YMMV • Radar • Quotes • (Funny • Heartwarming • Awesome) • Fridge • Characters • Fanfic Recs • Nightmare Fuel • Shout Out • Plot • Tear Jerker • Headscratchers • Trivia • WMG • Recap • Ho Yay • Image Links • Memes • Haiku • Laconic • Source • Setting |
---|
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers was one of several Animated Series in the syndicated "Disney Afternoon" block of the 1990s. It updated classic Walt Disney characters, much as DuckTales (1987) (the Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comic book universe), Tale Spin (Baloo, Louie and Shere Khan from The Jungle Book) and Goof Troop (Goofy and Pete) also did. This one focused on updated versions of the mischievous chipmunks Chip and Dale. Originally, the series was actually going to be about The Rescuers, which would likely have departed from the books in favor of original content. However, when The Rescuers Down Under was green-lit for production, the series was redesigned into the one we all know and love.
Chip and Dale now led a team of crime-fighters called the "Rescue Rangers". The other members are Monterey Jack, or "Monty", a tough but lovable Australian mouse with a weakness for cheese; Gadget Hackwrench, a blonde female mouse who was a skilled inventor and mechanic as well as both chipmunks' (and the Furry Fandom's) unrequited love interest; and Zipper, a small fly (and Monty's best friend) who could not speak understandably, but had unusual strength for his small size. The team lived in a tree in the park and saved the day from a variety of villains.
There was a Nintendo video game adaptation, which was actually pretty good for a licensed game.
Boom! Studios announced a continuation of the series in comic book form which began in December 2010; this followed on the heels of the successful revival of Darkwing Duck as a comic series, which featured a cameo by Gadget in one issue that was likely a foreshadowing of things to come. The comic came to an end after two arcs (eight issues), and there is no word on a future continuation, either by Boom or by Disney-owned Marvel Comics.
Completely unrelated to Chippendales Dancers, as well as the 70s Saturday Morning cartoon Lassie's Rescue Rangers.
Tropes associated with the Boom Studios comic should go here.
- 100% Adoration Rating: Queenie, albeit only for her own swarm.
- Absent-Minded Professor: Sparky, of course. Gadget too.
- Accidental Kiss: Chip and Dale at the end of "Gadget Goes Hawaiian", Mole and Wart in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- Accordion Man: Monty in "To the Rescue (Part 3)".
- Acme Products: "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" features the ACME Majestic Ultra-light All-Weather Fiberglass Volcano. Which is unusual, because Disney productions usually have "AJAX" as the stand-in every-brand.
- Acrofatic: Monty.
- Action Girl: Gadget can turn into one given the necessity (or opportunity). Best example: "The Case of the Cola Cult".
- Adventurer Archaeologist: "Throw Mummy From the Train".
- The Ahnold: Arnold Mousenegger in "The S.S. Drainpipe" and "Mind Your Cheese and Q's".
- Air Guitar: Dale in "Risky Beesness".
- Air Vent Passageway: Used in a few episodes; Justified by the small physical size of the Rangers.
- Alien Abduction: Sort of happens to Dale accidentally in "Dale Beside Himself" when the Fleeblebroxians mistake him for DTZ.
- Alien Invasion: Attempted for real by the Fleeblebroxians in "Dale Beside Himself", faked by Norton Nimnul in "Fake Me to Your Leader", and subject of some of the movies Dale loves to watch.
- Alien Lunch: Urkburgles from Fleeblebrox. And yes, they're eaten alive.
- Aliens Speaking English:
- The Fleeblebroxians in "Dale Beside Himself".
- Steggy in "Prehysterical Pet" (he did spend a while learning it, though).
- All Animals Are Dogs:
- Steggy in "Prehysterical Pet".
- The guard shark in "One-Upsman-Chip" is wearing a stereotypical spiked collar, even though sharks don't even have a neck.
- Alliterative Name: Several one-off characters, including Monty's father, Cheddarhead Charlie, plus the regular villain, Professor Norton Nimnul.
- All That Glitters: Darbie's pot of gold in "The Last Leprechaun".
- All There in the Manual:
- The official press kit supplied the fans with information such as one possible official spelling of Lahwhinie's name (namely Lahwhinie). The official press kit was not even intended for the public.
- The only explanation as to how Chip got his hat that's available anywhere today is an out-of-print comic book. There are rumors that the movie cut of "To the Rescue" has a similar scene in it, but it hasn't been aired anywhere since 1988.
- All Work vs. All Play: Yeah, take a wild guess which of the two main characters fits which.
- Aloha Hawaii: "Gadget Goes Hawaiian".
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Monty's mother Camembert Kate in "A Lean on the Property". Yes, up to and including baby photos.
- The Amazon: "Chocolate Chips" seems to take place somewhere in South America.
- Ambiguous Syntax: Cassandra's prediction for Chip in "Seer No Evil" is this all over. Needless to say this leads to a Prophecy Twist.
- Amusement Park: "Seer No Evil".
- Anachronic Order: The canonical episode order is an often discussed issue. It is clear, however, that the episodes have been neither produced nor ever aired in their canonical order. After all, the pilot is part of Season 2.
- An Aesop: Many episodes had these.
- And This Is For: Monty in "Three Men and a Booby".
- Angry Guard Dog: The Doberman in "To the Rescue (Part 4)".
- Animal Jingoism: Maltese de Sade's universal dog hatred in particular. And there has to be a reason behind Monterey Jack's cat phobia.
- Animal Superheroes: Debatable, considering that[1] none of the characters on the show have anything that could be called a super power.
- Some Shows Within A Show give us Animal Superheroes: Flash the Wonder Dog and his sidekick Conrad Cockatoo, and the Red Badger of Courage.
- Animal Talk: Almost all animal species seem to be able to talk with one another, including insects. Even Zipper seems to be understood by other animals with ease. Almost all because there is probably one exception: Homo sapiens is clearly not able to understand chipmunks, but has no problems understanding dogs and alligators (Since these are bigger, and for that reason, sound deeper, might it be a question of pitch?).
- Animated Shows
- Animation Bump: Look at "To the Rescue" (done by Walt Disney Animation Japan) or "The Carpetsnaggers" (done by TMS Entertainment), then look at "The Case of the Cola Cult" (done by Wang Film Productions) or any of Sunwoo Entertainment or A-1 Productions' episodes.
- Animorphism:
- All over "A Wolf in Cheap Clothing".
- In "A Fly in the Ointment", several characters exchange bodies.
- Dale being turned into a frog in "Good Times, Bat Times" might count, too.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: Remember the classic Chip and Dale? (It could be argued the setting had an inverse shift, though. Instead of living alongside Donald Duck, they hide their Mouse World from the human civilization.)
- Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: Chip and Dale in most episodes, frequently resulting in a bop on the head for Dale.
- Aside Glance: Chip in "Piratsy Under the Seas" for example.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: "Fake Me to Your Leader".
- Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: Gadget's focus moves at a hundred miles an hour and turns on a dime. It rarely prevents her from finishing a project but it often makes things interesting for others around her.
- At the Opera Tonight: "A Case of Stage Blight". Slightly subverted in that Gadget's idea of dressing up is to wear a flower in her hair.
- Awesome Aussie: Monterey Jack.
- Awesome McCoolname: Dirk Suave.
- Badass Family: Monty and his parents (Cheddarhead Charlie and Camembert Kate).
- Badass Mustache: Monterey Jack is wearing one. It runs in the family, as he got it from his father Cheddarhead Charlie.
- Badly-Battered Babysitter: Whenever kids are involved, both humans and animals.
- Bald of Evil:
- The two most frequent villains (Prof. Nimnul and Fat Cat) seem to be examples.
- Ignatz Ratskiwatski is an example all right, as is the Greatest Spy in the World.
- Balloon Belly:
- "Out to Launch" is a good example.
- This does not happen to Bink from "Adventures in Squirrelsitting", though.
- Bamboo Technology: Most of Gadget's inventions.
- Bankruptcy Barrel: Percy in "To the Rescue (Part 1)", although he was wearing a box.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Gadget.
- Bare Your Midriff: Gadget when it's warm outside.
- Batman Cold Open: Used in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian".
- Bat Out of Hell: Subverted to hell and back in "Good Times, Bat Times". A cleaning woman-turned-witch has three of the standard horror animals as familiars: Bud the snake, Lou the spider, and Foxglove the bat. While Bud and Lou are affectionate parodies of Abbott and Costello and thoroughly evil, Foxglove is cute, nice, kind, chipmunk-sized, in love with Dale, and probably more popular in the fandom than Monterey Jack.
- Beach Episode:
- "Shell Shocked" does feature Gadget in a swimsuit, yes.
- "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" and "Chipwrecked Shipmunks" both have their beach scenes, too, but no swimsuits.
- Beat Them At Their Own Game:
- When trying to counter Professor Nimnul in "Weather or Not".
- "Normie's Science Project".
- When confronting Su Lin.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: "A Lad in a Lamp", complete with the Reset Button at the end.
- Bee-Bee Gun: "Risky Beesness".
