Western Animation / Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja

Best bros to the end. (Which could be today)

For 800 years, Norrisville High has been protected by a ninja.
No one knows that every four years, a new warrior is chosen.
A freshman to fight the forces of evil.
I am the ninja. I am Randy Cunningham!

Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja is Disney XD animated action/comedy series created by Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas, a writing duo who previously worked on shows such as Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and The Haunting Hour. The series was produced by Titmouse (Motorcity) and Boulder Media (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends).

As the opening narration helpfully explains, the American town of Norrisville has a frequent target of monsters, robots, and bullies for hundreds of years. Thankfully, the student body of its local high school has always been host to a legendary protector known only as "The Ninja". Of course, the Ninja isn't as much of a monolithic, legendary figure as everyone has been led to believe, as the position is passed from teenager to teenager as each one proceeds to graduate from the school. And at the start of his freshman year, via a package left in his bedroom, the unlikely Randy Cunningham discovers that he has been chosen to be the next Ninja. Joined by his best friend Howard, Randy now must protect the school from the likes of monsters sent to destroy him by the evil McFist Corporation as well as keep his new identity a secret. Cue the theme song!

If the show's aesthetic is making you wonder why there isn't more dark comedy about how much humanity is a collection of morons, it may be because Jhonen Vasquez (Invader Zim), served as one of the main character designers, with the series' background design also taking on a lot of his influence.

The series ran from August 2012 to July 2015, with its second and final season being quickly burned off with little fanfare. Post-cancellation, the show is currently streaming on Disney+.

This show provides examples of:

Tropes A-F

• 100% Heroism Rating: Due to the ninja being a protector of the school and by extension the town for 800 years, the ninja is practically a celebrity in the eyes of the townsfolk.
• Aborted Arc: A good number of plots go unresolved, in no small part due to the show's cancellation, but some don't even stretch into the second season before being dropped.
  • The Sorceress is imprisoned in the Land of Shadows at the end the Sorcerer in Love 2 and never reappears, despite the Land of Shadows gaining prominence in the second season's Evil Julian arc.
  • Whatever The Creep meant by the lines of "Your greatest battle is just around the bend" in the episode Ball's Well That Friends Well is also a mystery, thanks to that being the show's final episode.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Played with in Julian's Birthday Surprise, where Randy and Howard go to Julian's birthday party and unintentionally cause chaos because Julian mistakes the sorcerer orb that Randy brought with him for a birthday present.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Ninja Sword can cut through anything... but stupidity.
• A Day in the Limelight: Howard in The Ninja Supremacy when he substitutes for an amnesia struck Randy until the end when Randy has regained his ninja memories.
• Accidental Misnaming: Heidi does this most of the time to Randy. She called him Sandy, Andy, Brandy, etc. Hilariously, she is Howard's sister.
  Heidi: ...and his best friend Andy.
  Randy: Randy, name's Randy, known you my whole life.
  • Though in Debbie Meddle, Heidi finally said his full name right, which Randy points out. At the end of the episode, she only remembers his first name, but mispronounced his last.
• Accidental Public Confession: In "McOne Armed and Dangerous", the Ninja tries to expose McFist as a villain during a ceremony but, since McFist isn't up to anything evil at this moment, he manages to preserve his reputation until the Ninja's efforts cause a commemorative statue to be destroyed and the first McSquiddle to be lost, making McFist too furious to remember he's in public and he ends up blurting his true purposes.
• Accidentally Real Fake Address: In "Swampy Seconds", Randy protects his identity as the Ninja from Catfish Booray by making up the name "Ranginald Bagel". In "Bring Me the Head of Ranginald Bagel!", Randy and the viewers learn there is a student named Ranginald Bagel.
• Affectionate Parody: Jackie Cous, an artist for the show, has said the show "doesn't take itself seriously and pokes fun at a lot of the tropes and cliches, rather than falling right into them un-ironically."
• All Part of the Show: In Grave Puncher: The Movie!, everyone assumes that a giant version of the Grave Puncher coming to life and attacking everyone is part of the movie.
• All There in the Manual: You can learn more of the story if you play the game "Enter the Ninjanomicon".
• Animated Outtakes: Outtakes appear as The Stinger for the Series Finale, showing the characters flub up various moments from Season 2.
• Animation Bump: In the episode "Let Them Eat Cake Fries", the attractive French teacher's butt is animated rather smoothly while she's crossing her legs, in contrast to the rest of the scene.
• Artistic License – History: Done deliberately because the show doesn't take itself seriously. Norrisville is somehow 800 years old^note far older than European settlement of the Americas, and a flashback in Sorcerer in Love shows that it was somehow culturally Japanese back then, but inhabited by mostly white people.
• Art Shift: The Ninjanomicon is in a sort of traditional Japanese cut-out style, while Randy stays in the usual style even while in the book's world.
• As You Know: Randy and the viewers learned about Terry McFist (Hannibal's big brother) being the real heir to McFist Industries and yearly signing over the company to Hannibal when he overheard Viceroy reminding Hannibal of that fact.
• Ascended Fanboy: Randy was The Ninja's biggest fan in middle school, and now he has become The Ninja.
• Asteroids Monster: The mutant potatoes from Attack of the Killer Potatoes. Cutting them just multiplies them as Randy found out and he had to use Viceroy's robot to mash the potatoes to defeat them.
• Attack the Tail: Randy does this twice in Viva El Nomicon to destroy two monsters. However, the second time played straight into Viceroy's hands (see also Bears Are Bad News below).
• Attack Its Weak Point: The only way to "destank" someone, is to destroy the thing they hold most dear (mostly a item of some kind), it's the only way to free them from their monster state. Fortunately for Randy, the monsters tend to have the item on them after they were stanked.
  • Can also become a bit of a difficulty curve if the dearest possession in question is something abstract such as a relationship or winning streak.
    • Or, you know, a person...
  • As of True Bromance, it's also possible to destank someone if the conflict is resolved through some sort of apology to those wronged. This is also how Randy avoids having to slice Howard in half.
• Attention Deficit... Is That a Choco Fountain?!

