Regular Show / Tropes A to M

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#-A

• 555: All of the phone numbers seen in "Cruisin'" start with this.
• A Day in the Limelight: Season 5 sees a number of minor, underdeveloped characters getting episodes to themselves.
  • "The Postcard" for High-Five Ghost.
  • "Video 101" for Eileen.
  • "Thomas Fights Back" and "The Real Thomas" for Thomas.
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game:
  • "Skips Strikes" has Rigby making a bet with Death: If Death's Team wins he'll get the team's (which is everyone working at the park except Muscle Man and High-Five Ghost) souls and if Rigby's Team wins he gets... a bowling ball filled with souls. Mordecai, Pops, and Benson aren't happy about this in the slightest.
  • "Over the Top" has Skips arm-wrestling Death for Rigby's soul.
  • In "Slam Dunk", Mordecai eventually bets his computer privileges for life on a basketball game just so he can help Margaret make a website in hopes of impressing her.
• Accidental Innuendo: In-Universe.
  • "Benson's gonna drop his BALLS when he sees how good we set up these chairs. He's gonna be all like, 'Oh no, my gumballs.'".
  • "And when the balls drop..."
  • "Carmenita's special parts should only be manipulated by a professional."
  • "Because of my big backup *chuckles* balls!"
  • A running gag in "Stick Hockey" where phrases regarding playing with sticks are often said followed by a "Don't say it like that."
• Accidental Misnaming: Mr. Maellard constantly mispronounced Benson's name during his early appearances. However, he stopped doing this when Benson saved his life in "Benson Be Gone."
• The Ace:
  • Rigby's brother Don, apparently.
  • Skips most of the time.
• Achilles in His Tent: Muscle Man in "Prankless"
• Actor Allusion:
  • Tim Curry literally is a hot dog in "Meat Your Maker".
  • Crew Crew is voiced by three actual rappers: Childish Gambino, Tyler, the Creator, and MC Lyte.
  • While this is more of a Creator Allusion, J.G. Quintel was born in 1982, the year that Mordecai and Rigby travel back to in "Prank Callers." Plus, the title card of Ello Gov'nor (the movie, not the episode) has "©MCMLXXXII" written on it and the World Dishwashing Championship 1982 video in "Peeps".
  • James Hong basically plays Lo Pan during the episode "Fortune Cookie".
  • Techmo is dressed up as Spike Spiegal "Terror Tales of the Park III". Both characters are voiced by Steve Blum.
  • Ed Asner (Santa) previously portrayed Santa in Elf and an obscure 1995 animated special called The Story of Santa Claus (which also featured Betty White and Tim Curry), which was introduced to a wider audience when it aired on CBS in 2015 after Frosty Returns.
  • Terry Crews (Brock Stettman from "The Thanksgiving Special") used to be an American football player; he's more known these days as Julius from Everybody Hates Chris and the crazy guy who succeeded The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.
  • Once again, Katey Sagal plays an amazing embarrassing mom (cf. 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, Recess, and Married... with Children, though Mordecai's mom is more like Spinelli's mom than Cate Hennessy^note who isn't that embarrassing a mom or Peg Bundy^note who is embarrassing, but doesn't really act like a mom).
  • In "Terror Tales of the Park IV", Grey DeLisle voices another Japanese girl named "Kimiko".
  • In "Butt Dial", Rich Fulcher plays an answer phone that's also the leader of the Phone Guardians — exactly the kind of bizarre non-sequitur role he played as a supporting actor on The Mighty Boosh, JG Quintel's inspiration for Regular Show.
  • Laura Bailey voices another Russian spy named Natalia with a commanding officer named Romanov.
  • While Robert Englund doesn't voice a character who can control dreams, Anti-Pops was introduced in the episode, The Dream Warrior in which one of his henchmen could invade dreams.
  • In "Meet the Seer", Skips (Mark Hamill) says "I've got a bad feeling about this."
  • In "The Eileen Plan", Amy Sedaris plays Rigby's teacher when he goes back to high school. In Strangers with Candy, Sedaris plays an adult who returns to high school, amongst high school-age students.
• Adrenaline Makeover: Well, somewhat, in that Mordecai and Rigby give themselves mullets while learning Death-Kwon-Do.
• Almighty Janitor: Skips has solved multiple problems for Mordecai and Rigby, lived for hundreds of years, and knows so much knowledge that he could be world-renowned. Yet for some reason, he chooses to be a simple groundskeeper at a public park that many would consider a dead-end job. Whatever the reason is, it's essentially part of his many mysteries that have never been answered.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The show at first seems to be set around the eighties or nineties as evidenced by VHS tapes and NES-era video games being marketed as new. One episode stated that LaserDisc died "two years ago" and another had a Power Glove expy in commercials. A third episode also indicated the Soviet Union was still around. However, more modern elements can also be seen, such as SMS messaging, online dating, and even smartphones.
  • "Skips' Story." Skips attends a co-ed private school where people dress like it's the 1700s, yet there are goths and an '80s song, "Forever Young" by Alphaville, plays at Prom.
• An Aesop:
  • From the episode "Mordecai and the Rigbys", Mordecai and Rigby noticed at the end of the show that their future selves stayed famous through lip-syncing. Mordecai makes a speech about the issue.
  • Also, in "Cool Bikes", Mordecai told Benson (after countless hours trying to impress him) "We don't care what you think."
  • In "Steak Me Amadeus", the villain says, "I didn't go to school! And look at me!" and then violently explodes immediately after.
  • Dumptown, USA: It's terrible getting dumped, but don't wallow in it forever.
• Aesop Amnesia: Too many to list.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • Ostrich Thing With The Balls.
  • "Grave Sights" manages to make references to Dead Rising, Evil Dead 2, and Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare.
  • "Video Game Wizard" where Rigby gets jealous that Mordecai chose Skips as his partner for the video game tournament is an affectionate parody of The Wizard. It even has a crappy power glove knockoff as the grand prize.
  • "Brilliant Century Duck Crisis" deserves a special mention for referencing well-known mecha anime from the past century, including the opening to Neon Genesis Evangelion
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: "Internet" in "Format Wars II" is portrayed as a towering robotic monolith that serves as the ally to "DVD". However, Internet suddenly kills DVD's father (Laserdisc) with the sheer morality that Laserdisc is obsolete, and using its streaming abilities Internet turns on DVD and starts becoming hellbent on killing everyone. However, it is finally brought down once its Wi-Fi source is destroyed.
• Alien Geometries: In "Brain Eraser", the world of Mordecai's memories is a strange place.
  Skips: Memory isn't logical.
• All Just a Dream: The basis of "Mordecai and Rigby Down Under" is that the two wind up falling asleep in a crate that gets shipped to Australia. The episode ends with Mordo and Rigs waking up in the crate after passing out on the airplane back home and believing that the whole of the episode's events was merely a dream. They then get out of the crate to find that they never left Australia.
• All Your Powers Combined:
  • The video game character they summoned.
  • Also their combined efforts in defeating the physical manifestation of "Summertime Lovin'."
  • In "A Bunch of Baby Ducks", the baby ducks fuse into a giant duck person to defeat the creepy guy with the van.
  • And in the hundredth episode "A Bunch of Full Grown Geese", the baby ducks fuse with Mordecai, Rigby, and all the products they had collected for the past 99 episodes to defeat a King Ghidorah-esque fusion monster of grown geese.
• Almost Kiss:
  • Mordecai and Margaret in "Death Bear".
  • And in "Bad Kiss", and in "Do or Diaper"...
• Aloof Big Brother: Subverted and played straight. The audience is made to believe in the character's debut episode that Don, who is taller and more mature than Rigby, is an extremely affectionate older brother. Near the end, we discover that Rigby was jealous and angry that his friends liked Don more in part because people mistake Don for the older brother when it's actually the opposite, resulting in Rigby being this trope.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: "The Christmas Special", which essentially plays out like an action movie starring a Badass Santa.
• And I Must Scream: Apparently viral videos have their stars trapped inside of them. They're forced to repeat their injuries and mistakes over and over again. Until our heroes come to their rescue, of course.
• "Anger Is Healthy" Aesop: In "Think Positive," Pops orders Benson to stop yelling at Mordecai and Rigby. Benson can't help it, and keeps yelling. Pops writes him up for demotion, and Benson tries everything he can think of to stop being so angry, but nothing works. Mordecai and Rigby make things worse by being their usual mischievous selves. After bottling up his rage for so long, Benson is surrounded by a fiery orange sphere that sucks in the things around it, until his anger gets released. As bits and chunks of The Park are engulfed by Benson's inferno of containment, Pops realizes that it's not good to bottle up anger and allows Benson to yell at Mordecai and Rigby in the end.
• Angst Nuke: When Benson finally releases all his pent-up anger in "Think Positive", the results are explosive.
• Animals Not to Scale: Played straight with Mordecai, Don, and Margaret, but averted with Rigby.
• Anime Opening Parody: The Neon Genesis Evangelion opening "Cruel Angel's Thesis" is parodied in the episode "Brilliant Century Duck Crisis Special."
• Anthropomorphic Food: The evil hot dogs. Arguably Pops.
• Anthropomorphic Objects: Benson is a gumball machine. Don't question it... Also, Pops is a giant lollipop, although this is obscured by his human skin tone.
• Anyone Can Die: Characters in the show die nearly Once per Episode. Most of the time, it's innocent civilians or the Monster of the Week who end up dying, but the main characters often have a tendency to be killed, even if they inevitably get better. It's been calculated that, on-screen, 1,077 characters have died over the course of the series.
  Mordecai: Do you ever think about how many people we've seen probably die?
  Rigby: Ehh, I'm sure they're all fine...
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In "Dead at Eight", Death's refrigerator is populated by such abominable foodstuffs as eyes, Death Nuggets, Soul Juice, and almond milk.
• Art Evolution/Art Shift: The episode "First Day" is an expanded version of the pilot with new footage, which makes the older footage stick out like a sore thumb due to the juxtaposition with the newer art and animation used for the rest of the series.
• Artist and the Band: While drunk on soda, Mordecai and Rigby order custom t-shirts so they can pretend they're in a band called Mordecai And The Rigbys. Mordecai regrets their purchase the next morning because neither of them can play an instrument and the name doesn't make any sense, but he decides that they should become an actual band to impress his crush Margaret.
• Artistic License – Biology: In "Laundry Woes", Mordecai's feathers are treated as hair, with him growing a beard and shaving it off.
• Artistic License – Physics: In "Go Viral", somehow, jumping on a trampoline at the same time a refrigerator is dropped onto said trampoline will cause you to bounce thousands of feet into the air.
• Artifact of Death: There is a sandwich sold by Death Kwon Do Pizza and Subs known as the Death Sandwich. If not eaten correctly (while wearing cutoff jean shorts and a mullet), the sandwich unleashes a Curse that kills within six hours and causes agonizing pain between consumption and death. The only known way to cure the effects of this is the Sandwich of Life, which is kept in a remote dojo. There is also the Double-Death Sandwich which kills the consumer instantly regardless of whether or not they have the jean shorts and mullet.
• Artifact of Doom: For some reason, a public park is littered with these. Destroyer of Worlds is a good example.
• Artifact Title: "Terror Tales of the Park VI" was not set in the park, as it was part of the In Space season.
• Asian Speekee Engrish:
  • In "Over the Top", the Playco Armboy commercial man.
  • Also the waitresses in "Fortune Cookie".
• Atrocious Alias: In "Trash Boat", Rigby decides to change his name to two random words after seeing a news report on a rock star who did the same thing. The name he comes up with, Trash Boat, is... less than inspiring, and he spends the rest of the episode trying to get it changed back.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • "You have to break the tie!"
  • Susan's heels
  • "KICK HIM IN THE JUNK! KICK HIM IN THE JUNK!"
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • The real Susan.
  • The Keeper of Margaret's secrets in "Diary".
• Author Avatar:
  • Besides being voiced by him, Creator J.G. Quintel has stated that Mordecai is based on his own personality traits (what he'd do in any given situation).
  • Eileen is basically Minty Lewis in mole form. Her biggest roles are generally in episodes Minty Lewis (who's a writer on the show) co-wrote with Kat Morris.
• Author Appeal: There are frequent references to older pop culture, especially from the 1980s. Mordecai and Rigby still play 8-bit/16-bit video games, watch movies on VHS (and once on LaserDisc), and are also fans of hair metal rock bands. The anachronistic nature of the show makes it unclear whether they're very nostalgic or all of this is still commonplace.
• Auto-Incorrect: In the episode "I Like You Hi", Mordecai is texting CJ that he likes Yuji, but the autocorrect causes the sent message to be "I like you hi". He tried to cancel the message since he wasn't ready to start a relationship with CJ due to still missing Margaret. Yuji himself complains that the autocorrect always changes his name to "You Hi".
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The members of the park staff may treat each other crappy on a daily basis, but when there's serious trouble, they will not hesitate to help each other out.
• Ax-Crazy: A majority of the villains they face are this. They make sure to take their insanity to absurd levels as they simply have an extreme disregard for innocent lives and do not really give a damn who they kill all for the sake of petty reasons. While some of them end up joining the Park employees as their allies or friends, the rest are simply too murderously unstable to even think about their actions.