- Beneath the Earth: Where Darby Spree from "The Last Leprechaun" lives, as do the other leprechauns.
- Berserk Button:
- To a minor extent in "A Creep in the Deep", where Monty's tail keeps getting injured much to his dismay (and his increasing anger). The last time it gets injured in the episode, he goes absolutely berserk.
- Also, don't call the cleaning witch from "Good Times, Bat Times" "Freddie". Of course, only the nice Foxglove calls her Winnifred.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Gadget in "The Case of the Cola Cult" and "Dirty Rotten Diapers".
- Be Yourself: Dale in "The S.S. Drainpipe" who eventually ditches Red Badger of Courage methods in favor of a plan of his own. Also Tammy who tries to impress Chip by being like him.
- Big Applesauce: Chrysler Building in "The Carpetsnaggers", Twin Towers in "Robocat", Rat Capone's Brooklyn accent, and so forth, and still there's no rock solid proof the show takes place in New York City (there's also quite a bit of evidence that it doesn't—see Geographic Flexibility).
- Big Bad: Fat Cat, Professor Nimmul, and (in the pilot only) Aldrin Klordane.
- Big Ball of Violence: In "Love is a Many Splintered Thing", Monty ends up in a Big Ball of Violence, crawls out of it, picks it up and tosses it away as a whole.
- Big Eater: Bink in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting", and of course Monterey Jack, especially when it comes to cheese.
- Big Fancy House: The Clutchcoin house in "The Carpetsnaggers", for example.
- Birdcaged: Chip, Dale and Gadget are trapped in a bird cage placed in rising water by a tribe of beetles in "Zipper Come Home".
- Blessed Are the Cheesemakers: At least, to Monterey Jack.
- Blinding Bangs: K. Sera.
- Blondes Are Evil: Lahwhinie definitely qualifies for this.
- Blue Eyes: Gadget and Foxglove both have blue eyes (the mousette inventor sporting Hair of Gold as well).
- Boisterous Bruiser: Monterey Jack.
- Booby Trap: Gadget used to live behind what seemed like a Hall of Fame of booby traps. One might wonder how she got all that stuff installed, including a safe.
- Bottomless Magazines: Percy's revolver during the shoot-out in "To the Rescue", up to the point of acting like a submachine gun, but always far from being limited to five or six rounds.
- Bound and Gagged: The primary method of handling prisoners among the animal population seems to be tying them up.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Has happened to all the main characters at some point.
- Brand X: Coo-Koo Cola. On the other hand, Shell and Studebaker are mentioned in the show.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Tammy in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- Breaking the Fourth Wall
- Professor Nimnul's rants tend to have him acting as if he really does have an audience.
- A number of episode endings use this trope.
- There are several in-story occurrences throughout the series.
- Broken Aesop:
- "Dirty Rotten Diapers" does not work as a lesson against resorting on violence.
- "The Case of the Cola Cult" was trying to promote finding a place where you belong in an episode about a cult. That's definitely not the best message to send to people.
- Building Swing: Rubber Bando.
- Bull Seeing Red: Was impossible to avoid in "When Mice Were Men".
- Buried Alive: Gadget suggests the Pi-Rats bury them in the sand and wait for the tide to come. When Chip expresses his shock, she apologizes and says she couldn't resist the challenge.
- Busman's Holiday: Whenever the Rangers go on one of their many vacations, they will inevitably have to solve at least one case. A few examples: "Gadget Goes Hawaiian", "Shell Shocked", "Kiwi's Big Adventure", "When Mice Were Men", "Chocolate Chips".
- California Doubling: It's not quite clear where the Rangers are based, but that place looks a lot like Burbank and Hollywood. Although it is animated.
- The Cameo: The crocodile from Peter Pan chases Chip 'n Dale in "Kiwi's Big Adventure".
- Cannot Spit It Out: Chip in "Good Times, Bat Times", mostly because he is being constantly interrupted. Also in many fanfics he is portrayed this way.
- The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires: "Chocolate Chips".
- Captain Ersatz: Each of the five main characters is based on a well known 1980s live-action character:
- Chip, with the bomber jacket and fedora, is based on Indiana Jones.
- Dale, with the Hawaiian shirt, is based on Thomas Magnum.
- Monterey Jack is based on Crocodile Dundee.
- Gadget is an almost direct port of Jordan from Real Genius.
- Zipper is based on Rin Tin Tin (who had an 80s revival).
- Cargo Cult:
- In "Kiwi's Big Adventure", the Ranger Plane becomes the object of one.
- "The Case of the Cola Cult" revolves around one.
- Cartoon Cheese
- Halfway Averted with the slices of cheese Monty steals out of burgers and sandwiches and the melted cheese from pizzas.
- Monty's favorite cheese is the Brie '86 (though it was established in "To The Rescue (Part 3)" that he likes cheese regardless of what kind it is). Of course, no cheese in the show ever looks remotely like a brie.
- The Cassandra: Played with in "Seer No Evil". When the predictions of the fortune teller (who's actually named Cassandra) start to come true, the whole team (except Chip) gets very worried, since her last prediction was apparently of Chip's demise.
- Catch Phrase: The show is full of them.
- The heroes' battle cry, "Rescue Rangers Away!"
- Dale has his catch phrase, "Wowie Zowie".
- Gadget has several catch phrases: "Golly!", "Should", "No problems".
- The joke on those last two is that whenever Gadget says 'em, something always goes wrong with her latest invention.
- Monterey Jack's Australian slang also qualifies.
- It should be noted that few, if any, Real Life Australians speak like Monty. He does sound somewhat like the Crocodile Hunter, however.
- Cats Are Mean: Fat Cat, Maltese de Sade, the Siamese Twins, Kismet... averted with most of the kittens though.
- Chained to a Railway: Twice. ("Out of Scale" has Dale in garb Chained to a Railway by Buffy and in "Last Train to Cashville", the whole gang, bar Dale, gets this treatment from Fat Cat). In "To the Rescue", Plato is chained to a train, although not the railway itself.
- Chain of People: "To the Rescue (Part 5)". What's remarkable about this scene is that Gadget on top of the chain is able to yank up Chip to shout into his face and the other three Rangers with him with only one hand.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Monterey Jack does this during the Five Episode Pilot.
- Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Irweena and the Stingers in "Risky Beesness".
- Chaste Toons: Subverted by Gadget (who had a father), Monty (who still has both parents), Tammy (who has a mother), and Ignatz Ratskiwatski (who has a daughter), just to name a few. Played straight by Nimnul, though, who only has a nephew.
- Chick Magnet: Most of the male characters are lucky with women. Chip has received affection by Gadget and Tammy, Dale has received affection from Gadget and Foxglove, Monterey Jack has received affection from Gadget and Desiree D'Allure, and Zipper has received affection from Queenie and Cassandra.
- Children Are Innocent: Or so Gadget believes in most of "Dirty Rotten Diapers".
- Chinese Launderer: The main location in "To the Rescue (Part 2)".
- City of Adventure: Most of the episodes take place right there.
- City with No Name: The show's setting. Although there are hints that it's supposed to be either Burbank or New York City, and even a few references to San Francisco, it's just as likely a case of Geographic Flexibility.
- Clear Their Name:
- What Chip and Dale have to do for Detective Drake in "To the Rescue".
- What the Rangers have to do for themselves in "An Elephant Never Suspects".
- When Dale becomes Rubber Bando and is framed for crimes he didn't commit in the episode "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!".
- Close-Call Haircut: Monty in "Mind Your Cheese and Q's".
- Clothing Damage: Parodied. Whose dress is ripped in an action scene? Dale's.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Dale in many episodes.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Most of the villains wear purple: Fat Cat, Rat Capone, Errol, Mr. Gribbish (Gadget wears purple too, but it's a different shade, more like lavender).
- Comic Book Adaptation:
- An official series of 19 comic books, the first two of which retell "To the Rescue", and several stand-alone comics in various Disney publications, including quite a few in Disney Adventures and a compilation collection called "The Secret Casebook". Sadly, Disney has never reprinted any of these, so good luck finding 'em.
- The Boom Studios comic.
- Compliment Backfire
- Compressed Hair: Just exactly how did Gadget stuff all that hair under that wig in "Dirty Rotten Diapers"?
- Conservation of Ninjitsu: Gadget vs. Bubbles' Ninja Mooks in "The Case of the Cola Cult". Granted, she is heavily armed and doesn't know Ninjitsu, but the principle is the same.
- Context Sensitive Button: Many controls of the Ranger Plane and the Ranger Wing.
- Convection, Schmonvection: It's apparently not the slightest bit hot a pair of tongs' length above a barbecue grill ("Gadget Goes Hawaiian").
- Conveyor Belt O' Doom: Used in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting" and "Pie in the Sky".
- Cool Garage: Gadget's old home in a World War II bomber plane wreck, complete with dozens of death traps against intruders and a dynamite-driven catapult for her father's plane.
- Cool Plane:
- Ranger Plane and Ranger Wing.
