Ben 10: Omniverse

The fourth iteration of the Ben 10 franchise following Ben 10: Ultimate Alien.

The Ultimatrix is gone and the real Omnitrix is in. With Gwen off to college and Kevin joining her, Ben is joined by newly minted Plumber recruit named Rook Blonko. As the two hunt down alien criminals around Bellwood, they come across both an alien sub-city and a plot by one of Ben's old enemies that not only threatens Ben himself but the whole galaxy.

Tropes used in Ben 10: Omniverse include:

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Contumelia present themselves as what holds the most sway over the viewer's heart. Rook sees his father, Malturant sees himself, Skurd, one of their creations, sees blobs of energy, and Ben... sees the Mr. Smoothy mascot.
• A Wizard Did It:
  • Done in the 7th episode, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Smoothies"; In order to justify any Series Continuity Errors or Retcons in Omniverse, the universe is destroyed by the Anihilaarg, and Ben rebuilds a copy of the Universe as Alien X albeit with errors here and there. Many fans criticised this idea, feeling it was a Voodoo Shark and declared the episode Fanon Discontinuity as a result.
  • "Universe vs. Tennyson" explains away all the Art Shifts by the Celestialsapiens being bored.
• The Ace: Feedback.
• Aborted Arc: As a result of Dwayne McDuffie's passing, many of the arcs he had planned for Omniverse either failed to pan out as he had planned, most notably Charmcaster's, or were simply cut.
• Alien Invasion: The Incursean Empire invades Earth in the third season finale.
• And the Adventure Continues...: In the Grand Finale, Ben and Rook call up Gwen and Kevin so they can go on a galactic roadtrip.
• Animal Wrongs Group: Pax.
• Art Shift: Much more noticeable than the Ben 10 to Alien Force shift.
• The Assimilator: Ordinary Galvanic Mechamorphs temporarily merge with other technology and upgrade it. Malware absorbs the technology into himself permanently.
• Awesomeness By Analysis: Brainstorm. As him, Ben deduced that the Vengers would fall apart in short order and he proceeded to do nothing but sit around until it happened.
• Badass Normal: Rook may be an alien but he uses technology to fight.
• Bare Your Midriff: Subdora.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Why Zed defects to Kevin after Khyber abandons her.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Ben and Kai.
• Big Bad:
  • Khyber in Season 1. In truth however, he was The Dragon to the real Big Bad, Malware.
  • The Alliance (Khyber, Malware, and Psychobos) in Season 2.
  • The Incursean Empire in Season 3.
  • Albedo in Season 4.
  • Zs'Skayr in Season 5.
  • The Rooters in Season 6.
  • Maltruant in Season 8.
• Bizarre Alien Biology:
  • The Gourmands, Upchuck's people, all share "a swarm gastronomy." Their stomachs are linked to the "bladder dimension." Even Rook considers it disgusting.
  • Methanosians (Swampfire) have a blooming period.
  • Galvans have two distinct brains. One controls their higher functions leaving the other to manage their subconscious.
• Built With Lego: Blox.
• The Bus Came Back: Several of Ben's classic aliens, such as XLR8 and Ditto, return.
  • Put on a Bus: While several of his UAF roster, such as Jetray and Fasttrack, disappear.
• The Collector: Collectimus is the universe's biggest Ben 10 fan.
• Contrived Coincidence: In "For a Few Brains More", Gwen and Kevin just happen to be in Earth's orbit for an astrophysics project at the same time that the heroes are going down.
• Crossover Alternate Universe: No-Watch Ben's timeline. It's just a world for the other Omnitrix bearers to play around in.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Gwen and Kevin as the latter accompanies the former to college. Not to attend, he just lives near her campus.
  • Vilgax has a lot less to do than in previous shows.
• Denser and Wackier: By far the most slapstick show of the original Ben 10 saga.
• Didn't Think This Through: Kevin choosing to take the Taydenite Car. As Ben and Argit lampshade, who could possibly have enough money to buy it?
