Toontown Online

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Toontown Online was pretty much what it says in the title, a town full of toons, online! It was an MMORPG featuring falling flower pots, cream pies, and corruption of humanity. Unlike most MMORPGs, this one had a basic turn-based system and could literally make peoples' head explode. No, literally, when a cog lost a battle, its head exploded!

Sadly, after a long, slow decline, Disney shut down Toontown Online in September 2013. However, a team of dedicated fans recreated the game using public and public-domain information, calling it Toontown Rewritten; this somewhat more than just Spiritual Successor is free to play.

Not to be confused with that place where cartoon characters live.

Tropes used in Toontown Online include:
  • Abnormal Ammo - Cog moves such as Double Talk, Buzzword, Jargon, Red Tape, and Pecking Order.
  • Absent-Minded Professor - Flippy and Professor Pete. Pretty much every other toon who claims to be a professor and gets caged by the V.P.
  • All Deserts Have Cacti - In the Western themed furniture sets.
  • Allegedly Free Game - It claims to be free to play, with perks for subscribers. Of course, those perks include the ability to venture out of Toontown Central and its three streets, to learn more than the first four levels of Gags (attacks) of the two starting Gag tracks, buy clothes for your Toon and furniture for your house (among other things) from Clarabelle's Cattlelog, play games other than the few Mini Games in the first Playground, and so on.
    • And buy items for friends.
    • It has recently gotten a lot better with this - free accounts now allow you to go anywhere (however, you can't buy anything outside of Toontown Central), use the non-crappy chat system (Speedchat Plus), buy from the Cattlelog and have up to 50 friends. Unfortunately, now free users can't go into Cog Buildings or buy stuff outside Toontown Central for some reason. Ah, well. At least the subscription price is no longer redonkulous.
  • Always Accurate Attack - There are S.O.S. Toons who can make it so that the next round of the Toons' attacks hit. There is also an inverse where some S.O.S. Toons make it so that the next round of Cogs' attacks miss.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield - Go ahead and encounter a cog in Minnie's Melodyland or maybe Daisy's Gardens.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population - Toons. Some Cogs, too.
  • Ambulance Chaser - The almighty Ambulance Chaser, who is a Lawbot.
  • Amoral Attorney - All (or nearly all) Lawbots.
  • Anticlimax Boss - The Chief Justice
  • Anvil on Head
  • Arcadia - Don't you wish you can visit those places in the rural racetracks? The only noise there is are the racecars...
  • A Taste of Power - In the middle of the Toontorial, Clerk Clara shows you what gags you can earn if you train.
  • Awesome but Impractical - Trap gags, if nobody can use a lure gag to trap the Cog into the trap gag.
    • The entire Drop Track in general. While they are second only to Trap Gags in terms of damage done, they have the lowest base accuracy of any gag track. Unless you have a friend who is simultaneously training Squirt Gags (very high accuracy), you're gonna be gag camping for a looooong time.
  • Awesome Yet Practical - When you are all alone in multi-Cog battles, Lure Gags are your best friend since they put the affected Cog to sleep.
  • Bad Boss - Bossbots
  • Ballroom Blitz - Not necessarily a ballroom, but the C.E.O. battle is supposed to be a sophisticated and well-mannered meeting about golf or plotting the toons' death. Until you sabotage his plans by making the guests explode with bad drinks...
  • Banana Peel
  • Band Land - Minnie's Melodyland
  • Biting the Hand Humor- The Cogs can easily be interpreted as a Take That against the Eisner-era Disney executives themselves, what with their efforts to suppress Toontown just as Executive Meddling kept making things worse and worse over in the Disney animation departments.
  • Big Fancy House - The Clubhouse in the Bossbot HQ.
  • Big Labyrinthine Building - Factories, Mints, and District Offices.
  • Bottomless Bladder
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory - Parodied with the Cashbot Promotion track. Once you have the Cashbot Disguise, you have to get a certain number of Cogbucks (by beating Cashbots or taking over the Mints) to see the C.F.O. for a "promotion" (aka fighting him).
    • The lure gag track consists of fake cogbucks used to make cogs come closer to the user For Massive Damage if you want to use another gag or to leading them into a trap or to temporarily stun them.
