YMMV Tropes For Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends
YMMV items with their own pages:
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A-L
- Accidental Innuendo:
- When Mac, Bloo, and Cheese are building their go-cart, Bloo calls out Cheese for screwing everything up. How does Cheese respond? "Nuh-uh, I'm only screwing the wheel!"
- When Mac is explaining to Goo how everyone got locked out of the house in "The Big Cheese," Cheese can be seen trying to get Goo's attention by tapping her on the shoulder. Because she's leaning over when he does, it looks more like he's smacking her butt.
- Adorkable:
- Wilt is clumsy, friendly, and apologetic.
- Eduardo can be a tough purple monster whenever the situation calls for it, but he's really just a goofy and sweet-natured imaginary friend. He is also a Lovable Coward who tends to cry a lot.
- Goo is a silly, talkative, and sweet natured Ms. Imagination.
- Alas, Poor Scrappy:
- While Eurotrish is an Ethnic Scrappy with an annoying singing voice, it's hard not to feel sorry for her in "Foster's Goes to Europe" when Bloo keeps on rudely throwing away her chances to go back to Europe to visit her creator and her creator's parents. Things are especially made heartbreaking by the scene that plays during the credits, where Eurotrish finally makes it to her creator's home only to be harshly turned away.
- Bloo in "The Sweet Stench of Success". Even his detractors will admit he didn't deserve to be overworked, starved, and lied to.
- Base-Breaking Character:
- Bloo. Some fans find him very entertaining and funny because of his antics, while other fans find him as an obnoxious Jerkass who doesn't deserve Mac as a friend, let alone live in Foster's. It doesn't help that he only ever seemed to get worse as the show went on, so much so that by late into the series' run, many fans were wondering why Mac hadn't just gone and left him.
- Mr. Herriman. Some fans like his strict personality, and see him as a person who just tries to keep everything structured and feel his moments of taking things literally can be funny. Other fans find him to be an obnoxious, inconsiderate militant control freak who abuses his rules and feel some of his policies are unreasonable (yet he has no problem breaking his own rules). They also hate him for being a complete Jerkass toward Frankie for NO reason other than to spite her. Not helping the fact that he's constantly insulting and berating her, even when she does something right and feels only his way is right. Some of the worst examples of this are "Imposter's Home for Um... Make Em Up Pals", "Let Your Hare Down", and the beginning half of "Destination Imagination".
- Madame Foster in later seasons. While most still enjoyed her wild side nature, others felt the writers took her too far (Foster's Goes to Europe being a rather infamous example).
- Goo. There are some who see her as an adorable and funny character and those who see her as obnoxious and annoying. It doesn't help that her debut episode "Go Goo Go" garnered as much negative reaction as it gained positive.
- Cheese was a very popular character in his debut episode for his antics providing a lot of comic relief, but his popularity dwindled because of his subsequent appearances making him The Load. This hasn't stopped some fans from liking him, though.
- Eurotrish was this. Some saw her as The Woobie for just wanting to go back to her creator in Europe, and many felt rather bad for her when it was discovered that her creator sent her away simply because she thought she was a bad singer. However, the rest saw her as an obnoxious nuisance due to her obnoxious singing and some were even offended that her design was every European stereotype in a blender, making it impossible to tell what part of Europe she is from. The fact that "Foster's Goes to Europe" was her only appearance aside from a cameo in "Destination: Imagination" didn't help either.
- Canon Fodder: Wilt. His Backstory wasn't revealed until the special "Good Wilt Hunting", spawning many, many Fanfics that provided their own explanation for his scars and history, often treading into Darker and Edgier territory than the actual series.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: Goofball in "House for Make-Em-Up Pals" turning out to be an imaginary friend is a particularly bad example of this (and adds to the episode's rather poor reputation). The episode hammers in Frankie's suspicion that he isn't one so hard that, after a while, the twist becomes painfully obvious. And yet the episode still expects you to be surprised.
- Character Perception Evolution: Cheese was an Ensemble Dark Horse back in his debut episode "Mac Daddy" for his comical Cloudcuckoolander antics and the fact that he's a Fountain of Memes, but he became a Base-Breaking Character after he was flanderized into being The Load. Some fans still find his memetic lines amusing, others find him useless and irritating.