- This has to be taken literally with Nimnul's flying iceberg in "To the Rescue". It's so cool that it doesn't even melt on its several-thousand-mile flight.
- Crash-Course Landing: The Rangers manage to pull off not a "simple" landing, but a fricking planetfall and touchdown with a NASA experimental space plane. After about five minutes in a simulator (and crashing twice there).
- Crash Into Hello: Tammy and Bink's mother gets to know Chip and Dale when they crash into her place.
- Crazy Prepared: Gadget has on her person, among other things, a parachute, an inflatable raft, a glass cutter and a lighter. Being a Rescue Ranger kinda justifies it though.
- Criminal Amnesiac: (Ram-)Dale in "Le Purrfect Crime".
- Crossdresser:
- Chip and Dale do this for "The Fat Cat Stomp". In fact, it can be seen in the full opening for the show.
- Dale as "Tootsie" in "The S.S. Drainpipe".
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Dale, especially in "The S.S. Drainpipe" and "Le Purrfect Crime".
- Cult: The Cola Cult in "The Case of the Cola Cult".
- Cute Little Fangs: Foxglove. Justified by her being a bat, but nonetheless cute.
- Cute Kitten: Spunky in "Catteries Not Included", Boots in "Gorilla My Dreams".
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Professor Nimnul is clearly a brilliant scientist, so why doesn't he just patent his inventions, sit back and watch the money roll in instead of constantly picking fights with a group of rodents?
- Subverted when he tried to go straight in "Rest Home Rangers" by showcasing his invention at an expo, only to have it backfire, after which he swears revenge on everyone who laughed at him.
- Additionally, in "The Pied Piper Power Play", he tried to sell his potato generator to the power company, but they just laughed at him.
- In "Catteries Not Included", he mentioned that he attempted to sell his cat-powered generator to the power company, but they laughed at him.
- It seems the only person to have ever believed in Nimnul's crazy inventions was crime boss Aldrin Klordane, although that may have been because Klordane himself was a bit crazy.
- Da Chief: Sergeant Spinelli.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Rat Capone and his lackeys.
- Damsel in Distress:
- Standard plot element in Flash the Wonder Dog.
- Also, Gadget was this in a number of episodes.
- Dark Fic: Many of the most famous Fan Fiction creations in the Rescue Rangers fandom fall into this category. Rhyme and Reason, Gadget In Chains, The Nowakverse stories including Under The Bridge, the Chip Noir Dale series, in fact, also Of Mice and Mayhem.
- Dating Catwoman: Monterey Jack and Desiree D'Allure.
- Deadpan Snarker: Chip and Monty.
- Decoy Damsel: Lahwhiney.
- Defeat Means Friendship: How Chip and Dale met Monty. He picked the fight, they had staying power.
Monty: [recovering from the piano the chipmunks launched at him] Y'know, I'm beginning to like those guys. |
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Appropriately Queenie, after Zipper helps her save her swarm and she acknowledges his feelings for her.
- Derailed for Details: Gadget frequently is.
- Deserted Island: "Chipwrecked Shipmunks".
- Detail-Hogging Cover: Done with a lot of CDRR artwork.
- Diagonal Cut: Performed by Juice Lee in the pilot.
- Digging to China: What the two pandas try to do in "An Elephant Never Suspects".
- Dinky Drivers: One episode has the Rangers trying to land a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of the Space Shuttle.
- Disappeared Dad:
- Geegaw Hackwrench, who is only mentioned in the pilot episode(s) as having been absent for more than a year before Gadget met the other Rangers and, according to Gadget, not going to return.
- Tammy and Bink seem to lack a father, too.
- Disguised in Drag: Chip in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting", Dale ditto plus several more episodes, and even Zipper in "When You Fish Upon a Star". And quite successfully.
- Disney Death: Monty in "To the Rescue (Part 2)", Chip in "Seer No Evil"...
- Distracted by the Sexy:
- This is played straight in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting"... by Chip and Dale in drag.
- Also works in "The S.S. Drainpipe"... with Dale in drag.
- Gadget's famous "red dress" scene in the episode "Double 'O Chipmunk".
- Ditzy Genius: Gadget is a Gadgeteer Genius who constructs incredible technology out of junk, but she can be pretty scattered.
- Dodge by Braking: This is how Gadget avoids the hawks in "Three Men and a Booby".
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Monterey Jack trying to quit cheese in "Mind Your Cheese and Q's" is probably the closest thing Disney (or any American TV show, animated or otherwise) has ever done to doing an addiction show that wasn't Anvilicious.
- Dog Stereotype: The Doberman and Frenchie in "To the Rescue (Part 4)", for instance.
- Dope Slap:
- Chip bonks Dale on the head on occasion when he says something stupid.
- Dale does this to Chip when he hurts Tammy's feelings and makes her cry in the episode "Adventures In Squirrelsitting".
- Doppelganger: See the episode "Dale Beside Himself". Also, in a sense, Lahwhinie.
- Dragon Ascendant: Both Fat Cat and Professor Nimnul previously worked for Klordane.
- Dreadful Musician: Irwina Allen and the Stingers.
- Drive-In Theater: The opening scene of "Good Times, Bat Times" takes place at one.
- Drives Like Crazy: Gadget in the opening scene of "The Case of the Cola Cult".
- Drowning Pit: The boot in "Shell Shocked".
- Dub Name Change: More often than not, apparently, and usually not even sparing the Rangers themselves. Check them here.
- Dumb Muscle:
- Arnold Mousenegger (more like "brain-dead muscle" in his case).
- Subverted when Desiree DeLure treats Monterey Jack like this, only to find that he was smarter than she thought.
- Easy Amnesia: Dale in "Le Purrfect Crime".
- Easy Come, Easy Go: Almost all episodes.
- Edible Ammunition: For example,
- Squeezed-out bananas in "To the Rescue (Part 1)".
Chip and Dale: Banana! Banana! Banana! |
- Small Easter eggs on a catapult in "Three Men and a Booby".
- RamDale's Decaffeinator machine gun from "Le Purrfect Crime" shoots coffee beans.
- Edible Theme Naming: Monterey Jack's entire (canonical) family is named after sorts of cheese.
- Eek! A Mouse!:
- Usually Monty, especially when he attempts to steal cheese or anything cheese-flavored from the police officers. In this case, it's less "Eek! A Mouse!" and more "Get that mouse!" or "Hey, it's that mouse!"
- Eek! A Mouse! is played particularly straight in "The Carpetsnaggers", used by Monty to his advantage.
- Eighties Hair: Gadget. Sort of lampshaded in Of Mice and Mayhem when Gadget gets a more modern hairstyle since the story takes place in the 90s. And of course Lahwhinie.
- Einstein Hair: Dr. Hibbleman from "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!", Dr. Whitebread from "Double 'O Dale".
- Ejection Seat: Gadget built one into the Screaming Eagle.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Monty is still called "Cheezer" by his mother.
- Enfant Terrible: Buffy Ratskiwatski from "Out of Scale" is so absolutely that.
- Epunymous Title: "Song of the Night 'n Dale".
- Eskimo Land: "A Chorus Crime".
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Some episodes end with this; others don't.
- Everyone Looks Sexier If French: Désirée D'Allure from "Love is a Many Splintered Thing".
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Gadget is loved by Chip, Dale, and most of the fans actually.
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Steggy, whose appearance in the late 20th century is Justified by declaring dinosaurs highly developed creatures who came to Earth in egg-shaped spacecraft millions of years ago.
- Everything's Better with Monkeys: Heebie and Jeebie in "An Elephant Never Suspects", Kookoo in "Gorilla My Dreams". Abbadabba in "Seer No Evil" is actually an exception; unlike Heebie and Jeebie, he is a henchmonkey of the Big Bad and not even sentient.
- Everything's Better with Penguins: "A Chorus Crime". Happy Feet, anyone?
- Everything's Better with Plushies: The long out of production, extremely sought after, and thus outrageously expensive "Gadget Plushie", a figurine manufactured by Applause that isn't even made of plush. If you're lucky enough to acquire the whole set of four, you'll pay at least 90% of the price for Gadget alone and the other 10% for the guys.
- Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: In particular, the sharks in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" that could fit into a pint. And the shark guarding the pearl in "One-Upsman-Chip".
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: The Bagpipe Express in "Good Times, Bat Times".
- Everythings Nuttier With Squirrels: Tammy and Bink.
- Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: When the Rangers are anywhere near the sea, they encounter squids more often than not. Billy the Squid in "Piratsy Under the Seas", the nameless squid at the beginning of "Gadget Goes Hawaiian", All Hands and Captain Fin's other tentacled cronies in "A Creep in the Deep"...
- Everything's Worse with Bears: Humphrey the Bear (yes, that Humphrey from the Donald Duck shorts). Averted due to the fact that despite the chaos he accidentally caused, in the end he saves the baby's life.
- Evil Redhead: Aldrin Klordane, Winifred, Nimnul...
- Evil Twin:
- Lahwhinie, in relation to Gadget. Might be also considered an Evil Counterpart.