• Battle of the Bands: Briefly, in Unstank My Hart.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the finale, the Nomicon tells Randy he needs an "Unlikely Ally" to beat Evil Julian. Randy thinks it's Howard, but the savvy viewer will know it's Julian, right? WRONG. it's the Sorcerer.
• Bears Are Bad News: In Viva El Nomicon Randy fought a Mexican Death Bear. Debbie Kang thinks they are cute though and even dresses-up as one on Halloween.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Not a wish, but Howard demanded that Randy tell him 'everything' after he found out that his best friend doesn't share his most intimate thoughts the same way he does with him, and forces him to do so in exchange for helping defeat the Monster of the Week. Randy does so...and Howard plugs his ears and tells him to stop talking when Randy starts to tell him all about how he thinks Howard's big sister Heidi is hot.
• Becoming the Mask: Randy in Brolateral Damage, when he tries to get information about the mysterious BBD plot.
  • The Ninjanomicon even warns him about this. Of course, Randy doesn't pick up on it at all.
• Bee-Bee Gun: in the form of the Ninja Bee Ball.
• Berserk Button: The robo-apes actually have a built in one.
  Mcfist: WHY DID YOU BUILD AN APE-MODE!?! (Runs from rampaging robo-ape.)
  • Viceroy's Evil Genius really comes to the surface when he's without Otto.
• Better the Devil You Know: In the episode featuring Hannibal MsFist's brother Terri, the Ninjanomicon lampshaded the trope by bringing up the possibility of the unknown ally being more dangerous than the known enemy.
  • In an episode where Randy outs McFist as a villain, he ends up having to restore his reputation as Hannibal's stank'd form brought about by his distress is far too powerful for Randy to defeat.
• Big Bad: The Sorcerer, for the overall series, though he gets some competition in season 2 in the form of Evil Julian.

• Blatant Lies: In Wave Slayers, the Ninjanomicon, when Randy asks it about what he should do after breaking one of the team's vehicles, doesn't give him a cryptic answer as per usual, but very clearly tells Randy to own up to his mistakes. Randy, however, pretends not to understand.
• Blind Black Guy: S.Ward Smith the metal shop teacher. He still able to craft some amazing swords and can make surprisingly balloon swords.
• Blob Monster: In Monster Dump, they start off harmless, but then get deadly later on. The only one that stayed harmless was Nicholas.
• Brain Bleach: A main plot point in the episode "Gossip Boy" is Randy's attempts to find a mind-wiping spell in the Ninjanomicon, his original reason being to apply this to the more "shnasty" memories of things he's seen while doing duty as the Ninja.
• Brain Uploading: The Ninjanomicon
  • While it does have written words, the Nomicon puts Randy into a drooling state and spells out a somewhat cryptic answer to whatever question he asked but likes to do so by throwing him into a sort of surreal world inside the book.
  • When a Ninja's duty is done they "learn" the "Ultimate Lesson", in which they upload everything they've learned into the Ninjanomicon for future Ninjas to learn.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  Randy: [Debby Kang's] whole report was in Spanish, so she may have been giving a flan recipe.
  Howard: (looks directly at the screen) Man, how good is flan?
  • The entire episode of Debbie Meddle.
  • During the end of "Fudge Factory", Randy was looking at the screen while explaining the consequences of lying.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: Norrisville High's Chess Team has defeated Flackville High's eleven times in a row. When they tried the twelfth time, Hannibal McFist replaced one of Flackville's players with a robot that broke that streak, making several Norrisville students depressed enough to be stanked by the Sorcerer. The students reverted back to normal when Howard Weinerman, who knows practically everything about chess except for the pieces' names, defeated the robot.