• Disappointed by the Motive: Of all the reasons that Kevin could be running from the Tetramand legal system, the gang are exasperated that it's down to his car's engine block.
• Divergent Character Evolution: After being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Grey Matter, Brainstorm is now written as an Awesomeness By Analysis type, being much more useful in a fight.
• The Empire: The Incursean Empire.
• Entitled to Have You: Princess Looma's attitude towards Ben. In her defence, the Tetramand legal system is backing her up but it hardly excuses her invading Earth to stake her claim on him. While he's on a date.
• Evil Knockoff: The Nemetrix to the Omnitrix.
• Evil Versus Evil: In "Vilgax Must Croak", it's mentioned that the eponymous tyrant is warring with the Incurseans.
• Famous Last Words: In the face of death, Ben shouts "I can't believe my last words are snot-rocket!"
• For Want of a Nail: When it comes to Alternate Universes, it seems that the key difference between Ben becoming a hero or not is if Grandpa Max is still around.
• Half-Identifying Hybrid: Ester. Despite being half-human, everyone just treats her as a Kraaho.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Will Harangue's smear campaign against Ben is still going strong.
• Hostile Terraforming: The Kraaho, who thrive in a superheated environment (superheated as in 38 degrees Celsius counts as a frigid winter), attempt to boil Earth and make it more to their liking.
• Informed Attribute:
  • The "perfected" Omnitrix really doesn't seem so perfect. Justified, or Hand Waved, in "For a Few Brains More" where Azmuth says that Ben is too rough with it but that only raises the question of why it was built like that.
  • Everyone speaks about what a great couple Kai and Ben are. But they're really not. They seem to genuinely loathe each other. Even when they're married, their banter is more antagonistic than playful.
• Interspecies Romance: For most of the series, Ben is in a semi-serious relationship with Ester who's half-human/half-Kraaho.
• Kid From the Future: Spanner is really Ken Tennyson.
• Legion of Doom: The Vengers, formed of Billy Billions and Mazuma, Kangaroo Kommando and Captain Nemesis.
• Lighter and Softer: Tonally much closer to the OS than Alien Force or Ultimate Alien.
• Line-of-Sight Name: Ben names "Blitzwolfer" after he happens to see a CNN broadcast of Wolf Blitzer.
• Made of Indestructium: Tetramand engine blocks, forged from a metal they call Infinitum. How do you think Kevin's car survived all the beatings it took?
• Monster Clown: Zombozo is back.
• The Multiverse: Forms the premise of the last two episodes of Season 5. Among the worlds include:
  • The world of Ben 23. A blue-tinted world where a younger Ben used the Omnitrix to become a celebrity.
  • The world of Gwen 10.
  • A Mad Max style world that's home to Mad Ben (who has an Australian accent for no sufficiently explained reason).
  • The world of Bad Ben who is a Card-Carrying Villain.
  • The world of Benzarro, who was Patient 10 in a Zombie Apocalypse.
  • The world of Nega Ben who comes from a world of emo hipsters that's described as being, essentially, Seattle or Portland.
  • The No-Watch timeline, a Crossover Alternate Universe where the Omnitrix seemingly never existed.
• My Future Self and Me:
  • Happens whenever Ben 10,000 shows up.
  • Happens to Animo in "Animo Crackers." All this does is make him twice as incompetent.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: According to Azmuth 23, Blukic and Driba are brilliant scientists... by Earth standards. For a couple of Galvans, they're remarkably unintelligent.
• Numbered Homeworld: The Gourmands, Upchuck's people, come from Peptos XI. Though given a good justification. If the Gourmands are unable to drive away the invaders, they'll destroy their homeworld. Why do you think it's called Peptos XI?
• Poorly-Disguised Pilot: All the episodes based around Gwen at college, "Mystery, Incorporeal" in particular, were attempts, not very subtle ones, to get her her own series on CN Asia.
• Precursors: The Contumelia.