B

• Babies Ever After: At the series' end, Mordecai and his unnamed bat-woman wife, Rigby, and Eileen, and Muscle Man and Starla all have a bunch of kids running around. Hi-Five Ghost and Cecilia also have a kid.
• Babies Make Everything Better: Not in Skips's place.
  • Thomas (Death's kid) is even worse.
• Badass Adorable: The ducks from "A Bunch of Baby Ducks"
• Badly Battered Baby Sitter: In "Dead at Eight", Mordecai and Rigby have to babysit Death's kid otherwise he will take Muscle Man's soul.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "The Christmas Special", Muscle Man comments on the cookies, and then asks "You know who else makes great cookies? MY-chael's (Michael's) Bakery on Fifth and Western. You ever been there?"
• Bait-and-Switch Performance: Mordecai and Rigby form a band with Benson, Pops, High Five Ghost, Skips, and Muscle Man so they could enter a competition and win a new air conditioner. Conflicts and infighting results in them destroying their instruments right before their performance is due. They go on stage anyway, claiming they need no instruments. At first their performance is as bad as expected, but they suddenly start improving and manage to win the air conditioner. Suddenly it turns out it was all Mordecai's fantasy, and the band never performed at all — they all got sent to the hospital for heat stroke.
• Balloon Belly: Party Pete after drinking several Radicolas which gave him strange powers. After finding out Benson was going to return to the park to see what all the commotion was about (They were having a party without Benson's say so), The gang had to keep giving Party Pete Radicolas so he'll burn out in order to get rid of him before Benson showed up, thus ending Mordecai and Rigby's party with a bang.
• Band of Brothers: While the park employees take the piss out of each other for fun, and get on their friends' nerves more often then not, they have definitely become this.
• Balloonacy: Happens to Pops in "Just Set Up the Chairs"
• Bar Brawl: in "Karaoke Video" in the karaoke bar. While Pops sings Footloose.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Seen when naked Pops is falling down the cliff in "Brain Eraser".
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: In "The Power", the cast is shown to have no problem with breathing while they're on the moon.
  • Averted throughout Season 8, which is set in space. In the first episode, Muscle Man and Fives were suffocating when the oxygen tanks of their space cart were ejected.
• Batman Gambit: Pops of all people pulls off a particularly excellent one in "Win That Prize", in which Pops goes to a TV studio to participate in the titular game show. After being promoted to the studio's president, he plans to leave after seeing the fate of the previous president. He asks Scabby Grossman, the expert make-up artist, to make a fake Pops doll, which he uses as a decoy in his office. When the executives discover the decoy, they realize the only person capable of making a decoy that perfect was Scabby. Remembering that Scabby was set to be on Win That Prize, they meet him after the show and fire him for helping Pops escape... Only to see him working later, with no memory of being fired. It turns out Pops was the Scabby they fired; Pops had Scabby make him up as Scabby himself because he knew the executives would fire him for making the Pops decoy, allowing Pops to finally go on Win That Prize and escape the studio before the executives realized their mistake.
• Beard of Sorrow: Mordecai grows one in "Laundry Woes".
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • The internet video bear who lands on people, plays its instrument and farts on his victims after.
  • Also the above mentioned Probo-Bears.
  • The Death Bear. Name to run away from really fast, indeed!
  • The giant polar bear that Pops had to wrestle in the Christmas special probably counts as well.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Margaret, Eileen and CJ/Starla.
• Beleaguered Boss: Benson, the head keeper of the park, who has to deal with slackers Mordecai and Rigby on a regular basis, Muscle Man's constant pranking, and the others having their moments of Not So Above It All, with his boss Pops being a Cloud Cuckoolander. It takes the constant threat of George Jetson Job Security to keep Mordecai and Rigby in line, and even then they constantly bring near-apocalyptic chaos to the park with their Weirdness Magnet luck. As a result, he is so constantly angry that the one time Pops orders Benson to reign in his anger or else he will be fired, Benson makes himself sick from all the pent-up rage... and when Pops tells him to let it out, the angry rant he unleashes comes along with a Super Saiyan-esque Super Mode.
• Beneath the Earth: The inhabitants of the crash pit deep below the park, the Carlocks.
• Berserk Button:
  • The zombie slayer.
  • Don't even DARE cheat in a game of arm wrestling with Skips.
  • Benson has a truckload of these. Lampshaded in "Think Positive."
  • Never talk crap about Muscle Man's mom.
  • Don't mess with Pops - everyone up to Benson might chip in to get back at you for that one.
  • And don't ever spit food on Muscle Man's face.
  • Also never ever ever prank Muscle Man if it involves money or else you will never walk again! Or was that never work again?
  • Don't call Mordecai a slacker, and don't make fun of him for being shy around Margaret. The latter once led to him trying to kill Rigby.
  • Always take Drawsome seriously when Reginald is around, and don't joke about him.
  • Don't even think about pulling a prank that seriously hurts Pops. Otherwise, you'll make Muscle Man flip out. Completely Lampshaded in "Prankless" when Benson and Pops had to trick Muscle Man into coming out of retirement from pranking, and pulling the biggest prank ever on rival park manager Gene.
• Beta Couple: Eileen and Rigby.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Benson at the end of "This Is My Jam".
  • Also gets one in "Benson Be Gone".
  • And again in "Stick Hockey".
  • The Baby Ducks in "A Bunch of Full Grown Geese".
• The Big Damn Kiss:
  • Near the end of "Picking up Margaret", Mordecai and Margaret finally kiss.
  • An even bigger one happens in "Meteor Moves".
  • Happens in "New Year's Kiss" between Mordecai and C.J. but they didn't recognize each other until they removed their masks.
• Big Damn Movie: Was announced as part of Cartoon Network's Upfront 2015.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In the opening of "Fortune Cookie", when everyone is at the Chinese restaurant, we get a couple of shots of the Dim Sum receipt. It has four rows, labeled with the Pinyin characters for "small", "medium", "large", and "king".
  • "Fool Me Twice", set in Japan, has a lot:
    • The title of the titular game show, Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, I Punch Your Face! is rendered on screen as 一回私をだます！恥！二回私をだます！パンチ！罰！^note Ikkai watashi o damasu! Haji! Ni-kai watashi o damasu! Panchi! Batsu!, translating to, "Fool me once! Shame! Fool me twice! Punch! Punishment!"
    • The stage of the gameshow reads "恥、罰"^note "Haji, batsu", or "Shame, Punishment."
    • When Clive fools Shinehara a second time, the screen reads, "すごい”^note Sugoi, or "Cool!"
    • "Baka" ("ばか") in "Baka Blitz" translates roughly to "Idiot", though "バカ" is more common in current usage. The audience bleachers are also labelled with "ばか".
    • The tank of wasabi is labelled correctly as "わさび". Ditto for the "Port of Japan" ("日本港")^note "Nihon Minato" sign.
    • After the Punching the Liars video is shown, Mordecai, Rigby and Benson are shown mortified. Their shock is captioned with "心配して？" ^note "Shinpai shite?", meaning "[Are you] worried?"
    • Annoucerbot's final words are, "ごめんなさい、シネハラ先輩。”^note "Gomen-nasai, Shinehara-senpai", meaning, "I'm sorry, Shinehara-senpai."
• Big "NO!":
  • The Death Kwon Do teacher lets out three of them in the course of one episode.
  • The Master Prank Caller gets two.
  • GBF gets one after his score is finally beaten, and he explodes before he can fully finish it.
  • Susan gets one after going One-Winged Angel and Benson gets everyone to stop working.
  • Mordecai & Rigby get one after working all day on the rock garden and then walking on it.
  • In "The Night Owl", the titular antagonist gets one after the guys make it back to the time machine and escape him. The present Night Owl gets one when they come out of the portal crashing down on his billboard and car, ruining his plan.
  • Muscle Man gets one when he realizes his dad was never a truck driver.
  • In "Benson's Suit", Benson gets one mixed with Skyward Scream when his suit is stained beyond repair.
  • Pops and Benson both have one in "White Elephant Gift Exchange" as reactions to Muscle Man's "prank gifts". (Pops received a bottle of 20-year-old ranch dressing, and Benson received gloves made from Muscle Man's underwear.)
• Big "SHUT UP!": Rigby, very often. A variation of this that he also uses very often is "STOP TALKING!"
• Big "WHY?!": In "A Bunch of Full Grown Geese", Rigby shouts this two times when four geese ruin a sandwich he, Mordecai, and Pops were about to eat by knocking it on the ground and kicking dust on it and when the geese surround him and beat him up.
• Birthday Episode: The episode "Free Cake" revolves around Mordecai and Rigby setting up a birthday party for Skips, but only so they could have free chocolate cake. In trying to get Skips to the party, they interrupt a ritual that gives him eternal life, and have to sacrifice the cake to save him.
• Bishie Sparkle: Starla sees Mordecai with these when she falls for him.
• Bittersweet Ending: Pops saves the universe from Anti-Pops, but at the cost of his life. His sacrifice allows not only for the universe to continue but for all of his friends to go on to live fulfilling lives. Mordecai pursues his dream of being an artist and finds love while doing it, Rigby and Eileen raise a family together, as do Muscle Man and Starla, Fives and Cecilia have a successful career together as a DJ duo, Benson and Pam get back together, and Skips remains in the park to help mentor a whole new park crew. There is even a statue erect in memory of Pops' sacrifice, as well as one to commemorate Maellard. Still, despite seeing all these characters live happily ever after, one cannot help but feel a sense of melancholy at the loss of Pops.
• Black Comedy: Occasionally used, but especially in the "Terror Tales of The Park" Halloween specials.
• Black Comedy Rape: One of the unicorns eats Benson's gumballs.
• Bland-Name Product: Dudetime appears to be a parody of Axe body spray.
• Bloodless Carnage: A lot of one-shot villains and minor characters get killed off, though in rather cartoonish ways, such as falls and explosions.
• Body Horror:
  • What happens when you work under Susan for too long.
  • A good example of this trope is when Rigby physically turns into a house. The slow transformation doesn't look comfortable either.
  • In "Skips' Stress" Skip's extreme stress manifests as an oozing black mass that threatens to consume his body, and eventually becomes a symbiote-esque monster that absorbs the others' stress to grow to giant size.
  • The Night Owl's future self is a hulking owl robot with his living human head preserved and visible in it's chest.
• Book Ends: In "Mordecai and Rigby Down Under"; when Mordecai and Rigby first wake up in the crate and discover that they're in Australia, a group of kangaroos runs by and it zooms out to show the whole continent of Australia as Mordecai and Rigby scream. At the end, the same thing happens when the two realize that they never really left Australia, and the contents of the episode that took place in Australia were a dream.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: After being fired in "Benson Be Gone", Benson shouts a particularly long "OOOHHHHHH!!!".
• Bowdlerise:
  • The two instances of Mordecai saying "pissed" (from "Free Cake" and "Meat Your Maker"), along with Rigby's instance in "The Power", have been dubbed over with "ticked" in recent airings. The same version of "The Power" also changes Rigby's line, "Now, how in the H are we gonna fix this S?" to "Now, how in the heck are we gonna fix this stuff?" In Canada, these episodes still air in their original form, but the "H and S" line is missing entirely.
  • The international airings of this show are either edited to pieces or have missing episodes. The biggest offenders are the versions shown in the United Kingdom, Australia^note Interestingly enough, this only applies to its broadcast on CN, as it was aired uncut on 9GO! and on the streaming service Stan, as well as the DVDs/Blurays., Southeast Asia (particularly the version shown in the Philippines), and Latin America.
• Bowling for Ratings: "Skips Strikes"
• Brain Bleach: Mordecai is in need of some in "Brain Eraser," after seeing Pops in the nude.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The premise of "Exit 9B".
• Breakout Character: Muscle Man has had about as many episodes centered around his misadventures as Mordecai and Rigby.
• Breath Weapon: Benson unleashes a torrent of pure, pent up rage at Mordecai and Rigby during "Think Positive" in the form of a mouth laser.
• Brick Joke:
  • From the pilot: "Rock-paper-scissors is an evil game!"
  • Muscle Man: "MY MOM!"
  • Mordecai seems to really like chick flicks.
  • Near the beginning of "150 Piece Kit" Rigby mentions that he knew a guy who tried to perform the legendary drum solo that the episode is centered on and his skeleton caught on fire. Benson suffers similarly during the episode's climax but survives.
  • Margaret said she was going to use Mordecai's butt dial song as her ringtone, and she does.
  • In "Really Real Wrestling", Pops accidentally crushes Huge-Head with his flying car. Later, Pops flies home with a strip of police tape stuck to one of the car's wheels.
  • In "Dead at Eight", Death mentions that Muscle Man would die in a hot dog eating contest. This doesn't get brought up again until a whole season later, in "Last Meal". Death did join the contest himself just so that he could take Muscle Man's soul if he won, however, so it's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Muscle Man wins anyway.
  • A bet was made in "Terror Tales of the Park III" that the person who told "the lamest scary story" would have to wear their costume through to American Thanksgiving, a month later. Thomas ends up losing, and is seen in multiple episodes afterward still wearing his costume. He finally removes it at the dinner table in "The Thanksgiving Special", to reveal stains and stink lines.
• Broke Episode: Both "Free Cake" and "Caffeinated Concert Tickets" qualify.
  • To a lesser extent "The Power", which involves asking for raises to... hire someone else to fix a hole in a wall.
• Broken Aesop: The episode "Think Positive": if you don't yell at people, then you'll destroy everything around you. This is especially damning since Benson, the character the episode focused on, refuses to get anger management, and after this episode, continues to act hard toward Mordecai and Rigby for a good while.
• Brutal Honesty: In "Pie Contest", Mordecai and Rigby are pie judges but they don't want tell everybody how bad their pies are to avoid being hated. But they have to do this when a talking pie starts eating everybody and the only way to stop the pie and save everyone is to tell them the truth.
• Bullying a Dragon: In "Last Meal", after Death loses the hot dog eating contest, Marty, the hot dog vendor, has the nerve to call Death a loser and gives him a complimentary T-shirt for losing the contest. Death told him to enjoy the next few days because his deadline just moved up big time.
• Burying a Substitute: When Muscle Man's dad dies, his funeral urn contains not his ashes, but the ashes of his trucker's hat. It's never made clear why just his hat was cremated, just that Muscle Man plans to scatter them at the Truckers Hall of Fame.
• The Bus Came Back: In "New Year's Kiss," Rigby is told by his future self to prevent Mordecai from kissing the girl he met the day before the party, though he doesn't elaborate why Rigby needs to stop the kiss at all. In the end, it turns out that Tracy was a Red Herring all along and that wasn't the girl Rigby was supposed to stop, but his future self never said that it was C.J. he needed to stop from kissing him (the humanoid cloud girl Mordecai used to date to forget Margaret over a misunderstanding with her cousin as his boyfriend). Only time will tell how preventing this event makes any drastic significances.

