Western Animation / Wunschpunsch

The four main characters from Wunschpunsch. Bubonic and Mauricio are on the left, and Tyrannia and Jacob are on the right. Not pictured: Maggot.

By the power, hail and hearty,
of an earthquake on a roll,
prove these parts be part and party,
of the one and only scroll.

Formula of deepest night,
if it's you, then show your might!
Join what once was rent asunder,
to the sound of flames and thunder!
Ready? Set! Wunschpunsch!

The Invocation said by Bubonic and Tyrannia whenever they brew the titular potion

Wunschpunsch is a French/Canadian animated series co-produced by Saban International Paris and CinéGroupe inspired by Michael Ende's novel Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch (known in English as The Night of Wishes).

Each episode, a bumbling wizard and witch named Bubonic and Tyrannia (who are nephew and aunt) are forced by their supervisor, Maggot, to cast a spell on the inhabitants of the city they live in. To do so, they have to combine their two halves of a magical parchment. The spell has to last for seven hours in order to become permanent, but can be broken within that time span. Unbeknown to the wizard and witch, they are thwarted each time by their own pets; a cat named Mauricio and a raven named Jacob, who work together with an old turtle to undo every spell before the time is up.

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This series provides examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: When Tyrannia grew jealous of the attention the self-centered local news reporter received from men, she and Bubonic cast a spell that made men unable to resist her. Maledictus Maggot became this trope.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Maurizio finds the vanity spell hilarious.
• Actionized Adaptation: "The Night of Wishes" is a loose adaptation of the novel with several action scenes added that weren't in the source material.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Neither Bubonic nor Tyrannia are what you would call "attractive", but the illustrations in the novel were downright hideous.
• Adaptational Badass: In the novel, Jacob was somewhat cowardly. In the series he's proactive to the point of overconfident.
• Adaptational Dumbass: The wizards are pretty stupid in the series, compared to how they were in the novel.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the novel, Mauricio was lazy, not very bright and revealed to Preposteror his true nature (although Preposteror had figured it out before). In this series, he keeps his true identity a secret- the most Bubonic knows about him is his name- and is one of the most competent members of the High Council.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Bubonic and Tyrannia are stone-cold villains in the novel the show is based on. Here they are Harmless Villains that have to be threatened and cajoled into doing anything remotely evil.
• Adaptational Wimp: The High Council outside of Auntie Noah are pretty useless whenever a spell is cast, and Mauricio and Jacob have to do all the work.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Pay attention to Maggot lecturing Bubonic and Tyrannia.
• Agony of the Feet: Happens to Bubonic in the episode "Big Feet", and his constant whining about how his feet hurt causes the spell of the week to go wrong (it was supposed to turn people into giants, but instead only made their feet grow)
  • In "Sand Witch", Maurizio accidentally hits Jacob in the foot with a hammer.
  • And of course, the cuckoo clock in the wizard's lab that counts down the hours till the spell becomes permanent; rather than a bird shouting cuckoo, it has a hammer that slams on a toe, to which the clock shouts in agony.
• Alliterative Name: Maurizio diMauro, Maledictus Maggot, Barbara Blabber, Peter Pestilence and Professor Precious Perfidious.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: In the episode where the wizards reverted the entire city back to medieval times, Bubonic makes himself a king.
• And Call Him "George": Mrs. Maggot is this way with pets.
• Animate Inanimate Object:
  • One spell of the week made all electrical appliances come to live.
  • The Christmas Episode did the same thing to toys.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: One episode had the spell of the week turn the entire city prehistoric, which resulted in cavemen and dinosaurs both roaming the city. It is lampshaded by Tyrannia that in real life humans and dinosaurs never lived in the same time period, and Bubonic concludes something must have gone wrong with the spell.
• Back to School: When Bubonic and Tyrannia wished Maggot would no longer teach them a lesson, Professor Perfidious turned their home into a school and placed them into a classroom full of magical children, who were better at magic than they were.
• Bad "Bad Acting": In "You Must Be Joking", Mauricio and Jacob re-enact Jack's death scene from Titanic (1997). However, their acting is so wooden that the bewitched citizens laugh.
