The World of David the Gnome

"Soy un gnomo (I am a gnome) Y aquí en el bosque soy feliz (and I'm happy here in the forest) bajo un árbol vivo yo (I live under a tree) Junto a su raiz... (Together with its root[s])"

"In every wish and dream and happy home, you will find the kingdom of... THE GNOMES!"

The World of David the Gnome was a Spanish animated television series based on the children's books The Gnomes and The Secret Book of Gnomes, by the Dutch author Wil Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet. The English dub aired on Nickelodeon in the late 80s and early 90s, and followed the adventures of one David the Gnome, who in most episodes traveled through the forest on his pet fox Swift and rescued animals that were injured or in danger.

"Susan: Grandma, I'm not a child anymore! I'm 65 years old!"
 * All Trolls Are Different: Clumsy? Check. Evil race? Check. Turn to stone in sunlight? ... Check.
 * Anti-Sneeze Finger: Might be or not a Running Gag in this show...
 * Automaton Fox: Swift, to the extreme.
 * Battle Couple: David and Lisa in "The Shadowless Stone."
 * Bittersweet Ending: In the last episode, David and his wife Lisa die of old age. Traumatized and lonely, Swift moves on to make new friends with a glasses-wearing David look-a-like named Christopher and his vixen.
 * Cheerful Child: David's granddaughter Susan, who appears in a number of episodes and is very close to her grandfather.
 * Which causes a tiny bit of Fridge Logic if thought about too much -- since, as noted below, gnomes are always twins, why didn't the audience ever see Susan's twin? David and Lisa never even mention any other grandchildren.
 * Combat Medic: David was a doctor by trade, but it didn't stop him from battling the trolls.
 * Every Episode Ending
 * Friend to All Living Things: The gnomes as a whole, David perhaps in particular.
 * Green Aesop
 * Happily Married: David and Lisa
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: David is Howard Cunningham.
 * Humans Are Bastards: Gnomes do have a few human friends and allies but generally view them as this trope.
 * James Bondage: David and Swift get imprisoned by the trolls in the second episode, requiring Lisa to find and rescue them.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes
 * Literary Agent Hypothesis
 * Mouse World
 * Nice Hat: And they almost never take them off, not even for baths.
 * They remove their hat so rarely that in the second episode one of the trolls even carries David by holding the tip of his hat.
 * No Fourth Wall: David and his wife frequently address the audience directly, 'educating' them about the gnomish lifestyle.
 * Non-Human Sidekick: Swift the fox.
 * Older Than They Look: Gnomes live to be exactly 400 years old.


 * Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Not necessarily mad but definitely non-blue smurfs with some stripes of Underground Monkey, Can't Argue with Elves, and Speaks Fluent Animal. Also Mind Manipulation, Telepathy, and Horse of a Different Color.
 * The Power of Love: Required to open the Cool Gate in "The Shadowless Stone."
 * Scenery Porn: Lavishly animated for the time.
 * The Renaissance Age of Animation
 * Translation Convention: It's mentioned several times that gnomes speak their own language, and humans are forbidden from knowing it, except one word...
 * Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: "Gnomes only have children once in our lives, and they're always twins," albeit not always a boy and a girl.

Slitzweitz!