C

• Call-Back:
  • In "Grave Sights", Benson asks Skips to set up the chairs, making an obvious callback to "Just Set Up the Chairs".
  • In "Benson Be Gone", Maellard complains to Benson about snacks disappearing from the snack bar, holes in the walls, and five hundred dollars worth of prank phone calls, which are all references to the episodes "Rigby's Body", "The Power", and "Prank Callers" respectively.
  • In "Camping Can Be Cool" Mordecai and Rigby bring the Super Extra Premium Hot Dogs from "Meat Your Maker" to eat on the camping trip.
  • "Stick Hockey" seems to be a whole episode callback to a scene in "Benson Be Gone", in which Benson starts warming up to the Mordecai and Rigby over the stick hockey game.
  • The Unicorns return in "House Rules", and prank calls are also referenced. Mordecai also threatens to ruin No Rules Man's only good eye with a laser pointer. Everybody knows they aren't regulation.
  • Subtly, when payday is first shown in "High Score", Mordecai complains about how they're essentially receiving doggy bags full of change, and ask to at least get an envelope. Later, in "Temp Check" they receive their pay in an envelope.
  • In "The Power", one of the things Rigby sends to the moon during the Cutaway Gag is "a bunch of baby ducks". There's a later episode with that exact name.
  • The Ferguson Convention Center from "Video Game Wizard" is named after Garret Bobby Ferguson, from the episode "High Score". A bust of him is even seen outside the building.
  • In "The Best Burger in the World", the burger truck crashes into the Crash Pit from "Terror Tales of the Park".
  • During "Diary" as Rigby and Mordecai prepare to use a microwave to melt the glue off Margaret's diary, Mordecai has a flashback of the episode "It's Time" and quickly decides against it.
  • In "Death Bear", Eileen suggests watching "Cease and Decease" before Mordecai talks about Rigby's fear of horror movies, such as "Breakfast Slaughter". Rigby is also scared of films like "Ello Gov'nor".
  • The Christmas Special had the members of the park using their Hidden Depths to overcome the booby traps on the way to the lava pit:
    • Benson used his stick-handling skills from "Stick Hockey" to beat the pinball machine.
    • Pops used his wrestling skills from "Really Real Wrestling" to pin the polar bear.
    • Also, Skips tells Santa he'll call him to go bowling sometime, like he did with other magical beings in "Skips Strikes".
  • In "TGI Tuesday", among the food that Mordecai, Rigby, and Eileen brought to the party are hummus and mini toast like in "Party Pete".
  • Rigby's refusal to hug Mordecai in "Temp Check" is possibly a call back to the episode "Don". Rigby doesn't like hugging people because it reminds him of his brother Don, who has a habit of doing it.
  • All the Death Kwon Do moves (except for the Death Dump) that Mordecai and Rigby use from "Death Punchies" are used again along with some new moves in "Sandwich of Death".
  • "Quips" features Skips and Rigby talking about the time Rigby's brother Don came over, and how Rigby tried to get rid of him but it was of no use since everybody else loved him.
  • In "Fool Me Twice", Mordecai brings up his experiences in art school which he mentioned in "Camping Can Be Cool" which Rigby points out that he never graduated.
  • In "Bad Kiss", after Mordecai tells Rigby that he and Margaret kissed, Rigby says that he owes Muscle Man a lot of money. This would later be explained at the end of "Do or Diaper" when Muscle Man bets Rigby that Mordecai and Margaret will never kiss.
  • "Last Meal" has Death showing up after Muscleman enters a Hot Dog Contest, and even has a flashback to the end of "Dead at Eight", where he tells Muscleman, Mordecai, and Rigby that Muscleman will die in a hotdog eating contest.
  • The animatronics from "Fuzzy Dice" come back for revenge during "Steak Me Amadeus".
  • "A Bunch of Full Grown Geese" not only features the return of the baby ducks Mordecai and Rigby cared for in "A Bunch of Baby Ducks", but also a bunch of past MacGuffins such as the Maximum Glove, the PlayCo Armboy, and Rigby's "Eggscellent" hat.
  • In "Dodge This", the "Magical Elements" use their magic powers to cheat but still lose at the end like in "Skips Strike".
  • The Season 4 opener, "Exit 9B", features nearly every villain who had appeared in the series up to that point working together with the son of Garrett Bobby Ferguson to destroy the park. An important part of the plot involves the park staff (except for Mordecai and Rigby) being brainwashed to forget ever having worked there, leading to the duo having to kick-start their memories by reminding them of events that had previously occurred on the series (complete with flash-backs), including:
    • Reminding Skips of his lost love, Mona, who first appeared in "Diary";
    • Giving Pops a lollipop, which he was shown to use as currency in "The Power"; and,
    • Throwing all of their catch-phrases at Benson, whilst doing donuts in the cart.
• Calling Your Attacks: "SCRAMBLE MISSILES!!"
• Camera Spoofing:
  • Tried by Mordecai in "Peeps" with a crude drawing on lined paper.
  • They do a much better job with a tape of the 1982 World Dishwashing Championship.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': The entire plot of the show is made up of this. The show starts out with something normal. Set up these chairs, go buy me a grilled cheese sandwich, learn to play guitar by the end of the episode, etc. However, just due to the world they live in, this somehow turns into a video game almost destroying the world, having to stop a black hole, and your future selves destroying your concert, just to name the outcomes of these examples. And of course, by the end of the episode (excluding "Prank Callers") everything is back to normal.
• Captain Ersatz: A very strange musical version of this during the montage in which Rigby, Mordecai and CJ set up a flat screen television. The music played sounds very much like a certain infamous 80s new wave track... which was written in the first place by the show's own composer.
• Captain Obvious:
  Rigby: Looks like you've learned the ways of Death Kwon Do.
  Mordecai: Looks like you know how to say things that people are already aware of.
• Cassette Futurism: It has a very '80s (with some '90s) feel to it, despite being set in the present day (2010s). (One episode had the characters time travel to the actual 1980s.) All video graphics are 8-bit, the music is mostly Hair Metal, and some episodes ape early-MTV music video techniques. Not to mention that their current United States President looks pretty similar to Bill Clinton, and Skips' backstory of how he became immortal has a 1980s high school tropes-like atmosphere despite being set in the 1800s.
• Casting Gag:
  • Aside from Skips, Mark Hamill also voiced the hungover clown that was in the hotel room with a horse - which might be a reference to The Joker, one of Hamill's most famous roles.
  • They also got Hamill to voice a Commissioner Gordon expy in "Temp Check".
  • One episode features Tim Curry as a guest voice. The character he plays? A literal frankfurter.
  • In "Exit 9B", after the park is destroyed, we see Skips now works as an auto mechanic. His voice actor, Mark Hamill, played Burke, one of a duo who tormented a pair of auto mechanics, Chance and Jake— aka the SWAT Kats.
• Chainsaw Good: Coffee's interpreter wields a chainsaw.
  Mordecai: A chainsaw!? Are you serious!?
  • The Probo-bears in "But I Have a Receipt".
• Chaos of the Bells: In the episode "The Christmas Special", "Carol of the Bells" plays as Mordecai and Rigby battle Quillgin over a pit of lava.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Mordecai and Rigby: The double grunt, and a triumphant, simultaneous "OOOHHHHHHH!!!" or "WHOOOOOOOHHHH"
    Their in-unison "YEEEAYUHHH!" seems to have become Cartoon Network's new catch phrase.
    • Heck, everybody gets in a "WHOOOOH!" at least once.
    • Along with the above catchphrases, their freestyle raps get so common in the later seasons that they may well be contractually obliged to put them in.
  • Skips: "I've seen this before."
  • Pops: "Good show!" and conversely "Bad show!" He also has "Oooh! How exciting!", regarding absolutely anything people tell him about.
  • Benson: "YOU'RE FIRED!", and to a lesser extent, "UNBELIEVABLE!" and "YOU IDIOTS!"
  • Muscle Man: "YOU KNOW WHO ELSE IS/DOES X?" followed by "MY MOM!"
  • When something goes/is about to go wrong: "Oh no, bro!"
  • Rigby's "STOP TALKING!!!" and "Dude, we gotta...!"
  • Mordecai's usual response to Rigby's "Dude, we gotta" is "Dude, we should totally do that" if he wants to. If he doesn't, it's "I don't know, Rigby", "No, Rigby" and inevitably something about them getting fired if they do it. Rigby usually follows up with an "Aw, c'mon" and Mordecai is like "Alright then". Mordecai knows that he can always say "it was Rigby's idea" when he gets in trouble, and that may be why he is so easily persuaded. This formula is the premise for virtually every episode.
  • Often when he's explaining something he'll throw in "and they were all like" before doing an impression of the person he's describing. Muscle Man also does this.
  • Mordecai and Rigby, together, when asked to do more work than usual: "Aw, what?!"
• Character Development:
  • "Benson Be Gone" has Benson come to understand Mordecai and Rigby more. And it sticks, afterwards, he's shown to be noticeably more tolerant of them and doesn't fly into a rage over them as often, even going as far as to helping them in "This is My Jam". In "Jinx" he actually accepts an apology from them, where before he'd not have given them the time of day.
    Especially since earlier, Rigby sent him in a moment of Unstoppable Rage, which Benson didn't take out on Rigby himself. Newer episodes also have him leading the group in "down time" activities such as game night or paying for drinks for everyone at a bar, showing he's lightened up more.
  • Rigby has grown much closer to Eileen; in "Yes, Dude, Yes" he eagerly suggests going to the movies with her, while in "Do Me a Solid" he only accepted a date as a solid, and did everything possible to sabotage it. Later, it goes even further in "Diary", where he admits that she looks hot without her glasses on. In "Eileen Flat Screen", he convinces Mordecai and CJ to help him set up her new flat screen and prevent it from being destroyed, all while showing how much time he spends with her now. They even went to a museum without Mordecai's knowledge.
  • Mordecai and Margaret's relationship has also developed along the series. In the first season, she's seen hooking up with a different person in every of her appearances, while in Season 3's "Butt Dial", she sets his song about her as a ringtone. Later, in "Death Bear", they almost kiss but Rigby's prank spoils it.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Margaret was a Flat Character compared to the other recurring cast, that is until "Do Me a Solid" where she's revealed to be a down-to-earth character (the unusual circumstances don't faze her nearly as much as one would expect).
  • Benson, Skips, and even Muscle Man and High-Five Ghost have had a good bit of character growth over the series as well, the group becoming kinder and more friendly with Rigby and Mordecai, making some of their early scenes a bit strange to how they are now. This is especially clear with Benson, who doesn't go into a rage as often. Recent episodes even have him doing things like organizing game nights for everyone and taking everyone out to a bar with the drinks on him, showing he's lightened up considerably.
  • Notably, High Five Ghost did not start off as an independent character, only being seen when Muscle Man was around, and having no real speaking lines. He eventually developed his own personality, which serves as somewhat of a foil to Muscle Man's often reckless jockishness.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Hamboning will save your life.
  • Button Mashing really works in video games, but only for shooting, not for leg control... normally.
  • The grilled cheese.
  • "Laser pointers?! That's not regulation!"
  • The celebratory hug, or lack thereof.
  • Two Words: "PLAYCO ARMBOY."
  • Muscle Man's sporting equipment in "Grave Sights".
  • Rigby and Mordecai's extreme carting comes into play in "Busted Cart" when they need to drive along the most dangerous highway in the country.
  • Mordecai and Rigby make use of their Death-Kwon-Do training from "Death Punchies" without giving it a second thought in "The Death Sandwich". Mordecai uses the Death Block a few times, among other moves. Although, Benson was with them and also knew Death-Kwon-Do, which might have come as a result of being forced to wear cut-off jean shorts and a mullet like all practitioners must wear.
  • Mordecai and Rigby practice keeping their eyes open through staring contests in "peeps". This comes in handy later when they have to compete against Peeps in a staring contest.
  • The Power from the homonym episode plays a significant role in the finale: After glitching reality and ending up in said very first episode, Mordecai and Rigby use the Power to go back to the future to help Pops defeat Anti-Pops.
• Chess with Death:
  • Arm Wrestling with Death, in Skips' case. He challenged Death to restore Rigby back to life, whom Skips had killed in the first place. If he lost, Death would've claimed his immortal soul.
  • A blinking contest with Peeps, a floating eyeball monster to get him to leave in "Peeps". If they'd lost, he'd have taken all their eyes.
  • Mordecai and Rigby had to babysit Death's son in order to save Muscle Man from having his soul reaped. The specific condition was to have him sleeping by 8 PM when Death and his wife got home from their anniversary date.
• The Chew Toy: Rigby, and his four deaths.
• Childish Older Sibling: Everybody assumes Don is the older brother of Rigby because Don has his life in order, has a steady, professional job, is personable, popular with his friends, and is much taller than Rigby. The confusion manifested in the form of significant, life-long resentment on Rigby's end against Don.
• Christmas Episode:
  • Season 4's simply and aptly-titled "The Christmas Special", featuring Ed Asner as Santa and Thomas Haden Church as a "rogue elf". The episode is pretty much the definitive example of An Ass-Kicking Christmas, and perhaps the most action movie-esque episode of the series.
  • Season 6's "Merry Christmas Mordecai", which was way more active on the mellow factor, since it dealt with Mordecai reconciling his relationships between CJ and Margaret.
• Chunky Updraft: Benson's pent-up rage starts sucking the ground up in the surrounding area, leaving a crater in the ground by the time he unleashes.
• City with No Name: Anytime there you'd expect an actual name for the municipality, it just says "City" — maybe that's the actual name?
• Clothes Make the Superman: Anyone can become a Death-Kwon-Do master; just wear a mullet and disturbingly short cut-offs. This ensemble also protects the wearer from the deathly effects of the Death Sandwich, allowing them to eat it normally, unless you've already eaten it prior or it's the Double-Death Sandwich.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Pops. Seemingly the only reason he is employed is that he is the son of the guy who owns the park.
• Color Wash: The more action-oriented sequences are animated in a redder color palette.
• Community-Threatening Construction: It introduced Thomas as the Park's newest intern in an episode where the Park was being turned into a new interstate as a revenge plot by Garrett Bobby Ferguson Jr. because Mordecai and Rigby were responsible for his father's death.
• Compelling Voice: The Power seemed to grant its users this, but it was actually much more than that.
• Complexity Addiction: The Capicola Gang's plan for revenge on the park workers is printing fake Amadeus dollars (coupons to buy steaks at "Steak Me Amadeus") and sell them to Pops who would give them to the rest of the workers. When they want more cheap steaks, they would set up a meeting to exchange more Amadeus dollars and then ambush them. Their whole plan is dependent on the gang's desire for affordable steaks and apparently they didn't bother to take in account that if the park workers use these counterfeit coupons they would get trouble with the police and get arrested and won't have the chance to meet them. Rigby lampshades it:
  Rigby: Dude, that's really weird.
  Capicola Gang Leader: Well it worked didn't it?
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Taken to its logical conclusion in "Rage Against the TV". Mordecai and Rigby reach a legendary Final Boss that few if any have ever made it to, and none have beaten, just when they start damaging it, it fights back by shutting off the TV, then, when they connect another it manifests in the real world and they have to fight it for real before finishing it off in the game and finally winning.
• Comically Missing the Point: Muscle Man's signature "MY MOM" joke.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A very small one. In "Just Set Up the Chairs", Benson screams that he will never trust Mordecai and Rigby to do something as simple as setting up the chairs ever again. In "Grave Sights", he has Skips set up the chairs instead.
  • In "Bet to Be Blonde," a pair of "Mordecai and the Rigbys" t-shirts can be seen in Mordecai and Rigby's closet, calling back to their fake band in the episode of that name.
  • In "Yes, Dude, Yes" we see Mordecai finish telling CJ about the events of "High Score".
  • In "Fancy Restaurant", Rigby brings up the last time Starla dumped him in "Muscle Woman" and how his depression forced his work onto the two of them.
  • In "Diary", Ribgy is about to put Margaret's diary in the microwave, but Mordecai won't let him because he remembers the events of "It's Time", where microwaving a bunch of clocks sent them to another dimension and killed Rigby.
  • In "Bad Kiss", they try to use time travel again, and near the end, they travel through past episodes.
  • In "The Best VHS in the World", Mordecai and Rigby are forced to clean up their room to find a VHS. Items shown in their room include The Power (still broken in two) and the grilled cheese Rigby dropped on the floor.
  • In "TGI Tuesday", Margaret still uses Mordecai's song as her ringtone when Mordecai calls her from "Butt Dial".
  • "Sandwich of Death" brings the return of Death Kwon Do.
  • "Ace Balthazar Lives" brings back the guy who thinks he's a knight from "Muscle Woman" and the knight who guarded the "I'm Eggscellent" trucker cap.
  • In "Do or Diaper", Moredcai makes sure to pack gum, mints, and other things to freshen breath for his date with Margret. Why? Because he doesn't want a repeat of "Bad Kiss".
  • In "Quips", Skips argues that no one shooed away Don when he came to the park in "Don", and Rigby reminds him that was because everyone liked Don, and Rigby tried to get rid of him, which is true.
  • In "One Space Day At A Time", Pops and Eileen stumble upon the frozen cave couple, Gregg and Diane, from "Caveman".
• Continuity Porn: "Exit 9B" has every deceased villain and nearly every ally Mordecai and Rigby have ever encountered together for one big brawl out, and the Big Bad of the episode is the son of GBF. There's also the flashbacks the rest of the park workers have when they regain their memories, as well as the things Mordecai and Rigby do to snap Benson out of it.
• Continuity Snarl: "The Last Laserdisc Player" and "Format Wars II" not only flies in the face of any episode that used the internet but they also contradict "The Best VHS in the World," where it's revealed that Mordecai and Rigby can't afford a DVD player so they're forced to rent from the only store in town that still stocks VHS.
  • The Movie has a rather sketchy relationship with the shows timeline. There are obvious omisions like the movie ending with Mordecai and Rigby getting to keep Future Rigby's Time-traveling Space Gunship yet they never have it in the show. And there are more subtle PlotHoles; The movie featuring an Early-Bird Cameo of the Space Tree Station, the SPARK Initiative and the Galactic Park Rangers and even has the heroes (minus Rigby) outright join up with the Rangers at the climax the movie to fight Ross, yet they apparently have no recollection of this when they are actually recruited by the Rangers in Season 8. The most mention the movie gets are scant, overhand references like a Continuity Cameo from Ross in the Season 7 finale and Mordecai and Rigby mentioning the 'timeline where they were space pilots' in the first episode of Season 8. ^note Which only makes the problems above more confusing.
• Contrived Coincidence: The Series. Usually it's a well-timed commercial, but other events are likely to happen.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In "Bet to Be Blonde", Mordecai lowers Rigby into lava and stops just inches before he touches the lava. Rigby drips sweat, but is completely unharmed.
• Convenient Weakness Placement: The Warden of the Internet is a giant video screen. The power button is right next to the imprisonment beam. Apparently, nobody ever noticed that before Rigby.
• Converse with the Unconscious: In "Eggscellent", Mordecai briefly talked to Rigby, who was in a coma.
• Cool Car:
  • The golf cart.
  • Let us not forget Don's red Chevrolet Corvette C4 from "Don."
  • Carter and Briggs' custom 1985 police cruiser "engineered for doing donuts."
• Cool Old Guy: Skips (and maybe Pops)
• Cool Uncle: Uncle Steve from the story "Payback" in "Terror Tale of the Park II". Heck, the guy rose from the dead, just to pay Mordecai his five bucks back.
• Cool Shades: A relatively common occurrence in the series, but especially notable in "Cool Bikes".
• Cool Versus Awesome: Two-Headed Dinosaur vs. Robo-Bigfoot is brought up in "Replaced".
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • Rich Buckner in "The Thanksgiving Special", whose plan was to use the golden wishbone in the turducken that Mordecai and Rigby won to obtain the rights to Thanksgiving.
  • Matchmaker McIntyre, the CEO and owner of Couple's Corral, who was willing to commit cold-blooded murder to keep the last member of his website from deleting their profile.
  • The two heads of the Party Starters from "Party Re-Pete". They were willing to kidnap, clone, and indefinitely hold extreme partiers in order to make money renting out their clones as party hosts.
• Cruel Twist Ending:
  • At the end of Muscle Man's story in "Terror Tales of the Park III" where the pumpkin-head scarecrow turns Mordecai, Rigby, Muscle Man, and High-Five Ghost into pumpkins and smashed them for smashing his wife's head. The scarecrow uses their seeds to grow them into pumpkins (just their heads) where they would try to convince any people who would want to buy them to buy the others instead. Muscle Man lampshades the ending when none of his co-workers were impressed by his story.
  • Margaret's party bus story in "Terror Tales of the Park II". Mordecai, Rigby, Margaret, and Eileen are all on a bus that makes its passengers age rapidly. Once Mordecai puts the bus in reverse, the four start rapidly de-aging and are converted to babies by the time they escape the bus through a hatch on top. However, they all turn into dust and disintegrate in midair. Do note that this was meant to be a funny story.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • "The only thing you're better than me at is being a big piece of—"
  • "You f—"
  • "UGGH! F—"
  • "F-f-f-f-f-first of all..."
  • "Ow! Moth—"
  • "Since when does being right make you a—"
  • "We need to beat the living—"
• Cutaway Gag: "A bunch of baby ducks, send 'em to the moon..."
• Cyberpunk:
  • In "Skips vs Technology", Techmo has some shades of this.
  • Particularly of Shadowrun.
• Cyberspace:
  • Mordecai, Rigby and Pops end up there in "Go Viral".
  • As does Techmo in "Skips vs Technology".

