Western Animation / Amphibia

It's time to hop to it.

"Look, if a friend likes a pencil case, you get it for them. If your friend likes your new shoes, you give them to her! And if a friend wants you to steal a crazy music box from a thrift store, even if you really don't want to... you do it, okay? Because if you don't... they might not want to be your friend anymore."

— Anne Boonchuy

Amphibia is a Disney Channel animated adventure/comedy series created by Matt Braly, who previously served as a director on Gravity Falls.

The show chronicles the adventures of Anne Boonchuy (Brenda Song), a Thai-American teenager who, after stealing a mysterious music box at the behest of her Childhood Friends, Sasha Waybright (Anna Akana) and Marcy Wu (Haley Tju), is magically transported to the eponymous world of Amphibia, a mystical and hazardous marshland populated by Frog Men, giant insects, and much more.

Following some confusion with the local populace, she is taken in by an excitable young frog named Sprig Plantar (Justin Felbinger), his grandfather Hopediah "Hop Pop" (Bill Farmer), and his little sister Polly (Amanda Leighton), who promise to watch over this strange "human" monster. With Sprig's help, Anne discovers the first true friendship of her life, learns to be a hero, and slowly figures out how to return to Earth. Unbeknownst to Anne, however, her old friends have also made the trip to this amphibian realm, and have been forced to adapt in their own ways, for better and for worse.

Eventually, Anne manages to reunite with her human friends, and learns more about the true nature of the music box with help from the ruler of Amphibia, King Andrias (Keith David). As everyone works together to help the girls finally return to Earth, they discover that the music box might be the key to something much bigger than they could possibly imagine and that they're now at the center of an ancient prophecy that promises to affect more than just Amphibia.

The series premiered on June 17, 2019, with the first episode pairing being made available on various online services on the 14th, including YouTube. The second season premiered on July 11, 2020, whilst the third premiered on October 2, 2021, with Braly confirming in interviews that it would be the show's final season. The half-hour series finale, entitled "The Hardest Thing", aired on May 14, 2022. A spin-off companion book, Marcy's Journal: A Guide to Amphibia was released on December 6, 2022. On May 12th 2024, it was announced that an artbook featuring concept art for the show would be released on November 17th the same year, Matt Braly having previously teased it with a poll asking fans if they'd rather see a comic continuation or an artbook.

It officially has a Friendly Fandom with The Owl House, which the creators of both series have acknowledged and actively encouraged. Furthermore, the third season of Amphibia and the second season of The Owl House strongly imply that the two shows take place in a Shared Universe.

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Spranne against the tropes!

