Rugrats/Headscratchers


 * The Rugrats series has 351 episodes - each consisting of the adventures of one day, presumably.. sometimes more. This is over a year of time chronologically, yet the babies do not age. This issue is more noticeable because one year is a HUGE amount of time and development to children of that age range.
 * Well, they celebrated Christmas what, three different times, Hanukkah, Passover, and Kwanzaa. Especially grating in that Dil shows up in a Christmas special later on and... that.. really messes up any possibilities of a timeline.
 * Well, you can't really expect any sort of continuity in shows like this.
 * Yeah, the Simpsons have had a ton of episodes and they're still the same age IIRC.
 * Actually, according to the rugratonline.com website, they have 172 episodes (counting the two-parts as one), three movies, and two straight-to-video specials.
 * Moreover, Hanukkah is like Easter, in that it doesn't always take place at the same time each year. They could easily celebrate it the same year as the Christmas special, and not have both happen at the same time. They could also celebrate Kwanzaa with Suzy without disrupting Christmas either, as they were at her house they entire time. Therefore those three took place in the same December, and the one with Dil was a year later. The babies could also have latent development due to the fact that their parents are horribly neglectful, and listen to EVERYTHING that a pop baby doctor says, even though most of it is absolute crap advice.
 * The characters act like months pass in-series, well over twelve.
 * Did Chuckie originally have a live mom? In the earlier episodes, season one mostly, both him and his dad mentioned a mom and wife like she was alive despite the fact Chuckie's mom died when he was a few weeks, or months, old and Chuckie's dad didn't date until he fell for Kira.
 * This troper remembers an extremely early episode where the Rugrats are at a barbeque at a park (I believe it was for the club Tommy's grandfather belonged to), and the babies escape the playpen and antagonize some geese, and Spike saves them. The reason I'm mentioning this is because in the crowd shots, Chaz can be clearly seen more than once with a woman, I'm assuming an early prototype of Chuckie's mother, who had the same wild red hair as Chuckie and Chaz. I always assumed she was suppoed to be Chuckie's mother until they decided he didn't have one. So I'd say: Yeah, at one point"he had an in-show mother, but it's not the same mother that was in the "Mother Day's Special", so consider her retconed.
 * In one episode, the third one actually, Chaz also says "Wow! My fish! Your mother never liked this fish; but, now she's gone, I guess we can put it back up, now." So he did have a living mother that supposedly just left them, before they decided to retcon her into being dead.
 * Maybe Mr. Finster is just a creep?
 * There was an interview with Paul Germain (co-creator and head writer) where he says that he and the writers of the original run deliberately left the issue vague, but himself leaned towards divorce. Incidentally, the original writing team had left to work on Recess and Hey Arnold! by the time Chuckie's mom was explicitly referred to as dead in the show.
 * In the season one episode "Real or Robots" Stu told Chuckie as he was putting him and Tommy to bed that "His Mom and Dad will pick him up in the morning."
 * Isn't Susie a little young to know where babies really come from?
 * Suzie's mother is a doctor, so would probably be more willing to tell Suzie the truth as opposed to dumbing things down. Also, Suzie has two teenaged siblings who seemed obnoxious enough to tell Suzie the reason.
 * Also, for all we know she whispered into Angelica's ear something along the lines of "it grows in a mommy's tummy for 9 months and then comes out".
 * I don't really think she was too young. I'm pretty sure I knew that babies came from their mom's tummy when I was in preschool, but I didn't know all the details, or how the baby got in the mom's tummy.
 * I knew EVERYTHING by the time I was 5, probably earlier, with only television and an 8 year-old sister to tell me. Her older siblings would have definitely told her everything as well
 * In the second movie, for what reason did the villains kidnap the babies?
 * Coco wanted to avoid the kids blabbing to Chaz about why Coco wanted to marry Chaz so Chaz would call the entire wedding off and Coco wouldn't get promoted. However, it happened anyways.
 * But... Angelica was the only one that could talk...
