Rugrats / Tropes E to I

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E

• Early-Installment Weirdness: The "classic" episodes of Rugrats that most of us think back on were about the friendship of the whole gang, who are all well-developed characters, working together to deal with various issues, fears, superstitions, things the adults are doing, etc. The first season on the other hand is a way starker show about a largely-silent Tommy (and occasionally some of the other kids) being brought to some new building (the hospital, the post office, a child psychologist, a baseball game, the movies, etc), wandering off from his parents and accidentally getting into all sorts of trouble without them noticing, only to return to them unharmed at the end of each episode and leaving the building with them as it descends into chaos. The "solo Tommy" episodes were gradually phased out towards the end of the first season.
  • To go along with this, a couple classic episodes explicitly mention Chuckie's mother, making it unclear whether she and Chas are divorced, she's deceased, or what. Much later, the writers would clear this up; "Mother's Day" explains Melinda Finster is deceased.
    • In the Season 1 episode "Real or Robots?", Stu tells Chuckie his mom and dad would pick him up in the morning, as if she was still alive. Then again, Stu was sleep-deprived at the time.
    • Its companion episode "Special Delivery" has Chuckie telling Tommy, Phil and Lil that his mom said he came from the hospital.
    • Another example is in an earlier Season 1 episode "Barbecue Story", where Chas (before his proper introduction later in the season) is seen with a red-haired woman.
  • In a few of the earliest episodes, Angelica can be seen wearing a diaper under her dress. In "Tommy's First Birthday," her voice also sounds more babyish.
  • In earlier seasons, the authors were more likely to throw in random bits of weirdness, such as the toy time machine that actually traveled through time, or the Mister Ed knock-off who could actually talk. Neither of those things had anything to do with the episodes they appeared in.
• Early Personality Signs:
  • Angelica loves cookies and flashbacks reveal that she learnt to walk because she saw a cookie and (if she is to be believed) her first word was "cookie".
  • Chas is seen as a boy being scared of a rug, showing that he's always been nervy. Similarly, Chuckie, who's also nervy, walked for the first time while trying to run away from a clown head on an ice cream van.
• Eat the Camera: Several episodes end with such a shot. It's usually often done with Angelica and Chuckie. Sometimes it may happen at another point in the episode (usually when a character is screaming or crying.)
  • However, "Let Them Eat Cake" ends this way on Tommy belching, and "A Whole New Stu" ends this way on Tommy laughing.
  • An unusual one occurs earlier in "Showdown at Teeter-Totter Gulch," when Tommy and Chuckie are playing with Belinda, and she crawls right into the camera, her laughing mouth filling the frame and turning it black, and it wasn't even transitioning to a different scene.
  • "The War Room" exaggerates this by showing Dil's esophagus and having the inside his mouth animated more realistically than usual.
  • "Touchdown Tommy" has a rare moment where an adult utilizes this trope. In this case, it's Didi, who screams as the camera zooms onto her wiggling uvula before fading to the next scene.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Dil calls Angelica "Yucky."
• Entertainment Above Their Age: In "Angelica Breaks a Leg", when Stu is about to give Angelica (who is three years old) some chocolate pudding, she is watching what appears to be a war movie (or possibly an action movie or a cop show), judging by the explosions and gunshots that are heard from offscreen. She's also laughing raucously.
• Episode Tagline: The episode "Grandpa's Bad Bug" has Stu say: "If a promise you don't keep, it will haunt you in your sleep, and as you lie beneath your quilt, you'll have a conscience full of guilt." and then repeat it several times in Grandpa Lou's imagination because Grandpa Lou broke his promise to not stay up late.
• Escalating War: A subplot in "Stu Gets a Job." Tommy's efforts to keep Stu from going to work (throwing out his clothes, replacing his coffee with mud, etc.) are mistaken by Stu as pranks by Drew, after Stu's late on repaying a loan to Drew. Stu pranks Drew in response, leading to this exchange:
  Drew: Stu, I couldn't get to work this morning because someone had my car towed!
  Stu: Oh, and I suppose I wore my disco suit to work today just for kicks, huh?!
  Drew: I don't know what you're talking about. But I think you do know something about the fifty pizzas I got the other day!
• Eskimos Aren't Real: Angelica tells the babies that giants are just something made up by grown-ups to scare them, like monsters, "sea slurpents", and cavities. Justified because she is only 3 years old.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Angelica in "Tricycle Thief."
  Angelica: I may be mean, and I may be a bully, but I'M NO TRICYCLE THIEF! She's not.
  • Invoked by Tommy of all people in "Rebel Without a Teddy Bear." Angelica has successfully "turned Tommy bad," and Tommy has just completely wrecked his whole house at Angelica's behest. She then tells him to finish it off by throwing Didi's favorite necklace in the garbage. He refuses (with some coercing from Chuckie).
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In the episode "Runaway Angelica", Angelica for the umpteenth time has wrecked Drew's office and when he's angry at her for doing so, she smiles confidently and apologizes, but when it fails, she just sighs and tries buttering him up up even more. Drew calls her out for being insincere and her response is a confused "Huh?".
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Angelica can sometimes fall into this. Like when she convinced Tommy, Phil and Lil that Chuckie was an alien just so she could have the playhouse to herself.
  • She also learned that Susie thought she was going to have to move, and the babies were doing their best to keep it from happening. When Susie gave Angelica her Malibu Cynthia beach house toy as a sort of parting gift, Angelica attempted to keep the babies from helping her stay... until Susie said she got a new Malibu Cynthia road racer, and that if she was staying, she and Angelica could play with it together. This convinced Angelica to help keep Susie from moving (although she was upset when Susie took back the Malibu Cynthia beach house because of it).
• Evil Laugh: Angelica's is particularly obnoxious and cruel.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • From "Grandpa Moves Out":
  Didi: Say, didn't those kids speeding by on the electric scooter look just like Tommy and Angelica?