• Bystander Syndrome: The Ninja of '85, instead of curing Dickie, he froze Stanked!Dickie to attend prom instead and leaves the problem for a future Ninja (Randy) to deal with.
• The Cameo: There's been a strange orange-haired man with a fedora hat since #1, who is implied to have given Randy the Ninja suit and Ninjanomicon. You have to be really looking to spot him in every episode.
  • He resembles Chuck Norris.
• Calling Your Attacks: More of Randy's choice rather than anything else.
  • Also exaggerated in that he calls out everything. "Ninja Sprint!" "Ninja Stop Ninja Stop Ninja Stop!" "NINJA FLIP!" "Ninja Rotating-Table-Slide!"
• Cassandra Truth: Randy knows Hannibal is an enemy, but due to the public being useless in connecting two-and-two together, Hannibal says nobody will believe the Ninja.
  • In McOneArmed and Dangerous, the trope was subverted. It did take a while before anyone believed him though, to be fair. Later, it's inverted again, back to everyone thinking Hannibal's the best.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Each character has a unique character design. Even the background characters too.
• Chekhov's Armory: Randy uses several of the weapons, attacks, and lessons he's accumulated over the course of the first season to fight the Sorcerer in the 13th Century. He fails.
• Christmas Episode: Silent Punch, Deadly Punch
• Clothes Make the Superman: The Ninja Suit. The Nomicon has the ability to "turn off" the Ninja Suit, thus technically making the Nomicon the thing that gives you powers, although it does this by using the Suit as a medium...
• Cloudcuckoolander: Randy is definitely more than a bit odd and spastic, though he is often Closer to Earth than his best friend Howard.
• Counting to Potato: Randy hides the Ninjanomicon under a math book cover that reads "easy as 1-2-C".
• Crazy-Prepared: What kind of Mad Scientist would Viceroy be if he didn't have a killer robot with him everywhere he goes?

• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: McFist when the ninja stop the Shark-Dermanator from killing him and Viceroy and sending it back to the lake to sleep.
  Randy: Wait, I'll pay for saving your life?
  Viceroy: You gotta give it to him baby, he's consistent.
• Continuity Nod: Randy still has the Healing Hands as of Silent Punch, Deadly Punch.
  • As a whole the show seems to be pretty good with obeying its continuity.

• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Terry McFist fears to become like this like his father and brother.

• Dance Battler:
  • So U Think U Can Stank gives us this in the form of Stank'd dancers. It proves to be a double edged sword, however, as their thing held most dear WAS their dance moves. Randy simply trips them for a De-Stanking.
  • In Everybody Ninj-along Randy... Well, he Ninj-alonged.
• Darker and Edgier: Nukid on the Block. If Howard hadn't stepped in and helped, McFist would have won.
  • In Fudge Factory it was pure luck that the Ninja went on to live another day.
  • In Stanks Like Teen Spirit, so much chaos was caused that The Sorcerer nearly escaped.
    • In 13th Century Ninja he did.
  • The show is definitely, gradually edging towards this, with the villains becoming smarter, the stakes higher and Randy seemingly not progressing in his smarts as fast as his enemies. However, everything's still pretty goofy.
  • In Mastermind of Disastermind, when Howard thought Ninja killed Julian, who was actually Evil Julian
  • Julian is still in the Land of Shadows... At least until the season 2 finale

• Demonic Possession: Howard was possessed by the Tengu.
  • Perhaps Catfish too, in Welcome Back Catfish.
• Deadpan Snarker: Viceroy is pretty much in permanent snark mode, especially around McFist.

• Devil in Plain Sight: Hannibal McFist is this to the general public, who in turn adore him a lot for being the head of the city's major consumer products company. It's incredible how everybody ignores the right cyborg arm with a brain with eyes on the wrist. That is SO TOTALLY not evil-looking, oh no!
• Didn't Think This Through: In The McHuggers Games, the Ninja stole a McHugger from Hannibal McFist before the product was available in stores. Knowing the Ninja, like every other townsperson in Norrisville, would be attracted to the publicity event created to advertise the McHuggers, Viceroy sent a robot to the event and programmed it to attack whoever was wearing McHuggers, thinking the Ninja would be the only one. He forgot that, given the publicity campaign's goal, the spokesman would be wearing one as well.
• Distaff Counterpart: The Sorceress to the Sorcerer. They're apparently boyfriend and girlfriend, though, a certain Ninja did wonk things up for them, causing them to be separated nearly all the time.
• Distressed Dudes Both Howard and Randy respectively. Makes sense that while Howard was the primary dude in distress in a lot of episodes (both older and recent episodes), Randy is slowly becoming this in the more recent episodes since the show itself is getting darker and edgier.
• Dominance Through Furniture: In "Swampy Seconds", Catfish Booray shows off his control over the animals of the swamp by making them form a chair for him to sit on. Randy points out that this can't be very comfortable.

