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"I thought I'd do the opposite of what people expect from cartoon characters, which are usually happy animals. I made mine angry. Then I went down through a list of silly animals and decided on beavers."
— Creator Mitch Schauernote 

An animated show about two beavers, Norbert (Nick Bakay) and Daggett (Richard Horvitz), who are brothers and share a home. Norb is seems easy-going (or did early on), and Daggett is the angry one, mostly due to the fact that Norbert is a narcissist who abuses him constantly. Hilarity Ensues between the two regularly, often in a highly absurd way, crammed full of dialogue both fantastically witty and ridiculously dim.

Part of Nickelodeon's Nicktoons franchise, the show first began airing in 1997 and ran for four seasons. In 2001, it was canceled for good, and the last episode to be written had the characters aware of the fact that they were in a cartoon which was about to end. This apparently broke several in-house rules — mostly related to not announcing the end of a series, much less within the show itself (due to Nickelodeon's habit of profiting off re-runs). It also apparently got the executives angry by referring to an earlier incident where the line "Shut up" was censored for a re-run using a Sound-Effect Bleep, and then changed altogether when that generated even more controversy. Though Nick had supposedly considered bending their rules to allow the episode, they ultimately decided not to produce it, leaving it unfinished.

Regardless, the show was later released through iTunes, featuring the best of Seasons 1 and 2. Seasons 1, 2, and 3 were individually put out on DVD, and the complete series was released on July 30th, 2013. Daggett and Norbert are also featured as playable characters in Nicktoons Racing and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.

Perhaps the only cartoon in the universe in which a clock on the wall visible in most episodes updates in real time.

Not related to Angry Birds.


Contains examples of:

  • Acid Reflux Nightmare: The episode "Food of the Clods" shows Norbert feasting on junk food late at night then ending up Sleepwalking and re-enacting the 1950s B-films he's watching at the time.
  • Aerith and Bob: Norbert, Daggett, Truckee, Stump, Treeflower, and Bing. And Barry.
  • Affably Evil: True to his namesake, Kid Friendly is so thoughtful and polite that his kindness can literally kill someone.
    Chorus: He'll kill y'all with kindness, he'll kill y'all with a griiiiiiiiin. Kid Friendly!
    Narrator: Don't you mess around with him!
  • Aloof Big Brother: Norbert at the start of the series.
  • Always Someone Better: Norbert is driven by the need to constantly be the "Someone Better" in this equation with Dag. Tellingly, while Dag only ever expresses annoyance with his brother's constant gloating, when Norb finds out Dag's better at him at anything he suffers existential despair.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Raccoon Girls are a tribe of strong raccoon women.
  • Annoying Younger Sibling: Daggett's immaturity sometimes gets on Norb's nerves.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • Beavers don't actually eat wood in the sense that they'll chow down on an entire tree. They eat thin twigs and bark, where the nutrients lie, along with fresh buds and greens.
    • Beavers also do not have white incisors either, although it's normal for cartoon rodents to be depicted with white incisors regardless of whether or not the real animal has orange plating.
    • The older beaver offspring actually leave their parents when the mother is pregnant, not after their young siblings are born.
    • In "Euro-beavers", Norbert claims European beavers don't build dams. Eurasian beavers are no less dam-builders than their North American cousins are. Though that could be him making an excuse not to re-twig their dam.
    • Orcas do not eat humans like Camu does in "Moby Dopes".note 
    • Contrary to what the educational film in "Long in the Teeth" says, rabbits aren't rodents. They're what's known as lagomorphs.
    • Lampshaded in "Dumbwaiters" when Dag refers to his and Norb's thumbs.
      "Funny, I didn't think beavers had thumbs."
  • Artistic License – Paleontology: The Tyrannosaurus rex from the ending of "Moby Dopes" has three fingers on each hand and four prominent toes, and it stands in a tripod stance like in old-fashioned portraits. It is also much larger than the real animal, being able to eat an orca whole (a real Tyrannosaurus would be slightly larger than an orca).
  • Art Shift: Everyone's addition to the campfire story in "Pass It On". Norb's version is a Bond-esque spy thriller, Barry does the story over as a '70s blaxploitation movie, Bing's is just a series of doodles running around frantically, Stump's version is a letterboxed black-and-white drama with Scottish accents, Treeflower's is a Magical Girl anime with choppy 50's-style animation, and Dag's is just all the different styles floating in a white void.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Common theme in the Beavers' favorite B-movies.
  • Bad "Bad Acting": Oxnard Montalvo and all his co-stars. Also Daggett, Barry, and Bing when the beavers complete a 'lost film' of his.
  • Baffled by Own Biology: In "Act Your Age", the beavers turn into babies, and their stomach gurgle loudly. Dag mistakenly thinks there's a monster in his own belly.
  • Banana Peel: "Beavemaster" has a scene where Tor slips on a banana peel and falls down a cliff.
  • Bankruptcy Barrel:
    • In "Dag's List", Barry is shown wearing a barrel after Norb tricks him into giving him all his possessions in exchange for convincing Daggett to remove Barry from his list, unaware that Daggett was never intentionally attacking him.
    • "Three Dag Nite" has Stump wear a barrel after having his bark eaten off by Daggett's clones.
  • Berserk Button:
    • What really sets Norbert off is having his hair messed with.
    • Daggett goes ballistic if someone else takes his teddy bear.
    • Both beavers get annoyed whenever they are mistakenly identified as weasels.
  • Big Eater: Barry, and both Beavers, tend to have tremendous appetites.
  • Bigger Than Jesus: In "Beaver Fever", the beavers become One Hit Wonders. Their manager tells them that they're "bigger than sliced bread" and shows them a graph chart that proves this. When Daggett repeats this to the press, people start burning their albums, leading to Daggett explaining that he meant that they're physically larger than sliced bread. Upon hearing this explanation, people burning their albums are seen putting their hands into the fire to retrieve them.