  Drew: Yeah, they sure did.
  [beat]
  Didi, Stu, Drew, and Lou: Tommy and Angelica?!
  • From "Turtle Recall":
  Chas: Of all the places to leave an empty stroller! Some people just... [beat] Empty? Stroller? Stu! Where are the kids?
  • A delayed-reaction example takes place in "Passover". It takes place during an Imagine Spot where the babies are all characters from the famous Moses and the Ten Plagues story. Angelica plays the hard-hearted Pharaoh in this retelling, and interestingly she's still her child self, rather than an adult. Of course she refuses to let Moses' people go even after most of the plagues, so eventually God gets to the last one, killing off the "firstborn" of every Egyptian. Angelica laughs it off at first...and then she asks her father who the firstborn of her family is. Her father explains that since Angelica is an only child, the firstborn would be her! Her father doesn't know about the coming plague, but the implications certainly sink in for Angelica, whose reaction is this trope.
• Expressive Health Bar: In Jungle Stumble, a licensed game, your player character whines whenever you take damage.
• Expressive Mask / Latex Perfection: The ultra-realistic Reptar suit in "Reptar on Ice."
  • Averted in Season 1. The costume mentioned above had a zipper in the front that disappeared once it was fully zipped, and Reptar's mouth actually moved perfectly with the man in the costume's voice. In the Season 1 episode "Reptar's Revenge," 'Reptar' is nothing more than a skinny, balding middle-aged man with his head sticking out of the costume's mouth; this was also done in post-Season 2 episodes with Reptar impersonators (such as "Faire Play" and "The Big Showdown.")
• Expressive Uvula: In "Family Reunion", Angelica lies to Tommy, stating that people in a family reunion will want to take you home with them away from your real family. From then on, he's haunted by Angelica's words which come in the form of her head in place of the adult's uvula repeating those same words. Even Angelica herself interprets her own lie this way when she ends up in the same boat.
  Angelica: And you'll never see your mom or your dad or your dumb-old dog ever again!!! (laughs maniacally)
• Expy: Reptar is this for Godzilla, the Dummi Bears appear to be this for Care Bears (rather than Adventures of the Gummi Bears). And Dr Lipschitz is clearly one for Dr. Spock
  • Tommy is a charismatic leader who goes on strange adventures with the help of his trusty screwdriver. Sounds familiar? A few daleks have even shown up in the background.
  • Watch The Bad Seed, then watch any scene with Angelica and deny the similarities between her and Rhoda.

F

• Fake Alibi: In "The Trial", the kids try to determine which one of them broke Tommy's lamp. Angelica is supposedly cleared since she claims to have been napping when the lamp broke, but she turns out to be guilty when Tommy realises that she'd already taken her nap prior and knew what was happening at the time of the lamp's breakage.
• Family-Friendly "Mature" Content: In "Grandpa's Date", Grandpa Lou babysits Tommy and Chuckie and rents some movies for them to watch, including two Reptar movies and his "personal favorite", Lonely Space Vixens.
  "That's for after you go to bed."
• Family Theme Naming:
  • Brothers Stu and Drew are the sons of Lou (and later stepsons of Lulu).
  • The Family Reunion episode reveals that theme naming extends throughout the extended family: e.g. an uncle named Hugh, aunts named Dotti and Edie (similar to "Didi") and cousins with names that sound like "Tommy" (Tony, Timmy-Ray and Tammy-Faye).
  • Phil and Lil DeVille, who also have a teddy bear they've named "Bill." In addition, they mention having an uncle named Bill at one point (meaning that the bear is possibly named after him). And as if that weren't enough, All Grown Up! reveals that one of Lil's middle names (she has two) is "Jill".
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Traveling into Chuckie's stomach to remove a watermelon seed before it sprouts inside of him.
• Fantasy Sequence: If there was one thing the cartoon series really excelled at, it was these. From the perspective of the babies, not so much using their imagination, but trying to comprehend the big grown-up world, the ordinary, boring and mundane... could be a wonderous surreal experience for the viewer.
• Fate Worse than Death: Growing up is this for the babies.
• Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: In the games the babies make for themselves, Phil and Lil often end up playing characters who are dating, such as when they performed their own soap opera and when the babies held their own prom, and when they were dressed as Morticia and Gomez expies in a Halloween episode.
• Fear-Induced Idiocy:
  • In "Tie My Shoes", Angelica gets so shy about everyone watching her tie her shoes that she keeps messing up.
  • In "Word of the Day", there is an audition for Miss Carol's Happy House. One of the kids, Timmy^note Not to be confused with Timmy McNulty, is so nervous when he's onstage that he just mutters, "Hubba, hubba..." Later, after Miss Carol is fired and replaced by her assistant Stephanie, Timmy becomes her new Happy Helper, and when he's on TV, he's still babbling nonsense.
• Fearless Infant: All of the babies, especially Tommy.
• Feigning Healthiness: In "All's Well That Pretends Well", Angelica has a cold, but she pretends to be healthy so she doesn't have to miss out on a Dummi Bears performance. She tries to make it look like the babies are sick by using a feather duster, but she ends up giving herself away by accidentally making herself sneeze. However, she gets to see the performance anyway when it's shown on TV.
• Feud Episode:
  • "Farewell, My Friend," formerly the Trope Namer. Chuckie ends his friendship with Tommy after a disastrous adventure and subsequent nightmare. He quickly changes his mind soon after.
  • Tommy and Chuckie have another feud in "The Odd Couple" when Tommy spends the weekend at Chuckie's house, and the two argue over how each other does everything over the course of the episode. They do make up near the end.
  • Tommy and Chuckie have yet another feud in "Opposites Attract", when Tommy wants to climb rocks, Chuckie wants to pick dandelions, and neither one wants to do the other's activity. During this time, they meet two kids with personalities similar to theirs; a girl named Samantha, and a boy named Freddie.