• Dumb Jock: Bash. Even though he's strong and tough, he is very childish and thinks C is a number.

• Epic Fail: Randy's first attempt at fixing his sword. Not even a blinder clip, duct tape, stamps, bandaids, cement, paper clips, and string could keep it together.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: Howard Weinerman doesn't believe isosceles triangles are real.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies/Our Zombies Are Different/Technically-Living Zombie: In Night of the Living McFizzles they are not really dead but look like it and they crave candy.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: One of the Stank'd monsters forged his own samurai armor to protect itself.
• Evil Brit: Levandar Hart when he's stank'd. And famous. Mostly when he's famous. In fact, quite possibly, only when he's famous. But he's also only famous when he's stank'd.

• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The McFist Corporation has a rather foreboding structure set up in the middle of the city. Though personally it looks more like a futuristic pyramid than a tower.
• Expy: Background character Nameless Girl with Eyelashes looks similar to Candace from Phineas and Ferb
• Fan Disservice: The Sorcerer in "Brolateral Damage." He is seen wearing a towel and at the end of the episode, the towel drops offscreen with the Sorcerer's rat companion making a disgusted reaction, implying that it got an eyeful of the Sorcerer's genitalia.
• Fat and Skinny: Howard & Randy and McFist & Viceroy, respectively.
• Final Battle: In Randy Cunningham and the Sorcerer's Key Randy and Howard learn from the Nomicon that the final battle with the Sorcerer is approaching. Naturally, Randy is freaked out.
  • It happens in Ball's Well That Friends Well
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Dickie, who was from '85, was unfrozen in the present day.
• Foreshadowing: At the end of the finale episode, some of the sorcerer orbs scattered, with one being found by Catfish Booray.
  • In Sorcerer in Love 2: Sorceress's Revenge, the Land of the Shadows makes its first appearance. It seems to be a throw-away plot device though. Until it reappears in Julian's Birthday Surprise.
  • As of All the Juice that's Fish to Swim, Debbie Kang is trying to find out who the Ninja is.
  • At the end of Julian's Birthday Surprise we see Shadow Julian in the Land of Shadows, angered that he no longer possesses an orb. Considering the poster design for Season 2...
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: In Dawn of the Driscoll, Randy is able to sneak into McFist's house... because McFist thinks he's just a kid trick-or-treating dressed as The Ninja.
• Forgotten Birthday: Randy forgets about Howard's birthday in Space Cow-Bros. He tries to make up for it by lying every time when Howard asks about his surprise party or gift.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: This show is really big on sight gags, most notably with the neon scribbles that appear, but also try pausing to see how much Randy and Howard spent on McFist Industries items next time you're watching McFists of Fury for absolute hilarity.
• Freudian Excuse: Doug decided to become a tattletale back when he was six years old and Marci berated him for not telling her on Randy and Howard as soon as he saw them sneaking out of her day care center.
• Full-Name Basis: Randy and Howard both call Debbie Kang by her whole name when they mention her.

Tropes G-M

• Gasshole: Ironically played with, since the robo rhino scans then farts a conjuring of your worse fears. McFist lampshades this by saying it feels like a cheap gag.
  • Then theres McFist older brother wind power idea.

• Godzilla Threshold: Freeing the Tengu and allowing it to possess Howard so that Randy can control him with the suit. Randy refuses when Howard asks him never to do it again, implying it may be needed in the future.
• Good Is Boring: Howard asks Randy why he (Howard) can't be the nice judge in So U Think U Can Stank. Two seconds later, he laughs at it with Randy.
• Great Big Book of Everything: The Ninjanomicon. It has all the accumulated knowledge of all previous Ninjas.
• Gross Gum Gag: In "Gossip Boy", Randy recalls how he once saw the school janitor chewing some old gum he'd just scraped, with the resulting bubble containing an insect within.
• Gym Class Hell: While Coach Green thinks his lessons are great, with his strange ideas for activities like flamethrower jump-rope, most of his students do not agree.
• Gym Class Rope Climb: The plot of The Tale of the Golden Doctor's Notes is how to get out of Coach Green's version of it.
• Halloween Episode: In order, Dawn of the Driscoll and Night of the Living McFizzles, taking place right after one another on, presumably, the same night of Halloween.
• Handbag of Hurt: A giant, killer robot made out of satchels to be precise.
• Hanukkah Episode: The episode "Happy Hanukkah, Howard Weinerman!" is about Jewish character Howard learning "the true meaning of Hanukkah."
• Happy Flashback: The Sorcerer had this in Stank'd to the Future to the 1985. It just showed him sitting annoyed in his prison, as a different rat did the moon walk.
  • Hannibal McFist had one in McOne Armed and Dangerous. It was similar to the one Anton Ego had in Ratatouille.
• Healing Hands: Deconstructed. Randy learns to shoot healing beams out of his palms, with knowledge obtained from a forbidden section of the Ninjanomicon, leading him to accidentally reanimate the skeleton of an evil mad scientist.
• Henshin Hero: Randy becomes The Ninja by putting on the mask of the suit, complete with Transformation Sequence.
  • Lampshaded in Tale of the Golden Doctor's Note:
  Howard: All dressed? Good.

