Given this show's creative staff are mostly British and French (including the creator), most of the cast are British, and animation is done in London, Germany, and (in the first season) Ireland. Although any connection Elmore has to real life geography is tenuous at best, it’s located in the United States, yet some British English and other culturally Euro-specific bits slip by:
General
- Cars are sometimes shown driving on the lane to the driver's left instead of the right.
- The scenes inside stores in such episodes as "The Fridge", "The Castle", and "The Limit" have the prices depicted with a comma separating the dollar and cents values (which is common in Europe) rather than a decimal point (which is common in America). Weight may also be listed in kilograms instead of pounds.
- Listings for amounts of money (like the bank statement in "The Treasure" and a price for a frozen chicken in "The Fridge") will sometimes have the dollar sign after the number amount (where a Euro sign is usually put in Germany), instead of before it (American).
- The show's website states Miss Simian is a second grade teacher when most of her students are twelve years old. In the UK, the second grade of secondary school is the equivalent of the seventh grade in the United States. Someone on the writing staff appeared to have noticed this, as in the show Gumball and Darwin are stated to be in either seventh or eighth grade.
- Dates are often listed as day first, followed by the month. In America, it's the other way around. Examples include a suspension form shown in "The Apology" and a date stamp on a weather program in "The Laziest".
- Various doors and signs are labelled "W.C." for "water closet", a term for "bathroom" or "(a room with a) toilet" that isn't typically used in the U.S.. Gumball's emoticon-based chat with Penny in "The Romantic" has a "W.C." placard used to mean "bathroom" and whenever there's a scene in the mall, there's a placard showing directions to the "W.C" rather than the men's/women's bathrooms. The girl's bathroom is also once called the "girl's toilet," a term rarely used in American English.
- Digital clocks often use 24-hour clock instead of a 12-hour AM/PM system. Strangely in "The Joy", the bloodied clock shown throughout the episode uses numbers from a twenty-four hour clock, but still uses "AM" and "PM" on top of that.
- Principal Brown's first name is Nigel. Which is a pretty common name in the UK, but is quite rare in other parts of the world, including the US.
Dialogue
- In "The DVD", Gumball mentions losing his "trousers" three weeks ago. This technically isn't wrong in American English, but it’s typically reserved for only certain kinds of "pants", such as business wear or formal attire.
- In "The End", Richard sees there are a bunch of people in front of them at the checkout and shouts "Queue!", but the more common term in America is "line". The rats in "The Singing" likewise says a restaurant "has no queues," though the fact it's part of a rhyme allows it to slip by more subtly.
- In the episode "The Date", Richard says Gumball is going to look "smashing", a common term in England, the US equivalent would be something like "awesome".
- In both "The End" and "The Date", Penny refers to the school's "corridor", while the more common American term is "hallway".
- In "The Helmet," Nicole is offered an interview for a "pay rise" at work. In American English, the term would be "pay raise."
- Nicole and Granny Jojo have an argument in "The Authority" about which way to look first before crossing the road. Granny Jojo says you see the closer oncoming cars first by looking to your right, which is only true with left-handed traffic.
- In "The Name", Alison Gator refers to the fat under her arms as "bingo wings", which is more of a British term. Though it is used in American slang sometimes, the term "lunchlady arms" to describe fatty upper arms on a woman is used more often.
- In "The Pizza", during his goodbye phone call, Larry mentions a pizza special that cost "five dollars ninety-nine". In the U.S., $5.99 is usually said either as "five dollars and ninety-nine cents" or "five ninety-nine".
- In "The Traitor", Alan tells Gumball and Darwin that he took his mom to the cinema before taking her to the hospital. "Cinema" is the British way of saying "the movies" or "the movie theater"; in American English, "cinema" is used as either an adjective to describe movies or a collective noun for a certain genre of films.
- In "The Burden", Principal Brown tells Darwin and Gumball to "clear your diaries" when they need to take care of the school hamster. In "The Love", the black hexagon lady says she can't go on a date because "...my diary is full". Both are using the word "diary" to mean "a day planner/calendar", a meaning that's used in the UK, but not the US.
- In "The Triangle", Darwin refers to his slide whistle by the British term "Swannee whistle".
- In "The Parasite", Joan sarcastically wishes for a "cabriolet", a term for a convertible car that's almost never used in the US.
- In "The Ex", when Gumball is fiddling around with a cell phone while trying to help out his now-ex nemesis Rob, he says he was trying to take a picture but turned the torch (flashlight) on by mistake.
- In "The Uncle," Gumball mentions his fear that he'll be made into a meat pie by Ocho, a dish largely unheard of in the United States, but popular in the U.K. (as well as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.)
- In "The Grades", a traumatized Gumball recounts his horrible first day in kindergarten, ending his tirade by comparing his new classmates as "British tourists". Two issues: One, Americans are more likely to use the I Am Very British stereotype when characterizing the UK and it's tourists; and two, while the "rude British tourist" stereotype is very common in Europe and even in Britain itself, it's completely unknown in America. With Americans themselves are more likely to think of unruly Asian tourists, the Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist and especially fellow Americans when asked about their idea of a rude tourist.
