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Western Animation / Dot and the Kangaroo

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The Dot series is an Australian film series featuring animation placed over live-action backgrounds. The first film, Dot and the Kangaroo, was released in 1977. It was based on the posthumous 1899 novel by Ethel C. Pedley. The first film was an early success for Yoram Gross' studio and led to many sequels (diverging further and further from the original source material), with the last (Dot in Space) being released in 1994. The original film tells the story of a little girl who gets lost in the forest, but is helped by a kindly mother kangaroo.

Character sheet in progress.

Tropes in Dot and the Kangaroo (and the Dot series in general):

  • Adaptational Alternate Ending: In Pedley's original novel, the kangaroo stays to meet Dot's parents and be thanked for protecting her. As this is going on, a joey emerges from the cottage which was being looked after by Dot's mother during the time Dot was lost. The kangaroo is stunned but overjoyed upon recognising that it is her joey. And although Dot does gradually lose the ability to talk to animals, the kangaroo and her joey stay near the homestead and frequently visit Dot and her family who open an animal sanctuary.
  • Adapted Out: Kangaroo never finds her joey (whereas in the book by strange coincidence he was found by Dot's parents). Dot searching for the joey drives the plots of both Around the World with Dot and Dot and the Bunny, although the films do not follow on from one another, with the latter explicitly mentioning he was sent to a zoo overseas. It is possible the latter is set up as an Alternate Continuity, see Snap Back below. Either that, or the events of Dot and the Bunny chronologically precede those of Around the World with Dot.
  • Animated Musical: This also applies to the sequels, except Dot in Space.
  • Art Shift:
    • During the Bunyip Song, the movie switches to more surreal character art based around Aboriginal-style depictions of the titular beast.
    • The animation tended to vary a fair bit over the course of each film, with them generally using different variations of the same basic formula. Eventually, it completely changed to a mostly anime-influenced look.
  • Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Bittersweet Ending: Dot makes it home safely in the end, but she's clearly devastated at the sudden departure of the kangaroo. Dot even sobs as she cries out for the kangaroo to come back at the end credits roll. Also, the kangaroo doesn't find her joey (which became the jumping off point for the first two sequels).
  • Celebrity Cameo: Dot meets Spike Milligan in trailers for the movie.
  • Chasing a Butterfly: How Dot gets lost in the book and film.
  • Crosscast Role: The Kangaroo is clearly played by a male in the live action footage.
  • Disney Acid Sequence / "The Villain Sucks" Song : The Bunyip Song ("Bunyip Moon").
  • Disney Villain Death: One of the dingos falls into a chasm while chasing Dot and the kangaroo.
  • Earthy Barefoot Character: Dot's perpetual lack of footwear helps to establish that she's closer to nature than most people.
  • Farmer's Daughter: Dot, since her grandfather is also known as Jack the Farmhand.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The frogs are attacked by crocodiles at the end of their "I Am" Song. In Dot and the Bunny, the crocodiles get an "I Am" Song of their own, right before attempting to eat Dot and Funny-Bunny.
    • Also, at one point in the film, Dot is almost attacked by a snake. She obviously learns from this encounter as she approaches the snakes (and other reptiles) with caution in Dot and the Bunny.
    • Around the World with Dot and Dot and the Bunny to Dot and the Whale.
      • In Around the World with Dot, a whale transports Dot and her friends to as close to Japan as he dares to venture without attracting attention from whalers. Tonga lost her immediate family to whalers.
      • In Dot and the Bunny, Dot narrowly avoids stepping on an echidna with her bare foot and a sea-turtle takes her and Funny-Bunny back to the mainland. In Dot and the Whale, Dot nearly dies from stepping on poisonous live coral and rides a sea-turtle.
    • Also Around the World with Dot to Dot and the Smugglers and Dot Goes to Hollywood.
      • Both Around the World with Dot and Dot and the Smugglers feature Dot and her friends infiltrating a circus, in the latter, Dot frees the imprisoned circus animals.
      • In both Around the World with Dot and Dot Goes to Hollywood, Dot travels to America where she infiltrates a zoo to rescue one of her animal friends (Joey the kangaroo, Gumley the koala).
  • Free-Range Children: Dot, even though she gets lost as a result here, she becomes increasingly so in the sequels.
  • "I Am" Song: "I'm a Frog" in the first film, with this trope becoming a recurring theme with most of the animals Dot meets.
  • Intellectual Animal: Especially the platypus couple with their insistence on using their species' Latin name.