  • Big Ol' Eyebrows: The record executive from "Beaver Fever", when we first see him, has birds perched on them.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • Yahoo is a copyright-friendly pastiche of the drink Yoo-hoo.
    • Ho-Humms snack cakes are clearly a stand-in for Hostess Ho-Hos.
  • B-Movie: Oxnard Montalvo's filmography. The Halloween Episode is one big Homage where the beavers visit him, and an alien even turns everything black and white (and the plot makes no sense whatsoever).
  • Bond Gun Barrel: "The Mom from U.N.C.L.E." features a spoof of the gun barrel sequence from James Bond where Norb and Daggett's mother is seen in the gun barrel and the gun barrel turns out to be a washing machine that she proceeds to put clothes in.
  • Book Burning: In "Beaver Fever", Norb and Dag become disco stars. After announcing their latest album is "bigger than sliced bread", angry bread lovers stage public burnings of their albums. After the beavers clarify that they actually said that their latest album is "bigger than a slice of bread", sheepish fans are shown trying to retrieve their albums from the bonfire.
  • Bowdlerise: A rare example of how this can backfire. Norbert yelled "Shut up!" in "Alley Oops", drawing complaints from parents. Nickelodeon addressed them by adding a Sound-Effect Bleep but only the word "shut" got censored by it. This generated even more controversy, leading Nick to outright change the line to "Shush up!" (this version of the episode is the one currently seen on the show's DVD releases and Paramount+).
  • Buffy Speak:
    • Both beavers used the word "thingy" repeatedly to refer to stuff they don't know the name of. One of the episodes is actually titled "Big Round Sticky Fish Thingy" in reference to what they call a giant fish egg they find.
    • Scientist #1 is especially prone to resorting to describing things as "thingy" or similar in spite of being a scientist.
    • Really, 80% of the cast is prone to using non-descriptive words for things they can't name.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Daggett tends to suffer a lot throughout the episodes, much of it at the hands of Norbert’s abuse.
    • Eventually, it catches up to Norb as well, but things usually turn out fine for him in the end, which is not the case for Daggett.
    • Minor character Chip always ends up unlucky every time he's seen.
  • The Cameo: The Beavers obtain a box of movie masks, one of them is Helga Pataki, (though she has orange hair).
    • Which is hilarious due to the fact that the movie masks are supposed to scare people.
  • Canada, Eh?: "Canucks Amuck" had Norb and Daggett having to deal with a pair of stereotypically Canadian beavers.
  • Cassandra Truth:
    • Daggett claims Big Byoo-tox is teaching him how to hide; Norbert, of course, doesn't believe a word of it. Norbert turns out to be correct, since it wasn't Big Byoo-tox, just a big, hairy, naked Canadian.
    • Daggett also claims that Old Gramps is real and that his tail was bitten off by the big fish. Norbert doesn't believe him until seeing a shadow of a fish in the lake. Another subversion for as it turns out, Old Gramps is an old, senile fish with no teeth. The REAL culprit was his wife, Old Gram.
  • Catchphrase:
    • Daggett's is "That was nuts!", while Norbert's is "BIIIG Hug!", usually combined with a big hug (or an attempted one).
    • The Unusual Euphemism "spoot," which is something of a joint catchphrase for the two.
    • The brothers also have unique "screams".
    "Eeeeeeehh!"
    "Hooooooo!"
    • Barry's "Oh baby".
  • Celebrity Paradox: In "Tree of Hearts," the brothers receive an announcement in the mail about the birth of Richard Steven Horvitz's son, Jack:
    Daggett: Wow! That's great!
    Norbert: I think so.
    Daggett: Who's Richard Horvitz?
    Norbert: Nobody.
  • Chased by Angry Natives: The brothers are chased after pissing off a tribe of Raccoons amazonesses.
  • Chase-Scene Obstacle Course: The show parodied Starsky & Hutch by having the beavers (as cops) chasing their suspects down a "city". Every obstacle they have to overcome is nothing more than a cardboard box.
    "Quick, they're headed for the cardboard box district!"
  • Christmas Episode: Parodied with "Gift Hoarse", an Arbor Day episode (the justification being that Arbor Day is beaver Christmas).
  • Companion Cube: Stump is just an inanimate tree stump, but Norbert treats him like a person.
  • Company Cross References:
    • In "Dumbwaiters", one of the Oxnard Montalvo movie monster masks is of Helga Pataki from the other Nickelodeon show Hey Arnold!
    • "Dagski and Norb" is presented as a show on Nick Not At Nite.
    • It is unclear if this was intentional, but Yahoo is the name of a soft drink on both this series and Hey Arnold!
  • Competition Coupon Madness: In "Box Top Beavers".
  • Contrived Coincidence: The beaver brothers' dam is the end result of an out-of-control pickup truck knocking over some trees, falling over a cliff, and the trees landing in a perfect arrangement in the body of water below.
  • Counting Sheep: Daggett gets the concept of counting sheep to fall asleep mixed up in "Up All Night 2: Up All Day", thinking that instead, he must listen to a sheep counting.
  • Crappy Carnival: Smelly Jim's Carnival of Mirthiness in "Dag Con-Carny".
  • Credits Gag: Many of the staff got goofy nicknames.
  • Cryptid Episode:
    • Daggett meets "Big Byoo-tox".
    • "Fish Dips" is another.
  • Dead-Hand Shot: The last we see of Edgar the Swamp Witch in "Open Wide for Zombies" is her hand reaching out as she drowns in the swamp.
