Peanuts/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: Subjective; while the TV specials are generally more well-known than the comic strips, there are a rather vocal section of fans who take their cues from Schulz as far as only treating the strips as canon and ignoring pretty much ANYTHING from cartoons, even if it's minor stuff like the cartoon giving Marcie a last name (which was never stated in the strips).
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: A lot, but specifically that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are Schoolgirl Lesbians. In-strip, though, both are clearly crushing on Charlie Brown. A bit further out, there are those who consider Peppermint Patty to be omnisexual/into bestiality, due to her firm belief that Snoopy is 'a funny-looking kid with a big nose'.
    • Similarly, there are some who consider Lucy's cruelty towards Charlie Brown as a mask for her own romantic feelings for him.
    • There are those who think that Schroeder is gay.
    • In the foreword to the 1975-76 collection, Robert Smigel (an SNL writer and the guy behind Triumph The Insult Comic Dog) argues against the popular view of Charlie Brown as a Determinator - see that entry below.

Charlie Brown didn't keep trying to kick Lucy's football out of some inner strength and Horatio Alger resolve we were supposed to admire. He did it because he was weak. He was flawed, and he couldn't help himself. But that's exactly why we love him.

    • The reason Violet constantly says My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad is because she doesn't want anyone to know that she wishes he'd spend more time with her.
  • Awesome Music:
    • Flash Beagle.
      • The first time we hear it (main time), Snoopy, as "Flashbeagle," goes into a 80s dance club and shows he has dance moves (and dressed in a "Flashdance" outfit--headband, torn sweats, leg warmers) to the humans there.
      • The second time we hear it (reprise) a student heckling Sally and Snoopy pulls out a boom box and turns it on. Snoopy hears the rhythm and music, causing him to dance all over again. He becomes Flashbeagle without the outfit while the other students dance. This gives Sally her first "A" in Show and Tell and lets her defend Snoopy's behavior to Charlie Brown.
    • For "She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown," when Woodstock whistles "O Mio Babbino Caro" by Puccini to help Peppermint Patty perform her ice-skating routine. Aside for a little piano, it's non-vocal and mostly acapella.
    • LINUS. AND. LUCY.
    • The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show opening themes, from Season 1's gentle piano keys to the jazzy "Let's Have A Party" of season 2.
  • Base Breaker: Lucy. People either love her for her personality or hate her for the very same reasons.
  • Cargo Ship: If taken to the extreme, Schroeder/Toy Piano and Linus/Security Blanket. Unfortunately, those two pairings might be the only two requited relationships.
  • Creator's Pet: Rerun, who pretty much usurped control over the strip in the last five-six years at the expense of every character not named Lucy, Charlie Brown, and Snoopy. Spike, Snoopy's older brother, also fits the bill as well.
  • Ear Worm: Linus and Lucy. How much so? A recent poll reported that the theme was the most recognizable piece of music in the world.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Snoopy. The first couple of years of the strip had him being a non-entity who never spoke and was treated as a secondary character. But he quickly became arguably the most famous character of the series.
    • Alternatively, you have Lucy (upstaging female lead characters Patty and Violet) and Peppermint Patty, who had her own supporting cast of sorts (Franklin, Marcie and occasionally José Peterson).
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Linus' belief in the Great Pumpkin is supposedly a metaphor for religious faith, but has been Jossed.
  • Fanon: Several elements of the strip, including the Little Red-Haired Girl's actual name and Marcie's last name (You're in the Super Bowl called her Marcie Johnson, but Schulz has said that he never considered the animated specials canon.)
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Fans of the newspaper strip versus fans of the animated cartoons, as far as whether or not character details that are expanded upon in the latter (such as Marcie's last name, the number and names of Snoopy's siblings, and what the Little Red-Headed Girl looks like) should count as canon.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The very last strip, like all comic strips, was written many weeks in advance...and was printed the day Charles Schulz died.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: At least two translations of the strip (the French one and the Swedish one) were renamed after Snoopy. He's also very popular in Japan.
    • It would be interesting to note that, if you look at Yoshi from the Super Mario series' look and personality, it's very similar to Snoopy. Even similar enough to think Yoshi might be an Affectionate Parody in tribute to Snoopy.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Listen to stories of bullying that have been in the news recently, then go read a Peanuts strip, or watch any of the specials (such as the Auditorium scenes in A Charlie Brown Christmas). Not as funny as it used to be, is it?
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: On June 10th, 1959, shortly after Sally's birth...

