Early Installment Weirdness/Western Animation

• The earliest Woody Woodpecker shorts directed by Walter Lantz and Alex Lovy are quite different from the eventual Jerkass he became later. Woody was adorned with an ugly, ghoulish design, and was a shameless ripoff of the early screwball Daffy Duck. Even the stories and gags were very derivative of Warner Bros–type comedy (although this is probably because Lantz had one of their former writers, Ben Hardaway, working with him).
• In the first episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the otter penguin hybrids with four flippers are simply called "Penguins", rather than the more traditional Mix-and-Match Critter names such as Platypus Bear and Saber Tooth Moose lion.
• Ben 10: In the original series, Ben didn't say the names of his aliens. That started in Ben 10: Alien Force and continued in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien.
  • Earlier episodes of Ben 10: Omniverse had Rook use contractions. Later episodes demonstrate that Rook's species consider contractions akin to cussing. The Revonnahganders using them in "While You Were Away" was actually a plot relevant Out of Character Alert.
• The Simpsons are possibly the best-known example amongst the modern generation. First were the Tracey Ullman shorts, the earlier ones with very skewed character models compared to what we know. Then come the first season or so, most of which is very different in tone and humor style to everything that came after it. In particular, there's the episode "There's No Disgrace Like Home" (in which Homer is actually ashamed of his family being dysfunctional, something that would be more in character for Marge or Lisa in later episodes). The writers' commentary cheerfully admits that pretty much everything in the episode is "wrong" compared to later seasons, though that still doesn't stop it from having a scene that continues to be extremely popular, where the Simpsons all give each other shock therapy.
  • Also notable is the completely different, more gruff voice Dan Castellaneta uses for Homer during the shorts and first part of the first season. The original voice of Homer was based rather closely on Walter Matthau. As well, after the first three or four seasons (after the initial craze died down) the writers realized that Homer was a much better character for generating plots, as long as they kept him fairly unpredictable and dumb. This was lampshaded with a "viewer's letter" saying that "I think Homer gets stupider every year." Dan Castellaneta actually says on several commentaries that he never really made a decision to change the voice; he just kept trying his best to match the voice he used in the previous episode, and it slowly changed to one that fit the writing better.
  • Let's not forget the early Off-Model appearances of black Smithers with blue hair (on the season one episode "Homer's Odyssey") and Lou the cop (who switched from being black to being yellow).
  • As late as Season 4, Chief Wiggum was a semi-competent, serious and dedicated police officer who often clashed with Mayor Quimby. By Season 5, he'd become the inept buffoon that he's famous for being.
• South Park is essentially known as one of the modern era's leading voices in satire, but the first several season were much better known simply for their use of swearing and shock-value in otherwise aimless, mostly Rule of Funny comedy plots. The lower budgets and actual-construction-paper animation also present a significant visual difference. Funnily enough, the newer seasons are far filthier and feature unbleeped swearing. The show itself lampoons all this when recreating the series' first scene with twice as much swearing and blockbuster computer effects in the episode "Cancelled".
• Combined with Characterization Marches On, this can be seen in a lot of the first season episodes of Teen Titans; over time, the cast underwent a kind of reverse Flanderization, thanks to Character Development. In early episodes, several characters resemble stereotypes of themselves more than their selves from the later seasons--Raven's gothiness, Starfire's ditziness, Beast Boy's immaturity, and Slade's Card Carrying Villainy are all really played up, and the overall tone is more of a very lighthearted kid's action show, as compared to the somewhat schizophrenic later seasons, which tended to bounce back and forth between utter random goofiness and surprisingly intense darkness. It's generally considered that Robin's Not So Different Story Arc with Slade is where the show really Grew the Beard and started acting like itself.