  • In "Family Feud", the parents of Tommy and Phil & Lil got into a fight over a game of charades.
  Betty: It's Dances with Wolves.
  Howard: Oh. I never saw that movie.
  Stu: [annoyed] Well, you must have heard of it.
  Howard: I don't really like musicals.
  Stu: IT ISN'T A MUSICAL, YOU IMBECILE!!
  Didi: Stu! Don't yell, it's just a game!
  Stu: Then why do I always get teamed up with Howard?
  Howard: Just a minute... are you calling me an imbecile?
  Stu: Oh, very good. And it only took you fifteen seconds.
  Howard: That's it! I don't need to take this! I'm gonna go home and, and... and do some filing! [storms off]
  Stu: FINE!!! I've had enough of this stupid game anyway! [storms off]
• File Mixup: Angelica fakes a broken leg (to force her aunt and uncle to look after her like her own parents normally do). She succeeds when a young doctor gets "Pickles" mixed up with "Peaches" and looks at the wrong x-ray.
• Filthy Fun: The babies, especially Phil and Lil, like to get dirty.
• Finish Dialogue in Unison: Phil and Lil seem to do this at least once an episode, and all four babies do it from time to time.
• First Day of School Episode: A few First Day of Daycare Episodes.
  • "The Big House" has Tommy go to a strict daycare where everyone has a nickname.
  • "Dayscare" has Chuckie and Kimi having their first day of daycare.
  • Angelica switches daycares and has her first day in "Preschool Daze" and "Educating Angelica".
• First Injury Reaction: In "The First Cut", Tommy cuts his finger. Seeing as he's just a baby and it's the first time he's ever bled, this confuses and frightens him.
• 555: In "The Santa Experience," Angelica dialed the phone number 555-5555 in an attempt to get ahold of a Christmas help line. She ended up calling Cogs Unlimited, and after some persuasion, the employee told her she was on the bad list.
• Flanderization: Not the characters themselves(this is a long runner that cleverly avoided this trope for the most part), but the baby talk. In the seasons after the movie, the baby talk is amped up to 11.
  • Chuckie's character as the baby that's afraid of everything is actually a case of this. In the first few seasons, he's merely the Only Sane Man - who would typically say "I don't think X is such a good idea" (and would end up going along with it anyway). He then later merely became afraid of clowns before that morphed into him being afraid of everything.
• Flash Forward: The episode that inspired All Grown Up!.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Angelica's Right-Hand Cat.
• For Inconvenience, Press "1": In "Naked Tommy", after Tommy's nudist phase rubs off on Phil and Lil, Didi calls the Dr. Lipschitz hotline for advice on how to deal with said phase. A recorded message from Dr. Lipschitz picks up her call, giving her instructions to wait to press the right button. When she reaches "9", the message gives her the exact same advice written in the books (which she already knew about), and charges her for every minute she waited on the hotline.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • The Toy Palace episode where Tommy and Chuckie get trapped inside the toy store has toy Daleks briefly visible in one scene.
  • Another episode has Stu visit a pet shop to get Tommy a new pet after Spike gets lost. There are several animals stuffed into the cages, including an elephant, a full sized shark, a cat sized slug, and a praying mantis the size of Angelica. What kind of pet shop is this?!
  • Anywhere there could be, there are- the supermarket, the movies, the doctor's office, etc.
  • Look what comes out of Howard's drawer in "Twin's Pique": a Playboy magazine, complete with centerfold.
  • In "Tricycle Thief" Susie's tricycle can be seen under the stairs to the deck before it's revealed Angelica didn't steal it.
  • Pay close attention to the whip-pan at the beginning of the Chanukah Special. One might see a caricature of Elvis.
  • Near the end of "Early Retirement" as the babies jump on the couch, the remote can be seen right under Tommy's foot.
• From the Mouths of Babes: In the episode "Dummi Bear Dinner Disaster," all the adults are trying to impress Paul Gatsby (who's having dinner at the Carmichaels'), a cartoonist and creator of the Dummi Bear cartoon. Drew in particular is attempting to become business partners with Paul, and when he introduces Angelica...
  Drew: Angelica, say hi to Uncle Paul.
  Angelica: My daddy says your show is the biggest gravy train in town!
  Paul: I beg your pardon?
  • Bonus points that Paul Gatsby is a character of the show's co-creator Paul Germain.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: One episode has Phil and Lil singing, "99 Bottles of Milk on the Wall". Perhaps justified, as they're both only one and may not even know beer exists.
• Funny Phone Misunderstanding: In the episode "Mommy's Little Assets", Charlotte's employee Jonathan thinks she's calling him sweetie, when really she was talking to her daughter Angelica.
• Fun with Flushing:
  • The pilot episode had Tommy inspecting the toilet to find out what it does. He accidentally ends up flushing some toilet paper and making a mess in the bathroom, causing the toilet to overflow. He also flushes jewels down a toilet while he was kidnapped by robbers.
  • In a different episode, Tommy nearly flushes Stu's tie (that he was planning to wear to a business dinner, no less) down the toilet (fortunately, Stu catches him just in time). Apparently this was not a one-time occurence either.
  Stu: [Exasperated] Didi, he did it again!
  Didi: [Sympathetic] Oh, tie in the potty?
  • Another episode had Angelica scaring Tommy and Chuckie by saying they'll get sucked down the drain (After an incident where Tommy accidentally loses one of his toys this way) whenever they take a bath, and throughout the episode they try to find ways to get out of it, which includes flushing anything bath time related down the toilet. Ironically, she accidentally flushes her own doll, Cynthia, down the toilet. The plumber recovers it, but the doll is ruined.
  • In yet another, the parents take the kids to the pool, which they assume is a gigantic potty. The whole episode revolved around them trying to find the flusher, and trying things such as the high dive and the sauna thermostat (when they do the latter, they accidentally lock the moms inside).
