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Alternative Character Interpretation: A common view on the show is that it may all be seen through Courage's eyes. Supporters of this theory argue that Muriel and Eustace's indifference to the baddies and the many instances of Negative Continuity can be explained by the fact that Courage is a dog. The many times Courage thinks someone dies could just be someone leaving the room and the outlandish threats could be a dog trying to make sense of something he has no frame of reference for.
Anvilicious: Has this show mentioned the fact that you shouldn't judge people by their appearances and/or abuse animals yet?
Katz. Most of the villains are sort of cartoonishly ineffectual, even if they are loaded with Nightmare Fuel, but Katz is implied to have successfully killed many, many victims. "Care for a bit of sport before dying, dear boy?"
The Great Fusilli initially seems like a charming (if somewhat sinister) traveling magician taking his show on the road, and allows Courage as well as his owners Eustace and Muriel to perform for an imaginary audience. However, his true evil nature is revealed when Courage stumbles upon a back room full of lifeless human puppets. It turns out that Fusilli is a Serial Killer of sorts who uses enchanted strings that turn people into lifeless puppets, effectively killing them so he can play round with their lifeless bodies for his entertainment. As one would expect Courage defeats the villainous magician, but not before Eustace and Muriel have been turned into puppets, leaving Courage to essentially play with their lifeless bodies in order to pretend that they're still alive. Thankfully negative continuity is in effect, but it's still considered to be among the darkest, creepiest, and most downright disturbing episodes in the series for a very good reason.
Schwick, a wanted criminal who owns an Eldritch Abomination hidden behind a mouse hole, and who sends Courage to get a squeegee needed only because he had to erase a previous victim's message on one of the windows, in order to make it more alluring to future victims.
The Computer and Sara 1, due to both being often-snarky, British-accented computers from Cartoon Network. Then there's the Ho Yay route with him and Brainiac...
The Great Fusilli and Alice Margatroid, due to their shared love of puppets and magic.
The soundtrack to the episode "The Tower of Dr. Zalost".
Also the One-Woman Wail at the end of the Doc Gerbil episode during the boat chase scene.
The person who composed that disturbing yet awesome theme in "Windmill Vandals" deserves a medal.
The subtle organ music that plays during certain events. It plays quite a bit clearer in the quilt club episode, one place where it's really noticeable.
The Great Fusilli's theme, in its entirely appropriate Creepy Circus Music style.
The Crisis Theme, once/when it reaches its maximum intensity. Special mentions go to the Mortal Kombat-esque techno remix that plays when Courage and Katz play tennis in "A Night at the Katz Motel," as well as the jazzy version that plays when Schwick chases Courage and Muriel in "Courage in the Big, Stinkin' City." In fact, the latter episode won an Emmy for Best Sound Editing.
Muriel's sitar song, with its mystical, Indian sound.
Ear Worm: The theme for Doc Gerbil, as well as Flan King's hypnotic command to "buy Flantasy Flan".
There's no time to rest our laurels, when we must repair the corals!
Ethnic Scrappy: DiLung, who is increasingly-widely considered to be one of the absolute worst and most racist cartoon characters of all time and is basically just a Chinese and even more obnoxious version of Eustace at best. Even worse, his episodes are on Max, while Speedy Gonzales (a character that Mexicans absolutely love) isn't.
Say what you will about Katz, but he is definitely one seriously smooth bastard.
Despite being the absolute biggest douchebag in the entire series, DiLung is basically how "cool" of a person Eustace wishes he could be (wears utterly badass-looking sunglasses and drives a vintage hot rod, is obscenelyrich and lives in a mansion, is a Mad Scientist who can easily just build a better dog for himself rather than having to look for a new one, is actually able to survive on his own without being utterly reliant on his wife, etc).
Dr. Zalost, who rides round in a mechanical castle and has absolutely amazing theme music.
The Queen of the Black Puddle is one of CTCD's only conventionally attractive characters...and eats people.
Same with Mondo, whose human form is the only attractive guy in the show (even being black, to boot!) and turns out to be an Eldritch Abomination in disguise.
Katz also easily qualifies if you're a furry... although his voice certainly helps...
The Computer in "Mega Muriel the Magnificent." Take his already sexy voice and have it laugh evilly... never mind he's in the body of Muriel, that is outright heaven for evil male AI lovers, and it just makes them want a regular physical body for him even more.
Fan Nickname: The "Perfect Trumpet Thingy" for the blue thing in the first of Courage's nightmares in "Perfect" and "Violin Girl" for the Demon Head in "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City".
The Violin Girl has also been called "Viola" by a small group of fans.
Courage, Muriel, and Eustace together as a group is usually called "the Bagges" or "the Bagge family" by fans.
"Simon" for the Computer, named after his voice actor, Simon Prebble. It's usually the AI fetishists who call him that.
Friendly Fandoms: With Scooby-Doo due to the similar premises of dogs investigating spooky things, to the point where WB Animation did a crossover in 2021.
As with other Cartoon Network shows, the show is popular in Japan, though not as much as say, The Powerpuff Girls. However, you can find clips of the Japanese dub on YouTube.
The Italians apparently loved "Leone Cane Fifone" enough to get the only official Courage plush.