- One could say that Fat Cat and Maltese de Sade from "Le Purrfect Crime" are Evil Twins of each other, although they're actually cousins.
- Expository Theme Tune
- Express Lane Limit: In "Rest Home Rangers", Professor Nimnul tries to get a colossal stockpile of prunes out through an express lane, with predictable results (apart from Nimnul's retort: "I've only got one item - prunes!").
- Eye Pop: Of all characters, Bubbles has one before falling onto the soda pool.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: Lahwhinie with Dale (once) and Chip (twice) in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian", Gadget in disguise with Dale in "Double 'O Chipmunk".
- Fake Band: Iron Goose in "Risky Beesness".
- Fake Rabies: In the pilot arc, Fat Cat gets Plato out of the way at one point by spraying his mouth with whipped cream and stuffing a visitor's lapdog into the middle of the mess.
- Fan Art: And how!
- Fanfic Fuel: Most prominently, the scenes in "To the Rescue (Part 3)" when Monty and Gadget talk about Geegaw, leaving the viewer with more questions than answers, and the end of "Good Times, Bat Times" which leaves the Dale/Foxglove pairing unresolved.
- Fan Verse: Most Fanfic writers create their own universe with whole series of stories, to which sometimes stories are added by other writers, for example The Nowakverse by John Nowak or the Chip Noir Dale's Rescue Rangers universe by Matt Plotecher.
- Fan Web Comics: There are several creations that may count as Fan Web Comics. None of them are comic strips published regularly, though.
- Chris Fischer's Of Mice and Mayhem was published all at once when the author gave the link to the story; besides, it's a graphic novel rather than a comic strip.
- There are several more graphic novels which are works in progress and updated very irregularly; the latter also applies to the Sprite Comic Ranger Days.
- "Cheer Up, Gadget".
- Angry Murine Catharsis, the first comic to feature John Nowak's famous original character Widget Hackwrench.
- Fat Bastard: Fat Cat.
- Feather Fingers: Foxglove's wings even seem to morph into hands and back into wings, depending on what's required by the plot.
- Femme Fatale: Désirée D'Allure.
- Fiction 500: The Clutchcoin family obviously.
- Fiery Redhead: Tammy and Queenie.
- Five-Bad Band: Fat Cat's gang.
- Big Bad - Fat Cat.
- The Dragon/Evil Genius - Wart.
- The Brutes - Mole and Snout.
- Dark Chick - Mepps.
- Five-Man Band: There are five of them, but Gadget pulls double duty, while Zipper is the Team Pet.
- The Hero - Chip.
- The Lancer - Dale.
- The Big Guy - Monterey Jack.
- The Smart Guy/The Chick - Gadget.
- Team Pet - Zipper.
- Five Episode Pilot: "To the Rescue" Parts 1-5.
- Flame War: Some extremely ugly wars about which chipmunk Gadget will end up with have nearly torn the fandom apart on at least two occasions. Since then discussing the topic seriously is still somewhat of a taboo.
- Flight: "Kiwi's Big Adventure".
- Fluffy the Terrible: Bubbles, the Big Bad from "The Case of the Cola Cult".
- Flying Broomstick: It's a vacuum cleaner that Winifred rides in "Good Times, Bat Times", but she's a cleaning woman from around 1990 after all.
- Flying Carpet: Nimnul makes those in "The Carpetsnaggers".
- Follow Your Nose: Played straight by Monty during his cheese attacks. Exaggerated on "Out of Scale", when Dale throws a chunk of Limburger cheese into a toy truck, commenting that Monty will love it. Of course, Monty smells it and goes into "cheese attack" mode—until he finds the shrink ray gun and attempts to drag it back with him, only to have the smell of Limburger literally drag him away. Monty fights it—until the smell taps him on the shoulder and goes up his nose.
- Fortune Teller: Cassandra. She's a Gypsy all right, and a light bulb serves as her crystal ball.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Most characters, but a few have five-fingered hands. This is used to comedic effect in "The Pied Piper Power Play" when Chip has to use both hands to indicate the number five.
- Four Legged Insects: Not limited to Zipper. Actually, most insects in the show — the "good" ones in particular — have only four limbs, the bees from "Risky Beesness" for example. However, this doesn't apply to all insects. To give another example, the pill bugs from "Fake Me to Your Leader" have six limbs.
- Friendly Local Chinatown: "To the Rescue (Part 2)", and "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- Funetik Aksent: Monterey Jack to a lesser extent in the official comics and to the extreme in Fanfic.
- Furry Female Mane: Most of the anthropomorphic female cast actually, including Gadget, Lahwhinie (naturally), Tammy, Bink, their mother, Cassandra (an insect), Queenie (another insect), Camembert Kate, Désirée D'Allure, and so forth. Foxglove and Ming-Ting are comparatively rare exceptions.
- G-Rated Drug and I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!: The episode "Mind Your Cheese and Q's" where Monterey Jack tries to give up his cheese addiction is a perfect example of both of these. Actually, Monty's cheese addiction in general counts.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Gadget.
- Gangsterland: Where Rat Capone pretends to live, complete with the appropriate accent.
- GASP: Because you can't have Gadget do a Wild Take.
- Gay Paree:
- "Le Purrfect Crime".
- The Flash Back in "Love is a Many Splintered Thing".
- Genie in a Bottle: The Genie from "A Lad in a Lamp".
- Genre Savvy: Chip in "Pound of the Baskervilles".
- Geographic Flexibility: What the heck do a barrage ("A Creep in the Deep"), the Chrysler Building ("The Carpetsnaggers"), the World Trade Center ("Robocat"), the Bob Hope Airport ("To the Rescue"), the Los Angeles Town Hall ("To the Rescue"), and LAPD police uniforms do in one and the same city?
- "Get Out of Jail Free" Card: Nimnul, although he may just be really good at breaking out of jail.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar:
- The infamous "red dress scene".
- In "Double 'O Chipmunk", Dale, after his devices wreck the Ranger HQ, in shown wearing only a bow-tie, like a Chippendales Dancers. This also qualifies as a Visual Pun.
- In "Mind Your Cheese and Q's", Monty locks himself in the vault of cheese and sings a variation of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", replacing "beer" with "cheese". Might not seem like much, but it does seem like something that modern cartoons (unless they're adult-oriented) wouldn't dare put in.
- Ditto the end to "Battle of the Bulge". Yes, Chip, Dale, and Gadget were wearing clothes when they jumped into the mini-bath, but the only thing Monty had on was that helmet with the goggles.
- How did a character named Maltese de Sade make it past the media watchdogs?
- The episode "A Fly in the Ointment" has a scene where Dale (who, I would like to remind everyone, is male, and a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal) and Gadget (who is female and generally goes around fully dressed), get hit by a ray that swaps their heads. Gadget's reaction upon realizing what happened is to panic and turn a nearby paper cup into an improvised skirt.
- Not to mention her reaction to seeing Dale's head on her body. (Keep the hands off the body!)
- In "Shell Shocked", after the Rangers fall to the floor.
Dale: Bottom floor, lingerie. |
- Giant Enemy Crab: The red lobsters in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" are indeed giants in comparison to mice.
- Giant Spider: And the tarantula baddie Lou is large if compared with the Rangers, too. Not that he's really scary, though.
- Girl of the Week:
- Tammy and Foxglove are the most widely known examples.
- Also Queenie.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The sphinx demon in "Throw Mummy From the Train".
- Go-Go Enslavement: In "A Case of Stage Blight", after the team is captured by Sewernose, he dresses them up like Wild West people, puts strings on them like marionettes and puts on a dinner theater with them before choosing to eat them.
- Goggles Do Nothing:
- Most of the time, Gadget wears her goggles upon her head as a decoration. She even wears them with her nightgown in "Double 'O Chipmunk". A very few times, however, she does use them.
- Monterey Jack has his own goggles. He is even seen once wearing his usual Goggles Doing Nothing in their usual place and a second pair of goggles covering his eyes.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Happens to the spy at the end of "Double 'O Chipmunk" when he realizes he's been defeated by a group of rodents.
- Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: They actually even managed to do that with Lahwhinie, who otherwise looks like Gadget.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: Irweena and the Stingers. In fact, also Iron Goose.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck: Gadget.
- Gosh Hornet: "Risky Beesness" uses standard elements of this.
- Grappling Hook Pistol: Gadget's suction-cup crossbow. She even uses a suction-cup pistol in "To the Rescue".
- GPS Evidence: Subverted in "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!" in how Gadget finds where Seymour's hiding the monuments he's stealing. She takes a flyer from his travel agency, analyzes it chemically, and then tells the Rangers the exact address... which she read on the flyer.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Lots of instances. The most famous example would be Dale and Foxglove's first scene together in "Good Times, Bat Times".
- Greasy Spoon: Ma's Diner in "Short Order Crooks".
- Great Detective: Chip.
- Hair Color Dissonance: Gadget, Lahwhinie.
- Hair Decorations: Applies to almost all cute females in the show with the possible exception of Foxglove. Even Gadget's Goggles Do Nothing may count.