  • Deconstruction: The series finale was never filmed because it was to include a segment, "Bye Bye Beavers", that broke two of Nickelodeon's rules. One being that a show doesn't acknowledge an episode is the last episode, so kids keep watching and hoping for new episodes, and the other rule being a show doesn't break the fourth wall. "Bye Bye Beavers" did both. However, a recording of the actors reading the script exists online. This episode, even only as audio, is one of the most unique deconstructions ever made. It starts off somewhat normal, with Norbert explaining to Daggett that they're fictional characters in a cartoon, that has just been canceled. The insanity begins when you hear the voice actors laughing as they're reading their lines, and then having a conversation. Norbert and Daggett are talking to each other about how their lives are just a show, joking about common tropes in cartoons, while each character's voice actors are talking to each other about other shows and their future plans. This doesn't just break the fourth wall, it completely deconstructs the show in a bizarre meta way.
  • Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Daggett.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In "The Day the World Got Really Screwed Up", Daggett manages to send the Crawling Spleen away by yelling "Buzz off, spootwad" at it.
  • Disembodied Eyebrows: Most characters in the show have these, especially Daggett.
  • Disney Acid Sequence:
    • Norbert and Treeflower's duet in "Bummer of Love".
    • The entire episode of "Brothers, to the End?"
  • "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Daggett does this often.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?:
    • "Up All Night" has Norbert and Daggett laughing like mad, with half-closed baggy eyes. This was obviously meant to be a result of lack of sleep, but it's really close to stoner behavior.
    • "Slap Happy", where beaver tail slapping (which is something beavers actually do in real life to warn others of danger) and the discussion on not abusing it comes off more as a metaphor for masturbation, leading to this great exchange:
      Norbert: I am a beaver of self-control!
      Norbert's Dad: Ease up, Norb, I heard you slapping before you left home! You used to do it in the bathtub all the time!
      Norbert: I was just washing my tail, I swear!
  • Dub Name Change: In the Dutch dubbed version, Norbert is named Benno, and Daggett is named Boris.
  • Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In the original "Snowbound" pilot, Norbert looks like a yellow version of Daggett. For the rest of the series, he's clearly distinguishable from his brother.
    • In the earliest Season 1 episodes, the animators apparently couldn't decide if Dag had two eyebrows or a unibrow, as it occasionally alternated back and forth. Around Episode 5 seems to be when they finally settled on Dag having just a unibrow.
    • In the debut episode "Born to Be Beavers", Daggett and Norbert's parents had their color schemes swapped. Mom had Norbert's scheme, while Dad had Daggett's.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The credits for Season 1 had no Credits Gags. They began with Season 2.
  • Ending Theme: An organ theme, still upbeat but noticeably different in tone from the brassy opening theme.
  • End-of-Series Awareness: Too much of this is why the final episode, "Bye Bye Beavers", was never completed.
  • Episode Title Card: Each card is accompanied by the recurring theme and an illustration. A few episodes lack the title card sequence.
  • Event-Driven Clock: In "Up All Night". Except it somehow gets unplugged at some point.
  • Everyone Has Standards: In "Brothers...To The End?", Daggett and Norbert, who now have godly powers to create a new world, get in a fight. The entity (credited as The Voice) which gave them the powers seems to side with Dag:
    The Voice: Wha-wha-wha what's happening?! What are you two beavers doing to the world I gave you to create?
    Norbert: Ask my brother! All I said was I didn't like baklava.
    The Voice: You don't like baklava? You...you don't like baklava?
  • Expy: Their father looks like...Drew Carey.
  • "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: "Van-tastic Voyage". The scientists enlarge Daggett to immense proportions in order to explore him.
  • Five Stages of Grief: In the unaired and unanimated episode "Bye Bye Beavers", Daggett goes through the "five stages of being over".
  • Flanderization: Mostly of Norbert, whose kaaahn-vuh-looh-uh-tuhd speech patterns got more exaggerated as the series went on. The characters' personalities remained mostly stable, though, aside from Norbert's ego getting bigger as Daggett's intelligence got smaller.
  • The Fool: Norbert often manages to avoid a lot of painful consequences his brother suffers, sometimes in rather contrived circumstances. This was Lampshaded in an instance the two switch places, and Daggett (supposedly) avoids an Amusing Injury as a result. Granted on many other occasions Norb is an even bigger Butt-Monkey than Dag is.
  • Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Played with:
  • Fountain of Youth: The bark of an ancient tree causes Norbert and Daggett to turn into children in the episode "Act Your Age", complete with having no memory of their grown-up lives.
  • Freudian Slip: In "The Posei-Dam Adventure" when they're singing the Auld Lang Syne parody, Norb says, "left in a dam to die.", reflecting his brother's current situation trapped in the upside-down dam, life in danger.
  • Fridge Logic: Invoked in "The Day the Earth Got Really Screwed Up" when the narrator, Peter Graves, Rage Quits at the end and descends into ranting about how the plot of the episode didn't make sense.
  • Fur Is Clothing: "Sans-a-Pelt" revolves around Norb and Daggett losing their fur after attempting a magic trick and being treated as being naked. They end up encountering some sheared sheep who sing a musical number convincing the brothers (mainly Norb) of the benefits of going naked.
  • Fun with Acronyms: In the episode "Salmon Sez", Daggett doesn't know what it means for fish to "spawn," so he claims that it stands for "Smashing Property And Womping Norb."
  • Gender-Blender Name: The Swamp Witch the brothers encounter in "Open Wide for Zombies" happens to be named Edgar.
  • Goggles Do Nothing:
    • Norbert's helmet in "Muscular Beaver 2" either falls off him before sustaining a head injury or just fails to protect his head at all. This is ultimately subverted at the end of the episode, where Norbert's helmet ends up defeating the giant splinter he and Daggett (as Muscular Beaver) have been fighting.
    Norbert: This... this... HELMUUUUT!!! has been completely, absolutely, positively, and rightfully USELESS!
    • Daggett's non-existent 'invisible' x-ray glasses and Norbert's working x-ray glasses in "Specs Appeal". Ends up reversed - Daggett's x-ray glasses are the ones which work, not to mention literally invisible, while Norbert has the ones which don't work.
  • Gonk: The vast majority of the human cast looks downright hideous.