  • "Chuckie vs. the Potty" had a dark dream-sequence example, wherein Angelica was having the Fun with Flushing by flushing Chuckie down a giant toilet. As an added bonus, we get to see him go through the pipes, screaming the entire time.

G

• Games of the Elderly: In the episode, "Lady Luck", Grandpa Lou takes the babies to the senior center for bingo night. When Lou first starts playing bingo, none of his numbers are called, but as soon as the babies find the female manager, whom they believe to be "Lady Luck," Lou's numbers begin to be called, and when she arrives, he gets a bingo.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: With the introduction of Susie in Season Two, the babies consisted of three boys (Tommy, Chuckie and Phil) and three girls (Angelica, Lil and Susie). Dil being born in The Movie brought it up to four boys, with Kimi debuting in the sequel evening it out again with four girls.
• Generation Xerox: In "Sour Pickles," baby Stu sounds and acts just like Tommy. Drew as a toddler is essentially a male version of Angelica, with some of Chuckie's characteristics (though he doesn't sound like Chuckie very much.)
  • It's heavily implied that Grandpa Lou and Aunt Miriam had a relationship similar to Tommy and Angelica as children. Lou even relates a story about how Miriam threw his favorite ball into the next yard, and another where Miriam opened a window which made Lou sick. They apparently were also friends with a set of twins, Bill and Jill, supposedly mirroring Phil and Lil.
  • Betty and Howard have their own counterparts in minor characters Devil May Care Sam and Cowardly Lion Freddie from post-Dil episode 'Opposites Attract'. Look at them. Freddie even has Howard's hairstyle.◊ They (sort of) hook up at the end.
• George Jetson Job Security: In the episode "Mommy's Little Assets," Charlotte is forced to take Tommy and Angelica to work with her, as the other adults are all gone and apparently, no one will ever agree to babysit Angelica more than once. Jonathan, Charlotte's assistant, neglects to keep an eye on the kids (which all the adults do at least Once an Episode), and Tommy and Angelica get away and roam the building. Charlotte immediately fires him after she finds the children, even going as far as to tell Jonathan to call security on himself. He's re-hired at the end of the episode, with a promotion. To Jonathan's dismay, it's not a Vice President position— it's supervisor of Merge Corps' daycare center, starting with watching Angelica.
  Angelica: [grabs Jonathan's hand and smiles evilly] Boy, Jonathan, are we gonna have fun...
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: The show is rated G. For the most part, it's perfectly innocuous, but in the episode "Reptar's Revenge", there is a nude pinup on the side of the carnival owner's trailer. which should warrant a PG.
• The Ghost: Jonathan, Charlotte's assistant, whom we only ever heard about when she was talking to him on her cell phone. He was finally revealed in an episode where Charlotte had to take Angelica & Tommy to work.
  • Charlotte herself was a ghost for much of the early run of the show. She was mentioned in passing, but appeared onscreen for the first time in "The Santa Experience" in the middle of the second season.
  • Similarly to Jonathan, Charlotte is heard talking to a Mr. Yamaguchi in a handful of episodes including "Let Them Eat Cake." He and his company Yamaguchi Industries would be mentioned again several years later in the "Acorn Nuts and Diapey Butts" arc leading to the second movie, where he appears as Coco's boss by video call at the beginning and in person at Coco and Chas' wedding toward the end of the film.
  • Grandpa Lou's brother Sparky.
• Gift of the Magi Plot: Intentionally set up by Angelica in "The Santa Experience" as a way of bullying Phil and Lil — Phil will give Lil crayons and Lil will give Phil a Reptar Space Helmet, but Angelica made Lil trade in her coloring book and Phil trade in his Reptar doll.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • Happens twice in the episode "Angelica Breaks a Leg":
    • First, after Tommy falls asleep after watching Captain Blasto, this exchange occurs:
    Lou: 20 minutes to Fishing With Stan and Orville! Sure you don't want to join me?
    Angelica: Yeah, right! I'm really gonna watch a fishing show!
    (Cut to Angelica watching "Fishing With Stan and Orville" as Lou falls asleep)
    Angelica: Guess the excitement was too much for him.
    • Then, when Stu and Didi are forced to wait on Angelica hand and foot due to an (alleged) fractured fibula. Eventually, in the middle of the night...
    Angelica: Uncle Stu, I want some chocolate pudding.
    Stu: It's three o'clock in the morning, I'm tired, and we don't have any chocolate pudding.
    Angelica: (attempting to guilt-trip Stu) Oh! OH, the pain! *clutches leg*
    Stu: Angelica, we don't have any chocolate pudding.
    Angelica: There must be a store open somewhere...
    Stu: Angelica, I'm not going out at three in the morning to buy you chocolate pudding, and that's final.
    (cut to Stu walking into a 24-hour convenience store)
    Stu: Where's the chocolate pudding?
  • In the episode "Stu Gets A Job," Stu has taken a job outside of the house, and Chuckie warns Tommy that he won't be around so much anymore...
    Tommy: Chuckie, listen, maybe your dad goes to a job all day, maybe other peoples' daddies go to jobs all day, but not my daddy. He stays right here at home with me.
    (cut to the driveway with Stu in the car saying goodbye to Tommy)
    Stu: Bye, Tommy, daddy's off to the lard mines.
  • From the episode "Runaway Angelica," after she's caught playing in Drew's office, despite being told repeatedly not to. She attempts to use the "Sweet, apologetic child" ploy to avoid punishment:
    Angelica: *smiling innocently* I'm so sorry. I'll never do it again. I promise.
    Drew: Angelica, it's NOT gonna work this time!
    Angelica: *sighs in defeat* Okay... I'm really, really sorry, Daddy dear, and I promise I'll never ever—
    Drew: You're not being sincere, young lady! This time you're in BIG trouble!
    Angelica: (in a sweet voice) Oh, Daddy, you're silly. I can't be in trouble— I'm Angelica! Your only daughter. Your princess, your cupcake. Your little tax shelter...