• Highly-Visible Ninja: The Ninja operates in broad daylight and has been a highly regarded public figure for years.

• How Is That Even Possible?: In a Halloween Episode, the reanimated skeleton of Jerry Driscoll is recognized by a retina scan in spite of, as Viceroy points out, not having a retina.
• Human Popsicle: Stanked!Dickie was frozen by the Ninja of '85 and awoken in present day when the power to the school freezer was cut.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Subverted Catfish Booray isn't going to eat Howard, His brainwash animal army will.
• I Am Spartacus: How Howard foiled McFist's and Viceroy's plan using the Truth Tone to find out who the Ninja is in 30 Seconds to Math.
• I Love the Dead: Mrs. Driscoll brings around her deceased husband's bones and still makes out with him... yeeeeeeeah...
• Improbable Weapon User: Randy seems to be a fan of this trope when he does not use the weapons in the suit.
• Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!: In the episode "Der Monster Klub", Randy uses his scarf to snatch a baton thrown at him and spin it fast enough to fly like a helicopter. He calls it the "ninja-helicopter-baton flying manuever".
• Ink-Suit Actor: Debbie Kang and Coach Green bear some resemblance to their respective voice actors.
• Invisible Parents: With the notable exception of Hannibal McFist and his wife Marci, we don't see any parent in at any moment (unless you count Bucky's mother). In fact, Randy's parents are not seen in at any moment, although he names his mom sometimes. In Season 2, however, we finally can see Mort Weinerman, Howard and Heidi's father.
• Is This Thing Still On?: In "McOne Armed and Dangerous", the Ninja's efforts to denounce Hannibal McFist during a public event would have been in vain if not for this trope.
• Jerkass: In So U Think U Can Stank Howard acts like this a few times, but he becomes popular when exploiting it while being a judge in the school's talent show. Randy was the one to suggest this to him, and it inadvertently makes every single downcast participant turn into hideous monsters for Randy to fight behind the curtains.

• Kick the Dog: Viceroy and McFist were jerks to that Shark Kaiju with the dry skin.
• Kid Hero: Also see Affectionate Parody above.
  • Later deconstructed, as at least one of the past ninjas has abused his power. Mac Antfee, the ninja of 1985, locked a kid in a freezer rather than destank him so he could have time to go to prom. This resulted in the kid being trapped in monster form for over 20 years. He was also extremely violent, resulting in the Ninjanomicon having to expel him of its abilities so he couldn't abuse it any further.
• Kiddie Kid: Both Randy and Howard are 14, yet they act as 10 year old kids, being obsessed with junk food, candies and being prone to play some rather childish pranks on other people. This is justified, as this is a children’s show, and depicting 14 year olds in mature situations would exceed the boundaries of such programming.

• Lame Pun Reaction: This one after Viceroy shows McFist the zombie making candy.
  Viceroy: Congratulation, you created a confection of mass destruction.
  McFist: (gives annoyed look) Proud of yourself for that one?
  Viceroy: A little.
  • From Nukid on the Block:
  Randy: Well, I guess you have to know the difference between your Franz and your enemies!
  Howard: Too soon, Ninja. Too soon.

• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Randy spends most of Gossip Boy searching for a "Mind Wipe" in the Ninjanomicon. There isn't one that can be used. Only a piece of wisdom, "The way to forget, is to remember".
• Last-Name Basis:
  • Howard pretty much exclusively calls Randy by his last name.
  • Hannibal McFist is called by his last name by everyone except his wife and his brother. Sometimes by Viceroy as well.
  • Viceroy is always referred to by his last name. According to Dawn of the Driscoll and the "Enter the Ninjanomicon" game, his full name is Willem Viceroy III.
• Legacy Hero: Every four years a new ninja is chosen to protect Norrisville High.
• Legacy Immortality: The Ninja is believed to have been the same person for over 800 years, but of course, Randy is only 14.
• Legacy of the Chosen: Throughout the series, Randy meets several previous Ninjas. He helps establish the overall legacy of the Ninja when time travel allows him to meet the original, he met the Ninja of 2005 when he was just a kid, and the Ninja of 1985, Mac Antfee, became the main villain for two episodes.
• Losing Horns: A running gag is that the trombone player for the marching band will pop up, and play a Type B when something bad happens.
• Made of Evil: The Sorcerer orbs, which also seem to have some connection to the Land Of Shadows.
• Mad Scientist: Both Jerry Driscoll and Viceroy. There's even a university for mad scientists that they both attended as part of the same class (and as rivals). Said university even has a policy that a successful completion of a Doomsday Device guarantees the creator valedictorian, even though the only way to test if such a thing works is to destroy the world.
• Magic Knight: The Ninja; intense melee skills and weaponry along with mystical Elemental Powers and Ki Manipulation.
• Male Gaze: In "Let Them Eat Cake Fries", we get a close-up shot of the French Teacher's rather shapely ass from behind the desk. The focus on her ass was important enough to warrant smoother animation.
• Mask of Power: The Ninja mask, creates the suit.
• MacGyvering: "All I need is some chewed gum, a pencil, and that thing Flute Girl plays."
• May Contain Evil: Mc Fist Industry's Soupsicles, frozen bowls of soup on a stick that contains a secret ingredient the excessive consumption of which leads to mutation into a soup crazy monster.
• Mecha-Mooks: Robo-Apes are this to McFist, though we see them doing a multitude of things, including fighting The Ninja and catering McFist social events. They even have their own King Mook in the form of one having a built-in mohawk.
• Mistaken Identity: In Bash Johnson: 11th Grade Ninja, Bash is mistaken for the ninja and gets all the adulation and is almost killed by McFist's robo-apes.
  • During Randy's first run-in with Catfish Booray, Randy introduced himself as "Reginald Bagel", leading Booray to believe that to be the Ninja's true identity. It's revealed in a later episode there is a boy named Reginald Bagel and the Ninja has to protect him from McFist.
• Monster of the Week: Alternates between McFist and Viceroy's mechanical monstrosities and The Sorcerer turning people in despair to monsters.
• Mook Maker: Randy actually get this one, in the form of Earth Attack. At first it went kinda wrong as Randy accidentally created a monster sandworm but played straight with the Sandja's.

Tropes N-Z

• Naked People Are Funny: Bucky at the end of Got Stank? and the beginning of Silent Punch, Deadly Punch. Humorously, he's the only character whose clothes are destroyed by turning into a monster.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: You wonder how most everyone in Norrisville doesn't suspect someone named Hannibal McFist is evil, though that might be part of the joke since it is lampshaded.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Escape from detention island is like one HUGE showing of this trope.
  • When Mac Antfee returns, he's a motivational speaker and becomes nice, Randy believes it's an act and reminds Mac of the ninja mask with all it's cool weapons, powers, and the Nomicon, causing Mac to turn back to his old self while practically exposing himself as the ninja. Randy also accuses the Nomicon of doing this for not mind wiping Mac when it fired him as the ninja.
  • Those pale in comparison to when Randy and Howard broke into McFist's Time Machine and went back in time to the day the original Ninja imprisoned the Sorcerer. They altered the past, freeing the Sorcerer. And Mc Fist wasn't even planning to use the time machine to do anything to harm the Ninja and / or free the Sorcerer.
• Ninja: The Ninja.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: A stanked Scorpion centaur robot.
• No Indoor Voice: McFist seems almost entirely unable to keep himself from yelling. About anything.
• No Name Given: Several recurring characters have no name. A notable example is Flute Girl.
• Noodle Incident:
  • How Jerry Driscoll became a skeleton.
  • Also, hold the cheese.
  • This exchange between Heidi and Howard in "So U Think U Can Stank":
  Heidi: Wonk this up, and I will webcast that video of you two taking a bath together!
  Howard: We were three!
  Heidi: Not. That. Video.
  Howard: Oh.
  • Whatever Theresa Fowler tasted in Der Monster Klüb.
  • Howard's booger story
• Not What It Looks Like: In-universe, there was a misunderstanding with a student named Becky when she was only just bloated.
  • Of course, there have been other incidents of "It's not what it looks like" in-universe... But the above example is the most notable.

• Only Known by Their Nickname: Even science teacher Mrs. Driscoll calls the girl who plays flute in the marching band "Flute Girl."

• Overly-Long Tongue: Bash suffers this in "Best Bud" due to one of the Viceroys inventions literally turning his tongue into a huge squid monster.

• Pirates vs. Ninjas: In Club Ninja-dise; McFist, Viceroy and marauder bots as the pirates vs. the Ninja Randy Cunningham.
• Posthumous Character: Jerry Driscoll, until he becomes post-posthumous in Dawn of the Driscoll. Of course, he goes back to being dead by the end of the episode.
• Pressure Point: Randy occasionally employs the "Ninja Puking Poke" to make a target puke up an important object. He does it with his scarf.