- Hair of Gold: Gadget, Lahwhinie.
- Hair Reboot: Queenie can do that within a second or so. Unless the plot requires otherwise.
- Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: Sort of parodied and quoted by Winifred when she steals the police chief's wig with her flying hoover.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The male part of the cast and many incidental characters.
- Lampshaded in "A Fly in the Ointment" when Gadget and Dale switch bodies and Gadget dons a small paper cup to cover her (that is, Dale's) lower half.
- Hammerspace:
- Chip and his magnifying glasses.
- Gadget and the glass cutter in "A Creep in the Deep".
- Gadget and a lot of things, actually, such as the raft in "To The Rescue (Part 5)".
- Or her head light in "Shell Shocked".
- Handy Remote Control:
- Nimnul frequently has one of those on himself.
- Gadget's remote control for the Gyrotank in "The Case of the Cola Cult".
- Heart Symbol:
- That one scene on the Headquarters platform in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- The end of "Risky Beesness".
- Hell Hound: MacDuff's disguise, type Guardian.
- Heroes Want Redheads: Zipper is attracted to Queenie.
- Heroes Are Wanted By Redheads: Tammy is attracted to Chip, and Foxglove is attracted to Dale.
- Heterosexual Life Partners: Chip and Dale must have been spending an eternity together even before they became Rescue Rangers (though it has been hinted in comics before this series at that they're related, this is probably not canon to the show).
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Monterey Jack and Gadget are the friendly variety of this.
- Hula and Luaus: "Gadget Goes Hawaiian", only little hula, but a big luau scene and tourists and surfing and volcanoes. Justified that the episode takes place behind a hotel, and the volcano is fake, a deliberate tourist attraction.
- Humanity Ensues: When Harry the wolf is turned into a human and Nimnul almost pulls a Wolf Man in "A Wolf in Cheap Clothing".
- Human Ladder: Although not done with humans but animals instead, this is the subject of merchandise such as the Electric Tiki statue. Of course, it also appears in the show on several occasions, for example, in "Fake Me to Your Leader" when the Rangers sans Zipper have to press an elevator button.
- Hypno Fool:
- Everyone exposed to the hypnosis device in "Parental Discretion Retired" believes they're chicken.
- Queenie's swarm in "Risky Beesness".
- The sturgeons in "Parental Discretion Retired".
- Hypocritical Humor: On the episode "Chocolate Chips", Dale smells chocolate and goes into the same sort of cheese-attack trance that Monterey Jack does whenever he smells cheese. Monty pulls Dale back and has the nerve to comment that it's "...disgusting the way some people can't control themselves."
- It happens again when an alien transformed into a duplicate of Dale sees his favorite food... ...Earthburgles.
- I Broke a Nail: Lahwhinie in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian".
- Identical Stranger: Gadget and Lahwhinie.
- Idiot Ball: Dale has held this a few times.
- If My Calculations Are Correct: Said by both Dale and Gadget in "The S.S. Drainpipe". Dale uses it as a Catch Phrase whereas Gadget's calculations are correct.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: The very reason why Foxglove ended up with Winifred.
- Imperial China: Lives on in a valley in the Himalaya which has even got its own emperor ("Song of the Night 'n Dale").
- Implausible Fencing Powers: Dale, a chipmunk, manages to defeat Sewernose de Bergerac, an alligator several times his size with a weapon several times as large as his.
- Ink Suit Actor:
- Deborah Walley more or less replays part of her role as Gidget as Lahwhinie's voice actress.
- Dev Ross stars as herself in a mini cameo as an aerobics trainer in "Battle of the Bulge".
- Insistent Terminology: "Chipmunks!"
- Instant AI, Just Add Water: "Robocat". The titular robot even has different personalities according to what game cartridge is inserted. Yes, its AI runs on arcade game code.
- Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Bubbles' Mooks in "The Case of the Cola Cult" just had to be Ninja mice so that Gadget had some worthy opponents to fight.
- Instant Ice, Just Add Cold: For example, Nimnul's weather machine works that way. It certainly doesn't carry enough water to produce that much ice.
- Instant Plunder, Just Add Pirates: The Pi-Rats don't really fit into the Rangers' era and setting, do they?
- Interspecies Romance: All over the place:
- Chip and Dale (chipmunks) are both attracted to Gadget (a mouse), who shows varying degrees of interest in them as well.
- Dale and Foxglove - A chipmunk and a bat.
- Zipper and Queenie - A housefly and a bee.
- Tammy hearts Chipper - A squirrel and a chipmunk.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting: At least when Winifred turns Dale into a frog in "Good Times, Bat Times".
- It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: "When Mice Were Men" has the Rangers travel to Spain, or "Tramplonia", to be more precise.
- It's Always Spring: Unless stated otherwise, for example in "Weather or Not".
- It's Personal: The reason why Monty joins Chip and Dale against Fat Cat is because the latter sunk his living-place.
- Jackass Genie: The episode "A Lad in a Lamp" has one.
- Just a Stupid Accent: Applies to just about every foreign character in the show. Most prominently Monterey Jack.
- Kent Brockman News: Stan Blather.
Stan: In a tragic development, the space plane is plunging directly toward the control tower. Wait a minute. I'm in the control tower! WAAAUGH! |
- Lady in Red: Gadget in "Double 'O Dale" and "Mind Your Cheese and Q's".
- Lampshade Hanging: Happens in "A Creep in the Deep". After Gadget pulls out a larger-than-herself glass cutter seemingly out of nowhere:
Monty: Do you always carry a glass cutter around with 'ya? |
- Land Down Under: Where Monty and his parents hail from.
- Land of Dragons: Main location of "Song of the Night 'n Dale" and hinted at in the first few minutes of "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- La Résistance: Parodied with The Pound Underground in the pilot.
- Large Ham:
- Professor Nimnul.
- Fat Cat. It kind of helps that both characters were voiced by Jim Cummings.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: (Ram-)Dale in "Le Purrfect Crime".
- Laughing Mad: Professor Nimnul usually does this.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Cheddarhead Charlie and often Monterey Jack.
- Lethal Chef: Dale mentioned in "Good Times, Bat Times" that Gadget's cooking tastes like motor oil.
- Limited Wardrobe: Actually makes sense if you think about how many chipmunk-sized shirts could be cut out of one human-sized one.
- Long-Lost Relative: Geegaw, whenever he is still alive, and Lahwhinie, whenever she is Gadget's sister, in Fanfic.
- Love At First Sight:
- Chip and Dale fall for Gadget pretty much at first sight.
- In "Good Times, Bat Times", Foxglove falls for Dale the moment she sees him.
- In "Adventures In Squirrelsitting", Tammy falls for Chip the moment she sees him.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Monterey Jack couldn't even see what the other Rangers were trying to tell him about Desiree being linked with the recent crime they were investigating because he was too smitten with her to see otherwise to the point where he temporarily quits the team.
- Love Triangle:
- Chip/Gadget/Dale. Then again, there is also the Love Triangle Tammy/Chip/Gadget, and to a lesser extent Foxglove/Dale/Gadget. Add Sparky, whom Gadget admires a bit too much, making both Chip and Dale jealous, and you've got a borderline Love Dodecahedron.
- Cassandra/Zipper/Queenie.
- Monty/Désirée/Errol.
- Lucky Rabbit's Foot: Monterey Jack of has one among his many good luck charms. Bear in mind that he's a mouse, and the rabbit's foot is quite large in comparison to him. Chip comments that it couldn't have been very lucky for its previous owner...
- Luke Nounverber:
- Gadget Hackwrench.
- The Clutchcoin family.
- Mad Love:
- Tammy, who falls head over heels for Chip to the point where she endangers the other Rangers, her sister, and herself.
- Monty when he reunites with Desiree, despite the fact that Desiree doesn't seem like she loved him in the first place.
- Mad Scientist:
- Professor Nimnul.
- Irweena from "Risky Beesness".
- Magic Music: What Irweena Allen uses on Queenie's bees in "Risky Beesness". Also, what Queenie uses to save her bees in the same episode.
- Magic Pants:
- Zipper in "Fake Me to Your Leader".
- All the Rangers in "Puffed Rangers".
- Malaproper: Dale, to the extreme in Fanfic.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Corey Burton, Peter Cullen, Rob Paulsen, and most of all, Jim Cummings.
- Message Board: The biggest and oldest one is the Acorn Cafe; it is here where the Big Name Fans meet. The Chip 'n Dale (both classic and Rescue Rangers) fan portal Chip 'n' Dale Online has its own large forum.
- Message in a Bottle: All Hands tries to contact Captain Finn this way in "A Creep in the Deep".
- Mid-Air Bobbing: Way too many occurrences to list.
- Midair Repair: Overdone by Gadget in "Bearing Up Baby" when she rebuilds the plumbing of an RV into a sort of rigid lanyard to rescue it after it falls from a cliff. Within seconds.
- Mind Control:
- Used by Heinrich von Sugarbottom in "Chocolate Chips".
- Used by Irweena in "Risky Beesness".