 * IMHO, I think they had Coco and her gang kidnap the babies (all of 'em) so make the audience see them as Complete Monster. If only Angelica were kidnapped, I doubt the majority would care. I mean, she was just a snobby, rude, loud, spoiled brat and she may have caused Didi to enter premature labor in the first movie (After the singing scene where Angelica basically yells at Didi's stomach). Um, okay, it's obvious I don't like Angelica. XD
 * The babies they were watching climbed into a giant robot and marched to the wedding chapel (not that they shouldn't be there). That's all they meant by it. Karmic bad luck I suppose.
 * Coco just didn't like the babies. She probably thought they would be a disturbance at the wedding or something, or she got really mad at them right before the wedding.


 * So how does Stu bring home an Income? He looks to be an independent Toymaker, and doesn't make as many inventions that often...
 * He seems to strike up a lot of deals with investors, such as Mr. Mucklehoney in the restaurant episode. He has to be getting grants from the toy companies he builds for. There's no way he can afford the parts for high-tech toys like Mr. Friend on Didi's school teacher salary.
 * Also, Grandpa Lou is a semi-retired professional wrestler. Maybe he has endorsement deals or occasionally makes appearences and competes in matches behind Didi's back. Then he gives Stu the winnings to fund his research.
 * He probably saved his money from the repair shop.
 * Can Tommy talk? Everyone acts like Chuckie was the first to speak, other then Angelica and Suzie, however in the earlier season Tommy would say words. It's most likely not translated baby talk either, because it barely sounds like his translated voice (it's more babyish and like a toddler speaking), and it was in the episodes where baby talk wasn't translated (just a bunch of cooing and such; for example the baseball episode).
 * How do babies get screw drivers?
 * It was a toy.
 * And who gives a 1 year old a toy screwdriver?
 * As long as it wasn't small enough to be a choking hazard, their family deemed it safe.
 * This Troper had a sort of plastic tool set when he was growing up, with big hollow plastic versions of various standard work tools; granted he might have been slightly older, but it was still around a similar age.
 * Maybe Tommy just swiped it from his dad. Stu has taken him to the basement before.
 * How did Tommy's parents never find out that Tommy kept a screw driver in his diaper. I mean, wouldn't they find it when they changed his diaper?
 * The babies are a little smarter than the adults. Tommy may know when he's about to be changed and slip the screwdriver elsewhere for the time being.
 * If you think about it, Tommy was a smart baby; if he was about to soil his diaper, he might have figured he'd best take his screwdriver out of it.
 * Alternately, the screwdriver resides in Hammerspace, making its existence run on Rule of Funny.
 * In the "Chuckie Is Rich" episode, Drew ends up taking Chaz's entire $10 million dollar fortune out from under him in order to fund his hokey earwax startup, and he gets away with it! Even Drew, who's not exactly a criminal mastermind, seems surprised about what he's just done. Assuming something like that isn't worthy of at least a 25 year sentence, why did Chaz still stay friends with him after that kind of complete and abject betrayal?
 * He didn't steal it. He thought it was a good idea, and convinced Chaz to invest. And those were just his liquid funds. After he sold all the stuff he just bought (save for his glass elephant) he was able to renovate his old house.
 * This. When you invest in something, you are willingly taking a risk that it won't pan out.
 * Still, Chaz specifically asks "how much of my money did you invest in this?" when Drew breaks the news to him, so it's apparent that Drew still hoisted the money to at least some degree.
 * This is about All Grown Up! but it doesn't have a Just Bugs Me page so..Anyway, why are they all pre-teens? They act like high schoolers, they're treated like high schoolers, they have high school problems, etc.
 * The episode of Rugrats that inspired the series was originally a celebration of Rugrat's tenth anniversary and was intended to show what the characters would be like if they'd aged ten years. What with the majority of the cast being between one and three they'd have to be preteens. The problem was that the writers apparently had no idea how 11-13 year olds acted in real life and decided to just make them act high school aged. It's a fairly common thing seen in various media featuring kids: Grade schoolers act like middle schoolers, middle schoolers like high schoolers and high schoolers like college students. Seriously, I was still pretending to be Pokemon when I was 11, not going to concerts!
 * Why not age them up?