- Crazy Is Cool: Madame Foster. Worried you'll get in trouble for starting a party in the house? You sure will for not inviting her.
- Case in point, she's left to deal with a bear. Next time we see her she's riding the bear naked! That is to say, bare naked?
- Creator's Pet: Cheese became this for many fans. Ironically, the reason Cheese became a Creator's Pet is that he was immensely popular with the fans in his debut episode. You know what they say; there is such a thing as too much, well, cheese.
- Crosses the Line Twice
- Terrence creating a slice of pizza as an imaginary friend only to eat it.
- For the few people who don't dislike "Everyone Knows It's Bendy," Bloo's "Shaggy Dog" Story is funny, considering how much of a Jerkass Karma Houdini Bloo usually is.
- Crossover Ship:
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Cheese, of course.
- Jackie Khones.
- Bloo's alter-egos — Orlando Bloo and the Bloo Superdude are by far the most memorable.
- The pizza slice Terrence created only to eat alive has gotten fans for his brutal death and being The Woobie.
- In the same episode, Terrence's imaginary friend Red. He never appeared again, but he's pretty popular with fans for being a Nice Guy and for standing up to his Jerkass creator.
- Uncle Pockets only appeared in one episode, but he has a lot of fans for being very likeable and always speaking in entertaining rhymes.
- Imaginary Frankie from an issue of the comics gained a fanbase for her bubbly and cheerful personality. It helped that she was shown to be helpful and a good cleaner and made a good 'big sister' friend for a young girl.
- Ethnic Scrappy: Eurotrish. Her horribly fake accent, annoying voice, and constant "Because I'MMA GOING to Eur-OPE!" song made her immensely hated by the fans. It also doesn't help that her name is a pun on the word "Eurotrash" (a derogatory term for Europeans, particularly those living in the United States). This even occurs In-Universe during the credits sequence of her episode!
- Estrogen Brigade: A significant percentage
of fans are this for Wilt. - Fandom Heresy: "Everyone Knows It's Bendy" was already very disliked upon its initial airing, mainly because of the plot being mostly driven by the characters acting like idiots or out-of-character, but has progressively gathered more and more hatred among fans of the series and even people outside of the fandom for just about every single aspect they can point out at the titular Bendy instead, to the point that they place him among the worst of their character/general opinions seemingly for the sake of getting some kicks. Any small mention or speech about the episode or Bendy being good in the slightest is guaranteed to get you pummeled with neverending, burning hatred.
- Fanon Discontinuity:
- There are several fans who don't consider anything past season 1 as canon. To a lesser extent, there are those who won't accept anything past the three-episode pilot.
- The show's attempts at Black Comedy and/or Kafka Komedy ("Imposter's Home For Um... Make Em Up Pals", "Foster's Goes to Europe", "I Only Have Surprise for You" and the infamous "Everyone Knows It's Bendy") typically get this reaction.
- Some fans don't wish to acknowledge any of Cheese's appearances post-"Mac Daddy".
- Fountain of Memes: Cheese again.
- Fridge Horror: Imaginary friends can look just like humans, as shown by characters like Goofball or the comic-only Imaginary Frankie. This opens up a scenario where an imaginary friend could easily impersonate the real person they're based on, or steal their identity.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The scene where Wilt freaks out some kids by pulling a fake arm off his nub arm is pretty funny the first time through. Once we learn his backstory though (specifically that he had to get the arm amputated after it was crushed beyond repair.) it becomes much darker. Not to mention a rather dark instance of Foreshadowing.
- I Am Not Shazam: No, Foster is not the name of the young male protagonist. Foster is the last name of the nice old lady who runs the home for imaginary friends.
- Karmic Overkill:
- "Imposter's Home for... Um, Make 'em Up Pals": Rather than stop Bloo from mixing dangerous chemicals, Frankie makes a bet with Bloo that it'll turn out badly. Immature, yes, but what she was put through afterwards (including being forced to miss a concert that she'd been dreaming about for months, with the final slap in the face being that everyone BUT HER got to go) would have been overkill even if she were the one playing with chemicals in the first place. Goofball was a complete Jerkass to Frankie and Mr. Herriman's treatment of her in this episode bordered on abuse.