• Batman Gambit: In "Slowly But Surely", Jacob and Mauricio trick the wizards into thinking their spell didn't work by filming a chase between cops and robbers. Jacob reports the scene in a slow voice, and then they play the tape at a faster speed so that it looks like things are normal. This causes Tyrannia to cry "Failed again!" and break the spell by accident.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • In one episode, the wizards created a spell that granted one wish for every person in the city, but always in the way to backfire. The wizards used it later for themselves, sure they'd found a wish that would let them get rid of their boss and not backfire at them in any way. They were wrong.
  • One of the lines the wizards recite while casting Wunschpunsch spells is "hear our wish and grant us a notion". See Hoist by His Own Petard for details.
  • Jacob and Maurizio aren't immune to the trope. In "Nice Wizards", they tampered with a spell and wished Bubonic and Tyrannia became good people. Even well-intended, the wizards' spells cause disaster.
  • In "Mayor for a Day", Bubonic switched bodies with the Mayor, who said he'd rather be struck by lightning. After it happened, Tyrannia quoted the trope.
• Big Ball of Violence: Jacob and Mauricio get into one in "The Night of Wishes", when they first meet, get off on the wrong foot and start insulting each other.
  • The wizards and all of Megalopolis' pets get into one in "Life with Maggot".
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: one spell of the week turned all insects in the city giant.
• Big Damn Heroes: Saint Sylvester showing up to help the heroes in The Night of Wishes.
• Bolivian Army Ending: A rare villainous example in Let´s break a deal: At the end of the episode, Tyrannia is abducted by imps into the Realm of Magic. Mr. Maggot gives Bubonic 15 minutes to rescue her and brew a Wunschpunsch potion with her. The episode ends with Bubonic trying and failing to create a portal to the Realm of Magic and decrying that he will never be able to rescue her in time.
• Bowdlerise: In the original Michael Ende novel, the male wizard's name is Beelzebub Preposteror. In the English version of this show and most international dubs, his name is instead Bubonic Preposteror. This was most likely done because Beelzebub is also another name for Satan.
• Break the Haughty: Jacob in "Two Cute". Throughout the episode he looks down on Mauricio and insists that every decision he makes is the right one. When he thinks that they need to solve a puzzle to break the spell and it doesn't work, he's brought down to earth by his own failure and his admission of his own stupid decisions is what causes the spell cast on them to break.
• Call-Back: In "Gloom With a View", some previous spells of the week were mentioned.
• Catapult Nightmare: Happened to several characters in the episode where the spell of the week gave everyone nightmares, and to Bubonic himself in a different episode (when he dreamed he was a king, until Mr. Maggot, as a dragon, confronted him).
• Chained Heat: In one episode, Bubonic and Tyrannia cast a spell that makes people stick together whenever they argue between themselves. Even they becomes victims of this. Later, when the spell is broken, their supervisor punishes them for the failure by turning one of them into a fly paper and the other into a fly and sticking them together.
• Christmas Episode: "Worst Noel" centers around Christmas.
• City of Adventure: The city in which the series is set, Megalopolis.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The wizards' boss uses a new one almost every time. The punishment as almost always has something to do with the (failed) spell the two wizards tried to put on the city.
• Cuckoo Clock Gag: The wizard's lab has a cuckoo clock for counting down the 7 hours a spell needs to last in order to become permanent. The hours are announced by a hammer slamming down on a toe, causing the clock to yell in pain with each slam.
• Curse Escape Clause: Every spell cast by using the Wunschpunsch parchment comes with a Curse Escape Clause that comes in riddle shape and it's up to the heroes to figure it before it's too late. (Wunschpunsch spells that last seven hours become permanent).
• Deal with the Devil: One episode had Bubonic make a deal with Mephisto, a powerful wizard from the underworld, to gain more power, thus enabling him to curse the city all by himself and being able to put Tyrannia in her place. Unfortunately, the deal meant he eventually had to become the wizard's servant.
• Deliberately Monochrome: One spell of the week turned the city and his residents black and white.
• Denser and Wackier: Every spell cast after the first one. Some of them are still dangerous, but nowhere near as much as poisoning the world.
• Determinator: Jacob in Slowly But Surely, going all day and night without getting tired. There's also his reset button wish in Wishful Thinking, which he said as he was melting.