Di Lung (ignoring his intelligence) is basically the show's version of RiceGum; both of them are comically massive hypocrites, both of them are living "rich Asian asshole" stereotype caricatures, both of them have gotten completely owned by a white guy with nerd/reading glasses (iDubbbzTV for Ricegum; Eustace for Di Lung), and both of them have become huge ironic memes due to how much many of the people that know about them love to hate them. However, Di Lung is considerably more "purely Asian" than RiceGum.
The Alien Brain Visitor's "creepy government agent with top hat and trenchcoat" costume eerily resembles one of the online avatars/logos of The Mysterious Mr. Enter, who is actually somewhat notorious for being one of the all-time biggest fans of CTCD itself and even seemingly considering the series to be "above criticism".
The Violin Girl is a girl that shoots a Demon Head at Courage, scaring him enough to leave her alone. Come 2003, and we have an entire character who does that to get what she wants.
Les Yay: Kitty and Bunny from the episode "The Mask".
Magnificent Bastard: Katz, whose immoral, sadistic antics actually almost succeed, leaving one of the Bagges to save Courage. Example would be in "A Night at the Katz Motel," where Katz gives up on playing tennis with Courage and is strangling him to death when Muriel bonks him on the head with a racket.
Nightmare Fuel: A lot of the more surreal stuff. It even has it's own page.
Non-Sequitur Scene:
A dragon coming out of absolutely nowhere(pun not intended) and eating Eustace in the last five seconds of the episode.
Eustace getting mauled by a Siberian Tiger while deer hunting.
Seems as though animals are always coming out of nowhere to attack Eustace, as he got attacked by a giant squirrel in "Family Business".
Most of Courage's nightmares from the last episode could count, especially that blue thing. It really had no importance to the rest of the episode except to scare you straight and it really wasn't seen or mentioned again in those other nightmares.
The way Katz gets defeated in "Katz Under the Sea," namely getting Swallowed Whole by a shark.
"Snowman's Revenge" has Snowman breaking out into a So Bad It's Good musical number about... a chilly love story? Huh?
"Courage Meets The Mummy" opens with an archeologist dusting off a gem inside the Mayan temple, which then shoots out a beam of light which gets reflected off some things and causes a disco ball to come out of the ceiling while some music plays for a brief moment. Afterwards, the archeologist just shrugs it off and continues dusting off the gem stone.
Paranoia Fuel: Kitty could see Eustace and Muriel doing things in secret (sneaking cake, not fixing things) when they couldn't tell.
Seasonal Rot: a lot of season three and four episodes aren't nearly as memorable as pretty much every episode in season one and two. They're still considered pretty good, though.
The idea of on of the Valkyries falling in love with the incredibly disgusting Troll king, and soon the other Valkyries and the trolls falling in love is just, gross. Don't think about their Honeymoon to much...
That scene doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny because the as the Valkyrie and Troll King were singing about how much they love each other, they would not. Stop. Singing, Despite the fact that the rest of the Valkyries and Trolls were on their way to the cave. Added bonuses include going to the scene of the Valkyries and Trolls running their way over there, and cutting back to the Valkyrie and Troll King, STILL SINGING, and cutting back over and over, but also Courage Lampshading it.
"Muriel Blows Up" and "Mission to the Sun," namely because they show the insides of incredibly ugly characters. (Courage does not count, he's a dog!) This troper had a hard time watching those episodes in their childhood.
Tear Jerker: "The Last Of The Star Makers". *sniffle*
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The AI fetishists did not take kindly to Jeff Bergman voicing the computer in the Scooby-Doo crossover movie.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many of the show's secondary characters get little screen time despite their plot potential, but Di Lung especially stands out, being a rich and badass Asian version of Eustace who usually only appears for about five seconds per episode (so that he can yell "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING, YA FOOL" at random people as one of the show's manyComic Relief sources).
Ugly Cute: The Hunchback Of Nowhere, due to his Schwick-like left eye and his shared stocky appearance/vocal similarities to Tansit. In fact, he might even BE what Tansit looks like under his helmet.
Most of the show's characters, due to its art style.
The Hard Drive Virus from "Hard Drive Courage," due to its comically ugly countenance and bulbous nose, plus the fact that he was voiced by Top Cat's original VA, Arnold Stang. The same goes for the similar-looking Mustafa al Bacterius from "Mission to the Sun," who was also voiced by Arnold Stang.
Say what you will about Schwick the cockroach, but even he might count, with his deformed eyes and silly Brooklyn accent, as well as the fact he's a giant fucking cockroach lurking in New York unnoticed. At least if you aren't scared of bugs.
And the Harvest Moon in "The House Of Discontent".
The Magic Tree of Nowhere, due to its Synchro Vox human face that reminds one of Tom Kenny's face on the drop of hot sauce from the SpongeBob SquarePants "Karate Choppers" episode.
The Demon Head in "Courage in the Big, Stinkin' City."
The Hunchback of Nowhere. Again, he has a lot of similarities to Tansit.
In direct contrast to most "villains", Freaky Fred is a perfectly kind individual whose shaving... thing lost him his pet, his girlfriend, his job, and landed him in a mental institution.
The Snowman. The poor guy lost all of his friends and family because of global warming, is it really any wonder that he wanted to freeze everything in the entire world?
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