fed bamboo shoots through a vent in the wall, which is not how baby animals should be cared for. Even when his caretakers notice his loneliness, all they do is give him a doll. In reality, baby pandas — even ones being prepared for a life in the wild — are given plenty of enrichment and doted on.
- Comically Missing the Point: Panda activates a row of security monitors while trying to turn on the "magic box". He stares in shock at the view of his living enclosure... before complaining that he's seen all that stuff and it's boring.
- Companion Cube: Panda treats the toy Panda he is given this way, naming it "Panda 2" and talking to it as if they were having conversations.
- A Day in the Limelight: This episode focuses on Panda, showing his life before he met his brothers.
- Epiphanic Prison: The forest Panda lives in is actually a simulated habitat in a research facility. He doesn’t question any of it until Panda 2 “helps” him see outside the window, and even then he just wants to go inside the “magic box”.
- Heroic Sacrifice: How Panda interprets Panda 2 staying behind.
- Origins Episode: This episode is about Panda before he met Grizzly and Ice Bear.
- Nobody Here but Us Statues: Panda manages to evade one of the zookeepers by posing as a doll. It works, until he knocks over a figurine and gets caught trying to slip away.
- Shout-Out:
- The first show Panda sees on the "Magic Box" is basically Seinfeld. The Jerry-Expy is asking what's the deal with bees.
- Panda's first anime is a magical girl anime, which bears a high resemblance in both appearances and catch phrase to Sailor Moon.
- Stock Animal Diet: Panda is only fed bamboo, which he has no problem eating, unlike his future self. This makes sense when you realise it's probably the only thing he's ever had to eat until he escapes at the end.Panda: Oh yum, bamboo! The only food that exists!
- Whole Episode Flashback: Takes place before Panda even meets the bears who would become his brothers.