  • Invisible Parents: We see Dot's mother in Dot and Keeto but that's about it.
  • Jerkass Realization: The bush animals. After hearing the Kangaroo's story of how she lost her joey and compared her situation to Dot getting lost in the woods, they have this after they initially refused to help her.
  • Kangaroo Pouch Ride: There's even a song about it.
  • Literal Cliffhanger: The kangaroo does this after jumping a chasm.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • A, brief, upbeat ("Clickity-Click") song by Willy Wagtail... followed immediately by the unhappy ending!
    • Also, a scene where Dot's parents are mourning her is sandwiched between "Clickity-Click" and its reprise.
  • Nobody Poops: Averted; Dot whispers to the kangaroo, which she responds with "Anywhere you like, dear", followed by Dot making a Potty Dance gesture.
  • Prefers Going Barefoot:
    • Dot is always barefoot in all the movies.
      • Averted as she wears canvas shoes in live-action form in Around the World with Dot and she is forced to become an astronaut in order to rescue Whyka in Dot in Space.
    • Dot's human friends in Dot and the Whale though, to a certain degree, this is to be expected as they were all playing on the beach until Alex, Owen and Dot alerted them to Tonga's plight.
    • One of the two boys who are shown to be friends with Dot in Dot and the Smugglers.
  • Puzzling Platypus: Mr. and Mrs. Platypus singing about their peculiar qualities, as an "Ornithorhynchus paradoxus" (an outdated Latin name for the platypus).
  • Roger Rabbit Effect: The first eight films are all based around this visually, with the characters in the foreground being animated to interact with a filmed live-action background — as seen here in Dot Goes To Hollywood. Goes back-and-forth between live-action and painted backgrounds in Around the World with Dot, and averted starting with Dot and the Smugglers, which only uses traditional painted backgrounds.
  • Speaks Fluent Animal:
    • In the book, Dot does after eating some berries the mother kangaroo offers her, which Dot had to keep eating in order to prolong the effects. In the movie, the berries were replaced by roots, and the effect was permanent— though the sequels offered several different explanations for Dot's ability to understand animals, and sometimes didn't even bother.
    • It's implied that the roots aren't permanent either in the first film. When Willy Wagtail says "Kangaroo must have her freedom" to Dot when Kangaroo leaves at the end, the last word of his sentence echos until it becomes the sound of a bird chirping.
    • Dot has to take the roots of understanding again in Dot and Keeto in order to talk to animals, further implying that they're not permanent, or at least not in this instance.
    • Dot in Space implies that Dot is only able to communicate with animals native to Australia, yet somehow she can freely communicate with aliens on another planet, and understand Whyka's barking in Russian.
      • Though to be fair, it's likely because in the series, some of the animals she encounters are portrayed as non-sapient (i.e. the dingos in the original film, the magpie and the cat in Dot and Keeto.)
  • Thunder = Downpour:
    • Not what you want when lost in the forest.
    • Happens again in Dot and the Bunny. She has to take refuge in a wallaby cave.
    • And again Dot in Space when she escapes from the Prison for Squaries.

Tropes the sequels have:

  • Adults Are Useless:
    • Human ones especially, with the odd exception (most obviously Danny the Swagman/Santa Claus in Around the World with Dot and Laurel and Hardy in Dot Goes to Hollywood).
    • This is particularly emphasized in Dot and the Whale.
  • Agony of the Feet:
    • A near-fatal example in Dot and the Whale, Dot steps on live coral and gets a venomous sting lodged in the sole of her foot, an octopus has to pull it out to save her.
    • In Dot and the Bunny, Funny-Bunny is bitten on his hind feet by crocodiles and Dot nearly steps on an echidna but this is averted when a numbat warns her at the last minute.
    • A Bound and Gagged Dot stamps on Professor Globus' foot in Dot in Space.
  • Alien Sky: At (what appears to be) night on the planet Pie-Arr-Squared in Dot in Space, multiple moons/planets can be seen in the sky.
  • Anachronism Stew: The plot of Dot in Space kicks off with a Russian dog named Whyka being launched into space and becoming trapped in orbit (mirroring her real-life counterpart Laika which suggests the film is set in 1957) yet an American monkey named Buster is quoted to be preparing to be launched from Cape Kennedy. The launchsite in question was still called Cape Canaveral in 1957 and was only named Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973.
    • Also, if Dot in Space is set in 1957 then the fact that Buster is preparing to be launched into space soon after Whyka is anachronistic as no monkeys were launched from Cape Canaveral until 1958.