• D.I.Y. Disaster: In "Appliance Alliance", Bubonic and Tyrannia cast a spell to make appliances revolt against their owners. When Tyrannia decided to bake a cake to celebrate, she realized that she forgot to protect her own appliances against the spell. One of the consequences was her refrigerator spouting flames.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: Especially on Bubonic.
• Diving Save: Jacob saves Mauricio from getting hit by traffic this way in "Colorless Chaos"
  • Mauricio saves Jacob from getting crushed by a falling statue head in "Lost Spell".
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In "By a Hair's Breadth", Mauricio has to pull a feather from Jacob's wing, but Jacob is too scared. This is obviously like someone avoiding an injection.
• The Door Slams You: Tyrannia accidentally smashes Jacob with the door to the laboratory in "Simply Irresistible".
• Doppelgänger: One spell of the week created a double for everyone who looked into a mirror.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Bubonic gets dragged off to the Realm of Sorcery in "Let's Break a Deal". When he's sent back, Tyrannia gets dragged to the realm in his place.
• Dreadful Musician: Bubonic is this whenever he plays his cello. Mauricio, Jacob and Auntie Noah are all horrible singers.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Colonel Custard, the mouse who leads Mauricio and Jacob on their mission in 'Plant Panic'.
• Drives Like Crazy: Tyrannia. Jacob is even worse, having had no previous driving experience and sending a car jumping fifty feet into the air before crashing.
• Dub Name Change:
  • In Brazil, Bubonic was translated and Maledictus Maggot, to the amusement of those who read the book, was renamed Maledictus Larva.
  • In the Dutch dub of the cartoon, Maggot's name is changed to Mekker, which is the Dutch first person form for whining. However, in the Dutch translation of the book, he is called Made, which is a literal translation of Maggot. Might've been enforced to fit the Mouth Flaps.
  • In the German version, Oakfoot is named Florian.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In one episode, Bubonic and Tyrannia save city from flood, which is a consequence from one of their spells, though Tyrannia did this more because of Pragmatic Villainy (why destroy a city, when you do manicure here?).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Bubonic and Tyrannia might hate each other and have no qualms about casting evil spells (despite being usually too lazy to start before their supervisor shows up) but love their respective pets. Then again, unlike their book counterparts, they don't know said pets are the ones who ruin their spells.
• Eviler than Thou: Maledictus Maggot to Tyrannia and Bubonic. They have to be constantly reminded to cast evil spells.
• Exact Words:
  • In the episode that granted everybody a single wish, the wizards wished their boss would never teach them a lesson ever again. Another person showed up to do the teaching.
  • When Mephisto offered to make Bubonic more powerful if Bubonic agreed to become his assistant for "a certain amount of time", Mephisto intended that amount to be forever.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: In "The Beastie Brew", where the curse of the week turns everybody into the animal that best suits their personality or character traits, two lawyers get turned into sharks.
• Facepalm: Jacob does this in "It's a Dog's Life" when Mauricio asks him to carry him down from the tree.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The wizards never managed to make a spell last long enough to become permanent, and are punished for it.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: How Mauricio rescues Jacob in "Ty-Me Travel".
• Fashionable Asymmetry: In one episode Bubonic and Tyrannia used the spell of the week to make Maggot inspect everybody's work in Megalopolis, hoping it would make him too busy to bother them (It didn't. He just bothered them with non-magic related stuff). To break the spell, Maurizio and Jacob had to make Maggot realize a mistake of his own, and the only flaw they could find about him was that he was wearing missmatched socks.
• Femme Fatale: One spell of the week made Tyrannia irresistible to all the men in the city. Maggot was affected as well.
• Finagle's Law: Bubonic and Tyrannia once used a spell to make people shrink upon contact with water. It stopped raining as soon as they finished casting the spell.
• Fountain of Youth: One spell of the week turned everybody in the city back into a five year old child.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: One spell of the week made Bubonic and the mayor switch bodies, so that Bubonic (as the mayor) could halt the production of a theme park that was to be built in the wizard's backyard. It was supposed to be temporary, but both Bubonic and the Mayor soon discovered the advantages of their new bodies (Bubonic now having total control over the city, and the mayor now being a wizard) and wanted to stay each other permanently. And unfortunately, the spell also made Maurizio and Jacob switch bodies.