• Codename: Kids Next Door started with Sector V as apparently the only KND unit in the world. Their specialties and specific personalities besides Numbah 1 being the official leader had also not been established yet, Numbah 5 was almost The Voiceless, Numbah 4 didn't have his famous crush on Numbuh 3, and the show itself was far more of a comedy (with downright bizarre Gross-Out Show-style plots relying on the Rule of Funny) than the action/comedy it became as the series progressed. Also, some of the early gadgets didn't have the acronym gags.
  • It also had very little continuity, to the point you can watch most of the early episodes out-of-order.
  • And of course, the first episode title was "No P in the OOL" as A Worldwide Punomenon instead of the Fun with Acronyms titles for which the series is famous.
  • In the earlier seasons, "normal" prisons clearly existed--Count Spankulot is seen in one in at least two episodes (N.A.U.G.H.T.Y. (where the adults don't prove useless for a change and the local court is actually seen sentencing him!) and L.O.C.K.D.O.W.N.). Later on, all of the KND villains were locked up at a special facility in Antarctica.
  • Also, in earlier episodes, the KND were heavily implied to be Villain Protagonists with a Sympathetic POV. Later episodes made them more unambiguously heroic.
• Daria‍'‍s early gimmick was that whatever odd situation the title character had been placed in, she could get through it and upstage her erstwhile counterparts at Lawndale High and home on her wits and effective use of irony. Daria became more introspective in the later seasons.
  • Arguably this counts more as Character Development.
• The first two seasons of Kim Possible lack the series signature Affectionate Parody, Les Yay, and comedy. Dr. Drakken was also a serious villain early on, and Shego was a rather onesided mook with some essences of her later personality.
  • The art is also quite different in the first season.
  • Kim was also much more hostile in the first season, with most of her Deadpan Snarker moments being laced with open contempt towards others. She even called Rufus "a naked freak" among other things.
  • Most of these changes can be attributed to the departure of the original director and producer, Chris Bailey, who allegedly clashed with co-creators Schooley and McCorkle on the show's creative direction. The second season had a number of rotating directors before Steve Loter was installed as the permanent director for the third season.
  • "Tick, Tick, Tick" had Steve Barkin with blond hair, and all future appearances had brown hair. Her hair dryer grapple gun was also purple instead of blue.
  • Kim and Ron's voices are also quite different until about halfway through the first season. Ron spoke in a lower register, sounding very much like Eric Matthews while Kim's voice took a while to settle down, alternatively being higher and lower depending on the episode.
• The early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts are almost unrecognizable from the latter-day productions during the 1940s and '50s, they were no different from the other cartoon series running at the time--mildly amusing musicals with bland characters, derivative of Disney's more polished Silly Symphonies. It wasn't until Tex Avery was promoted to director that Looney Tunes began living up to the first part of their name.
  • Even after the Loonification of the cartoons, some still come off as incredibly weird. Bugs Bunny (or his prototype) in particular started off more like Daffy Duck wearing a rabbit suit. Watch "Hare-Um Scare-Um" sometime and see Bugs openly refer to himself as crazy, jump around chuckling to himself, and even sing a Daffy-esque song about how insane he is.
• The first episode of Phineas and Ferb has Phineas being sarcastic and a little more antagonistic towards his sister Candace, something that's still in the theme tune ("...or driving our sister insane!") After that, he's just upbeat about his projects and bears no ill-will to her or anyone. Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Evil Plan is also much grander in scope than his usual focus on "the entire Tri-State Area" too, and the key device in his plan is not an -inator.
• The first season of KaBlam! is somewhat more bizarre than the rest of the show (and not just the art style or the voices. It's more "zany" (similar to the WB cartoons, mainly Animaniacs), June being an idiot, and the lack of shippy moments between the duo.
• The pilot of Invader Zim features four rather odd discrepancies with later episodes. The Tallest have a simpler design, they seem about equal in intellect whereas only Red would later be established as having even a shred of competence, the Massive lacks its escort fleet, and Zim's trip to Earth takes six months whereas he was later shown to be hopping around the galaxy in a few hours.