  • Animesque: For Dot Goes to Hollywood and Dot in Space, Dot was designed by Nobuko Yuasa (a.k.a Burnfield), a Japanese artist— who's previous work included the 1983 Barefoot Gen film adaptation, and gave her a very Tezuka-esque design, being slightly shorter with bigger eyes and a more expressive face.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Dot briefly turns into a giant before shrinking down to insect-size in Dot and Keeto.
  • Badass Adorable: A somewhat-downplayed example, but Dot definitely becomes this over time with her determination and the lengths she goes to in order to help her animal friends and protect the environment— especially considering she's a young girl who can't be any older than nine or ten. By the time of Dot in Space, she's seen switching places with a monkey in order to commandeer an American rocket and going into Space, all to rescue a Soviet space dog who's trapped in orbit.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The nightmarish Bunyip mentioned in the first film finally appears near the end of Dot and the Smugglers, but it was designed to look like a typical wooly, tall, big and fat humanoid beast that can live underwater. It's kind of disappointing for those who expected the original terrifying, mysterious creature of the first film.
  • Bloodless Carnage:
    • Downplayed but Funny-Bunny suffers no loss of mobility or any visible injury after his hind leg is bitten by a crocodile in Dot and the Bunny.
    • Dot's foot just gets a poisonous barb stuck in it with no bleeding or lasting injury in Dot and the Whale.
  • Bound and Gagged:
    • In Dot and the Koala, a family of wombats are just bound then after Dot and her animal friends rescue them, they do this to the dog-cops and stuff logs in their mouths.
    • In Dot in Space, this is the Roundies' preferred method of capture as Dot finds out when they ambush her. This leads to a Painful Adhesive Removal for her when she is subjected to interrogation.
  • But Now I Must Go: Danny the Swagman in Around the World with Dot.
  • Celebrity Cameo: Dot Goes to Hollywood has Dot meet such famous names as Laurel and Hardy, Shirley Temple, James Cagney, among others. Of course, Dot is either animated into clips of their films, or the stars themselves become animated.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
    • Dot's father and Jack the Farmhand.
    • Dot's brother Ben from Around the World with Dot.
  • Completely Different Title: Around the World with Dot is alternatively known as Dot and Santa Claus.
  • Covers Always Lie:
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Dot and the Whale was noticeably more somber in overall tone and had fewer songs than most of the other sequels, and even has a point where Dot nearly dies after accidentally treading on poisonous live coral - though it could still be considered Lighter and Softer compared to the original.
    • Dot in Space is the only sequel not to be an Animated Musical and certainly one of the darkest, given that Dot narrowly escapes being blown up in a rocket explosion while trying to rescue a Russian dog that was stranded on said rocket and ends up stuck on an alien planet that is best described as an extraterrestrial Nazi Germany.
  • Demoted to Extra: Dot doesn't appear in Dot and the Koala until the last half hour.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The most likely reason Dot in Space is seldom seen outside its native country of Australia (and even there, it is hard to find) is due to heavy references to Nazi Germany, with the main villain of the film Papa Drop behaving in a similar manner to Adolf Hitler, one of the Roundy interrogators performing the Nazi salute, and the persecution of the Squaries under Papa Drop's regime being eerily similar to how the Jews were maltreated during the Holocaust. This film would automatically be banned in Germany for the same reasons due to references to Hitler and Naziism being outlawed after World War II.
  • Fantastic Racism:
  • Fat and Skinny:
    • The fish store owners in Dot and the Whale.
    • Dot and the Smugglers has the circus owners Mr. Spragg and Scarface and the two boys who are shown to be friends with Dot.
  • Great Escape: Dot breaking out of the Prison for Squares in Dot in Space.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters:
    • In Dot And the Koala, the animal-like townspeople acted no different when they and their mayor wanted to build a hydro-electric dam over the native animal's homes.
    • The two fishermen in Dot and the Whale, who wanted to sell the whale as food.
    • How Funny-Bunny was orphaned in Dot and the Bunny. His parents were shot by hunters.
  • Idiot Ball: Everyone seems to take turns holding it in Dot in Space.
    • The Russians for sending Whyka into space where she becomes trapped in orbit (The Russian professor can't even recite the countdown properly!), then resolving to just blow up Whyka's rocket instead of sending someone out to rescue her. They don't even bother to inform anyone before blowing it up (Least of all, Dot or the Americans). This results in the shockwave that sends Dot's rocket off course and into another solar system altogether, leading to her and Whyka becoming stranded on the planet Pie-Arr-Squared.