- Used by Fat Cat in "Parental Discretion Retired".
- Minion with an F In Evil: Foxglove for the first half of "Good Times, Bat Times".
- Misplaced Wildlife: A crocodile in New Zealand in "Kiwi's Big Adventure".
- Missing Mom: While Gadget's father Geegaw is mentioned and shown in a picture during the pilot, not a word is said about her mother, and she never appears during the series.
- Moment Killer: Dale in "Good Times, Bat Times". Twice.
- Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Professor Norton Nimnul.
- More Dakka:
- The crank-operated, coffee-bean-shooting machine gun that Dale wields in "Le Purrfect Crime".
- The shoot-out between Winifred's flying hoover and the Bagpipe Express in "Good Times, Bat Times".
- Mouse World: Explored in the show, but used to a much higher extent in Fanfic.
- The Movie: Actually planned, but nixed after DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp bombed. Although the story is believed to have been written, nothing is known about it among the fans.
- Ms. Fanservice: Gadget in her red dress definitely qualifies for this.
- Mummy: Subverted in "Throw Mummy From the Train", Hiram is on the Rangers' side.
- Mundane Fantastic: Apart from the rodent societies, we have Gnomes, malevolent spirits and aliens on vacation. Yet, nobody (beside Dale) seems to make much fuss about them. Of course the humans are always oblivious to everything.
- My Name Is Not Durwood: Chip continually tells Tammy not to call him Chipper in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- My Nayme Is: Whatever you expect the name of Gadget's Evil Twin in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" to be spelled like, chances are good it's spelled differently. The officially established canonical spelling is Lahwhinie, by the way, but even this isn't accepted by everyone.
- Mysterious Past: Gadget's past, only a few hints are given in "To the Rescue (Part 3)".
- Mythology Gag:
- In "To the Rescue", the detective and his dog are named Donald Drake and Plato, obviously a nod to Chip and Dale's old costars Donald Duck and Pluto; also in that episode, the villain's thug mistakes Dale for his gun, reusing a gag from the 1950s short "The Lone Chipmunks".
- In another episode, the Rangers are going to a movie, and Dale hopes to see some cartoons before the main feature:
Dale: "I hope they show the one with the big dumb duck!" |
- Humphrey the Bear in "Bearing Up Baby".
- The friendly rivalry over between Chip and Dale over Gadget is also a nod to the old cartoon "Two Chips and a Miss", with Gadget replacing Clarice.
- Whenever Chip and Dale fight over something, their voices slip into the high-pitched squeaky voices they had in their old shorts.
- One episode ("Out of Scale") shares a title with a classic cartoon, and borrows a few plot elements from it as well, such as a toy train set and the 'munks living in a toy house.
- Name and Name: Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers.
- Named Weapons: The Decaffeinator.
- Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Aldrin Klordane. Named after toxic chemicals and often spelled with a K.
- The Napoleon: The baby from the episode "Dirty Rotten Diapers".
- Nested Mouths: A scene from an obvious Alien parody which takes Nested Mouths Up to Three. The alien in question has three mouths nested in one another, the last one is just big enough to pinch the Ripley look-alike's nose.
- Never Found the Body: How Aldrin Klordane could return, despite being officially pronounced dead by the police. Also allows Geegaw Hackwrench to return in quite a few FanFics.
- Never Say "Die": Played so straight that some fans believe Geegaw Hackwrench is still alive because he couldn't be undoubtedly pronounced dead.
- New Old Flame: Désirée D'Allure in "Love is a Many Splintered Thing", sort of.
- Nice Hat: Chip's fedora definitely qualifies.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Chip literally does this to Tammy's heart when he yells at her in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting" causing her and her sister Bink to try to retrieve the Maltese Mouse from Fat Cat by themselves.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Steggy once more; a super-intelligent, high-tech-equipped dinosaur from outer space meets crimefighting rodents, one of whom is an Australian bush fighter.
- Nobody Here but Us Statues: Chip and Dale in "Song of the Night 'n Dale", Steggy in "Prehysterical Pet".
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Too many examples to list.
- No Matter How Much I Beg: Lahwhinie knew Gadget would try to escape when the dangerous challenges started, so she tells Shaka Baka that she's scared and might chicken out, but wants him to make sure she goes through with it.
- Non-Fatal Explosions: The blowing up of the kitchen door in "Zipper Come Home" is only one example.
- Non-Mammal Mammaries: Queenie has a pretty ample bust for a bee.
- Non Dubbed Grunts: More than 95% of Zipper's dialogs in the German dub remained English.
- Noodle Incident:
- Monterey Jack and Gadget's father were once friends that broke up over something that happened in Zanzibar that involved cheese-bread.
- It's never explained how Monterey Jack got those "cheese attacks" since it hasn't been implied that it's genetic (otherwise, the writers would have shown it on the two occasions where Monterey Jack's parents were shown).
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup:
- Nimnul's inventions.
- Gadget (partially) subverts this trope, by making blueprints for seemingly every' invention, even if it was just an improvisation on the spot.
- Now You Tell Me: Monty mentions to Gadget that her father used to mount skis on the Screaming Eagle when he had to land on ice after she landed on Glacier Bay's icy ground.
- Obfuscating Disability: "Kiwi's Big Adventure" had Dale fake a broken toe to get out of doing work, and get spoiled by Gadget. Later in the episode, Dale saved the day, breaking his toe for real, and got his comeuppance when he had to miss a party because of it.
- Oblivious to Love: Gadget Hackwrench; not exactly oblivious, more like not ready for the advances she receives yet.
- Off-Model: The episodes "Risky Beesness" and "Bearing Up Baby" definitely had moments of this. Not to mention "An Elephant Never Suspects" in it's entirety.
- Off Like a Shot
- Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: Most noticeably, "Good Times, Bat Times".
- Oireland: "The Last Leprechaun".
- Oktoberfest: Heinrich von Sugarbottom's choice of clothes.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: Not only does Captain Nemo's pipe organ (complete with ribbon and "N" seal) appear in "A Creep in the Deep", it is even played in that episode. Twice even: once by All Hands, once while misused by the Rangers as a pump. The same music is used as BGM in other episodes.
- One-Scene Wonder:
- Foxglove from "Good Times, Bat Times". Foxglove has an entire website devoted to her (and now dedicated to her voice actress, the late Deborah Walley).
- Tammy and Bink from "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- Queenie from "Risky Beesness".
- Sparky from "Does Pavlov Ring a Bell"
- Geegaw Hackwrench from "To the Rescue (Part 3)" isn't even really a character, he is only ever shown on a picture. Yet, despite his unknown fate and total personal absence, he is quite popular in the fandom.
- One Head Taller: Queenie to Zipper. Your Size May Vary, though (see the end of the list).
- The One Who Wears Shoes: Gadget's occasional disguises almost always include high-heels.
- Only Six Faces: Rat Capone ("Thee S.S. Drainpipe", "Mind Your Cheese and Q's") and Francis ("Double 'O Dale") look exactly the same except for the clothes. Some fans believe they're brothers.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: The villain of "The Last Leprechaun" is a banshee who has enslaved all the leprechauns.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Nimnul in "A Wolf in Cheap Clothing", for he uses the Metamorphosizer to exchange species with a wolf who then turns into a human.
- Overclocking Attack: Nimnul's generator in "The Pied Piper Power Play".
- Overlord, Jr.: Norton Nimnul's nephew Normie. He even looks like a much younger version of his uncle.
- Packed Hero: One episode has Fat Cat using a canning machine as a Death Trap for the Rescue Rangers, with every implication that the process would result in a bunch of finely-minced Rangers in a cat food can. Not only do the Rangers escape, but they also trick Fat Cat and his goons into throwing themselves into the machine: the end result is Fat Cat and his goons improbably stuffed into tiny cans, humiliated but apparently no worse for the wear.
- Pandaing to the Audience: Ming-Ting and Ting-A-Ling from "An Elephant Never Suspects".
- Panty Shot: Technically speaking, Winifred from "Good Times, Bat Times" has plenty of these. But she isn't attractive to start with, nor are her undergarments.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Gadget and Lahwhinie only exchange the goggles and the flower. Being Doppelgangers, such a minor change is really all that's needed to make them look like each other; the "paper thin" part is that they have very different voices and personalities.
- Parental Abandonment: Gadget.
- Parental Bonus: The many, many movie and literature references in the show, some of which border on Genius Bonus.
- Parent Service: The infamous red dress scene.
- Parody Names: Lots.
- Passing the Torch: From Plato to Chip and Dale.
- Perpetual Motion Machine: Gadget claims she once found a perpetual motion machine in the garbage can after a school science fair; of course, by then, it had stopped moving.
- Pimped-Out Dress: The princess at the opera in "A Case of Stage Blight". Chip somehow finds one that fits him later on, and distracts the villain by singing a duet with him.
- Pinocchio Syndrome: "Robocat".
- A Pirate 400 Years Too Late: The Pi-Rats.
- Pirate Booty: "Chipwrecked Shipmunks".
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The Pi-Rats.
