Western Animation / The Crumpets

The Crumpets is a Adobe Flash-animated series from France that debuted on Canal+ Family on December 21, 2013. Very loosely based on the Petit Dernier and Petite Pousse children's Picture Books written by Didier Lévy and illustrated by Frédéric Benaglia, and produced by 4.21 Productions, the show follows the lives of the eponymous family, headed by adoring lovebirds Ma and Pa Crumpet, who are an inventor and stay-at-home gardener respectively. Also living in the Crumpet household are Pa's crabby 112-year-old, gambling-addicted mother Granny, the family dog T-Bone, and Ma and Pa's 142 children.

Central to the series' focus is the youngest of the Crumpet children, the feisty, headstrong, and outspoken nappy-clad baby, known only as Li'l One. As the runt of such a massive litter, Li'l One is always competing with his numerous brothers and sisters to draw the affections of Ma Crumpet away from Pa's doting. In most episodes, Li'l One attempts a variety of schemes in an effort to get the attention of his mother, usually taking advantage of whatever chaos is engulfing the household that week (typically the result of Granny's latest get-rich-quick scheme or the quirky personalities of his siblings). Among Li'l One's 141 other siblings, only a few receive much screentime, with the most prominent being the tall and sluggish Pfff, the moody Goth Caprice, the immensely strong Triceps, the balloon-headed philosopher Ditzy, the eccentric artist Fynartz, the mischievous twins Bother and Blister, the cowardly Ohoh, and the lion-costumed King. Other characters include the Crumpets' strict neighbor Ms. McBrisk, her rebellious daughter Cassandra (who is Caprice's best friend), Pa's obscenely wealthy brother Uncle Hurry, his snooty wife Aunt Harried, and their fat, nerdy adopted son Cordless.

Although the series is for children and based on a book for very young children (albeit largely In Name Only), even possessing the cutesy and colorful artstyle one might expect from such, the show is notorious for having large amounts of Demographically Inappropriate Humor, Family-Unfriendly Violence, and other other eyebrow-raising material that would be deemed unacceptable were it not for the Values Dissonance between French and American kids' TV (it did air on the same channel as Kaeloo). While this has unsurprisingly hampered the show's distribution in North American markets, The Crumpets has still managed to appear across international TV channels, thanks to distribution on the part of Mediatoon.

Two seasons of the series aired from 2013 to 2014 for a total of 52 episodes. The show then returned in 2015, but underwent a major Retool that further distanced itself from the original books. Between seasons, audience feedback for the first two had revealed to the executives that the show's teen characters were the most popular with viewers. As a result, the series was rebranded as Teen Crumpets and changed the focus to the older Crumpet children (particularly Pfff and Caprice), as well as Cassandra, while adding two new characters in Pfff's Gothic, poetry-loving friend Marylin and bumbling outcast Larry. The show's adult characters were also pushed into the background alongside all the younger Crumpet children. Ironically, many of the infamous What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? elements of the first two seasons were softened for Teen Crumpets. This new version of The Crumpets ran for an additional two seasons and 52 episodes, wrapping up in 2017. However, the series (still as Teen Crumpets) returned one more time in March 2021 in the form of a 26-minute special about International Women's Day.

The original 52 episodes can be viewed on Amazon Prime in the UK. The first twenty episodes dubbed in English (plus "The Mix-Up") are officially available for free on YouTube. A trailer and an English dubbed episode of Teen Crumpets are viewable on the C21Media website.

A character page is available, as is a recap page. There is also The Crumpets Wiki.

Not about a bunch of bread^note except for the show's few jokes on literal crumpets or a 2015 food ad campaign using The Muppet Show characters.

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The show contains examples of:

General

• Adaptation Deviation: In the original Petit Dernier books, Ma and Pa Crumpet start off with 24 children and gain an additional 27 at the very end when the first 24 grow up and leave (minus Li'l One who instead moves in with his friend Grande Copine). By contrast, The Crumpets gives them 142 children, with no newcomers arriving at any point and all of them except Grownboy living with the family.
• Adaptation Name Change: Li'l One was known as Petit Dernier in the original books, although in the original French version he's called "P'tit Der", essentially a shortened version of his literary counterpart's name.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the original books, Li'l One loved both his mother and father, but in The Crumpets TV series, Li'l One only cares for Ma Crumpet and has an attitude towards Pa that ranges between indifferent to hostile.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the original Petit Dernier books, Granny was a typical sweet old lady who adored her granddaughter Petite Pousse — a far cry from the crabby gambler and scheming troublemaker of the cartoon.
• Adapted Out:
  • Early art for the show includes the little girl called Petite Pousse who stars in one of the books as the Distaff Counterpart of Li'l One. She is nowhere to be seen in the final show.
  • In the original Petit Dernier books, Li'l One has a best friend in the form of a young girl named Grande Copine, whom he also attends school with. This character is entirely absent from the books.
• Aerith and Bob: The show contains characters whose names are odd (like Grownboy, Cordless, Triceps) and ordinary (like Isadora, Cassandra and Steve).
• Age Lift: In the original books, all the Crumpet children were about the same age as Li'l One, who was depicted as being old enough to go to kindergarten unlike the diaper-clad infant of the cartoon. The cartoon however portrays them all of being differing ages.
• All Cloth Unravels: In "No Pffuture", Pfff unintentionally catches a thread of his red guitar rug with his foot and unravels it as he walks around his house and the McBrisks'.
  • In "Nu comme Hervé", the loose thread of Cassandra's yellow skirt gets caught in an elevator door. She breaks the thread before it could disintegrate her skirt, which is now short.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Among the animals in the show are pink penguins and brown elephants.
• Anthropomorphic Food: In "Octosquito", the beer yeast syrup brew Pa gives to his sick, big tongued children transforms their heads into the crumpet food. One of Ma's machines revert them to normal and extract the crumpets for food. Bother was already bitten on the head by José and keeps this wound once his head returns to normal.
  • In "Radeau d'ados", when Marylin and Pfff are stranded in the sea and starve, there is a brief sequence depicting them as literal crumpets. Unlike the "Octosquito" example, Pfff is super deformed, Marylin has a Cephalothorax body, and they are noseless.
• Animesque: The show has some anime-influenced visuals demonstrated, like the opening of Ma and Ms. McBrisk's fight in "Amnesia", and when Cassandra screams in shock in the beginning of "Crumpity Pity".
• Art Shift: The art style for a character shifts to a black and white, minimal, and geometric design when they get zapped, though in "Ransoming Dad" the colors stay intact.
  • Many "out-of-world" sequences in season 4 have a higher art quality compared to the past seasons. In "Music-hall thérapie" and "... et bonne année !", there are scenes that switch the art style to a "Día de los Muertos" design.^note Examples of this design are displayed in the portfolio of one of the show's designers.
• Ascended Extra: In the original books, Granny only showed up in the second book, Petite Pousse. In the TV series, she's one of the most regular characters of the first two seasons.
• Ash Face: When someone is caught in the radius of an explosion, they may consequentially appear coated in black ash.
• Beach Episode: Pool variant: "Dried Water" takes place during a global shortage of water. The Crumpet kids swim in their flooded house, which is storing the water stashed by Hurry and Harried.
  • "Pudeur et tremblements" has the teens partying in a body of water, and they are accompanied by the German pen pals (who go Skinny Dipping). Marylin poorly participates the party due to his dislike of the pen pals getting Caprice and Cassie's attention and his fear of drowning.
• Big Fancy House: Hurry and Harried's residence is one big mansion.
• Big Red Button: Granny presses one in the house's hidden security room so that the house transforms into a robot in "Pong! The Menace!".
  • "Force et honneur": The nuclear device held by the blue nose faction has one. Larry inadvertently steps on it immediately after Caprice and Cassie make peace.
• Bizarchitecture: The Crumpets' house. An odd towering structure with disjointed roofs, a variety of windows, a network of balconies, and a giant windmill.
  • Grownboy's house. It's a residential structure on top of a high rise in the city, and it has a bus and train attached.
• Blank White Eyes: Usually shown when a character gets surprised.
• Bloodless Carnage: As of seasons 1-3, blood isn't depicted in acts of violence, except in "Octosquito" when José dies and splatters black ink. This doesn't count the instances of fake blood.
• Book Ends: At the beginning and ending of "My Family's Full of Losers", Li'l One looks at his parents together in their bed and whines, calling it "horrible". First, through their bedroom door's keyhole, and last, through a scope when he's on the moon.
  • "Troc de trucs" begins and ends with birds pecking a flowerbed in the greenhouse.
  • "Un vers de trop" begins and ends with Marylin throwing a fit due to his friends not liking his lyrics.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The word "human" is used in spite of the show's humanoid characters not resembling actual humans.
• Canon Foreigner: With the exceptions of Ma and Pa Crumpet, Li'l One, and Granny, all the characters in the cartoon were absent from the original Petit Dernier books and entirely created for the series.
• Camping Episode: "Li'l One All Alone" has all the Crumpets except Li'l One and Granny camping in the forest. Their shelter is an inflatable replica of the house.
  • "Enfermés en forêt" is about the teenagers taking Cordless to the forest in an attempt to cure his addiction on electronics and the internet. Ironically, Caprice endorses this trip in spite of complaining of the lack of internet reception in the previous Camping Episode. Unfortunately, after Caprice lets Larry wonder off, the gang would find themselves lacking food and a proper tent.
• Cartoon Creature: The "human" race in the show is primarily differentiated from real humans by their squeaky pink or blue noses (also shared with certain creatures in the show), a philtrum line from nose to mouth, and pale skin (darker skin also exists). To the face, it's a bit reminiscent to certain mammals such as rabbits, otters, or weasels. The episode "Hairifying" shows that they naturally have as much hair as humans do. Their three-toed feet, more unusually, are either sloped and stubby (Li'l-One, King, Ma, and "Acne Dents Happen" Pa) or like that of real humans (most other characters, and perhaps erroneously to "Prehistoric Crumpets" Pa). Most characters don't have visible ear structures, but others like Bother, Ohoh, and King have transparent swirl-like ears; when viewing the former two's paper toy templates they appear to be stylized human ears.
• Chainsaw Good: Chainsaws are a recurring prop and weapon, especially for Granny, as she tries to kill Renato in "Croco-Deal" and when she harms Pa in "Murder Everywhere". Heck, there's a horror movie called Werezombies and Chainsaws.
• Cheeky Mouth: The characters may show these when viewed from the side.
• Clothing Switch: Happens between L'il-One and King in "Sticks Stink" in an agreement that lasts 24 hours, because the former thinks the family is plotting against him due to a no diaper sign in a hallway. Although King was reluctant at first, he would take great advantage of the Clothing Switch at L'il-One's expense.
  • Caprice and Cassandra do this in "Quasi Cassie" when they Swapped Roles.
• Concert Climax: A concert with the stage being the roof of the McBrisk house lodged between the halves of the Crumpet house, with Pfff playing the guitar and Cassandra singing, occurs at the ending of the Series Fauxnale "Sound The Alarm". Caprice initially sings but gets pulled down by Cassie from the roof to the interior of the McBrisk house with Ms. McBrisk, because Caprice betrayed Cassie by lying to Pfff that she wrote Cassandra's poem and rehearsed it so she can entice Marylin, rather than having the poem going only for Pfff.
  • "La photo de la honte" has a concert headed by Rodrigo and Pedro Fennec, a duo Caprice adores. Pa brings them over to cheer up her daughter, who had broke down from Ma confiscating her phone. Marylin and Pfff, who dislike the duo, are forced to go onstage and perform with them, thwarting their objective of avoiding getting affiliated with the duo in any way.
  • "Un vers de trop" has Marylin reunite with the gang and singing his earthworm song again after his membership with the anti-poetry group actually recruited him to Pedro and Rodrigo Fennec's band.
• Continuity Nod: In "My Family's Full of Losers", a commercial for the radioactive acne cream featuring Cordless is broadcast in one of the game show's breaks. Another commercial promotes Hurry and Harried's Paymeism.
  • In "Crumpity Pity", Cassandra assumes at her mother if she had missed a date with "Furious Bull".
  • "Li'l One All Alone" has a couple. Li'l-One eats cocoa-patches and also shouts "You're dead" during his home alone time.
  • "Love à faire": Ditzy's love on Larry is raised up when Marylin and Pfff convince Larry to break up from Triceps.
• Cool Car: Ma and Pa's eccentric red car.
  • Uncle Hurry's huge black convertible.
• Courtroom Episode: "Belief Relief" and "The Divorce" have court scenes. "Acne Dents Happen" has a very brief one regarding Cordless' radioactivity.
  • In "Rat de marée", once the flood in the Crumpet house is over, Triceps blames Marylin's pet mouse for causing the near-fatal flood and sets up a court trial against Marylin and Caprice, who are left stranded on the failed elevator. The courtroom is a big room where the stalled elevator is visible.
• Covers Always Lie: The thumbnail for the show on the myCANAL website features a girl named Petite Pousse who appears in one of the books that inspired the show, but not in the show itself.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In "The Terrible Teens", a teenage-minded Pa picks a fight with his brutally powerful daughter Triceps. Guess who screams in pain right at the start.
  • In "Va te catcher vilain !", Caprice and Cassandra, who are substituting Triceps in the wrestling match, are easily defeated by their giant opponent.
• Denser and Wackier: The Petit Dernier books are simple picture books for very young children with a light, whimsical tone — cutesy stuff compared to the notoriously unhinged animated series that came out of them.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: Characters like Li'l One, Ditzy, and Cassandra sometimes have floating eyebrows.
• Documentary: When Ma watches a tape called Heroic Females in "Croco-Deal", there's a narrative about a charging rhinoceros getting kicked by a mother giraffe. The same Show Within a Show documentary returned for a few episodes.
• Dysfunctional Family: The Crumpets, in part by Granny and Li'l One creating trouble, Ma's occasional negligences, and other flawed children. Ms. McBrisk frequently complains of their unruliness, especially if they violate her boundaries.
• Eek, a Mouse!!:
  • Caprice freakishly reacts that there's mice in "Ghost In The Attic" where it's actually the twins sneaking between her legs. Averted later in that episode when she looks at an actual captive mouse prior to the voodoo ceremony and finds it cute.
  • In "Rat de marée", after it went missing, Marylin's mouse was found scaring a bathrobed Ms. McBrisk in her kitchen.
• Elongating Arm Gag: In "Taxidermama", Ms. Mc Brisk extends her arm to grab a hose offscreen before she intentionally damages a lawnmower by spraying it.
• Faceless Masses: Most Crumpet children are background, red haired people with simple clothes, different hair styles, and varying facial features. They're usually behind the main characters and are absent in some family gatherings. They also appear as crowds in non-family events such as concerts.
• Family Title
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: It's supposed to be a kids show, but there is some graphic violence in the form of birds getting shot and a machine gun shooting attempt at the Crumpets in darkness, as examples. It's minimized in season 3 but slightly ramped up in season 4.
• Fashion Magazine: Gloser, which often features Cradley Booper and the Weather Girl and plays a role in few episodes like "Greener Pastures".
• Fictional Video Game: Granny's 8-bit games on her laptop.
  • Maxi Monsters Wars, an action side-scrolling platformer in the Teen Crumpets episode "Insectator".
  • The MMORPG played by Cordless and his female friend in "Game lover".
• Flashback Cut: In "Save Granny", Pa compares his situation of Granny throwing flowerpots at him to the humiliation in his childhood when Granny took his socks after losing a game of Battleship and him having to wear flamingo pink dancer tights to school.
  • There are two consecutive ones when Cordless remembers Caprice bullying him in "Disassister".
  • "Troc de trucs" has a few of these where a young Caprice plays and damages her ragdoll.
• Foreshadowing: When Granny is about to babysit Renato in "Croco-Deal", she dreams of cutting and selling or processing parts of the crocodile into clothing and accessories so she can get rich. Ma would skin Renato into the clothes she wears at the episode's ending.
  • The gnome in "The Mix-Up" keeps switching the hand holding its axe.
  • In "Auto-graff", the final clip viewed in the camera features the running shadow of a caped girl.
• Four-Fingered Hands: The humans have four fingers and three toes. However, the Crumpets' attic contains a skeleton with five fingers and four toes.
• Grossout Show: The show has a number of disgusting moments, including but not limited to Li'l One's potty issues, T-Bone peeing, and farting teen boys in one episode.
• Growling Gut:
  • In "The Terrible Teens", the stomachs of the Crumpet children growl right after Ditzy suspected that something's forgotten. Their father was fainted by a light bulb electrocution and failed to feed them lunch by 3 pm.
  • In "Inside Li'l One's Brain", when Granny invites Ma and Cassandra for breakfast so she can "read a story" to the sleeping Li'l One (and eliminate Pa while he is inside Li'l One's brain), the stomachs of Ma and Cassandra instantly growl simultaneously.
  • In "Bulles de palme", the stomachs of Grownboy's giraffe and elephant growl when they're with Caprice outside the house.
  • In "Les sur-vivants", Caprice's stomach growls once when she and Cassie are the last members of the survivalist group who aren't hallucinating or captured by a hallucinating Triceps.
• Handguns: Ma fires a starting pistol twice during Triceps' reshuffle of the house in "Shake It Up", hitting a total of three birds.
• Harmless Electrocution: Some cases of electrocution aren't pretty harmful. One aversion is in "The Terrible Teens", where electricity dramatically alters personalities.
• Hippie Van:
  • In "Road Stories", Granny and Caprice embark on their world trip with a hippie van. Once they decide to fake their trip for a reality TV show, they utilize their van hidden in the woods and use backdrops to pretend they're somewhere very distant from home.
  • Also, Damon Grobain's abandoned van in the Teen Crumpets episodes, which becomes a hangout spot for the teens in the first episode.
• Idea Bulb: The show uses cogwheels instead of a lightbulb, which pop above a character as they come up with an idea.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: At some scene transitions, the screen is populated with genericized copies of the Crumpets' heads saying a phase or demonstrating an effect suited for the situation. One recurring quote is "What's next! What's next!".
• In Name Only: The Crumpets has very little in common with the original Petit Dernier book and its sequel Petite Pousse that inspired it. Asides from the fact almost the entire cast of the cartoon is absent from the books (and even then, those who were in the books often have little in common with their cartoon counterparts), the two works are complete opposites in terms of tone - Petit Dernier is soft, fluffy, sweet fare perfect for toddlers and preschoolers, while The Crumpets is a manic, sadistic, and cynical piece loaded with dirty humor and unhinged plotlines. And this is disregarding the Retool to Teen Crumpets, which makes the show even more In Name Only.
• Instant Web Hit: In "CrumStep", the video of the dance concert that Caprice shares online becomes viral, and the episode's second half deals with L'il-One's and Granny's new fame and the show business Caprice has to manage and host. The siblings adore the famous duo so much, they have to be separated from them, and they clamor even the filthiest objects the duo interacted.
  • Caprice's shocking web picture postings in "A Grave Affair" grant her thousands of likes, despite that she begins from having no likes at the start of the episode.
  • In "The Clip", an accidental video of Larry singing in a penguin suit near an elephant in the bathroom becomes viral, even though the gang intends to film a different video.
  • In "Dans tes dents", Caprice suddenly breaks silence to her friends by rapping while she's supposed to be filmed for Marylin's new song. The clip earns 66,666,666 views and 66,666,666 likes.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The bedroom of Ma and Pa is known as the "Do Not Disturb Room".
• iPhony: Granny's laptop comes with a logo being a fruit-styled letter C.
• Jagged Mouth: The mouths of characters are sometimes jagged. Marylin makes a distinctive smile with one.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: "Inside Li'l One's Brain" chronicles Pa's trip to his youngest son's brain so he can search and fix the culprit behind his refusal to potty train. Not to mention Cassie accidentally warps to T-Bone's brain instead of Pfff's, where she would destroy his obsession with the weather girl.
  • "Quotient H" has a variant that is an abstract form of remembering. When Cassie looks at her mirror while panicking that her friends and mother have perceived her as stupid, her reflection becomes a Living Shadow and transports her to her brain's interior (which is dark unlike the brains in the other episode). Cassie stumbles upon a keyhole in her brain that reveals the answer to her worries, Cordless' flawed IQ test that she and most of her friends had participated.
• Love Triangle: In "The Courting Of Ms. McBrisk", Cassandra has an attachment with Marylin even though her friend Caprice deeply admires him. Upon Caprice's discovery of the secret relationship, the two girls fight once and resume in the mud outside. It's resolved at the ending as Cassie, who holds on the ladder of Cradley Booper's helicopter, allows a fainted Caprice to replace her for Marylin.
  • Cassandra's rivalry with the weather girl over Pfff, notably in "Granny Strip", "Super Pfff" and "Pity The Prize". The story for "Super Pfff" keeps alternating which girl is inevitable, but at the end the car-trapped weather girl stays near Pfff and Cassandra is accidentally transported away by helicopter.
  • "Nez à nez" contains one where Ditzy has trouble picking her crush Marylin or her new friend Larry. Another triangle with Caprice and Ditzy fighting for Marylin can count if Caprice's defense of Marylin is not just driven by her defense of her fashion work on Marylin, but also for any romantic interests on him.
  • "Game lover" also develops one where Marylin, who is tasked by Cordless to pretend to be himself on meeting his MMORPG female friend as he awaits his t-shirt washed, builds a romantic interest on that woman at the chagrin of Caprice.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: There's 141 of L'il-One's siblings. A significant step up from 50-something siblings in the first Petit Dernier book.
• Medium Blending: The wallpaper in King's bedroom uses a "real-world" photo of a jungle.
  • The Spanish sardine fan/twirly twirlita and octopus pictures seen during the bait designing in "Octosquito", the fish in Ditzy's bedroom wallpaper, the "real" humans in Triceps' wallpaper, the class picture background in "The Courting Of Ms. McBrisk", the objects in a Hurry shot in "Belief Relief", the posters in Ma's workshop, and the meteorite's texture in "Prehistoric Crumpets" are also realistic looking.
  • In "Octosquito", the heads of the Crumpet children that are in the form of the crumpet food are based on real pictures of the food.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Lampshaded in "Disassister" as once the plane-piloting King rescues Grownboy's animals from being transported to a lab, he desires having the pink penguins move to Africa. However, the plane would crash just outside the Crumpet house.
  • In "Odeurs corp", the teen girls and Cordless' runaway van comes across a flamingo and a pink penguin in the forest.
• Mosquito Miscreants: In the beginning of "Octosquito", a swarm of mosquitoes enter the house just as Pa conducts a choir rehearsal with his children. After he slaps himself of the mosquito, his kids slap themselves too.
  • In "Enfermés en forêt", when the gang are sleeping inside the tent, a swarm of mosquitoes appear. Triceps and Caprice accidentally slap each other while the latter thinks there's a mouse inside.
• Musical Episode: Many episodes contain songs sung by characters, notably Pa during seasons 1 and 2. In Teen Crumpets, the songs are more prominent but Marylin usually has the helm. The episode "Music-hall thérapie" is a full-fledged musical episode besides its non-musical scenes.
• Nakedpeople Are Funny: Nude characters typically appear for comedic situations, such as L'il-One losing his nappy and the crowd that is left naked at the ending of "Save Granny".
• Negative Continuity: The show goes like this for many events, especially when something substantial happens to the house or any character (including fame). However, the radioactive acne cream, which is tested and destroys the Crumpets' house in its own episode, is promoted in-universe in "My Family's Full of Losers". Few early episodes like "The Courting of Ms. McBrisk" and "Crum-Step", as well as Caprice's romantic obsession with Marylin, are part of continuity.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The picture of the retirement community from "Shake It Up" is also a promotional picture for the in-universe movie Dirty Papy in Teen Crumpets.
• Nightmare Sequence: In "Sticks Stink", when L'il-One sleeps on King's bed, he dreams of an African landscape hit by falling bombs, followed by skeletal ghosts that look like King rising up in a red sky.
  • In "Lil Wrinkly One", L'il-One has one after Ma says Granny's forthcoming child can go in her tummy hatch.
  • "La capuche mortelle" opens with Marylin's Gothic dream running into a nightmare due to a hooded ghost in it. Most of his friends would get frightened by the same hooded ghost appearing in their dreams.
• One-Neighbor Neighborhood: Only the McBrisks have been the neighbors to the Crumpets. Their smaller, blocky house is the only one located near the Crumpets.
• Pilot: There was one from 2011 centering on Li'l One's birthday.
• Pinball Gag:
  • In "Granny's Twin Sister", a rocket-fired T-Bone collides the parents' balcony door and bounces over the house roof like a pinball, with sound effects.
  • Ohoh in "Supernawak" gets launched by Cordless' slingshot and bounces inside the Crumpet house like a pinball, also with sound effects.
  • When Pfff plays an electric guitar at the ending of "L'ADN à Pa", the speakers' loud noise forces out the hiding twins, who bounce in the room like pinballs.
• Potty Emergency:
  • In "Gambled Gables", Caprice has one while working for one of the KGC fast food drive thrus. Her Aunt Harried points that the employment contract grants a two minute break every 64 hours.
  • In "Force et honneur", Marylin, who feels empathy to Caprice, Pfff and Triceps despite of a clash over the abandoned van, worries that they're suffering from the heat under Cordless' microwave weapon. He delivers them plenty of water bottles whom the Crumpets immediately consume. The water bottles turn out to be an annoyance against the three Crumpets as they spawn an urge to use the bathroom.
• Recycled Animation: The show reuses character animations now and then. It's a tad more noticeable with the longer-used main character Caprice, in which one of her animations has her spawn a fifth finger.
• Retool: The show underwent this in Season 3 when Executive Meddling requested the series' protagonists be switched from Li'l One to Caprice and Pfff, renaming the series Teen Crumpets.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The ball-shaped puppies, including the ones Grownboy owns.
• Ruder and Cruder: Those expecting the infamous amounts of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? moments the cartoon is known for would likely be quite disappointed to learn the original books have none of that.
• Running Gag:
  • Any time someone rides the spinning clothes rack wheel at rapid cycles.
  • In "Acne Dents Happen", Ohoh getting scared of a fly.
  • Grownboy's pets dying or lost, followed by his grief.
  • Uncle Hurry's helicopter crashing.
  • In "Road Stories", Pa admiring Caprice and Granny on TV multiple times, annoying his wife.
  • The cast not knowing Larry's name and their asking for it in the Teen Crumpets episodes.
  • "One Man chien" has T-Bone loving to chew the medieval play's halberd prop, which is bothersome to the prop's holder.
• Sadist Show: People's misfortunes, especially with Li'l One, Caprice and Granny, fuel a great proportion of the show's humor. No one dodges absolute misery by the end of most episodes.
• Shout-Out: One of L'il-One's plushes is undoubtedly an UglyDolls character.
  • The Wicked Witch of the West is mentioned to demand the ransom in the forged letter in "Ransoming Dad".
  • Cordless has a Space Invaders t-shirt. More sprites from the videogame appear in Teen Crumpets.
  • In "Save Granny", when Pa chases Granny for her laptop, there's an arcade Pac-Man styled shot showing them in a Pac-Man maze. In "Gambled Gables", Cordless proposes an arcade and explicitly wants a Pac-Man game in the Crumpets' house. A man seen on television as the power goes off in "Acne Dents Happen" and in the show in "Road Stories" has a Pac-Man t-shirt.
  • In "Booty for Beauty", the words "Fifty Shades of Grey" are heard.
  • Pfff's bedroom mentions parodies of real bands, such as a poster reading "RAGE CRUMPET THE MACHINE".
  • One of the items the Crumpet children trade with Granny for cocoa-patches in "Lil Wrinkly One" looks like a Nintendo DS or 3DS. Cordless also plays a similar gadget.
  • In "Disassister", Marylin calls Grownboy's crocodile "Wally Gator".
  • Apple iPods appear in "Going Viral" and "Super Pfff".
  • The Mirror Routine scene between Cassandra and the Weather Girl in "Pity The Prize" is a homage to the Bette Midler movie Big Business.
  • "50 nuances de Cassie" has Larry wearing a Mickey Mouse ears hat, holding a Superman portrait, and wearing a Pikachu ears hat and red cheeks.
  • One of the scene transitions in "Dried Water" contains a brief sung rendition of the Superman: The Movie theme.
  • In "Nu comme Hervé", when Caprice accuses Marylin of wearing a leather coat made from animals, there is a diagram that resembles the one on a chalk board in The Simpsons song "See My Vest", but with the coat dripping blood (It's in the picture for the Cruella to Animals trope).
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Seasons 1 and 2 generally fall on the cynicism side. It features characters, some evil, greedy and/or insecure, who (briefly) ruin the family or other people. There's also suicide attempts, an Evil Uncle and Aunt with powerful businesses (who nonetheless usually fail in their schemes), and most animals dying or getting hurt. Although there are episodes that happily end for the titular family, the protagonists Li'l One and Granny (and Caprice and Cassie) may either be unlucky or confront a hellish situation. In season 3, the show leans towards the Lighter and Softer side and more episodes have idealistic endings, yet a lot of cynicism is reserved for Caprice, who frequently receives the Butt-Monkey treatment. Its season finale ending, compared to the rest of the season, is very bleak for Caprice and Cassie. Season 4 TBA.
• Smurfing: Downplayed for "crumpet", which is primarily adapted for Ma and Pa's Affectionate Nicknames, the parodies of real rock music artists in Pfff's posters, and some family pride phrases.
• Solid Clouds: Ditzy's bed is one, which is tethered by an anvil below.
• Space Is Noisy: People on the moon make and hear noises like on Earth.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: This happens in many phone calls, especially between one of the Crumpets and Uncle Hurry, and between Caprice and Cassandra.
• Title Scream: The cast shouts the show's name twice in the opening.
• Toilet Humour: A recurring element in the show. Examples include T-Bone the dog farting bubblegum bubbles, flatulence required to reverse bloating caused by a certain chocolate, Ma getting thrown to a pile of manure, and Li'l One wetting himself.
• Tooth Strip: The characters sometimes have their teeth depicted this way, usually if only the upper teeth is visible and the teeth is not covering the entire mouth.
• Toyless Toyline Character: Although no toys based on the show were produced for sale, there are printable paper toy cutouts of some characters available, including Marylin and Larry for Teen Crumpets. Unfortunately, it appears that L'il-One, Pa, Caprice, Pfff, Triceps, Ditzy, Fynartz, Cordless, and Uncle Hurry and Aunt Harried have none. The Kickstarter for the third season English dub, however, previewed a couple of cutout diagrams that would have been given to backers, including those that never got released to the public.
• Trash of the Titans: Pfff and Caprice's rooms have been depicted as littered. Pfff's room reeks exceptionally in "On se correspond", where it has to be cleaned up before he and Marylin's German pen pals arrive.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: While the show is of French origin, the roads are of right hand traffic, and the ending of "Going Viral" shows that L'il-One flies out of France as seen from space, Scotland Yard is mentioned as a legitimate authority in "Ransoming Dad", the quid is mentioned at times (despite the euro also appearing elsewhere), and all characters in the first and second seasons' English dub have British accents.
• Wingding Eyes: The characters have white hearts as eyes at some moments of attraction.
• World of Jerkass: Many characters are obnoxious jerks, and some others are like that for a while.