  • A Good Name for a Rock Band: The wacky word combo sort appears in "Bummer of Love" with Treeflower's band, The Friendly Chartreuse Bubblegum Machine.
  • Got Me Doing It: In "My Bunnyguard", both Daggett and Norbert end up copying Big Rabbit's Brooklyn accent.
    • In "Yak in the Sack", the Yak note  tricks Norb into rhyming like he does, which magically morphs Norb into his brainwashed minion. He tries it with Dag too, but it's Dag.
  • Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: In the opening theme, Norb successfully jumps into the show's logo, while Dag slams into the background, knocking it over.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: El Grapadura, with Norb translating. The episode "Norberto y Daggetto en El Grapadura y el Castor Malo" is entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles.
  • Gravity Sucks: To the point where they manage to escape being pulled into the Sun by damming it with sheet metal and stray satellites. And then there's the gravity from the Earth's core changing not only the beaver's (and Stump's) body lengths but tone pitches as well.
  • Grossout Show
  • Gross-Up Close-Up
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: The episode "Same Time Last Week" has Daggett being repeatedly punched into last week after pissing off Norb. Instead of using this experience to learn from his mistakes, Daggett instead uses it as an opportunity to repeatedly play every prank he can think of on Norb.
  • Growling Gut: Frequently, usually when the Beavers overeat.
  • Halloween Episode: "The Day the World Got Really Screwed Up", in a way. While it actually takes place on October 30th, Daggett attempts to go trick-or-treating with his brother on the day before Halloween in order to get more candy (not realizing that no houses would be ready to give candy yet) and the episode's plot involves the monsters from Oxnard Montalvo's movies coming to life because of an alien creature feeding off of Norb and Daggett's imaginations.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door: The concept of a character repeatedly switching moral sides is parodied with Baron Once-Bad-Then-Good-Then-Bad-Again-Then Good-And-Now-Something-That's-Neither Beaver, Norb's reluctant nemesis/sidekick to Dag's Muscular Beaver.
  • Hollywood Science: Anything those two scientists cook up.
    "Don't ask us to explain, it's haha, science!"
  • Humanity Ensues: The episode "I'm Not An Animal, I'm Scientist #1" ends with Norb, Daggett, and the other animals being turned into human beings.
  • Humans Are Morons: How humans are portrayed in the show. They're shown to be extremely stupid, unable to complete sentences, and basically Too Dumb to Live, both to themselves and to the much smarter Talking Animals.
  • Humiliation Conga: In "Kandid Kreatures", the "nature documentary" the duo star in ends up being this to them. They manage to get revenge on the producer and put him through the same thing.
  • I Am Not Weasel: The beavers are constantly mistaken for other, "pointy" animals by human characters.
  • I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: In "Chocolate Up To Experience", Norb gets addicted to the chocolate bars he's been making Dag sell in order to raise money. He's making Dag sell what appears to be the last remaining bar for two hundred dollars, while he gorges on a warehouse full of the bars. Norb eventually bloats to the point that he needs to be carried around in a wheelbarrow, but Dag does make the money... by selling their entire house. Because "no one wanted to buy a spooty old candy bar for $200."
  • Idiot Ball: Stupidity Potion #237.
  • Insane Troll Logic: In-universe: Stinky Thing + Stinky Thing = NOT SMELLY! note 
  • Instrumental Theme Tune: The theme music does not have lyrics.
  • Insult Misfire: When their sisters are spending the day, Dag and Norb start arguing about how to look after them, Dag with planning and a chart, Norb with a "let them run free" attitude. Dag eventually does this:
    Dag: Structure THIS, chart boy! (Blows a raspberry at Norb) Oh wait I'm chart boy.
  • Intentional Weight Gain: In "Fat Chance", Daggett tries to fatten himself up to prepare for winter. He failed but Norbert manages to fatten up himself accidentally when he was helping Daggett.
  • It's a Wonderful Plot: It's a Spootiful Life. It turns out everyone really would have been better off if Daggett had never been born. He decides he wants to go back anyway. That is, assuming it wasn't all just a dream.
  • It's Always Spring: Most episodes seem to be set in early spring, with little patches of snow strewn about.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Parodied In-Universe with the failed follow-up single to "Beaver Fever", which is literally the exact same song with one word added:
    ♪ He's got that Beaver Fever / More Beaver Fever! ♪
  • "Kick Me" Prank:
    • In "I Dare You", Daggett and Norbert have to complete two dares given to them by the Risk Keeper, with the punishment that both would be stuck wearing signs reading "Kick Me - I'm a stoopy poopy scaredy beaver" on their backs if either of them chickened out. In the end, the brothers put both signs on the Risk Keeper.
    • "Spooky Spoots" has Norb and Daggett use strawberry jam to draw a bullseye and write the words "Kick Me" on the two scientists' backs.
  • Kissing Cousins: Stump has a crush on his cousin Vanity, who was carved into a, well, vanity. At a family reunion, they overcome the objections of her brother Butch (a butcher's table) and get together. To be more specific, Vanity is a distant cousin.
  • Large Ham: Both brothers are not above chewing the scenery and hamming it up. Many other characters do, too. Pretty much everyone actually.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia
    Norbert: I can't remember anything! I must have damnesia, the rare beaver brain trauma that makes you forget everything but what damnesia is!
  • Last of His Kind: In "Endangered Species" Daggett gets a Cranial Eruption from a construction site mishap, which causes the recurring scientist characters to think he is the last of the "Great Horned Beavers", a supposedly Endangered Species.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • Norb spends most of "Un-Barry-Able" trying to get rid of Daggett while he tries to impress Barry and help him find his groove. It eventually turns out Dag's able to find Barry's new groove AND Barry's more impressed by Dag's ease with himself over Norb's desperate attempts to prove he's cool. In short, Barry thinks Dag is cool. Norb has an existential breakdown upon realizing this.