  • But Thou Must! - Not only do you have to do all of the non-"Just for Fun" Tasks in each Playground before the game sends you to the next one, there are several points in the game where it's very easy to end up in a Playground with only a single, very difficult Task, unable to proceed. The first obvious spot would probably be Daisy Gardens where you have to get a key from a Cog species found only inside buildings, but the exact Cogs you face in each building is random, and that species is quite rare at the levels of the Toons that would be going for the Key.
  • Capital City - The 4 Cog Headquarters
  • City Noir - The 4 Cog Headquarters
  • Chekhov's Gun/Hobby - When you play the minigames, there is one minigame where you have to shoot yourself out of the cannon and aim yourself into a big tub of water. Later in the game, when you fight the CJ, guess what you have to use?
    • Similarly, the 'treasures' that heal you in the main playgrounds reappear in the CFO battle and the golf course in Chip n' Dale's acres reappear in the CEO battle.
  • Chokepoint Geography - If you don't have teleport access to an area in Toontown, you can only get through there by walking
    • Same with the Cog Headquarters, since you can't get teleport access there
  • Cloudcuckoolander - Pretty much everybody.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience - The four types of Cogs have distinct logos and clothing colors that you can easily tell apart. About the only way you can tell a Short Change from a Cold Caller at a distance (see Palette Swap below).
  • Combat Medic - In most boss battles, there will always be one person who has stocked up on a lot of Toon-Up gags or Toon-Up and/or Gag-Up phrases to help.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive - The cogs, especially the C.E.O.
  • Courtroom Episode - The Chief Justice battle. The big guy himself even makes several references to Courtroom Antics as you make your case.
  • Cutesy Name Town - Guess.
  • Cutscene Boss - The C.F.O. and the V.P.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory! - Toontown has a relatively unusual control scheme. Movement is arrow keys only (as opposed to arrow keys or the WASD keys in some other games), and you don't press any specific key to start chatting, just start typing. If you've been away from the game for a while, you may end up typing long strings of characters when you're trying to walk around. Jumping is also different, with the Ctrl key instead of spacebar.
  • Dance Party Ending - When a battle finishes, the surviving Toons dance while gag experience and Toontask updates are completed.
  • Dark Is Not Evil - Donald's Dreamland has no references to nightmares, only puns on sweet dreams and sleep. The Cogs, on the other hand....
  • Dark World - All 4 of the Cog Headquarters, and Donald's Dreamland.
  • Damsel in Distress - Anybody who gets caged by the V.P.
  • The Dreaded - The C.E.O.
  • Doomed Hometown - Only if all you do is play games all day, which everybody in Toontown knows is foolish.
    • This can happen most often in Donald's Dreamland if toons get lazy. There is one server (called Districts in the game) where people can cluster around for things called "bean fests". In such cases, hardly anything gets done in Dreamland, and the streets may become the only reference to nightmares you'll ever see there.
  • Dream Land - Donald's Dreamland
  • Dreadful Musician - Toons who specialize in Sound gags and have Sound gag trees.
  • Drop the Hammer - the Giant Gavels in the Chief Justice battle
  • Duel Boss - Sometimes brave/foolish toons will go and fight Bosses alone.
  • Dungeon Shop - Completely averted- Cog buildings and HQs have no shops; you have to either leave or retake the building. Besides, shops are in the playgrounds.
  • Easily Angered Shopkeeper - Sometimes you'll run into a toontask with a very mean shopkeeper.
  • Eccentric Townsfolk
  • Edible Ammunition - The entire Throw Gag Section features cupcakes to pies to wedding cakes.
  • Environmental Symbolism - See Anvilicious.
  • Eternal Engine: The Sellbot HQ Factories are the closest the game gets to this.
  • Everything's Better with Indexes
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness - The Sellbot Towers.
  • Fanfare - There is a trumpet gag.
    • You also get a real one when you maximize certain stats, such as once for every gag track you complete and one for maximum gardening shovel points.
  • Fantastic Racism - Each Toon can only have six of the seven gag tracks. This is like choosing which "group" to be a part of since you become "a Toon that doesn't have [blank]." There are two tracks you have to have, though. The optional ones are Toon-Up, Trap, Sound, Lure, and Drop. Sound in particular is often used as a Game Breaker when everyone uses it at once, to the point where everyone is expected to have it. If it happens to not suit your playing style or you just don't like it, good luck once you meet the jerkasses.
  • Fishing Minigame - There's a fishing pond in every Playground and on every Street. There's Fishing BINGO every Wednesday, sometimes you have to fish for a Toon Task's objectives, and sometimes you fish just because it's one of the most lucrative methods of gaining Jellybeans.