- Plot Technology: Anything Norton Nimnul ever invents. Just about the only device to ever return is the Gigantico Gun.
- Police Are Useless: The reason why the Rangers have so much to do. The police usually show up when the Rangers have solved the case.
- Their best man, Detective Donald Drake, would not have been useless, hadn't his colleagues put him in jail for obviously false accusations.
- Sometimes subverted in fan fiction. Of Mice and Mayhem is a good example: While the Rangers are only so much as investigating in Nimnul's lab, the FBI shows up and arrests him right away.
- Posthumous Character: Supposedly, Geegaw Hackwrench.
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons: "To the Rescue (Part 4)".
- The Power of Friendship
- Power Walk: Almost, at the end of "To the Rescue". See the screengrab in this article.
- "Previously On...": The syndicated version of "To the Rescue".
- Private Detective: Sureluck Jones. And Chip.
- Prophecy Twist: "Seer No Evil".
- Punched Across the Room: Chip and Dale when they meet Monty for the first time.
- Punny Name: Too many to list.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: Fat Cat's cronies frequently act as one.
- Ranger
- Rapunzel Hair: Gadget's hair goes down to her tush. Together with its poofyness, it might be hazardous in an environment such as a workshop.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Played straight with Tom when Fat Cat switches his game cartridge about making friends to a violent war game, and changes his eye color from yellow to red.
- Redheaded Hero: Tammy.
- The Renaissance Age of Animation: CDRR is a good TV show example.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Sewernose de Bergerac, also the Mooks Wart and Sugar Ray Lizard.
- Requisite Royal Regalia: Queenie in "Risky Beesness", Zipper in "Zipper Come Home".
- Reset Button: At the end of "A Lad in a Lamp".
- Revenge SVP: The bull who wasn't invited to a festival.
- Right-Hand-Cat: What Fat Cat used to be for Aldrin Klordane, at least from Klordane's point of view.
- Role Called: Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers.
- Round Robin: Has become a tradition of sorts at the Acorn Cafe, just without a pre-defined posting order.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: In the episode "Risky Beesness", Queenie is able to overpower Irweena's hypnosis over her swarm and help Zipper save the other Rangers in the process.
- Rubber Man: "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!"
- Rule 34: Poor Gadget is usually the subject of such material, but there are plenty of fans who strongly oppose it (Tammy and Foxglove, as well as the other Rangers, have their own fair share - but nowhere near the amount as Gadget has).
- Rule of Three: The three tests in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" are only one example.
- Runaway Bride: Gender Flipped. Monterey Jack missed out on his wedding to Desiree D'Allure in "Love is a Many Splintered Thing" because he was "seduced by his first love" (a truck conveniently stuck in traffic carrying cheese), though considering that Desiree only used Monty to help out her gang of criminals, this may have been a good thing.
- Running Gag: Monty's cheese attacks (it would be Once an Episode, but there are a lot of episodes that don't have Monty's cheese attacks), some of Gadget's quirks, Chip and Dale fighting over Gadget.
- Running on the Spot
- Scam Religion: The Coo-Coo Cola Cult.
- Science Fair: "Normie's Science Project".
- Science Hero: Gadget.
- Scooby Stack
- The Scottish Trope: Many Rangerphiles refuse to say or write the name of a certain bobcat cop whose name shall not be mentioned.
- In fact, sometimes they refuse to spell out Lah... Law... Lou... the name of Gadget's Evil Twin from "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" due to the unclear spelling.
- Screw Destiny: Chip's attitude towards Cassandra's prophecy in "Seer No Evil", no matter how much of it comes true.
- Seers: Cassandra from "Seer No Evil".
- Shadow Discretion Shot: Dale vs. Su Lin in "Song of the Night 'n Dale".
- Shapeshifter Baggage: The Fleeblebroxians in "Dale Beside Himself" can shapeshift into anything, no matter how big or small. DTZ, for instance, transforms into both a dragon a dozen times as tall as Dale as well as into Dale.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Gadget in her red dress scenes proves this to be true.
- She's All Grown Up: Referenced/used in the meeting scene in "To the Rescue (Part 3)":
Monty: Gadget? Geegaw's little girl? Why the last time I saw you you were nigh high to a knee. |
- Shiny Midnight Black: Seymour.
- Ship Tease: Done on many occasions, both for Chip+Gadget and for Dale+Gadget, but also for potential 'ships involving one-shot characters. "Good Times, Bat Times" takes the cake, however, with its quite intense Chip+Gadget and Dale+Foxglove Ship Tease.
- The comics heavily hint at Dale+Foxglove being an Official Couple
- Shout-Out: So many, the show is practically Reference Overdosed. Go here for specifics.
- Show Some Leg: Gadget's red dress is tailored that way.
- Show Within a Show: Red Badger of Courage, Flash the Wonder Dog, the Dirk Suave movie series, several comic book series.
- Sixth Ranger: The original show didn't have a character joining for more than a single episode. In fanfic, the two most common examples are Foxglove and Tammy. In any case, this is meant literally.
- There seems to be more Fan Fiction with Foxy as the Sixth Ranger than not.
- Sixty-Five-Episode Cartoon
- Slap Slap Kiss: Monty's parents Cheddarhead Charlie and Camembert Kate fall under this.
- Smitten Teenage Girl: Tammy oh so very much.
- Smooch of Victory:
- At the beginning of "Dirty Rotten Diapers" Gadget gives one to Chip.
- At the end of "Adventures in Squirrelsitting", Tammy gives one to Chip. He's pretty popular with the ladies.
- Smug Super: Dale as Rubber Bando. It's not until he's framed for stealing world monuments that he loses his smugness.
- The Smurfette Principle
- The Song Remains the Same: "You're the Best Bee for Me" by Irweena & the Stingers isn't translated into German whereas all other songs including the theme song are.
- Space Does Not Work That Way: Whenever the Rangers travel through space.
- Species Surname: Mole, Rat Capone, Sugar Ray Lizard, Arnold Mousenegger, Conrad Cockatoo, Mr. Starfish, Canina LaFur.
- Now if Zsa Zsa Labrador were a Labrador Retriever...
- Speech-Impaired Animal: Kookoo from "Gorilla My Dreams". Strangely, she is it even to other animals instead of being fluent in Animal Talk.
- Spell My Name with an "S": There are at least three variations on "Lahwhinie" which have been referred to as "official" the fandom, plus several dozen more spellings created (and still used) by fans. In fact, it took years for the legit spelling of her name to be determined, because it was only mentioned in the show's promotional materials.
- And for the record, the subtitles for the episode on the DVD spell her name "Lawhinie".
- Spell My Name with a "The": "When Mice Were Men" has El Emenopio, El Monty Grande, and at the end also El Dale Grande.
- Spoiled Brat: Buffy Ratskiwatski. Her being the daughter of a Big Bad doesn't really make things any better.
- Stalker with a Crush: Foxglove.
- Start of Darkness: Winifred used to be a cleaning woman until she discovered books about witchcraft in the library.
- Stationary Wings:
- Cruiser and Bruiser from "Three Men and a Booby". They're too cool to flap, in fact, they're so cool that it's the Rule of Cool that moves them forward.
- Subverted by the Ranger Plane, as the source of lift for the craft is mainly the balloon and the wings only flap because it looks cool.
- Subverted by Foxglove at the end of "Good Times, Bat Times". She takes a moment to stop flapping in order to fawn over Dale, only to fall.
- Stealth Pun: Zipper is a fly. This is never referenced in the series.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero: Gadget and Sparky both qualify.
- Stock Dinosaurs: Guess where Steggy got his name from.
- Stock Epileptic Trees: At least CDRR and The Rescuers share the same universe.
- Stout Strength: Monterey Jack. Overweight: Check. Gadget even tries to get him to lose some weight. Strength: Check. He's easily the strongest Ranger.
- Strong Family Resemblance:
- Monty and his father Cheddarhead Charlie.
- Normie and his uncle Norton Nimnul.
- Superheroes Wear Capes: Flash the Wonder Dog and the Red Badger of Courage.
- Superpowers for A Day: Dale becomes the superhero "Rubber Bando" in "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!". Sadly, his source of super powers is smashed before the episode ends.
- Super Speed: The Ranger Plane in "Dale Beside Himself", thanks to DTZ.
- Super Strength: Gadget (as seen in "To the Rescue (Part 5)"), Monty, and Zipper. Also, a side effect of wearing one of the red meteorite crystals from "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!".
- Supervillain Lair: Aldrin Klordane's refit of the cave in "To the Rescue (Part 5)", which is also an Elaborate Underground Base, and to a lesser extent Norton Nimnul's lair in "Catteries Not Included", "The Pied Piper Power Play" and "Normie's Science Project".
- Supreme Chef: Monterey Jack.
- Surfer Dude: Shaka Baka from "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" is, like, way too Californian for Hawaii.
- Surrounded by Idiots:
- Fat Cat's henchmen are often Too Dumb to Live, which he complains loudly about on several occasions.
- He shares this fate with Francis.
- Sword Fight: "A Case of Stage Blight" has several unusual variations of this.
