The Powerpuff Girls / Tropes C to D

The Powerpuff Girls (1998) Trope Examples
A - B | C - D | E - I | J - Q | R - S | T - Z

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C

• Canines Gambling in a Card Game: In the episode Monkey See, Doggie Do, Mojo Jojo's spree of transforming the citizens of Townsville into dogs with the Anubis Dog Head includes a party of men playing poker.
• The Cameo:
  • Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory makes several cameos over the course of the series, including the episode "Forced Kin". In addition, Koosalagoopagoop makes a cameo, and is mentioned, in "Imaginary Fiend" - apparently he's Bubbles' imaginary friend as well.
  • Wally Gator (albeit much larger) appears in "Knock It Off".
  • Top Cat, Benny, and the Brain appear among the cats in "Cat-astrophe".
  • In one episode, the Professor looks at a chart featuring the bears of the world... one of which is Yogi Bear.
  • "Gettin' Twiggy With It" shows that Mitch owns a remote-control Speed Buggy.
• Captain Obvious:
  • Done by Blossom in "Los Dos Mojos"; lampshaded by Mojo.
    Blossom: I think Bubbles thinks she's Mojo Jojo!
    Mojo: (sarcastically) No. Really. You think?
  • Also in "Fuzzy Logic":
    Blossom: What happened here?
    Bubbles: You know what? I bet it was something bad.
    The other girls look unimpressed by the deduction.
• Cardboard Prison: Townsville's prison isn't too good at keeping Mojo Jojo and other villains locked up, particularly since they often appear out of jail even when they were incarcerated by the end of their previous appearance.
• Card Carrying Villains: They frequently have Eviler than Thou arguments, too.
• Cast of Snowflakes: The background character designs could be pretty creative.
• Catchphrase:
  • Narrator - "The City of Townsville..." and "So Once Again, the Day Is Saved, thanks to The Powerpuff Girls!"
  • Powerpuff Girls - "Not so fast, Villain of the Week!" and "Let's go, girls!"
  • Mojo Jojo - "CURSEEESS!!!"
  • Fuzzy Lumpkins - "GET OFFA MAH PROPERTY!!!"
• Catfight: Miss Bellum and Sedusa have one at the end of "Something's a Ms".
• Cereal Vice Reward: Magnificently parodied in one episode. "Ridiculous Lucky Captain Rabbit King! Lucky Captain Rabbit King Nuggets are for the youth!"
  ALL I EVER WANTED WAS SOME CEREAL! *Sob*
• Chainsaw Good: In the episode "Stray Bullet", the first of a numerous weapons Mojo Jojo takes out to destroy the trapped Powerpuff Girls is a chainsaw, which scares them and they struggle to get free from his lair.
• Cheer Them Up with Laughter:
  • In "The City of Frownsville", the titular girls try to make the Townsville people, who are all crying due to a Ray created by the Villain of the Week, Lou Gubrious, laugh. The problem is that the girls are crying as well.
  • In the revival episode "Bubbles the Blue", Blossom and Buttercup try to cheer up Bubbles who is enigmatically and uncharacteristically sad. When nothing works, it seems like some force is at work, but the Professor assures them that Bubbles will come out of her funk in due time.
• Chemistry Can Do Anything: Such as create super-powered little girls, using sugar, spice, and everything nice... And Chemical X.
• Childish Villain, Mature Hero: Although the titular girls and Princess Morbucks are both kindergarteners, the Powerpuff Girls, for all of their flaws and naivety, are ultimately good-natured and hard-working children who view being heroes as an important responsibility; while they do try to exploit their powers in some episodes, they always regret such actions upon realization. Princess, by contrast, is a Spoiled Brat who whines to her father whenever she wants something, thinks being a hero (as a former Loony Fan of the Powerpuff Girls who initially wished to join them) is all about the status and popularity, abuses her wealth at every opportunity, and doesn't grow an inch in terms of character over the course of the series.