  • Four Is Death - There are 4 kinds of cogs; Bossbots, Lawbots, Sellbots, and Cashbots.
  • Funetik Aksent - Dun on purpus to mayk puns luk punnier.
  • Fun Personified - Most of the Toons qualify. That's... probably the very reason various practical jokes are their main weapon.
  • Garden of Evil - The Cog golf courses.
  • Global Currency - Jellybeans
    • Cogs use Cogbucks
  • Good Hurts Evil - Or maybe it's fun hurts boring...
    • Actually, cogs can't laugh or their inner mechanisms explode
      • Then how come cogs go "Tee Hee" when a Cogs Miss SOS is used? It's more like cogs explode when they're forced to laugh extensively.
  • Green Aesop - Toons = Good Guys, Cogs = Bad Guys... Daisy's Gardens are from the Toons, Sellbot Headquarters are from the Cogs... Daisy's Gardens is the bountiful green nature place, Sellbot Headquarters are full of factories and the skies and ground are darkened to almost pitch black by pollution...
  • Green Hill Zone - Does Daisy's Gardens count?
  • Hailfire Peaks - When a cog takes over a building, it can be the only grayish-blackish thing in sight.
  • Halloweentown / Big Boo's Haunt - During Halloween, the entire town is decorated with all things Halloween-y.
  • Hammerspace - The gag pouch/bag/backpack; the place where you keep your gags.
    • Cogs also have their own kind of hammerspace where they get their attacks.
  • Hazardous Water / Making a Splash - The Squirt Gag-track.
  • Hello, Insert Name Here
  • The Heartless - Cogs
  • Improbable Weapon User - Toons
    • Cogs too. In contrast to the Toons' cartoony practical jokes, Cogs mostly use office supplies.
  • Improvised Weapon - The C.F.O. batttle stars the magnet cranes and safes. The C.J. battle stars the evidence from the witness' stand. The C.E.O. stars golf clubs and seltzer bottles.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun - Oh so many things...
    • The second Toon-up gag is a megaphone for telling jokes.
    • Don't forget the side and back doors on buildings! When you approach them, they tell knock-knock jokes, with a laugh track and rimshot following the punchline.
  • Instant 180-Degree Turn - In some minigames such as the jungle one or the cog escape one.
  • Instrument of Murder - Bugles to severed Opera Singers' heads
  • Insurmountable Waist High Fence - You can jump in the game, even jump high enough over fences, but you still can't get past them!
  • Inverse Law Of Lethality And Accuracy - In the game, the scary gags that seem like they would be the most lethal(the entire drop gag track) has the worst accuracy. No wonder they're the least chosen gag tracks.
    • Drop Gag accuracy greatly improves when the Cog has been hit by Squirt or Sound Gags in that same round (Drop goes last of all gags).
  • Joke Item - The first sound gag, at first...
  • Jungle Japes - One of the minigames take place in a jungle, despite Toontown not having one at all
  • Kiss of Life - The third Toon-up gag is lipstick, in which you have to kiss someone to restore some of their health. Can be played for laughs when a toon does it to the same-gendered toon
  • Level Grinding - Required for most of the higher-level stuff. Gag "camping" is one of the most common, where you fill up with just one or two types of gags, and go hunt lower-level street Cogs to get experience. Gardening is the most annoying, because you can only pick a flower once a day, and there's only ten flowers you can plant at a time. Worse, even the max-level flowers only give you one point per flower, requiring over a month of real time to level from 7- to 8-bean flowers.
  • Lighter and Softer - than most MMORPGs
  • Lethal Lava Land - Can you believe they have lava in the same place they make money!?!?
  • Mad Mathematician - Bean Counters and Number Crunchers
  • Mad Scientist - In the old introduction, the cogs were made by a mad scientist, but never intended on them to be released by the world. Some rich snob came along and released it instead.
  • Made of Explodium - Luckily the cogs don't hurt you when they explode.
  • Marathon Level - The Back Nine
  • The Maze - The Maze Game
  • Mecha Mooks - Cogs
  • Mind Control Device - Hypno-goggles
  • Minigame Zone - All of the Trolleys
  • Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate - The Spin Doctors and possibly the Ambulance Chasers, both from the Lawbots.
  • Mr. Fixit - A few of the people who give out toontasks.