    • Combined with Humiliation Conga in 'Specs Appeal'. After Norb tricks Daggett into letting him have x-ray specs and lets him 'have' non-existent invisible x-ray specs, it turns out Norb's specs fake an x-ray effect, Dag's specs exist, are invisible, and actually work, the brothers lose the working x-ray specs in a fight, and Dag accidentally smashes the working specs once Norb finds them.
  • Last One's Ploy: The episode "Endangered Species" has Daggett mistaken for an extinct species of beaver, which he exploits in order to gain control of the dam. He soon comes to regret it when he realizes that the two scientists assigned to "protect" him keep him cooped up in the dam and under constant study.
  • Leitmotif: For a few characters, including Barry, Treeflower, Bing, and El Grapadura.
  • Look Behind You: In "Three Dag Nite", Norbert distracts some of Daggett's clones by saying "Look, hairless monkeys!"
  • Manchild: Daggett is prone to child-like tendencies, such as complaining about chores.
  • Masked Luchador: One character is a masked wrestler named El Grapadura (Gratuitous Spanish Played for Laughs; this really means "Hard Staple", and it also sounds similar to "grapadora", which is Spanish for "Stapler").
  • Matchlight Danger Revelation: You never actually get to see from Dag's point of view, but when Dag spies on Norb in "Gonna Getcha" from under the floorboards, he keeps noticing bugs and shoving them out the spyhole, until he finally decides to light a match and see where the bugs are coming from.
    Daggett: AAAHH! 4,023 BUGS!
  • Menagerie of Misery: Defied. The episode "Zooing Time" has Norb being sent to a zoo due to being framed for a crime Dag committed, only to see that the zoo is essentially a paradise resort for animals and have the time of his life. Unfortunately, a guilt-ridden Dag believes this trope to be the case and ends up blowing up the zoo, prompting the animals to lock him up in a cage that actually looks like a prison cell.
  • Me's a Crowd: "Three Dag Nite" has Dag getting an "E-Z Clone" oven and using it to create MORE Dags.
    Daggett Clone: Ominous-eeeeeeeee!
    Second Daggett Clone: Ominous-eeeeeeeeeee!
    Third Daggett Clone: Ominous-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
  • The Moving Experience: "Pack Your Dags"
  • Mr. Imagination: Daggett loves pretending to be his favorite superhero, Muscular Beaver. It gets on everyone's nerves initially, so Norbert plays along as a villain to get him to stop. In a later episode, Treeflower joins him as a sidekick, which makes Norb jealous. Eventually, everyone plays along for a theme party.
  • Mythology Gag: In "Un-Barry-Able", Norbert dresses up to look like Dagget to try to win Barry back over since he found his brother "cool". This is a reference to the "Snowbound" pilot, where Norb just looks like a yellow version of Dag.
  • Naked People Are Funny: "Sans-a-Pelt" revolves around the brothers losing all their fur (minus their head fur) after Dag's mishap with an extremely complicated magical spell book.
  • Negative Continuity: A lot of episodes end with the brothers stuck in an unpleasant predicament that's undone by the next episode. Examples include "Long in the Teeth" (where their neglecting to gnaw on something to keep their teeth from becoming too long results in them both being stuck to a tree) and "Fin 'n' Dips" (where they end up eaten alive by and living inside Old Gramps' wife Old Gram).
  • Never Wake Up a Sleepwalker: Played straight as Daggett was told never to wake up a sleepwalker. It makes it tough as Norb is usually playing out scenarios he's watching on late-night B-films and eating loads of junk food in the process.
  • New Job as the Plot Demands: Treeflower often had a new job or hobby every time she appeared and often a change in personality to go along with it. This happened often enough for it to be lampshaded in "Practical Jerks".
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: "Lumberjack's Delight", where after exhausting every other option, Norb decides the only way to save the forest and get rid of the Lumberjacks is via a competition. A tree felling competition. Norb wins, but realizes that in the process, they've felled the entire forest, which the Lumberjacks gladly take with them.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Barry the bear talks an awful lot like Barry White. He sings like him too.
    • The title character from "In Search of Big Byoo-tox" is a hairier Donald Sutherland, even quoting some of his lines about "negative waves" from Kelly's Heroes.
    • And "Deck Poops" features an explicit parody of the Rat Pack.
    • Let's not forget BABA in "Euro Beavers", since that should've been clear who they appear to be.
  • No-Dialogue Episode: "Silent But Deadly", justified in that the beavers have woken up with their bedroom infested with sleeping beaver-eating wolverines. The only real line of dialogue in the episode is thought, as they don't want to risk waking them up by talking.
  • No Fourth Wall:
    • "Bye Bye Beavers" tears it to pieces by having the brothers come to terms with the fact that they are characters in a television show that has ended. Thus, it never aired.
    • Norbert opens the mirrored bathroom cabinet door in "Daggy Dearest", revealing a camera operator.
    • In "Practical Jerks", Daggett refers to the raccoon girl tribe as "those Amazon girl raccoon lady thingies from, uh, 'Mighty Knothead'", referencing the episode title in which they were introduced.
  • Nonstandard Character Design: The Beavers' cousin from "Kreature Komforts", who is just a live-action beaver, and behaves as one.
  • Noodle Incident: In the episode "Slap Happy", the Beavers' father claims that the story of Slap Johnson was made up by their mother because she never forgave him for the bachelor party that was thrown. Slap merely says, "It's okay, it was worth it."