• Children Are Tender-Hearted:
  • In "Stray Bullet", Bubbles the Friend to All Living Things takes pity on an injured squirrel and gets teary-eyed over the fact that it may not survive (at least until she saves its life with Chemical X).
  • In "Coupe d'etat", all three of the Powerpuff Girls (and the Professor) cry when K.A.R.R. tearfully tells them that he just wants to be loved.
• Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs: Lucky Captain Rabbit King Nuggets from "Jewel of the Aisle".
• Christmas Special: "Twas the Fight Before Christmas".
• Chromatic Arrangement: Both the Powerpuffs and the Rowdyruffs.
• City of Adventure: The City of Townsville.
• The City vs. the Country: In "Town and Out", the Utonium family moves to the metropolis of Citiesville, only to realize that it can't compare to Townsville, their original home.
• Class Pet: Twiggy the hamster. Mitch bullies Twiggy. In one episode, a liquid turns Twiggy into a monster.
• Clip Show:
  • Parodied in "The City of Clipsville". The episode starts out looking like a clip show, but the clips quickly turn into outrageous, bizarre events that never took place (most infamously the girls growing into teenagers and the Rowdyruff Boys asking them out), and everyone eventually barges into the girls' house to reminisce about rather insipid things like mowing the lawn. Ultimately, it turns out the clip show was a clip, with them at the end saying "Remember when we were remembering things?"
  • A more subtle parody happens in "Monkey See, Doggy Two", the sequel to "Monkey See, Doggy Do" (both of which were also included in clips from "The City of Clipsville"). The episode begins exactly the same way as its predecessor. When the girls realize Mojo Jojo is reusing his previous plan, they quickly confront him... and he reveals he's made a new plan by looking at the footage from his old one to figure out what he did wrong. He then shows the footage, which are clips from the original episode, as the four provide commentary.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The mayor. Bubbles has her moments as well.
• The Collector: Lenny Baxter in "Collect Her".
• Comic-Book Adaptation: DC Comics—70 regular issues, plus two issues of Cartoon Network Starring (their first two comic appearances), an adaptation of The Powerpuff Girls Movie, 21 appearances in Cartoon Network Block Party, 3 appearances of Cartoon Network Action Pack (Rowdyruff Boys stories—the boys appeared in four issues) and four volumes of reprinted stories. Series creator Craig McCracken drew and co-wrote the first CN Starring issue. IDW is now rebooting the comic in both new stories and reprints from DC.
• Company Cross References: Dexter had background cameos in several episodes. In addition, "Imaginary Fiend" featured a cameo by Dee Dee's imaginary friend, Koosie.
• Conforming OOC Moment:
  • In "Dance Pantsed", Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup have a tantrum so that the Professor will buy them the new video game Dance Pantsed Revolution. It can be a bit forgivable with Bubbles and Buttercup since they're more childish, but Blossom joining in is pretty strange since she's normally mature for her age.
  • In various episodes such as "Reeking Havoc" and "Oops, I Did It Again", Bubbles is seen eating meat with the other girls despite claiming to be a vegetarian in "Collect Her". This could be chalked up to Characterization Marches On, though, as "Collect Her" was only in season 2.
• Construction Vehicle Rampage:
  • In the episode "Abracadaver", wrecking balls are used to demolish an old magic theater, only for one of them to hit the old iron maiden that held the titular antagonist Al Lusion and set him free, causing the whole plot of the episode.
  • Defied in "The Mane Event", Bubbles removes the wrecking ball from a crane to use it as Epic Flail against the Evil Eye, only to have it blasted out of her hands.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Buttercup: Wow, where did you get that giant match?
    Blossom: Same place I got the giant jar, silly! Episode 2, Season 1, remember?
  • Twas the Fight Before Christmas has the girls tell Princess it's obvious that she's naughty by listing things she did in previous episodes, like buying Townsville and making crime legal and manipulating Robin into shoplifting.