D

• Dance Party Ending: The ending of "Ace Balthazar Lives".
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Shredder from "Power Tower", a bodybuilding pose that can shred the competition if done correctly, but shred the poser to death if it's not.
• Dark Is Evil: Lampshaded in "Brilliant Century Duck Crisis Special". The Geese originally signed up with PlayCo because they assumed they were going to be the good guys. When they find out that's not the case, the two business men tell the Geese that they're obviously the bad guys because their mech is black and grey. The outraged Geese promptly pull a Heel–Face Turn and combine their mech with the Park Gang's mech, turning it bright white.
• Deadly Prank: A near-deadly prank in "Prankless", in which Pops gets crushed by a bed that Muscle Man had taped to the ceiling. He gets taken to the hospital, where he just barely survives.
• Deadpan Door Shut: In "Rage Against The TV", Benson goes to the house to plug in his TV, only to see that Mordecai and Rigby have trashed the living room. Instead of getting angry at them for making a mess, he closes the door with a blank expression and says nothing.
• Death Glare: Mordecai gives one to Skips in "Over the Top" along with a What the Hell, Hero?.
• Death Trap Tango: Part of the death trap Gene made to protect the volcano is a game of DanceDanceRevolution mixed with instantaneous impalement upon screwing up the choreography
• Deconstruction: The park employees generally take the various insane events of their lives in stride. However, Margaret's life is relatively normal, so the ridiculous and/or supernatural disturbances in Mordecai's life put a real strain on their potential relationship because Mordecai turns out looking like a flake.
• Decoy Convoy: In "Trailer Trashed", a safety inspector comes to the park to do an inspection and, upon seeing Mitch (aka Muscle Man)'s trailer home, tries to confiscate it. When Mitch refuses, the Park Crew agree to help him try to get it somewhere the inspector can't find it and load it into Muscle Bro's trailer truck. A chase ensues between the crew and the Inspector and his flunkies until it comes down to Mitch and the inspector who reveals he's a contestant who lost the trailer in a hot dog eating contest against Mitch years ago. However Mitch bails out the truck and the inspector finds that trailer wasn't even in it before going over a cliff. Mitch reveals to the crew he had moved the trailer elsewhere and had Fives guarding it while luring the inspector into chasing a decoy. Though... didn't tell his brother that he was going to destroy his truck however. Whoops.
• Defeating the Cheating Opponent: Rigby beats Skips at arm wrestling several times, despite being a third of his size and Skips having Super-Strength. When Skips learns Rigby cheated with "the Arm-Boy," a mechanical arm designed for arm wrestling, he's so enraged he yanks the Arm-Boy off and forces Rigby to play fair... at which Skips wins so hard he kills Rigby. He gets better after Skips arm wrestles Death for the sake of Rigby's soul, though.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • With the defeat of the Prank Master the episode ends with Mordecai, Rigby and the Master Prank Caller making more prank calls. However, The Master Prank Caller is later seen as one of their dead enemies in "Exit 9B". How he died is unknown.
  • An even straighter example is Gene, a snack vending machine of a different park, who after "Prankless" is seen helping the guys in "The Christmas Special".
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • "It's supposed to say Rigby but they misspelled my name wrong." Kinda justified given Rigby's low intelligence.
  • "Dude, all these snacks are free, dude."- Rigby after he and Mordecai overate the snacks at the snack bar.
  • There's also the 'Death Punch of Death' in "Death Punchies".
  • Rigby rents a movie from "Movie Shack Hut".
  • From "This is My Jam", the song Rigby gets stuck in his head is called "Summertime Lovin', Lovin' in the Summer (Time)".
  • "You jerks are jerks! You don't know anything about comedy!"- Muscle Man bombing at open mic night.
  • In "But I Have A Receipt", Mordecai and Rigby attempt to get a refund from "Comics Plus And More Etc."
  • The elf's name in "The Best VHS in the World" is ButtonWillow McButtonWillow.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Either Benson or Mordecai and Rigby's statuses as the Designated Hero/Villain. In some episodes, Benson over-reacts, while sometimes, it's justified. Sometimes, Mordecai and Rigby screw around, but would try to fix what they broke.
  • Mordecai's competence. In some episodes, he gets dragged into slacking off by Rigby, but would try to suggest getting back to work. Other times, he willingly joins in on the slacking.
  • Rigby's competence and level of Jerkass also have some wild variations throughout the episodes.
• Deus ex Machina: In the season 4 finale, a member of an evil animatronic animal band says that school is overrated and he didn't need college—only for the restaurant owner to show and say that he does not allow dishonoring of college education. However, he had just gotten finished using his bazooka on the band.
• Deuteragonist:
  • Benson, on virtue of being the one character that can easily play protagonist or antagonist due to his role as the park's strict, temperamental boss. Like, two thirds of all episodes are about Mordecai & Rigby screwing up their job and trying to prevent Benson from firing them for it.
  • One could also make a good argument for either Skips, who is usually the guy that helps out the main duo in fixing all the weird mess that happens, or Muscle Man, who became really prominent from Season 3 and on, as the show's Tritagonist.
  • Pops becomes this during the last season, as the guy that is supposed to fight the universe's greatest evil.
  • Mordecai and Rigby both share the role of protagonist, as neither is really more important than the other. Love life aside, Mordecai rarely brings anything interesting to the table whereas Rigby is always causing trouble, driving the plot of most episodes. Still, Mordecai is often viewed as the "true protagonist" due to being the leader of the duo, to the point that there's even an episode where Rigby takes issue about being considered Mordecai's "sidekick". In general, Mordecai's love life is a major plot point in the first six seasons (especially in seasons 4-6) while Rigby gets a major arc regarding his character development in season 7.
• Did Not Get the Girl: See Downer Ending below.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Mordecai and Rigby have defeated enough Eldritch Abominations that it should be in their job description by now. Though it's normally in a Mundane Made Awesome fashion.
• Dinner and a Breakup: In "Steak Me Amadeus", Mordecai and Margaret go to the titular restaurant for a date, where Mordecai asks Margaret to be his girlfriend. Margaret, however, has to gently refuse him because she got into her favored college out of state (In fact, she was planning to tell him during the dinner. It got held up because of a sting operation the Park Crew and he got dragged into), and runs away crying.
• Dirty Cop: The Jerkass sheriff in "Gold Watch".
• Disco Sucks: In the episode "Party Re-Pete", Tommy tells Party Zoe "Disco is dead!" before blasting her with a rocket launcher.
• Disney Acid Sequence:
  • After Mordecai, Rigby, and Benson all consume a drink called "The Mississippi Queen" in "Weekend at Benson's", the song of the same name starts playing over a slew of deranged hallucinations.
  • In "Mordecai and Rigby Down Under", Mordecai and Rigby find themselves in an exhaustion-induced one after walking for countless miles on end in sweltering Australian heat.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • Susan in "Benson Be Gone" falls into a pit to Hell after Utopia takes out her heels in a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • The Jerkass Truckers in "Trucker Hall Of Fame" are sent falling off a cliff by the ghost of Muscle Man's father when they tried to run Muscle Man, Mordecai, and Rigby down with their big rig. Their big rig promptly explodes on impact.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Lots; one of the show's running gags is minor issues or problems that spiral into world-threatening peril or responding to minor slights with attempted murder. A few examples:
  • Muscle Man hosts a fake party, gets Mordecai and Rigby turned into ghosts, and fakes a heart attack after Rigby accidentally spilled soda on him. After almost choking to death.
  • "Over the Top". Skips isn't too pleased about Rigby beating him in arm wrestling, especially after finding out he used an arm brace. So he forces him into a rematch, yanks out the brace, then instead of leaving it there, smashes him through the table, killing him. Skips realizes this though, and puts his own soul on the line to bring him back to life.
  • The Warden of the Internet in "Go Viral," who imprisons people in their videos forever for making viral videos, because she believes the internet should be a serious place for writing term papers (and occasionally keeping in touch with relatives).
  • The Wizard from the Halloween Special turns Rigby into a house and brutally murders the entire cast just because Rigby egged his house. Not to mention egging the house Rigby rather harmlessly, giving Rigby enough time to lampshade the topic... JUST before the wizard drops a house-sized EGG and drenching him in egg yolk as he screams in horror. "The End."
    • Becomes even more of a disproportionate retribution when the viewers find out about Rigby's egg allergy in "Eggscellent".
  • The wrestlers in "Really Real Wrestling" beat the hell out of Mordecai and Rigby because they thought wrestling was fake.
  • Benson sometimes threatens to fire Mordecai and Rigby for tedious reasons, such as not taking a cart to the dump. He also once fired them for an accident and for something Muscle Man did, suggesting he will take any opportunity to get rid of them. Then again, he is a Bad Boss.
  • In "Benson's Suit", the original maker of the titular suit (Evil Steve) tries to coerce Benson into handing over the suit. How does he do so? By bringing an entire army.
  • In "Take the Cake", Mordecai and Rigby are picking up Mr. Maellard's birthday cake from the bakery and get into the pre-paid line, when a woman starts pitching a fit and calling them line cutters. So she tries to run them off the road while brandishing a cake cutter and screaming "Line cutters gonna get cut!" It turns out she can't read and didn't know there were two lines, so on top of being a psycho, she's also an idiot.
  • When Muscle Man is trying to impress Starla's parents at a fancy restaurant, the head waiter is convinced Muscle Man is faking being fancy and tries to trick him into proving it. When he does, the entire wait staff tries to kill Muscle Man, Starla, and her parents because of it.
    • Happened earlier in "Eggscellent"; when it looks like Mordecai is on the verge of completing their thought-to-be-impossible egg dinner challenge, the staff's response is to try to kill him.
  • Mess up on taxes? The IRS will audit you... by literally RetGonning everything you own, ending with you.
  • "The Best Burgers In The World." Mordecai and Rigby slack, as usual, and as a response to this Benson eats their burgers in front of them, out of spite. Keep in mind these burgers can only be gotten once every 100 years... and Benson brags to them about it afterwards.
• Distaff Counterpart:
  • Margaret and Eileen to Mordecai and Rigby, respectively.
  • Also Starla to Muscle Man.
• Distant Finale: The series finale ends with a flash-forward 25 years into the future, showing where everyone's lives ended up. Among other things, we see Mordecai finally achieved his art dream AND found love, Rigby and Eileen are Happily Married, Benson got back with his Ex and is a much happier person, Skips is training a new generation of park staff, and Pops has been memorialized with a statue in the center of the park.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Oh boy.
  • "Caffeinated Concert Tickets" gives us Mordecai immediately cutting off his sentence and drooling when he sees Margaret in a shirt showing some generous Sideboob.
  • "Mordecai and the Rigbys" has Mordecai gawking with his mouth gaping open and dropping the box he was holding when Margaret puts on one of his band's shirts.
  • "Slam Dunk" features a scene in which Mordecai stares at Margaret as she passes him on her bike, followed by a detailed shot of her butt.
  • In "Do or Diaper", Mordecai freezes for a moment and stares at Margaret in a fancy dress after she opens her apartment's door when he comes to pick her up.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Benson takes a gas nozzle in and out and in and out of the car, shaking it before gas leaks out of it.
• Don't Explain the Joke:
  • Muscle Man: "If you don't pick Starla's pie, the next pie you eat will be through a straw, because you'll be in the hospital on life support"
  • Quips explains a lot of jokes if the person/people he's telling them to don't laugh (but that's because they aren't funny).