  • No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Daggett gets treated like trash constantly, but is always vilified when he understandably acts out. Perhaps the best example is “Easy Peasy Rider,” in which Daggett goes off on the abusive Norbert, only to have his feelings invalidated by a bunch of bikers who have never had a brother. Another example is “Gift Hoarse,” in which Norbert is gifted a massive train set from their parents while Daggett seemingly gets an air freshener for a car he does not own. Rather than the situation being treated as emotional abuse, it is treated as a petty reason for Daggett to be jealous of his brother. When Daggett finally cracks and destroys the train set, Norbert gaslights him into thinking his actions were motivated by nothing more than pride and jealousy. Another example is “It’s a Spootiful Life,” in which Daggett rightfully feels bullied when Norbert plays embarrassing clips of him for all of their friends to see and laugh at. When Daggett voices his discontent, they try to gaslight him into thinking that they are laughing “with” him. Another example is “Pack Your Dags,” in which Daggett gets deliberately locked out of his own home for insulting the friend group, despite being told by them in the previous scene that they do not love him.
  • Not Hyperbole: In "Same Time Last Week", Norb threats to bop Daggett into last week if he doesn't stop annoying him. As Daggett finds out repeatedly, Norb wasn't joking.
  • One-Hit Wonder: In-universe. Norbert and Daggett never do produce another hit beyond "Beaver Fever" in the episode of that name, and eventually, their spotlight is taken by Barry.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: Parodied in "Fakin' It": Dag is on his deathbed and you can hear one of these chanting random Latin phrases like "Habeas Corpus" and "Quid Pro Quo" and even the lyrics to "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"!
  • Once a Season: Each season, except for the third, has one "Muscular Beaver" episode. The third season has two, but it also has almost twice the amount of episodes the other seasons have.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: In "Spookyspoots", the dam is inexplicably haunted by good, friendly ghosts who cater to the brothers' every whim and let them use portals to teleport around the house. Dag and Norb are quite fond of the ghosts, until the two annoying scientists show up to exorcise the ghosts against Dag and Norb's wishes. They then team up with the ghosts to get rid of the scientists.
  • Out-Gambitted: In "The Big Round Sticky Fish Thingy", Norb tricks Dag into going to Delaware, "a place nobody knows". As Norb's getting away, he didn't expect Dag to construct a "big, wooden, treadmill, thingamabob", which is "the specialty of the proud people of DELAWARE!"
  • Overcrank: "You Promised!" has the brothers fighting over a Lickety Split. When the last one drops out of their reach, things suddenly go into slow motion for way too long.
  • Pants-Pulling Prank: Scientist #1 gets his pants pulled down by the brothers in "Spooky Spoots".
  • Paranoia Gambit: Norbert uses this in "Gonna Getcha". of course, as soon as Norbert explains he was using this, he then proceeds to actually get Daggett back anyways.
  • Parental Favoritism: Both of the brothers' parents apparently favor Daggett. Norbert is far from The Un-Favourite, but he visibly loses his cool whenever Dag's getting pampered.
  • Pimp Duds: The beavers' outfits in "Long in the Teeth" has them looking like pimps.
  • Potty Emergency: Dag's part of "Too Loose Latrine" has him needing to pee and having a hard time relieving himself because he clogged his own toilet and Norb is too busy styling his hair to let Daggett use his bathroom.
  • Press Hat: A ton of reporters can be seen wearing Press-credential hats, though these use pins instead of notes.
  • Pyrrhic Victory:
    • In the climax of "Lumberjack's Delight", Norbert finally succeeds in driving away the lumberjacks from chopping all the trees in the forest. The problem? He did so by winning a tree-chopping contest... and the lumberjacks left smugly singing with the entire forest's worth of trees.
    • This also happens in "Sqotters". By Loophole Abuse, Norb tries to trick the otters out of their house so they can reclaim it. Eventually, he and Dag decide that they have to put all of their stuff outside so the otters would leave. The beavers get their house back... but the otters leave with everything in it.
  • Recorded Spliced Conversation: In one episode, the brothers have a bet over who can go the longest without speaking. They both exploit the loophole of being able to communicate using recordings.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Daggett and Norbert.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Stacy and Chelsea. Also, the Beavers themselves when shown as kits.
  • Robotic Reveal: In "The Legend of Kid Friendly", the titular Kid Friendly eventually turns out to be a robot when rubble falls on him and he emerges as a menacing robot.
  • Running Gag: Human characters don't often get the Beavers' species right (either weasels or "pointy bird things"), causing the beavers to correct them every single time. It varies between not knowing the difference or simply not giving a dam, with the scientists falling into the latter.
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: Barry is shown to have a feminine scream in "Three Dag Nite."
  • Sdrawkcab Name: "Dog", whenever it is used in contexts where one would expect "God" instead.
  • Sequel Episode: "Up All Night" had "Up All Night 2: Up All Day. The Reckoning". "Muscular Beaver" Exaggerated this trope and produced four Numbered Sequels!
  • Separate Scene Storytelling: In one episode, all the characters go on a camping trip and play a storytelling game where they get to tell part of a story for a set amount of time (the rules being that it has to be about the main characters or the antagonists in some way). Each "chapter" has its own art style. It starts out as a spy thriller (Norbert) and ends as a 90s Magical Girl anime (Treeflower).
  • The '70s: Tends to pop up occasionally, whether through music, fashion, or Barry Bear. And it's so well done, it doesn't seem at all out of place. In fact, it adds to the show's charm.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Pass It On"
  • Shout-Out:
    • The camera panning up dramatically as an epic score plays revealing Daggett (in his superhero alter-ego) overlooking the forest from the top of a cliff is taken from the ending of Tim Burton's Batman (1989).
    • Barry the Bear's doorbell is James Brown's famous "HEY!" from his hit song, "I Got You (I Feel Good)".
    • Norb also does the Captain Kirk voice. Quite a few times.
    • Any number of B movies, especially in the episode "The Day the Earth Got Really Screwed Up", which parodies the heck out of those things, yet manages to be really cool.
    • To 2001: A Space Odyssey when the beavers find the monolith while in space...and promptly use it to build their gravity dam.
    • "Oh, what a fool I was!" which is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.
    • Norb carves a statue of Treeflower looking like Princess Leia in one episode.
    • The "cyclops" in "Friends, Romans, Beavers!" is one big shout-out to Ray Harryhausen, between being a Roman monster and his unusually abrupt manner of moving to mimic stop-motion animation.