• Contrived Clumsiness: When the girls had to accidentally add Chemical X to their own "perfect little girl" concoction.
  Blossom: Oh, look at what I found, girls: Chemical X.
  Bubbles: Be careful with that Chemical X.
  Buttercup: Yes, Blossom. Whatever you do, do not drop that Chemical X.
  Blossom: Don't worry, I wo— (tosses Chemical X into bowl) Whoops. I accidentally dropped the Chemical X, and it fell into the concoction.
  Girls: Oh, no.
• Cowboy Episode: One episode, titled "West in Pieces", is basically a normal episode of the show, but in the Old West. The episode focuses on the Steamypuff Girls dealing with Mojo the Kid.
• Coy, Girlish Flirt Pose: The Powerpuff Girls do this to disarm the Rowdyruff Boys so they can destroy them by kissing them.
• Crapsack World:
  • Downplayed with the city of Townsville throughout the series (as well as the general franchise). It's not a terrible place to live and looks pretty much the same as any average US city, but it's threatened by giant monsters, supervillains, criminals, natural disasters and aliens on what seems to be a daily basis, most of which have to be stopped by the girls themselves. Even though, the city is always restored to its normal state before the events of the next episode, with no explanation as to how the damage was repaired so quickly and how its economy hasn't collapsed from this happening constantly.
  • More explicit Crapsack Worlds were shown in specific episodes, including:
    • A Bad Future where HIM took over Townsville in "Speed Demon".
    • The town of Citiesville from "Town and Out". It's a more realistic setting where there are many criminals who currently run amok unstopped. Not only that, but everyone else there is a complete Jerkass to everyone, especially the girls and Professor Utonium, whom they consider freaks.
    • Townsville's status in The Powerpuff Girls Movie before the girls were created. Even the Narrator had the tone of "abandon hope all ye who enter".
• Create Your Own Hero: It's eventually revealed that Mojo Jojo was once Professor Utonium's lab partner and caused the Chemical X to be added to the formula the girls were made from. Realising this causes Jojo to suffer a Villainous Breakdown. In another episode it gets even worse for him when he tries going back in time to Ret-Gone the girls and ends up giving Utonium the idea to create them in the first place.
  "It was me...it was me..."
• Creator Cameo:
  • Craig McCracken and his wife (and series storyboarder) Lauren Faust appear in "The Powerpuff Girls Rule."
  • When the mayor does rollcall of all the citizens in Townsville in "Collect Her", Craig McCracken is one of the names he calls out.
• Creepy Monotone:
  • The citizens in "Speed Demon".
  • The Powerpuff Girls Xtreme from "Knock It Off".
  • The class in Blossom's Nightmare in "Power-noia".
• Crossover:
  • In 2000, Cartoon Network published a special magazine which featured a story in which the Powerpuff Girls met Scooby-Doo and the gang.
  • The episode "Members Only" featured Major Glory and Valhallen.
• Crying a River:
  • In the episode, "The City of Frownsville", The main villain Lou Gubrious cries a sea of tears. In that same episode, the Professor advises the girls that the town will be flooded with tears in 10 minutes. And when the giant monster cries with Ocular Gushers, it was shortened to 5 minutes.
• Cue the Rain:
  • In "Simian Says", Mojo Jojo kidnaps the narrator and takes his place, leading to this exchange:
    Bubbles: At least it's not raining.
    Mojo Jojo (narrating): That's not a bad idea!
    (it starts to rain)
  • At the end of the episode, "The City of Nutsville", when Blossom and Buttercup are cleaning up the pieces of the statue of the Mayor, this happens after Buttercup says, "At least it isn't raining."
• Curse Cut Short: In "Mommy Fearest", Blossom notes "There's something fishy about that—"
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • In "Stuck Up, Up and Away" when Princess defeats two of the Powerpuff Girls effortlessly with her new armored supersuit, she expects to deal with Blossom just as easy. Cue Blossom hitting Princess back so hard multiple times she literally breaks the armor apart.