 * Actually, this whole "kids act like teenagers in television because they have no clue how kids really are" actually became Truth in Television. Kids see television as a role model for life sometimes, and they see "Oh, so this is how I'm supposed to be." Seriously. Remember those novels, "The Clique"? Before they all decided to go goth and read Twilight, they all acted like the girls in those novels. Even though we were barely out of elementary school. Besides that, kids always want to look and act more adult anyway. And are very mean to anyone who isn't as 'mature' as them. Tommy and the gang could be trying to be more adult, and their parents, being not-as-competent-as-they-think-they-are, would encourage this by humoring them.
 * It's pretty Fridge Brilliance there - Just hang around any elementary school and they'll start trying to act "older" so they fit in with the "Cool" crowd.
 * I said this on the Headscratchers for Daria, but when has any high-school-and-below-themed work EVER accurately represented those years? Sides, if they acted like "actual" eleven year olds, you'd be here talking about how annoying they are and how nobody can identify with the protagonists. We wouldn't actually have an original series if the characters in the original series acted like real babies that were like, one to three - there's that appeal of having the kids act older than they really are in fiction.
 * Well, they did act twice their age when they were babies. I mean seriously, Angelica acted like a six year old.
 * "All Grown Up" takes place nine years into the future. That means that they would be aged 9-13 (counting Dil). I thought they were about 15 when I first saw the show, and was shocked when I found out that most of them were only like, 10. Seriously, 10 year olds shouldn't even be old enough for middle school. Just look at Timmy Turner. He's also 10, and acts nothing like the kids in "All Grown Up". It could be that the writers didn't know how to make story-line out of things 10 year olds really do, but if that was the case, they should've just made them teenagers in high school.
 * In "The Word Of The Day", Angelica learns a cuss word, so her parents try to tell her to never say that word again, without telling her which word is the problem. So when she says it again in order to clarify, they punish her. I mean, I know her parents aren't exactly Parents Of The Year, but still, that just isn't playing fair.
 * Well considering the word in question was one she had never heard/said before, they probably (naively) assumed she knew what word was bad and was just being cute.
 * It wouldn't exactly be out-of-character for her to do so.
 * It's pretty common in real life for parents to not specify which word they don't want the kid to say and why they don't want them to say it (often because they're reluctant to say the word in front of the kid). At 3 kids have just grasped the concept of words, but are confused about the concept of how a word can be "bad".
 * This troper finds that a lot of parents tend to have an "ignorance of the rules is not an excuse" policy when it comes to punishment, especially with foul language.. I once got yelled at for using a curse word, and all I could do was sit there and wonder how I learned an ancient Egyptian mummy's curse and when I repeated it.
 * Still, it makes no sense. They basically punished her for being confused rather than saying the curse word. All she was asking for was verification.
 * Truth in Television - see below.
 * That's how this troper learned most of his curse words and the finger.
 * I thought it was kind of realistic to me...Most parents I knew punished kids for breaking rules they didn't know existed. My parents did it a lot and once yelled at me for talking back when I simply said, "But you never told us that was against the rules - how were we supposed to know?"
 * Just because I don't explicitly state that something is against the rules doesn't mean that you're off the hook for doing something that blatantly goes against what you know your mother and I want... Wait, this is my son editing this, right?
 * It wouldn't be right for Angelica's parents not to do anything, because the child will not know that there is anything wrong with the word if you don't.
 * But they should still tell her which word she's saying is inappropriate. Really, they can say something like "Angelica, (curse) is a bad word and you shouldn't say it." How hard is that?
 * Better yet... WHY DIDN'T THEY EVER ASK ANGELICA WHERE SHE LEARNED THE WORD FROM IN THE FIRST PLACE? This sheer ignorance is enough to make the Nostalgia Critic explode. Then again I doubt they would believe that Angelica learned it from Miss Carol.
 * How do the adults get Phil and Lil confused when they're always wearing different clothing except for one or two times? Lil in her typical outfit lacks pants (instead you can clearly see a diaper) and wears a dress, and Phil wears pants.
 * Maybe it's just when the adults are just in a rush, and not really paying attention when they get them mixed up.
 * The third movie. First of all, why does Spike's personality seem so different from his Rugrats one? Next, anyone else find the Thornberrys actually hindering the movies abilities? Next, Chaz states that it's his and Kira's anniversary...Huh? The kids haven't aged a day.
