Meet the Robinsons/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Anvilicious: Anyone who watched the movie without realizing that the Aesop of the story is "keep moving forward" clearly wasn't paying attention.
  • Ear Worm: "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas. It's not a bad song, but boy does it ever get stuck in your head.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Tiny. Retroactively.
    • Lizzie, too.
  • Fridge Horror: The second time machine looks nicer because it was being designed for use by the consumer, what could possibly go wrong with that?
    • Sequel Hook!
    • There was a deleted scene in which Lewis takes Bowler Hat Guy back to the past with him to give him the chance to wake a younger Goob up in time to catch the ball, an offer he accepts with heartfelt thanks as he disappears from existence. Compare that to what actually happened in the movie, in which a nervous Bowler Hat Guy disappears leaving his trademark list behind, the final item being a question mark. Lewis later goes back to the past alone, and wakes Goob up himself, thusly flinging Bowler Hat Guy headlong into nonexistence. Keep Moving Forward!
    • Actually he's probably happy somewhere, maybe playing baseball. He didn't erase him from existance unless Goob died between then and then.
      • To explain, the Bowler Hat Guy was necessarily erased in that he no longer exists. Because Goob woke up, caught the ball, and won the game, chances are that his life is going to go into a different direction. The Bowler Hat Guy still exists, but simply as an adult Goob who'll have probably had a better life.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: At the science fair, Wilbur knocks over a box full of frogs and their owner makes him pick them all up. He isn't too pleased, calls her "annoying little girl", and she warns him: "I know karate". It's hilarious on later viewings when you realize the little girl is Franny in the past, Wilbur was calling his Mom an annoying little girl, and yes, she really does know karate.
  • Memetic Mutation: I have a big head and little arms!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Doris crosses it when she brutally murders Carl in order to steal the memory machine back. This serves very well as foreshadowing for what happens to the future as a result of her and Bowler Hat Guy changing it. Fortunately, both of these events are eventually Ret-Goned by the protagonists. And yes, it’s understandable that Lewis would not try to redeem Dor-15 like he did the Bowler Hat Guy.
    • This trope is subverted with Bowler Hat Guy. While he turns down a chance of redemption, he decides to change his ways after he realized he allowed Dor-15 to manipulate him into doing anything she wanted out of his grudge against Lewis.
  • No Yay: People pair Wilbur and Lewis. The weird time-traveling incest doesn't put them off.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: "Keep Moving Forward". Repeated over and over again both directly and thematically. And it works.
  • Squick: Ummm... well, at one point Lewis is almost adopted by his future wife!
    • And he calls her "Mom"... which is not helped by the fact that the studio took Franny's character model and covered it with a cloak for use as Lewis's mom.
  • Tear Jerker: The very end, revealing where the arc words were taken from, reduced many a sentimental viewer to tears.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Bowler Hat Guy, when his motivation is revealed. Goob, who finally snaps when his life goes downhill due to Lewis unintentionally causing him to miss the ball. Even if he's not intending for the world to hit the Bad Future that The Man Behind the Man is trying for, the fact is, he is still looking to deliberately ruin the man responsible for much of the awesome tech that the future runs on, thereby making a future that's much less advanced (if not quite a Crapsack World).