  • In "Meet the Beat-Alls" after Mojo, Him, Princess and Fuzzy form a Legion of Doom and start committing crimes everywhere, whenever the girls show up to stop them they would easily defeat them by zapping them with three lasers followed by crushing them with a rock (although they come out completely undamaged moments later), eventually causing them to abandon their crime-fighting completely. The moment Mojo leaves the group however, the tables are turned.
• Cute Kittens: In the episode "Catastrophe", in which the Powerpuff Girls have to find one of the kittens for a giant monster in order to help him leave Townsville alone.

D

• Dark Reprise: A more sinister version of the theme song's origin exposition music plays when Utonium's college roommate Professor Dick creates imitations of the Powerpuff Girls.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Buttercup's new identity "Super Zeroes". It's a parody of Spawn that can't step out into sunlight and has "scabs that never heal".
  • "Speed Demon" has HIM go from joke villain to Not-So-Harmless Villain, totaling the Earth, turning everyone into shell-shocked, psychotic zombies, and psychologically torturing the girls. Yikes.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Mr. Green. Despite looking like a mish-mash of almost every Obviously Evil trope out there, he's really just a nice guy who wants to teach children. He even gives the girls a lecture about the trope.
• A Day in the Limelight: Some episodes aren't particularly centered around the Girls themselves, but more around the quirky side-characters or villains, sometimes pushing the Girls to the sideline. "Custody Battle" in particular doesn't feature the Girls at all, just focusing on HIM and Mojo's attempts to take custody over the Rowdyruff Boys.
• Deconstruction/Deconstructive Parody: The episode "Super Zeroes" had the girls deciding to emulate the superheroes in their comic books (or, in Bubbles' case, manga). Blossom became a pastiche of Captain America, Batman, and Wonder Woman, Bubbles became a crime-fighting, overhyper rabbitgirl that used her pogo stick to get places, and Buttercup became Spaw-, er, Mange. When a monster attacks, the girls try to respond, but Blossom gets stuck in traffic when she tries using her Cool Car, Bubbles took way too long traveling by pogo stick, and Mange could only fight at night because she's an anti-hero and she's affected by light. Eventually, the attacking monster gets fed up and says that they don't need capes, costumes, gadgets, and whatnot to be a hero, and then lets them beat him up. (Where he's from, getting your ass handed to you by pint-sized superheroes is a rite of passage for monsters.
• Decoy Protagonist: In "Knock It Off," the Girls acts as the main characters as usual for the show in the episode, however, after the Big Bad of the episode, Dick Hardly, turns into a One-Winged Angel and tries to kill them to harvest their Chemical X, the Professor arrives and saves them with The Power of Love, while Dick is killed by his own creations. In a way, the Professor is the real protagonist of said episode, as Dick Hardly was his so-called good roommate from college and the episode follows the Professor's realization that his college friend was Evil All Along from the beginning when Dick announces in front of the Professor to exploit the Girls for profit to the climax when the Professor catches him trying to kill the Girls and comes to their rescue with the help of Dick's defective creations.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Mojo Jojo. That is to say, he speaks in a manner that is highly repetitive and frequently says things that he has already said at an earlier point in time and is now redundantly saying again, thus causing the audience to wonder if they are hearing the same thing multiple times, for they are hearing dialogue that they have already been exposed to, for he has already said it. He does go the extra mile to deny it:
  Mojo Jojo [after hearing Bubbles speak like him]: I do not talk like that! The way I communicate is much different! I do not reiterate, repeat, reinstate the same thing over and over again! I am clear, concise, to the point!
• Designated Girl Fight: Normally averted given the nature of the show, but Ms. Bellum and Sedusa's fight in "Something's A Ms." has shades of it. However, aside from their outfits, it avoids being a typical catfight. The two of them get pretty damn brutal.