- "Nightmare on Wilson Way": It turns out the zombie apocalypse was all a prank everyone at Foster's was pulling on Bloo to get back at him for the snake-in-a-can prank. Even if it is annoying, that hardly warrants making him fear for his life and the life of his friends.
M-Z
- Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
- Moe:
- Mac is just adorable.
- And so is Goo.
- Wilt is also a huge sweetheart.
- Moral Event Horizon:
- Duchess in the pilot, where she tries to have Bloo killed for ruining her adoption.
- In her second and last appearance, Berry ties up a family and tries to kill Mac.
- Never Live It Down:
- Bloo's characterization in the later seasons of the show became controversial in the years since the show ended production, with just as many fans seeing his incredibly selfish and oftentimes antagonistic self as a negative towards the show as there are fans who genuinely enjoy it. The fact that he is the main imaginary character has made him all the more divisive.
- To this day, fans still haven't forgiven Madame Foster for snagging Mac's airplane tickets in "Foster's Goes To Europe."
- Bendy. While the premise of Bloo being stuck with another Jerkass was a good premise, a lot of fans have a problem with the idea of not just him, but his friends also being blamed, as it doesn't make sense for them to cause trouble.
- One-Scene Wonder:
- Mojo Jojo makes a cameo in the pilot as an imaginary friend created by a kid who just copied him from TV.
- Dexter and the Eds' cameo in "Eddie Monster".
- Frankie's Balloon Belly after getting fat from overeating cookies for months is quite memorable among her fandom.
- Padding: A lot of scenes and gags drag out a great deal in various episodes. The moment of silence in "Busted" and the "hot in Topeka" scene from "Squeeze the Day" are perfect examples of this. What counts as either this or counts as comedic timing is another level of YMMV on it's own.
- Periphery Demographic: It's a show marketed toward kids six to eleven. Most of the fans are teenagers and adults.
- Questionable Casting: The choice of actors for both Mac and Terrence raised some eyebrows.
- In animation, young boys are generally voiced by women — for example, Timmy Turner was voiced by Tara Strong, and Bart Simpson by Nancy Cartwright. 8-year-old Mac, however, was voiced by Sean Marquette, who was 16 when the show began — he even remained the voice of Mac until the end of the show's run, when he turned 21. That being said, he mostly pulled off the act of sounding like a young boy.
- It's even more apparent in Terrence's case, who was voiced by the aforementioned Tara Strong. To learn that the actress behind Nice Girl Bubbles and Deadpan Snarker Raven also played a unrepentant Big Brother Bully comes off as very off-putting. Tara Strong has made it clear that she hated voicing Terrence, which begs the question of why another actor wasn't chosen to replace her.
- The Scrappy
- Bendy from "Everyone Knows It's Bendy" is an unusual example. While he is meant to be despised for framing Bloo, Wilt, Coco, and Eduardo for his wrongdoings, he ended up being even more hated than the creators wanted him to be due to not getting punished for it (Lauren Faust also hated the episode he appeared in as much as the fans did, so he never appeared again).
- Goofball John McGee from "Imposter's Home for Um...Make 'Em Up Pals," a complete moron who makes Frankie's life a living hell when she has to constantly clean up after him, causing her to miss out on her concert. And then just to humiliate her even more (although admittedly this wasn't his intent), she spends the whole episode believing he's just a mooching teenager in a Paper-Thin Disguise only to discover that he is, in fact, an imaginary friend and that all of his little things he did to drive her nuts were completely justified.
- Signature Scene
- The unraveling of Bloo’s plot against Bendy, albeit for negative reasons due to it being the climax of the most hated episode of the series.
- Terrance creating and eating a pizza imaginary friend for being a prime example of the pure Fridge Horror of the series’ premise come to life.
- Strawman Has a Point: While Mac's mom forcing him to get rid of Bloo was somewhat of a rash move, given the fact that imaginary friends have sentience in this universe, her line of thinking actually makes sense. Children Mac's age acting kiddy makes them easy bullying targets in real life.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: During Bloo's movie, Wilt sings an obvious sound-alike of "All Star" by Smash Mouth.