• Friend to All Children: Unlike his mistress, Jacob rather likes children and doesn't hesitate to protect them.
• Fusion Dance: Subverted, Bubonic and Tyrannia both possess one half of a magical parchment, and only when joining the two halves together does their magic become powerful enough to curse the city.
• Game Show: One spell of the week turned the entire city into one big game show.
• George Jetson Job Security: A huge variation: Maledictus T. Maggot always punishes Bubonic and Tyrannia for their failures yet they never get fired.
• Get Back to the Future: One episode, the wizards went back in time to prevent their supervisor's parents from ever meeting each other and ended up stranded in the past. They didn't mind since they both met their love interests there, but their pets had a different opinion and soon learned that, in order to return to their own time, they had to make Maledictus Maggot's parents meet since it was to prevent that the wizards started the time travel in the first place.
• Gilligan Cut: In "By a Hair's Breadth", Mauricio comments how good it was the spell didn't affect animals. The next scene shows him as a hairless cat.
• Girls vs. Boys Plot: In one episode, the wizards cast a spell that pits all the men and women of Megalopolis against each other in a competition for control over the city. The key to breaking the spell is getting a man to help a woman instead.
• Growling Gut: Happens to Mauricio in "Life with Maggot", which causes Jacob to remember that, like Moe's stomach, Maggot's briefcase can hold anything.
• Guile Hero: Mauricio and Jacob usually trick other people (or even their owners) into ruining dark magic. In "Slowly But Surely", Jacob gets the idea of filming a slow motion chase between cops and robbers, filming it and making their owners think they failed.
• Hand Gagging: Jacob does this to Mauricio in "Perchance to Dream- Not" when the cat wakes up from a nightmare and runs yowling out of the laboratory. He does it again to Maurizio in "Simply Irresistible" when he runs around the kitchen table screaming, and a third time in "Wishful Thinking" when Maurizio almost wishes for something.
• Harmless Villain: The wizards would probably be this if Maggot didn't constantly force them to cast all those evil spells.
• Hero with an F in Good: In "Nice Wizards", Bubonic and Tyrannia are turned into these. Ironically, they cause far more damage to the city while trying to help people than they ever did while they were evil, forcing Jacob and Mauricio to break the spell as usual.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Has anyone kept counting how many spells of the week have somehow brought harm to the wizards or at least one of them? Answer: nearly every episode.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: A spell of the week caused everybody to shrink when making contact with water.
• Intangibility: One spell of the week made everyone (both humans and animals) able to walk through walls, thus taking away any form of privacy and allowing both criminals and wild animals to escape from prison and the zoo respectively.
• Inept Mage: Bubonic is a mean wizard, but not very bright.
• In-Series Nickname: Jacob and Mauricio call each other "Jake" and "Moe" on occasion.
• Ironic Echo: The punishments that Maggot gives to Bubonic and Tyrannia are often ironic echo's of the spell of the week (for example, when they turned everybody into animals, he turned them into snails, and when they made the city prehistoric, he turned them into cavemen).
• I'm Melting!: In "Wishful Thinking", Professor Perfidious has a student melt Jacob for trying to stop his class. Jacob saves himself by wishing the day would start over.
• Interrupted Suicide: In "Colorless Chaos", Mauricio is distraught by the fact that he lost his colour, which he sees as a sign of nobility, loses the will to live and walks out into the middle of a busy street, hoping to get hit by a vehicle. However, Jacob, who desperately tries to talk him down from his depression, saves him from an oncoming car.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jacob is basically a Grumpy Old Man in bird form but he cares about Mauricio and Megalopolis.
• Lame Pun Reaction: In "By a Hair's Breadth", Mauricio remarks "Whoa, Jacob, you were right. That is one hairy spell!" and laughs. Jacob answers with a dirty look.
• Last Ditch Move: Jacob saves the day while he's melting in "Wishful Thinking".
• Lightbulb Joke: Jacob asked Meathead (Bubonic's carnivorous plant) how many carnivorous plants were needed to change a light bulb. Jacob said there were needed two: one to hold the light bulb and the other to turn around.