    • The Americans are smart enough to recognise a security breach at Cape Kennedy when Dozey-Face tries to jump the perimeter fence, resulting in her and Dot almost getting electrocuted but once Dot is inside the complex, she remains completely undetected. Even disguising herself as part of a roadsign and trying to imitate Buster while donning his spacesuit is enough to fool everyone (The former instance should have been blatantly obvious if the security personnel in their jeep had just bothered to be a bit more observant and it doesn't help that all else who could potentially catch Dot out prove just as inattentive). It's only when Dot has been sent into space that everyone finally realises what's happened and the resulting confusing attempts at communication (Dot trying to contact Whyka, the Americans trying to contact Dot, no-one attempting to contact the Russians or vice-versa) means Dot only just manages to rescue Whyka in time and we all know what happens next as explained above.
      • Also, considering what happened to Whyka, you'd think they would've learned from the Russians' mistake and realize that sending Buster on a rocket to the Moon was a bad idea (especially since he can't drive a rocket considering he is a monkey, as Grumble-Bones points out), but no, they go right ahead with it and once they realise Buster is still on Earth, they only end up adding to the already growing confusion between them and Dot and wasting time enough for the events described above to take place.
    • Dot is really open to interpretation here, as while she is smarter than the aformentioned and the following examples, she seems to suddenly go through a slight form of Character Derailment once she arrives in America. For instance, she is unable to communicate with Buster or Whyka (or any creature on Pie-Arr-Squared that isn't a Roundy or a Squarey) at any point in the film despite having been able to communicate with animals that are not native to Australia as recently as the previous film which also involved her going to America. What is more, she is still somehow able to understand Whyka's barking in Russian. When she's launched into space, she tries to contact Whyka but only gets through to the Americans but doesn't realise this at first and believes she's talking to Whyka, until the Americans point out her mistake. She also wastes much of her time trying to communicate with an old satellite before finally coming across Whyka's rocket. Consequently, she successfully rescues Whyka but is unable to get her rocket clear before Whyka's explodes, she then lands on the first planet she sees, assuming it to be Earth without bothering to try and contact anyone on the planet to make sure, other than announce she's coming down now. She nosedives her rocket into the planet's surface where it becomes stuck and she only manages to dig herself and Whyka deeper when she tries to rescue her rocket herself. After being forced to flee across the wilderness of Pie-Arr-Squared, encountering quicksand, hostile trees, active volcanoes and rock-like creatures,she builds a campfire with which to cook pilly-fruit for herself and Whyka, when nothing seems to suggest the pilly-fruit couldn't have been eaten raw, but this also sends up smoke signals and a scent that alert the Roundy Army, who are on her trail, and Gorgo to her position. Luckily for her, Gorgo scares off the Roundies and spares her life. This also comes off as a sort of Idiot Hero moment for her as her escape from the Prison for Squares ultimately leads her to the The Party (Roley) which, in turn, leads to Papa Drop's defeat.
      • Though, in her defense, her landing on the wrong planet was not her fault as she intended to return to Earth after rescuing Whyka, but thanks to the Russians blowing up the ship (something she didn't anticipate), it was thrown off course and she does realize her mistake once she gets dragged into a Fantastic Racism conflict and learns the main bad guy, Papa Drop, intends to use the rocket to conquer the universe and she eventually fixes it, albeit with the help of some unlikely allies (Gorgo, a Non-Malicious Monster, The Party (a.k.a. Roley), Papa Drop's good-natured son and the for-whatever-reason-reformed Roundie soldiers). Even when sending the rocket deeper into the surface after escaping from the Prison for Squaries, she still foiled Papa Drop's plan to conquer the universe, albeit by accident. Plus, turning off her communicator once she realized she wasn't talking to Whyka was a smart move on her part, because if she attempted to contact the Americans, she would've made things worse. It's very also likely she wanted to use the rocket to bypass the aforementioned dangers to The Party's hideout, but had to go on foot because she had no other choice, as she tells a mustached stranger (who is actually The Party, but she didn't know this at the time) she escaped from the prison to look for him in exchange for his aid to return to Earth and foiling Papa Drop's plan to conquer the universe, which also may likely be because she didn't want to make things worse for the Americans in the Control room. Her wanting to make a campfire and cook pilly fruit is also understandable because during her stay in the Prison for Squaries she was only fed bad soup. The Roundies searching for her after she escaped is most likely Professor Globus' fault, since he (unintentionally) blew Dot's cover to Papa Drop.