Tropes A to M

• A Birthday, Not a Break: Anne (along with Sasha and Marcy) was transported to Amphibia on her thirteenth birthday.
• Abstract Strategy Game: Flipwart is an In-Universe game resembling Chess. While we don't know the exact rules, we do know it's a game for smart people and no chance elements appear when played on-screen.
• Actor Allusion: "Hopping Mall" has the character Priscilla the Killer, voiced by Misty Lee. She's a very tough and fearsome warrior, but is actually a good person, just with rough edges. She's also good with kids. Both of these describe her role as Big Barda.
  • Dr. Jan is voiced by Anika Noni Rose, who also was caught in the middle of a story full of frogs where the Big Bad was voiced by Keith David. However, this time, said villain turns out to be The Dragon to the real Big Bad.
• A Dog Named "Perro":
  • Captain Bufo's name comes from latin word for "toad" and a genus of toads in biological classification.
  • King Andrias may also count as Andrias is the scientific name for giant salamanders.
• Adults Are More Anthropomorphic: Amphibia's frogs start their lives as naked, wriggling tadpoles. As they grow up, they start walking bipedally and wearing clothes.
• Adults Are Useless: Subverted. Anne believes in season 3 that her parents would be no help to her quest to get the Plantars back to Amphibia, since they've been overprotective of her since she returned. She finds out she's wrong: sure, her parents aren't thrilled when they find out a tyrant newt king wants Anne's head on a platter and that she left out the important detail that he's planning to invade Earth. Once they're fully in the loop, though, the Boonchuys prove to be a Badass Family. They plant a tracking chip on Hop Pop, set up a decoy frog family for the FBI, and slow down Andrias in his tracks when he possesses a Santa float and attacks them during a Christmas parade. From what Mr. Boonchuy hints, his wife has always been this awesome. They also help with the ultimately successful portal project by calling for aid to rescue the Plantars from the FBI and give Anne her Heroic Second Wind. In the end, when their daughter is on the other side of the portal, they proceed to tell off Mr. X for how badly he handled the situation and make him listen to the actual truth.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: "Fort in the Road" has the group stop by some ruins that turn out to contain a factory designed to assemble robots, with technology comparable to the '90s on Earth. It's eventually revealed that this is a remnant of the ancient Amphibian civilization Andrias' ancestors ruled over.
• Aerith and Bob: As could be expected, Anne's name is rather down-to-earth, being used commonly in English and French, compared to someone named Sprig. Some of the people of Amphibia have exotic names, such as Grime, Toadie, and Hopediah, while others have more mundane names, like Polly, Ivy, and Wally.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • Mocked to hell and back in Return to Wartwood — the whole episode centers around the Plantars coming up with yet another Snowball Lie to get out of trouble with Wartwood for forgetting to bring them gifts, at which point Anne points out she "feels like we've learned this lesson by now." she still goes through with it though, if only because Sprig points out that his relationship with Ivy might be in danger because he ended up not getting the special gift she wanted, and she's not willing to let that ship sink. She still relishes the opportunity to finally be the one to say I Told You So when their Zany Scheme goes sideways.
  • In Snow Day, Anne repeats the exact same mistakes she and Sprig made during Grubhog Day. Specifically, getting bored and ignoring her duties as a guardian to have fun instead.
  • Many of lessons Sprig learns in various episodes tend to have trouble sticking. For example, in "Cracking Mrs Croaker" a "A Caravan Named Desire" and "Thai Feud" teaches Sprig that you shouldn't force people to like or accept you, and that his obsessive need for attention can be detrimental. The lesson is usually downplayed because Sprig ends up getting what he wants by the end. "Spider-Sprig" ultimately subverted this, after Sprig (as Frog Man) and Robert Otto ended up causing massive property damage and Molly Jo almost ends up getting hurt because of their desire for fame and adoration. Sprig finally seems to realize how selfish he was and how his need for affection does more harm than good, but time will tell if the lesson will stick this time.
  • Throughout the entire Earth arc, The Plantars have to learn time and time again to be more careful when going out in public, and Anne has to learn to be cautious when taking them out of the house to avoid getting caught by the government. Which ends up happening in "Escape to Amphibia" because of their carelessness.
  • "Hollywood Hop Pop" reuses the same moral from "A Caravan Named Desire" of Hop Pop learning that he shouldn't put his desire for fame and stardom above the needs of others.
• Aliens Never Invented Democracy: Zig-zagged. Overall, Amphibia as a country is ruled by an absolute monarchy, but mayors are democratically elected at the city level. That being said, the electoral system seems off its rocker, like having the candidates compete in Trials by Ordeal, or having the entire valley vote for the mayor of one city.
• Aliens Speaking English: Amphibian-people from another dimension can speak perfect English without any explanation.
• All Animals Are Dogs:
  • Mrs. Croaker's pet spider Archie shows some dog-like behavior.
  • Played with in the case of Domino II, the wild caterpillar Anne picks up. It largely behaves like a cat, right down to the purring and bringing Anne smaller creatures that it kills, but it very much is a wild animal. Especially when it metamorphoses into a carnivorous moth.
• All There in the Manual: Despite mostly being just for fun, the theme song takeovers done by Sasha and Marcy also give a brief overview of what the two were doing in Amphibia before reuniting with Anne.
• All There in the Script:
  • The robot-experimenting girls Polly befriends are named Ally and Jess in the credits. Their names are mentioned for the first time in "Froggy Little Christmas".
  • The credits give Marcy's Core-possessed form the name of "Darcy", which would be said aloud in "The Core & The King".
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Toads are initially shown to be antagonistic to the main cast, with Mayor Toadstool, Grime, and the tax collectors being the most prominent, but is ultimately subverted as the toads are people, and their antagonism is a result of Amphibia's Fantastic Caste System, not any inherent evil on their part. Even Grime, the Arc Villain of the first season, becomes a heroic figure after realizing that Andrias is a tyrant.
  • Horned frogs are a cannibalistic species of frog, and while only we only see a small portion of them, they show just how dangerous the horned frogs of the setting are.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The frog people of Amphibia can be anywhere from red to pink to blue, or a more common green color like most frogs. Justified, as different species of frogs can be any of those colors. This proves to be problematic when, after the season two finale, the Plantars wind up trapped on Earth with Anne. While they're able to disguise themselves with Anne's aid to obscure their appearances and avoid standing out too much from a distance, this only really works when the humans around them don't take too close a look at them and their colourful skin tones..
• Ambiguous Situation: Until "Fiddle Me This", it was unclear if Hop Pop burying the music box meant that he was going to Take a Third Option and help Anne find another way home, or have Anne stay with the Plantars forever. He at least sees her in his Imagine Spot of taking care of him in old age after Sprig secures lifetime stability. With that said, it's still unclear, since he was helping her gather knowledge to travel past the mountains once the weather was safe.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Sprig and Polly live with Hopediah, their grandfather, who they call Hop Pop. The identities and statuses of their parents (and grandmother) are as of yet unexplained and unacknowledged. "Hopping Mall" confirms that their mom died when Sprig was really young, before he could even really remember her. "After the Rain" further clarifies that their parents were killed by a bird attack, and Hop Pop feels responsible. "The Hardest Thing" has the Plantars coming face-to-face with those same herons during the invasion of Earth.
• Amphibian at Large: The show takes place in a world of anthropomorphic amphibians scaled up to human size, which means larger species are gargantuan by comparison. The episode "Quarreler's Pass" features olms the size of dragons, and King Andrias, who is based on the Chinese giant salamander, is so tall that Anne only comes up to about his knee.
• Anatomy of the Soul: The three gems of the Calamity Box are representative of mind, body, and heart, which correlate to the three girls. Marcy is the mind, Sasha is the body, and Anne is the heart.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  • Before the credits roll at the end of season 1, rather than just "the end" appearing, it says "End of Part 1."
  • Done again at the end of season 2, only now it says "End of Part 2."
  • Season 3, being the final season, has its final message be simply "The End", but the trope applies differently. In Amphibia, a whole new continent has been discovered, so Sprig and Ivy decide to explore it, starting a new adventure for them. On Earth, the girls reunite for Anne's 23rd birthday, thus continuing their friendship.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The wax museum exhibits in "Wax Museum", made out of living creatures, are still alive and can still see what's happening around them, but they can't move a muscle until they're melted out. The Curator who sentenced them to this fate wholly intends to do the same thing to Anne, coming very close to fully encasing her.
  • While possessed by the series' true Big Bad the Core, Marcy is locked away inside her own mind with no way to control herself. Double Subverted in the penultimate episode, which reveals that Marcy was kept occupied with an endless supply of games and puzzles while the Core has been controlling her body, before the Core spitefully decides to throw Marcy's mind into a featureless black void to rot in sensory deprivation until she becomes an Empty Shell (Marcy is fortunately saved before anything can come of that).
• Animal Facial Hair: Overlapping with Non-Mammalian Hair. Many of the anthropomorphic amphibians have beards or mustaches; sometimes it looks like fleshy appendages on their chin (like Mayor Toadstool's beard), but other times it's very human-like (like the sheriff's mustache or Soggy Joe's beard).
• Animalistic Abomination: A lot of Amphibia's fauna are downright terrifying. Rather than just being giant versions of animals we have on Earth, they are viciously aggressive and sometimes incorporate insectoid elements in otherwise mammalian-like animals.
• Animals Not to Scale: While Amphibia is a Macro Zone, the relative size of the various species is very different from Earth. For example, frogs and toads are slightly smaller (although, in the toads' case, bulkier) than humans. Snails and beetles are around the size of cars. Other arthropods are generally bigger than on Earth, but some are small enough to be eaten by frogs and others are big enough to eat frogs, and there are possums and rats only slightly bigger than their real-life counterparts.
• Animesque: From "True Colors" onwards, the series makes its anime influences obvious, to the point where Matt Braly even joked about it on Twitter. Anne's Calamity powers have a strong anime-inspired bent, enveloping her in a power aura and allowing her to fly around at incredible speed. "All In" is even more blatant about how much it was influenced by anime, as one of the two final battles is between Andrias in a Mecha and Anne using her powers for all they're worth. Anne even gets a second wind when Mr. puts her family on a widescreen to tell her they love her, and the soundtrack for the following beating she gives Andrias is BLACKPINK's "As If It's Your Last" (although Blackpink is Korean, not Japanese). On Sasha's end, her final fight is between a former villain having gone through a Redemption Arc wielding two colored swords, and a black-clad Eldritch Abomination in human form wielding a massive scythe. In addition, the season 3 outro is done in an animesque visual style to distinguish it from the previous two outros.
• Another Dimension: Amphibia is this to Earth, with the music box seen in the opening serving as a sort of warp.
• Appeal to Tradition:
  • This seems to be Hop Pop's mindset. Many episodes revolve around the conflict of Hop Pop wanting to do a task the traditional way versus Anne (and by proxy, Sprig) wanting to do it in a new, innovative way. Which side is right or wrong depends on the episode.
  • King Andrias massively deconstructs this once his true colors are revealed. While he was initially hesitant about wiping out life on Earth when he was young, his father, Aldrich, insisted that it was their "way of life", and most of Andrias' motivation afterwards is based on carrying on the abusive and oppressive system his ancestors created solely because it's their "way of life", even if he is still unhappy about doing it at all.
• Arc Number: The structure and world-building of the show heavily relies on the number 3. There are three dominant anthropomorphic species ruling over and living in Amphibia (newts, frogs, and toads), three main locations of interest (Wartwood, the Toad Tower, and Newtopia), three human characters stuck in Amphibia (Anne, Sasha, and Marcy), three gems on the music box, each one connected with one of the human characters, and three temples for each one of said gems. We also learn later that King Andrias used to have two best friends, forming another trio of friends, each one from a different species. If that is not enough, mostly every one of these major items or characters tend to have motifs of one out of three colors (blue, green, and pink) or one out of three qualities (strength, intelligence, and empathy).
• Arc Words: "Our way of life", always said by a villain in reference to said way of life being threatened, reflects the show's overarching theme of accepting change, even if that change seems scary.
  • First said by Grime in "Reunion", in reference to the frog rebellion that Hop Pop inspired, and how Hop Pop has to be executed to preserve the toads' way of life.
  • Also said by King Aldrich in "The Core & The King", referring to the ancient Amphibian way of life and how using the music box to enslave and destroy other worlds is the only way to preserve it, even when doing that is obviously wrong.
• Arranged Marriage: Sprig had to have one with Maddie in "Hop Luck" to get a condiment for the pizza. He breaks it in "Cursed!".
• Artifact of Doom: The music box that transports Anne and her friends to Amphibia is known as the Calamity Box, and it's apparently so dangerous that Hop Pop buries it immediately. It is not inherently dangerous, but its creators were a cruel, imperialistic society that used it to pillage other worlds.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Hop Pop kept Sprig's shed tadpole tail as a memento, but tadpoles do not shed their tails when they mature. In another episode, Polly is depicted with a vocal sac, but female frogs don't have them.
  • The show seems to treat newts and salamanders as synonymous. In reality, newts are a type of salamander.
  • Toads are generally similar to frogs in real life, except having shorter legs and warty skin. The toads in the show are depicted as larger and heavier-built than frogs, as well as having sharp teeth, claws, and, in some cases, horns.
• Artistic License – Physics: The final episode has the Core try to crash Amphibia's moon into the planet and Anne destroying it using the full power of the calamity gems. Neither the moon moving out of orbit or its destruction appear to have any negative effects on Amphibia's enviroment.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: Anne is very concerned about how her parents are doing while she's Trapped in Another World. When she returns in season three, it's made clear that she, Sasha, and Marcy were presumed dead, with acquaintances being genuinely surprised to see Anne alive. The pain this put the Boonchuys through is very evident, and they're terrified of losing Anne again.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Sprig has a very low attention span and jumps between interests at a whim. Word of God implies that he has ADHD.
• Automaton Horse: Zig-zagged. While the snails and bugs used for transportation are often treated like cars (e.g. feed is given to them with a gas station-style pump), they are living creatures. Bessy is considered part of the family. Anne needs to learn not to treat her like a machine in 'Anne Theft Auto.'
• Bad Moon Rising:
  • "The Shut-In!" gives us the blue moon. Anyone who looks at it turns into a hideous beast, so the frogs have to lock themselves in their homes until morning.
  • Amphibia's red moon is all but turned into a machine by the Core, and its final act in the series is to steer it on a collission course with the planet.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space:
  • In the climatic battle in "The Hardest Thing", Anne, Marcy and Sasha are able to breathe in space in their attempt to stop the moon from falling down on Amphibia. While one could hand wave this as being part of the gemstone powers, later in the same episode, Sprig is also able to go into space without any special suit or magical powers.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn:
  • Sasha is brawn. She's the most controlling of the three, and joins Toad Tower, the villainous warrior faction of Amphibia.
  • Marcy is brains. She's the most intelligent of the three, and landed in Newtopia, a place that contains multiple riddles, puzzles, and a large library.
  • Anne is beauty. She has good social skills, a high sense of morals, and is empathetic.
• Befriending the Bullied: Sasha first befriended Anne and Marcy when the three were toddlers and she defended them from bullies at the playground. Even years later, she was still defending them from bullies (as shown when she got Margot to leave Anne alone on her birthday).
• Berserk Button: Following Anne's Character Development, don't EVER call the Plantars "just slimy, little frogs", otherwise she'll strangle you.
• Big Bad Duumvirate / Big Bad Ensemble: Each season has had at least two villains acting simultaneously as the main antagonists, either together or independently.
  • Season 1: Mayor Toadstool, Captain Grime and Sasha Waybright
  • Season 2: Captain Grime, Sasha Waybright and King Andrias
  • Season 3: King Andrias and the Core/Darcy
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are essentially two kinds of bugs in Amphibia: regular-sized (or only slightly scaled-up) ones that are eaten by the frogs, and gigantic ones that eat frogs. This is lampshaded by Anne when Sprig mentions cicadas to her, and she sincerely hopes they are the former and not the latter.
• Birthday Beginning: Anne and her two best friends get zapped into Amphibia, which kicks off the plot of the series overall, on Anne's thirteenth birthday; symbolizing the start of responsibility and adulthood for Anne and the beginning of her growth into a new person.
• Black Comedy:
  • There are frequent jokes about minor frog characters getting carried off to be eaten by the large insects. This show essentially plays the Death World trope for laughs.
    Sprig: Don't let the bedbugs bite! Seriously, they can drain a body in seconds.
  • At the beginning of "Civil Wart", the mayor casually announces that tonight's theatre performance is cancelled due to the theatre group being eaten on the way.
  • Sprig claims that pain peppers are “so hot they’ll make you wish you were dead!” and proves his point by begging to be put out of his misery when he tries one.
  • "Hop Luck" has Anne casually sell Sprig to the baker's daughter Maddie just for pizza ingredients. In turn, the daughter herself is all kinds of creepy. Though this is mitigated later on when Anne helps Sprig break up with Maddie and it turns out she's a genuinely good, if creepy, girl.
    Maddie: I've seen your death in my mind.
    Sprig: I was kinda hoping that'd be a surprise.
    Maddie: IT WILL BE.
  • Polly seems incredibly casual about death. She’s disappointed that Anne isn’t a bloodthirsty monster she can kill, she outright suggests murdering Toadie, and when Anne accidentally feeds a food critic a live Kraken that tries to eat him, she applauds Anne for what she thinks is an assassination attempt.
  • Marcy's theme song takeover ends with her singing "hope nothing bad ever happens to me" followed by Andrias giving the audience a wink.
  • There's a Running Gag in season three where whenever Anne meets anyone she knew before going to Amphibia, they casually and nonchalantly mention that they thought she was dead.
  • The series finale has one last one with Anne noting she'll be having an existential crisis later on in life after being told she did die from her Heroic Sacrifice and she's a backup copy of the Anne that did the dying.^note Though the Guardian's word choice is vague enough that it can be interpreted as the original Anne's soul being placed in a new body if that helps you sleep at night.
• Bland-Name Product: When Anne scours the web for a means of interdimensional travel to get the Plantars back to Amphibia, one of the websites she comes across is "Big Ol' Wiki", a blatant Wikipedia-ripoff. In fact, the text of the article she is looking at was, at least at the time it aired, a word-for-word copy of the corresponding real-life Wikipedia page.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: Sasha obliviously is this; she thinks if she and Anne stay at Toad Tower and let Lord Grime oppress the frogs, they'll find a way home. And Anne will only return to Earth if she stays with Sasha. There's no mention of how at least Anne has the music box, or had it, and Sasha has no idea how to recharge the magic.
• A Bloody Mess: When the Curator is dragged into a room by the freed monsters, a red liquid oozes out from under the door. He then yells out that it's just wax.
• Body Motifs: Eyes are a common symbol of leadership in Amphibia, and characters with some sort of eye imagery are usually found in positions of power. Grime has a very prominent glass eye, the capital of Newtopia has eyes engraved on the walls, Sasha and the toads paint an eye symbol on their capes when proposing to the toad lords that they usurp King Andrias, Parisia the olm queen has an eye on her necklace, and the Core, the Transhuman Abomination made up of every previous Newtopian king, has thirteen eyes. The only leaders without this symbol are Mayor Toadstool, whose power is confined to a single village, and King Andrias, who was never more than The Dragon to the Core –- and even then, an eye appears on his crown whenever the Core attempts to rein him back in line with its plans.
• Book Ends:
  • The series premiere has Anne and Sprig exchanging an "up top", with her getting high-fived by his tongue. The season finale "Reunion" does the same with Sasha and Grime.
  • The premiere opens on Wally walking out of Stumpy's. The season finale has Wally once again walk out of Stumpy's, though the restaurant now bears the markings of Anne's influence on the town.
• Brainy Baby: Polly is only a polliwog, yet she regularly displays more intelligence and wisdom than her older brother.
• Breather Episode: Given the Half-Arc Season nature of the show, various episodic adventures are scattered between story-driven episodes:
  • "Cane Crazy", the first to take place after "Anne or Beast?" and its sister episode "Best Fronds".
  • "Anne vs. Wild", which ends with an ultimate discovery out of Anne's sight, is placed in between "Dating Season" and "Contagi-Anne".
  • "Prison Break", which focuses on Sasha and her set-up as The Dragon, is followed by "Grubhog Day".
  • "Trip to the Archives" is placed in between "Croak & Punishment" and "Snow Day".
  • "Bizarre Bazaar", which focuses heavily on the music box, is placed in-between "Family Fishing Trip" and "Cursed!".
  • "The Shut-In!", which has no relationship to the Newtopia travel arc, takes place after "Return to Wartwood" but aired after "A Day at the Aquarium". It is then followed by "Ivy on the Run", which precedes "After the Rain".
  • For the temple episodes, the first and second temples had four segments placed in-between ("New Wartwood"/"Friend or Frobo?" and "Toad to Redemption"/"Maddie & Marcy"), per Anne's request they take a break before going to the latter.
• Broken Masquerade: Twice in season 3. Firstly, the Plantars' frog identities have so far been unveiled to Dr. Jan and the Thai community, who promise to keep the secret and help them, but also to Mr. X who wants to exploit them. On Anne's side, her vow not to tell her parents about Andrias' invasion begins to unravel when she is followed by a Killer Robot sent to hunt her down and assassinate her to death, and the truth is eventually let out.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Anne to Sasha in the season 1 finale, after realizing how controlling she is and finally standing up to her.
  • The girls and the Plantars, especially Marcy, to King Andrias in season 2 after he reveals his true nature.
  • Andrias to his father when the latter tells him to become a part of the Core.
• Brought Down to Normal: Charging the Calamity Gems also causes the girls to lose their respective connections with them, as evidenced by the glow draining from their eyes as the gems charge up.
• Call-Back: Within the chibi shorts, the plants the bucket and cup offer to Polly in "Bucket Blues" are the same ones found in the "Bird Attack".
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Anne only stole the music box to make Marcy and Sasha happy so they wouldn't stop being her "friends." It ended up transporting them all to another world.
• Cast from Hit Points: Anne's Super Mode granted by her Calamity Gem is very powerful indeed, but it's also very energy consuming; every time she uses it, she becomes weak and drained upon powering down, often suffering a Power-Strain Blackout.
• Catapult Nightmare: At the start of "Best Fronds", Anne has a nightmare about how she ended up in Amphibia and then bolts right up when she wakes up from it.
• Central Theme:
  • Friendship. More specifically, what being a friend truly means, as well as the different ways a friendship can be toxic. The show explores how a healthy friendship requires trust, respect and communication, how wrong it is to treat friends like cronies or toys who exist just for your benefit through Sasha's actions, and how becoming attached and dependent on your friends to unhealthy levels can be harmful to everyone through Marcy's. It also shows friendships drifting apart, either because of betrayal, distance, or through change. That doesn't mean mean you can't stay friends, even if you don't see each other all the time, or even make up with friendships you thought were broken — what's important above all else are the memories that you share with them no matter what life has for you.
  • Change. One of the reasons why amphibians were chosen as the prolific character design is how radically different their bodies become as they grow older, which is fitting for a Coming of Age story. The show expresses how people change to be the best version of ourselves. Part of growing up is embracing change and letting go of things you hold dear, which is scary, but you can never avoid it. While you can never erase the person you were before, who you are now is far more important. Fittingly, the Core fears death so much that it turned itself into a Transhuman Abomination, conquering world after world for resources rather than finding a more ethical and efficient solution that would require a change to Newtopia's way of life before the Box was stolen, and when faced with obsolescence or death after its invasion of Earth is foiled in "All In", it ultimately decides to ''force Amphibia's moon to collide with the planet just to attempt to foil the heroes and regain control.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Compare the first season, which is mostly slice-of-life with a Coming of Age story for Anne, to the third, where all dimensions, even Earth, are under attack by an evil king and a Transhuman Abomination who wants Anne dead.
• Character Catchphrase: For Sasha: "END. OF. DISCUSSION." She does away with it after her character development, however.
• Chekhov's Gag:
  • Anne's first appearance in the pilot features her missing one of her shoes, having apparently lost it in transit to Amphibia. At the end of "Best Fronds", the mysterious villain Grime is shown to have found the missing shoe, which clues him in about her presence in Amphibia.
  • The first line of season 2 is by a frog who got carried off the previous season, announcing he'd been up there 3 months. He ends up coming Back for the Finale in "The Hardest Thing", nearly two years later, saying that he likes it now.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Sasha flashes one toward the end of "Prison Break" after Grime makes her his second-in-command, which in turn sets her up as The Dragon.
  Sasha: (flashing the grin) I think we're gonna have some fun with this place.
• Child Soldiers: Anne wields a sword to protect the Plantars and their village (and now takes part in the struggle against King Andrias with her new Calamity Gem powers), Sasha is a lieutenant in Grime's toad army, and Marcy serves in the Newtopian military (even though she does more work in the fields of civil engineering and administration than actual combat).
• Christmas Episode: "Froggy Little Christmas", where the Plantars try to understand the meaning of the holiday while Anne gathers materials for a parade float as King Andrias uses a drone to attempt to terminate them.
• Cold-Blooded Whatever: Some of the reptiles in Amphibia possess fish-like features. The most notable examples are the water snake in "Best Fronds" and the garbage lizard in "Lily Pad Thai".
• Collapsing Lair: Toad Tower is destroyed by the end of "Reunion", thanks to Wally setting up some explosive mushrooms.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Going with the show's Rule of Three, anything connected to the calamity gems are colored red, blue, and green.
  • Anne, Sasha and Marcy's thematic colors are respectively blue, redish-pink, and green, reflecting their connection to the gems. In their calamity forms, their powers are also those colors.
  • Andrias' old friends, Leif and Barrel, have pink and green skin, to go with Andrias' blue. Interestingly, these do not correspond to the girls, neither in the characters they are connected to or the characters they reflect; Andrias is Marcy's friend, Leif is the Plantars' ancestor, and Barrel is the previous owner of Grime's warhammer. In terms of reflection, Barrel reflects Marcy, while Andrias and Leif reflect Sasha and Anne, though who's who depends on how you read it.
  • Each of the three temples has a different color scheme, corresponding to the three respective gems on the Calamity Box, indicating what gem that temple will recharge; the first temple is green, the second is blue, and the third red.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Amphibia is a Death World, but the inhabitants have more or less accepted it.
• Confidentiality Betrayal: Played for Drama to tragic effect in “True Colors” when King Andrias purposely lets slip that Marcy got the girls stranded in Amphibia on purpose.
  King Andrias: Oops! Looks like I “spilled the tea” as you kids say… well, that’s what you get for pouring your heart out to me over flipwart.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: A somewhat more egregious example in "Anne or Beast", since the hapless victim is a young child whom Anne trapped in the first place.
• Content Warnings: "True Colors" was delayed for three weeks because S&P allowed a 13-year-old girl getting impaled onscreen while her friends helplessly look on to be aired, until suddenly reneging less than half a day before the planned airing. Disney Channel considered editing the scene before actual airing, but eventually decided to do four things instead: air it in the evening instead of the morning after a marathon of recent episodes, give it a TV-Y7-FV rating, add a disclaimer at the start (read by Sprig's voice actor) warning viewers that the episode will have intense final scenes that may scare younger fans of the show, and include an early reveal of the third season's new title sequence as The Stinger to make it clear that Marcy was Only Mostly Dead, and secretly being kept on life support in a People Jar.
• Cracks in the Icy Façade: Sasha is first introduced in flashbacks of season one as a manipulative, tough, cocky and controlling friend of Marcy and Anne who feels as though she's doing what's right for the friendship by being a Control Freak. However, it's revealed that after Anne defeated her in the season 1 finale, that she misses Anne and Marcy and is angry that things will never be the same again. She is also shown to genuinely care about her friends and thinks she doing what's best for all of them go get back home, and when she realizes how much Anne has changed, she struggles to accept it, since she always was the one who needed to protect her (and Marcy) when they were little. After Marcy reveals how she practically tricked her and Anne into taking the box and taking them away from their home and gets subsequently stabbed in the back by Andreas, as well as Anne calling off their friendship, Sasha begins to feel an immense amount of guilt for her role in the events that occured. She starts to be more humble and compassionate towards, openly shows her affections for Anne and later forgives Marcy for her actions of keeping her in Amphibia, promising to be a much better friend and person overall after this experience.
• Creepy Centipedes: One of the common bugs found in Amphibia, which is usually chopped up for food by the frogs. Usually, one end tends to walk away after being chopped. There also giant centipedes with electric powers named "Zapapedes".
• Crystal Spires and Togas: Flashbacks of Amphibia's lost civilization (namely Newtopia at its height of greatness) a thousand years ago show that it visually mixed advanced robotics, thrusters and lasers with the medieval mien that Amphibia retains to this day: it was a monarchy-based society which had interdimensional travel and a Mechanical Abomination, citizens wore medieval clothing whilst using frobot troopers as soldiers and royal guards, and one of the surviving weapons from this time period is a giant hammer that uses rocket thrusters to deliver more of a punch when swung at a target. While King Andrias initially makes Amphibia's lost civilization out to be a peaceful and utopian society, in actuality, it used its technology to invade and strip-mine other worlds for resources in order to perpetuate a vicious cycle of endlessly conquering the multiverse.
• Custom Uniform: The students at Anne's school wear virtually the same clothes, with the exceptions of the shirt hems and shirts being different colors, and they often add a hoodie. Sasha's outerwear, a jacket, is an exception.
• Cypher Language: "Ancient Amphibian" is simply English in a substitution alphabet. The messages are studied by Marcy, who has the ability to decode them.
  • In Andrias' book about the Calamity Gems, the descriptions below them translate to "wit" (the green gem), "heart" (the blue gem), and "strength" (the pink gem).
  • In the same book, on the page showing the various dimensions, the title at the top translates to "Stars", which is followed by a coded prophecy below:
    Three stars burning bright, come from beyond to expel the Night. Should they fight or embrace the fall, their choice will determine all.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Grand Finale reveals the Calamity Gems contain a secret spell: One can use all three gems to unlock a power that can destroy any threat in one hit, but with the cost of immediately killing the user along with it.
  Mother Olm: Summoning such power COMES AT A PRICE: the life of the user.
• Darker and Edgier: The series becomes more and more serious as it progresses, but the season 2 finale "True Colors" is what totally shakes things up. It turns out, King Andrias is a ruthless tyrant who wants nothing to stand in his way, and is especially furious with Anne. When she and the Plantars escape to Earth, she is attacked by Andrias' Cloak-Bot, which is a vicious assassin sent by him, and she faces off against it in a terrible battle which culminates in it nearly killing her.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Sasha makes such a deal with Captain Grime after they fight off herons together: in exchange for staying with him and putting her impressive capabilities to use for the toad army by serving as his second-in-command, she gets shelter from the toads, she gets to be a part of the action, and most of all she gets the toads' help looking for her friends. That being said, Sasha enjoys her arrangement with Grime to an almost disturbing degree for a Faust, and her later actions show that she and Grime aren't much better or worse than each-other.
  • Played With when King Andrias approaches Marcy with a "proposition" which is set up to seem like it's going to be this trope. "True Colors" reveals that Marcy agreed to going behind her friends' backs and helping Andrias to recharge the Calamity Box, in exchange for Andrias taking them on an endless cruise across the multiverse with the Box — Andrias, however, had no intention of holding up his end of the bargain.
• Death World: Amphibia has a lot of dangerous creatures roaming around, from Big Creepy-Crawlies like giant praying mantises to huge water snakes, and the plants are mostly poisonous or man-eating. That's not even getting into enviromental dangers like quicksand, snowstorms, wildfires, tornadoes, locust swarms, or flaming locust tornadoes.
  Anne: You know, no matter how long I'm in this world, I'll never get used to the piles of bones just lying around.
• Debut Queue:
  • Only Anne, the Plantars, Wally, and Mayor Toadstool are introduced in the premiere. "Cane Crazy" is where Loggle first appears, "Hop Luck" introduces Mrs. Croaker and Maddie Flour, Bessie is introduced in "Anne Theft Auto", Toadie first appears in "Breakout Star", Felicia speaks for the first time in "Girl Time", Ivy debuts in "Dating Season", and Stumpy debuts in "Lily Pad Thai".
  • Grime has a minor debut in "Best Fronds" before making an official debut in "Prison Break", while the Toads are introduced in "Toad Tax".
  • For the other two girls, Sasha and Marcy, both first appear in "Best Fronds" with Sasha officially debuting in "Prison Break", while Marcy doesn't officially debut until the season 2 special "Marcy at the Gates".
• December–December Romance: There's a developing romantic relationship between Hop Pop and Sylvia Sundew, two elderly frogs.
• Declaration of Protection:
  • Sasha, though she's a toxic friend, genuinely cares about her two best friends with all her heart and she's a Determinator about getting back to them and getting them back home. In her first major appearance, after she's effectively sort-of gained her freedom from the cell where Grime was originally holding her, she privately makes a vow to her photo of Anne and Marcy that she'll find them and get them back home.
  • In "Snow Day", Anne vows to protect the people of Wartwood from whatever's been causing the annual disappearances whilst the townsfolk are frozen during Hiber-Day, although Hop Pop cautions her that it's quite a workload. At the episode's end, she notes that Polly almost got eaten on her watch after she slacked off, although she nevertheless saved her and furthermore found out how to stop future disappearances from happening.
  • In Season 2, Frobo is very protective of Polly. He outright vows to save her when Andrias tries to kill her, and he loses his life (temporarily) in the process of doing so.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Despite being depicted as more heroic in comparison, both Leif and Barrel are shown to be fine with their nation's acts of subjugation against "lesser" species, reflecting how ingrained this "way of life" was in Amphibia at the time.
• Demonic Possession: This happens to Marcy partially into the third season thanks to Andrias using her intelligence as an advantage to turn her into a human host for the Core.
• Detrimental Determination:
  • In Season 2, Sasha begins manipulating both Anne and Marcy to her and Grime's ends whilst feigning a Heel–Face Turn, after having already had a catastrophic falling-out with Anne once over how much of a toxic friend she's been and over some of the disturbing extremes she went to. Although Sasha has some ambivalence about going this far with her friends, ultimately she sticks to her and Grime's plan, duping Anne and Marcy into taking the two of them into the heart of Amphibia's capital to stage a toad coup against King Andrias. The result is that Anne is not only furious with Sasha, but outright declares in no uncertain times that she's done being Sasha's friend, which is the very thing Sasha wanted least of all — but more than that, Sasha's repetitive backstabbing and manipulation means that when Sasha and Grime try to warn Anne that Andrias isn't trustworthy, Anne understandably doesn't buy it until it's too late.
  • It turns out at the end of Season 2 that Marcy herself has a case of this. Having intentionally all but engineered the three girls' marooning in Amphibia in a fit of distress at the idea of being separated from her friends; not only does she keep them out of the loop about her Dark Secret, once Anne intends to find a way back to Earth, Marcy doubles down on her fantasy of exploring other worlds whilst keeping her friends by her side, making a Deal with the Devil to ensure the three of them never go back to Earth. This doubling-down makes Marcy an Unwitting Pawn to a dangerous manipulator who has no intention of upholding their bargain, and Marcy only realizes what a horrible mistake she's made after she's semi-unwittingly helped King Andrias and his master obtain the means to invade Earth and resume their goals of conquering the multiverse. Marcy's doubling-down also doesn't do her any favors in her hurt friends' eyes, once her secret comes out and her first reaction is to feebly try and justify it.
  • King Andrias himself is one in the end. He is so hell-bent on doing his undead ancestors within the Core proud and redeeming himself (in his eyes as much as theirs) of his past role in the end of Amphibia's lost civilization, he goes to horrific extremes at the true Big Bad's prodding, and he doesn't realize until the end that the people (as much as a digitized Mind Hive can even be considered people anymore) whom he's trying to make proud are not worth what he's throwing away for them. Andrias turns Amphibia into a polluted wasteland whilst serving the Core's desires, and he inflicts more than one horrific act upon Marcy per the Core's orders despite his genuine affection for the girl — when Andrias finally has his Heel Realization, he's burned almost all his bridges.
  • The true Big Bad of the series, the Core, ultimately craves endless power, the restoration of its glory days as a Multiversal Conqueror, and avoiding death forever, and it will not accept defeat for anything. Despite having originally been made with the intention of aiding Amphibia, the Core remorselessly turns its homeworld into a ravaged wasteland so it'll have the resources it needs to rebuild its robotic army, which naturally turns half the population of Amphibia against it. And once its plans have been destroyed in the penultimate episode, the Core foregoes any opportunity to make a Heel–Face Turn in favor of trying to destroy Amphibia entirely in order to deny its enemies their victory: this last act ultimately causes the Core to meet the very fate it feared most of all when the heroes react in defence of Amphibia.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • One thing Sasha tries to claim is that if Anne lets Grime kill Hop Pop, they can go back to Toad Tower and try to find a way home together. "End of discussion." The thing is, Sasha has no idea how to get back to Earth any more than Anne does, since Anne at least has the Box, which is now buried. Anne only wavers when Sasha tries to claim she knows best, but gets a reality check when Sprig yells that Sasha is just a bully who isn't a real friend at all.
  • Marcy herself committed an act before the girls left for Amphibia which subsequently turned out to be a big case of this trope, which is darkly ironic given her prodigious intellect and the fact she's the girl most closely identified with the Calamity Box's "Wit" gem. In a fit of understandable panic and anxiety at the idea of being forcibly separated from her childhood-long best friends, Marcy manipulated Anne and Sasha into grabbing the Calamity Box and she all but engineered their Trapped in Another World plot so that they'd never have to move away from each-other while beyond the earthly dimension, but her emotion-fueled gambit backfired in multiple ways. She didn't count on the three of them arriving in separate locations when the box transported them (leading Marcy to be separated from Anne and Sasha for months), she didn't seriously comprehend the possibility that she could be sending them into perilous situations in an unknown alien Death World where any one of them could have died at differing points, and she didn't consider how badly Anne and Sasha might feel about getting forcibly ripped away from their families, homes and lives on Earth indefinitely. As a result, Marcy's actions subsequently become her Dark Secret, and when Anne and Sasha find out the truth, neither of them are pleased.
  • Anne has promised the Plantars that she's going to get them home, rescue Sasha and Marcy, and stop Andrias from taking over the planet. She has to put that scheme on hold, however, for a few reasons: 1) Her parents still have to take her to doctor and dental appointments owing to her being in the wilderness for five months, and that's not even going into the amount of school that she missed. 2) Earth may have the Internet, but it doesn't have actual online resources on how to deal with a newt tyrant or to recreate interdimensional travel, meaning it's a few weeks before she gets a lead from the local museum thanks to Dr. Jan. 3) She has to still do daily chores and weekly ones while keeping the Plantars incognito. and 4) A lot of people, including her classmates, are trying to dig for answers on what happened to Anne, and where the heck Sasha and Marcy are.
  • Discussed in "The Beginning of the End": the Big Bad Darcy intends to fully recharge the blue Calamity Gem by killing Anne so that the fragment of its power still inside Anne will go back to the Gem, but Anne points out in an effort to stave off her execution that the villains have no objective evidence that this is what will happen if Anne dies while the power shard is still inside her, so the big bad staves off killing her and plans to instead vivisect her to extract the Calamity power.
• Disc-One Final Boss:
  • Captain Grime is the primary antagonist for season 1 before being succeeded by King Andrias, who becomes the true villain of the series all together. Following said reveal, Grime becomes a full-time hero.
