Western Animation / Monsters vs. Aliens

When aliens attack, monsters fights back.

Monsters vs. Aliens is a 2009 All-CGI Cartoon movie made by DreamWorks Animation. The movie is a Science Fiction comedy that pays homage to the monster movies of the 1950s, and uses Rule of Cool and Refuge in Audacity to hilarious effect in an almost MAD type of way.

The movie was the first DreamWorks film to be produced in a 3D format, using the "InTru3D" brand technology co-developed by the studio. A special promotion ran during the Super Bowl that could be watched using 3D specs sold alongside Sobe soft drinks.

The story features a four-eyed, alien fiend attacking the United States with a giant robot. After conventional weaponry proves ineffective, a high-ranking general, W.R. Monger, suggests using the monsters that the government has been capturing for 50 years and keeping in "Area 52" against them.

Oh, yeah, and The President of the United States of America playing a kickass keyboard solo... of Axel F.

Technically there's only one alien in the movie (except the clones) but "Monsters vs. an Alien" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

It was later followed up by a Halloween Special, entitled Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space. The monsters head out to investigate a UFO sighting in Susan's hometown on Halloween, and discover that an entire patch of pumpkins has been mutated by waste dumped on them by said UFO. These vicious vegetables^note  Technically they're fruit rampage through the town and gobble up every piece of candy in sight, and it's up to the monsters to stop them before they turn the world into a giant pumpkin patch. The short later got a sequel in 2011 called Night of the Living Carrots, which follows up on that short's Sequel Hook.

A TV series of the same name aired on Nickelodeon (of Spongebob Squarepants and The Fairly OddParents! fame) in March 2013.

The monsters include:

• Ginormica, the most recent addition, a normal woman named Susan Murphy who has been turned into a 49 foot, 11 1/2 inch giant after being hit by a radioactive meteor — on her wedding day!
• B.O.B., a one-eyed, talking, brainless (literally and figuratively) and wholly-indestructible blue blob that was the product of a freak chemical accident involving a tomato and ranch dressing;
• Dr. Cockroach, a scientist who transformed into a humanoid roach in a freak accident during an attempt to give himself the resilience of one;
• Missing Link, a tough, sardonic 20,000-year-old fish-ape;
• Insectosaurus, a Godzilla-sized bug with the personality of a puppy.

Not related to Alien, Predator, or Alien vs. Predator. (We hope not.)

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Monsters vs. Aliens provides examples of the following tropes:

A-M

• '50s Hair: Despite being set in 2008, almost all human characters have standard '50s dos. Derek Deti has a crew cut, Ms. Ronson and one of Susan's roommates have short wavy hair, President Hathaway has cropped hair on the sides with a curly mop on top, and General Monger has the standard-issue flat top.
• Achievements in Ignorance: B.O.B. somehow managed to get a fake phone number from some gelatin he thought was alive and was hitting on. The line about the fake phone number was the voice actor's Ad Lib.
• Affably Evil: The Gallaxhar clones when the monsters fool them with Paper-Thin Disguises. Once they blow their cover, though, the trope wears off pretty quickly.
• Affectionate Parody: Of 1950's monster B movies.
• Agony of the Feet: When Susan tosses the giant hypodermic needle, it impales some poor soldier's foot and he screams in pain.
• Alien Gender Confusion: B.O.B. has no idea that Susan is a woman. Later he is also convinced that Susan's fiance Derek is his fiance, and when he meets Susan's mom he mistakes her for Derek.
  B.O.B.: What? No way, it's a boy. Look at his boobies.
  Link: We need to have a talk.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Or, in this case, Modesto, CA.
• Alien Invasion: The octopus-like alien Gallaxhar enters Earth to extract quantonium from the planet, and to use it to build his army of clones and conquer Earth.
• Aliens Speaking English: As does the rest of the planet, apparently, because they all understand Gallaxhar's giant holographic message whether they're in Paris, Egypt, or Tokyo.
  • The video game version plays with this. Each country gets its own version of Gallaxhar's message, which amounts to Gallaxhar butchering the language while wearing a stereotypical outfit.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Insectosaurus. He even thumps his leg when his belly is scratched.
• Amplified Animal Aptitude: Insectosaurus, once the Link translates his roars. He once helps the Link cheat at cards.
• Amusing Injuries: B.O.B., Ginormica, Link, Dr. Cockroach, Derek and Gallaxhar at various points in the film receive such injuries. B.O.B. especially — he gets stuck to the sole of the robot probe's foot and stomped on so many times.
• And Call Him "George":
  • B.O.B. enthusiastically hugs Susan's mom, and since he's The Blob, accidentally absorbs her. Susan orders him to spit her out before she suffocates, then apologizes for him. "He's just a hugger."
  • Later, Susan herself goes to her fiancé Derek, and as she is ten times taller than he is^note Assuming Derek is 6 feet tall, she is approx. 8.32 times taller than he is., she very nearly crushes him and almost snaps his head off with a kiss.
• And the Adventure Continues: By the end of the movie, the monsters (and Monger) are off to Paris to stop a new monster: Escargantula, a giant snail mutated through radiation. Paris, Ho!
• Area 51: Or Area 52, in this case.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Missing Link recalls fighting off the National Guard, the Coast Guard and... the lifeguards.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Most of the monsters are physically impossible. Then again, that's probably the point - they were created by freak genetic mutations.
  • In-Universe, B.O.B. fails biology forever: "She? It's a boy! Look at his boobies." Justified in that he is an idiot.
• Artistic License – Physics: Ginormica leaps onto rooftops and relies on the suspension system of two sportscars to support her weight. Neither would be compatible with the mass of a 49'11.5" woman. Of course, if quantonium allows mass control (and only causes ginormification of Earthlings as a side effect), then it's just as impossible - but slightly more plausible.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Ginormica (although she's just half an inch shy of that mark) and Insectosaurus (at a massive 350-feet tall) are both colossal monsters who tower over the normal humans and everything else.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  • Insectosaurus is easily mesmerized by bright lights, even at the worst possible moment. When Dr. Cockroach accidentally causes the alien robot to shoot out a beam of light, Insectosaurus is distracted and essentially taken out of the fight.
  • B.O.B. is not much better. While Susan is fighting for her life against the alien robot, B.O.B. gets distracted by a bird and has to be told by her to move the dividers and get the people off the bridge.
• Backstory: Messed around beautifully with Gallaxhar, as he tells his tale while in his cloning machine... which slams him down multiple times during the process (think copy machine) and blocks out most of what he says.
• Badass Boast: "You can't crush a Cockroach! Muahaha!"
• Badass Normal: Susan, when not ginormous.
  Gallaxhar: Are you crazy? You could have killed me!
  Susan: (coldly) Then we understand each other.
• Benevolent Monsters: The guys have no malicious intent whatsoever, and are merely imprisoned to keep from scaring people with their presence. At least one, the Missing Link, likes to scare people for laughs, but otherwise they're pretty decent.
• Big Door: A vast door opens on a dark space and two menacing red eyes of what appears to be a gigantic monster... and General W.R. Monger flies out. The two glowing eyes were just the lights of his Jet Pack.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Insectosaurus during the fight on the Golden Gate Bridge, though this is soon subverted when he gets distracted by the robot's bright eye beam.
  • Susan/Ginormica pulls off one later when saving her friends in Gallaxhar's ship.
• Big Honking Traffic Jam: Several drivers impatiently honk their horns at the stalled traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Although the bottleneck is caused by a fifty foot tall young woman engaged in combat with a colossal alien robot, leadfoot drivers nevertheless honk at them for the delay.
• Big Little Man: Susan Murphy is captured by the government after growing to a height of 49 feet 11 ½ inches and wakes up in a large, empty room with furniture the same scale as her. At first she (and the audience) is unsure whether she is normal size or not, until she steps on a normal-sized chair and crushes it.
• Big Red Button: Two in the War Room: one to launch all nukes, and one to make coffee. They are placed right next to each other and are unlabelled.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Gallaxhar drinks with his ear, but spits it out of his mouth. He later mentions his ear nubs, which are presumably the antennae on his head.
• Blob Monster: B.O.B. is a large, blue goo monster who was created when scientists injected a chemically-altered ranch dressing into a genetically-altered tomato, causing the resulting goo to gain consciousness. He can eat anything and has one eye.
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: Implied for Gallaxhar. We don't hear the sordid details, but it's implied to involve blowing up his planet over an unknown incident with his parents and girlfriend.
• Break the Cutie: Susan goes through a long and torturous process for the first part of the film. When she transforms, she's just crying for help in an understandably-distressing circumstance and worried about her fiancé before the military sedate her and rope her down. As a result of a chance encounter with a Magic Meteor, she is ripped from her beloved life, labelled a monster, and imprisoned within a hyperconfidential government facility to be essentially life-sentenced as an occasional superweapon for being unlucky. To cap it all, she then has to face a 350-foot Nigh-Invulnerable killer robot to secure her freedom and then she finds out that her fiancé didn't love her nearly as much as she deluded herself into believing. That set the stage for her reconstruction.
• Brick Joke:
  • The nuke button is first shown when the President is about to push it (instead of the identical one that makes coffee), but he is prevented from doing so by Monger. In The Stinger, the President actually does push it, accidentally launching all the nukes.
  • B.O.B. is shown eating ham. Later, after he gets too enthusiastic hugging Susan's mom and she falls in, he spits her out and we get this line.
  "I taste ham!"
• Bridal Carry: Spoofed by having the girl carry her boyfriend this way.
• Bridezilla: Inverted with Susan. Despite becoming a literal Kaiju-sized bride and having her wedding ruined, Susan remains incredibly composed and level-headed during the entire incident.
• Brig Ball Bouncing: At the top secret facility where the monsters are imprisoned, B.O.B. can be seen bouncing a ball on wall of his cell. It dislodges his one eyeball, which he then bounces off the wall as well.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The President after Gallaxhar's speech.
  President Hathaway: Boys, set the terror level to 'code brown', 'cause I need to change my pants.