      • Even then, she still had a handful of Guile Hero moments, such as when she swaps places with Buster the monkey at Cape Kennedy, when she tricks the Roundy Sergeant into thinking he's a Squarie to protect Poley and later in the film when she tricks the Roundy Sergeant into thinking he's painting a line on the ground to divide the Squaries and the Roundies to escape from prison and look for The Party. And her crowning moment comes at the climax when she helps the Party (aka Roley) expose Papa Drop for the fraud he is, ultimately leading in the latter's defeat.
    • While Dozey-Face somewhat Took a Level in Dumbass in the previous film, she's at her peak here. While attempting to jump through the high electric fence, she grabs the barbed wire, resulting in electrocuting both her and Dot and triggering an alarm (fortunately, the people at Cape Kennedy dismissed it as a false alarm and made no attempt to catch Dot out despite having at least two opportunities to do so).
      • On the other hand, she does know where Cape Kennedy is located.
    • The Roundies are an interesting case and are also open to interpretation though the Roundy Sergeant fails to recognise a broken mirror when he sees one after Dot smashes it with a hairbrush to trick him or realize Dot is tricking him into releasing the prison gate so she could plan her escape ( both of which possibly fueling his motivation for hoping Gorgo eats Dot later in the film) and keeps claiming to have found Dot when he's only found fragments of her dress and even his own soldiers point this out to him.
    • The Squaries, too. When Dot asks Poley why and her people don't escape from the Prison for Squaries to the mountains, it's because they fear quicksand, hostile trees, volcanoes (even though they can float in mid-air) and Gorgo (even though he's a herbivore). She's basically saying they would rather stay in prison where they are subjected to slave labor, starvation, and abuse than risk their lives escaping.
    • Papa Drop, for all his talk about being the "great me" and "much-loved leader", doesn't have the smarts to back it up. For instance, he doesn't realize that the rehearsal rally held for him is actually a trap set by the Party ((his own son Roley in disguise)), if he imprisoned those who aren't round on other planets, he'd be imprisoning entire populations or if he put his entire army in prison for failing to recapture Dot and put his son Roley in charge, Roley would basically free all of the prisoners (including the Squaries). But his crowning moment of stupidity comes in the climax, where he thinks his own army has recaptured Dot as well as capturing both Gorgo and The Party/Roley when in reality they've joined the side of the trio (with the possible exception of the Roundy Sergeant).
    • Roley is a very interesting inverted example. He appears to be a stuttering Extreme Doormat in his normal appearance, but as The Party, he is capable of blowing up statues of his tyrannical father, taming an giant alien dinosaur and rallying his own species into dethroning Papa Drop. He also seems to be aware of life on other planets, such as rabbits and dogs despite claiming not to hold such beliefs when Dot and Whyka encounter him as ''The Party'' although the very fact that he witnessed Dot and Whyka being brought to his father's attention and referred to as "creatures from space" presents him with proof. So maybe his stupidity is all a façade?
  • Insufficiently Advanced Alien: The inhabitants of Pie-Arr-Squared in Dot in Space have perfected laser guns, claim to own cars and are aware of the vast Universe beyond their planet and creatures from space (including rabbits somehow, unless Dot crash-landing on their planet alerts them to the existence of creatures from space) but use ropes and duct tape to subdue prisoners. They don't even have a more efficient method of digging Dot's rocket out of the ground, other than forcing the Squaries (and Dot) to dig it out with shovels, it takes Gorgo to pull it out and right it.
    • Though, to be fair, it may be likely due to Papa Drop's rise to power resulting in destroying Pie-Arr-Squared's economy.
  • Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Dot and the Koala has animals acting and dressing more like humans and even having houses, jobs and their own city. Curiously, it was only for this instalment— with them reverted to being more like real ones and living in the outback again for the rest of the series.
  • Living MacGuffin:
    • The Bunyip is this in Dot and the Smugglers, with the titular antagonists trying to capture it for a circus that Dot later discovers to be a front for an international wildlife-smuggling operation.
    • Gorgo in Dot in Space is this to the Roundies, they question his existence until he scares them away while they're trying to recapture Dot.
  • Made a Slave:
    • Dot is subjected to this in Dot and Keeto and Dot in Space, though she escapes in both instances.
    • Anyone who isn't round in Dot in Space as long as Papa Drop is in charge.
  • Mind Your Step: Dot is issued this warning in Dot and the Bunny while looking for numbats and echidnas, she becomes lost in her attempts to understand why and nearly steps on an echidna without realising it until a numbat stops her.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: Whyka the Russian dog and the Roundy dictator Papa Drop to Laika and (possibly) former Haitian President Francois Duvalier (who was nicknamed Papa Doc) in Dot in Space.