  • For the final season, the Cloak-Bot serves as the first enemy Anne must defeat before going to face Andrias back in Amphibia.
• Distant Finale: In "The Hardest Thing", after the Core is defeated and the three girls return to Earth, we see what has become of Amphibia after around nine months, and the girls after ten years.
• The Dog Bites Back: In "Reunion", after Sprig stands up for Anne after Sasha once again tries to control her, Anne finally calls her out on being a bad friend and beats her in a sword fight.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The season 3 outro is a remix of "Anne's Theme" performed by Brenda Song, Justin Felbinger, Bill Farmer, and Amanda Leighton, which mashes up lines from past episodes, including the classic, "Not the baby!" from "Marcy at the Gates".
• Dramatic Irony: At the end of "Best Fronds", Anne hopes that her friends Sasha and Marcy are having a good time, 'cause she is. We do know where Sasha is, and she's definitely not having a good time: she's been captured by Grime, chained and bound to the place, and is implied to be kept there in order to help Grime find more humans in Amphibia.
• Dumb Muscle: Most of the toads in Toad Tower are brutish and simple-minded.
• The Dung Ages: Wartwood is like this. The buildings look like they're about to fall apart, half of the frogs live in poverty, and they live in a world full of giant insects that are a threat to everyone.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The opening credits for the first two seasons show three small, blue tadpoles at the end, but they don't actually appear until season 2, where they're revealed to be Maddie's younger sisters. They also briefly appear an episode or two before they're properly introduced.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The original Amphibiland pilot has this, in that Sprig has a different design and voice, Mrs. Croaker has a different outfit and voice and lacks hair, Hop Pop's design is more rounded, Anne has both of her shoes and has a diary, Bessie is a slug rather than a snail (which is also true in "Anne or Beast"), Marcy and Sasha have different designs, Wartwood looks more like a swamp, and Polly is nowhere to be seen.
  • In the first episode, Hop Pop considers Polly to be responsible. She is most certainly not responsible for the entire rest of the series, being an impulsive child with a love of chaos.
  • In "Wally and Anne", Anne says her friends from Earth hated her handshakes and saw them as embarrassing (implying both Sasha AND Marcy are obsessed with popularity and maintaining their status within their middle school bubble). Come season two, Marcy is established as a dorky goofball who loves Anne's silliness. Furthermore, in "Marcy and Maddie", Marcy does a very similar handshake with Maddie.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Despite the fact that they made her shoplift when she didn't want to, leading to her getting stuck in Amphibia, Anne bears no ill will towards them for the incident, sincerely hoping that Sasha and Marcy are okay and being overjoyed when she's reunited with each of them, though her relationship with Sasha does take a hit for a good while when she realizes her manipulative tendencies.
  • Anne herself benefits from this. She's been a relatively bad guest, ignoring her chores and her benefactor's requests, and even placing her host family in actual physical danger. But she always manages to win them back by the end of the episode, due to working to make up for her mistakes.
• Elemental Embodiment: Each of the three temples is based on a specific element.
  • The first temple is in a vast forest, representing earth.
  • The second temple is in the frozen north, representing water.
  • The third temple is in a volcanic environment, representing fire.
• The Ending Changes Everything: Downplayed in that the ending only opens up for a possible interpretation, but still one that reframes large parts of the story: The final episode's Distant Finale reveals that Sasha is bisexual. With that in mind, her relationship to Anne can be read in a whole new light if one interprets her actions as those of a girl who doesn't know how to deal with romantic feelings.
• Ending Theme: The ending credits use a background track known as "Anne's Theme", which is, as you may have guessed, commonly associated with Anne.
• Episode Title Card: Every episode title card is a wooden carving. The only episodes that don't use these title cards are the specials "All In" and "The Hardest Thing."
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Amphibia as a whole is like this. Sprig and Anne can't set foot outside the village without encountering a dangerous monster of some kind. Even some of the plants will try to eat you.
• Evolving Credits:
  • The season 2 title sequence replaces both Anne and Sprig encountering a lizard monster and the "BFFs" picture on a tree branch with a scene of Anne and Sasha swordfighting on a bridge with Marcy depicted in the background holding the Calamity Box. Meanwhile, the Ending Theme moves a semitone higher (changing from B♭ major to C major) and features additional instrumentation, while swapping the scene of Anne and Sprig relaxing outside the Plantar house at night to the Plantars and Anne riding in the wagon under a night sky.
  • The season 3 title sequence showcases the new status quo of the series, featuring Anne and the Plantars on Earth, Andrias' robots on the warpath, Marcy in a preservation tank as Andrias' master looms over her, and Anne fighting robots with her Super Mode. Beginning with "Hop Til You Drop", the group shot at the end replaces Marcy with Domino. "Hollywood Hop Pop" has Marcy in the water tank, currently possessed with the Core after the events of "Olivia & Yunan" replace her, even gaining a spot next to Andrias at the end of the intro.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Amphibia is, believe it or not, inhabited by anthropomorphic amphibians.
• Exotic Eye Designs: While most of the amphibian characters have standard eyes with Black Dot Pupils, others have more unique looking eyes akin to real-life amphibians.
• Extra-Long Episode: In a bit of an oddity, the show's penultimate epsiode "All In" is an hour long, versus the half-hour slots usually reserved for the show's major episodes. The grand finale, however, is the regular length of a half hour.
• Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: While Wartwood is part of a fantasy land populated by giant sentient amphibians and Everything Is Trying to Kill You, it is still a normal rural society. Among the issues suffered by the Plantars are struggles to pay taxes, the local mayor not spending on infrastructure properly, interfamilial issues, and so on.
• Eye Color Change: While subtle and rare, we see that on occasion Anne's eyes will become blue, and even glow. In her introduction, there is a moment when Marcy's eyes become green. There's also a moment where Sasha's eyes turned pink. All three colors correspond to a gem that was on the Calamity Box before it transported the girls. When charging the stones, each of the girl's eyes change color again and then drain into the stone, cementing the connection, and foreshadowing Anne's Super Mode as hers only drains halfway.
• Eye-Obscuring Hat:
  • The frog named Chuck wears a straw hat which covers his eyes, yet he can still see.
  • When the Core takes possession of Marcy, she wears an antlered helmet which covers her whole face except for her mouth.
• Fantastic Caste System: It gradually becomes clear that Amphibia is structured into a strict system of class based on species:
  • At the bottom of the totem pole are the frogs, generally regarded as farmers and peasantry. They are looked down upon or exploited by the other castes, and if Toadstool is to be believed, a frog has never beaten a toad in an election. Hop Pop's attempt to do so was considered an act of rebellion and sparked resistance movements across the valley from disgruntled, oppressed frogs.
  • The toads act as a warrior caste, whose main priority is to keep the frogs in line and collect various rewards. They remain convinced that toads should control every part of the valley. However, they ultimately serve the whims of the newts, a role they clearly chafe at, and their leadership is selected by the newt army.
  • Newts are revered as wise leaders and stay strong at the highest tier of society. They're often wealthy scientists or scholars, and enjoy the pleasures of elite society. With that in mind, they look down at the other races, and newts of lower classes are looked down upon with the caste itself. Poor newts are also more likely to treat frogs with respect, while the richer newts tend to get annoyed at the presence of frogs in their personal circles.
  • In “The Core And The King” episode, it’s revealed to be actually invoked by King Andrias himself, after Lief stole the Calamity Box under his watch, to stop a vague prophecy that foreshadowed Amphibia’s doom from happening. Her betrayal hurt him so much, that he decided to “keep those frogs in line” as revenge. Regarding the toads, he viewed them as disposable but respected warriors, as he banished his friend toad Barrel for not stopping Lief in a crucial moment.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Amphibians keep spiders as dog-like pets, ride giant snails, spiders, and ladybugs similarly to horses or donkeys, and keep giant worms (with cow-like coloration) for dairy. Meanwhile, there are flies that act like birds (actual birds also exist, but they are monstrous predators), and hedgehogs that hunt in packs and cackle like hyenas. Also, an entire episode revolves around a caterpillar acting and looking like a cat.
• Fantastic Livestock: The frogs farm giant worms with cow-like colorations for dairy — it's implied, although not explicitly stated, that they create cheese from the worms' mucus.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Amphibia has a caste system with newts at the top, then toads (who serve mostly as warriors or as administrators where no newt officials are present), and frogs are at the bottom as peasants. It seems to vary from place to place, however. Toads are treated as de facto upper class in the valley, while Ribbitvale is home to an aristocratic frog family.
  Toadstool: A frog beating a toad, wouldn't that be something?
  • Most denizens of Amphibia assume Anne is a non-sapient beast upon first meeting her, and rarely correct themselves in that assumption even after she demonstrates the ability to talk (not to mention wear clothes and use tools).
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Wartwood culture is modeled mostly after rural America from the 1800's. There are also more than a few Medieval European elements scattered about. Newtopia notably has some Southeast Asian-like elements in its market places, which Anne finds familiar.
• Fatal Flaw: The three girls are all shown to have a problem that they need to overcome to both stay friends and to become better people:
  • Anne's flaw is her lack of responsibility and her being a pushover. Luckily, she more or less overcomes these flaws in the first season, gaining the confidence and maturity to become the defender of Wartwood.
  • Sasha's is her need for control, to the point that she is willing to manipulate or intimidate anyone so long as she knows that she's the one in charge. Her need leads to her more or less commanding Toad Tower (with only Grime being the one above her), the destruction of said tower, and her befriending Anne, Marcy, and the Plantars again only to betray them when she and the Toads stage their coup. It's only after said coup fails that Sasha finally realizes how her need for control ultimately gives her nothing, and that Anne never hated her. For the rest of season three, her growth is shown, and she ultimately comes out of Amphibia as a much more lenient, kinder person.
  • Marcy's flaw is her lack of focus on the world around her, as well as her selfishness. She used to go so hard into her schoolwork and hobbies that she'd ignore everything around her, including things that could be potentially dangerous (putting Anne in many situations where she had to protect Marcy). She also seemed to not realize that Anne and Sasha weren't too interested in her hobbies, and didn't think that they'd be mad at her for basically tricking them into going to another world with her, thinking they'd love living the lives of adventurers as much as she would. It's only after she's forced to face this fact by the Core that she realizes she never considered what her friends really wanted.
• Faux Affably Evil: The horned frogs of the Dandy Lion Inn seem like sweet old frogs from afar, even offering four rooms for the price of one and complimentary cookies. Really, they just want to eat all their guests.
• Feathered Fiend: Among the antagonistic creatures in the show are monstrous herons, doves, and others that are almost comparable to large, predatory dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era.
• Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Felicia Sundew is a very feminine-looking barmaid with long hair. Her daughter Ivy is a tomboy who wears overalls and hat and enjoys roughhousing and other boyish activities.
• Fire-Breathing Diner:
  • When Hop Pop insists that Anne and Sprig stay home in the second episode, Sprig suggests that they have some fun by tasting his "pain peppers". He starts breathing fire about a second after merely touching his tongue to one. He later uses it against the lake serpent to induce the same effect.
  • Later in “Lost in Newtopia”, Anne and Polly sample some extremely spicy Newtopian wraps that have this effect on them; Polly actually manages to set the food cart on fire.
• First-Episode Twist: The end of "Best Fronds" reveals that Anne's friends were also transported to Amphibia when the box opened, with one of them having been captured by the Big Bad, though Anne isn't aware of any of this until much later. "Anne or Beast" also has the twist that the story is told from Sprig's perspective, while normally it would be Anne's perspective.
• Fighting Your Friend: Anne has to fight Sasha at the climax of "Reunion" and again during "True Colors".
• Fisher King:
  • In Season 2, Andrias' throne room is a magnificent, dazzling display of arcitecture which is usually brightly-lit, befitting his benevolent, joyous and informal personality — but it turns more dim, dark and sinister when Andrias' more sinister side and ulterior plans are showing, and it becomes permanently dark as of the end of "True Colors" when Andrias reveals his dark plans to all and he fully commits himself to them even to Amphibia's detriment. When Andrias' master, the Core, finally reveals itself to the heroes as the true Big Bad and the one entirely behind Andrias' villainy, it has infested Andrias' throne room with its cables and many eyes, including a particularly-large Core eye which has replaced the center of Andrias' throne.
  • In Season 3, after the main villains (Andrias and the Core) have revealed their true agenda as would-be tyrants who intend to invade Earth and bring back Amphibia's era of world-looting with their magitek, Amphibia changes from a bright, lush, green, nature-dominated landscape to a drab, brown-skied polluted wasteland where the giant plant life is corroding due to the villains' continent-wide, magitek-fueled strip-mining — showing how the Core, acting through Andrias, doesn't care one whit about their subjects and homeland when their welfare is measured against the Core's ambitions, and that it only cares about advancing their own research and technology in the name of effectively conquering other worlds.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Anne finally reunites with Sasha after a party being thrown in Anne's honor; Sasha, however, has changed from her school uniform to battle armor, unlike Anne. Then after they hug, Sasha reveals she brought the entire toad army to Wartwood. Cue Oh, Crap! from Anne in the next episode!
• Forced to Watch: Anne believes her friends saw her disappear into Amphibia and were unable to do a thing about it. We quickly learn that this isn't the case. They were transported with her, with Sasha being imprisoned by the Big Bad and Marcy becoming the chief ranger of the Newtopian knight guard.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • As far as the S2 posters show and according to King Andrias, Anne must get the Calamity Box back, as she needs it in order to recharge the three gems on it. On the other hand, Hop Pop burying the music box to keep it away from the kids out of concern for the cryptic warnings about it in the book he read turns out to ultimately have been for the best. When Andrias gets his hands on the fully-charged Calamity Box, he reveals himself to be the show's Knight of Cerebus and instantly plunges the heroes into mortal danger multiple times through his plans to invade and conquer Earth. Whilst he might have needed Anne and the other's cooperation in order to charge the box, nothing good would have come from the heroes bringing it to him, even uncharged.
  • Any time Anne faces a deadly weapon sent by Andrias to kill her, of course she'll survive, because the next episode's description shows she's perfectly fine, and she's the protagonist of a children's show anyway.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the flashback at the beginning of “Best Fronds”, Sasha and Marcy are hit by the same light coming out of the music box that transports Anne to Amphibia. The end of the episode reveals that the two of them were also transported to Amphibia, albeit in different parts of the dimension.
  • In the first season episode "Stakeout", when Anne is tripping on Hop-Pop's energy drink, she hallucinates that she has glowing blue hair and shoots laser beams. Anne gains those powers for real by the end of the second season.
  • After winning the election in "Hop-Popular", Mayor Toadstool tells Hop-Pop that a frog beating a toad "would've made headlines". "Reunion" reveals that just the act of running against Toadstool was enough for Hop-Pop to make headlines.
  • In "Cursed", the newspaper Anne briefly hides behind has the headline "Rebellion gains steam". In "Reunion", it is revealed that Hop-Pop challenging Toadstool has led to frogs all over the valley being inspired to rebel against the toads.
  • On the official poster for S2, King Andrias is far in the back and darkly shadowed. He also appears to look sinisterly at Anne with interest. This hints that there's something dark and dangerous about him.
  • When Anne draws the sword she got from Tritonio Espada in "Combat Camp", as well during as her duel with Sasha in the season 2 opening, the blade glows blue. This both foreshadows her connection to the blue gem and the sword's connection to the Calamity Box, as an illustration of it is shown alongside a bow and dagger in King Andrias' book in "A Day at the Aquarium".
  • There's a very subtle hint toward Marcy becoming a host for the Core, in which Marcy's picture in the Crowded-Cast Shot at the end of the S3 theme is replaced with Domino in the final product.
  • When the girls find each of the three temples necessary to recharge the gems, the setup of said temples is designed solely around recharging the gem alone, and none of the carved murals in the temples showcase the music box or explain how it ties into the gem's intended usage. When Marcy inputs the necessary combination to release the gems from the box, they're shown to be held as part of the box by mechanical grips, akin to the Magitek machinery that Newtopia once ran on. This hints at the reveal that the music box itself is an artificial addition to the gems, designed to weaponise them from their true intended purpose and power both Newtopian society and interdimensional travel, since using music notes as coordinates is how one opens portals between different worlds.
  • When Marcy is freed from her healing chamber, she is wearing a mech suit with an ominous eye jewel on the chest, in the same design as the eyes of the Core. Also, the amphibian text on the chamber translates to "Host". Both foreshadow Marcy being chosen as the Core's human host.
• Foreign Queasine: The mass majority of the frog world's diet consists of some kind of giant bug. At first, Anne is as revolted by this as any Westerner would be (it doesn't help that Hop Pop is a terrible cook), but after a month of living with the Plantars, she has grown so used to the food that she even has favorite dishes.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In the opening, during the shot of the picture showing Anne and her friends, Grime's castle is visible in the background when lightning flashes.
  • Combined with Rewatch Bonus, at several points you can see Anne's eyes light up, as part of her connection with her gem.
  • In the Grand Finale after the Guardian resurrects Anne, her single shoe spends the rest of the episode on her opposite foot.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: In "Prison Break", when all is taken care of, Grime gives Sasha a decision: either she is released and has to fend for herself while looking for her friends, or she stays and becomes his lieutenant and has the resources of Toad Tower to locate Anne and Marcy. She chooses the latter while promising to "have fun" with her new position, setting her up as The Dragon for the season finale.
• Frog Men: The frog inhabitants of Amphibia have frog-like bodies, general humanoid structure, and even go through the life cycle of a frog, starting as a tadpole.
• Four-Fingered Hands: The Frog Men of Amphibia, those who have grown past polliwogs anyway, have only four fingers on their hands and two toes on their feet. Anne and her human friends, however, have five fingers each.
• For Temperament Ensemble: The Plantar Family.
  • Sprig (sanguine), who's almost constantly smiling and coming up with crazy ideas
  • Hop Pop (choleric), the practical, no-nonsense patriarch who makes sure the children contribute
  • Polly (melancholic), the aggressive, unpredictable Blood Knight
  • Anne (phlegmatic), the one who just wants to enjoy life and slack off
  • The adjacent personalities within the family tend to get along, while the opposites often come into conflict. Anne and Hop Pop's conflict is the focus of "Stakeout", while Sprig and Polly's is the focus of "Civil Wart".
• Furry Reminder: The Frog Men display frog-like biology, namely catching prey with their tongues, starting off as tadpoles in their life cycles, and being cold-blooded. They also have throat sacs that inflate when they challenge each other for a fight.
• Glowing Eyes: The girls' superhuman abilities supposedly granted by the Calamity Box manifest on rare occasions by having their eyes flash the color of the Calamity Gem they're associated with. Anne's eyes flash blue for true compassion and bravery, Marcy's flash green for wit and intelligence, and Sasha's flash pink for strength and aggressiveness. When the gems get charged up, the glow drains out.
• God Job: At the end of the show, Anne is brought Back from the Dead by the Three Stones Deity so that it can give her its job as a reward for being the first person to use the stones for good.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: In the season 2 finale, Anne and the Plantars (good) and Sasha and the toads (bad) face down King Andrias (evil).
• Grail in the Garbage: The Calamity Box in season 2 is revealed to have several guardians for the Gems, and the villains of the show want to possess it. It's the only device that can perform consistently successful interdimensional travel. Somehow, it ended up on Earth in a thrift shop.
• Grew a Spine:
  • In "Reunion", Anne learns to resist Sasha's demands and stand up to her for her overly controlling behavior.