• Brought Down to Normal: Gallaxhar drains the Applied Phlebotinum from Susan to power his cloning device, which shrinks her to her original size.
• Buffy Speak:
  • Susan trying to describe a cyborg.
  Susan: Oh, thank goodness. A real person. You are a real person, right? Not one of those half person, half machine, whatever you call those things.
  General W.R. Monger: A cyborg?
  Susan: Oh, no! You're a cyborg!
  • The President agreeing to Monger's plan, complete with a Title Drop.
  President Hathaway: I say we go forward with your Monsters vs. Aliens idea... thingy.
  • Gallaxhar's attempt to rename Earth: "Let the birth of my new planet, now called... Gallaxhar's Planet, begin!"
  • Link, when he sees a depowered Susan: "Wow, Ginormica ain't so... ginormic anymore."
• Can't Stay Normal: Susan.
• Caps Lock, Num Lock, Missiles Lock: There's two Big Red Buttons: One to launch the nuclear warheads and one to make latte. They're placed right next to each other and are otherwise unlabeled. In the movie's Stinger, the President accidentally presses the wrong button when he wanted to make some coffee.
• Captain Ersatz: To old monster movies:
  • Ginormica — Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Also The Amazing Colossal Man, when she first transforms and the military comes to secure her, they fire a comically giant syringe into her leg. She pulls it out, and throws it at a soldier — it appears to go through his foot and he screams in pain.
  • B.O.B. — The Blob. His backstory may also be a nod to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!.
  • Missing Link — Creature from the Black Lagoon. His meal of fish could be a nod to Columbia Tristar's Godzilla. He's also incredibly simian in behavior (runs on all fours, for instance), and can probably be considered a mini King Kong. He also happens to closely resemble the monsters from the Rampage video games. And he's thawed out of the ice like The Thing from Another World.
  • Insectosaurus — Starts as Godzilla, ends as Mothra.
  • Dr. Cockroach is a homage to The Fly.
  • The Giant Robot might be an homage to the one in the movie Kronos.
• Casting Gag:
  • Reese Witherspoon, one of the most petite actresses in the A-list, plays the tallest woman in the world.
  • At the time Stephen Colbert was recording his role as the President, his TV alter ego was running a presidential campaign of his own.
  • Hugh Laurie yet again voices a doctor (although he's more of a Mad Scientist rather than an actual doctor).
• The Centerpiece Spectacular: The battle between the five monsters and the alien robot probe on the Golden Gate bridge. Partly thanks to its prominence in the trailers, partly because it's the turning point of Susan's characterization, and partly because there's a long build-up to it (a build-up including several crowning moments, such as the introduction of the President, the War Room scene, and the monsters getting a chance to do what they do best for the first time), it's probably better known and more popular than the actual climax.
• Chekhov's Gun: General Monger could have given Ginormica her orientation driving in a jeep. The fact that he has jetpacks lying around ready for use turns out to be important.
• Chekhov's Skill: We find out Susan's really good at "roller skating" when she uses a pair of cars as skates in San Francisco. Then, when separated from her team on Gallaxhar's ship, all she has are the remains of the hoverbike...
• Citywide Evacuation: It shows San Francisco being evacuated as Gallaxhar's giant robot approaches the city.
• Clone Army: Gallaxhar considers himself to be a perfect being so he clones an army of himself.
• Cloudcuckoolander
  • B.O.B. He has no brain, so he is quite clueless.
  • And the President, who is fairly bumbling in general, and in particular keeps reaching for the "launch all the nukes" button instead of the "coffee" button.
• Company Cross References:
  • General Monger wears a pin of fellow Dreamworks Animation character Shrek wearing an eyepatch.
  • When Gallaxhar gives his world destruction speech in Japan, other Dreamworks movies can be seen on some of the background screens◊. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa appears on the top left screen while Kung Fu Panda appears on the top right.
• Cool Plane: The cargo aircraft used to transport the monsters is based on an ASC Guppy, and is VTOL capable.
• Cool Versus Awesome: The premise of the movie. It even gets a Title Drop.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • There is a meteor crash, and the guys sent to investigate it carry a missile-sized syringe full of enough sedative to send a giant person to sleep in under twenty seconds, a lot of rope, and a trampoline. They just outdid Batman for this trope.
  • There is also W.R. Monger, who always has a parachute on.
• Creator Provincialism:
  • Lampshaded with extreme prejudice by the newscaster with the line:
  "Once again a UFO has landed in America. The only country UFOs ever seem to land in."
  • The Modesto, California TV station is shown as having call letters starting with "W". (West coast stations all start with "K".) Considering how often writers make the opposite mistake due to this trope, this could practically count as an inversion.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: General Monger leads a covert ops team that captures monsters and confines them in a secret base to keep the populace safe. Later, the monsters themselves become one such team, sent to battle an Alien Invasion.
• Cultural Stereotypes:
  • California's Central Valley. It's more of an in-joke than anything else. Guess where Dreamworks' HQ is located?
  • "We need our top scientific minds on this. Get India on the phone."
• Cute Monster Girl: Susan, who has been described as a smoking hot monster girl.
• Cyber Cyclops: The alien robot has one huge eye which swivels and focuses on the humans around it. It can also scan things with its eye beam.
• Cyborg: Susan briefly thinks General Monger is one.
• Cyclops: B.O.B. His eye is detachable, and indestructible.
• Damned by Faint Praise: The absolute best thing Link can say about the monsters' failed party - where they accidentally scared away Susan's parents and all the guests - is that it was the best party he'd been to since he got out of prison. The joke, of course, is that it's the only party he's been to since he got out of prison.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The film shows that, although the monsters may look scary and ugly, they're actually funny and nice guys.
• David Versus Goliath: Ginormica versus the robot. The 49'11 ½" woman is the David in this scenario. There's another scene later in which she has to face a whole hangar full of them, having been shrunk down to normal size.
• Delayed Explosion: Parodied. "Hm, nothing happened. Maybe my countdown wa—" BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM.
• Delusions of Local Grandeur: When federal agents are attempting to tranquilize Ginormica, they manhandle local weatherman Derek Dietl, who snarls, "Don't you know who I am?"
• Disney Death: Insectosaurus is downed by a shot from Gallaxhar's ship, but turns out to have survived and gone into a cocoon. She re-emerges as Butterflyosaurus.
• Disposable Fiancé: Derek is initially set up as Susan's boyfriend and soon-to-be husband, but the wedding gets called off after Susan becomes a giant and is taken by the government. He later breaks up with her out of jealousy for her fame, which turns out to be a good thing for Susan.
• The Ditz: B.O.B. Justified because he has no brain.
• Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Susan struggles with controlling her strength for a good part of the movie, accidentally destroying a helicopter early on and subjecting Derek to both bone-cracking hugs and near-neck-snapping kisses.
• Dressing as the Enemy: B.O.B. comes up with the idea of him, Dr. Cockroach, and Missing Link dressing up like alien clones during their attempt to rescue a recently de-powered Susan.
• Evil Laugh: Dr. Cockroach tends to break out in one whenever he's having a Mad Scientist moment. Susan objects when she's the experiment.
  Susan: Throw the switch, Doctor... but - don't do the laugh!
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: With a Title Drop in case you don't get it.
• Exact Time to Failure: Subverted when Gallaxhar's ship is set to self destruct (the one time you would expect to know exactly when you're going to blow up); the AI hits 0 long enough before exploding that it wonders aloud if its count was wrong, only to be Killed Mid-Sentence.
• Expendable Clone: People keep accidentally shooting the Gallaxhar clones. Acceptable, because it's really damned funny.
• Extra Eyes: Gallaxhar, being an alien from another planet, has four eyes.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • B.O.B. can absorb anything, being a Blob Monster, such as ham, road dividers, and Gallaxhar's clones.
