Sweet mama's monkeys!
Pig Goat Banana Cricket is a Nickelodeon cartoon created by Canadian artist Dave Cooper and American cartoonist Johnny Ryan, both of whom had previously worked together making comics for Nickelodeon Magazine. The series follows the interlocking misadventures of four college roommates: Pig, Goat, Banana, and Cricket in their city.
The series was adapted from a Nick Cross short on YouTube named Pig Goat Banana Mantis! The supposed reason for the change in Mantis' name was that another Nickelodeon cartoon had a character named Mantis.
The show ran from July 18, 2015 to August 11, 2018, ending with a total of 40 episodes divided between 2 seasons.
Click here to see the original short.
This cartoon provides examples of:
- Absurd Phobia: Goat is afraid of nickels because she believes Thomas Jefferson might jump out of one and attack her. This turns out to be justified, as when Banana gives her a nickel Jefferson jumps out and smacks her with nunchucks because he thought she was Alexander Hamilton.
- Abusive Parents: Banana's Dad refused to forgive his son for years just because he messed up one concert.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Pig... Goat... Banana... Cricket...
- All Love Is Unrequited: Cricket has a crush on Goat, but she never notices and rarely shows any signs of returning the affection.
- Aloof Big Brother: Jimmy Ron to Cricket. He upstages his brother at every turn by gaining the attention of his friends and getting an award from Dr. Eggplantface, stealing his glory. However, it turned out he only came in the first place to throw a surprise party for Cricket.
- Alternate-History Dinosaur Survival: A few minor characters, such as Ranger Rex, the Scottish dinosaur and a female Triceratops that sometimes pops up in the background are dinosaurs. Seems like dinos didn't go extinct in this world.
- Ambiguously Gay: Banana. He has a huge admiration for Avocado and barely hesitated to give him mouth to mouth. Also, he agreed to go to a concert with Ranger Rhino and when he arrived with him, he automatically assumed Cricket had a girlfriend.
- Art Evolution: In addition to having his name changed from Mantis, Cricket was redesigned to look more like one for the series.
- Anthropomorphic Food: Banana walks and talks just like any other creature in the city. There's also the Ham Shanks, a family of talking hamhocks.
- Angrish: When Goat gets enraged, her ranting typically starts out as Gosh Darn It to Heck! and then devolves into this.
- Ax-Crazy: Psychopath Giraffe.
- Big Brother Bully: Cricket's older brother Jimmy Ron Cricket, he gives Cricket armpit noogies and he framed him for commiting crimes. However, he does care for his younger brother and only framed him just to keep him out of the way for a surprise party.
- Carnivore Confusion: Banana eats a banana in "King of TV".
- Catchphrase:
- Pig has two: "(food item)? Yum!" and "My favorite!".
- Goat: "Totally goatally!"
- Banana: "Sweet mama's monkeys!"
- Cricket: "I'm a genius!"
- The Chew Toy: Nearly every character, but particularly Goat and Cricket.
- The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Everyone thought Pig was crazy for thinking pickles came from a one legged hyena's belly button from a rainbow. But he was right all along.
- Crazy-Prepared: Goat has been prepared for not only a Fudge-pocalypse, but also a Peppermint-pocalypse, a Caramel-pocalypse, and a Mint-Chocolate-Chip-pocalypse.
- Creepy Doll: In "The Tooth of My True Love", Banana gets bought after being mistaken for a new toy and is forced to take care of three baby dolls. To drive home their creepiness when they first appear, they switch heads.
- Dance Party Ending: The ending of "Zombie Broheims", after everyone is turned into a zombie.
- Department of Redundancy Department: In "Heat Wave", Angry Old Raisin says that he hates three things: Pig, pool parties, and Pig.
- Distaff Counterpart: In "The Tooth of My True Love", Cricket creates Brainy Jane, a female clone of himself with a Bride of Frankenstein-esque hairstyle. She turns out to be better than him at everything and extremely crass to boot.
