YMMV / Calvin & Hobbes: The Series

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the Slender Man as monsterous as he usually is, or was he actually on the good guys' side? The ending gives support towards the latter, as he waves to the heroes from the shadows.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The duo grabbing hats and canes for a brief (as in ten seconds) dance in "The Photo Man".
• Catharsis Factor: Calvin calling out Hobbes in "Thunderstorm" serves as this for not just his Dirty Coward moments in previous chapters, but also the times he had been a jerk towards Calvin in the strips.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Among the topics discussed and/or mentioned in "Roughin' It" include squat lobsters that perform chemosynthesis, as well as acromegaly.
  • Then there's "SouthWest Pacific", which is about Calvin performing in a school play. What does the title mean, then? Well, during World War II there was an area entitled South West Pacific, where many important things happened. The wartime definition for this? A theater.
    • Not mentioning the musical South Pacific.
• Growing the Beard: Starts out as Rouge Angles of Satin and Plagiarism: The Fan Fic before finding an identity of its own by Season 2 and really starts getting better in Season 3 and beyond.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Calvin, having an irrational panic attack in the 2009 episode "Invasion", claims that "Japan is going to fall into the ocean!" Two years later, a massive tsunami wrecked the country.
  • On a less serious note, the same episode has a brief bit lampshading the fact that Calvin has stayed six for a long time, with the MTM remarking that the writers would "think of something soon", since it was a sci-fi show. Much later, in The Collective, it's revealed that the floating timeline was the influence of the Chill Collective.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • You know how Rupert and Earl's Goldfish Poop Gang love peanut butter milkshakes? Well...
  • Calvin calls Harley Quinn "Hardly Quinn".
  • Dr. Brainstorm's original design had him with unfocused gold eyes, like a certain muffin-lover...
  • The film Free Birds has the same premise as "Calvin, Hobbes, and the Pilgrims".
  • Two for "Wild Movie":
    • One of Calvin's ideas for a movie is Tornado Sharks, which is almost exactly what the 2013 Made-for-TV Movie Sharknado is about.
    • Also, the sequel's name, as proposed by Calvin, is Tornado Sharks 2: I Think Things Just Got a Little Windier. The sequel to Sharknado was named the equally stupid Sharknado 2: The Second One.
  • Several bonus materials have indicated that the show apparently airs on Nickelodeon. Years later, the studio wound up winning the rights to turn Phoebe and Her Unicorn — a strip widely considered to be Calvin and Hobbes' Spiritual Successor — into an animated series.
• Irony:
  • For all that Thunderstorm is more dangerous than Brainstorm, he's actually worse at the whole Mad Scientist thing than Brainstorm is. Brainstorm actually invents things (while Thunderstorm usually just imitates or steals Brainstorm's designs), and his failures leave himself and Earth alive for him to try again, while Thunderstorm's failure in Thunderstorm would have destroyed the planet, preventing him from ruling it (as well as likely killing him by throwing the satellite he was on out of its orbit).
  • Building on the above, Jack actually seems to be a more advanced AI than Shadow. He acts almost exactly like a human, has a distinctive personality, and even a sense of humor. Shadow merely serves Thunderstorm and attacks enemies, and, if it's not to help Thunderstorm, doesn't take initiative. He even gets a bit confused when faced with Jack while under orders to 'kill everyone' (Jack's a robot, and so not alive). Frankly, a scientist who was able to invent Jack would be more admired than one who could invent Shadow (and not just because people would be scared of Shadow).
• Memetic Mutation: Among the commentators in the later years of the fic, "IT'S DOCTOR BRAINSTORM!" became this.
• Narm: While "Have You Seen This Tiger?" is intended to be a Deconstruction of The Prankster, the awful prose gets in the way.
  Socrates: You're making me angry, Calvin. And when I get angry, it makes me what to use my claws, and tear something up!
  • When Hobbes in "RIP Calvin" is trying to keep all his friends from dying and avert a Bad Future, the lyrics to Evanescence's Bring Me To Life are written out in full between all his actions.
• Nightmare Fuel: See this page.
• Older Than They Think: This series has a habit of plagarizing jokes and storylines from Sheldon. "Insanity in the Air", for example, is based on a storyline from Sheldon in which Sheldon falls in love with a girl who in turn is in love with Dante.
• Padding: Season 1 had a Running Gag where Hobbes would misinterpret something Calvin said or did, and Calvin would retort. The duo would then argue for a painfully long amount of time about something with no meaning to the plot. This has thankfully been phased out.^note It should be noted that a similar chain of events was a Running Gag in the Hank the Cowdog series, which the author loves.
• Unintentional Period Piece: “Help Wanted,” from 2005, features a job offer at Taco Bell for $5 an hour; the Federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 an hour in 2009.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: "Black Rain". A Slender Man story on a (fake) kid's show? That's only the tip of the iceberg.
• The Woobie:
  • Susie Derkins has the world against her in "Chains".
  • Dr Brainstorm in "Thunderstorm" considering he spent most of the movie trying to defeat his friend-turned-enemy who apparently betrayed him and rubbed his temporary victory in his face during the climax.
  • Socrates seems to be heading toward an arguable direction towards this in the final season.

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