• Lighter and Softer: While the original book, The Night of Wishes, was a pretty comedic affaire, it was notably darker than the series. Circumstances were a lot more dire, Mauricio and Jacob were a lot more desperate, and Bubonic and Tyrannia were far from the Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain characters they are in the series; despite their comical edge they were both very competent in their evildoing, and they knew very well that Jacob and Mauricio were spies for the High Council, but pretended to be ignorant about it in order to manipulate them. They also only had one chance to brew the Wunschpunsch, and their punishment for failure was to be "repossessed" and dragged down to Hell for all eternity. In the series, the episode that's based on the book, their punishment is simply to be forced to live together, setting up the series' status quo.
• Limited Wardrobe: See the clothes Bubonic is wearing at the top picture? You'll hardly see him wearing anything else. The same goes for nearly all other recurring characters in the series. Tyrannia however averts the trope and frequently dresses in different outfits.
• Living Shadow: A spell of the week turned all the people in the city into living shadows.
• Living Toys: The spell of the week used in the Christmas Episode made all toys in the city come to live and become evil.
• Man-Eating Plant: Bubonic has an intelligent Venus Flytrap, who becomes a huge, carnivorous monster plant in an episode where the spell of the week causes all plants in the city to grow uncontrollably.
• Mayor Pain: The mayor of the city is an incompetent buffoon.
• Meaningful Name: The wizard Bubonic made a Deal with the Devil with was named Mephisto.
• Meat-O-Vision: In "The Wild Wild Pets", when Maurizio gains a split personality from the spell, his feral side sees Jacob as a roasted bird.
• Modesty Towel: At the start of the episode "Money Can't Buy Happiness", Tyrannia wants to take a shower but finds out their water is cut off because Bubonic didn't pay the bill. She spends the entire episode dressed in only a modesty towel, even when going out to pay the bill.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: Maledictus T. Maggot.
• Never My Fault: Both Bubonic and Tyrannia to each other, after they get defeated by their pets... and in general.
• New Year Has Come: "Night of Wishes".
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Twice:
  • In "Nice Wizards", Bubonic and Tyrannia tried to cast a spell to make their supervisor a nice man who wouldn't bother if they did their work or not. Jacob and Mauricio however realize this is the perfect opportunity to turn the wizards into good people, so they interfere with the spell and Bubonic and Tyrannia are turned nice instead. The problem with this is that they're so clumsy, that all their attempts to use magic to do good deeds end up causing disasters they're oblivious to, making them an even greater threat to the city than when they're their normal evil selves. Thus, their pets are forced to break the spell again.
  • In "Slowly But Surely", when the spell of the week made all the people who where still sleeping at the time the spell was cast (at five o'clock in the morning) extremely slow, Jacob and Mauricio tried to limit the damage by quickly waking up as many people as possible before the spell was activated, thus saving them from the curse. Unfortunately, one of the people they woke up was a bank robber, who took great advantage of everyone else, including the police, being slow.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In "Let's Break a Deal", Bubonic saves the day by accident when he accidentally smashes Mephisto's cellphone while stapling paperwork.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Auntie Noah has long, white hair despite being a turtle. All female ravens in the show's universe have hair, too, including Ravenia and Jacob's mother.
• Noodle Incident: In "You Must Be Joking", it's revealed that Jacob once tried to drop a rock on someone's toe (and threw his back out doing it). He didn't say why.
• Ocular Gushers: Tyrannia sheds literal floods of tears in "Simply Irresistible" when Bubonic refuses to help his aunt cast a spell that makes men fall in love with her.
• "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Jacob does this in "Good for Nothing" when he's trying to learn to fly again and is instead sent flying backwards into a family's cake.
• Once an Episode: Far too many to list. Like old Scooby-Doo episodes, the show follows a rigid plot structure.
• Pale Females, Dark Males: In Colorless Chaos, the raven that Jacob serenades has lighter colored feathers than he does.
• Parental Neglect: In "Drop Me a Line", it's revealed that Jacob's mother didn't feed him enough when he was a chick, and Jacob was always the last in line. This gave Jacob a lifelong inferiority complex.
• Pass the Popcorn: Happens in the episode where the spell of the week turned everybody's dreams into nightmares. Bubonic and Tyrannia use a special machine to look into the dreams of the citizens, and Tyrannia is eating some popcorn while enjoying the show.