• In the first season of Rocko's Modern Life not only was the theme song different, but Rocko was more paranoid and easily angered, Filburt was not a regular character, but when he did show up he was nerdier than in later seasons, Bev Bighead in all her season 1 appearances was more flirtatious and liked to party, and the style was cruder, and there was more gross out humor and innuendo than later on, and most plotlines involved Rocko trying to make it through everyday situations gone wrong more than in later seasons.
• Craig McCracken's first The Powerpuff Girls short (created under the title, Whoopass Stew) features the Amoeba Boys as genuinely competent criminals. Also, the girls have no individual personalities, and defeat the Amoeba Boys by flying them to extremely close contact with the sun, causing them to melt. Also, Professor Utonium for some reason looked like Dexter.
• The first My Little Pony special was very dark; it could rival most boy shows at the time. The series based on the special was Lighter and Softer, and it only became lighter and softer throughout the generations. The Ponies resembled actual horses and acted like them. To new fans of the series, seeing them lick each other and lie next to each other seems homoerotic.
  • The premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic made the series look more like a Magical Girl show. However, the Elements of Harmony are completely forgotten until Season 2, and the show turns to focus on one-shot episodes rather than an overarching plot.
    • It also took a while for the visual effects for unicorn magic to be standardized, and even then the Color-Coded Wizardry didn't really show up until "Lesson Zero".
• The second episode of the original Nickelodeon version of Doug, "Doug Can't Dance", had a different art style from the other episodes of the original series. Plus, Roger has a different gang of thugs in that episode as well.
• The first Tom and Jerry movie was actually about Tom and Jerry mysteriously gaining the ability to talk and sing. The sequels actually kept them both silent and were more faithful to the original cartoons.
  • In the very first episode "Puss Gets The Boot", Tom and Jerry were named Jasper and Jinx respectively, Tom walked on all fours, looked more realistic and had cat screeches instead of human yells and before walking on his hind legs.
• Arthur has some major inconsistencies early on. Francine was a Jerkass instead of her more mellow Jerk with a Heart of Gold personality from later episodes, Sue Ellen appears several times despite having transfered to the school in third grade, Francine celebrated Christmas despite later being shown to be Jewish and celebrating Hanukkah, etc
• The Five Episode Pilot of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers for some reason actually portrayed villain Fat Cat in a way so that he acts like a human when no one's looking, but like a normal house cat when he is with humans. From the second episode onwards however, he is now always shown acting like a human. Justified since in the pilot he is owned by a criminal mastermind named Aldrin Klordane, and after Klordane is arrested Fat Cat operates on his own.
• The pilot of Kaeloo suffered from this tremendously, as the animation is nowhere near that of the rest of the series, the character designs dangled around the Uncanny Valley and Bad Kaeloo had a vocal sac.
• Transformers:
  • The opening trio of episodes of The Transformers had the Autobots flying under their own power. This was dropped almost immediately with the Autobots having to use jetpacks to fly and Season 2 outright saying that robot mode flight was a Decepticon-only power. The Autobots did fly in Season 3, but it was all in space-based scenes so it may have simply been thrust in a vacuum. Nonetheless, the early writers clearly intended for all Cybertronians to be able to fly.
    • Much of Season 1, and the first half of Season 2, treated energon as a Decepticon-only resource, even suggesting that it had been recently created by the Decepticons shortly after they awoke on Earth, to the point that Mirage having energon cubes in "Traitor" was considered evidence that he might have been a traitor. From "War Dawn" onwards this was totally abandoned and energon became ubiquitous in Cybertronian society.
    • The first season was also rather coy over whether Optimus Prime was the leader of the Autobots or just the leader of this group of Autobots. By Season 2, it was clearly shown to be the former. This was likely the result of some cross-pollination with the concurrent Marvel comic which established that Optimus was the Autobots' military leader who had to answer to the civilian government.