• Destructive Saviour: Whenever the girls go "save the day," their fights with the bad guys and monsters often end up leveling quite a few buildings in Townsville. Exaggerated in the debut episode of the Dynamo Humongous Mecha; they caused such a great deal of damage to the city in the process of stopping the monster that the Mayor and the rest of the citizens ordered them never to use the Dynamo again.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: "Nano of the North" has exactly zero context for anything that is happening. A cloud showed up over Townsville and everything inorganic is getting decimated by the rain, which is actually a vast army of miniature robots traveling within the raindrops that can destroy things at a molecular level. None of this is ever explained.
• Didn't See That Coming: In the episode "Sweet n Sour", three cute animals - a puppy, kitten, and rabbit - are brainwashing the whole city of Townsville, except for the girls, of course, with their obviously cute faces, thus also causing a backlash on the girls due to their doubts on the animals. However, when they walk into a building which they think is a bank, they find it's a school filled with children who love the animals to near-death, thus delivering the message of how too much of something isn't always good. Of course, after the children leave, it is revealed that their receiving too much love was set up by the girls.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In the episode "Bought and Scold", Princess Morbucks takes over as Mayor of Townsville and passes a law legalizing crime, just so she could put the girls out of business. However, she apparently didn't realize that with crime being legal, she herself could be robbed as well, which is obviously one of the reasons why the girls thought of the idea of robbing her blind.
  • Also, in the episode "Birthday Bash", the Amoeba Boys send the girls voodoo dolls of the girls themselves without realizing that they were supposed to keep the dolls in order to make them work. To be fair, though, "thinking" is kind of a foreign concept for the Amoeba Boys...
  • Mojo Jojo's first attack involved turning the world and the girls into dogs. He was beaten when Buttercup ran up the platform bit him in the behind. In another episode, he does almost the same thing, then he plays a video recording of the first event to the girls and explains that he won't turn them into dogs this time, and he installed butt armor to prevent getting bitten again. Mojo got so wrapped up on how he was beaten previously he forgot to disable or weaken the girls this time and they beat him up as usual. In fact, this is actually Mojo's signature flaw when it comes to planning all of his schemes. To a point where the girls would even rule him out of a robbery since it was too well thought-out.
• Disappointed by the Motive: In "Just Desserts", a follow-up to the episode, "Supper Villain", Mrs. Smith and her children join her husband in helping him eliminate the Powerpuff Girls, following his release from prison. After the girls defeat them in a showdown, Mrs. Smith explains that her motive for wanting to destroy the girls was not really because they drove her husband insane or sent him to prison, but because they ruined her dinner. As the girls point out, that's not a good reason for wanting revenge on them at all.
• Disney Death:
  • The girls themselves in "The Rowdyruff Boys", where they were revived by the tears of the townspeople.
  • And again in "Knock It Off". They were revived by The Power of Love.
  • Blossom in "Abracadaver".
  • Also used in issue #2 of the comic book ("Buttercup's Boyfriend"). HIM gives a boy a belt that sends out a beam that makes whoever it hits hate everyone. It hits Bubbles, but because she's filled with so much love, it short circuits her and knocks her unconscious. Blossom and (reluctantly) Buttercup verbally announce their love for Bubbles to revive her.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • Roach Coach falls out of a building. While the Girls were shocked because they believed he was a man and they thought they'd killed him, but it turns out he was actually a cockroach in a mechanical suit, so he survived and was captured.
  • HIM sent plummeting into a bottomless abyss by Buttercup in "Power Noia". Being a recurring villain who can survive As Long as There Is Evil, this doesn't kill him, but it defeats him for the time being.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • During the episode where Mojo is hired to babysit the girls, the girls take a level in jerkass and beat him first with pillows, then just regularly beating him, for telling a bad bedtime story. The bad bedtime story came last, though, and it was because Mojo gave up his original plan in exasperation: first, Mojo had been planning to use his authority as babysitter to make the girls help him take over Townsville. One presumes the girls were beating him for his failed villainous plan, not for the bedtime story.