    (cut to Drew carrying Angelica to her room and grounding her)
  • In "Murmur on the Ornery Express," this is done with Chuckie who is quite scared while he and the rest of the cast are riding on a train, although this one ends on a more positive note...
    Kimi: It's just a choo-choo, Chuckie.
    Chuckie: This ain't no choo-choo! It's a big scary train! I don't like it and I never will!
    (cut to Chuckie enjoying eating ice cream in the train's dining car)
• Girlish Pigtails: Angelica. She even ties pigtails in her cat's hair.
• Glasses Curiosity: "Chuckie Loses His Glasses" is all about this. When Angelica and later Tommy put on his glasses, they see the same stuff he does without them.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "The Doctor Is In", Angelica, inspired by a radio talk show doctor named Dr. Kathy, pretends to be a radio talk show doctor to give the babies advice that will allegedly keep their friendship intact. She tells Chuckie to be more assertive, Tommy to stop telling his friends what to do, Phil and Lil to stop being dirty and disgusting, and Kimi to stop being so happy. Unfortunately for her, the advice she gives the babies works too well. When Chuckie decides to be more assertive, he drives Angelica's car. Angelica begs for the babies to stop him, but they all refuse; Tommy because he's not allowed to tell his friends what to do anymore, Phil and Lil because they're not allowed to get dirty, and Kimi because she takes on a more cool personality.
• Good Stepmother: Chuckie initially worries that Kira will be like the stepmother from "Cinderella", but she's actually quite nice and caring, and even adopts him legally in one episode.
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: In "Susie vs. Angelica", one of the challenges the two face off in is seeing who can land the farthest from a swing. While Susie gracefully lands on her feet, Angelica lands face first on the ground. However Angelica wins since she landed farther than Susie.
• Grandparental Obliviousness: Without fail, Grandpa Lou will always fall asleep while babysitting the children, giving them the chance to go off on one of their adventures.
• Grocery Store Episode: In "Incident in Aisle Seven", Lou takes Tommy to Grocery World to buy the Pickles family's weekly groceries and as many boxes of Fudgy Ding-a-Ling bars as he can carry. While he adds up the total cost of the groceries with a malfunctioning calculator, Tommy wanders off in search of Reptar cereal, inadvertently making a huge mess of the store along the way.
• Grossout Fakeout:
  • In "Baby Power", the babies think they've turned Dil into a superpowered monster and try to get him back to normal by spilling water on him. Didi picks Dil up and notes, "Your diaper is wet, sweetie. And so is your head?! When you have to go, you have to go!"
  • In "All's Well That Pretends Well", the babies eat vanilla ice cream and Didi mistakes the ice cream on their faces for snot. Needless to say, she is highly disgusted when Betty recognises it as ice cream and tastes some.
  • Downplayed in "Baby Power", where the babies think Dil is going to poop, but he farts instead.
  • In "Man of the House", Dil's rattle breaks, so he cries. This confuses Didi, and at one point, she thinks he has a dirty diaper.
  • In "Day of the Aquarium", the babies see a fountain. Chuckie says, "The floor's going potty?".
  • In "The Big Flush", the babies go to a pool and mistake it for a giant toilet. When Chuckie notes that the pool water tastes bad, Tommy says that it's because it's "potty water".
• Gross-Up Close-Up: A lot of episodes begin this way. One such example is "No Bones About it", which begins with what looks like a beating heart. However, it is really an extreme close-up of Spike's tongue as he is panting.
• Growing Up Sucks: The fear of growing up constantly hangs over the babies' heads. This is the subject of "Angelica's Birthday," where she fears responsibilities and attempts to revert to a baby.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Discussed in "Grandpa's Bad Bug"; Stu remembers that Grandpa Lou has told him a rhyme that says if you break a promise, your conscience will haunt you in your sleep. After Lou plays pinochle all night after having promised to come home early, and then resorts to Playing Sick so he can sleep all day without Stu or Didi knowing what he did, he mistakes the babies' attempts to cure him for nightmares caused by his guilt.

H

• Hairball Humor: In "Babysitting Fluffy", Phil says that he doesn't like cats, but when Fluffy coughs up a hairball on Chuckie's shirt, he says, "I guess I do like cats!".
• Half-Identical Twins: Phil and Lil.
• Hammerspace: Many instances, but Phil takes the trope literally when the babies are trying to figure out what to do with a bird's egg that they've found:
  Phil: *pulls a toy mallet from his shirt* Let's hatch it!
• Handing Over the Crap Sack: In "Driving Miss Angelica", Angelica saves Chuckie and makes him become her servant. She has him steal a box of chocolates for her, and while she does share some with Tommy, she gives the undesirable, coconut flavored pieces to Chuckie.
• Hanukkah Episode: The episode "A Rugrats Chanukah" is about the main characters hearing the story of the holiday and celebrating.
• Happily Married: All the married couples on the show. Perhaps the only intra-marital conflict that occurs throughout the entire series is between Boris and Minka, Didi's parents, and that wound up being a big misunderstanding.
  • Especially Chas and Kira. As seen in the episodes "Finsterella," "The Big Sneeze," "Bow Wow Wedding Vows," "Babies In Toyland," "Sweet Dreams," "Mutt's in a Name," and "Kimi Takes The Cake," just to name a few.
  • Chas' earlier marriage to the late Melinda, short as it was, was also a happy one, since "Mother's Day" shows that he was genuinely grief-stricken when she died and is still mourning for her. Not until Rugrats in Paris does he get married again, to the aforementioned Kira.
• Hated Item Makeover:
  • In "Changes for Chuckie", Kira puts clothes on her two-year-old stepson Chuckie's teddy bear Wawa. However, Chuckie, due to being a Shrinking Violet who fears change, is scared of the makeover.