- The Ditz: Pig is the main one, but Goat, Banana, and even Cricket have their moments.
- The End of the World as We Know It: In the very first episode; Pig overloads Cricket's fudge bubble-making machine and creates a giant bubble that drowns the entire planet in fudge.
- Energy Weapon: Cricket carries a ray gun with him.
- Extreme Omnivore: Pig; In "Fudge-pocalypse" when he's running through Cricket's security grid guarding his lab, he eats the head off of one of his robot dogs.
- Everybody Cries: In "Hotel It on the Mountain", Pig, Goat, Banana, and Cricket all cry when they think they are going to be evicted from their treehouse after they fail to make enough money to pay their rent before their hotel was destroyed.
- Eye Scream:
- In "Bananaland", one of the things Pig does while in Goat's room is spraying his eyes with her perfume.
- In "Mall Ya Later" Goat shoots Thomas Jefferson with a 5-pack ab Magic Wand, turning his eyes into abs, then sends him through a portal. When he immediately comes back in a lizard disguise, his eyes are back to normal.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: In "The Chronicles of Cutesachusetts", when Pig attempts to eat a flaming pickle the first two bites result in this, then the third causes his head to explode.
- Forced Transformation: In "Prank Thy Neighbor", Goat gets bitten by her new neighbor's baby and slowly starts turning into an anthropomorphic hillbilly hamhock.
- Foul Ball Pit: Goat plays at a Greasy Gus's with its animatronic band, with one line of their song mentioning that "the ball pit's full of germs."
- Four Lines, All Waiting: All of the main characters get their own plot each episode.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Pig is phlegmatic, Goat is choleric, Banana is sanguine, and Cricket is melancholic.
- Funny Animal: Pig, Goat, and Cricket.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Cricket.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: In "Where Do Pickles Come From?", Goat uses Cricket as a club to beat up Un-nettable Ned.
- Grossout Show: Judging from the original short, there is a lot of snot, pus, and other unsavory objects.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Goat could rival Yosemite Sam or even Sylvia in these stakes whenever she's pissed off.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Goat.
- Hidden Depths: Banana's revealed to have been a part of a musical group called the "Banana Bunch". But he had messed up and was disowned by his father.
- Idiot Hero: Pig.
- Informed Species: Cricket still resembles a praying mantis.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Cricket has no problem understanding Burgerstein's nonsensical jabbering.
- I Taste Delicious: Pig crumbled to bits, and he tasted himself and said "yum!".
- Jerkass: Banana and Thomas Jefferson. Especially Jefferson. He teams up with Goat sometimes but always betrays her in the end.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- For all of Banana's selfishness, he has moments of protectiveness for his friends and the junior rangers.
- Jimmy Ron Cricket is a brute who teases Cricket. However he really loves his brother and would do anything for him such as escape jail just to see him, throw him a surprise party, and get him on the cover of Almost Genius Gazette.
- Lazy Bum: Banana, the only reason he has a job is to earn money.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: In "Zombie Broheims", when Goat is trying to convince Thomas Jefferson to make her the customer of the day at a smoothie place, she offers him a souffle and he makes Goat's reflection in a mirror customer of the day instead.Goat: That's not me, that's my reflection, I'm me!
Goat's reflection: I'm me too. Tough toucans! - Mean Boss: Ranger Rhino. Given that he has to put up with Banana, it's justified.
- Mid-Battle Tea Break: In "Super Space Meatball", the gang takes a break from their fight against Lipstick Horse for all of them to re-hydrate.
- Misfortune Cookie: In "The Tooth of My True Love", Banana gets a fortune saying that he'll get severe food poisoning. He brushes it off, then it immediately comes true.
- Moving the Goalposts: In "King of TV", Goat and Thomas Jefferson form an Enemy Mine to make the one dollar needed for a toll. Once they get the dollar and Jefferson betrays Goat, the booth operator raises the price by 5ยข because he felt like it.