  • Combined with Minor Injury Overreaction, the two-parter episode about a meek husband trying to be a villain and horribly failed for it... the wife was MAD and ANGRY at the Powerpuff Girls and resort to crime along with the whole family because the Powerpuff Girls ruined her dinner to protect Professor Utonium.
  • The way Blossom and Bubbles get Buttercup to learn her lesson in "Moral Decay" probably also counts. See Do with Him as You Will for details.
  • Played with in "Crime 101". The judge nearly sentences the Powerpuff Girls to one million years in Townsville Correctional Facility just for robbing a bank, which the girls only did to demonstrate to the Amoeba Boys how to do so. It is played with because the judge clearly doesn't want to punish the girls and before sentencing them even assumed that they didn't rob the bank at all before the girls plead guilty.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Large zig-zag: in the debut episode of the Rowdyruff Boys, the seemingly defeated girls get some advice from Ms. Bellum in turning the tide. The girls completely disarm the boys with long, come-hither eyelashes, then they make the boys explode by kissing them.
• Divergent Character Evolution: In the original "Whoopass Stew" short and the two What a Cartoon! pilots, the Powerpuff Girls lacked distinctive personalities. The series made them more distinguishable by making Blossom the brainy leader, Bubbles the cute and innocent one, and Buttercup the tough and aggressive tomboy.
• Divided We Fall: The Girls are nigh-unstoppable when they're together. When they're separated? Not so much.
• The Documentary: Parodied in one episode where a guy tries to interview the Powerpuff Girls.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Mojo Jonesin'". "When dealing when Mojo Jojo, just say no-no!"
• Dope Slap:
  • Ace of the Gangreen Gang often does this to his yesss man Snake, but with a punch rather than a slap.
  • Brick does this or an Offhand Backhand to Boomer, if he says something stupid.
• Do with Him as You Will: In "Moral Decay," Buttercup has amassed a tidy fortune from the tooth fairy for teeth she has accumulated from punching the teeth out of all the robbers. When she attacks the show's main villains unprovoked, Blossom somehow gets wind of it and she and Bubbles help the villains set up an ambush on Buttercup to teach her a lesson.
  Buttercup: Uh, guys? A little help here?
  Blossom: Sorry, Buttercup. You know what they say. "An eye for an eye..."
  Bubbles: "An' a toof for a toof!"
• Downer Ending:
  • "Twisted Sister" ends with Bunny exploding after she rescues the girls.
  • "A Very Special Blossom" ends with Blossom being sentenced to 200 hours of community service.
• "Down Here!" Shot: The episode "I See a Funny Cartoon in Your Future" has the villainous medium Madame Argentina being introduced with the camera first missing her because she's too short.
• Drench Celebration: Mojo Jojo gets Gatorade thrown on him in the special Dance Pantsed after his softball team wins a game. He is then sent off to jail.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: Sedusa is a villainess who can use her prehensile hair as whips. She wears a red leotard, black leggings with red fishnets, red thigh-high high-heeled boots, and red opera gloves.
• Dressed to Plunder: In "Mizzen in Action", a crew of predictably-dressed pirates accidentally imbibe some Chemical X to become the Villains of the Week.
• Drugs Are Bad: "Mojo Jonesin'" plays this straight, but with Chemical X as an obvious metaphor for drugs. "Just Say No" is even spoken twice, once by the narrator and once by Blossom.
• Drunk with Power: That episode where The Mayor got tired of relying on The Girls and decided to bring his own brand of justice, riding a balloon and stopping bad guys with an extending boxing glove. It goes to his head...
• Dub Pronunciation Change: Mojo Jojo is pronounced as "Moho Hoho" in the Latin American Spanish dub.

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