  • Dr. Cockroach eats trash, since he's a cockroach.
• Eye Lights Out: The probes.
• Eye Poke: Susan does this to Gallaxhar. He attempts to block, but that is complicated by the fact that he has four eyes.
• Fear-Induced Idiocy: When Susan sees an oncoming meteor, she gets so scared that she attempts to run away, only to run right in its path (keep in mind that she was well out of its direction at first). She gets crushed by it and ends up becoming a Giant Woman during her wedding.
• False Reassurance
  • After the party, Dr. Cockroach tries this while in a friendly spirit, but Link is less reassuring.
  Link: Yeah, great party, the best one I've been to since I... got out of prison.
  • B.O.B. subverts it; he says he must've been at a different party, because his recollection varies from theirs:
  B.O.B.: I don't think your parents liked me, and I think that Jell-O gave me a fake phone number.
• False Soulmate: Derek to Susan. He is a vain weatherman who is more interested in furthering his career than in his fiancée's needs, and after Susan spends the first half trying to win her freedom and return to him, he rejects her because he isn't interested in having a wife who overshadows him, in more ways than one. And at the end, it's obvious he only wants to get back with her to leech off her fame and publicity.
• Faux Affably Evil: Gallaxhar is a pretty fun company, as long as you don't mind him invading the Earth and enslaving the population, and all that.
• Fireman's Safety Net: A trampoline is provided to catch Derek when he's dropped by the newly giant Susan. He bounces off it and hits the ground.
• First Rule of the Yard: Invoked by Link when introducing himself to Ginormica.
  Link: Wow, look at you. I know what you're thinking: first day in prison, you wanna take on the toughest guy in the yard? Well, I'd like to see you try.
• Fish Person: The Missing Link.
• Five Rounds Rapid: Subverted. At first it looks like the US military is trying to attack the enormous alien robot with just a few infantrymen with small arms. Then the camera pulls back and you see them throwing everything they've got at it. Tanks, attack helicopters, jet fighters, the works. It doesn't work, but at least they tried.
• Flippant Forgiveness: After dumping her earlier, Derek returns to Susan to forgive her, because "it wasn't your fault you got hit by a meteor and ruined everything."
• Force Field Cage: Susan is trapped in one on Gallaxhar's ship, which is said to be utterly impenetrable. She breaks out a few seconds later.
• For Science!: The core of Dr. Cockroach's character, including why he is a cockroach in the first place.
• Four-Star Badass: General Monger. He's also 89 years old.
• Freudian Excuse: The Big Bad, Gallaxhar, claims to have one of these — the problem is that he delivers his backstory while being cloned, meaning we only hear tiny snippets of it.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: After forcibly having the quantonium extracted from her body and being restored to her normal human size, Susan has to chose between going back to her normal life but leaving her friends trapped on Gallaxhar's soon-to-be-exploding spaceship, or reabsorbing the quantonium to save them but being unable to go back to her normal life. Unsurprisingly, she picks the latter.
• Funny Background Event: There were probably many, but at least one is worth noting as such. When Ginormica is given her tour of the prison, B.O.B. is bouncing a ball against the wall of his cell, catching it in his ooze, spitting it out into his hand and throwing it again. At least once, he fits the ball into his eye socket instead apparently by accident, pops the eye out, throws that into the wall, and continues as if nothing had happened.
• Fun with Acronyms: B.O.B. stands for "Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate". Not a real chemical compound, but the acronym spells B.O.B. so there we are.
• Gargle Blaster: Dr. Cockroach offers Susan's folks some "atomic gin fizz". It explodes as he's mixing it. Lord knows what would have happened to the poor soul who would ingest it.
• General Ripper: General Monger is a complete subversion. He certainly has the look of your typical General Ripper, but after The Masquerade is snapped in two by a giant alien robot, he mobilizes the monsters he's captured, and he also makes sure that they are set free afterwards. Adding to that, he proves to be a surprisingly caring and nice guy when he gives a call to Susan's parents, telling them she was going back home, and then he gives another call, to the local police, so that they don't try to shoot Susan at sight. Plus there's his reaction when the president launches all the nukes: "My God, Man. What have you done?!" Nicest General Ripper Ever.
• Genocide from the Inside: Gallaxhar blew up his own planet. His attempts to explain why are always interrupted.
• Giant Medical Syringe: When the army arrives to deal with the newly giant Susan, they bring along a needle of sedative so large it needs to be administered via ballista. After getting hit in the leg, Susan pulls it out and throws it, impaling a soldier's foot.
• Giant Woman: Susan, obviously.
• Godzilla Threshold: Pretty much the premise; army can't handle an alien robot, sends in monsters.
• Go-Go Enslavement: When Gallaxhar abducts Susan, she wakes up to find herself wearing a skin-tight bodysuit. The implication is that Gallaxhar changed her clothes while she was knocked out.
• Go Through Me: Said by B.O.B., the one character one can go through. A Gallaxhar clone punches him in the eye, only to be knocked out when it bounces back.
• Hachimaki: General Monger wears one for the climax.
• Hand Sliding Down the Glass: When Gallaxhar traps the giant Susan in an extraction chamber to extract the Quantonium out of Susan, she tries striking the glass to break free, but is too weakened to do so. With the Quantonium surrounding her, all that's visible of her last attempt at the glass is her outstretched hand before she slowly collapses.
• Harmless Electrocution: One of Dr. Cockroach's experiments to get Susan back to her normal size essentially amounts to electrocuting her with wires. Though she gets knocked out for a moment when it goes wrong, and her hair is visibly singed, she is otherwise unharmed. Justified as the quantonium inside her significantly boosts her strength and durability, allowing her to survive things a normal human would not.
• Harmless Freezing: The Missing Link's backstory shows that this happened to him.
• Helicopter Flyswatter: Ginormica does it by accident, while trying to explain how she's not dangerous at all.
• He Who Fights Monsters: W.R. Monger. He's as nice as the monsters themselves. If the logic of He Who Fights Monsters is to be trusted, then he's become just as kindhearted as they are.
• High-School Sweethearts: The movie begins with Susan Murphy and Derek Dietl about to get married, and a prom photo◊ briefly glimpsed during the opening scene shows (and confirmed through the Art of MvA book) that they've been dating since high school. Unfortunately, after Susan gets hit by a meteor, turns into a giant, and gets taken away by the government, the wedding is postponed, and their relationship later falls apart when Derek breaks up with Susan under the belief that she would overshadow him.
• Huge Holographic Head: Gallaxhar addresses the entirety of Earth using one.
• Humans Are Ugly: Gallaxhar finds Susan's body "grotesque".
• Hyperventilation Bag: Referenced when Ginormica sees the gigantic alien robot she has to fight. She starts panicking and hyperventilating instantly, asking for a giant paper bag.
• Hypocritical Humor: Dr. Cockroach calls the Missing Link's meal of raw fish "repulsive", even though his own favourite food is literal garbage.
• Idiot Ball: The alien clones. When they're given the order "destroy all monsters", every single one of the aliens, who outnumber monsters 100 to 1, charge blindly at the monsters whilst holding ray guns that they don't even bother to shoot with.
• If I Do Not Return: Parodied. Monger tells the monsters that if doesn't come back to pick them up on time, it means he's dead... or late. He even engages in a bit of Lampshade Hanging when they are falling from the Mothership, thinking they're going to die, and he states, as he arrives on the reborn Insectosaurus to save them...
  Gen. W.R. Monger: "OR LATE!"
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: B.O.B. does this to one of the clones upon being handed a gun. Dr. Cockroach later takes the gun, saying that it belongs in the hands of someone responsible, only to do the exact same thing.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Susan really doesn't want to be a nearly 50-foot woman, at least until she notices how much of a jerk her fiancé is, and how being 50 feet tall means she can kick ass and take names.
• Immune to Bullets:
  President Hathaway: Eat lead, alien robot!