- Theme Pairing: Lilo Pelekai from Lilo & Stitch has occasionally been shipped with Mac due to a couple of similarities they have — being bullied and having a crazy non-human blue friend, among others.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The general reaction to the intro being shortened in later airings.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character
- "Perfectly good" might be a bit of a stretch when describing Terrence, but there are some fans who were pretty disappointed that Terrence began to appear less throughout the rest of the season, for they felt that he never got the chance to develop as a character to explain his horrible behavior, especially towards Mac.
- Mac's family in general. His mother rarely appears and his father is neither seen nor mentioned. Seeing as how Mac is the main character of the show, you'd think that there would be a bigger background on his family life.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
- "Setting a President" gives the audience a more sympathetic Herriman, where it's revealed that his job as head of house is all he has, only for the ending to have Frankie give him his position back simply because "it pays less" (which contradicts her entire motive for running for house president). During the events of the episode, he talks about how "it's the nicest thing anyone did for him" — only to still treat her poorly in future episodes such as "Let Your Hare Down" and "Destination Imagination", as if he learned nothing from the nice act Frankie did for him.
- This was why fans felt that the Grand Finale was a big middle finger. They felt many plot conflicts hadn't been resolved and that many events could have happened instead, such as Mac's mother discovering that her son visits Foster's and hangs out with Bloo every day without her permission, why Terrence is such a bully to Mac, and Bloo being adopted by a new kid and saying his final 'goodbye' to Mac. Any of this would have been better notes to end on than Cheese moving to Foster's at the very end.
- Toy Ship: Mac and Goo are both kids and there are some who ship them.
- Ugly Cute: Some of the imaginary friends. Wilt, Eduardo, and Coco come to mind immediately.
- Villain Decay: Duchess. She was really only a villainous character in the pilot. After that she just became snobby and apathetic to everyone around her.
- The Woobie:
- That sentient slice of pizza Terrence created in "Seeing Red". Within seconds of being created and saying "Howdy-doo! I love you!", Terrence immediately eats it while the poor thing screams in terror. Worse, his death is the only one in the entire series and is played entirely for laughs. Basically, in his short life, he just wanted nothing more to love and be loved and all he knew was pain. If any character really qualifies as a Woobie on this show, it is without a doubt this character.
- Frankie is this whenever Mr. Herriman treats her like crap, though there are many instances in which Mr. Herriman was not involved and Frankie was still a mistreated and sympathetic character; just watch "Imposter's Home For...Make Em' Up Pals".
- Mac can be this pretty often, and The Pilot just shows. He is forced to give up his imaginary best friend on grounds that his mom thinks he is "too old" for him. Although this conflict is resolved by the fact that Mac can prevent Bloo from getting adopted by visiting him at the foster home every day and hang out with him without his mom knowing, there's one thing that Mac is forced to put up with every day of his life: him being ruthlessly and unrepentantly tormented by his Big Brother Bully Terrance. His brother has at times put his life at risk and made him live in constant fear.
- World, the reality-changing friend inside the toy box's imaginary world in Destination Imagination. The majority of the events in the special happened because of his emotional instability.
- Which only existed because he'd been locked up inside a trunk by his creator's parents for an extremely long time, where he could create absolutely anything he wanted...except other sentient beings to share it with. No wonder the little guy was an emotional timebomb.
- To a certain extent, Goo, at least in her debut episode. Prior to meeting Mac, she had no human friends and created imaginary friends to keep her company. It's even a bit worse in hindsight because when she tells this to Mac, she says nobody likes her because she's a "big, fat weirdo", subtly implying she might have been bullied before. There's also the possibility that her parents aren't much help because they give her too much freedom and little to no guidance.
- Bloo himself can be a Jerkass Woobie at times. One big example is "The Sweet Stench of Success", where he gets an advertising deal and is enslaved by the Hollywood agent Kip Snip, not allowed any breaks, forced to sleep in a kennel every night, and is alienated from his friends, leading Mac to believe that he deserted him to become famous.