The Crumpets

• Adam and Eve Plot: In "Prehistoric Crumpets", the Crumpets and the McBrisks survive a meteor crash that wiped out their homes. Due to the impact site's magnetic ray repelling the rescue efforts, the rest of the episode treats the cast as sole survivors of the incident, with the Crumpets splitting to pro-nature or pro-rebuilding camps led by Pa or Ma respectively. The McBrisks and Pfff hide in an underground shelter and the McBrisks propose reproduction to save the apparently endangered population. The episode even references the Biblical story as the Crumpets witness an instantly grown forest, Pa and Ditzy hold apples, and Pa calls the site a "Garden of Eden."
• Adoption Diss: In "Green Pastures", Hurry and Harried despises Cordless upon comparing him with the kids in the Gloser magazine and finding him ineffective to their business. They look at adopting a better looking child, later treating their runaway niece Caprice as one, until the discovery of their unauthorized appearance in the fashion magazine lead the couple to reconsider and kick their spoiled niece out the house. At the same time, Cordless abandons Hurry and Harried and flees with the helicopter, albeit not transporting Caprice with him. When Hurry and Harried want him or Caprice back, Pa lies to them that they're not in his proximity.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In "Cheep Shot", the intruder identification component of Ma's greenhouse defense system detects Pa because his crouch position looks like a cooked poultry (the system might as well detect any kind and form of bird), although it doesn't shoot him. He returns to the greenhouse one night and the system identifies him as an intruder, leading to his stranding and surrender. The other family members become trapped with Pa once they enter the Gatling gun's perimeter. When Steve, who is searching for Grownboy, arrives to the family in the greenhouse, the system identifies him as a flamingo and tries to shoot him. At the ending, a wounded bird flies in front of the Crumpets and it appears the family is doomed.
  • In "Mum's Double", Ma builds a robot clone of herself that likes to play cymbals rather than being a reliable substitute. It also creates a robot clone of Pa.
• Almost Kiss: In "Pity The Prize", Cassandra and Pfff almost kiss, but it's disrupted because Cassandra gets mistakenly snatched to the weather van as she is disguised as the Weather Girl.
• Amnesia Episode: One that is simply named "Amnesia" in the English dub, which is about King getting amnesia after a failed attempt to retrieve his lion costume gets him thrown by the clothing wheel to the McBrisks' lawn. Ms. McBrisk keeps him as if he's her son and names him Ghislain.
• An Arm and a Leg: Granny cuts the arms of several "werewolf" Crumpet girls in her own horror movie scene in "Hairifying". All in Bloodless Carnage.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: In "Going Viral", the Crumpet children chant "bravo" at the end Granny's memoriam film of Caprice, who despite being alive gets exasperated at this announcement of her "death".
• Ashes to Crashes: In "Murder Everywhere", the ashes of Rudy Swan are missing from his urn after Granny auctioned it. As revealed in her confession, Ditzy found the urn in a kitchen cupboard and poured the ashes to a sugar container by mistake, leading to the hallucinations of the others who ate the "sugar". Once the winner of the auction for the urn arrives, Granny burns the inflatable "Jolly John" to ashes and pours the remains to the urn to substitute the missing ashes, in addition to inserting Rudy's glasses.
• Attack Animal: Ironically, for a girl who hates animals, Caprice commands a small flock of birds to attack the plane lifting the animal cage in "Disassister".
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: José the octosquito creates trouble by sickening the Crumpet kids with his ink. He expands by eating Pa's brew prior to his next attack on the kids, where he bites Bother's crumpet head.
• Auction: Granny often lists items on online auctions to fulfill her greedy missions. In "Taxidermama", on an eBay-like website she places hundreds of Fynartz' paintings she stole for her personal benefit. After Fynartz mows his paintings and modifies the house to resemble Ma, Granny changes her listing to the house and the bidding price skyrockets. The listing is thwarted once Ma duplicates the house across the globe, diminishing its value.
• Babies Ever After: In "Crumpity Pity", Cordless secretly texts his crush Ms. McBrisk under his alias, promising her he'll meet all her needs and big families. Midway, he dreams of having multiple baby McBrisks.
• Balloon Belly: In "Lil Wrinkly One", Granny's belly becomes bloated after she eats some of her chocolate cigarettes she took out of storage. The other characters who eat the confection get these too.
• Banister Slide: King does this on two staircases during his family's chase at him in the beginning of "Amnesia". Li'l-One and the twins also do these in "Li'l Wonder".
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: People breathe without difficulty when they're on the moon.
• Battle of the Bands: After L'il-One and Granny end their partnership as a popular music stage act in "CrumStep", they lead and assemble competing bands for a concert battle. Ma ends the show because the family failed to celebrate her birthday, and all the performers sing for her and return to peace.
• BFG: In "My Family's Full of Losers", Ohoh uses a machine gun to shoot and seemingly kill his siblings in the darkness in a game show round. He fails to eliminate one, although he injured Pfff. When Ohoh is declared winner, he asserts the machine gun is the winner.
• Be Yourself: In "Puppy Love", this is a moral from Caprice's story once she reverts from having the fashion tastes and appreciation of wealthy living like Aunt Harried.
• Bear Trap: In "Croco-Deal", L'il-One puts one in Renato's mouth and goes in it so he can divert Ma's attention to himself. When Granny tries to kill Renato, she inadvertently frees the crocodile. The bear trap catches Granny's head, who keeps it on by the next day.
  • In "Granny Strip", Granny also ends up having a bear trap clung to her head by accident at the ending.
• Beat: When Granny complains that finding and forgiving her ex-boyfriends on the internet would drain her laptop's power in "Granny's Twin Sister", a beat occurs when Li'l-One gives her the charging cord and when she looks at her observers, until she starts saying the names of the men.
• Bedsheet Ladder: Pa and Cassandra use these for their escapes in "The Terrible Teens" and "Family Be Gone!" respectively.
• Big Ball of Violence: The fights among the Crumpet kids in "Family Be Gone!" and between Bother and Blister in "Granny's Twin Sister", as examples.
• Big "NO!": At the very end of "Cheep Shot", this is shouted by the family stranded in the greenhouse, when a wounded bird arrives in front of them and the garden defense system is about to shoot them.
  • This is also shouted by the Scene Transition heads at the climax of "The Terrible Teens" due to Ma's handling of the electrocuting lightbulb.
  • Nearly everyone who showered in the greenhouse in "Hairifying" says this due to the instant loss of their hair.
• Big "SHUT UP!": At the end of "My Family's Full of Losers", all the Crumpet children except Pfff say this to L'il-One when they're on the moon and the latter is complaining at his parents staying in Earth.
  • Happens again at the beginning of "Li'l One All Alone", also towards an angry Li'l-One by the family.
• Birthday Episode: The pilot, "Sticks Stink", "CrumStep", "Murder Everywhere", and "Puppy Love" contain the birthdays of Li'l-One, Ma, Caprice, Granny, and Aunt Harried.
• Bleak Abyss Retirement Home: In "Shake It Up", Ma and Pa refuses to bring Granny to Uncle Hurry's retiree community. Ma tells L'il-One that going to a retirement home is like going to a scrapyard.
• A Bloody Mess: Blister drops red paint to L'il-One during the horror movie showing in "Hairifying".
  • "Shake It Up" has Li'l-One and one poor sparrow getting covered by Fynartz' red paint.
  • In "A Grave Affair", one of Caprice's stunts at her siblings is squirting ketchup at Ditzy's head and body and having her hold a knife. Caprice snaps and shares to social media a picture of Ditzy as if she's fatally decapitated.
• Bowled Over: In "My Family's Full of Losers", a group of pink penguins are the pins struck by T-Bone the ball in a commercial.
  • "Li'l Wonder" has an Imagine Spot where Li'l-One's siblings are bowling pins that get bowled over by his head, when he realizes that his magic tablet can eliminate them.
• Brand X: The Crok! cereal featured in "Girls on Holiday".
• Brick Joke: In "Acne Dents Happen", Ms. McBrisk complains without evidence that it's the 327th time Cassandra left the lights on in their house. At the very end, she complains it's the 328th time.
• British Accents: The English dub of the original 52 episodes has all characters speaking with these and British vocabulary, while some credited voice actors are American and one each is Australian and Canadian. The dub of Teen Crumpets according to the one viewable episode on the C 21 Media website, has the characters speak in American accents due to recasting.
• Cardboard Pal: Caprice owns a cutout of the famous actor Cradley Booper. Cordless uses an picture of its head as the avatar of his dating service alias "Furious Bull". Ms. McBrisk is romantically obsessed with the cutout every time she sees it in "The Courting of Ms. McBrisk" and "Ice Lust".
• Chained to a Railway: Parodied in "Going Viral", as a suicidal Caprice brings and lays on a railway track piece as long as her height. Unfortunately for her, the track's isolation means no train will arrive to kill her.
• Cheesy Moon: In "My Family's Full of Losers', Ms. McBrisk hopes the moon-launched Crumpets will like The Man in the Moon's green cheese.
  • In "Pity The Prize", when Ma is about to throw the Weather Girl, and Pa by accident, to the moon, she unforgivably bids goodbye and wishes to know if the moon's made of cheese.
• Chekhov's Gun: Ma's blender that she builds across "Mum's Double". She splashes its liquid output at robot Ma to prove to the kids she's the real one.
• Clown Car: All members of the Crumpet family (except Li'l-One and Granny, who aren't traveling with them) fit inside their van in "Li'l One All Alone". Ironically, they resemble clowns.
• Clown-Car Base: As most of the Crumpets flee from their house before the meteor impact in "Prehistoric Crumpets", they cram inside T-Bone's doghouse. Their occupancy in the doghouse lasts very briefly before the doghouse lifts above the pile of Crumpets right before impact.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: In "Dried Water", Uncle Hurry, Aunt Harried, Granny, and L'il-One fall to the dehydrated water tank where they sink to the packaging process at the bottom. They're sealed in small dehydrated water packs adorning art of their heads on the packaging.
• Cool Airship: In "Going Viral", Caprice's fans dispatch a blimp that bears her likeness. It rescues their idol from her final apparent suicide attempt.
• Counterfeit Cash: In "Ransoming Dad", Ma produces counterfeit coins with a machine by Granny's request, despite of Ma's reluctance.
• Counting to Three: Although she may count to ten to pressure her daughter to return home, Ms. McBrisk's punishment to Cassandra for her relationship with Pfff in "No Pffuture" is offered by a count to three (including 2.8 and 2.9). At three, she can't force Cassandra inside because the tangled red thread had split their house.
• Crying a River: In the episode "Ransoming Dad", Lil' One briefly floods the room with his tears when he cries about having the blame pinned on him by Caprice for the kidnapping of Pa, shouting that he didn't do it (he actually did, alongside Granny).
• Cue the Flying Pigs: In the beginning of "Save Granny", L'il-One hints that only when pigs will fly would be the condition he can exit Ma's tummy hatch.
• Descent into Addiction: The primary conflict in "Addicted". Pa gives his mother a greenhouse gas remedy to cure her worsening gambling and onion crisp addiction. Granny refrains from consuming it, sells the gas to Ms. McBrisk to make a buck, lies to her family that she took it, and demands more and sells them to the neighbor to preserve her gambling addiction. Not only McBrisk becomes addicted to this temporary cure for her allergies, the Crumpet children also jump on Granny's bandwagon and develop addictions to the gas vials. They destroy the machine producing the substance, act like zombies to their parents, and seize McBrisk's gas supply. After that, the children immediately get over their addictions.
• Digging to China: In "Dried Water", Ma mentions China in reference to the strength of the drilling machine she needs to puncture the water tank from underground.
• Diving Save: Ma does this to Granny in "Taxidermama", when the latter is on Fynartz' path as he rides a lawnmower towards the stacks of his paintings.
  • Ohoh does this to the towel-wearing Caprice, rescuing her from the falling red paint bucket in "Supernawak".
• Divorce Is Temporary: In "The Divorce", Hurry is kicked out by his wife because he had overspent. In the court, once Ms. McBrisk the judge points out that Hurry and Harried are being "horrible" in their arguments against the other, the two reconcile over their enjoyment of being evil and become a couple again. Unfortunately, the wedding ring they want back is with T-Bone.
• Dramatic Drop: Pa drops a tray after hearing Ma appreciating the masculine traits of a man from a magazine in "Man Up!"
• Dramatic Unmask: Parodied in "Supernawak". Superhero Ohoh wishes to have the defeated supervillain Ms. McBrisk unmasked on her rooftop, and his partner (and her Abhorrent Admirer) Cordless gets this opportunity. McBrisk tells them to leave her mask on, then she lifts it to reveal her eyes to the duo. However, the heroes refuse to share her identity with the Crumpet family because according to Cordless, removing her mask is "against basic superhero ethics". The family gets to see her identity uncovered after Cordless and McBrisk fall through the collapsing roof and land in the stolen oil barrel.
• Driving Stick: When the Driving Test in "Drive Away" is about to begin, Pa tells Pfff that real driving involves with a shift stick, not a video game. The show is set in Europe, where manual transmission cars are dominant.
• Driving Test: Pa instructs an uninterested Pfff in a driving test in "Drive Away".