  (shoots gun at robot to no effect, gulping noise is heard)
  President Hataway: ...evidently they eat lead. Huh.
• Impact Silhouette: Susan leaves a series of these as she chases Gallaxhar down a corridor as he orders the bulkheads closed behind him.
• Impairment Shot: Every time we see Susan lose or regain consciousness.
• Impending Doom P.O.V.: Subverted for laughs. The opening scene shows what appears to be a gurgling monster walking into Susan's bedroom as white flashes of light appear. Turns out it's actually Susan's bridesmaids coming to wake her up for her upcoming wedding; the scary noises that were heard were just an inhaler used by one of the bridesmaids, the gurgling was just a bridesmaid drinking coffee, and the flashes of light was just a bridesmaid taking flash photos.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: A meteorite full of "quantonium" is the source of Susan's powers, and the object of Gallaxhar's desire.
• Impossible Pickle Jar: After Susan defeats the giant robot probe all by herself, she tells the others "Did you see how strong I was? I bet there wasn't a jar in the world I couldn't open." B.O.B. gets sidetracked and asks about the giant pickle jar.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Ginormica is surprisingly graceful for a 50-foot tall woman, easily performing various acrobatic moves and even using two sports cars as roller skates at one point.
• Ink-Suit Actor:
  • Susan looks almost exactly like her VA Reese Witherspoon. Except that she starts as a brunette, and her size (the producers said it's ironic to see a 5'1½" actress play a giantess).
  • General Monger and the President both slightly resemble their respective voice actors, Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Colbert as well as seeming to have similar personalities to their most famous works.
  • The original form of Dr. Cockroach also looks like Hugh Laurie.
  • B.O.B. has Seth Rogen's mouth and eye shape. He's a blob, and could look like anyone, but his loose resemblance to Rogen is uncanny.
• Instant Sedation: After getting hit with a giant syringe full of sedative, Susan is out like a light within seconds.
• It Has Been an Honor: General Monger to the monsters before the rescue. The monsters (sans Susan and Insectosaurus) do this when they're trapped on the alien ship. Subverted in that B.O.B., lacking a brain and being indestructible, simply says "I'll see you guys tomorrow." The other two decide not to tell him the truth.
• It's All About Me: Derek. First he ditches his honeymoon plans to go to Fresno for a job interview, then he breaks up with Susan because he's afraid of being overshadowed by a giantess who's practically a national hero.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Indirectly. The Missing Link isn't too happy that Susan beat the giant robot practically all by herself while he lay unconscious the whole time.
  Dr. Cockroach: Poor Link. After all that tough talk, you were out-monstered by a girl. No wonder you're depressed.
• Jerkass: Derek, whose interests lie entirely on himself. He's willing to put aside his fianceé for his career, right up until it looks like associating with her might start helping his career again.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: General Monger seems like a hard-nosed, heartless Drill Sergeant Nasty, but he honestly has the monsters' best interests at heart. A few deleted scenes even show Monger standing up for the monsters when the President threatens to renege on his promise.
• Jet Pack: General Monger uses a jet-pack to get around the secret base where the monsters live. It's even designed to avoid butt burn.
• Juggling Loaded Guns: B.O.B. is given a plasma gun by a clone, and the gun goes off in his hands and hits said clone. Later, Dr. Cockroach grabs the gun away, claiming that it should be in the hands of someone capable... and then the gun goes off in his hands and shoots another clone.
• Kaiju: Insectasaurus, as homage to the Godzilla movies.
• Large Ham:
  • B.O.B. fills this trope's requirements as wonderfully as one would expect to see from Seth Rogen. Even better, the movie lampshades the fact by having him swallow Susan's mother, who remarks upon being spit out: "I taste ham." It's a pun, it's a lampshade, it's the ham trope, all in one burst. (It's even in character: B.O.B. had eaten an entire ham in the previous scene, so it makes sense that he'd actually taste like ham.)
  • Rainn Wilson as Gallaxhar also hams it up quite a bit, as does Stephen Colbert as the President.
• Larynx Dissonance: Derek's mother is played by director Conrad Vernon.
• Last Day of Normalcy: The story opens on Susan Murphy's wedding day, as she prepares for the big day and suffers some anxiety over it. As she stands outside to clear her head, she is hit by a meteorite full of Unobtanium that turns her into a Giant Woman during the ceremony. The government captures her and sends her to a secret facility for imprisoning monsters, despite her insistence that she isn't one. There, she makes friends with the other monsters, who are all then freed to fight an Alien Invasion.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Dr. Cockroach on Gallaxhar's ship.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Though Susan is initially scared of the giant robot, she shows just how cunning she can be when she uses the Golden-Gate Bridge itself to knock it down and cut off its head.
• Literal Cliffhanger: Susan slips off a building and panics as she tries not to fall off. Considering she's not that much shorter than what's she's hanging onto, losing her grip results in a drop of a couple feet at most.
• Load-Bearing Hero: Ginormica holding back the robot's claw. She plays this trope again inside the self-destructing spaceship, stopping a huge piece of machinery from falling onto her friends.
• Locked into Strangeness: Susan's hair turns white when she turns into a giant. Even when she's reduced to normal size, her hair stays white.
• Lost in Transmission: The aforementioned Back Story that Gallaxhar is telling while being dropped into the cloning machine. We have no idea what he says in full.
• MacGyvering: Exaggerated so much. Apparently, Dr. Cockroach can build a super-computer out of a pizza box, two cans of hairspray, and a paperclip. On screen, he manages to build what appears to be a nuclear bomb out of Legos (he asks Susan if she has uranium) in his spare time, and a rocket-powered, wheel-steered tram car in less than ten minutes.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Cockroach. With a little bit of Gadgeteer Genius, since he can make a supercomputer from a pizza box, radio antennas, and other garbage. Though he isn't truly evil, he'd prefer you call him an Evil Genius.
• Magic Meteor: Gives Susan her powers, and ultimately sets off the whole plot.
• Magic Pants:
  • The alien Spy Catsuit Susan wears after Gallaxhar abducts her - it adjusts to fit Susan at all times, presumably via alien technology.
  • Susan's wedding dress fulfills the trope too, but only at the cost of substantial Clothing Damage.
• Mars Needs Women: For the Missing Link, abducting cuties is a top priority.
• Meaningful Name:
  • If anyone could get hit by a meteorite, have her church wrecked, and wind up imprisoned by the military on her wedding day... it would be someone named Susan Murphy.
  • General W.R. Monger, who has made a career of capturing monsters and, up to the events of the film, convincing the public that they don't exist, sells them to the President in a plan to save humanity from an alien invasion.
• Militaries Are Useless: The entirety of the US Armed Forces combined are unable to hold out against one robot drone of Gallaxhar's (and there's plenty more where that came from). Susan and her monster gang are, albeit with severe difficulty, able to tackle them in spite of the technological gap.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: The attack on Gallaxhar's ship.
• Monster Mash: Monsters based on the 50-foot Woman, The Fly (1958), the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mothra and a Blob Monster team up to fight an evil alien.
• Monumental Battle: Let's just say the Golden Gate bridge will never be the same after the battle between the monsters and the alien robot. In the TV series, the alien Coverton offers to restore it as a peace offering.
• Mook Chivalry: The Gallaxhar clones are nearly all armed, and yet the heroes fire more shots than they do.
• Most Writers Are Human: The major reason our viewpoint character is just a really tall human instead of, say, the blob or the fishman.
• Mook Horror Show: Gallaxhar thinks he has Ginormica trapped and at his mercy. She gets out. Nothing he does can stop her for long, and it's made clear she's only going to leave a purple stain if she catches him. Gallaxhar reacts accordingly.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Monger ordering coffee during The Stinger.