 * I don't remember much about that movie, but did Chaz specify one-year anniversary? It's not uncommon for new couples to excessively celebrate anniversaries that are only a month or two apart each time. And how on Earth would they get off the island without the Thornberries?
 * Well that would be a reasonable assumption but in one of the episodes following the 2nd movie Kira and Chas celebrate a four month anniversary.
 * Actually he said it was their honeymoon, see? Now it makes sense!
 * Exactly. I re watched the movie and never was it stated it was for there anniversary. I just assumed the original WMG was correct thats why i responded like such. As i said...They celebrated there 3,000 hour anniversary in ''The Big Sneeze". Thanks for pointing that out and correcting it.
 * The version I rewatched, a few moments before I made the WMG, had "anniversary" in one line near the beginning.
 * Am I the only one who thinks time actually passes in this series? Or maybe it's like Pokémon where years pass but no one ages.
 * The second movie. Everyone speaks English because..? Is Reptarland supposed to be billingual or mainly English, despite being in France? Also, Kira has an American accent. I'm presuming that she's either American, has lived in America, or learned English from someone with an American accent.
 * Maybe because the majority of fans who watch the show are presumeably american?
 * And?
 * Ever heard of Translation Convention? It's pretty much used by everything. It's the same reason why you wouldn't watch a Spanish dub of something only to find out it's actually Chinese.
 * And everyone knows how to suddenly speak French how? Plus the accents seem to imply they're speaking English.


 * Did Angelica realise Cynthia wasn't alive or not?
 * Angelica's three. Most three-year-olds talk to their inanimate toys. No problem here.
 * An episode of All Grown Up states that Angelica stopped playing with Cynthia when she was five.
 * Yeah, it's kind of like how some kids have imaginary friends. Cynthia is a parody of Barbie, and I have seen little girls talking to their Barbie dolls before. And it makes even more sense for Angelica, since she was an only child. She might've gotten bored sometimes without any siblings, so she had Cynthia
 * Why are Phil and Lil often mistaken for each other, when Lil is wearing a dress and Phil wears pants (among other design differences)?
 * Most of the time they're being mistaken, they're crying. Since you're trying to calm and reassure an upset child, you're probably not going to double check something like gender when you do so.
 * Is it me or was Lil more.. Adventurous then Phil for most of the series? Phil would get uncomfortable or squeamish more then her, with her often being the reason for his discomfort.
 * I personally never noticed that. Anyone got an example?
 * Nothing comes to minds, but I've noticed several scenes where Lil is enthusiastic about something gross but Phil is quite Squicked out.
 * Yeah, that's kind of true. Why is that a headscratcher, though?
 * Lil has been more prone to breaking down and crying than Phil who would otherwise say nothing, toughen up, or have a snarky remark. (first episode, first movie both come to mind)
 * What exactly happened in All Growed Up? It's implied they went into the future (or at least from their baby Point of View), but it's obviously not that. Also, I watched the special again, and it seems a bit heavy set on the lampshading of Rugrat things.
 * I think it's just supposed to be a look into their future for us, and they didn't really experience it. Of course, I haven't seen the special in years so I could be wrong.
 * This troper has seen the special, and I agree, that was rather strange. I guess the time machine worked so that the babies went to the future, but aged into their All Grown Up ages and accepted that they had to act like teens. Or maybe Tommy dreamed the special. In this troper's opinion, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot that would've involved the babies meeting their teen selves and realizing how they've changed and how they are the same.
 * Um, you do remember that previous episodes of this show included the babies entering a Reptar movie, acting out both the Passover and Chanukah stories, playing pretend through fairy tales, and imagining themselves as superheroes, right? The whole thing was probably just another Imagine Spot, and it would have stayed that way if the concept hadn't proven to be a successful pilot.
 * What was with Chuckie's haircut episode? He cut his hair once, and kept his normal look the rest of his life. Plus why'd they cut it off if he was going to go back to the same style? Did Chaz not like it, or is it simply just to keep status quo?
 * He probably just didn't like the hair cut. He tried to out, didn't like it, and didn't get it cut like that again. The status quo probably is the real reason, but as for an explanaion of how the status quo was kept, he didn't like it.