- Synchronized Swarming: "Risky Beesness" has a swarm of bees who not only form flying hearts on behalf of the queen, but also steal musical instruments while hypnotized by a thief playing a mind-controlling tune.
- Take a Third Option: Lawhinie's solution to the three deadly challenges is to not do them, and tricked Gadget to take her place; when the village chief finds out, he considers Lahwhinie's solution and her attempt at Loophole Abuse as cheating.
- Talk Like a Pirate: The Pi-Rats, especially Jolly Roger who even refers to the Rangers as "me hearties" in "Chipwrecked Shipmunks".
- Tank Goodness:
- The Gyrotank in "The Case of the Cola Cult" and the easter-basket-turned-tank in "Three Men and a Booby", though they are more along the lines of an APC.
- Buffy's toy tank driven by Dale in "Out of Scale" and the raygun tank prototype in "Double 'O Dale" are tanks all right. Also, tanks are used to try and fight Nimnul's giant bugs mistaken as aliens in "Fake Me to Your Leader".
- Team Chef: Monty.
- Team Switzerland: The so-called Neutrals (as opposed to Pros and Antis).
- Techno Babble: Gadget's ramblings do not always make sense.
- Temple of Doom: Where Heinrich von Sugarbottom has his secret base in "Chocolate Chips".
- Ten-Minute Retirement: Monty in "To the Rescue (Part 4)" and "Love is a Many Splintered Thing", Gadget in "The Case of the Cola Cult", Zipper in "Zipper Come Home".
- Tenchi Solution: Type 1 to be precise.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The majority of animal characters.
- Thememobile: The famous Ranger Plane, maybe also the Ranger Mobile and the Ranger Wing to a much lesser extent.
- Theme Naming: Monterey Jack's parents are named Cheddarhead Charlie and Camembert Kate.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The many death traps Gadget set up in the old bomber where she lived before the Rescue Rangers. Subverted by the other Rangers-to-be in that they trigger them all and survive.
- There's No B in Movie: Just about every movie Dale watches on TV.
- They Called Me Mad: Nimnul, so very, very much.
- They Fight Crime
- Thing-O-Matic: Clyde Cosgrove's Meal-O-Matic from "The Luck Stops Here".
- Those Two Bad Guys: Rat Capone's henchmen Arnold Mousenegger and Sugay Ray Lizard.
- Those Two Guys: Officers Kirby and Muldoon.
- Three Wishes: "A Lad in a Lamp".
- Through a Face Full of Fur
- Too Dumb to Fool: In "One-Upsman-Chip", Dale tries to convince Fat Cat's henchmen to let him go because he has psychic powers by having them think of a number between 1 and 3 and guessing that they are thinking of the number 2. Most of the henchmen are amazed that he was right. However, he somehow wasn't even close to Mepps the cat's number, so he doesn't get released.
- Took a Level in Badass: Gadget in the episode "The Case Of The Cola Cult", and Dale in the episode "Last Train To Cashville".
- Took a Level In Dumbass: Dale in several episodes.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Chip in several episodes.
- Top-Heavy Guy: The animators seemed to love this trope.
- Toros Y Flamenco: "When Mice Were Men" is built around this.
- Trademark Favorite Food: "chEEeeEEeeEEeeEESE!"
- Trap Door: There's one in the secret passage of the Baskerville mansion in "Pound of the Baskervilles". Fat Cat also has one in his office.
- Treasure Map: Used in both Pi-Rats episodes. In "Chipwrecked Shipmunks", they've got an actual treasure stashed away on an island. In "Piratsy Under the Seas", however, it is revealed that they've been hunting the same treasure on their stuck ship for hundreds of years, using the same map over and over again since the treasure has always been in the same place.
- Triang Relations:
- Chip, Dale and Gadget - Type 3, 7, 8 or 9, with Gadget as 'a' or 4 with Gadget as 'b', depending on the interpretation.
- Chip, Tammy and Gadget - Type 4 or 5, with Tammy as 'a', Chip as 'b' and Gadget as 'c', again depending on the interpretation
- Trojan Horse:
- Easter basket with an integrated tank in "Three Men and a Booby".
- The pineapple in "Battle of the Bulge".
- Tropey Come Home: Played not so very straight in "Zipper Come Home". Zipper doesn't really want to return to the Rangers after he has been made king of a bug tribe.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: The theme song does this twice. The full-length version additionally changes gears once per chorus.
- True Companions
- Tunnel King: Ming-Ting and Ting-a-Ling, the pandas from "An Elephant Never Suspects". The moles from "A Lean on the Property" also count.
- Tuxedo and Martini: Double 'O Dale - sans Martini, of course, but his role model Dirk Suave and the gimmicks built into his tux make up for this.
- Unhand Them, Villain!: Fat Cat does it to Tammy and Bink in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting".
- The Unintelligible: Zipper.
- Unnamed Parent: Tammy and Bink's mother.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: A lot of the cats, dogs, mice, chipmunks, birds, etc. wear clothes, but none of the humans seem to notice.
- Unwilling Suspension: Happens to Dale and Foxglove in "Good Times, Bat Times" and again to Dale in "Gorilla My Dreams".
- Vapor Wear: Tammy's mom as revealed by hardly more than one frame in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting". And even Gadget while lying upside-down in a skimpy dress in "Double 'O Chipmunk". Yes, they're both covered in fur, and the next scene with Gadget in that dress in that episode has her suddenly wear her coveralls under the dress, but still.
- Lahwhiney's Hawaiian skirt counts as well.
- Verbal Tic: When Chip and Dale get angry and start fighting, their voices get higher and faster.
- Villain Song:
- Fat Cat gets two out of the show's five songs, namely "The Best of Everything" in "To the Rescue" and "The Fat Cat Stomp" in "Adventures in Squirrelsitting"; ironically, the Rangers gave him the latter.
- There is also Irweena Allen from "Risky Beesness" who had her own song, namely "You're the Best Bee for Me".
- Villain with Good Publicity: Su Lin.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Fleeblebroxians again.
- The Von Trope Family: Heinrich von Sugarbottom.
- Walking the Earth:
- Although the Rangers live in a City of Adventure, their cases have taken them all over the world, and even outer space (in "Out to Launch").
- Pre-Rangers Monterey Jack and his parents, Cheddarhead Charlie and Camembert Kate, are even better examples.
- Walk the Plank: The Pi-Rats make the Rangers walk a human saber in lieu of a plank in "Piratsy Under the Seas".
- Weather Control Machine: Nimnul has one in "Weather or Not".
- We Help the Helpless: The team's motto being "No case too big, no case too small".
- Welcome to the Caribbean, Mon: The Jamaican fruit bats from "Battle of the Bulge".
- What Does This Button Do?: Toggle the hover mode on the Ranger Wing ("Song of the Night 'n Dale").
- Whole-Plot Reference: For example, "A Fly in the Ointment" is one big reference to the recently remade movie The Fly.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
- In the case of Monty, it's cats instead of snakes. Fat Cat and his feline crony Mepps don't seem to bother him too much, though.
- Flash the Wonder Dog has a fear of heights in which he needed a stunt dog.
- Wicked Witch: Why, Winifred from "Good Times, Bat Times" of course.
- Wig, Dress, Accent: Used in several episodes. Not always with an accent, though. Dale is particulary famous for this.
- Wild Take: Even villains do them, see Bubbles at the end of "The Case of the Cola Cult".
- Wishplosion: "A Lad in a Lamp".
- A Worldwide Punomenon: Many of the episode titles and a couple of lines.
- The most important character names in "When Mice Were Men", Don Quijole (pun on "key hole") and El Emenopio ("LMNOP").
- Wrench Wench:
- Gadget.
- Su Lin in "Song of the Night 'n Dale".
- Ming-Ting from "An Elephant Never Suspects".
- Wrestler in All of Us: Dale puts his alien clone in a Boston Crab.
- Wunza Plot
- X-Ray Sparks: Has happened to all the Rangers at least once.
- Yodel Land: Where Heinrich von Sugarbottom comes from.
- You Can't Fight Fate: "Seer No Evil".
- You Dirty Rat: Rat Capone, Snout, Francis and his henchrats on the one side, pretty much all mice on the other side. The sole exception would be Sparky the lab rat.
- You're Just Jealous: Dale to Chip so many, many times.
- Your Size May Vary:
- The best—but certainly not sole—example would be Queenie from "Risky Beesness". She is meant to be about twice as tall as Zipper, but she is depicted so inconsistently that she seems to have temporarily grown taller than Gadget in a scene near the end of the episode.
- "Bearing Up Baby". The size dissonance is so extreme that Monty is about three quarters as tall as Jeremy. This would be more realistic.
- Also, Winifred's list in "Good Times, Bat Times" which varies from handy size for rodents to way larger than Foxglove. This is particularly obvious because Foxy gets to hold the same list in several different sizes.
- ↑ except in the episode "It's a Bird, It's Insane, It's Dale!", in which Dale and a human villain both get temporary Rubber Man powers from an alien meteor