• Eating the Enemy: In "Octosquito", in one of Granny's cellular fights, Granny's cell does this to defeat José the octosquito's cell.
• Eject the Loser: In the titular gameshow in "My Family's Full of Losers", losers are thrown to the moon and are considered nobodies. In order, Ma, King, Caprice, the twins, followed by the rest except Granny, Pa, and L'il One. Ma returns to the Earth with her constructed rocket and Granny's next for ejection; L'il-One is the final loser.
• Electrified Bathtub: Almost happens in "A Grave Affair". Caprice poses a sleeping Pfff in a running shower and have him hold a hairdryer for a social media picture.
• Eldritch Abomination: Subverted in "Li'l One All Alone". Manolita, the mushroom Pa wanted to track in the forest expedition, is not a tentacled monster to the Crumpet children's disappointment.
• Electronic Telepathy: In "The Mix-Up", Ma and Pa read each other's minds with a machine. It's implied that Ma finds dirty thoughts from her husband.
• Elvis Impersonator: In "The Courting Of Ms. McBrisk", one of these is seen by Ms. McBrisk on the online dating service.
• The End Is Nigh: Uncle Hurry warns the Crumpets that the end of the world is nigh when he delivers a reason for converting to his Paymeism religion in "Belief Relief".
• Exact Eavesdropping: In "Family Secrets", L'il-One happens to be outside near Ditzy and Cassandra, and he eavesdrops his sister sharing secrets to their neighbor.
• Everybody Cries: The Crumpet family members who listened to the story of Pong breaking up from Granny cry in "Pong! The Menace!"
• Everybody Do the Endless Loop: The Crumpets dance in looping animations to Pfff's new song in "Gambled Gables", except for the dance between L'il-One and Granny.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: In "Ghost In The Attic", the blonde wig Caprice discovers in the attic is determined by her to be the spiritual clue that she has to be blonde to win the heart of Marylin. Oddly, she never takes this route.
• Everybody Must Get Stoned: In "Murder Everywhere", many of the Crumpets and Cordless hallucinate from eating the ashes of a dead hippie known as Rudy Swan because Ditzy had mistakenly poured them in a sugar container.
  • Also, in "Addicted", the drug addiction crisis among the Crumpet children and Ms. McBrisk caused by Granny secretly accumulating and selling the homemade greenhouse gas vials to McBrisk.
• Eyes Are Unbreakable: In "Drive Away", the shattered animals have their eyes living and intact. It turns out at the ending that they died.
• Fake Pregnancy: In "Lil Wrinkly One", when Granny's consumption of cigarette-like coco-patches makes her bloated, everyone assumes she's pregnant. Almost everyone eats the cocoa-patches and are mistaken to be pregnant, but L'il-One reverses this condition to the others by pressing their bellies so they can break wind.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: In "Murder Everywhere", Ohoh's attempt at retreating from looking at Granny chainsawing Pa triggers a chain reaction that leads to Pfff hitting Ditzy's head, which shoots up to a chandelier that drops to the bench sat by Caprice, launching her to the giant gelatin dessert.
• Fantastic Drug: In "Octosquito", Uncle Hurry gives the family drugs for their containment against José. When L'il-One tries one, he instantly grows big whiskers like Pa's. Another one of those drugs gives children huge tongues.
• Fatal Fireworks: At the end of "Ghost In The Attic", Caprice, Granny, and Bother and Blister are perished by the latter two's fireworks, a while after the first batch blew up and ashed the women. It's possible, however, that looking frame-by-frame, they went past the fireworks' explosions in the air.
• Flaming Meteor: "Prehistoric Crumpets" is about the impact and aftermath of a fiery meteor crash that is correctly projected by a Weather Report to crash on the Crumpet house.
• Food Fight: One started by Li'l-One happens among the Crumpet kids in "Man Up!".
• Food Pills: Ms. McBrisk, who is depressed from being unemployment, eats a sandwich with a huge pill in "Crumpity Pity".
• Forged Message: In "Ransoming Dad", Granny leaves a Cut-and-Paste Note to fool the family that Pa is kidnapped and that a ransom needs to get paid for his return. Caprice suspects that a fairy-tale book is the source of the letter's characters.
• Forgotten Birthday: In "CrumStep", Ma's birthday is forgotten by the children and Granny in spite of Pa making a couple of reminders. It lasts until the Battle of the Bands, when Ma halts the concert and she and Pa directs everyone to celebrate her birthday.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The main plot in "The Mix-Up" is about Ms. McBrisk and T-Bone the dog swapping their bodies, when the former tried to use a Electronic Telepathy machine to read his mind to seek her garden gnome's whereabouts.
• Fun with Acronyms: The PERP program from "Family Be Gone!" is named from the Plan to Equalize and Redistribute Populations.
• Funny Octopus: Grownboy's pet José in "Octosquito", who gets accidentally fused with a mosquito in a machine and creates trouble by shooting ink at the Crumpets. There's another octopus owned by Grownboy in "Disassister" that lands on and splats ink on Hurry and Harried's plane windshield.
• Game Over: At least two of Granny's computer games, including the poker game, have a digitized "Game over, you're dead" voice effect. In "CrumStep", she and Li'l-One's borrow the phrase as their music act's Catchphrase.
• Game Show:
  • The namesake one in "My Family's Full of Losers" is a game show hosted by Uncle Hurry and Aunt Harried that promises participant families to kick out and send their members to the moon to become "nobodies".
  • The travel TV show in "Road Stories" scores its two-member parties such as Granny and Caprice. They lose all their points once Caprice commits animal cruelty onscreen.
• Gatling Good: The greenhouse defense system in "Cheep Shot" uses a Gatling cannon to kill intrusive birds. The flawed automatic detection system threatens and strands Pa and the family in the greenhouse, and the arrival of the wounded bird at the ending might have exterminated everyone on sight.
• Gelatinous Encasement: Caprice gets catapulted into a giant gelatin mold, and remains trapped inside it for the duration of the episode "Murder Everywhere."
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Granny likes to find ways to earn quick big cash. She fails most of the time.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: Inverted to males in "Hairifying" when Pa hosts a horror movie showing for all the boys, except L'il-One because he's too young to attend. However, Ma invites all to her waxing machine, with only girls going there.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Ma's duplicating machine in "Taxidermama" malfunctions as a result of T-Bone stealing the power cord. It distorts its output rather than merely cloning them, such as cloning a nappy into piles of poop. She becomes increasingly hopeless as she can't figure out how to repair it.
  • In "Hairifying", the power outage triggered by the twins occurs during Caprice's turn in Ma's wax machine. Caprice, and the girls after her, leave the machine with longer body hair.
  • In "Octosquito", Grownboy's octopus pet José fuses with a mosquito in one of Ma's machines. As a newly-formed monster, he brings havoc in the Crumpet house.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In "Octosquito", José's death by helicopter rotor, with black ink substituting red blood.
• Green Gators: In a few episodes, Grownboy takes care of some crocodiles, at least two going by the name of Renado, who are green in color.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: L'il One does this by hand or object. He uses one of the floating "LIKE"s when he loses his nappy in "Going Viral".
  • At the ending of "Save Granny", L'il One uses a small piece of toilet paper, and some of his siblings use their hands to cover their private parts.
• Happy Birthday to You!: Caprice's rendition of the song to L'il One (King actually) includes the first two lines of the song in "Sticks Stink".
• Happy Fun Ball: Subverted in "Li'l Wonder". Bother gives Li'l-One a drawing tablet and have him showcase that it's a "magic tablet" when Li'l-One draws him and Blister (who suddenly arrives just after Li'l-One's drawing of her began). The twins help (or fool) their youngest brother by doing tricks that would make the tablet appear to work by luring Granny with cash once Li'l-One draws her. Granny steals it by providing its "receipt", (actually a casino checkout repeats Granny uses as a ticket to acquire anything she wishes), but she makes a deal with Li'l-One to share the tablet. Granny and Li'l-One would then dress like Fortune Tellers, run a fortune telling service outside the house, and use the drawing tablet to force most other children out the house. Although Blister warned them that the family and house can banish with "one wrong swipe", Li'l-One scribbles his drawing of Pa when he returns home and doesn't banish. Therefore, Li'l-One loses trust of Granny, who had told him that Pa will end up lost and eaten by rabbits.
• Helicopter Blender: In "Octosquito", Granny throws José to Uncle Hurry's helicopter and the creature gets killed by this. A Freeze-Frame Bonus depicts one of his tentacles already chopped.
• Holding Both Sides of the Conversation: L'il-One does this to mimic Granny in a cookie poker game in "Booty For Beauty" as he doesn't like being alone while the latter is absent for an extreme body makeover.
• Hollywood Board Games: In "Save Granny", a Flashback Cut has Pa and Granny playing Battleship. Granny takes the game as such Serious Business, that she orders her son to apologize for mistaking a cruiser for a torpedo boat. When Pa loses, she takes his socks as punishment and he's forced to wear pink dancer tights. For context, Granny is addicted to gambling and they made a bet.
• Hollywood Exorcism: In "Hairifying", the twins give Ohoh a green tablet that's supposed to cure his "night terrors". But the latter's mouth emits green foam, bubbles and vomit. Triceps does an unsuccessful attempt to free him from a demon she suspects is in him. L'il-One summons Ms. McBrisk to perform the exorcist ritual and give Ohoh a green substance that halts his condition. Unfortunately, said substance (in the form of a green odor) turns girls and women into zombies.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Caprice, Granny, and L'il-One participate in their own voodoo ceremony one night in "Ghost In The Attic", where they destroy dozens of Voodoo Dolls and allegedly hear voices which in reality originate from Ma and Pa making out and Ms. McBrisk complaining.
• Human Shield: In "Octosquito", Granny holds Li'l One as a shield against the ink of José the monster.
• Humongous Mecha: It's revealed in "Pong! The Menace" that with the press of a button in the secret security room, the Crumpet house can transform to a giant robot. Dwarfing Ma's vehicular robot, the house robot is controlled by Granny by using a video game controller, and the transmitted voice she gives out comes with an evil deep voice effect. She fights the other robot being controlled by Pfff as he tries to rescue his worm pet.
• If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: In "Octosquito", Pa admits that his beer yeast syrup tastes like rotting rubber, but praises it for being natural, containing no negative side effects, and not produced by a big-name pharmaceutical company. He's immediately proven wrong on its side effects by his kids' heads turning into literal crumpets.
• Immoral Reality Show: The titular game show in "My Family's Full of losers" pits a family to a slap fight, one member can gun down the others, and losers are thrown to the moon.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: As true to the title of "Sticks Stink", the Crumpets create a set of mikado sticks as their birthday present for Li'l One. At the ending, when Pa is starting to play them, no one joins him outside.
• Insignificant Anniversary: "Mum's Double" opens with Pa and the children celebrating his 1097th Tuesday of his marriage with Ma, who is busy constructing a blender and becomes very annoyed with them. She creates a robot clone of herself in an attempt to shield her from her distracting family.
• Instant Home Delivery: Cordless' orders of fast food, in addition to gifts for Ms. McBrisk, have gone through in seconds by helicopter in "The Courting Of Ms. McBrisk".
• Instant Messenger Pigeon: In "Disassister", Grownboy dispatches Lulu the pigeon for delivering letter to the Crumpets on having his menagerie babysitted. Upon arrival, the bird is grabbed in the neck by Caprice, who releases her grasp after retrieving the letter. When King exclaims of wishing to care the menagerie, Caprice grabs Lulu again while lying to him that she also loves animals. Caprice releases Lulu with the replied letter out the window, and the weakened bird stops flying and drops to a pile of fish. Later, Granny discovers the note from the bird and notifies her son Uncle Hurry of exploiting the menagerie for money, alarming King into rescuing the animals.
• Intentional Mess Making: In "Inside Li'l One's Brain", to protest against his toilet-training, Li'l One puts a sleeping T-Bone in his bed and whispers into his ear to make him wet the bed.
• Internal Reveal: At the end of "A Grave Affair", the picture of Pa and the non-deceased Granny, taken with Caprice's phone and uploaded by her father, turns the social media world against Caprice and calls her the "biggest liar on the web", despite that she didn't have knowledge of Granny being alive. Caprice did stage the other shocking pictures she shared, on the other hand.
• Interrupted Suicide: In "Going Viral", Caprice tries to bury herself alive in a dug plot with the help of T-Bone the dog. A fan-dispatched blimp bearing her likeness drops a hook-attached rope that she grabs and lifts with.
• It's A Small Net After All: In "Addicted", the anti-addiction remedy placed for sale by Granny is immediately discovered by her neighbor Ms. McBrisk, who discovers it as a potential cure for her allergies.
• It's Always Sunny at Funerals: During the funeral of Granny (who is actually alive) in "A Grave Affair", it is sunny.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: In "Amnesia", the reeked King looks around a hallway and notices the quietness just before his siblings ambush him for a bath.
  King: Something's not quite right, I can tell!