    • Norbert's hairdo in the soccer episode is highly reminiscent of Carlos Valderrama
    • Regular shoutouts to Charlton Heston movies, especially Ben-Hur and Planet of the Apes. The "damned dirty apes" quote is used at least twice.
    • In "What's Eating You?", when Norb, Dag and Stump are trapped in a cave system that leads to the center of the Earth, Norb outright acknowledges that "it's a homage to Jules Verne"
    • Treeflower's story in "Pass It On" features Norb looking like Astro Boy, and, before transforming into a Magical Girl form, Treeflower's schoolgirl look is a reference to A-ko Magami.
    • "Dagski and Norb" parodies Starsky & Hutch.
    • "Tough Love" opens with Daggett playing with a novelty hat of El Grapadura that can open and close his legs. When Norbert walks in between the leg space that Daggett is looking through, he proceeds to "crush" Norbert with them. "Crush crush crush crush crush!"
  • Shown Their Work:
    • Every once in a while something that is in fact true about real-life beavers is thrown at you, like the already mentioned Tail-Slapping.
      • The third eyelids mentioned in the Staring Contest (Stare and Stare Alike) and the slave-for-a-day (You Promised) episodes on the other hand do exist: they're the "nictating membrane" and the primary function in beavers is to protect the eyes while they are diving underwater.
      • The fact that a beaver's front teeth do indeed continue growing throughout their lives is true. And, yes, beavers do need to constantly chew on things to wear the teeth down, or else their teeth really will grow through their skulls and kill them.
      • The episode "Sqotters" involves river otters claiming the beavers' unoccupied home, which does happen in real life.
      • Beaver dams can prevent salmon from traveling upstream during spawning season, which is the main premise of Salmon Sez. But the ponds associated with the dams can also provide nurseries for the salmon (as the beavers find out at the end of the episode).
      • Norb's "European beaver" phase in "Euro-Beaver" isn't something he made up; there actually is a species of beaver that lives in Europe and it's called the Eurasian beaver, the only other extant species of beaver beside the North American beaver.
      • In "The Posei-Dam Adventure" Daggett tells Truckee that beavers can hold their breath for 15 minutes, which also applies to beavers in real life.
    • In "Moby Dopes" Camu would occasionally beach himself on land to catch prey just like real orcas.
  • Sibling Rivalry: Norb and Dag vacillate between this and "BIIIIG HUG!!"; their sisters, in contrast, get along very well.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: No matter what the subject, the two brothers usually wind up on opposite ends of it.
  • Space Is an Ocean: In "Mission to the Big Hot Thingy", the Beavers watch a video comparing their imminent doom of being pulled into the sun by gravity with a boat being pulled by a swift river current. They take this analogy literally and do what beavers would do in the river scenario. They build a giant dam to cut off the Sun's gravity! Which in turn cut the gravity from all other planets and the heat it provides to them, leaving Earth into an Ice Age as they swim their spaceship back.
  • Sphere Eyes: Norbert.
  • Status Quo Is God: For the most part. A few elements, such as the Muscular Beaver mini-arcs, were revisited from time to time.
  • Stupid Scientist: Scientist #1 and Pete.
  • Stylistic Self-Parody:
    • A throwaway line in "Slap Happy":
    Norbert: Daggett Beaver, I do not believe my ears that look like fins on my back!
  • Stylistic Suck: The beavers love terrible B-movies, and they even make one. And yet Animation Bump. The movies in question are drawn much more realistically than the rest of the show.
    • The beavers occasionally daydream in poorly animated colored pencil thought bubbles.
  • Sudden Anatomy: The beavers only have webbed toes when swimming.
  • Superhero Episode:
    • Anytime Muscular Beaver shows up. Dag deludes himself into thinking he's a superhero, with awesome tools like the Cloak of Limited Invisibility ("it's just nearly visible!")
    • Also, the dramatic score playing as the camera pans up to reveal Dag standing atop a cliff overlooking the forest seems oddly familiar...
    • Everyone gets in on it in one episode. And Bing shows up a few times as "Most Potent Bug".
  • The Talk: Parodied in "Salmon Sez", where the brothers find out that the salmon are showing up at their house because it is blocking their path to spawning. Daggett assumes "spawn" to be an acronym for "Smashing Property And Whomping Norb" when Norb asks him what spawning means. After Norb is able to make peace with the salmon, he whispers the real meaning of spawning to Daggett, who is disgusted.
  • Taxonomic Term Confusion:
    • "Long in the Teeth" incorrectly refers to rabbits as rodents, when in reality they are of the lagomorph, not rodent, order. Of course, in that same episode, it shows all sorts of animals growing giant teeth, including, IIRC, a frog and a deer. So perhaps their grasp of taxonomy should be taken with a good heapin' pinch of salt.
    • In "Deck Poops", daddy longlegs are incorrectly referred to as bugs or insects (they're arachnids).
  • Tempting Fate: The episode "Beaver Master". A warrior keeps reappearing every time Dag and Norb utter, "That's the last we'll see of him!" Norb eventually lampshades this. They both start using it to their advantage... at least for a plan they thought would work. Even after learning this, they still willingly tempt the phrase when they think they've actually won (twice) only to be proven wrong.
  • Terminator Impersonator: Kid Friendly from "The Legend of Kid Friendly" shares some traits with the Terminator, namely in his true form being a skeletal robot and the way he rebuilds himself at the end of the episode being very similar to how the Terminators regenerated after being blown apart.
  • Through a Face Full of Fur: In "I Dare You", Norbert turns blue after sipping on a jalapeño slushie on a dare by Daggett and this causes the reaction of his head swelling up as the result of brain freeze and burn.
    • Daggett in "Guess Who's Stumping To Dinner". After he was mailed to Antarctica, he returns to the dam blue and covered with frost, as some pesky penguins follow him before he drives them back out and away.