  • Two seasons later, in "The Hardest Thing", Andrias finally stands up to the Core after suffering centuries of emotional abuse at its hands. He even quotes Anne word-for-word while doing so.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • A real friend won't disrespect another friend's wishes, especially when asking them to do something dangerous. Anne learns this the hard way in the second episode.
  • "Hop Luck": No matter how skilled you may be at a task, and how knowledgeable you are, failure is still an option. But it's easier to fail when you fail together as a group.
  • One of the overarching themes of the series entire: change is part of how we grow, and holding onto the past too hard will get you nowhere. Sometimes even people who have made the most cherished memories together still have to grow apart from each-other before they can be someone better.
• The Homeward Journey: Anne's main goal for the show is to find a way to get back to her home world while adjusting to life with the Plantars. Unfortunately, the situation changes from returning to her home world to keeping the Calamity Box safe at all costs. She ended up getting sent back to her world without it, which means her home isn’t safe.
• Horse of a Different Color: The Frog Men of Amphibia ride snails (which can be surprisingly fast) or beetles. The Plantars' snail is named Bessie.
• Humanlike Animal Aging: Zig-Zagged with the Frog Men of Amphibia. Their aging process resembles actual frogs, starting out as tadpoles before metamorphosizing into frogs, but the chronological length of the process is similar to humans, i.e. they're children at the age of 10 and elderly at the age of 60.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Besides Anne just looking like a hideous monster to the frog folk, she is also shown to be a lot stronger than them in general (though whether this is because she's simply bigger than them, or due to other factors, is left unanswered). Plus, her smartphone is seen as magic to a culture still in pre-industrial times.
• Humans Are Ugly: Anne is first called "the Beast" by the frog-people. After she saves Sprig from a giant praying mantis, he comes to the conclusion that she's actually "an ugly, ugly, ugly hero".
• Hyperventilation Bag: Sprig does the equivalent with a pitcher plant to calm down after his shell is stolen.
• I Ate WHAT?!: Just count how many times Anne eats something only to find out it's made of bugs. Before long however, she starts to get used to the taste of eating bugs and even has her favorite flavor.
  • Mrs. Boonchuy has this reaction when she eats cookies made from dung beetles Anne baked for the Plantars.
• Identical Stranger:
  • In "The Domino Effect", Anne encounters a caterpillar that looks just like her cat back home.
  • In the flashback during "Reunion", the frog Anne has to dissect looks a lot like Hop Pop.
  • In "Hollywood Hop Pop", Hop Pop meets Humphrey Westwood, a custodian/aspiring actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to him.
• Ignored Epiphany: Despite the fact that the Plantars were trying to save her, with Anne refusing to let go of her former best friend, in season two Sasha plans on usurping the current newt government alongside the Toad Army. It's heavily implied, however, that this is due to emotional suppression on her part. She soon drops this desire upon learning King Andrias is the true threat.
• Immigrant Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy are first-generation immigrants originating from Bangkok, Thailand, with Mrs. Boonchuy in particular admitting to have felt disconnected from other Americans because of their circumstances. Mr. and Mrs. Wu are Taiwanese, though it doesn't come up much.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • In the ending of "True Colors," Andrias stabs Marcy with his flame sword when she defies his command over her to help Anne and the Plantars escape.
  • In "Froggy Little Christmas", this is how Anne and crew defeat the possessed Santa float and the drone controlling it.
• Innocuously Important Episode:
  • It's revealed in "Reunion" that Hop Pop running for mayor in "Hop Popular" inspired other frogs to rebel against the toads, which makes Grime want to kill Hop Pop.
  • Andrias showing the heroes how to charge the three Calamity Gems, as well as the three temple episodes, are all cast in a new light once Andrias' true nature is revealed in "True Colors" — he wants the girls to charge the gems so he can use the Calamity Box to conquer every dimension, and charging them also causes the girls to lose their connections with the gems so they won't be able to defeat him.
• Internalized Categorism: The Frog Reaper, the closest thing we've seen to a god in this setting to date, is a newt, showing that the other species have accepted that newts are natural rulers.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In "After the Rain", Anne finds out that Hop Pop didn't hand the Calamity Box over to any "contacts", but buried it on the farm because he thought it was too dangerous.
  • In "Anne-sterminator", Anne finally lets her parents in about King Andrias' invasion.
• Interspecies Friendship: Given that the show is about three humans in an amphibian world, there's bound to be these. Some examples:
  • Anne, a human, befriends Sprig, a frog person, once she arrives in the world of Amphibia.
  • Sasha, another human, gradually forms a bond with Captain Grime, a toad person.
  • Marcy, yet another human, becomes close friends with King Andrias, a humongous newt person. Except that friendship was a massive ruse at first. Andrias truly cared about Marcy, but the Core wanted her dead, so he formulated that plan to keep her alive for as long as possible.
  • Andrias himself shared a close friendship with Leif (another frog) and Barrel (another toad) in his youth, until she stole the Calamity Box out of fear for the safety of their world if they continued conquering other worlds.
• Interdimensional Travel Device: The music box, featured in the opening, transports Anne to Amphibia upon her opening it. And her friends too.
• It Only Works Once: At the end of the pilot, Anne tries opening the music box again to take her back to her world. It doesn't work. It is revealed in season 2 that this was because the three gems on the box lost their power upon transportation and must be recharged at each of the three temples.
• The Irredeemable Exception: Amphibia has most of its villains see redemption in the end. Sasha and Grime both end up seeing the errors of their ways and become genuinely admirable leaders to Amphibia, and most of the humans that antagonized Anne and the Plantars while on Earth end up helping them when the planet is invaded. Even Andrias learns to step out of his father's shadow, and that he does not need to be evil like him. The Core, meanwhile, never learns. It completely refuses to acknowledge change, and still believes that world must always be the same, no matter how much everyone argues against it.
• Kill the God: Twice, done to the Core, a Transhuman Abomination so powerful and ancient it declares itself a god. It is first defeated in its human host by Sasha, who severs its Achilles' Power Cord and excorsizes it from Marcy's body. Secondly, it's true form is killed for good by Anne wielding the full power of the calamity stones.
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • Grime starts out as this, as he is far more serious-minded than all of the other characters in the show, with him trying to trying to kill Hop Pop, whom he considers a threat for starting a rebellion, in the season finale.
  • King Andrias. He first appears as The Good King, when in reality, he's a genocidal tyrant who seeks to conquer all worlds, including Earth, and refuses to let anyone stand in his way.
  • The Cloak-Bot is about several times more dangerous than various other antagonists, as it seeks nothing but to violently attack Anne, to the point it nearly kills her.
  • The Core who is the true mastermind to King Andrias and the one that directs the invasion of Earth. Eventually becoming the final threat as when its invasion of Earth has been thwarted, it opts to crash Amphibias moon on the world as a last ditch revenge.
• Lampshade Hanging: In "Friend or Frobo", Sprig remarks that he and Anne have changed, prompting Anne to reply "some of us even sound different", referring to how Sprig's voice is deeper in season 2 due to his VA going through puberty between seasons.
• Laser Blade: These start featuring from the Season 2 finale onwards. Andrias and Darcy both wield fiery, lightsaber-like laser blades, and Darcy also utilizes a laser Sinister Scythe in "All In".
• Laser-Guided Karma: The reason why Anne, Sasha, and Marcy wind up being transported to Amphibia is that the latter two peer-pressured the former into stealing the music box. Furthermore, Sasha winds up being captured by some villainous natives, fitting for being one of the duo who pressured Anne into stealing the music box. By contrast, Anne, who was reluctant to steal the box, is fortunate enough to meet Sprig, who is willing to help her.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In 'Combat Camp', Hop Pop complains that it seems like two interesting things happen to them every week, referencing the release of two fifteen-minute-long episodes every week.
  • Early in season 2, they try to figure out how long Anne has been with the Plantars, before she declares it's been at least a season.
  • In the Day in the Limelight episode 'Maddie and Marcy', it briefly cuts to Anne and Sprig watching a show, oblivious to the destruction going on outside the window.
  Sprig: Do you ever think it's weird when the main characters aren't in an episode?
  Anne: Eh. You don't miss 'em.
• Leitmotif: All three human girls get an appropriate background track which befits their personality:
  • "Anne's Theme" is soft, soothing and relaxing.
  • "Sasha's Theme" has a dark and ominous mood to it.
  • "Marcy's Theme" has an upbeat rock and roll vibe.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": It's common for the Frog Men to have names that are frog-related puns, including first names like Hopediah and Polly (puns on "hop" and "polliwog", respectively) and last names like Toadstool and Croaker.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Anne is unaware Hop Pop buried her only key to get home and lied to her about it.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: Over the course of the second season, increasing evidence comes to light to suggest that the medieval Amphibia was once home to a far more grand and technologically-advanced civilization which somehow went into decline and was forgotten, leaving only remnants such as underground robot factories scattered around the land. It's finally revealed towards the series' end that Amphibia's lost civilization used the Music Box to build an advanced magitek civilization which thrived on invading and strip-mining entire other worlds, but they considered this way of life their divine right and they refused to voluntarily change it even when faced with a dire warning from the Music Box itself that Amphibia was headed towards an apocalyptic catastrophe of their own making. They lost the Music Box as a result of this refusal to change, robbing them of their homeland's power source and their ability to access other worlds, so their technology rapidly shut down and had to be buried just in an effort to preserve it. The Core is a remnant from this bygone time, and in its efforts to restore Amphibia to its multiverse-conquering days, it destroys Newtopia and turns Amphibia into a polluted wasteland before its own claims to immortality and godhood are disproven by the Calamity Trio's powers obliterating it (along with Amphibia's moon) forever.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle:
  • When Anne got transported to Amphibia, it apparently knocked one of her shoes off her foot in the process (the other shoe is currently in the possession of Grime). She's forced to go around one foot in nothing but her sock (which is surprisingly resilient through the series) and can't get a replacement since the inhabitants are frog people and any shoes they do wear are too small for her. She lampshades it in "Best Fronds":
  Anne: [rolling dice to a board game] C'mon, mama needs a new pair of shoes. Seriously though, I do need new shoes.
  • By the time of "After the Rain", the shoe is currently in possession of the swarm of magpie beetles.
  • She finally does get a new pair of shoes once she returns to Earth and has access to all her old clothes, getting an updated look to reflect both her Character Development as well as the changes in her situation following the Plantars getting trapped on Earth with her.
  • In "Commander Anne", she loses her shoe again.
  Hop Pop: Did you lose a shoe?
  Anne: OH COME ON!
• MacGuffin: The Calamity Box. Andrias and the Core need it for their interdimensional conquest, and won't let anyone stand in their way.
• Macro Zone: Everything in Amphibia is scaled up, with frogs almost as tall as human beings, snails large enough to ride like horses, and birds the size of giant dinosaurs.
• Magic from Technology: The natives of Amphibia, the Plantar family in particular, believe Anne's phone to be magical. They aren't all that impressed since actual magic does exist in their world.
• Magitek: Season 2 reveals that Amphibia is actually riddled with advanced technology from a bygone age — frobots, massive laser weapons, an Ominous Floating Castle, etc. — which is specifically powered by the Calamity Box's supernatural-seeming energies. The Calamity Box itself is revealed to be this in the final season: the three Calamity Gems which are the entire source of the Box's power were actually created by a trans-dimensional higher entity, whilst the Box itself is merely a vessel engineered by Amphibia's inhabitants in ancient times in order to harness and channel the Gems' power to their purposes.
• Malicious Misnaming: Anne is called "Boobchuy" by Maggie back home.
• Manipulative Bitch: It had been implied that Sasha is a manipulative friend before, but in "Prison Break" she takes it to the next level. After successfully manipulating several of her prison guards into quitting their job, she teaches Grime how to use flattery to make his troops love and fight hard for him. In a single day, she is able to talk and fight her way from prisoner all the way to second-in-command. Through it all she is suave, devious, and clever. Not bad for a 13-year-old. In "Reunion", it's shown that on Anne's 13th birthday, Sasha convinced Anne to skip school and go play instead, and when Anne tried to go home to the party her family had set up for her, Sasha effectively bullied Anne into ditching it and keeping hanging out with Marcy and her.
• Man-Eating Plant: Well, frog-eating plant in this case." Hop Luck" features gigantic carnivorous tomato plants, which ends up swallowing all the Plantars and Anne whole when they go looking for tomato ingredients to make a pizza. Luckily, it turns out the throat/stalk of the plant is delicious if eaten raw, giving them a way out. Grime has a Venus-flytrap-esque plant as a pet which he feeds toads and frogs, and which ends up crushed to death by the end of "Reunion."
• Meaningful Name:
  • Amphibia is a world where amphibians are the dominant race. Not just frogs, but also toads, newts, axolotls, olms... and likely every other species of amphibians.
  • "Plantar" means "related to the sole of the foot", possibly referring to the frogs' large, flat feet, or to plantar warts (warts on the soles of the feet), since both frogs and toads tend to be heavily associated with warts (the town the Plantars live in is even called Wartwood). It also sounds like "planter", which is a fitting name for a family of vegetable farmers.
    • Sprig means twig or shoot.
    • Polly is a pollywog, and her middle name is Petunia.
  • Anne Boonchuy's first name means "gracious"/"merciful" in Hebrew, and her last name roughly translates from Thai to "one who encourages or performs good deeds"; fitting her kind-heartedness. Anne is also a name that's been born by many royalty, fitting how she's a foil to King Andrias.
  • Sasha Waybright's first name derives from the name Alexander, which means "defender of man", and her last name is an Americanized form of Weibrecht/Weybrecht (note that Word of God says she's of German and Slavic descent) which is derivedfrom the words "war" and "bright". Sasha is very much a warrior who's very bright for her age, and she's a protector and very inspiring person when she's at her best.
  • Marcy Wu's first name means "warlike", and whilst she's not as pure warrior-spirit as Sasha, she does settle right into her role as Newtopia's crossbow-wielding chief ranger.
    • When she's possessed by the Core, the latter uses the name Darcy, meant to reference "Dark Marcy".
  • The Music Box is apparently called the Calamity Box in the Plantars' old tome because of Leif's vision which led her to believe the Box would bring an apocalypse upon Amphibia if the Newtopians continued using it.
  • The "mad" in Maddie Flour's name seems to fit her eccentric personality and superficially creepy demeanor.
  • The Sundews' family name is also the name of a shimmering carnivorous plant found in bogs, some species of which have the same yellow-and-red/orange colors as Ivy and Felicia themselves, and have a sweet aroma which could match Felicia's badassery-veiling personality.
  • Tritonio Espada. His first name is based on the word "triton", an old name for newts (which he is), and his last name is Spanish for "sword" (he's a Master Swordsman).
  • King Andrias is named after a giant salamander which is the largest genus in the entire amphibian class of vertebrates, fitting how he's an exceptionally gigantic newt. His family name, Leviathan, refers to the dreaded biblical beast of the sea, again fitting how he's a giant amphibian and also alluding to his sinister family legacy.
  • Captain Bufo of the toads. His name means, you guessed it, "toad" in Latin.
  • In Season 3, Mr. X's name is apparently a reference to extraterrestrials, which he specializes in hunting.
  • Leif's name, besides fitting how she ultimately became a farmer, means "descendant"/"heir", which fits with the reveal that the Plantars are her descendants. It also seems to reference Norse explorer Leif Erikson, the first European to reach America, fitting how Leif apparently took the Calamity Box to vikings on Earth a thousand years ago, and it ended up in America.
• Metal-Poor Planet: Amphibia is implied to be fairly resource poor, as their society has remained in Medieval Stasis for a millenium. While they had technology exceeding that of present-day Earth in the past, this was gained by exploiting other worlds using the Calamity Box, and their advanced civilization collapsed when it was stolen.
• Mid-Season Twist:
  • In "Prison Break", episode 20 out of 39 from season 1, Sasha becomes The Dragon to Grime.
  • In "Anne-sterminator", the 9th episode of season 3A, the Killer Robot is finally destroyed, Anne's parents now know about Andrias' invasion, and the Plantars have been seen in their true forms by the FBI.
• Milholland Relationship Moment: The citizens of Amphibia tend to be rather forgiving of big reveals, provided the offender apologizes.
  • In "Cane Crazy," Hop Pop goes into Tranquil Fury after Anne admits to breaking his ancestral cane, but he also assures her that he never intended to kick her out and he values their relationship more than a material possession.
  • In "Contagi-Anne," the Plantars are very forgiving when they learn Anne faked sick to get out of chores. They point out that having her helping them work in the rain probably wouldn't have prevented them from getting sick themselves, and she did everything in her power to cure them of what they all believed to be a fatal disease.
  • In "Return to Wartwood," the whole town quickly forgives the Plantars for forgetting to bring the gifts Hop Pop and Polly had promised to get them in Newtopia and for threatening everyone's lives with their crazy scheme trying to cover up that they forgot to bring the gifts.
  • Lampshaded and Played for Laughs in "New Wartwood", when Marcy accidentally destroys Wartwood. The citizens assures her that Anne used to do that all the time, and she eventually grew on them, so they're sure Marcy will too.
• Mineral Macguffin: It's hinted that the Music Box's power to open portals between worlds is tied to the three gemstones embedded in its lid, which were originally green, blue and pink on Earth but have become desaturated in Amphibia. Season 2 outright confirms this, and furthermore reveals that the Music Box/Calamity Box was created by King Andrias' ancestors: a major story arc of the second season is recharging the power in each of the Calamity Gems (each of which represent Wit, Heart and Strength) one-by-one to restore the Box to full functionality. Season 3 furthermore reveals that whilst the Newtopians created the Box, they did not create the three Calamity Gems which give it its power but rather they just found the Gems and don't fully understand them — the Gems are actually cosmic in origin.
• Mood Whiplash: Anytime an episode ends on a twist (i.e. Hop Pop buries the Calamity Box, the Toads appear before Anne, The Stinger with the mysterious robot following the Plantars), it's followed by the relaxing and soothing Ending Theme.
• Monster of the Week: A lot of the early season one episodes see Anne and the Plantars having to contend with some horrible species of wildlife for an episode — giant killer mantises, giant killer sea serpents, giant killer hedgehogs, giant killer doves...
• Moral Disambiguation: In the first season, Sasha is an Anti-Hero who resorts to immoral actions to get her friends back. Grime leads a Machiavellian toad army with the redeeming quality that they want to maintain (an admittedly feudal) order. After King Andrias is revealed to be a would-be Myopic Conqueror who intends to conquer Earth and then the multiverse, and he's willing to stoop much lower than Sasha and Grime were, Sasha and Grime unite with the main heroes and the heroes' formerly-neutral goals shift toward saving both Earth and Amphibia from an existential threat. Whereas Andrias is eventually revealed to be a more complex and multi-layered Tragic Villain than his initial atrocities let on, his master — the true Big Bad leader of the Myopic Conqueror campaign — is a pure, unrepentant monster to the end (literally and metaphorically), and would sooner destroy everything within its reach than admit defeat or try to redeem itself.
• More Predators Than Prey: The vast majority of Amphibian wildlife encountered in the show are large carnivores that eat frogs, snails, and/or humans.
• Moving Angst: It's revealed during the season two finale that Marcy learned her family would have to move due to her father's job. She wasn't happy about this, and it led to her tricking Sasha into goading Anne into stealing the Calamity Box and sending all three of them to Amphibia in the first place, all so she wouldn't have to say goodbye to them.
• Mundane Object Amazement: Sprig and his family are amazed by the human objects Anne brought with her to Amphibia.
• Mushroom Samba: In "Stakeout", Anne and Hop Pop have a shared hallucination after their bodies have a bad reaction to each other's energy drinks. The duo then attempts to maim Sprig under the belief that he's a strange beast made of corn. The episode ends with Polly also drinking Anne's energy drink and hallucinating as well.
• Myth Arc: Anne's quest to find a way to get home, slowly shifting into stopping Andrias.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The creepified version of the Amphibia theme heard in the Halloween episode uses the original melody heard in the initial reveal at the 2018 Comic-Con.
  • Two scenes from the intro, which are Anne and Sprig preparing to defend themselves from the Mudmen, and Anne pulling Sprig out of the way of an incoming boulder, are both taken from the original Amphibiland pilot.