N-Z

• Never Trust a Trailer: The promo trailers were edited to showcase all the Monsters equally and tended to show Ginormica in the middle or the end of the line. This was an effort to disguise the fact that Susan is the protagonist.
• Nobody Here but Us Birds: Subverted humorously when B.O.B. tries imitating birds on an alien spaceship, only for Dr. Cockroach to ask him who he's signalling to.
• Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: On Susan's first day at the monster holding facility, she is fed a gray, oatmeal like substance dispensed from a tube (along with a spoon to eat it with). All the other monsters are given food appropriate for their species (fish for Link, garbage for Dr. Cockroach, a ham for B.O.B.), so it might just be they haven't figured out what to feed a Giant Woman and went with the most basic dish.
• Noodle Implements: How exactly can a pizza box, two cans of hairspray and a paperclip function as a supercomputer?
• Not Helping Your Case:
  • Susan has a moment in the Area when, after saying she's not a threat to anyone or anything, she accidentally backhands an escorting helicopter, causing it to crash.
  Pilot: Don't let her get me!
  Susan: Sorry!
  • Also, although it comes before his objections are voiced, Susan's affectionate manhandling of her fiancé Derek certainly helped convince him he was doing the right thing when he dumped her.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: At first it seems Gallaxhar wants to rebuild his species on Earth, but he just wants a new army composed of him, and thus wiped out the rest of his species and set out to find a planet to populate with his clones.
• Nothing Personal: Said by Gallaxhar after announcing his plans to invade Earth, slaughter most of the population, and enslave the rest. It's just business.
• Nuclear Option: Subverted by General Monger, who suggests trying the monsters before resorting to nukes. Toyed with by the President (who keeps mistaking the Big Red Button for a different big red button that makes coffee).
• Octopoid Aliens: Gallaxhar is an evil extra-terrestrial with octopus-like tentacles instead of legs and a large head shaped like a cephalopod's body.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Four of the five heroic monsters ride on the back of Insectosaurus into the distance to save Paris, France from the menace of Escargantua.
• Offscreen Teleportation: The robot probe moves slowly onscreen, but look away for a few seconds and it has covered far more ground than expected. The most obvious example can be seen when Susan goes back to help the overturned truck on the bridge, at which point it goes from being about half a mile away to right at the bridge in the span of a couple of seconds.
• Oh, Crap!: The alien drone's eye widens a second before one of the Golden Gate Bridge's arches comes down on its head and completely decapitates it.
• Older Than They Look
  • W.R. Monger is apparently 90 years old.
  • Also, most of the monsters have been imprisoned since The '50s, appearing largely unchanged between footage of their initial rampages and their in-person likenesses decades later. Although it's inevitably hard to tell the age of a cockroach-man and a gelatinous blob (to say nothing of Insectosaurus, whose irradiation presumably delayed their adult metamorphosis by decades), Link at least shows signs of having let himself go with age, presumably due to being the sole monster of the group (until Susan's arrival) to not be artificially created nor significantly modified by science, hence his greater perviousness to natural ageing.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Gallaxhar committed genocide on his own race because he wanted a planet filled only with him and his clones. He's far more than willing to do that to humanity, too. He may or may not have a Freudian Excuse, along with a dozen or so other issues.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Dr. Cockroach. He got his PhD in Dance.
• Our Monsters Are Different: They're nice, in fact.
• Our Presidents Are Different: And they're also voiced by Stephen Colbert.
• Paddleball Shot: There are many instances of stuff being shoved toward the camera, starting with an actual paddleball.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Zig-Zagged Trope. Link, B.O.B., and Dr. Cockroach are all mistaken for cloned mooks just by wearing the same shirt they do. Then Link claims that he's Gallaxhar to try and get past a confrontational mook. The mook promptly declares him to be defective, but then orders B.O.B. and Dr. Cockroach to take him to the incinerator. He even helpfully gives B.O.B. his gun. An I Just Shot Marvin in the Face moment later puts an end to their disguises.
• Parental Bonus
  • Most of the Shout Outs and the scene with the Journey song, plus the pun on An Inconvenient Truth.
  • The streetcar Dr. Cockroach commandeers has the destination "Castro" on it. The Castro is the famous all-gay district of San Francisco.
• Pet the Dog: W.R. Monger has a little poster set up in Susan's room to cheer her up during her forced captivity. Doesn't help much, but the thought still counts.
• Planning for the Future Before the End: Subverted. After The Missing Link and Dr. Cockroach are telling each other It Has Been an Honor, B.O.B. tells them he'll see them tomorrow for lunch. They agree, although B.O.B. was totally serious...
  The Missing Link: It's been an honor knowing you, Doc.
  Dr. Cockroach: The feeling's mutual, my friend.
  B.O.B.: I'll see you guys tomorrow... for lunch.
  The Missing Link: That's right, B.O.B.
  Dr. Cockroach: There'll be candy and cake... balloons.
  B.O.B.: CAKE AND BALLOONS FOR LUNCH? IT'S GONNA BE THE BEST DAY EVER! I LOVE YOU GUYS!
• Plot Tailored to the Party:
  • Ginormica is basically the Superman to her team's Justice League until the end of the movie when she's depowered for just long enough to give the rest of her team a chance to do something useful. She is notably the only member of the team who makes any significant progress in defeating the alien robot, as Link is knocked out at the start, B.O.B. gets sick from eating too many road dividers, Dr. Cockroach is knocked out when he messes with the robot's machinery, and Insectosaurus is incapacitated by the probe's light.
    B.O.B.: Whoa, you're doing good!
    Susan: I'M DOING EVERYTHING!!
  • There is a subtle hint of Deconstruction, however, as Link gets rather depressed when he has to face the fact he isn't as powerful or useful as he used to be.
• Power Loss Makes You Strong: Ginormica after Gallaxhar strips her of her Applied Phlebotinum.
• The Power of Friendship: When the only people who accepted Susan while she was a monster are trapped and doomed, she sets aside her fear and starts defying death. Several times.
• Power Trio: Despite the Five-Man Band vibe of the eponymous Monster Mash, the three all male monsters have so many scenes together, that they form this with Link as Id, Dr. Cockroach as Superego, and B.O.B. as Ego, if only because he's the happiest-go-lucky monster.
• Product Placement: When making first contact, the President is playing on a Yamaha DX 7 keyboard.
• Professor Guinea Pig: Dr. Cockroach's backstory.
• Punny Name: W.R. Monger = "Warmonger". His government also has a tendency to name monsters this way.
• Radar Is Useless: There's no explanation as to how Gallaxhar's honking massive starship seemingly just appears over Earth without anyone noticing it coming, especially after they were able to detect one of his probes.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: The monsters consist of a Giant Woman who just wants to be normal again, a dim-witted blob who eats everything, a human/cockroach hybrid Mad Scientist, a fish/ape hybrid who acts like a jock, and a humongous mutated grub, but they become a team to fight Gallaxhar.
• Reactive Continuous Scream: A brief one at the beginning of the movie; Before Susan's wedding, her friends, who are going to be the bridesmaids, wake her up at 5 AM to watch Derek's announcement of the wedding. Being awaken so early and abruptly makes Susan scream in shock, but her friends think she's screaming with delight, so they do the same.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: General Monger, in a subversion of General Ripper.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Susan starts banging on the walls of her prison, the other monsters warn her not to do that, whereupon a huge door opens to reveal a dark interior with two glowing red eyes within... which merely turn out to be the navigation lights on General Monger's Jet Pack.
• Reference Overdosed: It's a family-friendly pastiche of dozens of monster movies.
• Refuge in Audacity: This movie would not be nearly as funny if they didn't make it as screwball as possible. Seriously, a supercomputer that has a security system beatable only through DanceDanceRevolution? And a security checkpoint that for severe security includes tongue, both elbows, and bare ass?^note Ironically, the one kind of scan that isn't done is the one you would most expect to see - a retinal scan.
• Reluctant Monster: Susan. Her Character Arc leads her out of the trope.
• Revolting Rescue: Susan is trapped in an extra-terrestrial robot's jaws and is very nearly crushed, but Insectosaurus sprays snot into the robot's eye to stop it.
• A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: General Monger refers to the top-secret prison Susan is taken to as "an X-File, wrapped in a cover-up, and deep-fried in paranoid conspiracy".
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Susan tears her way through Gallaxhar's ship to get revenge for Insectosaurus, literally roaring most of the time.
• Roof Hopping: Ginormica does this in San Francisco to escape the alien robot. (Don't ask how the roofs don't crumble under her feet.) She jumps to one tilted roof that's too far for her, scrambles to hold on as she slips down, loses her grip... and safely lands on the ground, since she's almost as tall as the building.
• Rule of Funny: The science of this is non-existent, one-dimensional characters outnumber the fleshed-out ones, and several characters hold onto the Idiot Ball. However, it's a Massive Multiplayer Crossover of 1950s horror movies, in 3-D, with Stephen Colbert as president and a recognizable voice for almost every other named character as well, so who the hell cares about all that other stuff?
• Running Gag: Link getting his head smacked by, in succession, a manhole cover, a falling piece of the Golden Gate bridge, a diving board and the entrance to the power core on Gallaxhar's ship.
• Samus Is a Girl: Insectosaurus, possibly. At the very least, they're sporting some noticeable Tertiary Sexual Characteristics after metamorphosing.
• Schmuck Bait: The Big Red Button that launches every single nuke in the US at once. That is right next to an identical big red button that makes lattes.
• Screaming Woman: In the War Room, Monger shows footage of all the monsters he's got locked up. Every time he moves on to the next monster, Ms. Ronson the coffee lady screams in sheer terror and drops her tray. Finally, Monger has had enough and angrily orders her thrown out of the room. He then shows his next clip, that of "Ginormica", a 49 foot, 11 1/2 inch woman. Whereupon there's an identical high-pitched scream... from the President!
• Screams Like a Little Girl:
  • The President. Especially amusing since the previous four exactly identical girly screams were from an actual girl.
  • When the giant Killer Robot proves Immune to Bullets, an army officer starts to order a retreat in a high-pitched squeal, then quickly clears his throat so he can speak in a more manly tone.
• Sensory Tentacles: Bob sometimes contorts his amorphous body to extend his eye on one of these, to look around corners or through openings.
• Sexy Figure Gesture: General Monger unconsciously cups his hands while describing Ginormica as having "enormous strength and size."
• Share the Male Pain: When General W.R. Monger gives a wedgie to the poor "nerd" who questions the wisdom of unleashing a monster problem to fight an alien problem, everyone else in the board room cringes.
• Shout-Out
  • Gallaxhar's computer resembles Dexter's computer.
  • General Monger's pin with the clouds on it on his upper left side is Shrek wearing an eyepatch.
  • There is also a Shout-Out to Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the president attempts to communicate with the robot probe musically. (and he ends up playing Axel F, the Beverly Hills Cop theme song). Plus, he gives the Vulcan salute from Star Trek.
  • Link mentions that finding out that the Earth had gotten warmer in his absence would be a "very convenient truth", a reference to the film An Inconvenient Truth.
  • Modesto, CA, Susan's hometown in the movie, was the hometown of George Lucas.