• Pungeon Master: Jerry Driscoll sure loves his skeleton puns but somewhat understandable since he's a living skeleton at the time.

• Red Right Hand: Hannibal McFist has an artificial arm that seems to have a mind of its own. Literally, you can see parts of a brain inside of it.
• Red Shirts: Mac Antfee has an army of these (though they're technically Mooks) and they're even called that.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: When the Sorcerer's past was altered and his eight-century-long imprisonment erased, he still remembered it. Later, when Randy and the original Ninja imprisoned the Sorcerer back in the 13th century, Present-time Sorcerer didn't forget his brief freedom.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In Bash Johnson: 11th Grade Ninja, a de-stanked student thinks Bash was the one who turned him back to normal because he thinks Bash is the Ninja. He's wrong about Bash being the Ninja but is right about Bash being the one who turned him back to normal.
• Rockers Smash Guitars: In 30 Seconds to Math, Howard does this to his sister Heidi's guitar; he does this to smash the Truth Tone which also inadvertently disqualified Heidi from the Battle of the Bands by lack of instrument. Bash also jumped on his turntables, presumably for the same reason.
• Running Gag:
  • Just about every time Randy uses the Nomicon, he either gets hit on the way down or drools.
  • The Principal's car is destroyed nearly every episode.
  • Flute Girl saying, "You guys are idiots" whenever Randy and Howard do or say something dumb.
  • Stevens playing his Sad Trombone whenever the situation calls for it.
• Sadist Teacher: The gym teacher is either this or just insane. Case in point, he wanted the group to play a sport he invented that involved a flamethrower.
• Sarcasm-Blind: McFist.
  Viceroy: Congratulations, sir, I don't know how you did it.
  McFist: Sometimes I amaze even myself! Now, what kind of power should I ask for?
  Viceroy: How about the power to recognize sarcasm?
  McFist: When would I ever use that?
• Scarf of Asskicking: It even doubles as both a rope and a whip!
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Sorcerer, who is a sealed evil underneath a high school and seeks to free himself by causing chaos with the people he mutates.

• Secret-Keeper: Howard is the only one who knows Randy is the Ninja.
• Sensory Overload: When Randy asks for some super taste to cheat in a blind taste competition, the Nomicon gives it to him. Along with jacking all his other senses up to agonizing levels as punishment for cheating.
• Sequel Hook: The end of "Randy Cunningham: 13th Century Ninja" foreshadows a new threat in Form of the Sorcerers Power Balls. Season 2 ends with one as well with the Chuck Norris Expy proclaiming that Randy's real fight has just begun.

• Shadow Archetype: Mac Antfee was the '85 ninja, and although he had some skill like Randy, he had none of Randy's good qualities, like how Randy tries to make up for his mistakes and stop monsters at personal cost. In fact, Mac was essentially fired, and he wanted revenge.
• Share Phrase: Randy likes using the Catchphrase "What the juice?!" so much that other characters eventually say this.
  • He has a number of other Catch Phrases in the form of odd euphemisms and lingo, such as "that's the cheese" (that's the best), "so honkin' bruce" (that's freaking awesome), "shnasty" (extremely gross), and "so wonk" (so lame). The fandom likes using these a lot too.
• Ship Tease:
  • Between Randy and Theresa, several times throughout the first season. Less so in Season 2, but it is still there.
  • More subtly between Randy and Heidi at the end of Grave Puncher: The Movie.
    • In "welcome back catfish", Randy tells Howard that he finds Heidi attractive in the right light, much to Howards horror. Randy then goes into detail...
  • A bit between Randy, as the Ninja, and Debby Kang.
  • Flute Girl and Stevens seem to be canon, but as it isn't clear...

• Sick Episode: Subverted in Randy Cunningham's Day Off, Randy is back in school by the end of the episode and only winds up having a half-day off.
• Signature Instrument: This show has a character who is only ever referred to as Flute Girl. Unsurprisingly, she's known for playing the flute.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: In "Dawn of the Driscol" Jerry Driscol attempts to complete his Doomsday Device following his accidental resurrection. In the final battle Viceroy desperately tries to find a way to shut it down before it destroys the world, Howards suggests simply cutting the power only for Viceroy to reveal that its powered by an internal nuclear reactor meaning there is no way to do so.

• Skewed Priorities: Averted. A teacher wasn't gonna let Randy get his backpack during a drill. Even if he's standing very close to it.
  • Played straight in "Randy Cunningham: 13th Century Ninja", out of fear McFist was implementing another evil plan, Randy and Howard decided to sneak away from the tour at McFist Industries. When a student reported them to Principal Slimovitz, Slimovitz ignored them and had the other students do the same and keep their eyes on the "tattle-tale" because he hates tattle-tales more than he hates troublemakers. Not knowing it'd somehow result in the Sorcerer being free does not excuse him.
• Slow Clap: Howard (and Randy) received one in Gossip Boy.