Tropes N to Z

• Non-Mammalian Hair: Most amphibians in the show have human-like hair (though often in unusual colors) or facial hair, though there are some who are "bald".
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Some of the more humanoid-looking amphibians have knockers.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: King Andrias, who wants his dimensional conquest to be carried out as planned with no interruptions. If you try to stop him, no matter if you're tall, short, a human, a non-human being, or magically empowered, then he'll see you as a big threat to his plans and will try to kill you, whatever it takes. This doesn't prevent him from being a bit of a goofball, though.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: Downplayed. While there are a few romantic relationships featured throughout, most of them are unimportant to the overall story: Hop Pop's Love Interest Sylvia Sundew is severely Demoted to Extra after two appearances in season 1, Sprig and Ivy's relationship is only given focus once per season, Percy and Braddock only appeared for a few episodes before leaving in season 2, and Yunan and Olivia don't get together until the end of the show. Other than that, most of the other main and supporting characters don't get a romance arc or are already in unimportant relationships.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Anne toward Hop Pop's freestyle in "Hop Pop and Lock":
  Anne: Hop Pop, if you wanna win over Sylvia...NEVER DO FREESTYLE AGAIN.
• Noodle Incident: In "The Domino Effect", Hop Pop complains on and on about the last pet the Plantars had, a spider named Charlie Bigbottom. At the end, however, he reveals that he misses the spider badly when empathizing with Anne. Turns into a Running Gag as Hop Pop will bring up Charlie several times later in the show.
• Not Now, We're Too Busy Crying Over You: Shortly after her resurection, Anne comes across all her friends mourning her. When she casually asks what they're doing, Hop-Pop brushes her off until Sprig realizes she's both alive and standing right behind them.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Happens between each season:
  • "Reunion"/"Handy Anne": Sasha and Anne's relationship is damaged, possible beyond repair, and the Plantars leave Wartwood to explore the rest of Amphibia.
  • "True Colors"/"The New Normal": Andrias is revealed as a tyrant, Marcy is stabbed, Anne and the Plantars are stuck on Earth, and Sasha is left to an uncertain fate.
  • "The Hardest Thing", Due to the nature of the finale: Anne had exhausted the Calamity Gems to destroy the Core for good, and The Guardian gives the trio three smaller gems that only had enough energy for a one-way trip back to Earth. Once they leave, that's the last of any known energy source capable of traversing worlds, capped off by the Calamity Box itself disintegrating soon after. Anne, Sasha, and Marcy likely never saw any of their friends in Amphibia after the last battle, and they probably never will. Though on a lighter note, all of the conflict, warfare, and class division seems to have been eliminated from Amphibia.
• No, You: In "Anne or Beast?", when Sprig protests Hop-Pop putting Polly in charge of the cart.
  Sprig: Polly's a baby!
  Polly: You're a baby!
• Object-Shaped Landmass: The titular continent resembles a lilypad, fitting considering the amount of sentient species based on amphibious lifeforms who live there.
• Oh, My Gods!: There are no details about a religion (except for when Hop Pop mentions in the Christmas Episode that they have a holiday called "Swamphollow's Eve" (an Amphibia version of Halloween, a.k.a. "All Hallow's Eve"), on which they make ritual sacrifices) or a deity/deities are given, but the frogs replace "god" with "frog" in their expressions of surprise, anger, and so on ("oh my frog", "I swear to frog", and so on).
• Older Is Better: Hop Pop personifies this, with episodes often having his older, traditional views clash with Anne’s newer, more modern ways.
• Ominous Floating Castle: That giant palace in the middle of Newtopia? The Season 2 finale reveals that it actually doubles as an ancient, gigantic magitek flagship with thrusters that enable flight. Its flight and lazer-firing capabilities are reactivated by Andrias, and throughout the final season it serves as his and the Core's main base of operations, spending most of the season hanging in the sky above Amphibia before the Earth invasion begins.
• Once a Season:
  • The finale of every season has one of the three human girls experiencing a Disney Death (Sasha in S1, Marcy in S2, Anne in S3).
  • Also near the end of each season, one of the human girls has briefly turned to the side of villainy and the others have to fight them. Anne fights Sasha in Season 1, Sasha fights Anne, who's unaware of Andrias' true intent, in season 2, and Sasha fights Marcy possessed by the Core in Season 3.
  • Each season gets an appearance of the mysterious newt Valeriana in one particular episode; "Bizarre Bazarr" in S1, "The Second Temple" in S2, and "The Hardest Thing" in S3.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: A Running Gag throughout the series is that when someone is reminded about a mistake they made in the past or something bad they did, they respond with a defensive "It was just one time!" or some other variation of "one time".
• Once More, with Clarity: This happens twice to provide context on how Anne, Sasha, and Marcy got stranded in Amphibia, as the first time we see Anne stealing the box from the thrift store, it just seems that Sasha and Marcy egged her on to do it.
  • In "Reunions", we discover that Sasha borderline-bullied Anne into skipping school to go do fun things for her birthday, and then put the hammer down to keep Anne from going back home to the party her parents were planning for her, leading to them meeting up with Marcy at the thrift store.
  • In "True Colors", we see what Marcy was doing during while Sasha and Anne were playing hooky; she was studying in the library when she found a book detailing what the Calamity Box can do before being told by her parents to come home. When her father explained that they're going to be moving away, Marcy ran out of the house in tears and, in doing so, passed by the thrift store that has the Calamity Box. She then sent a picture of it to Sasha and Anne, saying that it would make a great present for Anne's birthday, laying the foundation for getting them stranded in Amphibia because she couldn't bear to let them be separated.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Anne, Sasha, and Marcy.
• Organic Technology: Certain aspects of Amphibian technology, such as bioluminescent mushrooms in place of light bulbs, and the occasional Flintstone-style creature◊ serving the function of an appliance.
• Otherworldly Communication Failure: In “Night Drivers”, while trying to take a shortcut home, Sprig and Polly are repeatedly harassed by a creepy, hook-handed hitchhiker. When they finally make it back home, they run into what appears to be the hitchhiker; it’s actually a statue dedicated to the late Zechariah Nettles, a frog who dedicated himself to guiding and protecting travelers. They then realize that the hitchhiker was the ghost of Zechariah himself, and that he was actually trying to steer them onto the safe path home.
• Perpetual Poverty: The Plantars don't have a lot of money, and the little bits of gold they earn are put towards Anne's debts. Hop Pop even has IOUs in his wallet instead of actual currency, and "Plantar's Last Stand" revolves around them trying to drum up enough business to keep their food stand open after a new tax, which they are ultimately unable to do. Later, however, Hop Pop running for office and showing he's willing to fight for the town motivates his neighbors to rebuild his food stand, implicitly promising to cover the increased taxes.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite being a massive Sleazy Politician who serves more than once as a single-episode antagonist, Toadstool has a couple moments towards the end of the first season, and they grow more frequent as the series goes on from there. Notable highlights include saving the frogs at Toad Tower from collapsing rubble in the Season 1 finale, and, even more prominently, trying to own up to the angry townsfolk for his share of the blame instead of letting Marcy take all the heat after the two of them almost sunk Wartwood by accident.
  • In the Season 1 flashback to Anne's life on Earth, her bully Maggie takes a moment out from bullying her to sincerely wish her a happy birthday, before she tries to steal Anne's lunch.
  • Grime moves to save Sasha's life from a deadly fall at Toad Tower after Sasha has lost to Anne — this is one of the first solid signs that his Villainous Friendship with Sasha, despite its manipulative roots, is genuine.
  • The Stan Pines Corrupted Character Copy in Season 2 may be a crazy, evil spook who plans to forcibly turn Anne into a wax exhibit in his museum, but he's still genuinely affable enough to have a conversation with her in which he assures her that falling for his trap does not make her stupid, and that she's just having a really bad day.
  • During Mr. X's multi-episode feud with Anne and the Plantars, it's shown in his second appearance that he kept the terrestrial frogs and pollywog which they used to throw him off their trail and humiliate him.
  • Very downplayed by King Andrias when he admits to Marcy (in a very snide tone) that he genuinely liked her and that he pleaded with the Big Bad the Core not to do what it's going to do to her. The series' penultimate episode shows that Andrias had a much straighter example of this trope when he first met Marcy: after quickly and genuinely bonding with her, Andrias went out of his way to talk the Core out of having her killed in favor of something more pragmatic which could spare her life whilst serving their own ends.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: The title logo has the shape of a frog's foot making up the hollow in the first "A".
• Pineapple Ruins Pizza: In the episode "Hop Luck", Anne explains pizza to the Plantars and Sprig wonders how good pineapple would be on it, only for Anne to shoot it down immediately.
  Anne: Don't you dare talk about pineapple on my pizza. Ever.
• Planet Looters: The last two seasons reveal that this trope is a dark part of the Music Box's history. Up until a thousand years ago, Amphibia's ancient civilization were using the Music Box to serially invade other worlds; stripping those worlds bare for resources and for any research-worthy specimens, in order to fuel their own civilization's cultural and technological marvels as well as their endless multi-dimensional war machine. And Earth was about to become the next target when their technology shut down.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: In-Universe, Anne tends to give these to both romantic couples (Sprivy/SprigIvy for Sprig and Ivy) and platonic ones (Spranne for her and Sprig, P'anne for her and Polly). Given that Anne is a Pop-Cultured Badass, it's likely an intentional reference to this trope.
  Polly: Our teamname sucks.
  Anne: Yeah, could be better.
• Power Trio: A big theme. To go with the three calamity gems, there are three girls who were transported to Amphibia, though it takes quite a while for them to join up. Andrias was also part of this once, until Leif stole the calamity box and he exiled Barrel in grief.
• Pun-Based Creature: The frog world's Fantastic Fauna Counterparts include caterpillars, insect larvae that look and behave like cats (until they grow up).
• Put on a Bus: The Wartwood residents in the first half of the second season, though in an inversion they actually stay in Wartwood; it's the Plantars who leave for Newtopia. The only characters from Wartwood who appear in the first half of season 2 are Leopold, Chuck, Soggy Joe, and One-Eyed Wally. Mrs. Croaker is mentioned in one episode as well.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Newtopia's royal palace is actually a giant floating fortress and superweapon, and is very much functional after having lain dormant for at least a millennium.
• Raised by Grandparents: Sprig and Polly are being raised by their grandfather Hop Pop, who also takes care of Anne while she's in Amphibia and grows to consider her his adopted granddaughter.
• Rearrange the Song: The season 3 intro uses an electronic remix of the theme tune, reflecting the setting changing to Earth now that the Plantars are stranded there with Anne.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Principal Murphy, for the short time we see her, can immediately tell that Anne is more of a follower in Sasha and Marcy's schemes. She then challenges Anne to write an essay on who she wants to be, and to apply herself.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Polly delivers a pretty cutting one in Dating Season to Hop Pop, Felicia, Anne, and Anne's dating magazines.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • A giant rat in the toad tower's sewers and many toad soldiers have red and sometimes red-glowing eyes.
  • The ancient robots controlled by King Andrias all have glowing red eyes, except Frobo, who is on the side of the protagonists and gets destroyed by King Andrias.
  • Sasha gets pink eyes when doing something particularily determined.
• Rejection Projection: According to King Andrias, he had two friends, a pink frog and a green toad, who betrayed him by stealing the Calamity Box, causing Newtopia to fall from grace. But once we learn that Andrias planned to use the box to be a Multiversal Conqueror, we're left with the implication that they took the box out of worry for the maniac their friend was becoming. It's ultimately revealed that Leif (the frog) did steal the box out of concern for what its powers would lead to, but Barrel (the toad) was largely innocent except for a moment of hesitation before fighting Leif.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Giant predatory reptiles are among the dangers Anne faces in Amphibia.
• The Reveal:
  • "Best Fronds" opens and ends with one of these; it opens revealing where Anne got the Calamity Box and how she got transported to Amphibia, and ends revealing that Sasha and Marcy also got transported, the former now being a prisoner of the toads, while the latter's fate isn't revealed until season 2.
  • "Reunion" reveals that Hop Pop has inspired rebellions around the valley, and the toads want him dead for it.
  • "Marcy at the Gates" reveals that Marcy has become a ranger for the Newtopian king.
  • "After the Rain" reveals why Hop Pop is so overprotective of Sprig, Polly, and Anne: they're the only family he has left after Sprig and Polly's parents were eaten by herons while he was away from the farm.
  • "True Colors", hoo boy where to begin; Andrias' dynasty were not explorers, but conquerors, and Andrias is keen on continuing their legacy. Amphibia was once technologically advanced and used the calamity gems as a power source. Marcy was aware of the calamity box' power and used it to send her and her friends to Amphibia on purpose.
  • "Olivia & Yunan" reveals that The Core is a Mind Hive of all of Andrias' ancestors.
  • "The Core & The King" reveals that Andrias father, Aldrich, is part of the Core, and Andrias' friend Leif betrayed him because she saw a vision of what the calamity box would lead to.
  • "All-In" reveals that Leif is the ancestor of the Plantars.
  • "The Hardest Thing" reveals that the stones are not Amphibian in origin, but were created by the "three stones deity".
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • In season 2, once you learn King Andrias is plotting to take over all worlds with the Calamity Box, it casts all his earlier appearances in a new light. The part where he explains how to charge the Calamity Gems becomes even more poignant because he wants to sever the girls' connections with the gems so they will be useless and unable to fulfil the prophecy against him, allowing him to take over the universe without any interference from them. And another new light in the next season, when it's increasingly revealed that the Core has Andrias under almost complete control, the sadistic tyrant is just a mask to please the Mind Hive, and he took a genuine liking to Marcy when he first met her.
  • Once you watch the finale and learn the truth about the moon, it becomes hard to not notice its presence in the background of many episodes, in the season 2 and 3 intros (except for when it's overshadowed by Darcy), and prominence in every outro.
• Rule of Three: Very prominent.
  • There are three calamity gems, three girls, three major races, the symbol of Amphibia has three brances, etc.
  • Andrias had two friends before they "betrayed" him.
  • Played for Drama. Each season ends with one of the three girls having a Near-Death Experience. Case in point:
    • Season 1: Sasha lets herself fall from the collapsing tower to not drag Anne with her, only to be rescued by Grime at the last moment.
    • Season 2: Marcy gets stabbed in the back by Andrias’s Laser Sword, only for the latter to put her in a Healing Vat so her body could be used as his master’s vessel.
    • Season 3: Anne uses the power of all the three stones combined to obliterate the moon and the Core, losing her life in the process. Luckily, the entity behind the Calamity Gems “backed her up” and restores her to life shortly thereafter.
• Running Gag: Anne makes references to various Earth things, commonly be followed by a Plantar saying something akin to, "That means nothing to me!"
• Sapient Eat Sapient:
  • There have been at least four different cases of sapient amphibians intending to eat other sapient beings: a Cannibal Clan covering themselves in mud pretending to be Muck Monsters while hunting people; a family of Affably Evil horned bullfrogs running a "bed and breakfast" where the guests are the breakfast; one of the Toad Tower tax collectors pondering how Anne tastes; and a pair of gigantic, conjoined olms that devour any person that enters their lair.
  • Played For Laughs during the first few episodes of season 1, with part of the town's unfriendliness towards Anne coming from the fact that they fear this unfamiliar (and ugly) creature could snap and start eating the townsfolk at any moment. Anne's pretty blunt about this never happening.
  Anne: Dude, relax. I am not going to eat something that clearly doesn’t bathe.
  Viewers then get a Gross-Up Close-Up of Hop Pop, showing he’s rather dirty and has visible flies buzzing around him.
  Hop Pop: Fair point... (eats a fly).
• "Save the World" Climax: The first season and the majority of the second season was about Anne and the Plantars' misadventures in Amphibia, and the main objective was for Anne to find a way for her and her friends to return to Earth, with the biggest threat to the overall setting being a toad coup looking to overthrow Amphibia's ruling government. Then in the Season 2 finale, Andrias reactivates Amphibia's magitek robot army, and he and his secret master reveals that they're setting their sights on conquering both Amphibia and Earth, planning to exterminate the latter planet's dominant species and strip both worlds of their resources so they can conquer the multiverse. In the final season, Anne is juggling getting the Plantars (who've been stranded on Earth in a flip of the first season's Trapped in Another World formula) back to Amphibia with preparing to combat the coming extradimensional invasion.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Gender-Inverted. Anne, despite being a newcomer, is much savvier and street-smart than Sprig, who is overly excitable and foolhardy.
• Scenery Porn: Just from the intro alone, it's pretty clear the titular Amphibia is a beautiful place to look at. Several shots in the show takes time to show the varied and gorgeous landscapes, and the season 2 outro in particular shows a rolling skyline with a volcano and a lake with ruins under a beautiful night sky.
• Schizo Tech:
  • The greater majority of Amphibia's technology seems to be medieval, and yet they've also created things like amusement park rides and gas masks.
  • In season 2, it's revealed that Amphibia used to have more advanced technology long ago when Anne and Sprig discover an ancient factory that makes robots.
  • Season 3 further reveals how. As Newtopia was a Flying Fortress used by the Newts to invade other dimension to fuel their technology with the help of the Calamity Box. When the Calamity Box was stolen by Leif Plantar they buried their technology until it is recovered.
• Science Fantasy: At first, the series started off as being just straight fantasy, until robot frogs, mad scientists, stargaze-esquires portal, a space colony were added to the mix.
• "The Scream" Parody: Grime watches an episode of Suspicion Island, an in-universe reality show, with one sneak peek showing a woman accusing her mate of being suspicious. He responds by doing a Big "NO!", and the pose of his hands and face resemble the painting.
• Second Chapter Cliffhanger: The first season ends a bit triumphantly as Anne finally stands up to Sasha and Wartwood gains a decisive victory over the toads. At the end of the second season, in "True Colors", King Andrias reveals that he's Evil All Along and is planning an invasion of Earth, Anne is shown to have a powerful Super Mode, Marcy is gravely stabbed by Andrias, and Anne and the Plantars end up on Earth.
• Second Episode Morning: "Best Fronds" takes place the morning after "Anne or Beast?"
  Anne: Guys, guys, guys! I just had the craziest dream! I was trapped in a world of frog pe...!
  (Anne looks over and sees the Plantar family.)
• Secret Identity: When the Plantars end up on Earth in the third season, Anne tries to keep their frog identities a secret from most other humans to avoid being taken away and being experimented on. Anne also tries to keep Andrias' rebellion and her Calamity powers a secret from her parents.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • In season 3, Anne's parents and Domino are the only ones in the human world who know the Plantars are frog people. She is later joined by Dr. Jan, and later everyone at the Thai Temple.
  • Following "Anne-sterminator", Anne's parents are the only ones in on King Andrias' invasion of Earth.
• Secret Test of Character: Each of the three temples to recharge the gems give the three girls associated with the respective gem they symbolize a challenge which tests them on their gem-associated personality.
  • Marcy — Green — Wit: She has to learn to give up for the good of others (Anne and the Plantars) and realize the Flipwart game is unwinnable.
  • Anne — Blue — Heart: She is repeatedly tested over and over by Valeriana until she admits her mistakes in the past and learns from them.
  • Sasha — Pink — Strength: She uses the mental strength within her to persevere herself to succeed for Anne and Marcy's sake.
• Sequel Goes Foreign:
  • The first half of season 2 has Anne and the Plantars leave Wartwood for the distant city of Newtopia to get hints on how Anne should get home and to uncover more information about the Calamity Box. The second half has them travel to the three temples and recharge its gems so it's at full power again.
  • Season 3 has the Plantars and Anne now having wacky adventures Trapped in Another World — on Earth.
• Series Goal: Anne's goal is to return home, reunite with Sasha and Marcy, and learn why she was transported to Amphibia by the music box. Her next goal in season 3 is to get back to Amphibia and defeat King Andrias and later the Core.
• Shared Universe:
  • The show takes place in one shared with The Owl House, which was first implied in "If You Give A Frog A Cookie" by dr. Frakes having taken a blurred image of the Owl House itself through her dimensional portal, and finally confirmed in The Owl House's season 2 finale with Camila Noceda having an article about Anne open on her ipad.
  • It is also implied to share a universe with Gravity Falls, given the appearance of Amphibia-versions of grunkle Stan and Soos, plus the implications in The Owl House that Eda married Stan at one point.
• Shipper on Deck: Anne is a big fan of Sprivy (Sprig and Ivy).
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Despite returning to Earth in season 3, Anne is never shown going back to school.
• Shown Their Work:
  • In "Flood, Sweat and Tears", Sprig prefers to keep the window closed during the night to keep out the cold. Frogs in real life prefer warm and humid environments over cold ones. He also mentions that frogs can't sweat. The exothermic physiology of amphibians is a plot point in "Snow Day".
  • In "Hop Luck", Hop Hop, reading from a cookbook, remarks that tomatoes are in the dangerous vegetables section. Though the carnivorous plant we see later is exaggerated, real-life tomato plants are more dangerous than most vegetables, as they are part of the solanine family and poisonous if ingested — only the fruit is edible.
  • "Lily Pad Thai" has Anne try to open the very first frog-Thai fusion restaurant, inspired by memories of her parents' own Thai restaurant. Their selection is based on actual Thai cuisine, Anne wears a simplified version of a traditional Thai dress, and actually speaks a number of Thai words and phrases such as "sawadee ka" (with a perfect accent, no less). This all comes from the show's creator and Anne's voice actor both being half-Thai themselves.
    • Similarily, "Temple Frogs" display many elements of real Thai culture.
  • Hop Pop mentions the Plantars are in Perpetual Poverty and have to work extra hard to break even. This is very true for farmer families, especially having to save crops in hazardous weather.
  • A good portion of bugs are edible for human beings. While Anne is grossed out too much to eat them at first, she eventually gets used to it after several weeks of being in Wartwood.
  • The Villain of the Week in "A Night at the Inn" are horned frogs who turn out to be a Cannibal Clan. Horned frogs do in fact eat other frogs.
  • The roc in "Truck Stop Polly" has clawed wings like feathered non-avian dinosaurs, proto-birds, and some modern birds like ostriches and hoatzin chicks.
  • The olms in "Quarreler's Pass" have skin-covered eyes, pale skin with visible veins, snakelike bodies, and three stubby fingers characteristic of real-life olms.
  • As mentioned above, it's stated that frogs are unable to sweat. However, toads are able to, as shown in "Reunion" and "Toadcatcher".
  • "Lost in Newtopia" shows a Newtopian "tail shop", whose main purpose is apparently to sell temporary prosthetic tails to newts who have lost their tails and are waiting for them to regenerate. Real newts are indeed able to regenerate their tails.
  • An illustration of a plausibly feathered Tyrannosaurus appears as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the season 3 opening. Specifically, the Tyrannosaurus has a pelt on the dorsal region, the part of its body feathers were most likely present (that is, assuming it even had feathers).