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: Although most of his sons are permitted, Pa refuses to let L'il-One watch Werezombies and Chainsaws and throws him to his crib in "Hairifying". L'il-One secretly watches the movie from a plant pot and is bothered by the movie's scary content. Ohoh, who sits at the front, does too, obviously.
• Killer Rabbit: Subverted in "Li'l Wonder". When trying to continue the trend of eliminating family members, Granny lies to Li'l-One that Pa was kidnapped by rabbits in the forest. Pa and Ma return home safely as Li'l-One thought his father was already in the "bunny's tummy".
• Landfill Beyond the Stars: In "My Family's Full of Losers", the moon is seen littered with junk from the Earth.
• Last Disrespects: When the not-quite-dead Granny is buried and surrounded by her family in "A Grave Affair", Caprice exclaims that Granny's post-mortem picture earned 12,500 likes before apologizing.
• Lie Detector: Ma builds one in "Ransoming Dad" for the family to find out who snatched Pa. It attaches to the head of the user.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: Subverted in "My Family's Full of Losers". Ohoh plays a game show round where he must execute his siblings by a BFG in the dark. None of his targets die, having fled to the ceiling except Pfff, who ends up injured.
• Legacy Character: According to two episodes, there's more than one pet crocodile named Renato ever owned by Grownboy.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: In "Booty For Beauty", when Uncle Hurry is looking for Granny, he remarks that she should come out and fight like a man.
• Long List:
  • Ma gives her children a long chore list as she leaves for an inventor's convention in "The Terrible Teens".
  • In "Ghost In The Attic", Granny names her past boyfriends who are represented by the voodoo dolls she pulls from the bag. Some of these names return in "Granny's Twin Sister" when she forgives them on the internet.
  • In "Pity The Prize", Pa has a long list for the weather girl containing a greeting and the tasks he wants accomplished with her guidance.
  • Grownboy gives Caprice a long list of chores for caring his animals in "Disassister".
• Look Ma, I Am on TV!: In "Road Stories", Caprice does this to her family and Cassandra when she and Granny appear in the group of incoming participants for the TV show.
• Love Potion: In "Ghost In The Attic", a supposed one is partially made from Li'l One's urinal waste. The twins steal it and apply it to Ms. McBrisk's mouth.
• Made in Country X: In "Pong! The Menace", Li'l-One exclaims "Made in China!" once he's fascinated with the electronic tablet he finds on TV. After Pong rewards him the tablet for exchanging the Kun Yun Yun diamond, its display scrambles as Li'l-One tries it on, and Caprice remarks "made in China".
• Magical Defibrillator: Ms. McBrisk rips off the wire of a toaster and shocks an unconscious bird to get its heart beating in "Cheep Shot".
• Magnificent Moustaches of Mexico: The twins wear fake ones whenever they wear stereotypical Mexican accessories such as sombreros. Li'l One does this too in "Gambled Gables" when they sabotage the machines in their captured house.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: In "No Pffuture", Ma and Pa's bed gets discharged out the house by Pfff's string, as the making-out parents shout that "love is in the air".
• Matter Replicator: Ma builds and tests one in "Taxidermama". It malfunctions through most of the episode thanks to T-Bone stealing a power cord from it.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: Ohoh is forced to do surgery on T-Bone's brain (which comes out of his mouth) by the twins in "Acne Dents Happen". This grants the dog intelligence.
• MegaCorp: Uncle Hurry and Aunt Harried own a corporation blazoned with the emblem of a snake dollar sign. One of their biggest restraints to society is their purchase of the world's water and selling the useless "dried water" powder in lieu of the liquid.
• Memento Macguffin: The Kun Yun Yun, a pink diamond with a worm sealed inside, in "Pong! The Menace!". Granny stole it from Pong as a consequence of his relationship with another woman, and it reminds her of their working romantic relationship. In the present, Pong and his gang hold the Crumpets for ransom for possibly storing his lost diamond. Before revealing that truth, she lied to her family that she gambled it away in Monte Carlo in 1969. Under the command of his mother, Pa sculpts a clay replica of the diamond and reluctantly inserts Pfff's worm via a straw to the replica so Pong can get fooled in reposessing the diamond. The replica doesn't hold up due to the worm eating it from inside, and Li'l One exchanges the real diamond to Pong for an electronic tablet in the ending.
• Miranda Rights: In "Ransoming Dad", Caprice raises them when she catches Li'l-One and Granny for the forged ransom note. Li'l-One doesn't remain silent and responds that she can't arrest anyone.
• Mister Seahorse: Downplayed in "Lil Wrinkly One". When nearly every Crumpet consume the cocoa-patches, the females are initially the only ones sprouting Balloon Bellies, but it's also shown later that the males can have these too.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: José the octopus in "Octosquito" fuses with a mosquito in one of Ma's machines, therefore transforming into the titular creature.
• Mobile Phone Game: One licensed game being a collection of minigames was developed by Bulkypix.
• Mobile Shrubbery: In "Pong! The Menace!", Pong is inside a mobile bush as he snatches Pfff and cuts some of his hair.
• Moving Buildings: In "No Pffuture", the unraveled red thread left by Pfff is all over the Crumpet and McBrisk houses. The thread's external forces causes the structures to move closer.
• Mud Wrestling: Caprice and Cassandra fight in the mud over being Marylin's girlfriend in "The Courting Of Ms. McBrisk".
• Murderous Malfunctioning Machine: In "Mum's Double", Ma splashes a liquid at her robot clone to prove her children who's the real Ma. In response to its own malfunction, the robot shifts to "Destroy and Murder Mode" and shoots a barrage of metal nuts. Robot clone Pa rescues them by switching the robot off before it could whack Ma with her blender.
• Mutants: The leeks that get exposed to the radiation in "Acne Dents Happen".
• Nature Is Boring: In "Li'l One All Alone", the whole family except Li'l One and Granny explore the woods not too far from home. Pa leads a trip to seek an underground multi-tentacle mushroom known as Manolita Volvariella. He makes mundane facts and appreciations of nature during the search. After finding Manolita's extensions above the ground, they have Triceps cut the trees in order to benefit the mushroom. The wait becomes unexciting to the children, and by Li'l-One's arrival, they start to walk home before Triceps pulls it, revealing that Manolita is a mustachioed mushroom. They're still greatly unimpressed.
• Nostalgic Musicbox: In "Family Secrets", the letter from the dug music box was delivered to Granny by Ma's grandfather, her "first loverboy".
• Not Himself: Pa in "The Terrible Teens" acts and dresses like an aggressive, old-school teenager as a result of an electrocution. Same goes to Ms. McBrisk turning into a New-Age Retro Hippie after Pa kisses her, but lasts until she gets zapped in her house, as well as Pfff who sucks his thumb. At the end, when Ma touches the lightbulb and zaps everyone, Pa returns to normal, but Ma becomes very hostile at Pa, Granny is romantically attracted to Pa, and all the children except Pfff (who now acts normal) are acting like crying babies!
• No Smoking: Ma says this to Granny and confiscates her cigarette-like cocoa-patches in "Lil Wrinkly One".
• Not in Front of the Kid: In "Croco-Deal", Ma scolds Caprice for saying "crappy" and almost saying "damn" in front of L'il-One.
• Number of the Beast: During the first TV show broadcast of the hoax journey in "Road Stories", the fake desert background has a highway sign numbered 666.^note There was a real highway 666 in the US Southwest.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Renato in "Croco-Deal" is the beloved pet of Grownboy who has to be babysitted by Granny due to Grownboy's ultimatum between Renato and his best friend Steve. After Renato jumps to Ma's tummy hatch, she kills him offscreen and is later seen wearing his crocodile skin and body parts.
• Never Win the Lottery: Ms. McBrisk in "Booty for Beauty" is arrested after getting caught by camera for rubbing a lottery ticket count with a chainsaw.
• New Job Episode: Subverted in "No Pffuture" as Pfff is forced to find employment and ends up getting none.
  • Also subverted for Ms. McBrisk in "Crumpity Pity" once her job will return. In "The Divorce", she forms a business that helps reconcile couples.
• On the Money: In "Ransoming Dad", Granny wins a ticket to a poker cruise ship, but she lacks the money for the trip. By kidnapping and hiding Pa, she and Li'l One demand a ransom from their family.
• Ordered Apology: Pa is ordered by his mother to apologize and go to the room's corner for not figuring the difference between a cruiser and a torpedo boat in his childhood game of Battleship in "Save Granny".
• Ouija Board: Caprice and Ditzy create a table one in "Ghost In The Attic" so that former can communicate spirits who's supposed to give her the path to love Marylin. Whatever name used is pronounced like "Weebee" instead of "Weegee".
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Ms. McBrisk's axe-holding garden gnome "Sneezy" in "The Mix-Up" is an ornament who gives an eerie stare. Concerned with her mother's obsession with the gnome, Cassandra hides and delivers it to Caprice for it to remain hidden. After Caprice looks at it and gets bothered, few other Crumpets found use of the gnome, but when she finds Pa using it as a juicer, she jumps on the gnome and damages its hat. "Sneezy" would unintentionally take part of the reverse body swap, resulting in T-Bone staring like the gnome, and it's revealed that "Sneezy" has an evil mind when he speaks to Caprice from T-Bone's body. The T-Bone-minded ornament also kills birds near McBrisk.
• Our Slogan Is Terrible: In the TV ident, as heard in few episodes like "My Family's Full of Losers":
  "You saw it on Hurry and Harried TV!"
• Our Zombies Are Different: In "Hairifying", one zombie outbreak is initiated by a green substance given to Ohoh by Ms. McBrisk during an exorcist ritual. Females who inhale the substance turn into zombies who chant "Ohoh get, Ohoh get" and walk toward him. When L'il-One takes Ohoh across the house, the latter's odor infects many females. Once everyone ends up in the greenhouse, Bother pumps a liquid to the ceiling sprinkler to produce a flood, leading to an electrocution that cures the females' zombie and long body hair conditions. Unfortunately, the showered liquid is a weed killer, causing nearly every strand of hair of those showered by it to come off. And not to mention McBrisk wasn't under the shower and remains as a chainsaw-wielding zombie frightening the Crumpets at the end.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Seasons one and two are a family-centered Black Comedy with a tilt on cynicism and plenty of Slapstick. There are few scenes (including machine violence in episodes such as "Cheep Shot" and "Mum's Double") that elevates the show's action tones.
• Pac Man Fever: Granny's video games on her laptop look antiquated, although the avatars of her and Li'l-One don't have quite poor detail.
• Parody Names: In "Crumpity Pity", Cassandra assumes at her mother if she missed an episode of EastVenders.
  • There exists a Facebook parody known as "Facedebook", and an eBay parody known as eBlé.
• Placebo Effect: In "Addicted", the greenhouse gas remedy is a temporary cure to Ms. McBrisk's allergies, but she becomes addicted to the substance. Cassandra warns her mother about a placebo effect.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: Caprice plagiarizes Cassandra's poem in "Sound The Alarm". The poem was intended to be a love letter to Pfff, but Caprice, who isn't good at spelling, sings it so she can possess a talent to impress Marylin. An enraged Cassie pulls her from the stage mid-concert in payback and took her place.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Averted at the ending of "Save Granny" where nobody in the bathroom crowd complains of some of the siblings' (including Pfff, King, and Fynartz) nudity.
• Plot Allergy: In "Addicted", Ms. McBrisk alleges that she's allergic to the Crumpets or dust mites, now that zits are all over her head. She buys what's actually Pa's anti-addiction solution from Granny through the internet and her zits disappear only for a while, and she becomes addicted to it once she buys more. After realizing that Granny scammed her and that the solution doesn't treat allergies for the long term, this condition is left untreated by the episode's end.
• Population Control: In "Family Be Gone!", a disgruntled Ms. McBrisk comes across a Hurry and Harried population redistribution program known as PERP, which she and Li'l-One agree to exploit to get rid of the Crumpet family. It's hardly terrible to the Crumpets than feared.
• Potty Failure:
  • L'il-One did this in a family photo seen in "Granny's Twin Sister", and in a previous horror movie showing according to "Hairifying". In the latter episode, after the twins fail to make him do this again, it finally happens again once the zombie crisis is resolved via electric shock.
  • In "Inside Li'l One's Brain", he stages a Potty Failure to disapprove having to wear shorts. He brings a sleeping T-Bone to his crib and whispers him to pee, before he kicks the dog out.
• Prank Call: Played a few times in "The Divorce". The first phone call to Ms. McBrisk's new business is a prank from Bother and Blister. Basing the prank from the script for McBrisk's commercial, Bother tells her that he is lost at a stormy sea, his belongings are gone, and claims to be drowning before the call ends, leaving McBrisk guilty. The twins later swap their baby phone for Ms. McBrisk's phone and receive a call from Aunt Harried. Unfortunately for the twins, Granny snatches the phone from them, pretends to be McBrisk in the call, and arranges a meeting between herself and Harried. During the night, the twins leave their phone in T-Bone's doghouse. Once T-Bone activates it into calling McBrisk, McBrisk interprets his barking as the voice of a man who isn't feeling well.
• Prison: In "Road Stories", several members of the Crumpet family and Ms. McBrisk are sent to a massive prison for the crimes they committed.
• Pulling Themselves Together: In "Drive Away", Grownboy's crammed animals disintegrate upon being thrown from his trailer to hitting a brick wall. They return to normal but they're already deceased.