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": "GBF" is "Garrett Bobby Ferguson," not "Giant Bearded Face."
• Doomed by Canon: Mona in "Skips' Story." Skips' immortality already made it clear that the "girl [he] loved" that lead to his name change had to have passed away long ago, though until this episode it was never confirmed how she died (in this case, she was crushed by falling debris).
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: "Death Punchies" is all over the "of death" variant.
• Doppelgänger Spin: Used by Chong in "Stick Hockey" as one of several methods to gain the upper hand in the final round of stick hockey.
• Downer Ending:
  • "Steak Me Amadeus": Mordecai finally has the courage to ask Margaret to be his girlfriend, but she reveals to him that she's been accepted into her dream college so she can't be his girlfriend which devastates both of them. The last scene shows Mordecai sitting on the park roof with Rigby trying to comfort him.
  • "Skips' Story": As a result of the above mentioned Doomed by Canon, the episode shows us Mona's death, and how it lead to Skips' changing his name in honor of her memory. Even Mordecai and Rigby, whom Skips was telling the story to, found the ending to be depressing. The final shot of the episode even has Skips pulling out the locket he made over 150+ years ago and tearing up.
  • "Merry Christmas Mordecai": After spending the whole episode trying to avoid talking to Margaret out of fear of screwing things up with CJ, Mordecai finally finds the courage to talk to her and both seem to finally have moved on... and then both in the heat of the moment kiss in front of a heartbroken CJ who runs away in tears, possibly ending their relationship.
• Dragged Off to Hell: "Exit 9B" ends with all the surviving resurrected villains being sucked back into the underworld when Garrett Bobby Ferguson Jr.'s plan is foiled.
• Dramatic Drop: In "Dumped at the Altar", Mordecai drops his coffee cup when Rigby tells him that he and Eileen are dating. It even has a musical sting, no less.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: The animatronic bear reaches for his gun to kill Rigby before the FBI shows up in "Fuzzy Dice". The snipers cock their gun and the bear follows suit. Cue in a fatal shootout.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In "Cool Bikes" Benson admits that Mordecai and Rigby are the coolest guys he knows. In any other context this would be sweet, but the viewer knows that Benson just unknowingly secured them a guilty verdict.
  • In "New Year's Kiss", Mordecai and C.J. were surprised that they kissed each other once they removed their masquerade masks, but viewers were fully aware that was obviously C.J. under the mask, due to the mask not covering her entire face and the fact that she's the only cloud humanoid to appear on the show so far.
• DreamWorks Face: Mordecai strikes one in "Cruisin'". It even says "Dreamworks Face".
• Dr. Fakenstein: The eighth and final season featured a minor character named Dr. Prankenstein. He insists his name is pronounced "Pronkensteen", but no one listens to him.
• Driven to Suicide: Cart in "Out of Commission", to the point where he actually wants to be driven off a cliff to drown in a lake. While having fireworks exploding on him. After his death, Mordecai and Rigby have to bring him back due to Benson's math mistake.
• Drowning My Sorrows: At the end of "Steak Me Amadeus", when Margaret has rejected Mordecai to attend university, Rigby and an extremely depressed Mordecai drink "soda" together on the park rooftop.
• Drunken Montage: The beginning of "Mordecai and the Rigbys" has Mordecai and Rigby drunk trying to find a good name for their fake band.
• Drunk on Milk: Every time there's a bunch of soda cans around, they mean beer.
  • To an even greater extent, chicken wings (yes, really). In the Regular Show universe, chicken wings are apparently a mind-altering substance. Any time a character is shown eating them, expect the next scene to feature them either acting drunk/stoned out of their mind or nursing a hangover.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • Muscle Man gets this from everyone else in "The End of Muscle Man," when at first we all thought Muscle Man was going to die, but is later reveal this was part of his plan to propose to his girlfriend. Everyone scolds him because death is not a metaphor, but Fives though it was amazing.
  • In "Steak Me Amadeus", right after Margaret says that she can't be Mordecai's girlfriend since she got into her dream school, the Capicola leader snidely remarks about how college is useless and that he didn't need it. He and the rest of the Capicola gang are subsequently bombed by Amadeus Martinez.
  • In "Eggscellent", Benson makes an insensitive remark about Rigby when he's in a coma about how you shouldn't slack off your work. Mordecai immediately punches him in the face.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: It seems to be one of the major running gags in the case of Mordecai and Rigby.
  • Benson tends to fall victim to this as well, despite years of faithful service at the park.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Pops, while rather naive and obstructive during "Think Positive", does bring up the obvious question of why Benson has to constantly yell at Mordecai and Rigby. Sure, they're slackers, but it often doesn't make them much better employees.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • Leon performing a Heroic Sacrifice in "Benson Be Gone" to take out Susan.
  • Wedgie Ninja's sacrifice in "Go Viral" to save Mordecai, Rigby, and Pops from the Warden of the Internet, destroying her in the process.
  • In the finale, Pops sacrifices himself by grasping his evil twin and hurling the both of them into a sun. Thus saving the universe, but leaving a hole in the heart of his beloved friends.

E

• Ear Worm: In "This Is My Jam" Rigby gets "Summertime Loving, Loving in the Summer (Time)" stuck in his head, to the point that the song sings itself whenever he opens his mouth. Not singing it, but playing on its own. Eventually the song manifests itself into a physical form and starts driving everyone nuts. The gang decides to come up with an even catchier song to rid of it... "Aw snap! Aw snap! Come to our macaroni party then we'll take a nap!" Which then gets stuck in Rigby's head just like the last song, causing everyone to groan.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The show is rather infamous for featuring mild swearing early on, which was slowly phased out in season 2.
  • The animation style was much more fluid and Off-Model in the pilot and first season.
  • Season 1's title cards featured background ambience, which isn't present in later seasons.
• Easily Impressed: Mordecai and Rigby are often stupefied by hilariously mundane things like video games with graphics that wouldn't be out of place on an Nintendo Entertainment System or how when Ribgy is awestruck by Techmo's (a who happens to be a high-tech, cyber warrior) built-in pizza pouch warmer. What makes this particularly hilarious is that they are able to be amazed by such trivial and/or outdated stuff despite living in what basically amounts to a World of Chaos.
• Eldritch Abomination: These are so commonplace in the series; it puts H. P. Lovecraft to shame.
  • When you tie in rock paper scissors 100 times, it summons a black hole that apparently leads to a monster's dimension. The glimpse of the monster is… disconcerting.
  • In the name of all that is holy, do not play with the wires of the Destroyer of Worlds arcade game.
  • Father Time from "It's Time" is one. He is a being made entirely of clocks who lives at the end of time, and was actually a rather nice guy and was willing to let Mordecai off with a warning and press the Reset Button for him.
  • The Snow Monster. He's made of snow, breathes fire from a jawless mouth, and creates one of the scariest moments of the show.
  • Actually, the "Book of Park Records" could qualify too, as it gave a Necronomicon vibe when they touched it, and can alter reality (at least within the park).
  • Peeps from the self-titled episode. He's a giant floating eyeball that can summon a huge number of smaller eyeballs from his body and threatened to watch everyone till they died. When they made a deal to get rid of him, he wanted all their eyes if he won.
  • SUSAN. The worst part is how normal she seems before turning her head 180 degrees and going One-Winged Angel.
  • The mirror monster in "Jinx" could qualify too.
• Eldritch Location: The whole world turns into one if you eat too much sugar. The laws of physics, time, sound, light, and colors start to break down, leaving almost nothing as it was.
• Electricity Knocks You Out: In an episode, Muscle Man and High Five Ghost are knocked out by lightning while high fiving each other.
• Embarrassing Voicemail: Mordecai accidentally leaves a Pocket Dial message expressing his fondness for Margaret. After he realises, he and Rigby must find Margaret's phone to delete it before she listens to it.
• Epic Fail: When Rigby fails to do even one pull-up in front of everyone, Muscle Man is the first to respond by verbally playing the fail tune from The Price Is Right.
• Escalating War: "Prankless".
  • "Family BBQ", where Mordecai and Margaret's dad try to top each other at cannonballs.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: When a football game is interrupted by a lightning storm, Muscle Man and Hi-Five Ghost insist that people getting struck by lighting is an old wives' tale. No points for guessing what happened to them.
• Eternal Recurrence: The backstory of the show reveals this to be the fate of the universe, When Pops and his evil twin assume their apex titanic forms and punch the universe into oblivion and back. However, the recurrence isn't perfect and small things glitch with each new iteration of the universe (which explains a lot). THIS universe iteration, the one Regular Show takes place in, is the first one where the balance is finally broken, and the forces of the cosmos are scrambling to come out on top, knowing that this is the universe which might not reset. Long story short, Pops wins, happy ending, jolly good show, okay you can turn off your televisions now.
• "Everybody Helps Out" Denouement:The episode "Party Pete" has a mild ending like this where many of the partygoers help Mordecai and Rigby clean up before Benson arrives.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: The golf cart in "Grave Sights"; usually averted, however.
• Everyone Went to School Together: One episode reveals Muscle Man had met Hi-Five Ghost in high school when Fives was the new kid. During the drag race they had, Starla's also in the same school as she starts the race.
• Everything Makes a Mushroom: The slam dunk Mordecai makes from outer space causes a mushroom cloud explosion upon impact.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Muscle Man maybe a known bully who enjoys pulling pranks on others, but in "Prankless" we learn there's one rule he has about it... Do Not Harm Anyone!
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: Skips has to repeatedly take down Klorgbane every 157 years. He only has to beat Skips once to kill his brothers (as shown with Archibald being easily killed).
• Exact Words: "The End of Muscle Man", in the sense that Muscle Man was planning to "kill" himself so that Mitch Sorenstein remained to take Starla's hand in marriage. Starla rejects this idea, stating that she wants to be married to the man she fell in love with, and so Muscle Man reproposes and she accepts.
• Expendable Clone: The clones rented out by the party service in "Party Pete" and "Party Re-Pete". Each one was set to explode after the time of rental expired.
• Expy:
  • Dig Champs is clearly a parody of Dig Dug.
  • In "Grave Sights", Zombocalypse 3D stars Ash from Evil Dead and Army of Darkness.
  • Garrett Bobby Ferguson from "High Score" is pretty much Pac-Man champion Billy Mitchell... as a giant head.
  • In "Rage Against the TV", The Hammer is pastiche of games like Double Dragon. Also the console Mordecai and Rigby play on looks like a Sega Master System.
  • In "World's Best Boss" Doug MacFarland, the boss who fights the workers for the mug seems and looks a whole lot like Bill Lumbergh.
  • The murderous TV Executive in "That's My Television" is basically Ted Turner if Ted Turner was a supervillian. Although that may not be far off..
  • Agents Costello and Kessler from "Steak Me Amadeus" bear more than a passing resemblance to Mulder and Scully.
  • Rich Buckmart resembles a slightly fatter and shorter Donald Trump. He even hired expies of Katy Perry, Will.i.am, and Justin Bieber to sing a song about Thanksgiving.
• Eye Scream:
  • The eye creature in "Peeps" grows several extra eyeballs, which Rigby then scorches with a laser pointer.
  • The last of which BURSTS INTO FLAME.
  • Also, the bet Peeps makes where if he wins, he get everyone's eyes. At which point, he produces an ice pick and ice cream scoop.
  • In a subtler example from the same episode, Mordecai loses the ability to blink and his eyes become so irritated that the eyedrops he uses evaporate before even touching them.