 * When Tommy was accidentally kidnapped, why was everyone Grandpa questioned acting suspiscious like they were in on it?
 * I always thought it was a little weird myself. Grandpa Lou should have contacted the police the moment he couldn't find Tommy. I'm surprised how unhelpful everyone was. Maybe they just didn't want to get into trouble with a super rich guy.
 * He made them uncomfortable. They're trying to live a quiet, unassuming life and he goes around asking questions. Also, from a production point of view, it helps the noir/detective story angle.
 * So the babies drove a giant dinosaur robot through the streets of Paris, destroyed half the city, climbed up the Eiffel Tower, dueled a giant Robo Snail, and their parents never found out?
 * They probably heard about it but didn't know it was their kids.
 * Sort've a fandom thing more than anything else, but - what it so 'sociopathic' about Angelica? She's three. Even when you take into account that she's acting older than she actually is (which all the kid characters do to some extent) she would be right about the age where the ego's set in, but she doesn't completely understand the needs and feelings of others. At worst, she's a mean-spirited and spoiled bully, but she's not evil.
 * I definitely agree that calling Angelica a sociopath goes too far, but this is likely because of the extent of her bullying towards the babies. Most of the time, she harasses them with no provocation.
 * The unprovoked harassment might just happen because she's bored. When this troper was around that age, she was the most selfish person in the world, without having been spoiled at all. Had my sister been younger than me, I would have been bullying her out of boredom instead of annoying her.
 * Actually this troper notices Angelica does things that no normal 3-year old wouldn't do such as making up scary messed up lies she tells the babies, having a extremely hard time telling the truth, the way she treats the babies, steals their sweets, breaks their toys, general disregard over their safety like the time she was almost responcible for getting Tommy mauled by a mean dog in "Barbeque Story"... AND NOT FEELING ANY REMORSE FOR IT! yeah, Angelica has got to be a sociopath because the behaviors of one matches the descriptions . This troper is surprised that Angelica's abuse towards the babies didn't cause permanent psychological damage or worse. This troper wonders what goes in in Angelica's psyche to make her such a "nightmare fuel station attendant"... at least she's not as bad as Ren Hoek from the adult Ren and Stimpy series.
 * Also the episode "The Trial" shows how really messed up she is like she was planning to draw on a wall and blame Tommy for it, then she has the idea to destroy Tommy's clown lamp why? Because she believes Phil and Lil were "playing a kids' game that they never invite the big kids to play". Here's the link that reviews the episode and points out how messed up Angelica is. http://abcnotjustforkids.blogspot.com/2009/11/recap-rugrats-trial.html
 * In the episode where Angelica convinces Tommy to "go bad," one really needs to look at all the damage he caused: he busted up nearly every single window in the house some of them really badly, destroyed thousands maybe millions of dollars worth of stuff in the house, but his parents never stop and throw him in his crib for a time-out at any time in all of this?! He's a one-year old baby, not a rapid coyote or something.
 * I just watched the episode. His parents follow the advice of Dr. Lipschitz again, which (from the book) says to "give the baby all the freedom he needs and his behavior will be over in 3-4 months." Yeah.
 * During "The Family Tree," Chaz assumes that Tommy misses his parents (who are away on a cruise) and is suffering from "separation anxiety." Later, while they're trying to cheer him up, Chaz's mother says, "He seems very happy to me," and Chaz responds, "We shouldn't be misled by the appearance of happiness." Then, at the end of the episode, Chaz sees Tommy and says, "Well gee, you look happy now. Golly, maybe you just needed to be with your friend for a while!" This line has always bugged the HELL out of me! Every time I hear it, it sounds like the writers saying, "We need to wrap up Chaz's role in the episode, but we only have about a minute left, so let's just have him say a real quick line, even though it totally contradicts what he said earlier in the episode." It would have been MUCH better if they just let it go as-is; I hardly think anyone would have been very bothered by the dangling "separation anxiety" thread, especially given the huge revelation that comes at the end of the episode (Didi's pregnancy with Dil). I know I'm probably making a huge deal over nothing, and I'm probably the only one who feels this strongly about this stupid line, but I felt the need to vent.