• Rain Dance: Parodied in "Belief Relief", as Pa and Caprice do a Native American-like ceremonial pow wow while trying to rejuvenate the leeks.
• Read the Fine Print: Aunt Harried shows Caprice the employment contract after the latter complains of her lack of breaks in "Gambled Gables".
• Reality TV: The game show in "My Family's Full of Losers" parodies the genre and contains interviews from the Crumpets. It is attacked by Ma and Ms. McBrisk.
  Ms. McBrisk: Reality TV... they promote anti-educational and anti-family values! I won't let the telly interfere in how I raise my child!
  • The Once Upon A Time In The Van show is featured in "Road Stories" as the broadcaster of Granny and Caprice's world road adventure, even when they haven't suspect that the trip is actually a hoax.
• Red Shirt: Many sparrows fall to bad luck by injury or death. In season 3, out of all seasons, this doesn't happen as it is under Lighter and Softer tones.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The endings of "Cheep Shot" and "Hairifying" have a silhouette of the Crumpet house under a red sky due to serious life-death threats to the family.
  • In "A Grave Affair", this also happens when Pa discovers that his mother is dead (despite that she is in a sleeping state).
• Reincarnation: Pa and Ditzy comment on the possibility of dead leeks reincarnating in "Belief Relief", depending on a certain "belief system".
• Religion Is Wrong: It's proven in "Belief Relief" that science trumps religion in rejuvenating Pa's lunar leeks and that there are no gods living in the sky. The episode however deliberately attacks a fundamentalist religion established to financially benefit its "prophet", and the faithless Ma delivers her family the message that people should believe what's personally best for them, including religion.
• The Remake: In-universe in "Hairifying", Granny films the hairy zombie Crumpet girls as if she's producing a remake of Werezombies and Chainsaws. The twins hook her camera to the TV so the footage can be viewed live by the male Crumpets, who were watching the original movie.
• Remember the Alamo: L'il-One mentions the Alamo (but saying "defend" rather than "remember") as he rallies the Crumpets to fight for their home in "Gambled Gables".
• Repeating Ad: The in-universe Crok! cereal commercials play five times to the viewer in "Girls On Holiday".
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The logo for the Hurry and Harried company is a snake dollar sign.
• Riding into the Sunset: At the ending of "Octosquito", Grownboy walks towards the sun. As the tentacles and wings traced from José grows from him, he flies to the sun.
• Right Behind Me: In "Amnesia", when Caprice remarks "parents are so lame" while conversing with Cassie over Ms. McBrisk's mysterious adopted child, Ma arrives in the room uttering "ahem" as she's searching for King.
• Rise from Your Grave: Parodied in "Ghost In The Attic" as Ditzy's living head emerges from the ground (with bones seen in the dirt) and terrifies Ms. McBrisk.
• Rise of Zitboy: The main plot in "Acne Dents Happen" is about Cordless trying to cure his zits with the new radioactive acne face cream given by his parents to experiment.
• Road Trip Plot: Subverted and parodied in "Road Stories", which is about Granny and Caprice faking their trip across the world for the "Once Upon A Time In The Van" reality TV show. They depart from the house as if they're going on an actual road trip, however.
• Rock & Roll: In "The Terrible Teens", Pa dances to this kind of music with Cassandra.
• Scam Religion: In "Belief Relief", Uncle Hurry and Aunt Harried open their "Paymeism" religion to the Crumpets, where payments are exchanged for teachings, books, and "blessings" such as mobile phones and falsely cured leeks; the uncle proclaims to be divine, threatens that nonbelievers will perish, and wants "no crazy questions". Due to Pa being the brother of "God", Uncle Hurry forces Pa to avoid marrying any "infidels", leaving him an option to divorce from the irreligious Ma.
• Series Fauxnale: "Sound The Alarm". It concludes with a Concert Climax and serves as if it's the show's Grand Finale (Pa mentions a "happy ending"), yet it brings up the relationships between Caprice and Marylin, and Cassandra and Pfff, which retrospectively serves to open the events of Teen Crumpets.
• Shockingly Expensive Bill: In "My Family's Full of Losers", Uncle Hurry charges television viewers 50 quid per second to any phone call that votes which Crumpet member should lose the game show.
  • In "Sound The Alarm", when Caprice calls the telephone service to cancel the delivery of her typo-ridden text messages to Marylin, she gets an automated message for two options to spiral her bill.
  "Please repeat your request clearly. Press one to pay more. Press two to double your monthly tariff."
• Somethingitis: Granny is diagnosed with "foulmouthitis", one making "a constant stream of insults", in "Shake It Up".
• Sibling Rivalry: "Granny's Twin Sister" highlights two twin examples: between the titular characters (over their appeal with their grandchildren), and Bother and Blister (due to an explosion in their room).
• Sickly Green Glow: The radioactive acne cream and Cordless in "Acne Dents Happen" have these, plus its X-ray.
• Sick Episode: "Sticks Stink" (due to the cold) and "Octosquito" (the monster making people sick with his ink).
• Silence, You Fool!: Ma quiets all the children who want her attention at a time in the beginning of "No Pffuture".
• Silent Whisper: In "The Courting Of Ms. McBrisk", Cordless describes and partly whispers at L'il-One about the dating service he uses to attract Ms. McBrisk. The whisper part is completely inaudible to the audience.
• Sistine Steal: Between Granny and Ms. McBrisk (who's offering the other to stay in her home) in "Shake It Up".
• Sleeping Dummy: Bother and Blister fool their parents with these in "Ghost In The Attic". Ma thinks her Trickster Twins are sleeping this time.
• Something We Forgot: The family outing in "Li'l One All Alone" would realize in two occasions that somebody was forgotten. In the first one, Ma exclaims that they forgot someone right after departure; T-Bone responds and enters their van. In the second one, Ma realizes that Li'l One isn't with them after noticing it's too quiet. She rushes back to the house while Li'l-One and Granny travel the opposite direction on the road.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Gets imitated by the Scene Transition heads for a Censored for Comedy effect.
  • In "Shake It Up", after Ma diagnosed Granny's foulmouthitis, Li'l One whispers Granny's ear before she shouts two consecutive insults at Ma and Pa that get interrupted by the Scene Transition heads imitating a "bleep". Li'l One would make fun of Triceps, whose response also includes a bad word censored by another Scene Transition.
  • The Scene Transition heads also imitate one to censor Caprice's insult at Pfff in "Gentlemanly Modified Organism".
• Spoiler Title: Subverted in the episode "Taxidermama", when Fynartz fails to taxidermize Ma.
• Spot the Imposter: In "Mum's Double", after the kids encounter two Ma's fighting each other, Triceps holds a contest where they prove to be the real Ma. Robot Ma appears to have beaten real Ma when it shoots pies and muffins at the kids' mouths. When it's her turn, real Ma presents her blender which fails to excite her kids. After its liquid output gets rejected by the kids, she wins by splashing it to robot Ma, which malfunctions and turn hostile at them.
• Stargazing Scene: In "Girls On Holiday", Caprice and Cassie look at the night sky once. Cassie, who wishes Pfff is with them, spots a constellation of him and herself (who are referred as a "prince" and "princess" respectively) riding a horse. Caprice complains that the sky is too dark for gazing, irritating Cassie before she walks to the van for bedtime.
• Stock "Yuck!": The kids are disgusted upon hearing Pa's plan to serve leek and turnip pie in "Crumpity Pity". But the next shot shows them enjoying their meals except for Caprice, who is concerned with the widespread issue of poverty at the moment.
• Stop Saying That!: In "Road Stories", there is a Running Gag on Pa saying "Aren't they precious?" or "Isn't she precious?" whenever Granny and Caprice appear on TV. Ma gets fed up with his compliments since his twelfth time saying it. Once, Pa only says "Aren't they" before realizing he can't annoy Ma anymore. Hypocritically, Ma would also say "Aren't they precious?" before Pa quiets her gently.
• Strip Poker: Granny and Magic Marvin play a game of strip poker in "Granny Strip". Granny was also in the middle of a strip poker game in "The Terrible Teens".
• Surprise Car Crash: In "Lil Winkly One", L'il One calls his driving Uncle Hurry about the latter's reduced share of inheritance from Granny during her alleged pregnancy. Hurry brakes at displeasure and a freight truck rear-end collides and lands on the car upside-down. Hurry and Harried call Granny immediately without signs of harm.
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: In "My Family's Full of Losers", all families wanting to join the Game Show are surveilled by flying cameras. L'il-One finds one inside the house as Aunt Harried announces the Crumpets' entry to the game show and as the house's windows are shutting.
• Talent Show: In "My Family's Full of Losers", the final round of the game show is a singing competition between L'il-One and Pa. The father wins.
• Talking Animal: In "Inside Li'l One's Brain", Pa encounters talking pigs in Li'l One's brain, since Granny spawned them as her son's punishment for sharing a forbidden family secret and knows he's scared of pigs. When Ma tries to save Pa from the episode's namesake, she retrieves one of those pigs who talks eerily before fading away.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: In "Taxidermama", Fynartz plans to turn Ma into a taxidermic figure.
• Technically-Living Zombie: The females who turn to zombies in "Hairifying" did so because they inhaled a green-colored gas from Ms. McBrisk's potion for curing Ohoh.
• Teen Pregnancy: In "Lil Wrinkly One", Caprice appears to become pregnant, as so as the other teens (including Pfff), due to the Balloon Belly side-effect of eating the cocoa-patches.
• Theremin: It's heard in the background music throughout "Prehistoric Crumpets", especially at the scenes with the meteorite crystals.
• Toilet Training Plot: "Inside Li'l-One's Brain" is about Pa's quest to fix Li'l One's alleged "pee-pee gland" by going inside his brain so he can outgrow wearing nappies.
• Toothy Bird: The worms in "Pong! The Menace!" and "Li'l One All Alone" are shown to have human-like teeth.
• Trash Landing: One of the machines Ma tries to use to fix her malfunctioning tummy hatch throws her out the house, and she lands to a pile of manure in "Croco-Deal".
  • In "Pong! The Menace!", the kids and Pa evacuate from their robot-transformed house by falling to a filthy, slimy dumpster held by Ma's robot.
• The Triads and the Tongs: "Pong! The Menace!" has the mostly unseen rich and "very, very unforgiving" titular character and his gang in their limousines intimidating the Crumpets so they can retrieve a pink diamond allegedly stolen by Granny. Pong kidnaps Pfff to a movable bush and shaves all his hair on top of his head, as well as restraining parts of his body and attaching a ransom note in Chinese.
• Twinkle in the Eye: The worm inside the pink diamond in the web search picture in "Pong! The Menace!", and the rubber duck in "Amnesia" give these.
• Unfortunate Item Swap: In "Pong! The Menace!", after Granny receives the clay pink diamond replica from Li'l-One and removes the real diamond from a vault, she juggles them before giving the supposed clay one to her grandson that he can deliver to Pong. She learns that the clay one is actually with her, when Pfff's worm eats the diamond-shaped material from inside. This initiates her pursuit on Li'l-One to retrieve the real diamond from falling to the wrong hands.
• Villain Episode: "The Divorce" features Uncle Hurry as the protagonist, though due to being kicked out of his house and his resulting sadness, he isn't really evil until the ending when he and Harried realize that they enjoy being evil and thus reconcile.
• Vine Swing: Pa does this and brings Ma to a tree at the ending of "Croco-Deal".
• Visible Odor: The stenches from Granny's onion crisps, the odor inside the van in "Road Stories", and the dirty-smelling King at the beginning of "Amnesia", as examples.
• Visual Pun:
  • Ditzy ascends her head and says "The telly can make nearly anybody lose their head, Mummy" in "Pity The Prize".
  • Also for Ditzy, in "Addicted", when she inhales her first dose of the greenhouse gas, her head goes high.
• Voices Are Mental: In "The Mix-Up", Ms. McBrisk and T-Bone accidentally swap bodies from use of an Electronic Telepathy machine. Their voices swap too, between a human and a dog.
• Weapon for Intimidation:
  • In "Save Granny", when Granny complains of how McBrisk is caring her, she pretends to be a soldier and holds her big key like a gun once.
  • In "Lil Wrinkly One", L'il-One aims Granny's key at her in a dispute about her supposed Fake Pregnancy.
• Weather Report: Pfff loves watching these due to the attractive Weather Girl.
• Whodunit: Caprice's birthday party game in "Murder Everywhere" was supposed to give a random player a murder contract to kill Pa's character, and the others must investigate and arrest that player. Instead, the uninvited Li'l-One "joins" the game and acts as Pa's "killer" in the darkness against Caprice's will before running away, and all the players' cards are copies of the murder contract. She concentrates finding the one who ruined the card printing, while being stuck in the giant gelatin dessert.
• Wedding Ring Removal: Harried removes her tight wedding ring around the time she kicks her husband out their home in "The Divorce". In the Crumpet house, a hopeless Hurry throws it out a window. T-Bone finds and makes use of it by the time Hurry wants it back.
• Wild Teen Party: In "The Mix-Up", Cassie prepares to throw a sock party in her house, which her mother objects as the invitations were already sent. Ms. McBrisk and T-Bone's "Freaky Friday" Flip allows the party to proceed.
• Wingding Eyes: The rainbow spirals are the eyes of hallucinating people in "Murder Everywhere", like those of Fynartz in "Taxidermama".
• Your Mum: In "Addicted", Ma, as one in an angry crowd, only says this to Pa while being one of the complainers of Granny's disturbances in the house.