  • In "The Odd Couple", Tommy is staying over at Chuckie's house and rearranges the latter's toy village so that items are at the wrong buildings, one building is taken apart, and people are hanging out of the windows. Chuckie hates this and yells at Tommy.
  • In "The Art Fair", Angelica is instructed to paint the Finster household's den. She orders Chuckie to help her, but he runs from her, and when she chases him, she knocks over the cans of paint, resulting in very colorful walls. Charlotte's impressed by this, but Chas clearly doesn't share the same opinion, as the scene cuts to the outside of the house as he screams in horror. Charlotte later tells Angelica not to take it too personally because he doesn't know what real art looks like.
• Hates Baths:
  • Phil and Lil hate taking baths in general. In "Word of the Day", an episode that deals with profanity, Phil considered the word "Bath" a bad word.
  • Tommy temporarily hated baths in "Down the Drain", when one of his toy soldiers fell down the bathtub drain. Angelica telling him and Chuckie an obviously made-up story about a kid who got sucked down the drain certainly didn't help matters. He did everything he could to avoid taking a bath, but nothing worked. Fortunately, he overcame his fear at the end of the episode.
  • Dil also hates baths, as seen in the short, "Dil's Bathtime". In contrast, his older brother, Tommy, loves taking baths.
• He Who Fights Monsters: At least a couple of times, the babies' hatred of Angelica and her constant tormenting of them would reach boiling point. "Tricycle Thief" has Susie adamant on punishing Angelica for (supposedly) stealing her tricycle, while in 'When Wishes Come True", Tommy becomes so incensed by Angelica's cruelty that he wishes something horrible would happen to her. In both cases they end up repenting when they realised they sunk even lower than her.
• Historical Longevity Joke:
  • This joke from "Mirrorland":
  Lou: Antiques, huh! Back in my day, we had no use for antiques!
  Didi: But Pop, I thought back in your day, there were no antiques.
  (Didi giggles)
  Lou: (angrily) Very funny! A fella could bust a gut around here!
  • This joke from "Reptar on Ice"...
  Grandpa: In my day, dinosaurs didn't skate around with a bunch of ninnies in costumes.
  Stu: (to Didi) In his day, the dinosaurs were real.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Junk Food Kid (as mentioned previously), and the two crooks who kidnap Tommy in "Ruthless Tommy" when the ransom note they wrote blinds Mike, and throws him and Bob into the back of a Police car, sending them to jail.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: In "Opposites Attract", Lil says, "Looks like somebody's got their ^diapiespanties in a bunch."
• Homage: "Gold Rush" is one long homage to the Bogart classic, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Some notable standouts:
  • The entire plot of a treasure hunt where all participants turn on each other
  • Chuckie's laughing fit and speech is a baby-fied version of Walter Huston at the end of the film
  • The final shot, where said treasure is lost to the wind and sand
• Honesty Aesop:
  • In "Angelica Nose Best", Tommy, after listening to an audio tape of Pinocchio, tells Angelica that her nose will grow if she lies. The next day, she blames some of her misdeeds on the babies and pets and a bump on her nose (actually a mosquito bite from the previous night) gets bigger, prompting her to ask the babies to help her learn to tell the truth.
  • In "Cooking With Susie", Susie makes Reptar cereal bars for the babies with her new Cynthia Easy-Cook oven. When the babies try them, they taste terrible, but not wanting to hurt Susie's feelings, they tell her they like them. Susie believes what the babies said to be true and makes more Reptar cereal bars, which the babies try unsuccessfully to hide. Eventually, the babies try to hide Susie's oven, and when Susie catches the babies doing this, they tell her the truth and realize it's what they should have done in the first place.
• How About a Smile?: In one episode Angelica steals a ball from the babies. She tries to make Tommy beg for it to get it back. Tommy's less than cooperative.
  Angelica: Ask me nice.
  Tommy: Give me my ball!
  Angelica: Say "Pretty please with sugar on top."
  Tommy: Give me my ball!
  Angelica: Say "Angelica is the nicest, prettiest, best person in the whole wide world."
  Tommy: GIVE ME MY BALL!
  • During the episode "Angelica the Magnificent," the babies believe that Angelica has used magic to turn Lil into a butterfly, and they demand that she change her back. Angelica, as usual, takes this opportunity to torment the babies.
  Angelica: Say "Please."
  Phil, Tommy, Chuckie: Please...
  Angelica: Say "Pretty please."
  Phil, Tommy, Chuckie: Pretty please...
  Angelica: Say "Pretty please with sugar on top and ice cream in the middle and..."
  Tommy: Angelica, change her back!
• Human Ladder: The babies often climb on top of one another to reach heights that none of them could reach by themselves. In addition, the order in which they climb on each other is surprisingly consistent— Chuckie's on the bottom, since he's the biggest. Phil is next, since he has a better chance of holding two babies' weights than Lil. Lil is next because Tommy is almost always at the top (being the leader of the group), and Tommy stands on Lil's shoulders/back at the very top.
• Human Mail: Tommy Pickles sneaks into the mailman's bag and explores the post office to find a "baby" (really a toy his dad ordered to compare with his own handmade doll) that will be delivered to his family. Tommy gets mistaken for a piece of mail and is sent through the system of mail sorting machines and chutes, almost gets stuck in the dead letter office, and finds the package, climbing into it and going home this way.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Angelica, in "New Kid In Town."
  Josh: Hey, what's the big idea?
  Angelica: I'M the big idea, and I say quit messing with these babies! They don't have to be bossed around by you or anyone else! *to the babies* Come on, get up off the ground, dummies!
  • Angelica in general, as part of her Jerk with a Heart of Gold's position. She might bully the babies, but she'll stand up to anyone else trying to be mean to them.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • It is common for Chuckie's cowardice to be met with one of the other babies saying "Aw, quit being a baby!"
  • Angelica seems to be very insecure about being close to the same age as the other kids. She constantly refers to them as "just babies" and to herself as an adult, despite being only a year older than Chuckie and two years older than Tommy, Kimi and the twins, Phil and Lil.