• Pet the Dog: Unlike in the book, Bubonic and Tyrannia genuinely adore their pets.
• Plant Person: Tyrannia becomes one after the spell of the week causes her to fuse together with Bubonic's carnivorous plant.
• Pinocchio Nose: One spell of the week that made people only tell lies had this as a side effect, most likely because a lie detector was accidentally added to the potion when the spell was cast.
• Polluted Wasteland: The prequel episode shows that turning the city into one of these was the first spell the wizards used.
• The Prankster: One spell of the week turned everybody in the city into one.
• Precision F-Strike: Being a Canadian cartoon of its time, it gets away with this at times.
  • In "The Night of Wishes", when Bubonic tries to explain to Maggot how nasty Potion Number Ninety-Two is, Maggot yells back: "POTION NUMBER NINETY-TWO IS A PATHETIC PIECE OF CRAP!"
  • In "Achoo!", Bubonic declares to Tyrannia, "If everyone were to sneeze harder than you, life would be hell!"
• Predator-Prey Friendship: The two main heroes are a bird and a cat and they're friends.
• Proud Peacock: In "The Beastie Brew", the spell of the week turns all people in Megalopolis into the animal that best suits their personality. Thus, vain reporter Barbara Blabber is turned into a peacock; something the wizards even lampshade. Later in the episode, when Jacob and Mauricio have to gather all the people-turned-animals on a ship, they use a mirror to lure peacock Barbara on board.
• Powers as Programs: zig-zagged. When Bubonic and Tyrania turned all inhabitants of Megalopolis into doubles of themselves, it also gave them magic powers. However, when Bubonic and the Mayor switched bodies, Bubonic's magic powers did not switch along with him but stayed with his old body, thus making the mayor, in Bubonic's body, a wizard.
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • If it wasn't for the fact that their boss Mr. Maggot keeps reminding them of their duty as wizards, Bubonic and Tyrannia would probably never put a curse onto the city. At worst they are jerkasses while left alone.
  • Mr. Maggot himself considering the episode "Life With Maggot". The episode "Gloom With a View" shows him becoming depressed from work.
• Reality Warper: The Wunschpunsch curses are powerful enough to -among other things-, send the entire city back to the medieval ages, and turn fairy tales into reality.
• Rhyming Wizardry: For the Wunschpunsch curses, both the starting invocation (see page quote) and the episode-specific spell that follows are said in rhyme. Averted with Bubonic and Tyrania's individual uses of magic, which require no words, just hand movements.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: When Bubonic is forced to become Mephisto's servant as a result of his Deal with the Devil, he turns out to be extremely clumsy at what he does, to the point that Mephisto can't stand having him around much longer and kicks him out of the underworld again, canceling their deal and undoing all of Bubonic's spells in the process.
• Quote Mine: In one episode the spell of the week made everyone hate everyone. The only way to break it was to make someone say "I love you". To achieve that, the two main characters found a love interest for Jacob. Jacob asked her "What do you think of me?" while Mauricio hid somewhere with a tape recorder. She answered with a rain of insults, Mauricio quickly paused and unpaused the recording so that, when played back, it finally said the required words.
• Race Against the Clock: Each spell has to be broken within seven hours, or else it will become permanent. Jacob and Mauricio frequently check their clock to see how much time they have left.
  • And in the episode in which the spell of the week turned everybody into a shadow, the time limit was even shorter because all shadows would disappear at noon.
• Read the Fine Print: The contract Bubonic signed with Mephisto had a fine print on its back.
• Record Needle Scratch: In "By a Hair's Breadth", Mauricio has to pull a feather from Jacob's wing, but Jacob is too scared to have one pulled out. Mauricio asks him to think of a happy memory. Jacob remembers lying in a nest, his wings around two pretty robins, one feeding him a worm. Record needle scratch ensues when he hears Mauricio's voice say "Ready?""
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Eager, happy-go-lucky Mauricio (Red) and serious, hard-working, cantankerous Jacob (Blue).
• Reset Button: No matter how they are punished, at the start of each new episode the wizards are totally fine again and back to living their lives. The only punishment that stayed throughout the entire series was the first one; Maggot joining the two houses of the wizards together. Also, nobody in the city seems to recall events from a previous episode, since nobody ever wonders why so many strange things happen in their city. Even the mayor completely forgot about his "Freaky Friday" Flip with Bubonic.