  • General Monger: "This place is an X-File! Wrapped in cover-up and deep-fried in paranoid conspiracy."
  • Ms. Ronson (the coffee lady who screams at the monsters' footage) resembles Dana Scully (or Annie Hughes).
  • Gallaxhar's line, "Destroy all monsters!" is a reference to the Godzilla movie of the same name.
  • The eventual fate of Insectosaurus is much like that of Mothra. If you're familiar with that particular monster, the supposed death of Insectosaurus isn't quite as traumatic.
  • Also, "Oh, Spaceballs."
  • That one convertible belonging to the jock that had racing stripes and a radio that shifted frequencies on its own. Interestingly, the capture of Susan and Bumblebee both involve helicopters and some similar equipment. They even start with roping one arm.
  • The scene where Susan tosses the giant hypodermic needle, only to have it impale some poor soldier's foot, is a reference to The Amazing Colossal Man, where the results are a bit more lethal.
  • Gallaxhar's speech to all of Earth sounds a lot like the Vogon's speech before they destroy Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978).
  • Not only is the president an expy of Stephen Colbert, but his code name ("Papa Bear") is a Shout-Out to Colbert's nickname for Bill O'Reilly (one of the main inspirations for his over-the-top alter-ego.)
  • The Robots' shields use the same effect as the aliens' in Independence Day.
  • They got three in the space about three seconds: "Supernova. This is Red Dwarf! We actually have one! Code Nimoy!"
  • When B.O.B. is in his cell throwing the rubber ball against the wall to pass time, that is an homage to a scene with Steve McQueen in the movie, The Great Escape.
  • When the military attempts to defeat the robot probe, there is a shot of a missile with the words "E.T. Go Home!" Not only that, if you listen carefully, the theme from the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is actually played for a second.
  • A Gallaxhar clone getting thrown off the side of the walkway lets out the Wilhelm Scream.
  • In a deleted scene, B.O.B. charges into battle yelling "LEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIINS!!!!" The lines surrounding that are even roughly the same as the Leeroy Jenkins Video, namely the request for a "number crunch", the absurdly low odds of survival being "better than usual", and the like.
  • At the beginning of the movie, we see a guy playing with a paddle-ball, as the ball is sent flying toward the audience before springing back. This is a riff on the paddle-ball scene from House of Wax (1953), one of the classic 3D movies.
  • The shot of B.O.B.'s blue mass flowing out the doors of laboratory he was created in (in Monger's video of his origins) is exactly the same as shot of the Blob coming out of the front doors of the theater from The Blob (1958). He's also created from a tomato.
  • Similarly, the shot of Susan's hand reaching into the news station to get Derek calls to mind a similar shot in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958).
  • One of the trucks that nearly falls off the Golden Gate bridge has the letters "SKG" on its grill, in reference to Spielberg-Katzenburg-Geffen, the founders of DreamWorks SKG.
  • Lastly, there's a shout out to Dr. Strangelove during The Stinger.
    • In fact, there are several shout outs to that film, including the appearance of the war room and General Monger's "YYEEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAHH!" as his plane goes down.
  • The scene of the military attacking the alien robot with jets and artillery is a perfect copy of the scene in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which the U.S. military attacks the automaton GORT.
  • The closing credits play over silhouettes of Susan's doing Waif-Fu moves, along with the fighter jets and stuff, reminiscent of the James Bond films.
• Shut Up, Kirk!:
  Susan: You destroyed San Francisco, you terrified millions of people, you killed my friend, just to get to me?!
  Gallaxhar: "Wha-ka-ka-ka-ka!" Silence! Your voice is grating on my ear-nubs!
• Sigil Spam: The agents from Area Fifty-something have their logo on everything from their SUVs and briefcases to their rescue trampoline and playing cards.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Derek, made briefly apparent when he shouts the typical "don't you know who I am" line to the military personnel. Keep in mind he's a local news anchor, and not even in a primetime slot.
• Smart People Speak the Queen's English: Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Susan/Ginormica is the only woman in the main cast ("We are in the presence of the rare female monster."). However, she is the main character and has the most Character Development of anyone else, and Took a Level in Badass. The rest of the female characters are in small, stereotypical roles, with the exception of the girl making out in a car, which reverses the usual role by being more assertive than her milquetoast boyfriend.
  • The jury is still out on whether Insectosaurus is female or not, since he/she has eyelashes in his/her final form as a butterfly. Even so, the ratio of female monsters to male would still be 2:3.
• Smug Snake: Gallaxhar gloats at every opportunity, and has an obnoxiously big ego, but seems to be new to the business of being an evil invader. One of the more satisfying scenes in the film is watching him flee in panic from an enraged Ginormica onboard his own ship, having twice tempted fate by smugly claiming that she can't break past his security defences.
• Songs in the Key of Lock: DanceDanceRevolution-style.
• Square-Cube Law: Ginormica, Insectosaurus and the robot probes. This movie doesn't so much ignore the trope as shred it to mulch. Then again, it's too fun of a movie to really matter. Also, Monger and Gallaxhar handwave the trope in Ginormica's case by mentioning that her strength and size were both increased separately as a result of exposure to the Applied Phlebotinum.
• Starship Luxurious: Really, it's a plot necessity if you're going to have a 49 foot, 11 1/2 inch woman rampaging through it.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Downplayed. If Susan attempts to do something that should be impossible even for her (forcing open the claw of a machine twenty times her size, or tearing apart a force field designed to render her helpless), she succeeds. But it's never spelled out.
• Stuck On Bandaid Brand: In the video game version, The Missing Link is always referred to as such, whereas in the movie he's known more often as "Link". Presumably, this was to prevent confusion/copyright issues from that other Link.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Parodied with the Brick Joke: President Hathaway accidentally hits the button which launches nukes while trying to order coffee, and immediately suggests that everyone in the bunker be cryogenically frozen for five hundred years.
• Take Over the World: With clones. After killing most of the people and enslaving the rest, to be precise.
• Terror at Make-Out Point: A couple making out in their car are the first to see the giant robot probe.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Insectosaurus as a butterfly has prominent eyelashes and lipstick-like markings. Never would've guessed "he" was actually a girl, huh?
• That Man Is Dead: When Gallaxhar reveals he can't free the others, we get this exchange:
  Gallaxhar: Now we're all gonna die! And there's nothing you can do about it, Suuusan!
  Susan: I wouldn't be so sure. And the name... is Ginormica.
• That Poor Car: Averted when Susan uses those cars as roller skates, but played straight with the deep bass roar of Insectosaurus at the first Modesto party.
• Title Drop: By the President:
  President Hathaway: I propose we go forward with your "monsters vs. aliens" idea... thingy.
• Token Romance:
  • Averted in Susan's case, which is extremely refreshing for a movie starring a female lead (whose love life is part of her character development, no less).
  • Also made fun of with B.O.B. and his girl, the plate of green jello.
• Too Dumb to Live: It's excusable for Susan to misjudge the path of the meteor as potentially heading toward the gazebo she's in. It's not excusable when she decides to run in the same direction as it's falling, when literally any other direction would have prevented her from getting hit. Any other film and we would have had one squashed bride.
• Took a Level in Badass: Susan takes several levels of badass throughout the film, going from a scared girl who just wants to go home to a powerful monster who fully embraces her new strength. The biggest leap occurring when she meets Gallaxhar for the first time, and she effortlessly breaks through almost every defense he has and comes this close to killing him outright.
• Totally Radical:
  • Dr. Cockroach with his Ph.D in dance. At least he has the grace to realize how absurd he is (at times).
  Dr. Cockroach: What my associate is trying to say is we all think the new Susan is the cat's me-wow. (awkward silence from everyone) I'm sorry.
  • B.O.B. is guilty of it too.
  B.O.B.: These disguises are da bomb!
  • Not to mention Gallaxhar.
  Gallaxhar: The Omega Quadrant? Lame.
• Touch of the Monster: Parodied with the date couple.
• Tranquillizer Dart: The army tranquilizes Susan when she first becomes Ginormica. She pulls the huge dart out and throws it, comically hitting a soldier in the foot and causing him to scream in agony.
• Troubled Fetal Position: When Susan gets captured by the government, taken away from her old life, and forced into an isolated cell, all the poor girl can do is curl up into a ball and cry.
• True Companions: Over the course of the movie, the other monsters become a sort of family, bonding over their time spent in captivity and always sticking up for each other against those who dare to harm them. Even when Susan loses her quantonium and becomes a normal human, the others still consider her one of them and go out of their way to save her from Gallaxhar.
  Susan: I can't believe you guys came to save me. Thank you.
  Link: Don't mention it. We monsters gotta stick together.
  Susan: But I'm not a monster anymore. I'm just... me.
  Dr. Cockroach: My dear, no matter your size, you'll always be- [sees Gallaxhar clones approaching] NOTHING BUT A FILTHY CARBON-BASED LIFEFORM!
• Undressing the Unconscious: Happens to Susan Murphy/Ginormica twice, first by the government and then by Gallaxhar. Both times she wakes up in a different outfit to the one she was wearing before rendered unconscious. An impressive feat, considering it's difficult enough to undress and redress a regular unconscious human and Susan is a 50-Foot tall giant.
• Unnecessarily Large Interior: Every part of the alien ship - even the parts not made for giant robots - is big enough to accommodate a 50-foot woman.
• The Unmasqued World: The public becomes aware of the existence of aliens at the beginning of the movie, and of the existence of monsters towards the end.
• The Unreveal: Gallaxhar's explanation of his backstory is constantly interrupted by his cloning machine, meaning the audience (and Susan) never get to hear more than a few unfinished details about it.
• Unusual Euphemism
  • "What the flagnar?!"
  • Plus "Oh Spaceballs!"
  • "By Hawking's chair!"
• Unobtainium: The Quantonium.
• The Unseen: There was a sixth monster in the movie, The Invisible Man, but he had died 25 years before. The others told the childlike B.O.B. that he had escaped. It appears briefly in the prequel short, B.O.B.'s Big Break.
• Valley Girl: Unexpectedly, Gallaxhar briefly talks like one while telling his life-story:
  Gallaxhar: ...and then I was all "NO WAY!", and she was all "YES WAY!", and I was like...
• Villainous Breakdown: Gallaxhar twice — once when he realises Ginormica can burst through his allegedly impenetrable shield, and again when Susan holds him at gun point.
• Versus Title: But of course. It would hardly be a Cool Versus Awesome movie without one, after all.
• The War Room: The so-crazy-it'll-never-happen command center where you need your bare ass scanned to get in, showing the cut version of the Earth across 3 or 4 monitors, with a giant button to launch every Nuclear Missile in the U.S..
• We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: Gallaxhar's broadcast has him say he comes in peace... then immediately declare his intent to destroy humanity.
  Gallaxhar: To recap: We come in peace. We mean you no harm. And you all will die.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Insectosaurus is mesmerized by bright lights. Handy if you need him to travel someplace specific, less so when it makes him freeze up mid-battle.
• Wedding Smashers: Susan does this to her own wedding when she suddenly transforms into a giant mid-ceremony. She is then captured by government agents, who were there investigating the meteor that caused her growth spurt in the first place.