  Didi: *as Tommy is reaching for a bowl of cereal on the table* No, Tommy...this is Angelica's breakfast.
  Angelica: Uh-huh...babies aren't allowed to eat Reptar Cereal. It's only for us grown-up people. *sits down at the table and can't reach the bowl*
  • During the episode "The Shot," Tommy and Hector are attempting to escape the doctor's office to avoid getting their immunization shots (after Chuckie described it as a ghastly, nightmarish experience). Angelica shows up, gets Tommy to spill the beans, and then promptly goes to tell on him.
  Angelica: Aunt Didi! Aunt Didi!
  Drew: Now, pumpkin, Daddy and Aunt Didi are talking.
  Angelica: I know, but...
  Drew: When grown-ups are talking, little girls and little boys are supposed to wait quietly.
  Angelica: I know, but...
  Drew: Then when the grown-ups say it's okay for you to talk, then you can say whatever you want.
  Angelica: I know, but...!
  Drew: *puts one finger over Angelica's mouth* Now, calmly... what is it that you wanted to tell Aunt Didi?
  Angelica: THE LITTLE KIDS HAS GOTTED AWAY!
  Didi & Hector's mother: OH, NO!
  Drew: You know, honey pie, these are the kinds of things you should really tell the grown-ups right away.
  Angelica: *turns and glares angrily at the camera*
  • In the Tales from the Crib direct-to-video film that adapts the story of Snow White, Phil belittles Dil for chewing on a piece of the pop-up book Taffy is reading to the babies and remarks on how babies are always putting strange things in their mouths. After this, the other babies find stuff under couch cushions that they proceed to eat.
  • One episode has Kira and Didi not doing business with a clothing store because they didn't properly watched their kids. Even though they and the other adults lose track of their kids as well.

I

• Identical Twin ID Tags: For Phil and Lil. Phil wears pants while Lil has a skirt and a bow.
• I Ate WHAT?!: In the episode "Runaway Angelica," Angelica orders the babies to go in the house and bring her cookies (she's hiding in Tommy's backyard after running away from home). The babies can't reach the actual cookies that they know Angelica wants, so they find the next best thing...
  Angelica: Say, Tommy, these cookies are pretty good! Did your mommy make these?
  Tommy: No, they're from a box.
  Angelica: A box, huh? What kinda box, Tommy?
  Tommy: Oh, you know... that box with a picture of a doggy on it.
  Angelica: [realization setting in]...the one by Spike's bowl?
  Tommy: Uh-huh.
  Angelica: *spit take* YOU! DUMB! BABIES!!!
• "I Can't Look" Gesture: Invoked then subverted. Angelica tricks Tommy and Chuckie into going and getting a cake from the kitchen right under the adults' noses using "invisibility creme". As she watches them, certain they're about to be caught, she chuckles then turns away, saying, "I can't watch...yes I can."
• I Have This Friend: Angelica tried this on Tommy once when she was worried that her parents' new baby would get more attention than her.
  Tommy: Well, at least it's happening to your friend and not to you!
  Angelica: Yeah, right...
• I Never Said It Was Poison:
  • In "The Trial," the babies hold a mock court proceeding in order to find out who broke Tommy's clown lamp. As Angelica repeatedly accuses the other babies based on their actions, Tommy (playing the judge) makes a sudden realization: Angelica claimed to have been taking a nap when the lamp was broken, but she was supposed to have already taken a nap at home before coming over. Furthermore, how would Angelica know what the other babies were doing at the time if she was napping...unless she wasn't actually napping? Backed into a corner, Angelica immediately begins gloating that she did indeed do it...which Didi and Betty immediately hear, resulting in Angelica having to sit in time-out until her father gets back.
  • In "Ransom of Cynthia," Angelica hatches a plan to not only get a new Cynthia, but to also get the other babies' candy from a birthday party, by faking her Cynthia's kidnapping, complete with a "ransom note" and a call from the "kidnapper." The babies take the kidnapper's (Angelica) call and meet "his" demands by leaving their candy out, but they begin to suspect something is up when they realize that the supposed ransom note is just a page torn out of Angelica's Cynthia-themed coloring book. Then, Angelica reappears (with chocolate on her face) telling the babies that the kidnapper told them to bring more candy...even though she was nowhere around when the kidnapper called. The babies immediately call her out on this, and Angelica's plan is exposed; despite this, she almost gets away with it, only for Laser-Guided Karma to hit her again when Spike retreives her old Cynthia, and she barfs up all the candy she ate.
• Innocent Awkward Question: "The Stork" has Angelica hearing conflicting stories from adults at a dinner table about how babies are made—her father Drew tells her that babies are made via fertilizing eggs, and then tells her that a stork comes by, reaching a compromise that babies hatch out of a stork's egg.
• Intentional Mess Making:
  • In "Rebel Without a Teddy Bear", Angelica tells Tommy to be bad in order to get his toy lion back. Her idea of being bad involves spilling juice, knocking a bunch of furniture over, and dirtying the walls.
  • In "Baby Sale", the babies are put in the daycare section of a mall. Because their mothers were mentioning a "baby sale" (actually a sale on baby clothes), they think they're going to be sold. They decide that people would want to buy the best babies, so to avoid being sold, they must act like the worst babies. Among the things they do to act bad are throwing things and knocking things over.
  • In "Baby Maybe", Ben and Elaine babysit Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil. The babies mistakenly think Ben and Elaine want to take them home and keep them, so they start throwing food everywhere.
  • In "The Family Tree", Chuckie becomes envious of the attention that Tommy is getting from Chas and his grandparents. Angelica tells Chuckie that if he blames Tommy for his own actions, Chas will love Chuckie again. First, Chuckie throws all the food off of the table, and later, he tricks Tommy into holding the hose so he can turn it on and spray the whole room.