• Reset Button Ending: Is used in the episode where the wizards created a spell that granted one wish for everyone in the city. To end the spell, Jacob wished the day would restart.
• Rich Bitch: One spell of the week made everybody extremely rich, but also extremely snobbish because of it.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The episode "Ghost Town" starts with Bubonic receiving a jar from an old friend turned enemy, which contains an annoying poltergeist. He and his aunt spent the entire episode fighting the creature until Mr. Maggot finally seals it into its jar again, along with Bubonic and Tyrannia as their punishment for that episode.
• The Runt at the End: Jacob when he was a chick.
• Season Fluidity: This show is firmly on the "Fluid" side of the scale, to the point that you can watch the episodes in any order you like without getting confused.
• Security Cling: Jacob and Maurizio do this in "Shadow of a Doubt", just as they had done many times in the book.
• Send in the Clones:
  • One spell of the week caused all the men in the city to become clones of Bubonic, and all the females to become clones of Tyrannia, complete with their personalities and magical powers.
  • Another episode featured a spell that duplicated everyone who looked at themselves in any mirrors. Having six Aunts instead of one was so horrible Bubonic said "good riddance" when they vanished until he realized that meant the spell failed.
• Sentient Vehicle: One spell of the week turned everybody into living cars.
• Series Continuity Error: In "Good for Nothing", Mauricio rationalizes that the spells never affect himself or Jacob while they're in the laboratory. And yet in "Perchance to Dream- Not", when the nightmare spell was cast, Jacob left the lab and was unaffected, while Mauricio, who had fallen asleep in the lab as the spell was cast, was. Furthermore, in "Shadow of a Doubt", Mauricio and Jacob were in the lab when the spell was cast and they were still affected.
  • In "Double Trouble" Bubonic doesn't feed Mauricio enough. But in "Fancy Footwork", he's shown to feed him too much.
• She's a Man in Japan: Meathead is female and named "Dionna" in the German dub.
• Shout-Out: Jacob looks remarkably like Igor from Count Duckula.
• Sinister Schnoz: Bubonic and Tyrannia.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In The Night of Wishes, Beelzebub and Tyrannia were sent to hell as punishment. In the episode directly based on the book, their animated counterparts were just forced to live together (that said, Hell is other people).
• Spell My Name With An S: Mauricio's name is either spelled with a z or with a c.
• Spooky Painting: One spell of the week made all paintings in the city come to live.
• Split Personality: In The Wild Wild Pets, the spell of the week gives Mauricio this because he was half in/half out of the house when the spell was cast, and thus only got half affected. He kept switching back and forth between his regular self and his new, feral self.
• Stealth Pun: In "The War of the Sexes", Mauricio sees a female cat walking by and says, "Hello-o-o, beautiful!" The cat answers, "Get lost!" In other words, he was literally catcalling.
• Strictly Formula: Each episode follows a distinct pattern: We see the villains going about their daily business. Then Maledictus T. Maggot shows up and berates them for not having cast any evil spells lately and forces them to cooperate. The villains berate each other for their lack of achievement before coming up with an idea for a spell. They use their combined power to cast the spell. Their pets witness the resulting devastation and plot to stop it before it becomes permanent. They first seek out the aid of a wise turtle who gives them a cryptic riddle. Meanwhile, the villains take jabs at each other as they revel in their wickedness. The animals figure out the riddle and reverse the spell at the last minute. Maggot shows up and gives the villains their Cool and Unusual Punishment. The animals rejoice.
  • In fact, the wizards expect visitations from Maggot on a daily basis so much that they start to get worried about him when he arrives late in "Gloom with a View".
  • The formula was broken in "Let's Break a Deal". Mephisto made a deal with Bubonic where Bubonic became powerful enough to cast sinister spells on his own, Bubonic cast a spell on his own and later put Tyrannia on her place. Then Mephisto takes Bubonic away and only then Maggot appears. Tyrannia then must find Bubonic's half of the Wunschpunsch parchment and cast a spell on her own before the "grace period" Maggot granted her ends. Because of the level of sorcery employed by Bubonic on the spell, the wise turtle cannot give any riddle to help Mauricio and Jacob so they must find another way to break the spell. They don't, but they think they did because they were working on a way to do it when the deal between Bubonic and Mephisto was undone. Tyrannia was taken to the underworld and Maggot gave Bubonic a fifteen-minute "grace period". Bubonic was now trying to rescue Tyrannia so they could cast a spell together. No punishment from Maggot, but then again Bubonic's idiocy is punishment enough.