• Reality Ensues:
  • Though the Omnitrix is very advanced technology, it's still technology. Being too rough with it, or not using it properly, as Ben does, will result in glitches and malfunctions.
  • Will Harangue got away with painting Ben as a Hero with Bad Publicity in the UAF era on account of how covertly Ben operated. After Ben publicly saved Earth from an Alien Invasion, people were a lot less willing to listen to Harangue. Didn't help that Harangue openly worked with the Incurseans.
  • Ben has over seventy aliens at this point. And with his preferences towards a handful of transformations, there are some aliens, such as Ditto and Snare-Oh, that he hasn't used in years.
• Retcon:
  • Ancillary media regarding the previous shows suggested that the Tetramands were a Bronze Age culture. This show depicts them as a spacefaring power.
  • "The Rooters of All Evil" enacts a massive one. Osmosians are, in fact, not an alien race. They're a human sub-species and Devin Levin, Kevin's father, never existed. It was all an elaborate ruse by Servantis.
• Revisiting the Roots: The series returns to the Denser and Wackier set-up of the original show rather than the Darker and Edgier UAF era with Ben mis-transforming more often and Grandpa Max coming back to the forefront.
• Ridiculously-Human Robots: Mazuma.
• Running Gag:
  • For the whole of the first season, Ben couldn't transform into Humungousaur.
  • Ben being unable to pronounce "Anihilaarg."
• Ship Sinking:
  • "Rules of Engagement" sinks Ben/Julie. Why? Well because Ben couldn't be bothered to pause his video game when she called and she mistook his anger at it as anger towards her.
  • Ben/Ester is suddenly dropped in "The Most Dangerous Game Show" as part of the buildup to Ben/Kai.
• Shout-Out:
  • Optimus Prime's vehicle mode is frequently seen parked in the background.
  • One episode is titled "Fight at the Museum". Among the exhibits are a Monolith, a stone Dalek and a Cyberman head.
  • "Blukic and Driba Go to Area 51" is a big mockery of 1950s sci-fi films, The Day the Earth Stood Still in particular.
• Stripperiffic: Subdora's attire.
• Take That:
  • Billy Billons forms a Legion of Doom of fake superheroes who are driven by greed and narcissism, uncaring about any civilians. Their name? The Vengers.
  • "Blukic and Driba Go to Area 51" does get a bunch of mileage out of low-key mocking the Values Dissonance and Superdickery 1950s sci-fi with the stand-ins for Klaatu and GORT being outright villains.
• Time Travel: Forms the basis of the last story arc.
• Took a Level In Badass:
  • Psyphon. Still not enough for Ben to take him seriously though.
  • Malware takes a few. He starts out as on the brink of death, then becomes more powerful than any Galvanic Mechamorph, then he acquires a gun capable of ripping targets apart on a sub-cellular level, then he absorbs a good chunk of Galvan-B's advanced weapons technology.
• Took a Level In Dumbass: Not that Ben was ever a genius but he's really dumb now.
• Unknown Rival:
  • Billy Billions regards Ben as his Arch Enemy and tried to banish him to an alternate dimension when they were 12, all because Ben was more popular than him in grade school. When Billions fired his ray, it harmlessly reflected off of Ben, who was Diamondhead at the time and didn't feel a thing. When Billy returns, it's the first time that Ben actually acknowledges him.
    • Ben doesn't take Billy's Legion of Doom, the Vengers, even remotely seriously, despite their hatred towards him, knowing that they'll tear each other apart in short order. And they do.
  • The Cerebrocrustaceans are engaged in a blood feud with the Galvan over which species is smarter. The Galvan ignore this rivalry on the basis that proving which species is smarter is a colossal waste of time and resources. Which tells you all that you need to know about which species is smarter.
• Villain Decay: Vilgax's main purpose is to be the butt of jokes.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Rooters. Ben is an Idiot Hero who has been grossly irresponsible with the Omnitrix but they undermine their own argument given the fact that Ben has never even come close to demonstrating the behaviour that would make him a threat to the galaxy.