  • Tinkle in the Eye: In "Daggy Dearest", baby mongoose Gary at one point pees in Norb's face while Daggett is changing his diaper.
  • Toilet Humor:
    • "Gonna Getcha" has Norb get mad when Daggett accidentally farts on him and swears that he'll get even with his brother. After Daggett spends the rest of the episode paranoid about how his brother will pay him back, Norb catches Daggett off-guard with a surprise party and then gets his revenge by farting on his brother.
    • "Too Loose Latrine" has Daggett begging and screaming for Norb to let him use the second bathroom after clogging their toilet, Dag ends up urinating in the lake their house was formerly afloat on.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Dag on MANY occasions puts himself and his brother in peril because of his idiocy, this bad behavior slowly infects Norbert as the series goes on.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Usually wood, with a special mention to "Lickety Splits". Also jalapeños. They also like a drink called "Yahoo."
  • Two Shorts; Every episode consisted of two 11-minute shorts.
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Norb & Dag's parents.
  • The Unapologetic: A couple of Labcoat-wearing scientists frequently cause inconveniences for Norbert and Daggett. They don't apologize for anything they do, because they do it in the name of science!
  • The Unintelligible: Scientist #1's sidekick Pete is somewhere between this and The Speechless.
  • Universe Bible: Right here.
  • The Unreveal/What Happened to the Mouse?: The manservant in "The Day the World Got Really Screwed Up". At the end of the episode, Norbert says there was no manservant, and asks Daggett to explain. Daggett begins playing a video...and then the show instantly cuts to the end of his explanation. All the viewers see is the other characters reacting to the explanation, and one person commenting "And to think they did it without using their...tongues."
  • Unstoppable Rage: Dag had a pretty nasty temper, and Norb wasn't too far behind, either.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Daggett often uses "spoot" as a family-friendly expletive.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Daggett seems to love it when the parents visit and doesn't at all mind the fact that his mom is a secret agent or that his dad likes to hang out around him and Norbert a little too much, while Norbert tends to be a little paranoid or skeptical. Could be part of the reason Dag's the favorite.
  • Unwanted Assistance: Daggett's attempts at superheroics in "Muscular Beaver" only cause trouble for the people he's trying to help. He gets a bear trying to fish eaten by a gigantic fish, bothers a mother bird by convincing her hatchlings that they can fly just by jumping off a cliff, and gets a raccoon in trouble when he steals food from a family picnic and the family ends up blaming the raccoon.
  • Urine Trouble: "House Broken" has Daggett grossed out when he sees that the trees he was going to gnaw on had just been peed on by a coyote.
  • Verbal Tic:
    • Norbert's odd habit of adding extra syllables, especially with diphthongs and silent Es: "The beäver gargle of achë!" Daggett likes to "Eeeh" and say "dot dot dot" out loud. Sometimes they'll use each other's tics, too.
    • Daggett also has a tendency to perform an action while saying out loud what the action is. For example, when he "flies" as Muscular Beaver, he yells "Whoosh!", and at least once, he storms out of a room while saying the words "Muttering angrily..." in an angry, muttering tone.
    • Norbert especially loves to deliberately mispronounce words, which gets Daggett doing it, too. Some of the words Norbert mispronounces throughout the series: "entertainment" (enter-tan-e-ment), "speak" (spee-ak), "beaver" (beev-wawr with French inflection, or bee-ah-ver), and "buttocks" (byoo-tocks).
      • This is eventually lampshaded when Norb pronounces movie as "MYOO-vee" throughout the episode "Dag for Night". Then when he finally pronounces it right, Dag calls him out on it.
    Norbert: Some of your injuries may never heal properly, but we will always have made our MYOO-vee, the greatest MYOO-vee ever made! Say it with me, Daggett. The greatest MYOO-vee ever made!
    Daggett: The heck's a moo-vay?
    Norbert: You'll see.
    Scene changes to show the brothers watching TV on their couch. Norbert yawns.
    Norbert: This is boring. Let's watch our movie again!
    Daggett: I thought it was a MYOO-vay.
    Norbert: I never said that...
  • Villain Song: Parodied in "Spooky Spoots", where Scientist #1 sings about his intention to exterminate every ghost in existence to the tune of In the Hall of the Mountain King. He slips up a little as the song goes on and gives up singing lyrics because he doesn't like the song.
  • Visible Boom Mic:
    • In the episode "The Loogie Hawk".
    • The "Food of the Clods" episode, which frequently shows Norb watching 1950s B-movies, invokes this by showing a boom mic visible in shots.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: The titular duo. Even though they're brothers, their relationship oozes this trope. The show's opening even highlights it.
  • Wave of Babies: The beavers' dam is flooded with baby salmon at the end of "Salmon Sez", after they help salmon going upstream to spawn.
  • Will They or Won't They?: Norb and Treeflower, though considering the Status Quo Is God nature of the series, they probably would have remained Just Friends.
  • Woodland Creatures: The beavers and the other animals, with many episodes revolving around nature in a kooky way.
  • Wraparound Background: Parodied; in "The Big Round Sticky Fish Thingy", Norb tries to get away with the titular "fish thingy" (a rare sturgeon egg) after tricking Daggett into looking for it elsewhere. Norb finds himself going past a repeating background of absurd images, including a reproduction of "Washington Crossing The Delaware", and realizes he's running on a treadmill with a scrolling background hastily constructed by Daggett.
  • Your Mom: After getting chased by dogs in "Born to Be Beavers", Daggett tells them "And your cousin is a three-legged toadstool!"
  • Your Television Hates You: While trying to get his mind off of Dag playing with his bunny dolls in "The Big Frog", Norb decides to watch TV... and gets nothing but shows and ads about bunnies.


Alternative Title(s): Angry Beavers

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The Angry Beavers

Aside from singers singing "Angry Beavers" briefly, the theme song does not have lyrics.

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