Teen Crumpets

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: In season 4, at least, there are few computer-generated door animations that stand out from the show's standard Flash animation. There is an example in "La capuche mortelle" where Caprice opens Pfff's door at night.
• Art Imitates Art: A parody of the "Girl with a Pearl Earring" painting can be spotted in the attic in "Auto-graff".
• Babysitting Episode: The free Teen Crumpets episode ("Baby sister") has Caprice being forced by her parents to babysit her baby brother Li'l One before and during her party.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: The opening animation wasn't updated for Teen Crumpets, so one expecting to see the ploys of Li'l One or Granny would instead see that they're about a group of teenagers.
• Bears Are Bad News: In "Enfermés en forêt", when the gang find clutter outside their tent at the morning, Cordless, who appears traumatized, mentions a bear. Later in that scene, he admits that he lied and made the mess because he misses his electronics. But the gang would spot a bear behind Larry just after he presented them a compass and a map, and all the teens except Larry flee to the house. Larry, who seems to be friends with the bear and a squirrel, would get sticks drawn by the animals, which they choose him to get attacked or eaten.
• Bunnies for Cuteness: In "Rip la guitare", Pfff finds a white bunny in a hammock. Despite Caprice suggesting him to drive it away, he looks for somewhere else to sleep. The bunny is Larry's missing pet.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: In "La capuche mortelle", when the teens return to the online professional psychologist that was analyzing Marylin's nightmare, he is seen sleeping with a teddy bear and sucking his thumb.
• Bunny Ears Picture Prank: One picture in "Gentil choléra" shows a young boy with glasses doing this to Cassie.
• Chain of People: In "Auto-graff", it is revealed that the Crumpets, Cordless and Marylin previously chained together out of a window at their attempt to rescue a sleepwalking Caprice.
• Christmas Episode: The two-part episodes "Joyeux Noël..." and "... et bonne année !" in Teen Crumpets. They're the final episodes in numeric order until the 2021 special.
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: In "Nu comme Hervé", when the gang are panicking and fleeing from finding suspiciously naked people in the Crumpet house, they come across a billboard of a seemingly naked man (albeit with his bottom part being painted) and TV programming depicting additional clothing-less individuals.
• Computer Virus: In "Les sur-vivants", this is the actual type of globally-spread virus Cradley Booper was talking about in the video. When the teen girls originally saw the video, it lagged half-way and they conclude there's a zombie virus spreading worldwide, partly because of this video.
• Creepy Doll: "Troc de trucs" revolves on a rag doll rediscovered by Caprice. It has one missing eye and a sinister grin. When Caprice was young, she pounded the doll with a hammer, ripped off some of its hair and poured tea on it. After Cassandra took the doll away from a reluctant Caprice in a Garage Sale, Caprice wonders how she'll retrieve the final remnant of her childhood, settling on tasking Bother and Blister to steal it back from their neighbor. After the twins' mission goes awry, the doll (which is now hairless) ends up scaring both the McBrisks.
• Dark Reprise: In "Les sur-vivants", a Dark Reprise of one recurring music piece plays in some scenes due to an apparent zombie threat.
• The Dentist Episode: The beginning of "Dans tes dents" features Caprice fiercely resisting her trip to the dentist and repeatedly screaming, Triceps has to tie her up. The visit itself is brief on runtime, yet Caprice leaves with braces she's very reluctant to expose to others.
• Distant Finale: "Rendez-vous dans 15 ans" is set 15 years after the events of Teen Crumpets and is about the state of Caprice and Cassandra's friendship. It is the final episode, before the two-part Christmas episodes and the 2021 special, in numeric order.
  • In a smaller scale, the ending of "Gentil choléra" is set six months later, when Cassie's puppy returns to her house along with Marylin's mouse and hundreds of their offspring.
• Drawing Straws: In "Enfermés en forêt", the starving gang draw straws from Triceps after they consider eating one of their friends. Caprice, who is presented the last two straws, throws them to the campfire because she fears the group will die from cold temperatures first rather than starvation, so they sleep together for the night. At the ending, a squirrel and bear draw straws from Larry. The animals pick him to be attacked.
• Dream Intro: "Dans tes dents" starts with Cassandra's dream of sitting next to Pfff and being taught to play his guitar. She wakes up from her phone's vibration and Caprice angrily calling her friend to answer.
  • "La capuche mortelle" begins with Marylin's dream of himself and his pet mouse in a fantasy Gothic world. It shifts to a nightmare when a hooded ghost bearing Larry's voice pursuits Marylin.
• Elevator Failure: In "Rat de marée", Caprice and Marylin become stranded in the Crumpets' elevator at the time an internal flood struck the house.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: In "Auto-graff", Caprice, who is cooperating with Ms. McBrisk in searching their respective relatives, finds one of Cassandra's shoes on the floor and they both cry. Cassie herself is hidden with the other Crumpets in the attic, covered in paint.
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: The party in the free Teen Crumpets episode "Baby sister" gives off flashes of white in the screen.
• Et Tu, Brute?: "Marilyn Blues" thouroughly features betrayal as a theme. Caprice and Pfff feel betrayed and depressed from Marylin apparently abandoning them for his long-distance trip, especially once they have learned on the internet the possibility he ditched his goth rock hobby for a Disco career. After Larry was found to have good singing skills and the potential to replace Marylin, Marylin's bitter ex-friends conduct a goodbye ceremony where they dump his belongings to the water. During the ceremony, Caprice finds his pet mouse and fails to have the twins capture it, instead she expects it to never return. Cassandra defends the mouse, which is drifting away on its floating bed, saying it did nothing wrong. Caprice openly assumes her friend is on Marylin's side, shattering the girls' friendship, and Cassie runs away crying. Marylin finally returns and denies having another alias, yet Caprice and Pfff remain skeptical of his truth. He too cries and flees upon learning the disappearance of his mouse and declares he'll hate his ex-friends forever. Luckily, he discovers Cassie saving his mouse from the water. The gang would discover Marylin going out with Cassie at a concert, leaving Caprice depressed again in spite of her past traitorous motive.
• Fantastic Racism: "Force et honneur" is about a war between the pink-nosed Crumpets and a handful blue-noses including Cassie and Marylin because Caprice started banning the blue-noses from the abandoned van hideout.
• Five Stages of Grief: In "Rip la guitare", Pfff's friends are concerned with his lack of grief over the loss of his first guitar, "Pop". The plot of the episode mainly revolves on their endeavors, orchestrated by Cassie, to have Pfff go through six stages of grief. The first stage, shock, was already completed because Pfff had slept in the aftermath of Cordless' failed "surgery" to the guitar.
• Green Aesop: In "Bulles de palme", when the Crumpet kids play with massive quantities of green bubblegum in the house, Marylin arrives at their home and gets shocked because it is made of palm oil, a resource that is harvested by destroying wild habitats. Subsequently, Caprice and Cassie learn the devastating effects of palm oil harvests on the internet. To educate her siblings on its ill effects to the environment, Caprice borrows Grownboy's pet giraffe and elephant and presents them as homeless wild animals that have to reside in the house.
  • "Crumperchés" has Marylin self-chained to a gigantic, infected tree to protest Pa and Triceps' plan to cut it down. He becomes stuck due to a Thieving Magpie that stole the key for his chains. Later on, as his friends and several other Crumpets gather on the tree with him, the tree's electric mushrooms gravely infect Marylin, and his friends' effort to recover the key with a group-improvised magnet eliminates every other tree in the forest.
• Group Hug: The teen main characters, in addition to Bother and Blister, hug together when they're reunited in "Radeau d'ados"; it's also a promotional shot for "Teen Crumpets".
• Girls Stare at Scenery, Boys Stare at Girls: Gender-inverted with Caprice and Marylin. Whenever they're in the forest, Caprice sometimes looks upon Marylin intimately while he is busy admiring flora.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: In the beginning of "Quotient H", Larry's sudden arrival at Marylin and Pfff's performance causes the latter's guitar to produce a sound that breaks the abandoned Hippie Van's windows.
• Gratuitous English: Once in a while, the songs in Teen Crumpets have English lyrics, such as Damon Grobain's song in "L'ADN à Pa", Cassie's first song in "Quasi Cassie", and the disco song in "Marilyn Blues".
• Gratuitous German: The conversations between the main characters and the teen boys' pen pals in "On se correspond" and "Pudeur et tremblements" sometimes include German dialogue. The Chinese dub kept the audio dialogue intact.
• Guy In Real Life: In "Game lover", Cassie warns Cordless that his female character friend in the MMORPG may be actually a man. This gets disproved once they spot the woman.
• Haunted Technology: In "La capuche mortelle", while Marylin, Caprice and Cassie are horrified by their nightmares in the middle of the night, they find a laptop activated on its own with a fuzzy screen displayed. It turns out that Cordless is about to video chat them of his own nightmare through the laptop.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: In "Un vers de trop", after the gang failed to rescue Marylin from his alliance with an anti-poetry group, Caprice, Cassie and Triceps are shown eating ice cream.
• Heat Wave: "L'impffossible choix" starts with Pfff and Marylin, who are in the former's bedroom, complaining of a heat wave but also creating a song about it.
• History Repeats: In "50 nuances de Cassie", when Cassie views a photo album while preparing to run away from home, it's revealed she had partaken the same rebellious lifestyles, played an African drum, and broke up from her friends like her mother (as a teenager), the very woman she's afraid of becoming alike in the future. McBrisk's friends were even lookalikes of Cassie's friends, and she had a boyfriend resembling Pfff. This convinces Cassie to quit being rebellious in a toxic manner and reunite with her friends.
• I'm a Humanitarian: In "Enfermés en forêt", after Marylin sings a song about plane crash survivors on an island eating other humans, the gang (which didn't bring food for their forest trek, and also detect Larry's food odor they're unable to trace) decide to pick which one of themselves would get eaten by Drawing Straws from Triceps. When it's Caprice's turn to draw sticks, she throws them to the campfire because she fears the gang will die from cold temperatures first, so they sleep together for the night instead.
• Improvised Sail: In "Radeau d'ados", one of Cordless' shirts is used as the sail for Pfff and Marylin's watercraft.
• In Medias Res: "Auto-graff" begins with Caprice waking up outside and finding her house lonely and sprayed with graffiti, not to mention there's a lump on her head. She looks at the footage of a camera to begin uncovering why things are like that.
• Inflating Body Gag: In "Bulles de palme", Caprice cleans up the mess of palm oil bubblegum in the house with Grownboy's elephant functioning as a vacuum. Once she's finished, the elephant is inflated and floats in the air, later lifting a swing set sat by Caprice and Marylin to the sky.
• Injured Limb Episode: "Les frères platrard" highlights Pfff and Marylin getting their arms broken and subsequently taken cared of. And it ends with Caprice and Cassie breaking their legs from an automobile that collided the girls carelessly walking across a street.
• Instant Fish Kill: In "Rip la guitare", Pfff feeds potato chips to some fish outside as Cassie encourages him to mourn the loss of his guitar. The fish die and float to the surface and Pfff thinks they do a backstroke when they're happy.
• Interspecies Romance: Marylin's pet mouse wants to kiss Caprice at sight, which makes her annoyed.
  • In "Gentil choléra", Cassie's puppy and Marylin's mouse fall in love with each other and mate offscreen. The ending, which is set six months later, reveals their return to Cassie's home along with hundreds of dog-mice hybrid offspring.
• Just One Extra Ticket: In "L'impffossible choix", Pfff receives two tickets to a rock concert, but he has to pick Marylin or Caprice for the other ticket, resulting in an unpleasant argument between the two that hurts Pfff's mental well-being.
• Just One More Level!: In "Insectator", both Pfff and Cassie become drawn to Maxi Monsters Wars. They eventually think they're their respective playable characters living in the video game's world!
  • In the beginning of "Enfermés en forêt", Cordless remains drawn to his computer game just as Marylin kicks him out of Pfff's room for being a distraction to his music writing.
• Konami Code: In "Enfermés en forêt", Cordless, who has gotten insane in the teens' forest trip because he misses his electronics, utters the Konami Code while trying to flee.
• "Last Supper" Steal: "Quotient H" has a homage to The Last Supper painting, where Larry is in the center surrounded by Marylin, Caprice, Pfff and unnamed Crumpet children. Believing that Larry is divine since he got a perfect score in Cordless' IQ test, Marylin lets him say a couple of words to the kids. Larry responds and proclaims that he likes to eat bread and grape juice.
• Level Ate: In "La capuche mortelle", when Marylin sleeps near Pfff, he dreams of riding his mouse (with a unicorn horn) in a Sugar Bowl world filled with edible sweets. Similarly, when Caprice complains to Marylin of her own nightmare, her dream is depicted as being set in an orange-tinted world of sugary beverages where she and Marylin are swimming in a body of bubbly water.
• Lighter and Softer: Season 3 is noticeably tamer than the past seasons, having minimized or eliminated adult sex jokes and graphic violence. The immoral adults Granny, Hurry and Harried stopped appearing. The negative treatment of animals, meanwhile, continues to persist but with a (near) lack of fatalities, and T-Bone and Marylin's mouse have gotten lighthearted moments. The cast was given some likability and the episodes have more evident themes, including a more constructive (but not wholly positive) take on depression in "Marilyn Blues" when compared to "Going Viral". Nonetheless, this isn't to say the stories are void of drama. Season 4 TBA.
• Littering Is No Big Deal: In "On se correspond", Pfff and Marylin throw food waste and junk out of the window during their cleanup of Pfff's bedroom, littering the ground outside.
• Lost at Sea: In "Radeau d'ados", while the gang are at sea, the twins split their vessel's wooden board with a sawfish akin to a chainsaw. Marylin and Pfff are stuck on one side of the boat. The twins, Cordless, Larry, Caprice and Cassandra are on the other half.
• Lost Voice Plot: "Cacher la voiiix" is about Marylin losing his voice prior to a talent agent visiting his rehearsal. Although Triceps decides to supplement her own singing voice for Marylin, her voice was found to be very beautiful, yet she's unmotivated to sing under her real identity.
• Market-Based Title: Seasons three and four are promoted as Teen Crumpets by its distributor for non-French regions.
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: "Game lover" centers on Cordless' female friend (a woman who appears identical to the Weather Girl) who has been playing a MMORPG with him, as well Cordless' struggling to meet her in-person due to wanting his stained t-shirt cleaned first.
• Mocking Music: In "Marilyn Blues", Caprice and Pfff try to forget Marylin after they found the possibility online he became a Disco singer in a distant land. They keep encountering his apparent disco song in their house and their neighbor's.
• New Year Has Come: "Astres-trop-logiques !" highlights the gang waiting for the new year in the drained pool of Cordless' mansion. Caprice is frustrated with the bad luck she had from the past and from mishaps during the party.
• Nonstandard Character Design: The mage from "La capuche mortelle" has a realistic appearance compared to the other humans.
• Nuke 'em: In "Force et honneur", Cassie and her faction possess a thermonuclear device with a Big Red Button on it. Once the girls bury their hatchets, Larry mistakenly steps on it and wipes out both houses.
• Parental Favoritism: In "L'impffossible choix", the twins ask their father which of the children is the best. Pa, who is gravely afraid of answering this, gathers the family so he and his wife can announce that they love their kids equally. Li'l One, meanwhile, emerges from Ma's tummy hatch and declares he's the favorite child before Ma scolds him and he flees. Immediately, Pa gives his liking to T-Bone, which upsets Triceps and in turn ignites a dispute among the children over who's the couple's favorite child. Later, this gets inverted when the kids argue over their preferred parent.
• Pen Pals: "On se correspond" is about Pfff and Marylin's German pen pals who are coming to visit. Pa, Caprice, and Cassandra have to persuade the teen boys to clean their hangout before the pen pals arrive. Pa also begins to talk about a pen pal from the past and bring up artifacts from this occasion, including video tapes and a way-expired box of chocolates. It would be discovered that the pen pals are highly educated and they expect the boys to learn their cultures, including German Expressionism. There is even speculation that they're attractive girls. Cordless and Larry, meanwhile, disguise themselves as the pen pals by wearing huge backpacks and turning away from the boys, before they head to Pfff's room and eat the chocolates. The real pen pals turn out to be boys who are captivating to the teen girls, and they return in "Pudeur et tremblements".
• Professional Wrestling: Season 3 finale "Va te catcher vilain !" features professional wrestling. Caprice, Cassandra, Cordless, Larry, and Pa are shown to be wrestling fans, while Marylin and Pfff couldn't get to the teens' party due to their poor knowledge of the hobby, yet they create their own wrestler costumes. Triceps and especially her father are well known wrestlers too.
• Ramp Jump: In "Odeurs corp", during the runaway van scene, Cassie has to steer the lab van and make a jump over a ravine.
• Retool: Teen Crumpets narrowed the main cast to the teenagers, and Li'l One and the adults either lost importance (except Pa) or no longer appear (besides making cameos). The stories are more character-driven, and slapstick jokes and adult material have become less common before making a resurgence in season 4. The episodes are more evident on themes, too.
• Reused Character Design: The Teen Crumpets seasons did this for several minor characters, such as Marylin's parents in "Nom de code" sharing the same appearances as Rudy Swan the hippie and younger Granny in the photographs from "Murder Everywhere".
  • In "50 nuances de Cassie", not long after she abandoned her friends, Cassie stumbles upon a picture of her mother (as a teenager) breaking up from her friends, who greatly resemble Caprice, Pfff, Cordless, Marylin and Larry. This is part of the revelation that Cassie was actually becoming more parallel to her mother than she wanted to stray from rebelliously.
• The Reveal: In "Rat de marée", when Ma and Pa investigate the culprit behind the flood in the house, Ma denies that it's caused by Marylin's pet mouse damaging a pipe as Triceps suspected, saying the pipe is a component of a communication network under construction. Pa comes across the real culprit, which is a sample of Caprice's hair clogged in the bathtub.
• Rule of Three: In "Les sur-vivants", when the gang are in the woods during an apparent viral Zombie Apocalypse, group leader Triceps speaks about three steps for survival, but she initially refuses to reveal the third one because it isn't time yet. Once the twins Bother and Blister ask her what their roles are, she gives them step three, which is having no choice but winning the battle. Caprice, Cassie and Scene Transition quotes later mention the third step during high-tension situations, such as the two girls confronting a hallucinating Triceps.
• School Play: "One Man chien" has the teens working on a medieval play for Pa's annual potato festival, with the scriptwriters being Caprice and Cassie (later joined by Cordless for a revision). The girls get irritated by Marylin and Pfff initially refusing to join this production, and Cordless and Larry being uncommitted to it despite joining.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: In "Nu comme Hervé", Caprice and Cassie wear the same yellow skirts, but the former's choice to buy and wear a cheap imitation that was possibly manufactured in a sweatshop draws rebukes from Cassie and Marylin.
• Signs of Disrepair: In "Force et honneur", Marylin holds a sign reading "MAKE MUSIC NOT WAR!" sign to bid on ending the war between the pink-nosed Crumpets and the blue-noses like him. The twins shoot a cannonball and hit the center of the sign, which now reads "MAKE WAR!".
• Sleep Cute: In "Enfermés en forêt", Caprice and Cassie lean to their respective love interests while they sleep inside the tent. Caprice, who has wrapped Marylin in her arms, gets her sleep disrupted by Triceps slapping the mosquitoes over her.
  • In "Insectator", Cassie sleeps next to Pfff (who is peculiarly laying with his legs hanging above his head) on the grass after their video game hallucinations.
  • Caprice and Cassie also do this to each other in "Radeau d'ados", not to mention Bother and Blister sitting next to each other while facing opposite directions.
• Spaghetti Kiss: In "Reuh", after Pfff became friends with Reuh, Caprice finds a clip on social media with the two boys sharing spaghetti pasta with Cassie during the latter's simultaneous relationships with them.
• Stock Animal Diet: In "Insectator", Cassandra becomes obsessed with the video game Maxi Monsters Wars, where her character is a rabbit warrior. After she defeats the robot character of her neighbor Pfff, she holds a partially eaten carrot as she laughs maniacally. She would be seen hopping in her bedroom with carrot leaves on the floor and she eats another carrot. When Pfff is sleepwalking and views the world as if he's in that video game, he views Cassie as her rabbit character as she eats another carrot.
• Stock Scream: In the beginning of "Odeurs corp", when Caprice refuses to find a part-time job because of hard work, it shows a silhouette animation of a man pushing a boulder up on a slope (inspired by Sisyphus of Greek Mythology). Once the boulder rolls down, he flees and utters a quick Wilhelm Scream.
• Swapped Roles: In "Quasi Cassie", Caprice and Cassie switch their identities and reside at each other's homes, because Caprice wants to draw peacefully and Cassie wants to sing in a place that permits loud noise. Caprice would realize that living in Cassie's shoes (and literally wearing them, too) means eating small Fancy Dinner servings, doing tons of chores and having less free time to draw. Even though Cassie (who can imitate her friend's trademark walk) cleans her friend's bedroom and finds bedtime noisy at the Crumpets' house, she would adapt to its atmosphere and oppose Caprice's later argument to return to their old lives. The Crumpet family even notice that "Caprice" is more kind and helpful to her siblings than before.
• That Cloud Looks Like...: In "Rip la guitare", during the closing music number, Pfff gazes at a guitar-shaped cloud blocking the sun before it dissolves quickly. He smiles teary-eyed and gives us a rare look at his eyes open.
• Thieving Magpie: In "Crumperchés", when Caprice is accompanying Marylin while he's tied to the big tree, they appreciate the arrival of a magpie. This magpie hurts Marylin by pulling his chain, and it steals Cassie's heart necklace. On the next day, the same magpie or another one snatches Marylin's key for his chains.
• Two-Act Structure: The original plot of "Quotient H" is about most of the teenagers taking Cordless' IQ test while Marylin strongly protests it and sings in a lengthy musical sequence. Once the teens learn of their IQ test results, Larry is given a perfect score, drawing Marylin's attention into treating him as a divine boy who inspires lyrics he can write. Cassie, who receives the lowest IQ score despite being intelligent, gets rejected by her friends because they comprehend the test's results as the truth. She is also the protagonist for the episode's second-half.
• Urine Trouble: In "Gentil choléra", Cassie's puppy urinates on one of the former's legs. Cassie, who is having difficulties controlling her temper towards her puppy, smacks it high to the air.
• Vader Breath: In "Rip la guitare", when the gang make Pfff cry for his grieving process by using tear gas, the breathing they emit with their gas masks is similar to Darth Vader's breathing.
• "Wanted!" Poster: In "Combien on t'aime pas trop", the gang plaster wanted posters of their missing outcast "friend" Larry on cars and even on the Crumpets' house, including one giant copy covering most of the house. Because they lack a good picture of him, Cordless attempts a digital facial composite stitching the pictures they have, resulting in Larry having a blurry and pixelated portrait in the poster.
• Way Past the Expiration Date: In "On se correspond", Pa, who has been bringing up mementos from a past pen pal visit now that Marylin and Pfff's pen pals are en-route to the house, gives the two boys a two-decade old box of chocolates. After Pfff throws it to a trash can, Cordless and Larry went to the room being disguised as their pen pals by using only massive backpacks and facing away from other people. When the other teens arrive in the room, Cordless and Larry are found eating the chocolates. They feel nauseated and leave.

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