  • Durians do in fact smell awful, as Hop Pop finds out the hard way in "The New Normal".
  • In "Adventures in Catsitting", Polly triggers Domino's wrath by leaping onto her belly. Cats have hypersensitive hair follicles on their stomachs, hence why most of them don't like belly rubs.
  • Also in the abovementioned episode, there is an albino python with realistic coloration, down to the skin patterns being yellow.
  • When Hop Pop asks the vet if he can make a frog look 40 years younger, the vet becomes confused and asks if he has a 40-year-old frog. In real life, most frogs live 3-6 years in the wild and 10-20 years in captivity, with the oldest age recorded in a frog indeed being 40 years.
  • Though not quite accurately, the Deinonychus display from "Fight at the Museum" clearly has feathers. This is notably the first time a feathered dromaeosaur has been referenced in a Disney Channel original show.
  • In "Olm Town Road", it's shown that olms are seriously harmed by sunlight and have very long lifespans (though living for centuries is a bit of a stretch).
  • Axolotls are shown coming in different colors, rather than pale pink as usually depicted. The popular coloring of axolotls is actually a leucistic morph resulting from being in the pet trade.
• Sibling Rivalry: 10-year-old Sprig and 5-year-old Polly have quite a rivalry. Their personalities are nearly opposites, with Sprig being easygoing and hyperactive, while Polly is aggressive yet more responsible. It comes to head in "Civil Wart", when the entire town takes the side of one sibling or the other in a Ship-to-Ship Combat. They resolve to support each other from then on, but the rivalry doesn't disappear.
• Siding with the Suffering: After King Andrias reveals his true evil nature in the season 2 finale, his despoiling of the land and cruel actions against the populace turn Lady Olivia and General Yunan against him.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift:
  • While Anne has dresses and even a tuxedo either packed in her backpack or commissioned from tailors in Wartwood, she tends to stick to her school uniform in most episodes, showing that she is still a good person at heart. She only changes outfit in "Bessie and Microangelo", adding a chestplate to symbolize her Character Development, and in "The New Normal", changing to casual clothes now that she's back on Earth.
  • As a foil, Sasha switches from her school uniform to a Toad Tower armor, signifying an Evil Costume Switch.
  • Similarly, Marcy wears Newtopia armor over her school uniform, hinting that she has Conflicting Loyalty towards Anne and the king she serves — or rather, the life of adventure she's having in Amphibia; when she becomes a human host for the Core, she now wears a black mech-suit with an orange eye-shaped jewel in the chest, along with an eye-obscuring helmet with antlers, which literally represents her turn to the dark side. This goes even further in Good Costume Switch in season 3, where Sasha's switch to her resistance armor symbolizes her redemption arc, and Marcy goes back to her Newtopia armor outfit after being freed from the Core and turning good again.
• Slapstick:
  • Anne is pretty regularly subject to physical slapstick where her survival is really only possible because it's a cartoon.
  • Marcy also has moments of this due to her clumsiness.
  • In "Mother of Olms", it's shown that not even Sasha is safe from any embarrassing slapstick as while everyone else also gets a bit banged up inside Mother Olm, Sasha gets the worst of it by walking into a wall of boogers and getting splashed by Mother Olm's tea when she requested a place to get clean. At least it was jasmine.
• Slasher Smile:
  • Maddie has several moments where she sports an unsettling ear-to-ear grin which could haunt your nightmares, although she's actually a really chill person. One of the most notable instances is the grin she gives Barry while cackling, which is not a case of her looking more creepy that she means to be, in "Sasha's Angels".
  • General Yunan may be funny and silly, but when she intends to kill and her blood starts rushing, she looks like this.
  • Andrias smiles quite unsettlingly during and after the build-up to his reveal that he was Evil All Along, in "True Colors".
  • Though it's not quite a Glasgow Grin, the Cloak-bot grins a lot, most notably when it's getting close to killing Anne and it lets out an unsettling laugh to go with it.
  • Darcy has quite a few intimidating grins while they possess a human body, including a truly sinister ear-to-ear grin after they cut off Grime's arm.
• Slaying Mantis: Anne saves Sprig from a gigantic red praying mantis. Apparently, giant mantises are common in the world of Amphibia.
• Sleep Cute: The first season's closing credits depict Anne and Sprig reading side-by-side at night, with Sprig gradually falling asleep by Anne's side.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Downplayed, but for how important they are to the story, to the point of both being Deuteragonists, Sasha Waybright and Marcy Wu don't actually appear that often. Out of 104 episodes, Sasha appears in 29, more than half of them in season 3, and Marcy in 31, more than half of them in season 2. The story is almost exclusively from the perspective from Anne and the Plantars.
• Small Taxonomy Pools: Probably the first time you'll see olms in a work of fiction.
• Smart People Play Chess: Flipwart is an In-Universe game resembling Chess. Marcy and King Andrias, two characters known for their brilliance, are perhaps the game's best players.
• Smug Snake:
  • Mr. X, though he's an Anti-Villain, is notably more cocky and overconfident than he should be during his Season 3A-spanning feud with the Boonchuys and the Plantars. As an antagonist, he acts like he has near-complete control of the situation and treats the Boonchuys like they're only worth his notice insofar as locating the frog people they're harboring goes, despite the multiple times where Mr. X underestimating them has blown up in his face and led him to humiliation.
  • The true Big Bad, the Core/Darcy, isn't nearly as smart as it thinks it is, despite condescending Andrias and its enemies as Darcy, and despite boasting that its Mind Hive is made of the greatest minds that Amphibia had to offer. It acts incredibly smug, but it has a good deal of hubris in its assertions that it's a god just because its creators found and used the Calamity Gems even though the Big Bad doesn't really understand how they work, the Big Bad tends to default towards solving any problem it's confronted with via murder even when those supposedly less intelligent than it can see that there's more pragmatic and productive alternatives, and it's prone to losing its temper and throwing hissy fits (the very thing it derides Andrias for) whenever it's losing or its ego is taken down a peg. Overall, it's implied that the bad guys are only as successful as they are during Season 2 and Season 3 because of Andrias' contributions, not because the Core lives up to its claims of being Amphibia's greatest thinktank at all.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Giant snakes are among the dangers in Amphibia. "Best Fronds" features a giant fish-snake. In "A Caravan Named Desire", there are sand worms threatening to eat those passing by.
• The Song Before the Storm: "No Big Deal" from "Battle of the Bands" in season 2, given that it's the second-to-last episode of the season and serves to give viewers one last hurrah before things go totally off the rails in the finale.
• Space Whale Aesop: Don't steal from shops, kids. Otherwise, the object you steal — in Anne, Sasha, and Marcy's case, a mysterious music box — may transport you to another world.
• Stealth Pun: In "Contangi-Anne", a Sick Episode, the characters make their way to a mountain called the "Peak of Health" — except it's missing a T, so it's spelled "Healh". Health without the ending "th" sound? That would be pronounced... hmm...
• Sticky Fingers: Anne got her hands on the magical music box because Sasha and Marcy peer-pressured her into stealing it from a thrift store. The three of them pay for it, magically.
• The Stinger: Following the events of "Fort in the Road", the last scenes of the next two episodes feature the robot that was unintentionally made at the factory visiting the last place the Plantars visited before continuing to pursue them.
• Stock "Yuck!":
  • Don't ever suggest pineapple on pizza to Anne.
  • Offering licorice to the otherwise calm and pleasant Gunther causes him to hulk out.
• Suddenly Ethnicity: In a rather clever move, thanks to Anne's Ambiguously Brown character design, the viewer probably won't realize she's Asian until the restaurant episode casually mentions that her family runs a Thai restaurant (and after the viewer has already become emotionally invested in her with no preconceptions based on her ethnicity). Her cultural background becomes more significant later on, such as her familiarity with Muay Thai.
• Superficial Suggestion Box: The suggestion box that Hop Pop sets up so the kids can submit ideas on how to improve the farm has a fire pit hidden inside to burn said suggestions.
• Swallowed Whole: A common threat in Amphibia, being the fate of some mooks and a problem Sprig has to deal with occasionally.
  Polly: I've been eaten eight times, Sprig. Eight times! I SORTA LOOK FORWARD TO IT NOW!
• Swapped Roles: In the season 2 finale, Sasha's betrayal of her friends incidentally leads to her learning that Andrias, who has been posing as The Good King, is actually an evil tyrant. When she tries to explain this to Anne, who's trying to return Andrias to power, she's too angry to listen, resulting in a fight. The ensuing duel swaps their dynamics from the first season finale, with Sasha being the heroic one trying to talk sense into her friend, and Anne unwittingly fighting for a tyrannical cause.
• Swiss-Army Tears: Invoked. After Marcy is freed from the Core in "All In", she falls down unconscious and wakes up shortly after Anne and Sasha have shed tears on her face.
• Symbolic Distance: Anne keeps her physical distance from Hop Pop for most of the episode because she's mad at him for burying the music box and lying to her about it. When he gives an explanation for his actions (he wanted to protect his family after losing Sprig and Polly's parents to a heron attack) and a sincere apology, he starts to close the distance by walking towards Anne but stops halfway. When she forgives him, she walks the rest of the way and hugs him, closing the physical and symbolic distance.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: The two overarching main antagonists that are working together to conquer and destroy Earth and other planets in order to get their resources have such a dynamic. King Andrias (Sympathetic) has done many inexcusably vile things by the series' end to further this evil cause, but he carries a lot more guilt and regret over his actions including his betrayal of Marcy than he initially lets on, and he has the Freudian Excuse of having been gaslit and browbeat by his Abusive Dad and other undead ancestors that exist in the Core's Mind Hive into closing his own heart off (a feat which Andrias can't completely pull off) and becoming solely dependent on them, for a millennium. The Core (Despicable) is the true master of the crusade to conquer and strip-mine the multiverse: it's a completely selfish and malicious entity which has none of Andrias' redeeming qualities, and it ultimately rejects any opportunity to pull a Heel–Face Turn in favor of attempting a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum against all of Amphibia when it's lost to the heroes.
• Tempting Fate:
  • As Anne looks at a photo of her, Marcy, and Sasha, she sincerely says she hopes they are okay because she is. We learn that Sasha's been imprisoned by a mysterious overlord, the Arc Villain. Marcy is in Newtopia working as the chief ranger of the knight guard.
  • When the herons approach Toad Tower, Grime warns everyone to be as quiet as possible and everything will be fine...cue Percy the one-toad music band loudly wandering outside.
• That Was Not a Dream: At the beginning of the second episode, Anne wakes up happily thinking her stay in Amphibia was just a weird dream. Then she sees Sprig and his family next to her.
• 13th Birthday Milestone: Anne is peer-pressured into opening a magical box known as the Calamity Box which transports her and her best friends Sasha and Marcy into the mysterious world of Amphibia, where the girls are separated from each other. This happened on her 13th birthday.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • General Yunan screams the following when she's sent falling from the top of a waterfall at the end of a Sasha-centric episode in Season 2, having been spending the episode trying to hunt down Sasha and Grime:
    "THIS CANNOT BE! I AM GENERAL YUNAN!"
  • In the Season 2 finale, Anne can only solemnly whisper, "No... it can't be" in disbelief when she and Sasha discover Marcy's Dark Secret. In the same episode, The Dragon King Andrias says in disbelief, "But that's impossible!" when he realizes that Anne still has an advantage which he had no way of foreseeing: she's still connected to the Calamity Stone because she didn't fully recharge it.
  • In the penultimate episode, the Big Bad Darcy is on the verge of killing Sasha when they sense that Andrias' fight against Anne has stopped due to Andrias' Villainous BSoD, prompting them to hiss to theirself in disbelief, "It can't be!".
• Title-Only Opening:
  • The duo of episodes in the first season which heavily feature Sasha ("Toad Tax"/"Prison Break" and "Reunion") skip the theme song all together and just show five seconds of the show title along with an abridged version of "Anne's Theme".
  • Done again with "The First Temple" in season 2.
• Toothy Bird:
  • The Frog Men often display teeth. More specifically, frogs have cartoony, square-shaped teeth, whereas toads, the warrior caste of Amphibia, have sharp, pointy teeth.
  • The monstrous birds appearing in the show, including the love doves, the herons, and the giant chicken in the opening, all have a beakful of fangs.
• Torches and Pitchforks: This seems to be a frequent pastime among the villagers of Wartwood.
  Mayor Toadstool: (to the pitchfork-wielding mob) Now, when I say "KILL" you say "IT!" KILL!
  Mob: IT!
  Mayor Toadstool: KILL!
  Mob: IT!
  Hop Pop: Heh. Another day, another mob!
• Touched by Vorlons: The reason the three gems on the Calamity Box lost their color was because their respective powers were transferred to the girls, evidenced by each girl's eyes flashing the color of the gem they're associated with (Anne is blue, Marcy is green, Sasha is red) prior to showing said power. When the gems get recharged, the glow drains from their eyes as a sign of them losing their powers. Because Anne only charged her gem halfway during the events of season 2, she still retains the latent abilities the box gave her, and gains a Super Mode at the end of the season. In show finale, Valeriana helps Marcy and Sasha regain their connections as well.
• Town Girls: Sassy Lovable Alpha Bitch Sasha is femme, cheerful Gamer Chick Marcy is butch, and feisty yet caring Anne is neither. This is very downplayed however, since all three girls possess a fair amount of both feminine and masculine traits.
• Toxic Friend Influence:
  • Sasha and Marcy appear to have had this effect on Anne, as her talk with Sprig in "Best Fronds" about friendships shows that pressuring her into stealing the music box despite her obvious misgivings was just the latest in an escalating series of similar events that she went along with because she was afraid that they wouldn't want to be friends with her anymore if she didn't.
    Anne: Look, if a friend likes a pencil case, you get it for them. If your friend likes your new shoes, you give them to her! And if a friend wants you to steal a crazy music box from a thrift store, even if you really don't want to... you do it, okay? Because if you don't... they might not want to be your friend anymore.
  • Anne herself often causes trouble by convincing one or more of the Plantars into doing something bad.
  • In a bit of a twist, it's eventually revealed that all three of the calamity trio are responsible for their friendship being toxic:
    • Sasha is most obvious; She's domineering and a Control Freak who always needs to be in charge of any situation, always being the one who decides what the three should do and steamrolling any objections. Her worst actions in the show are taken in an attempt at "taking back control" of her friendship because she's uncomfortable not being in control.
    • Marcy's issues are more subtle, but present: She is so absorbed in her own interests that she completely ignores her friends' needs and wants. Marcy constantly assumes Sasha and Anne are as invested in her games and hobbies as she is, to the point of ignoring their clear disinterest. Her trapping them in Amphibia is the most extreme result of this, as she thought they would be as happy to be Trapped in Another World as she was. They are not, which she would have known if she wasn't so self-absorbed.
    • If Sasha is possessive and Marcy is self-absorbed, Anne is an enabler. Despite having wants and interests herself, she never acts on them, just going along with what Sasha and Marcy are doing with no objection. The few times she did voice concerns, she immediately relented as soon as the others pushed just a little bit. She herself admits that she always just went with the flow, with no agency of her own.
    • In a bit of a deconstruction, these traits are also not shown to be wholly negative, or entirely their fault; Sasha does have potential as a leader and is an amazing people person. Marcy is passionate about her interests and her friends should have at least made an attempt at learning about them. Both of them shouldn't have pushed Anne so much around. The toxicity of their friendship ultimately stemmed from them not trying to work through their issues, letting them spiral out of control.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Certain Halloween promos following season 1 spoil the ending of "Anne of the Year", where Anne walks out of Wartwood to meet Sasha and where the toads are revealed.
  • The season 2A promo spoils Anne and the Plantars finding Marcy in Newtopia.
  • A rare case of it being done on purpose to mitigate the fallout of a really shocking scene. The season 3 opening was shown right after the season 2 finale, showing that Marcy did survive, if barely.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • "Cane Crazy": After Anne admits to breaking Hop-Pop's cane, she asks him if he's angry. Hop-Pop responds that he's "furious"... while wearing a pleasant smile.
  • "Flood, Sweat & Tears": After Anne accidentally causes one of his prized action figures to break, Sprig calmly walks out of his bedroom, a flat expression on his face.
• Trapped in Another World:
  • Thanks to opening a strange music box, Anne gets transported to another dimension known as Amphibia. It turns out that Marcy and Sasha were also teleported to Amphibia when the box opened; Sasha has been taken prisoner by the Big Bad, and Marcy is in Newtopia. Marcy is also not "trapped", as she knew what the box did all along.
  • Season 3 flips the dynamic on its head by having Anne and the Plantars trapped on Earth with the music box still in Amphibia, along with Sasha and Marcy. The goal thus becomes to find some way back to Amphibia so the Plantars can go home and Anne can retrieve her friends, on top of stopping Big Bad King Andrias from staging an invasion of Earth using the music box.
• Trial by Combat:
  • This is apparently the way toads settle disputes between them, at least going by Grime's words. One such trial takes place in the climax, between Anne and Sasha. Another occurs between Sprig and Beatrix in "Grime's Pupil".
  • At least some frog families will settle disputes this way, most notably the Plantars and the Ribbingtons.
• Troublesome Pet: In "The Domino Effect", Anne rescues a caterpillar that reminds her of her pet cat back home. After taking her back to the house, Anne finds out that wild caterpillars are much more aggressive and destructive, and it only gets worse when it transforms into a giant, ravenous moth.
• True Companions:
  • Anne grows into this with her adopted frog family, the Plantars, chosing to take public shame punishments with them and doing everything in her power to make sure they are safe and happy. They return the sentiment, going out of their way to help her.
  • While their relationship is initially based on mutual benefit, Grime and Sasha turn into this over time, fighting alongside each other several times, laying plans of conquest, and declaring their loyalty to each other. Even when Sasha makes her Heel–Face Turn, Grime can't stand to abandon her for long and joins her rebellion. In the penultimate episode, Grime pushes Sasha out of the way of Darcy's scythe while yelling her name, losing his arm in the process. Their final goodbye in "The Hardest Thing" causes them both to break into tears.
  Grime: Listen to me, Sasha. Before I met you, I was nothing. Just a bully in a tower. But you- You inspired me to be so much more! And if you can do that, you can do anything. You... can... do this.
  Darcy: Whoops, looks like he was disarmed. Get it? Dis-armed? Huh?
  Sasha: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
• The Unmasqued World: Towards the end of Season 3 Andrias and the Core finally manage to invade Earth, in broad daylight and televised at that. This pretty much renders all of Anne and her family's past attempts to keep the Plantars hidden/disguised pointless.
• Unpleasant Animal Counterpart: Toads are presented as more unpleasant than frogs, although their extent of villainy varies from Sleazy Politician to Evil Overlord.
• Unreliable Expositor: Anne tells Sprig she doesn't know how she got to Amphibia, only that one moment she was on Earth, the next she was here. This is a blatant lie, as she knows very well that the music box in her backpack transported her there, although not much more than that. Later on, she tells the Plantars about the box but not how she got access to it. However, she does say to Sprig in "Best Fronds" that "a friend wants you to steal a crazy music box from a thrift store, even if you don't really want to, you do it, okay?", so there's a possibility that he may have put two-and-two together, though his short attention span makes this possibility unlikely.
• Villainous Medical Care: Right after he stabbed Marcy, Andrias had Yunan and Olivia put her in a healing tank to save her life... because the Core wanted her as its newest host.
• Vocal Evolution: Sprig's voice is noticeably deeper in the second season compared to the first. due to his voice actor aging and going through puberty. This is lampshaded by Anne in "Friend or Frobo?".
• Voice of the Legion:
  • Whenever Anne is speaking when in her Calamity Power state, her voice is somehow accompanied by a deep reverb. Sasha and Marcy get the same along with her in the Grand Finale when they gain powerful forms to fight the Core.
  • The olms speak in this manner to show their mystic behavior.
  • Whoever is under control of Andrias' mind-controlling collars will have this sort of voice.
  • When Marcy becomes possessed by the Core, she gets a reverberating undertone added to her voice which sounds like a mixture of deep male and female voices in unison. Justified, as the Core is a Mind Hive containing the various souls of former conquerors within.
• Volumetric Mouth: When frogs yell,◊ it's like looking into the mouth of a Muppet.◊
• Wearing It All Wrong: In "Prison Break", Captain Grime finds one of his soldiers to be wearing a breastplate as pants.
• We Can Rule Together:
  • In Season 1, after seeing just how capable Sasha really is and after striking a deal with her, Grime decides he's unwilling to let her go but offers her a mutually-beneficial arrangement: she can stay with the toads and join Grime as his second-in-command instead of his prisoner, helping them to quash Frog Valley, which will also give her the resources she needs to better find her friends. Sasha accepts.
  • In the final season, the Big Bad the Core has forcibly possessed Marcy due to prizing her intelligence, and afterwards it tries to butter Marcy's mind up with a Lotus-Eater Machine and an avatar as a companion because it wants to assimilate her into its Mind Hive, where she will be equals with the other newt kings and scholars it has assimilated over millennia but she will ultimately be nothing more than another one of the Big Bad's neurons. Once Marcy learns what's going on, she firmly rejects it, so the Core decides to either assimilate her intellect or just plain mortally spite her another way.
• Weird Moon: Amphibia's moon isn't the weirdest, but it is larger than Earth's and constantly red. Also it's the testing ground for robotic monstrosities created by a Transhuman Abomination, and can be moved by massive engines to crash it into Amphibia's surface.
• Weird World, Weird Food: Amphibia is populated by anthropomorphic frogs, newts, toads, axolotls, and other amphibians, and accordingly, the cuisine enjoyed there are made of bugs. Anne Boonchuy, who is a human, finds the insect-based food that is now her only option for sustenance incredibly disgusting at first, and her starting to not only tolerate the food but also actually enjoy it is one of the first indications that she's acclimating to the absurdities of Amphibia.
  Anne: I'm gonna go grab some of that beetle jerky I like. Can't believe I just said that.
• We Used to Be Friends: Anne and Sasha as of the first season finale, due to the former realizing how controlling the latter was over her. Anne fully breaks off their friendship in "True Colors" when Sasha tries to conquer Amphibia, but the revelation about Andrias' true motivations force them to put that conflict aside. The next time they see each other, Sasha has done a Heel–Face Turn, and Anne is too relieved to see her to be angry.
• Wham Episode: "True Colors". Good lord, "True Colors". Sasha and Grime lead the invasion on Newtopia, King Andrias’ true intentions are revealed, leading to Sasha and Grime's Heel–Face Turn, it’s revealed that Marcy got them trapped in Amphibia on purpose, Polly gets her legs, Andrias seemingly kills Marcy, and Anne and the Plantars are now in the human world. There is a reason this was the first ever episode with a Content Warning.
• Wham Line:
  • From "Prison Break":
    Sasha: But first, I think we're gonna have some fun with this place.
  • From "Bizarre Bazaar:"
    Hop Pop: Sorry, Anne, but I can't have you showing this thing around. Too dangerous for all of us.
  • From "Anne of the Year":
    Grime: Nice to finally meet you, Anne Boonchuy.
  • From "Reunion":
    Sasha: And once this is over, we can finally find a way out of this crummy, gross world.
  • Several from "True Colors":
    Andrias: For you see, my ancestors weren't frail explorers. They were glorious conquerors!
    