  • Nature Hero: Dot becomes this in the sequels, with her frequently being able to communicate with animals like people and having much more of a connection to them than before, as well as being very proactive (see Badass Adorable) in helping or protecting them when she has to— among other feats, she ends up bringing down an international wildlife-smuggling ring in Dot and the Smugglers, and trades places with a monkey named Buster in order to commandeer an American space rocket to rescue a Russian space dog and helps to overthrow a tyrannical empire of Scary Dogmatic Aliens along the way in Dot in Space.
  • No Biochemical Barriers: Dot and Whyka are able to breathe and function as normal on the planet Pie-Arr-Squared in Dot in Space.
  • Nobody Here but Us Statues: Dot has to pose in front of a roadsign in order to infiltrate the Space Center in Dot in Space.
  • Non-Indicative Name: The Squares in Dot in Space aren't even square, they're actually pale blue (or light grey) aliens with Unusual Ears and Fog Feet.
  • Oddball in the Series:
    • In Dot and the Koala, Dot is the only human character in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals.
    • While most of the films are about protecting animals or the environment, Dot in Space is instead about racism— and to a lesser extent, the use of animals in space missions. Dot's motivation for going there was to rescue Whyka, a Soviet space dog who acts as an expy of Laika, and was trapped on a broken-down satellite in orbit.
  • Opening Scroll: The opening credits of Dot in Space.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: In Dot and the Bunny, said bunny adopts a series of unconvincing disguises to convince Dot that he is the lost kangaroo joey she is looking for.
  • Punny Name:
    • Pie-Arr-Squared, the name of the planet Dot and Whyka crash-land on in Dot in Space, is a reference to π × r2— the mathematical formula used to measure the area of a circle.
  • Recycled with a Gimmick: Dot in Space (1994), the last film in the series.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Dot's brother Ben in Around the World with Dot.
  • Replacement Goldfish: At the end of Dot and the Bunny the mommy kangaroo, who never did find her joey, adopts the orphaned bunny.
  • Retcon:
    • The first movie appears to take place in the turn of the 20th century, much like the book, but the sequels seem to take place in the mid-20th century at the earliest.
    • In Dot and the Koala, Dot is the only human character, everyone else is an anthropomorphic animal.
    • Dot's brother Ben is renamed Simon in Dot and Keeto.
  • Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: Most of the later films are more lighthearted than the first three installments.
  • Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Papa Drop and the Roundies in Dot in Space
  • Shout-Out:
  • Shown Their Work: Dot and Keeto correctly identifies male mosquitoes as sap suckers and female mosquitoes as the blood suckers.
  • Snap Back:
    • At the end of Around the World with Dot she finds the kangaroo's missing joey and is ready to take him back to her. In Dot and the Bunny her joey is still gone — though the latter is set up as more of an Alternate Continuity, as a dream by a girl who's just started reading the book.
  • Take Me to Your Leader: Inverted and forced in Dot in Space when Dot is captured by the Roundies.
  • Those Two Guys:
    • Alex and Owen in Dot and the Whale.
    • Also the two boys from Dot and the Smugglers.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
    • Dot's brother Simon is responsible for the events of Dot and Keeto; he bullies Dot's insect friends in various ways such as trying to drown a caterpillar in a watering can and stomping on an ant's nest, prompting her to stop him and apologize to the ants for his actions and while doing so, she gets the roots confused and eats the red one, shrinking herself down to bug-size, spending the rest of the day trying to find the green root that will restore her to her normal size while trying to avoid being crushed and eaten and finding whatever creepy-crawlies she can rely on like Keeto and Butterwalk. Worst of all, by destroying the ants' nest, he made Dot the scapegoat when she gets captured by the Queen Ant's soldiers and when she tries to apologize to the ants on his behalf, they reject it and subject her to a lifetime of slavery. If he had just left Dot's insect friends alone, none of the events above would have happened.
    • The Russians and the Americans in Dot in Space. Their sending Whyka into space and being unable to rescue her and the Americans nearly repeating the Russians' mistake is what leads to Dot attempting to rescue her only for the both of them to become stranded on an alien planet (one that is basically an extraterrestrial Nazi Germany to boot), because by blowing up Whyka's rocket, they indirectly sent the rocket Dot used to rescue her off course.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The girl having the dream at the beginning of Dot and the Bunny.

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