Linus: When I'm twenty-two and Sally is seventeen, do you think she'll go out with me?

  • I Am Not Shazam: When the strip first came out, people naturally assumed that Charlie Brown's name was "Peanuts". This frustrated Charles Schulz, who had predicted that this would happen.
  • Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: Many people thought the comic strip was called "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy". Sunday comics added subtitles such as "Featuring Snoopy" or "Featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown".
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Believe or not, Charlie Brown. In Peanuts fanfiction (yes, there is Peanuts fanfiction), he's been paired up with Peppermint Patty, The Little Red-Haired Girl, Lucy and Frieda. In the strip, there's also Marcie, who has a huge crush on Charlie Brown, and he also had a short-lived romance with a girl named Peggy Jean. And in the early days, Patty and Violet sometimes showed romantic interest in him.
  • Love to Hate: Lucy Van Pelt.
    • And Violet.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Lucy crosses it in "It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown", and she deliberately cost her team the game, and then managed to convince everyone that it was Charlie Brown's fault.
  • Narm Charm: The animated specials, particularly the very early ones, have a great deal of this.
  • The Scrappy: Rerun
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The strip sometimes suffers from this, due both to its own cultural ubiquity and to the influence it's had on countless other comics over the last half-century.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: "Happiness is a Warm Puppy", a strip quote that was famously turned into a gift book, leading to an entire "Peanuts Treasury of Happiness" series. Then again, it is the good Sweet Dreams Fuel of Tastes Like Diabetes.
  • Tear Jerker: Snoopy Come Home is the most depressing and gut-wrenching thing the franchise has ever produced. If you do not cry because of this film, you have no soul.
    • This strip from 1972 is the most heartbreaking thing ever.
      • The two strips after it though, are downright adorable, unless you are a Linus/Sally shipper.
      • The final strip was this for me as well as a heartwarming moment.
    • Why, Charlie Brown, Why?
    • While not as soul-crushing as Snoopy Come Home, A Boy Named Charlie Brown has a pretty melancholic feel to the whole thing. The basic plot is Charlie Brown dealing with the unrelenting misery and failure that is his life, getting a Hope Spot when he gets a chance at a regional spelling bee, and returning in disgrace after he loses.
  • Toy Ship: Many of the strip's male/female relationships would qualify as this.
  • Values Dissonance: One strip from the mid-fifties Played for Laughs the fact that Linus had mistaken his first snowfall for the fallout from a nuclear war.
  • Values Resonance: A Charlie Brown Christmas' denouncement of commercialism (which carries over into A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown as well) and presentation of the True Meaning of Christmas.
    • Which can lead to a bit of cognitive dissonance when those specials are interrupted so the characters can hawk Dolly Madison snack cakes and whatnot.
    • There's also a bunch of still-relevant political humor in You're (Not) Elected, Charlie Brown and the strips that it was based on. The fact that they haven't dated is probably due to Schulz lampooning the overall election process rather than a current election or event of his day.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Some people actually thought that Peppermint Patty was not a Tomboy, but a real boy. It doesn't help that in some of the animated adaptations, she is voiced by a boy, and that in the 80s and 90s, it became a little more acceptable for young males to have longer hair than it would be in the 50s-70s. (Where it was older men who had longer hair primarily!)
    • Plus, she's drawn with shorts -- Schulz would often draw the other girls with skirts.
  • We're Still Relevant, Dangit: One word: Flashbeagle.
    • In one of the last daily strips, Sally is writing a letter to Harry Potter. Not as obvious as the previous trope, but this was written around the time the books were becoming popular.
  • What an Idiot!: An entire arc was dedicated to Peppermint Patty attending a "cheap private school" Snoopy recommended and not realizing it was an obedience school until after she graduated and the principal told her when she showed him her diploma as proof that she doesn't need to go back to school.
    • She then blamed Snoopy, and looked for him in order to beat him up, only to forgive him when he saved her from the cat who lived next door to Charlie Brown (which she had mistaken for Snoopy in a cat suit).
    • Let's not forget that Patty for the longest time thought Snoopy was a "funny-looking kid with a big nose." It was not until a series of strips in 1974, when Patty announced she was quitting school and moving into "Snoopy's guest cottage," that an irate Marcie finally pointed out the truth to her.
    • And a series of strips from 1982 or so when Patty decided to transfer to a school for gifted children because she thought it meant they would give her presents.
  • The Woobie: Charlie Brown, whenever his optimism is crushed for the umpteenth time.
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