- In "The Cage", Mr. Cornett pronounces "schedule" with a "sh" sound, the British way.
Writing
- A sign in "The Third" lists distance in meters instead of feet or yards.
- In "The Laziest", a digital clock on a car radio uses a period instead of a colon to separate the hour from the minutes, something usually only done in Germany.
- In an Easter Egg in "The Remote", a sign states "Strictly no Kung-Fu Fighting in The Car Park." A "car park" is what Americans call a "parking garage" or a "parking lot." The episode "The Coach" also had Coach refer to a parking lot as a "car park."
- In "The Tag", Richard gets out a bag of "Nacho Crisps" when he finds his bathtub filled with melted cheese. In America, "crisps" are referred to as "chips".
- In "The Lesson", Principal Brown's pin-up calendar for Miss Simian starts at Monday and ends at Sunday. American calendars are laid out so Sunday is the start of the week and Saturday is the end. Likewise for the Hexagon Lady's computer planner that gets erased by the Internet on "The Love".
- In "The Coach", a stammering Gumball's subtitle reads "apologised" instead of the American spelling "apologized". Likewise captioned bird speak in "The Extras" uses "realise" ("Dude, you do realise that I'm a guy?") instead of "realize".
- In "The Butterfly," Karen is shown working at the Elmore "Emergency Call Centre", instead of "Center".
- When Richard is looking for something to fix the broken TV in "The Authority", he finds a coupon for TV repair. The phone number is shown as 0454 454 963 02, which is the UK/continental European format of writing telephone numbers rather than the American format.
- Gumball's subtitle in "The Misunderstandings" ("If you weren't such an anaemic chicken, you would defend their honor...") uses the British spelling of "anemic".
Other
- In "The Car", the flashback of the last time Gumball, Darwin, and Richard played "Dodj or Daar" had the house on fire. The incoming fire siren is the lower sounding kind used in Europe.
- A subtle one: in both "The Extras" (after Gary the Purple Moose attacks the shooting star host of Win or Don't Win) and "The Lie" (when the Sluzzle Tag holiday special cuts off because the network could only make a few minutes of the show due to how lengthy animation is and how recent the holiday is), a TV cuts to a colorful test card with a circle in the middle as a frowny face with X's for eyes. That card is actually based on a real one
used in the United Kingdom; the American equivalent is the SMPTE color bars. - Another subtle example is how Kip Schlezinger in "The Law" says the temperature is 122 degrees Fahrenheit. This seems like a randomly specific number...unless you know that's exactly 50 degrees Celsius.
- "The Law" also featured multiple intersections where the traffic lights are on the near end (so you stop your car roughly when you reach the lights). In the US, it's far more common to have traffic lights on the far end of intersections (where you would instead pass under the lights as you exited).
- In "The Vision" when Gumball and Darwin are reading a poem on their computer one can see their keyboard in the ISO layout (notably, the larger Enter key and smaller Left Shift key). In the United States the ANSI layout is far more common.
- In "The Schooling", after hearing them complain on their way to school, Larry teaches Gumball and Darwin the importance of going to school (and getting a good job) by tricking them into cutting for the day and doing his job...on Black Friday. The plot doesn't make sense in an American setting, since schools would already be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. In fact, the whole reason people are even able to go out shopping on Black Friday is because they have the day off.
- Despite setting off the plot, it's also really unlikely for kids from the American suburbs to even live within walking distance of their school (unless their parents have the money to live near a school), especially since Gumball and Darwin take the bus (or get driven to school by Nicole or Richard) in most other episodes.
- In "The Spinoffs", Rob accidentally dooms the show by telling kids to watch Scooby-Doo, which he is told too late is on another channel. In the States, where the show is set, Scooby-Doo is one of Cartoon Network's flagship shows, and has been since its inception. In the UK, however, its incarnations are usually limited to the Boomerang network (which, confusingly, also airs Gumball reruns).
- In "The Intelligence", losing technology causes Elmore to regress into medieval English peasants, despite being Americans, many of whom don't even have English ancestry. To be fair, they did get right that Americans didn't burn witches at the stake (an accused Mrs. Robinson gets sentenced to a dunking, instead, since hanging isn't allowed to be shown on children's TV).
- In "The Line", Richard's "flashback" is a parody of the magnetic puppet scam, which is far more common in Europe than in the United States.
- In "The Spoon", as Gumball and Darwin are in the gas station, British groceries not found in America can be seen on the shelves including Walkers Quavers and Prince's Jucee packs.
- In "The Transformation," Gumball heads off to Penny's house carrying a Victoria Sponge cake as a peace offering to her family. While Victoria sponges are ubiquitous in Britain to the point of being the quintessential British cake, they're completely unknown in the United States (unless you're a fan of a certain British baking show).
- In "The Copycats," Darwin eats an "exotic food" dubbed "cowboy caviar" and, after reading the ingredients, Gumball is horrified to tell him what he just ate, with it being heavily implied that he ate animal testicles. In the States, "cowboy caviar" usually refers to a bean salad, effectively salsa, that's used to dip chips into. It's also completely vegetarian.note Americans are more likely to call the dish "Rocky Mountain Oysters."