    Andrias: Did it ever occur to you, Anne, Sasha, that one of you knew more than she was letting on? That one of you might have gotten you stranded here in Amphibia… on purpose?
  • From "All In":
    Sprig: Hey, is it just me, or is the moon getting closer?
• Wham Shot:
  • Near the end of "Best Fronds", Anne speaks out loud to her friends, Sasha and Marcy, saying that she hopes they're faring as well as her. Smash cut to the castle of Grime, and the reveal that he's keeping Sasha prisoner.
  • Another one at the end of "Anne Vs. Wild": after saying he's never seen anything like Anne's music box, Hop Pop goes back to his study and reveals it's an artifact called the Calamity Box.
  • The ending of "Bizarre Bazaar", once again featuring Hop Pop and the music box. Anne gives it to him so that he can try to find more information through his channels. That night, he does the complete opposite of that — he buries it in the front yard, saying he can't have Anne showing it around and that it's best hidden where nobody else can find it.
  • "Anne of the Year" has two in quick succession: first Sasha revealing herself to Anne and their reunion, and then moments later Sasha revealing she brought the toad army with her.
  • The very end of "The Second Temple" shows the blue Calamity Gem flashing and flickering, as a sign Anne didn't let it charge all the way.
• What Are Records?: While saving Hop Pop from a machine in the episode "Fort In The Road", Sprig asks Anne what a disk is. Anne says she doesn't know either, and states that she's from another dimension, not The '90s.
• When Trees Attack: "Cane Crazy" involves the duo replacing Hop Pop's broken cane by retrieving a branch from the same tree, known as the Doom Tree. It turns out to be a monstrous stick insect with real, gnarled bark as its carapace. It's also vulnerable to said carapace being eaten by termites, leaving it harmless and rather cutesy looking.
• Wingding Eyes:
  • The zapapedes have one + and one - for pupils.
  • Frobo can turn his eyes into wingdings to express emotion — mostly question marks, but also other things, like the copper coin symbol.
• World of Funny Animals: Amphibia is inhabited by anthropomorphic frogs and other amphibians. The other animals of the world, ranging from reptiles to mollusks and giant arthropods, are non-anthropomorphic.
• Your Mom: The toilet stall Anne and the Plantars hide in from Mr. X's pursuit has graffiti reading "Your mom is nice" written on one of its walls (possibly a child cartoon-friendly euphemism for a very physical reason to call someone's mom "nice").

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