Courage the Cowardly Dog/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Care for a bit of sport before dying, dear boy?"

    • The Great Fusilli initially seems like a charming (if somewhat sinister) traveling magician taking his show on the road, and allows Courage, Eustace and Muriel to perform for an imaginary audience. However, his true evil nature is revealed when Courage stumbles upon a back room full of lifeless human puppets. It turns out that Fusilli is a Serial Killer of sorts who uses enchanted strings that turn people into lifeless puppets, effectively killing them so he can play around with their lifeless bodies for his entertainment. As one would expect, Courage defeats the villainous magician, but not before Eustace and Muriel have been turned into puppets, leaving Courage to essentially play with their lifeless bodies in order to pretend that they're still alive. Thankfully Negative Continuity is in effect, but it's still considered to be among the darkest, creepiest, and most downright disturbing episodes in the series for a very good reason.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome:
    • The soundtrack to the episode "The Tower of Dr. Zalost".
    • Also the end of the Doc Gerbil episode during the boat chase scene.
    • the person who composed that disturbing yet awesome theme in "Windmill Vandals" deserves a medal.
    • The subtle organ music that plays during certain events. It plays quite a bit clearer in the quilt club episode, one place where it's really noticeable.
    • Katz's Leitmotif, also a good case of Hell Is That Noise.
    • The Snowman's song from "Snowman's Revenge".
    • The Great Fusilli's theme, in its entirely appropriate Creepy Circus Music style.
    • The Crisis Theme, once/when it reaches its maximum intensity.
  • Ear Worm: The themes for Doc Gerbil and King Ramses, as well as Flan King's hypnotic command to "buy Flantasy Flan".
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Freaky Fred.
    • Di Lung. The recurring Asian guy.
    • King Ramses also qualifies for some reason.
    • The computer.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Di Lung leans heavily on many Chinese and Asian stereotypes and is very much unlikeable (to the point where he actually makes Eustace look like a good person at times).
  • Evil Is Cool: Say what you will about Katz, but he is definitely one seriously smooth bastard.
    • Despite being the absolute biggest douchebag in the entire series, Di Lung is basically how "cool" of a person Eustace wishes he could be (wears utterly badass-looking sunglasses and drives a vintage hot rod, is obscenely rich and lives in a mansion, is a Mad Scientist who can easily just build a better dog for himself rather than having to look for a new one, is actually able to survive on his own without being utterly reliant on his wife, etc).
    • Dr. Zalost, who rides around in a mechanical castle and has absolutely amazing theme music.
  • Evil Is Sexy: the Queen of the Black Puddle is one of CTCD's only conventionally attractive characters...and eats people.
    • Katz also easily qualifies if you're a furry...although his voice certainly helps...
  • Fan Nickname: The "Perfect Trumpet Thingy" for the blue thing in the first of Courage's nightmares in "Perfect" and "Violin Girl" for the Demon Head in "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City".
    • Courage, Muriel, and Eustace together as a group is usually called "the Bagges" or "the Bagge family" by fans.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Frequently.
  • Hype Backlash: Mostly a result of how much people such as The Mysterious Mr. Enter have boasted about how "emotional" and "terrifying" they consider the show to be (despite the fact that the show is mostly just a Darker and Edgier Scooby Doo mixed with a Darker and Edgier Looney Tunes, with a ton of Surreal Horror and Art Shifting thrown in).
  • Jerkass Woobie: Eustace, in his more humane moments.
  • Les Yay: Kitty and Bunny from the episode "The Mask".
  • Magnificent Bastard: Katz.
  • Memetic Mutation: "Watch where you're goin', ya foo!"
    • STUPID DOG! YA MADE ME LOOK BAD! OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Eustace crosses this in "Ball for Revenge" when he gathers up many villains to kill Courage.
  • Nightmare Fuel: A lot of the more surreal stuff. It even has it's own page.
  • Non Sequitur Scene:
    • A dragon coming out of absolutely nowhere(pun not intended) and eating Eustace in the last five seconds of the episode.
    • Eustace getting mauled by a Siberian Tiger while deer hunting.
    • Seems as though animals are always coming out of nowhere to attack Eustace, as he got attacked by a giant squirrel in "Family Business".
    • Most of Courage's nightmares from the last episode could count, especially that blue thing. It really had no importance to the rest of the episode except to scare you straight and it really wasn't seen or mentioned again in those other nightmares.
    • The way Katz gets defeated in "Katz Under the Sea".
    • Di Lung appearing out of absolutely nowhere during important scenes and then yelling "Watch where you're going, ya foo;!" for a nearly-always hilariously hypocritical reason. At least ten times, no less.
    • "Snowman's Revenge" has Snowman breaking out into a So Bad It's Good musical number about... a chilly love story? Huh?
    • "Courage Meets The Mummy" opens with an archeologist dusting off a gem inside the Mayan temple, which then shoots out a beam of light which gets reflected off some things and causes a disco ball to come out of the ceiling while some music plays for a brief moment. Afterwards, the archeologist just shrugs it off and continues dusting off the gem stone.
  • Paranoia Fuel: Kitty could see Eustace and Muriel doing things in secret (sneaking cake, not fixing things) when they couldn't tell.
  • Periphery Demographic
  • Seasonal Rot: A lot of season three and four episodes aren't nearly as memorable as pretty much every episode in season one and two. They're still considered pretty good, though.
  • Signature Scenes: "You're Not Perfect", "Return The Slab" and "The Violin Girl" are easily the show's three most iconic examples of nightmare-inducing Art Shifts ...which are the main reasons for its popularity.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: See the Anvilicious entry above this one.
  • Squick:
    • The idea of on of the Valkyries falling in love with the incredibly disgusting Troll king, and soon the other Valkyries and the trolls falling in love is just gross.
    • The entire "The Clutching Foot" episode. Namely the scene where Courage licks the foot as a cure.
  • Tear Jerker: "The Last Of The Star Makers". *sniffle*
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many of the show's secondary characters get little screen time despite their plot potential, but Di Lung especially stands out, being a rich and badass Asian version of Eustace who usually only appears for about five seconds per episode (so that he can yell "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING, YA FOOL" at random people as one of the show's many Comic Relief sources).
  • Ugly Cute: Most of the show's characters, due to its art style. One example is The Hunchback Of Nowhere.
  • Uncanny Valley: The Magic Tree of Nowhere, the first nightmare in the episode "Perfect", the Harvest Moon in "The House Of Discontent", the scary violin-playing girl in "Courage In the Big Stinkin' City", and King Ramses' in "King Ramses' Curse".
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: A lot of people probably think Courage is for an adult audience with all the strange horror.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?
  • The Woobie: Courage takes a lot of crap, and a lot of the other characters have dealt with troubling pasts.
    • The Hunchback of Nowhere.
    • In direct contrast to most "villains", Freaky Fred is a perfectly kind individual whose shaving... thing lost him his pet, his girlfriend, his job, and landed him in a mental institution.
    • Iron Woobie: Courage again.
      • And Freaky Fred, again. He may be sympathetic, but he's still, well, freaky and he seems to take the bad things in his past in stride.
    • Jerkass Woobie: Eustace - his family has been just as bad to him as he's been to everybody else, and his life is largely a study in failure.
      • Kitty from "The Mask". Her hatred of dogs is perfectly justified when you find out what happened to her best friend...
    • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dr. Zalost.
      • The Snowman. The poor guy lost all of his friends and family because of global warming, is it really any wonder that he wanted to freeze everything in the entire world?
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