F

• Face Doodling:
  • Rigby does this to Pops when he passes out in "Dizzy".
  • It's also the main thing the Creepy Doll in the Halloween special does.
• Faceless Masses: Averted, in almost every crowd shot the background characters are drawn about as detailed as full on screen ones, although they are often duplicated, mirrored and huge crowds are usually not animated.
• Failure Montage: Several failure montages for Mordecai and Rigby in different characters, some prominent examples being:
  • Their training montage with the God of Basketball, so full of failures he declares them to be the worst Basketball players in history.
  • Trying to clean up the park's abandoned ballroom, while ghosts undo everything they do.
• Fake Brit:invoked Future Mordecai and Future Rigby, in "Mordecai and the Rigbys". They lose the accents right before the two of them are destroyed by Present Mordecai.
• Family-Friendly Firearms:
  • Averted in the episode "Fuzzy Dice". The guns don't sound like lasers either.
  • Even worse in the Christmas Special. We actually see the very human Santa getting shot numerous times. Lucky he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
  • Later seasons use lasers, though. This might be because of censors cracking down on the show, or it might be because, as the show's story arc progressed, it took on more of a sci-fi theme.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Naked Pops in "Brain Eraser". Mordecai even describes Pops' genitalia after he walks in on him naked. Luckily, Rigby stops him before he can continue, but by then the detail has already been discussed.
  • Many scenes involving Muscle Man, since the show really likes to show off his man boobs and/or fat flaps whenever possible. "Bald Spot" is a particularly noteworthy case since Muscle Man remains shirtless and "flexes" his man boobs for literally half the episode (he wanted to ensure that Starla wouldn't notice his bald spot).
• Fanservice: The ending of "Slam Dunk", with the camera treating the audience to a nice, lingering shot of Margaret's butt on a bike, as well as her curves.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In "Cool Cubed", Thomas drinks a slushie which gives him extreme brain-freeze, and Mordecai and Rigby are sent into his body to thaw his brain out.
• "Fawlty Towers" Plot: Most episodes start off with a problem that's bound to escalate into supernatural chaos.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • Muscle Man rams a table into the wall and rolls on the floor screaming when Rigby accidentally splashes soda in his face.
  • Skips quits the park bowling team and leaves his job altogether because he didn't want his friends to know that his name used to be "Walks" until he changed it due to the fact that he was tired of being asked "Why are you called Walks when you always skip?"
  • You can be sentenced to death for being too cool.
  • In "Butt Dial", exceeding your log-in attempts can get you erased from existence. It turns into An Aesop about phone hacking (which actually is heinous) though.
• First Kiss: "Bad Kiss" and "Do Or Diaper" are all about Mordecai trying to get it right with Margaret. They end up not kissing in either episode, though. "Picking Up Margaret", on the other hand...
• Fist Pump: Parodied in in the episode "Caffeinated Concert Tickets". Mordecai and Rigby want to get concert tickets for a band of the same name. They do this pose many times throughout the episode while shouting "Fiiist Puuummmp".
• Five-Second Rule: In "Bad Kiss", Mordecai and Rigby go back in time to prevent Mordecai's bad breatwork as he is told to and Rigby is the foolish one who slacks ofh from ruining his first kiss with Margaret. One of these attempts involve pushing away a hot dog truck as past!Mordecai is being served a chili dog with onions. The truck rolls away as past!Mordecai's being served the food and it falls on the concrete pavement, and past!Mordecai immediately picks it up and eats it anyway, invoking the five second rule.
• Five Stages of Grief: Muscle Man in "Trucker Hall of Fame", after his father was killed. First, his brother John walks into his trailer teary-eyed, and Muscle Man doesn't believe anything. At the funeral, he breaks out in tears. While in the forest, Muscle Man takes his picture of his dad wearing a trucker hat and smashes it. Finally, after Muscle Dad's ghost appeared, Muscle Man spread his dad's ashes in the Trucker Hall of Fame.
• Flanderization: Inverted. The show actually downplayed several characters' (e.g. Muscle Man, Benson, Skips) most defining traits.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: "More Smarter". Be sure to look at Rigby's crossword.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Snowballs the Ice Monster.
• Flying Car: Pops' car, Carmenita.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: While not related Mordecai and Rigby have this dynamic. Mordecai is the responsible one who tries to to
  • Mordecai — Phlegmatic/Melancholic
  • Rigby — Sanguine/Choleric
  • Benson — Choleric/Melancholic
  • Pops — Sanguine/Phlegmatic
  • Skips — Melancholic/Choleric (usually verging on Melancholic/Phlegmatic)
  • Muscle Man — Choleric/Sanguine
  • Hi-Five Ghost — Phlegmatic/Sanguine
  • Thomas — Leukine
  • Mr. Maellard — Melancholic/Choleric
• Foreshadowing: Throughout the show, Margaret has been trying to transfer to her dream college. In "Steak Me Amadeus", Margaret calls Mordecai and tells him that something came up and she'll be late going to the restaurant. From that moment you can tell that the date won't end happily when they finally meet up at the restaurant and Margaret has something important to say to Mordecai.
• Formal Full Array of Cutlery: The waiter at an exclusive fancy restaurant took advantage from this to unmask Muscleman — who was trying to impress his girlfriend's parents — as a filthy peasant. Muscleman simply couldn't figure out what spoon is used to eat crème brûlée without the help of Mordecai and Rigby.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The particularly chilling ending to "Terror Tales of the Park". Rigby suddenly rips his skin apart to reveal an evil wizard underneath. As everyone screams, the wizard lunges towards the camera and, with his face completely filling the camera, says "Happy Halloween".
• Four-Fingered Hands: Everyone has four fingers per hand, although it may change to five fingers in close-up. The trope is oddly highlighted in "Silver Dude", where the eponymous street performer signals the number 4 by showing off all his fingers and closing his thumb, like a real person would... but he's actually only showing off three fingers.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: See Five-Temperament above.
• Free-Fall Fight: The finale of the Christmas special. Over a lava pit no less.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Every Meat Burritos", the meats that they showed in the commercial fast forward. Don't let some of the names fool you, these are, in fact, real animals, except bacon and long pig:
  Gila monster, pigeon, marmot, dik-dik, baboon, bushpig, long pig, aardwolf, manatee, bat-eared fox, red bat, spotted bat, dog-faced bat, opossum, emu, hairy long-nosed armadillo, big hairy armadillo, screaming hairy armadillo, colocolo, spectacled bear, lowland tapir, red deer, shy albatross, komondor dog, hagfish, sonoran sidewinder, snorkel viper, oak-leaf rattler, bacon, narwhal, kookaburra, aha ha, blobfish, bulldog stargazer, tufted titmouse, screaming cowbird, green jay, lady amhersts pheasant, polish chicken, quetzal, surinam toad, tomato frog, turtle frog, Christmas tree worm, vampire squid, coelacanth, mugger crocodile, aya-aye, dumbo octopus, platypus... and more!
• French Jerk: The maître d' of Bistro in le Parc turns out to be this in "Fancy Restaurant".
• Friend Versus Lover: It would be a bit disingenuous to call them lovers (definitely at that point in the series, anyway), but Rigby often seemed to set a "her or me" dichotomy with Mordecai vis-a-vis Margaret. This trope helped set the conflict for "The Unicorns Have Got to Go," "It's Time," and helped inspire Rigby's jerkish behavior in "Do Me a Solid."
• Friends with Benefits: Inverted in "Diary", after Mordecai says he and Margaret are friends, Rigby responds with "Yeah, your friend without benefits!"
• Freudian Excuse: "Think Positive" implies that Benson is so quick to raise his voice because his father told him, "You'll never get anything you want in this world if you don't yell for it."
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Basically invoked in "Over the Top"; when the gang head out for "drinks", Mordecai and Rigby anticipate, respectively, ordering a Watertini and an Ice on the Rocks.
  • More generally, soda is often used as a more family-friendly replacement for beer.
• Funny Animal: Mordecai, Rigby, and Margaret, among others.
• Funny Background Event: In "First Day", the other want ads in the newspaper are largely humorous."... and dancing ONLY. Must be over age 75, and no dyed hair or wigs allowed."
• Fun with Acronyms: GBF is Garret Bobby Ferguson, not Giant Bearded Face.
  Though he's a giant bearded face as well.
• Furry Confusion:
  • Subverted in "A Bunch of Baby Ducks." The titular ducks seem to be non-anthropomorphic at first, but quickly pick up humanlike behaviors (like karate chopping) from Rigby, and their mother speaks English.
  • Played straight in "Skunked," with Mordecai and Rigby picking up roadkill in the park and even PLAYING A BINGO GAME USING THE DEAD ANIMALS, though technically it was created by Benson to motivate them to work; they can't stop working until they get Bingo.
  • In "Prankless," Mordecai got Tarred and Feathered despite already being a bird.
  • In "Appreciation Day", it was mentioned that Pops helped a baby bird back into its nest.
  • Bird calls are also regularly used as background noise.
• Furry Reminder: Rigby's habit of Running on All Fours.

G

• Gargle Blaster: Non-alcoholic varieties in this series.
  • Rigby's homemade Rig-Juice.
  • "The Mississippi Queen". A concoction so absurdly spicy that Mordecai, Rigby, and Benson spent the rest of the party they were attending experiencing a Disney Acid Sequence played to the tune of "Mississippi Queen" by 70's rockband Mountain. It even came with a little umbrella.
• Gasshole:
  • Gloken Bear from "Go Viral".
  • And the unicorns from "The Unicorns Have Got to Go," who trap Rigby in a circle of their hindquarters and repeatedly fart directly in his face.
• Gatling Good: The FBI breaks out a minigun to take down the Capicola Gang in "Fuzzy Dice". They use an RPG-7 as well.
• Gem-Encrusted: The concert tickets. And the seats the tickets are for.
  • Wing Kingdom dipping sauce containers.
• Genius Serum: Rigby once invented a Genius Serum called "RigJuice" in order to get his highschool diploma.
• Genre Savvy: In "Pie Contest", Mordecai and Rigby know that the talking pie in the trash can will only cause trouble.
• George Jetson Job Security: Although as demonstrated in "Replaced", no one would be stupid enough to actually replace Mordecai and Rigby.
• Ghostly Animals: Mordecai and Rigby have died and become ghosts a couple times in the series. In "Blind Trust" however, Mordecai, Rigby, and a blinded Benson accidentally wander on a sacred animal burial ground where the animals actively try to kill them until the trio makes it to the edge of a cliff where the animals will let them go if they survive the drop.
• Giving Some One The Pointer Finger: "Give us a raise, loser!"
• Going Commando: The secret that Mordecai reveals in "Diary" is that "[he] likes going commando. A lot."
• Gondor Calls for Aid: When GBF Jr resurrects his dad and all of the other people who Mordecai and Rigby killed, several of their friends in the past come in to save them and the park, including Death!
• Gone Horribly Right: In "Cool Bikes", Mordecai and Rigby spend most of the episode trying to convince Benson that they're cool. When he finally does admit that they're the coolest guys he knows, it's most definitely a bad thing, since they're on trial for being so cool that it threatens to destroy the universe, and Benson's admission is literally a death sentence for them.
  • In "Real Date", it turns out Couple Corral (the dating site where Mordecai meet CJ) was too good at matching people up that it lost subscribers, since lonely people don't use dating sites.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: In "Fuzzy Dice", the FBI has loads of men carrying a various plethora of big guns, while the gangsters have lame handguns.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: Mordecai suggests "Mustache Cash Stash" for their band and read off a whole list of them. They eventually just go with their names.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In the "Payback" story in "Terror Tales of the Park II", we only see the events leading up to the exact moment of Uncle Steve's death, and then it cuts to someone feeding wood through a wood chipper, which doesn't do much to lessen the implications.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Pops uses 'show' instead of god, which makes his catchphrase 'Good Show!' into something completely different.
  • Early on, Rigby said "Shut Up!" when he got annoyed - he started saying "Stop Talking!" a few episodes later. A classic example of how the obvious censorship often makes this show even funnier.
• G-Rated Drug: The donuts in "Sugar Rush", also the Mississippi Queen drink.
• Grand Theft Me: An overachieving bodybuilder('s consciousness) steals Rigby's body in "Rigby's Body".
• Gratuitous Ninja: Wedgie Ninja.
• Greeting Gesture Confusion: In season 4, "Every Meat Burritos", when High-Five Ghost and his older brother, Low-Five Ghost, tries to give each other five, they completely miss each other due to the type of fives they give.
• The Grim Reaper: In "Over The Top", "Skips Strikes" and "Dead at Eight".
• Groin Attack:
  • Mordecai has a flashback of doing this to Rigby in "Death Punchies."
  • Rigby's favorite internet video is of an ostrich kicking an old man in the balls.
  • Mordecai does this to GBF. But since said champ is basically a head with arms and legs, the champ reacts with "my chin!"
  • Subverted and played straight in "Rage Against the TV". In Mordecai and Rigby's video game, the duo are punching one of the games' bosses in the junk. As in the miscellaneous things he is carrying. Later, Skips gives one to The Hammer with a chair.
  • Skips perform one on a zombie. It doesn't work.
• Gross Gum Gag: The beginning of the episode "Fancy Restaurant" has Muscle Man spitting a wad of chewed gum on a piece of paper and then planting it on the ground for someone to walk on, laughing uncontrollably when it happens.