- My Little Panzer: In "Miss Cutesy Meow Meows", the titular toy is revealed to be a reusable energy-based explosive, which Cricket uses to destroy Banana-bot when he takes control of the house.Miss Cutesy Meow Meows: (before exploding) I'm Miss Cutesy Meow Meows, pow-pow!
- Negative Continuity:
- The first episode having the world drowning in fudge and everything being back to normal the next episode should tell you that this is in effect.
- In "Mall Ya Later", the gang's treehouse has a mall built around it, which is gone in subsequent episodes.
- At the end of "Total Bananarchy", the gang accidentally blow up the entire planet.
- Only Sane Man: Angry Old Raisin has the most realistic outlook on life, often being annoyed at Pig's Cloud Cuckoo Lander logic.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: In "It's Time to Slumber Party", Goat refers to DJ Wheelbarrow Full of Nachos as her favorite DJ wheelbarrow full of nachos of all time.
- Parental Bonus: In "Fudge-pocalypse", Banana asks Goat for her Wi-Fi password so he can download "Midnight Passion Possums".
- Plot Allergy: In "Underpants-Palooza" Pig is revealed to have an allergy to underwear, which complicates things when he lies to his parents that he's a famous underwear model.
- Plotline Crossover: Each of the main characters' plotlines usually end up affecting one or more of the others' in some way.
- Potty Emergency: Pig decides to hold the urine in his bladder and catch the thief instead of going to the bathroom.
- Potty Failure: Pig ends up exploding from his urine and flooding the town with it.
- Prone to Tears: Banana cries very easily.
- Random Events Plot: Pretty much every episode. Some, like "Prank Thy Neighbor" and "Mall Ya Later", have slightly more consistency.
- Rummage Fail: In "Super Space Meatball" Time Donut attempts to give Banana an evil black suit, but first accidentally pulls out a pink dress.
- Running Gag: This show is very reliant on these.
- Self-Serving Memory: In "Fudge-pocalypse", Cricket tells Pig not to play with the Fudge Bubbler and that it's not a toy. Naturally, Pig remembers him saying to play with it and that it's a toy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- In "Super Space Meatball", before the gang prepares to fight Lipstick Horse and Time Donut, the former finds that the latter has already gone forward in time to find that they both lose and bailed.
- In "The Tooth of My True Love", Cricket challenges Brainy Jane to a fight between their brains. After a few seconds of fighting, their brains decide to flee to Tijuana.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Goat and Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: In "Zombie Broheims", when Cricket's rare bird produces the extremely delicious cookie in its body, Thomas Jefferson immediately steals it and eats it, only for it to explode in a blast of puke through the front and out the back of his torso.
- Short-Runner: Stated above, the show is one of the shorter-lived Nicktoons, running for 40 episodes and abruptly ending after its second season.
- Shout-Out: In "Super Space Meatball" Banana turns evil when he gets a black costume.
- Suck E. Cheese's: Greasy Gus's, where the animatronics are all malfunctioning and have an Electronic Speech Impediment. Their song even points out that the ball pit is full of germs and there's a risk of customers getting worms.
- Surreal Humor: The entire basis for the show, more or less.
- Time Skip: In "Angry Old Raisin", Cricket turns himself and the rest of the main characters into babies, and they have to wait 20 years to turn back to normal. Oddly, the rest of the world seems unchanged.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Pig is obsessed with pickles.
- The Smurfette Principle: Goat serves as the token girl of the group.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Flip-flopped in "Super Space Meatball", where our main characters are given superpowers by the titular meatball. Goat is given the ability to telepathically control oatmeal, which initially proves to be a hassle when she almost causes the president of the planet to choke to death during a trip to the store, but eventually uses it to save the day when a villain attacks, summoning a tidal wave of oatmeal to subdue him.
- Who Even Needs a Brain?: When Cricket and Brainy Jane's brains decide to run off, their owners both become a Type II.
- You Mean "Xmas": Chalawunga. It's more or less the same as Christmas, except their version of Santa Claus is Filthy the Foot, a giant foot who flies around in a giant sneaker.