Wedgie: General Monger gives the “nerd” one after he anticipates blowback for the monster solution.

• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Zig-Zagged Trope. At first, the monsters are considered a danger (and a distraction) and are kept out of the public eye in Area 52. The monsters themselves are indeed mostly too destructive to be let out, but later in the film they seem upset about the fact that they can't get out, and are enthusiastic when they are given a chance to earn their freedom. Once they are out, the trope is played straight and the monsters don't enjoy it. They later earn respect by Saving the World. Link is a good indicator of how this trope is faring at any point in the film.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Monger, when the President accidentally presses the "fire all nukes" button, instead of the "get me a latte" button, during the end credits scene.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Gallaxhar destroyed his own home planet, though we never find out why.
• World of Ham: Try finding a scene without someone who is clearly enjoying their role.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: Most of Gallaxhar's life-story is never heard by Susan (or the audience). But whatever it was, it drove him crazy enough to destroy his planet and develop a lifelong obsession with Quantonium. It also apparently involved some terrible secret his parents kept from him ("No child should ever have to go through anything like that!") and his marriage going sour.
• You Won't Feel a Thing!: Variant:
  Dr. Cockroach: Now, you might feel a slight pinch in the brain. Mwahaha... Sorry.

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The Shorts

The shorts provides examples of the following tropes:

• Captain Ersatz: (From the Halloween Special) The Pumpkins — Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!'
• Company Cross References:
  • A woman giving out candy thinks Link's "costume" is supposed to be Shrek.
  • Susan's old plushes that B.O.B. picks up in Night of the Living Carrots include ones based on Dragon and Alex the lion.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: All of the monsters (barring Insectosaurus, who dresses as Elvis Presley) go to the Halloween party without costumes. Susan intended to wear a zombie cheerleader outfit, but was forced into the mission before she could change.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: In B.O.B.'s Big Break, Dr. Cockroach is the realist, the Missing Link is the cynic, B.O.B. is the optimist, and the Invisible Man is apathetic. In the Halloween Special, Ginormica is the realist, Dr. Cockroach starts as the cynic and Link starts off as the optimist (they swap roles later), and B.O.B. is frankly well out of it.
• Freudian Excuse: Dr. Cockroach hates Halloween because he was bullied during it as a child. He quickly gets into the spirit of things when an old lady gives him a swirly pop.
• Going to Give It More Energy: In Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space, the cast battles living jack o'lanterns that feed on candy. When the pumpkins join together to form a giant monster, they bombard it with candy until it explodes.
• Halloween Special: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space
• Immediate Sequel: Night of the Living Carrots directly continues on from the Sequel Hook brought on at the end of of Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space.
• Married to the Job: Ginormica in the Halloween Special. Her parents are so glad to see her that she doesn't want to ruin it by revealing that she's actually still working, and is not on holiday.
• My Grandma Can Do Better Than You: Variant in the B.O.B.'s Big Break supplemental short on the DVD:
  General Monger: You throw like my nine-year-old niece... that I may or may not have.
• "Pan from the Sky" Beginning: Mutant Pumpkins starts with the boy on the moon like usual, and then it pans down to reveal a UFO heading towards Farmer Jeb's.
• Prized Possession Giveaway: In the short Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space, Dr. Cockroach is joyful to realise the Swirlypop he always wanted was still intact after the battle, and then a trick-or-treating kid also appeared eager to see it. After a moment of hesitation, Dr. Cockroach eventually decides to give the Swirlypop to the child.
• Russian Reversal: Ginormica tries to squash the main pumpkin. When they pull a One-Winged Angel, they try to squash her.
• Shout-Out:
  • At the beginning of Mutant Pumpkins, the theme tune to John Carpenter's Halloween plays... and turns out to be a cell phone ring tone.
  • One person thinks Link's "costume" is supposed to be Shrek. A child mistakes him for Kermit the Frog.
• Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: On the Halloween Special, B.O.B. tries to reason with the evil pumpkins because, since he's part tomato, he's fluent in produce.
  Dr. Cockroach: Well, what did he say?
  B.O.B.: Horrible things! About my mother, in a salad bar.
• Tagline: "Alien problem? Monster solution."
• Telepath: Dr. Cockroach accidentally grants B.O.B. the ability to read minds during a failed escape attempt, which leads to him quickly coming up with a new plan of escape.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played for Laughs: B.O.B. in the B.O.B.'s Big Break short hinders as often as he helps the others.
• Unwitting Pawn: Dr. Cockroach tries to manipulate B.O.B. in order to break out of their prison, but B.O.B. turns out to be a Spanner in the Works and it comes back to bite him later.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite being prominent characters in the Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space special, Susan and Insectosaurus are absent without mention in the Immediate Sequel Night of the Living Carrots.
• Your Costume Needs Work: Parodied, at the Missing Link's expense, at Halloween.

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