  • Discussed in "Chuckie Vs. the Potty", when Phil and Lil suggest that Chuckie should take a dump in his room and hide it in his toy box to find a way around his toilet-training.
• I Owe You My Life: Enforced in "Driving Miss Angelica", where Angelica insists that Chuckie has to become her slave after saving him from being run over. It gets turned against her at the end, when Chuckie saves her from being locked in the upstairs closet and Tommy and Chuckie convince her she has to become Chuckie's slave.
• Irritation Nightmare: In "Real or Robots?", Stu is Sleepwalking and dreaming that he's hosting a cooking show but that Drew is trying to steal his recipe.
• I Warned You: When Tommy and Chuckie decide to spend the night at each other's houses for awhile, Phil and Lil warn them that they're gonna get so tired of each other, they're gonna start arguing. Chuckie and Tommy are best friends, so they naturally believe there's no way they could ever be at odds with one another. When the two (separately) run to Phil and Lil and complain about the other, they both tell them the same thing: "I hate to say it, but...we told you so."
  • Chuckie plays this trope straight often. Being the most cautious and skeptical of the group, he often warns the others that what they're doing or going to do is a bad idea. They almost never listen.
• If You Can Read This: The various background signs, boxes, and papers often contain amusing jokes, gags, and Continuity Nods. One memorable box is for "Unsweetened sugar."
  • In the episode "Chuckie's First Haircut," one of the bottles on a barber-shop shelf reads "Eau da doo da day."
  • The episode "When Wishes Come True" opens with the babies building a "sculpture" with building blocks (that Tommy calls "Three Babies and a Guitar"). As the camera pans up, one can see that from bottom to top, one row of blocks reads "RUGRATZ."
• Imagine Spot: Most episodes consisted of creating a more elaborate fantasy than what was really going on.
• Improvised Lockpick: Tommy is often able to pick locks with his (toy) screwdriver as easily as he can reach and push latches with it.
• Injured Limb Episode: Zigzagged for "Angelica Breaks a Leg". Angelica doesn't really break a leg, she just pretends to, but a background character named Antonio Peaches and eventually Charlotte do break their legs.
• In-Series Nickname: Betty (and only Betty) often refers to Chuckie as "The Chuckster," and both Betty and Stu use the nickname "Deed" for Didi. Also see Affectionate Nickname above. The parents also have various cute baby names for their children—"Tommykins" from Didi, "Philly Willy" from Betty, and Grandpa Lou tends to call Tommy "scout."
• Incest Subtext: Between Phil and Lil repeatedly. Truth in Television given that Children Are Innocent.
  • The episode "Junior Prom" has the babies stage a school dance in the back garden. When the boys ask the girls out, Phil immediately takes Lil (Angelica also makes her cousin Tommy ask her).
  • "Kid TV" the twins pretend they're lovers in a soap opera. Acting out a big dramatic scene too.
  • "Cradle Attraction" when Chuckie discovers that the girl Megan picks on him because she likes him (read: has a crush). Lil shoves Phil and when he asks why she did it, she responds "it's because I like you" - and they both giggle.
  • In "Naked Tommy" they have a very curious reaction when they see each other in the buff for the first time.
  • One episode has the twins fall out with each other but then miss each other when they get separated for the day. It's played very much as if a couple had split up. And what's the episode called? "Together At Last"
    • This carried over into All Grown Up!. Until the second episode - and the kids are ten or eleven at this point - they have been sharing a room. It deals with Lil wanting independence and there is one scene (after she has moved into her own room) that's played as if Phil has been dumped. And the episode's resolution comes across as Better as Friends. Additionally Phil's reaction to Lil having to wear bras is very atypical of a brother. And there's another episode where Phil falls for one of Lil's friends - and she gets jealous that the girl is taking her brother away from her.
• Indian Burial Ground: The Carmichaels live on one. At the end of their introductory episode, Randy makes a joke about it (after Stu had been bugging Randy all day, as Randy writes for The Dummi Bears, with which Stu is oddly obsessed):
  Randy Carmichael: You know that Indian burial ground curse they told us about?
  Lucy Carmichael: Yeah?
  Randy Carmichael: You don't think he's it, do you?
• Informal Eulogy: Parodied in the episode "The Mysterious Mr. Friend," when the babies bury an immobile Mr. Friend (whom they call "Mr. Fiend") in a grave:
  Chuckie: Shouldn't somebody say a few words?
  Phil: Like what?
  Chuckie: How 'bout..."Hinkle, finkle, dinkle, doo!"
  Phil and Lil: A-hen!
• Informed Judaism: Perhaps one of the strongest aversions in any mainstream secular cartoon. There are holiday episodes focused both on Hanukkah and Passover, including a cutesy rendition of the story of Moses. Having decided to make Tommy's maternal grandparents Alter Kockers, they really ran with it.
  • All Grown Up! also makes several references to Tommy attending a synagogue school, and one episode centers around him trying to be more of a "Nice Jewish Boy" to impress a girl he likes there.
• Innocent Swearing: Angelica overhears a Depraved Kids' Show Host state, rather sarcastically, that the "real" catchphrase of the show is that the children who watch it "are all little Sound Effect Bleeps" while auditioning for it. Angelica, being a preschooler, thinks this is sincere. Hilarity Ensues.
• Irony: In the DTV movie Tales From The Crib: Snow White, Snow White is played by Susie.
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: More than once.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: "Chuckie's Wonderful Life," which may or may not have been All Just a Dream.
• It Kind of Looks Like a Face: It wasn't a scary, hungry monster under Chuckie's bed, but a colorful sweater curled in such a way that looked like a monster enough to even make Chas flinch.
• It Tastes Like Mud
  "It is mud."
• It Will Never Catch On: In "Game Show Didi," Grandpa says this of television, possibly echoing the feelings of his generation. Doubles as Hypocritical Humor since TV did catch on decades before, and because Grandpa constantly falls asleep in front of it.