• Squee: Debbie Kang's reaction when finding out there's a Mexican Death Bear at school. Also Rachel. SO MUCH RACHEL.
• Status Quo Is God: In "McOne Armed and Dangerous", Hannibal McFist's status as a Villain with Good Publicity is destroyed thanks to the Ninja telling the people about McFist's attempts to have him killed and McFist falling victim to Is This Thing Still On?. The Sorcerer then Stanks McFist. After McFist is brought back to normal, the Ninja decides to restore his reputation by claiming McFist only tried to kill him because he had been turned into a monster. It happened to so many students before everyone in Norrisville bought that and called off the boycott on McFist Industries.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Hannibal McFist once tried to destroy the Ninja with an Powered Armor. When the Ninja removed the helmet, he assumed McFist was being forced. McFist tried to play along but the Ninja wondered why somebody would force him. Since McFist failed to come up with an excuse, the Ninja figured out McFist is a Villain with Good Publicity.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • When Randy and Howard meet McFist at Bash's birthday party, Randy at fist spoke like he already met McFist before, forgetting that, up to this point, it was only as "The Ninja" he already met him. His efforts to mask that slip was claiming they never met before. Howard then added that McFist's stepson Bash wasn't a jerk.
  • Randy was specifically invoking this trope in Wave Slayers to avoid having to confess the truth when the Ninjanomicon told him to fess up about what happened to Buttermaker.
  • After expresing hope that a then six-year-old Randy never becomes the Ninja, the Ninja of 2005 quickly mentions there wouldn't be a chance anyway because the Ninja is the same Ninja during all those centuries.
• Talking the Monster to Death: When the thing held most dear is something abstract like a relationship or irreplaceable like a person, victims can be de-stanked by having their feelings assuaged by an earnest talking to.
• There Was a Door: In Got Stank?, Stanked!Bucky busts through walls instead of going through doors or even windows.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: Viceroy created Jack Hammer's control as an arcade machine so that the perfect beings could control it. Teenagers, which is made worse because Howard is one playing the game doesn't believe Randy about it being this trope due to him messing with Howard's head at the arcade.

• Time Machine: McFist had Viceroy build one in "Randy Cunningham: 13th Century Ninja". To Viceroy's disappointment, instead of using it to destroy the Ninja, McFist wanted to use it to travel back to a time, when his favorite breakfast cereal hadn't been discontinued.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Randy Cunningham: 13th Century Ninja follows this to a T. When the past was altered so the Sorcerer's imprisonment never happened, it got the Sorcerer free but didn't change the world in any way that reflected the damages he would have caused during eight centuries of altered history. No explanations were given.

• Totally Radical: All the teen characters unabashedly speak in made-up slang like, "Shoob-tastic" or "So Honking Bruce". Adult characters like Hannibal McFist try and fail to speak "teen lingo" and end up coming off like this.

• Unobtainium: Viceroy invents a Time Machine that is fueled by hardtogetium. He cannot get more fuel than needed for a round trip.
• Unusual Euphemism: McFist's stepson Bash uses the phrase "make a Mr. Grumpy" to refer to defecation.
• Unwanted Assistance: In Escape from Detention Island, Randy as both himself and the Ninja tries to help the students with their punishments but the Disciplinarian considers it cheating and amps up the danger making it worse.
  • Even the Nomicon was trying to tell him he should have stayed out of it from the beginning.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: The Sorcerer has the ability to "Stank" any person that has been heartbroken or is going through emotional trauma, and transform them into a monster.

• Vomit Chain Reaction: How the "candy zombies" from Night of the Living McFizzles were defeated.
• Wham Episode:
  • Randy Cunningham and the Sorcerer's Key revealed that Randy will be the ninja to partake in the final battle with the Sorcerer.
  • Snow-Klahoma! Randy inadvertingly lets out Anti-Julian from the Shadow Dimension who no doubt will be after the Sorcerer's Ball he has hidden away. What's more the real Julian is stuck in the Shadow Dimension.
• "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Viceroy once invented a robot that created personifications of people's fears. Randy fears chickens (McFist and Viceroy were disappointed); Heidi Weinerman fears looking like her mother in the future; Viceroy fears the kid who used to bully him at school; McFist fears clowns; and Bucky is afraid of minotaurs playing smooth jazz.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Randy has a fear of chickens (Also roosters).
  • In fact Rhinosaurus' power was to INVOKE this trope

• Zerg Rush: Robo-Apes usual tactic when fighting the Ninja. This actually becomes effective when they go berserk and attack everything else, rendering Randy unable to stop all their rampages.

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