H

• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal:
  • Rigby started walking around naked one day. His brother thought that was so cool, he hasn't worn clothes since.
  • Skips is a straighter example, wearing jeans but no shirt.
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • The stag-man in "Camping Can Be Cool".
  • Margaret is one too.
• Halloween Episode: Starting with Season 3, "Terror Tales of the Park" revolves around the park workers telling scary stories. With the exception of Terror Tales of the Park V, each episode features 3 scary stories.
• Handshake Refusal: This is the main plot point in "Family BBQ", as Mordecai tries to get a handshake from Margaret's father.
• Hangover Sensitivity: The special entertainment in "Just Set Up the Chairs".
• Haunted Technology
• Head Turned Backwards: When things get real in a rap battle, a rapper tells Mordecai to put his face in reverse, resulting in his head facing the other way.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Muscle Man eats spoonfuls of protein supplement in the fashion in "Muscle Woman".
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: In "Format Wars II", the two main rivals — DVD and Laserdisc — have a personal heart-to-heart when it's revealed that Laserdisc is DVD's dad. Just as Laserdisc proposes the idea of reconciliation with DVD, DVD has a change of heart... only for Internet to suddenly kill Laserdisc.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": This exchange in "Fuzzy Dice":
  Benson: Alright, now when the balls drop...
  Mordecai & Rigby: (snickers)
  Benson: Ugh! When the game starts, you guys have to...
  • This also happens in "Skips Strikes".
    Death: You! Get your balls! (chuckles)
• Here We Go Again!:
  • The events of "Gold Watch" are started by Benson eating a bunch of wings and waking up in a desert strapped into the ejector seat of an experimental rocket car. At the end of the episode it happens again, but now he's lost at sea.
  • In "Mordecai and Rigby Down Under", Mordecai and Rigby wind up asleep in a crate that gets shipped to Australia. After the two wind up asleep on a plane back home, they wake up in the same crate and believe that it was All Just a Dream... but when they lift the crate lid, they realize that they never left Australia.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • In "Benson Be Gone", Leon barrel rolls Mr. Maellard's limousine and knocks off Susan's heels, sending Susan back to Hell and the limo careening into a wall where it explodes, killing Leon.
  • In "Go Viral", Wedgie Ninja stays behind to stop the Warden of the Internet, allowing the other viral videos to go free. He keeps it up until she explodes, killing himself in the process.
  • In "Appreciation Day", Rigby manages to get the cover of the Book of Park Records back to Mordecai, but he gets killed for his trouble.
  • Donnie G in K.I.L.I.T Radio is a subversion. At first it looks like a Heroic Sacrifice, because he gets a hole blown in his stomach and is at ground zero of the explosion that wipes out the radio station... and then in the end of the episode, he's inexplicably alive and hanging around Mordecai and Rigby with no explanation.
  • Pops sacrifices his life in order to save the universe in the grand finale. He hugs his brother and sends both of them into a nearby star.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Mordecai and Rigby are still best friends many years later in the 25-year anniversary epilogue. In the present time, the two have been friends since they were kids, and do most things together.
  • Muscleman and Hi Five Ghost count too, being essentially the platonic version of a Beta Couple.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Benson and Muscle Man.
• Hideous Hangover Cure: After getting drunk and drugged from the Mississippi Queen in "Weekend at Benson's", Mordecai, Rigby and Benson wake up hungover and stoned, and Benson gets cured when he founds out his neighbor gave him her cell phone number. As for Mordecai and Rigby, they get cured when Benson rehires them.
• Hipster:
  • In "Cool Bikes" Mordecai and Rigby dress in this style to be cool. The stack of Brain Explosion records they swear upon in court is even a Call-Back to Mordecai's own infamous hipster moment in "This Is My Jam".
  • The Movie Shack Hut employee has traces of this, preferring VHS to DVD.
  • Chad and Jeremy from the episode "Replaced" are true hipsters. They dress like hipsters, are obsessed with their phones, are so self-obsessed that they think they can fit their job around their schedule, and talk in a very arrogant way. It was clear that they are just as useless as Mordecai and Rigby, but didn't joke around, so Benson thought they were serious.
• Hobos: Leon
• Holiday Episode: "Saving Time" is a Daylight Savings episode where Mordecai and Rigby prank the other park attendants by setting their clocks to the wrong time, thus accidentally making the park physically change time zones.
• Homage:
  • Zombocalypse has Bruce Campbell starring in it.
  • Also, in "Over the Top", Death is a dead ringer for Lemmy from the band "Motorhead", right down to the accent and the two large moles on his left cheek.
• Horrible Camping Trip: "Camping Can Be Cool."
• How We Got Here: "Over the Top" begins with the death of Rigby.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  Benson: Rule #47: NO YELLING!
  • A rather... odd case in this one: in the episode "Karaoke Video", Benson tells Mordecai this:
    Benson: I want to... you know, boost morale around here.
  • 14 episodes later, in "Think Positive", we get this:
    Pops: I'd like you to stop yelling at Mordecai and Rigby.
    Benson:: You're kidding me.
    Pops: Quite the opposite. It's too negative and bad for morale.
    Benson: WHAT MORALE???
  • In the Mordecai and Rigby Ringtoneers short:
    Benson: Pops, can Mordecai & Rigby write a hit song?
    Pops: They could write any song!
    Benson: Yeah, but a hit song?
    Pops: Oh, no.
• Hypothetical Fight Debate: Invoked and double subverted in the episode "Replaced". Mordecai and Rigby try to prevent their replacements from finishing their work by having them debate who would win in a fight between a two-headed dinosaur and a robotic Bigfoot. They both agreed that a robotic Bigfoot would win. Then Mordecai gets into a debate with them on why a two-headed dinosaur would win. It still didn't stop them from working.

I

• I Call Her "Vera":
  • Rigby lets Mordecai name a keyboard he stole. He calls it 'The Power'.
  Mordecai: I always wanted to date a girl named The Power.
  • Pops named his car "Carmenita".
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: The ending of "Benson's Suit" has the titular suit requesting that Benson lower it into a washing machine set to "inferno" since it will attract power-hungry people who will kill to wear it, and also since it cannot destroy itself. And yes, it is a Shout-Out to the Trope Namer.
• Ignorant About Fire: When Mordecai and Rigby are trying to fix the lock on Margaret's diary with superglue and accidentally use too much, they try to remove the superglue with heat by putting the diary over a grill. But the diary catches on fire and Rigby tries to extinguish the fire with lighter fluid, which makes it worse.
• I Resemble That Remark!: After Rigby makes Mordecai a profile on a dating website on Yes Dude Yes, we have this exchange:
  Mordecai: "Mordecool? Likes video games, goofin' off and grilled cheese?" Dude, you make me sound like a dork!
  Rigby: Hey, all that stuff's true man, don't put that on me.
• I'll Kill You!!:
  • Rigby on occasion, with varying degrees of seriousness.
  • Mordecai says this in "It's Time" right before accidentally killing Rigby.
  • In "Death Punchies", Rigby actually tells this to Mordecai several times, and means it. He tries to kill his best friend with the Death Punch, and they end up trapped in a pit fifty feet underground with lava pouring out the walls.
• Imagine the Audience Naked: Mordecai suggests this to Pops so he won't be so nervous over his speech. It doesn't work.
• Improbably Cool Car: Pops' "Carmenita" is already a cool old car, but it has special gears that allow it to fly and have bat wings, among other things.
• Informed Ability: In "Slam Dunk", Mordecai apparently has enough knowledge in HTML coding for Margaret to ask him to help make her website.
• Informed Species: Eileen—with her wide tail and buckteeth—looks like a beaver, but is canonically a mole. Margaret is canonically a robin, but looks more like a stylized cardinal.
• Initiation Ceremony: There's one to become an official member of the Blonds. Unfortunately, it's the horrific kind.
• In Medias Res: "Exit 9B" starts with the park already destroyed and everyone other than Mordecai and Rigby brainwashed.
• Instant Emergency Response: Lampshaded in "Party Re-Pete", after Benson blows up the Party Pete clone along with the party company the police automatically shows up.
  Police: We came when we saw the explosion.
  Rigby: You guys got here fast.
  Police: Of course we did we're the police.
• Instant Sedation: Averted in "Death Bear". It takes a minute or two for any of the tranquilizers to actually affect Death Bear, and Rigby is never actually shown passing out.
• Insufferable Genius: Chad and Jeremy in "Replaced".
• Insult Backfire: Pretty much how Pops, Mordecai, and Rigby defeat the rappers who have been tormenting Pops the whole time, by turning their insults around into positive messages.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • In "Cool Bikes" Mordecai and Rigby are seen with two human girls in the cart, and in "Cruisin'" they tried to pick up several ones.
  • In "Yes Dude Yes" Rigby set up Mordecai with several women, including three human, a flamingo and a canary, and he ends up with a humanoid cloud called CJ. Also when CJ's (human) friend's thought Mordecai was good-looking.
  • Margaret is seen with several human boyfriends in multiple episodes. In "Cruisin'" she along with Eileen pretended to have human boyfriends.
  • In "Muscle Woman" Mordecai (reluctantly) dates Starla in an attempt to get her back with Muscle Man.
  • Margaret's parents, a female Cardinal and a male Human.
  • Benson has a relationship of sorts with a human named Audrey despite him being a gumball machine. Later he finds a soulmate in Pam, a human scientist.
  • Although they are both birds, Mordecai and Maregaret are of different species and could be seen as an example.
  • Eileen crush on Rigby. And in the episode "It's Time" Rigby asked Margaret out on a date (the writer implied that Rigby was going out with Margaret pretty much just to get under Mordecai's skin, but the point still stands).
• The Internet Is for Cats: In one episode Benson develops an addiction to cat videos.
• Ironic Echo:
  • "I can fix this" from the hot dogs episode. First, it's Rigby trying to fix everything that he's messed up but only messing it up worse. Then it's Rigby trying to keep Mordecai from dying. Then when Rigby brings up who bought the premium hot dogs...
  • There's also "I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise" from Future Mordecai in the episode "Mordecai and the Rigbys" when the regular Mordecai asks if he ends up with Margaret in the future. Mordecai throws it back at him in his Shut Up, Hannibal! speech when he breaks up the band.
  • "Don't blink!" in "Peeps". First said by Peeps to Mordecai when Peeps starts growing extra eyes to tease Mordecai into blinking, and then by Mordecai to Peeps when it finally looks like Peeps is going to give in and blink.
  • "The finder's fee" when Rigby hires the temp.
  • "STEP OFF!"
  • Inverted psychology in "See You There".
• Is It Always Like This?: Asked by Thomas at the end of "Exit 9B." The answer, of course, is yes.
• Is This a Joke?: Lollipops as currency. Also, "he can't make a major speech facing away from the audience!" From the same episode, Mordecai draws Pops' face on the back of his head because Rigby vandalized his face with Sharpie drawings.

J

• Jerkass:
  • Benson in the first couple of episodes, where he had little character outside of being the duo's asshole boss. Later episodes make it evident that he can be pretty nice, just with an unfortunate temper and a tendency to hold on to the Jerkass Ball.
  • Muscle Man likewise was little more than an obnoxious loudmouth early on, but like Benson grew as a character.
  • For the first three seasons, 60% of the plot seems to be driven by Rigby being this. Offenses include making bets he has no intention of honoring or playing out fairly on multiple occasions, abusing the rules of the Solid to make Mordecai ruin his chances with Margaret on a night out, almost causing the park to be destroyed in an audit by refusing to give his brother a hug, nearly killing himself during the Eggscellent Challenge (he's allergic to eggs) and then forcing Mordecai to complete it for him, stealing Benson's good luck out of spite, and generally being the least reasonable and most selfish person around. Somehow, he has remained Mordecai's best friend in the series despite all of the abuse.
  • The French Maitre D in the "Fancy" episode, Muscle Man was just trying to show Starla's parent a good time and wasn't even trying to cause any trouble. Say guy interrupts the whole proceedings because he didn't find Mitch fancy and tried to have the whole party beaten up over it.
  • The unnamed Country Club Leader in "Country Club", plays a cruel prank on Mordecai and Rigby, steals the park's cart when they retaliate over it and tries to turn it into a toliet to blast off into space just because he's rich and he can. His karma was a long time coming.
• Jerks Use Body Spray: Dudetime body spray, that advertises itself pretty much like AXE, but in action smells terrible, and all it actually attracts are jackassed Frat Bro unicorns. And considering the legends around unicorns and their attraction to virgins...
• Joins to Fit In: Mordecai, tired of being teased by Rigby, joins a group of blondes, who eventually turn out to be completely evil.