  • Non-Lethal KO - Cogs explode out of laughter, and toons don't die, they get depressed!
  • No Sense of Humor - The reason why Cogs die (supposedly of laughter, though there is no laughter animation) when you pelt them with Gags.
  • Palette Swap - Go and look at Short Changes and Cold Callers, and tell me they don't look the same. Double Talkers and Two-Faces.
    • Most attacks can be like this too, the only difference between the animation of the Whole Cream Pie and the Whole Fruit Pie is that the Cream Pie is bigger, and the splat they make when they hit a cog is different colors.
    • Bloodsuckers and Movers & Shakers. Maybe Ambulance Chasers, too.
  • One-Man Army: With all of this game's focus on teamwork and friendship, you would not expect something like this. However, if you know what you're doing, along with going to collect the necessary equipment, your toon could become this anywhere in the game. Just ask this guy.
  • Palmtree Panic - Some parts of Donald's Dock
  • Personal Raincloud - The second-to-last squirt gag.
    • Some Cogs have their own variations on this.
  • Pie in the Face - Fruit Pie, Cream Pie, Birthday Cake, or Wedding Cake?
  • Player Headquarters - Toon Headquarters
  • Port Town - Donald's Dock.
  • Power of Friendship - Some bosses and buildings cannot be finished by one person. There is even a toontask that asks the player to 'Make a Friend'.
  • Punny Name - Too much to name. Get it?
  • Quicksand Sucks
  • Railroad Tracks of Doom - The Cashbot Headquarters, and the final Trap Gag.
  • Rich Bitch - Short Changes, Penny Pinchers, Tightwads, Money Bags, Robber Barons, and the C.F.O. himself.
  • Sad Clown - Anybody who reached zero in their Laff Meter.
    • As well as the fairly common Sad Clown Fish.
  • Screaming Woman / Screaming Warrior - The final sound gag, the Opera Voice.
  • Shout-Out - There are a few of these here and there; For example, one of the buildings in Donald's Dock is called "What's Up, Dock?".
  • Single Palette Town - Most of the areas of Toontown have their own special colors, especially the Brrrgh and Donald's Dreamland
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World - The Brrrgh
  • Soft Water - The final Toon-up gag is a high dive into a cup of water.
  • Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom - Many of the Cog Headquarters have these, most notably the Sellbot factory which has an area that is quite literally the definition of this trope.
  • Spiteful AI - In the Cog Thief minigame, the cogs try to steal barrels that contain gags, and you try to throw pies at them to make them explode. If they hit you, they explode and you fly into the air. When this happens, the cogs currently on screen will turn away from the money and try to run into you, even though they will instantly explode upon running into you.
  • Spit Take - The second Squirt gag is a glass of water. Guess what you do with it.
  • Stuff Blowing Up - Cogs.
  • Stupid Boss - Bossbots, the C.E.O., The Chief Justice, the C.F.O., and the V.P.
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything - Try using the New Friend command on someone other than a player.

Use on a Cog: A few seconds of waiting, and then "(Cog name) says no, thank you."
Use on your own Doodle: "(Doodle name) is already your BEST friend."
Use on someone else's Doodle: "(Doodle name) jumps around, runs in circles and licks your face."

  • Tickle Torture - Inverted. Tickling restores health.
  • Too Awesome to Use - Level 7 Gags, SOS Toons, Unite Phrases, Cog Summons, and Pink Slips especially.
  • Toon Town - It's in the name, yo.
  • Trap Door - The level 5 Trap gag is a trap door.
  • Two-Faced - Obviously, the Two Faces and Double Talkers
  • Noob Cave - Toontown Central
  • Unfortunate Names - Go to any of the buildings and see the nametag over their heads. You'll understand by then.
  • Unusual Euphemism - "I want to stick my long-necked giraffe up your fluffy bunny."
  • Wackyland - The whole game
  • What Do You Mean It's for Kids? - No, really.
    • Well, there is the fact that getting very far into the game requires a ton of repetition and grinding, things that kids shouldn't enjoy for very long.
    • The Cogs themselves and their attacks focus on business related puns, in which older players would probably understand the meaning of the puns more.
  • Where It All Began - The last toontask takes you back to Flippy.
  • White Gloves - They must be all the rage since every single Toon is wearing them.
  • World Map - It's in your Shticker Book
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz - You'll understand once you see some of the NPCs' names...