  • Also in the episode that had a Reset Button Ending: Maggot never showed up to punish the wizards for their failure.
• Stupid Evil: Bubonic and Tyrannia. For example, they don't take any precautions to prevent themselves from being target of their spells.
• Talking Animal: Mauricio and Jacob. It's evident with the latter in "Slowly But Surely", and they choose not to speak in front of humans. Clarified in "Simply Irresistible".
• Tempting Fate: The episode where Bubonic and Tyrannia turned all pets in the city (including Maurizio, who was only half-affected because he was half-outside the house when the spell was activated but excluding Jacob who, by his own admission, wasn't from a pet material species regardless of what Tyrannia thought) into wild animals. When the spell failed, Maledictus Maggot sent the wizards to a wild area as punishment. When Bubonic told Tyrannia they'd be safe for as long as they stayed inside the car, Maggot made it disappear.
  • In "Ty-Me Travel", when he hears that Bubonic and Tyrannia want to prevent Maggot's parents from meeting each other, Jacob is delighted. No more Maggot means no more Wunschpunsch spells, which means he and Mauricio can relax and enjoy themselves. But unfortunately he spoke too soon as the wizards decide to take them to the Middle Ages with them.
• Time Travel: Bubonic and Tyrannia once went back in time to prevent their supervisor's parents from meeting each other so he won't exist. Not wanting to get stuck in the past, their pets made Maggot's parents meet since they learned it was the Curse Escape Clause that could break the time travel spell.
• Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: One spell of the week made everybody extremely incompetent for the job or profession they have. Subverted with Jacob: Though he loses the ability to fly because of the spell, he doesn't lose the ability to improvise.
• Totem Pole Trench: Jacob and Mauricio did this in "Worst Noel", with Jacob as the top half.
  • They did this in "You Must Be Joking", with Mauricio as the top half.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Tyrannia wears unique clothes and has an unique hairstyle in about every other episode, in contrast to every other character.
• Unmoving Plaid: All the fuzzy animal fur and fabric were textured that way.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The wizards do not get along very well, despite being family.
  • In a prequel episode, we see that the first punishment Maggot imposed upon them was joining their homes together, which is notable for being the only punishment that is permanent instead of being undone by the start of the next episode.
  • One time, the spell of the week caused this to all pairs of individuals arguing between themselves. As usual, Bubonic and Tyrannia were no exceptions to this.
• Wet Cement Gag: In "Slowly But Surely", the only bank robber not affected by the spell ends up stumbling into wet cement. Although it slows him down, he can still outrun the policemen chasing him.
  • Also, when the duplicating spell failed, Maggot punished them by sticking their backs together.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In "Life with Maggot", Auntie Noah appears in a dream to scold Jacob and Mauricio for abandoning their duty.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The show takes place in the city of Megalopolis with no clues as to where it's located.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve:
  • In the episode that was adapted from the book, the spell was cast at five o'clock afternoon, meaning it had to be broken before midnight.
  • In "Slowly but Surely", the spell was cast at five o'clock in the morning, meaning it had to be broken before noon.
• Whole Episode Flashback: "Night of Wishes".
• Wise Old Turtle: In each episode, Jacob and Mauricio consult with one to get information on the Curse Escape Clause for today's evil spell.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In an attempt to prevent Bubonic and Tyrannia from casting the spell of the week in "Plant Panic", Mauricio placed some banana peels to make them trip and believed the plan would work because he'd seen it happening in cartoons. They simply walked normally and were oblivious to the banana peels despite having stepped on some. Mauricio later fell for his own trap. Just like it happens in some cartoons (and other media sometimes).
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: In some episodes, Jacob and Mauricio try to prevent the villains from casting the Spell of the Week. Their only measure of success was changing a spell so it'd make Bubonic and Tyrannia good people and they needed to break that spell because it turned them in Heroes With an F in Good.

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