K

• Karmic Injury: One of the series' Running Gags involves Mordecai punching Rigby. A couple times, however, he gets punched by Rigby and isn't able to instantly shrug it off.
• Kangaroo Court: "Can You Ear Me Now?" revolves around Mordecai and Rigby being taken for trial in a planet of sentient ears for accidentally setting off an alarm. The prosecutor does all in his power to disqualify their testimonies and their friends' (he disqualifies Benson on the basis that he's a drummer, and he goads Eileen into shouting "Shut up!" out loud to disqualify her), and the defense attorney assigned to them is laughably incompetent. It is only a well-placed water gun squirt from Rigby into the Auricle, the planet's highest authority, that manages to save them, because it restores the elder's failing hearing.
• Kansas City Shuffle: In "Ugly Moons", Space Tree commandant Col. Rawls recruits Muscle Man for a prank raid on his rival, Carlton Tanner, who runs the Space Bush station. Muscle Man infiltrates the Space Bush with a slime bomb with a timed detonator that explodes when it comes in contact with a dinner mint. Mordecai and Rigby infiltrate the space station by fooling the guards with an ultra-HD flat screen TV that makes pancakes.
  • Tanner manages to intercept and thwart the initial attempt:
  Tanner: Well, well. So this is the infamous Muscle Man. I got to say, I expected more from Rawls. Looks to me like he got an amateur to run this operation.
  Muscle Man: Don't be so sure of yourself. You may find that I'm full of surprises. (Muscle Man activates the detonator) In a few seconds, you and your whole Space Bush are gonna be covered head to toe in slime.
  Tanner (sarcastically): Oh, did you hear that, everyone? Muscle Man is going to slime the Space Bush. What are we going to do? (cries) I'm so scared! (Tanner simultateously cuts both detonator wires)
  Rigby: You can do that?
  Tanner: Aw, don't be so glum! It's not like the whole space tree was counting on you or anything. (evil chuckle) Now, you have two choices: You and your friends can either rot in the Space Bush Jail... or you can admit that I am the greatest prankster in the galaxy. What's it gonna be?
  Muscle Man (hesitates a minute, then mumbles): You're the greatest.
  Tanner: What was that?
  Muscle Man: You're the greatest prankster.
  Tanner: I can't hear you!
  Muscle Man (crying loudly): You're the greatest prankster in the galaxy!
  Tanner: Well now, as the greatest prankster in the galaxy, I feel like I owe myself a little reward.
  • Tanner takes the bottle of celebratory champagne from Muscle Man's backpack, until he unwraps the bottle, which turns out to be a slime bomb that explodes and fills the Space Bush with slime.
  Rawls: Muscle Man, you sneaky so and so, I never should have doubted you.
  Muscle Man: You're right, you shouldn't have. Now if you'll excuse me...
  • Muscle Man takes off his uniform pants, revealing underwear with Tanner's portrait on the back, and dances with Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" playing in the background.
• Karmic Transformation: Egg a wizard's house, be cursed to turn INTO a house. Poor Rigby learned this the hard way in the Halloween special.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • In-Universe; Mordecai, Rigby, Muscle Man, and High Five Ghost find an old Laser Disc inside some boxes. In their search to find a laser disc player, they learn that every laser disc and player in existence had been destroyed by VHS in a literal format war that happened 2 years prior. All except for their disc, and one player, and recovering that last player unravels a big conspiracy.
  • Averted in Real Life, as Regular Show's first two seasons are available on Blu-Ray and DVD and Hulu has all eight seasons uploaded.
• Kick the Dog: Benson, throughout "The Best Burger in the World". He knows there's a time limit for Mordecai and Rigby, so he chooses then to force them to do a catch-up rush. And at the end? He outright steals the burgers that Mordecai and Rigby legally purchased.
• Knight in Sour Armour: The grouchy Benson has come to save the day more than a few times.
• Knight of Cerebus: Garret Bobby Ferguson Junior, who makes the fourth season premiere play out much more seriously than other episodes.
  • Anti-Pops/Malum Kranas is by far the most powerful and evil villain given that he has the ability an desire to destroy the universe.
• Knight Templar: The Warden of the Internet. OK, wanting the internet to be used responsibly, that's an alright motive. Imprisoning anyone who makes a viral video to a Fate Worse than Death? Yeah, that's insane...
• Konami Code: Used to dodge bottles being thrown at Rigby's character in a Rock Band style video game.

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • The episode "High Score" is practically made of this.^note Margaret: "I can't believe we were so fascinated by a video game, but we were!"
  • At the beginning of "Butt Dial", Mordecai and Rigby mention how their 'game night' with Eileen and Margret was successful, without anything supernatural or park destroying happening.
  • In "Dumped at the Altar", Mordecai says that "it's like [Muscle Man and Starla] were designed for each other."
• Laser-Guided Karma: The entirety of "White Elephant Gift Exchange" is the gang plotting a way to get ultimate revenge on Muscle Man for the years of torture he's given them through various cruel "prank gifts". The end result is absolutely glorious: Muscle Man gets a clam chowder explosion in his face, baseballs shot at high speeds to the stomach, some of his own gifts used against him (itching powder sweaters and gloves made out of used underwear), all topped off by an elf beating the tar out of him. And "Holly Jolly Christmas" is used as a backing track. And Rigby gets the whole thing on camera. And it's in slow motion.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Used to subvert his usual catch phrase.
  Muscle Man: These are some great cookies. You know who else makes great cookies? MY-chael's Bakery on 32nd and West.
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: Skips' cousin, Quips, constantly tells bad jokes that only he finds funny.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When the Future Mercenary is attacking Mordecai and Rigby, he says "It's a good thing I like fantasy violence and adult situations", a reference to the show's TV-PG rating.
• Leave the Two Lovebirds Alone: Rigby made Pops follow him out the room so Mordecai and Margaret can have a moment alone near the end of "Butt Dial".
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Skips enforces this on Mordecai and Rigby at the end of "Diary".
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to "2 In The AM PM", which involves LSD-laced candy and contains foul language.
  • Also the show itself. The later seasons have nowhere near the amount of hidden sexual jokes that the first couple of seasons had (as well as the mild swear words), and those that are there are generally less raunchy.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Downed power lines can animate snow, apparently.
• Line-of-Sight Name: In "Trash Boat", Rigby decides to change his name to two completely random words. He looks over at the overflowing trash can, then at the painting of a sailboat on the wall, and hence the title of the episode.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: And lollipops and gumball machines and giant coffee beans...
• Literal-Minded: Inverted by Pops.
  Mordecai: That taxi's yellow!
  Pops: My taxi is not a coward!
• Living Museum Exhibit: Played with in the episode "The Night Owl". Mordecai, Rigby, Muscle Man, and High Five Ghost are all frozen in liquid nitrogen for a few thousand years by an evil radio DJ, who has a convoluted plan to build a museum exhibit around them so that he can become rich and powerful. But eventually, all four of them are unfrozen and try to escape via Time Machine.
• Locked in a Freezer: Complete with Mordecai almost dying.
• Logic Bomb: In "House Rules": "There's no rule against rules."
• Loophole Abuse: Unsuccessfully attempted in "Doughnut Factory Holiday." Right after Muscle Man says he knows how to get the aforementioned VHS to the video store "on a technicality", he, Mordecai, Rigby, and High-Five Ghost do just that with it still stuck inside their VCR, but the cashier doesn't accept it:

Muscle Man: Here we are. One tape as agreed upon, and I believe nowhere in the contract does it state that the tape has to be watchable.
Cashier: It's the first line! [shows the contract that says "I will return the tape in a watchable condition."] Plus, you can't return a tape stuck inside a VCR that also has a dude's arm stuck in it!

• Lovecraft Lite: Various episodes have the park workers beating the everloving crap out of otherworldly beings (not to mention Mordecai once worked as a babysitter for the Grim Reaper).
• Losing Your Head:
  • Happened to Dave, Benson's stick hockey apprentice and he even spoke briefly before passing.
  • Also happened to Mordecai in Rigby's story in "Terror Tales of the Park", he also talked briefly.
• Loud of War: Summertime versus Oh Snap!

M

• Madness Mantra: All day, every day, all day, every day, all day, every day...
• Magic Feather: The magic guitar picks in "Mordecai and the Rigbys" are a subversion, as their point was to trick Mordecai and Rigby into lip-syncing.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Typically played for laughs:
  • In "Terror Tales of the Park," Muscle Man's reaction to being skinned alive: flexing and boasting.
  • In "Video Game Wizard," Skips casually breaks his hand.
  • In "Death Bear," an animal control agent gets his arms ripped off by the Death Bear, who unenthusiastically states that he wants to go home.
  • In "Terror Tales of the Park II," when Muscle Man got impaled by one of Jan's legs, he was unimpressed and said that if killing him was his job, he'd be fired.
• Makes Just as Much Sense in Context:
  • Rich people in the country club turn things into toilets. Why, because they're rich.
  • Soda gives party people powers. Why, because of reasons.
• Male Frontal Nudity: Benson in "Brain Eraser."
• Male Gaze: "Slam Dunk" ends with Mordecai staring at Margaret's butt as she rides away on a bike.
• Malicious Misnaming:
  • "Hey Giant Beardo Face!"
  • "Mad Man Mordo? More like Bland Man Boredo!"
• Manchild:
  • Pops, save the fact that he's the opposite of Literal-Minded.
  • Rigby is this too. He may be 23, but he acts like an out of control teenager most of the time.
  • Mordecai, to a lesser extent. He's a lot more level-headed and less impulsive than Rigby, but just as eager to slack off and do childish things.
• Marshmallow Hell: Rigby runs into Starla's boobs in "Muscle Woman".
• Matrix Raining Code: In "Don", the whole park is engulfed by this when Rigby messes up the audit that Don hadn't stopped. Accounting never looked so cool.
• Mean Boss:
  • While Mordecai and Rigby are by no means decent employees most of the time, neither is Benson a particularly good boss. He barely ever trains the duo for the tasks he asks done, then berates them for not doing what he wanted how he wanted; he rarely gives positive reinforcement and often goes out of his way to single them out; he even once threatened to fire Mordecai and Rigby for something Muscle Man did, indicating he wanted an excuse to get rid of them; he continually doles out expectations that by all means he knows perfectly well can't be met; combine with a chip on his shoulder and blatant favoritism, and it shouldn't be any surprise that he gets poor results from the slackers.
  • Mr. Maellard is way worse than Benson. He generally gets angry for no reason and treats Benson like a butler who doesn't work right, which is probably the reason Benson is such an angry boss. He is taking in everything Mr. Maellard throws at him and taking it out on Mordecai and Rigby.
• Meaningful Funeral: Muscle Man's funeral for his father.
• Meaningful Name: Skips. And Pops, who has what looks like a giant lollipop for a head.
• Meganekko: Eileen◊.
• Megaton Punch: The Death Punch of Death.
• Memorial Statue:
  • After Pops saved the universe by doing a Heroic Sacrifice in the finale, his friends commemorated him by raising a statue with the words:
    He chased butterflies
    He loved to laugh
    He saved the universe
    He was our friend.
  • Many years later, a statue of Mr. Maellard was raised beside his son's.
• Merlin Sickness: In the "Party Bus" segment of "Terror Tales of the Park II", Mordecai, Rigby, Margaret, and Eileen find themselves on a bus that rapidly ages its passengers. Once Mordecai puts the bus in reverse, this trope comes into play and they start rapidly de-aging. Once they escape the bus through a hatch on top, they're children, and by the time they jump off they're babies. However, they turn into dust and disintegrate in midair.
• Mirror Monster: Ybgir, from the episode "Jinx".
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The monster on the moon had Rigby's body, Mordecai's tail and the wrestling doll's head.
• Mobile Kiosk: The Grill 'em up truck from "The Best Burger in the World" which makes the Ulti-meatum.
• Mocking the Mourner: Downplayed since nobody's actually dead in this case. Benson does this to Mordecai after Rigby, who attempted the Eggcellent Challenge and had an allergic reaction to the eggs, fell into a possibly fatal coma (he gets better), telling Mordecai that Rigby is in this position because they slacked off. Mordecai angerly punches him in response, prompting the rest of the Park workers to pull them both away. To Benson's credit, he quickly regrets it and helps Mordecai to devise a plan to complete the challenge in Rigby's stead.
• Monster of the Week: The show seems to be establishing itself as one of these; but you'd probably prefer to call it "Weird Crap of the Week."
• Montage: The show likes to use them often:
  • There's a Hard-Work Montage to the tune of Loverboy's "Working For The Weekend" while trying to save up enough money to go to a concert.
  • In "Death Punchies", Rigby learns to Death Punch to "You're the Best" by Joe Esposito.
  • There's also Mordecai's, Rigby's, and Benson's slack off sequence, all done to the tune of an instrumental song based off of Boston's "More than a Feeling".
  • Mordecai and Rigby end up starting a bar fight over possession of a karaoke tape with the owners of the bar while Pops sings "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins.
  • When Mordecai, Rigby, and Benson attend a party, they drink a spicy concoction called the "Mississippi Queen", named after the song by the rockband "Mountain". They spend the rest of the party in a Mushroom Samba while the song plays.
  • In "Eggscellent", Mordecai trains to eat the Eggscellent challenge to "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler.
  • In "TGI Tuesday", Mordecai, Eileen, and Rigby get into a dance off against three party ghosts from 1985 to "Ballroom Blitz" by The Sweet.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • In "Merry Christmas Mordecai", we see Mordecai and Margaret reconciling their relationship and reminiscing the time they had together, culminating in a kiss. Then we realize that CJ is in the same room.
  • In "Prankless," the episode begins humorously with Muscle Man taping Mordecai's bed to the ceiling while laughing. Things go downhill fast when the bed ends up falling on Pops, crushing him. As Pops lies on the floor sobbing and Benson calls for an ambulance, Muscle Man goes into a Heroic BSoD from the guilt.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: "Destroyer of Worlds".
• Moral Myopia: "Under The Hood", Rigby is painting Park Avenue’s tv room:
  Park Avenue: No, no no, don’t. What’s the matter with you?
  Rigby: You painted all over our whole park.
  Park Avenue: Yes, but it's different, you know? It’s what I do! My stuff is good, you’re only making a mess!
• Mr. Exposition: Skips, when he gets involved in the current trouble of the episode, usually knows exactly what's going on and explains it further and how to solve it. Being a few thousand years old may have something to do with this.
• Ms. Fanservice: Margaret.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The show's formula as a whole. Mordecai and Rigby take some perfectly normal situation way too far until something supernatural and absolutely ridiculous happens.
• Must Have Caffeine: Exaggerated in "Caffeinated Concert Tickets".
• Mushroom Samba: "Weekend at Benson's" has one as the result of Mordecai, Rigby, and Benson drinking a concoction known as "Mississippi Queen", the song of the same name by Mountain plays during it.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Skips gets this after he kills Rigby in arm wrestling, prompting him to bet his soul against Death to get Rigby back.
  • Rigby gets this after he reverted back from being a monster in "Skunked" and saw he'd hurt someone. The delivery was done so well you really feel bad for him.
  • Muscle Man of all people gets this in "Prankless", after his latest prank nearly killed Pops.
• My Girl Is a Slut:
  • Played straight with Margaret, who is shown hooking up with a new person every day.
  • Inverted in the second season: she's seen casually hanging out with Mordecai and Rigby.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Young(er) Pops in "Prank Callers" has his voice from the original sketch.
  • The cop from "2 in the AM PM" appears in the final short of "Terror Tales of the Park".

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