  • On the first two episodes of Beast Wars, the transformations are treated with much more gravitas. With each member shouting their name and transformation code out loud, and being seen to transform by themselves. This is not limited to just the first transformation either, as almost all of them in the first two episodes are this way. Similarly, a big case is made out of Optimus' inexperience at commanding. This is never referred to again once the two parter is over.
  • The opening movie of Transformers Animated had the Autobots' vehicle modes be able to convey facial expressions. It also had them be flummoxed by the idea of Sari being a "she", despite it being shown later in Season 1 that female Cybertronians exist. They also seem bemused by the idea of organics (initially thinking that Earth's cars and robots were the native Mechanical Lifeforms) despite it later being shown that an integral part of Optimus' backstory involves a trip to a planet inhabited by organic lifeforms. For most of the first season, they infrequently used a mixture of human and Cybertronian terminology rather than the exclusive usage of Pardon My Klingon the show would later become famous for.
  • The Five Episode Pilot of Transformers Prime has the characters be unfamiliar with Dark Energon, treating it as an unheard nigh-mythical substance. The Season 1 finale makes clear that, even if its true origins were a matter of debate, they'd all known about since the closing days of the War for Cybertron.
  • In a meta sense, the earliest incarnations of Transformers Generation 1 were very different from later incarnations of the franchise that followed the Beast Era. Prior to Beast Wars, Cybertronians were simply treated as androids instead of Mechanical Lifeforms. Alternate modes, aside from needing outside machinery to change, were treated as readily changeable (Bumblebee was a Volkswagen but could have easily become a jet, a train, or a gun) while later media had Cybertronians limited to alternate modes that fit what they'd been born with (born a train, you can only scan alien trains). Perhaps the biggest change from earlier media is that whereas beast modes weren't initially treated as anything special, Transformers Cybertron introduced the idea of them being a distinct subspecies of Cybertronians, something that bled to other depictions of the brand.
• The early episodes of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy were much darker and more morbid in tone than the wacky, nonsensical show that it later became.
• In the first season of Courage the Cowardly Dog, Courage openly spoke and had dialogue with a few other characters. For the rest of the series, he was pretty much silent. This is probably due to the fact that he was pretty much Captain Obvious.
• In the first 1973–74 season Superfriends episode "The Power Pirate", there were a number of things that didn't match later episodes.
  • Wendy and Marvin talked like 1960s hippies, using phrases like "groovy", "cool", "right on" and "far out". They never spoke like this again.
  • Marvin was able to levitate himself into the air, indicating he was developing super powers. This was never brought up again.
• The pilot episode of The Amazing World of Gumball had both Gumball and Darwin Watterson look nothing like how they do in the series proper.
• The first season of Code Lyoko definitely fits the bill. For a start, Aelita is trapped on Lyoko and isn't seen on Earth at all until the season finale (compare to later seasons where she lives on Earth full-time). Furthermore, season one is also very formulaic, the pacing is noticeably slower than in later seasons and at this point Sector 5 isn't know to exist. Couple that with different terminology to later seasons (sectors are called 'regions', Kankrelats are called 'Roachsters' etc.), and very different 3D graphics, and it almost feels like a totally different show!
  • Aelita also went by a different name at first - Maya. For some time everyone thought Aelita was an artificial being rather than a human stuck in an artificial world.
• The early episodes of Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy had more grotesque animation, Double D was more mellow and less uptight, and the trio actually succeed in getting jawbreakers in the pilot.
• Static Shock was originally intended to be separate from the DC Universe, and the early episodes make references to Superman and other heroes as fictional, along with their alter egos.
  • The show's first season also has a cruder animation style and more focus on problems that would afflict urban youth whereas the Lighter and Softer later seasons would shy away from this and make the conflict more about fantastic superhero problems.
• The Pilot Movie of Voltron: Legendary Defender had all the aliens use human time measurements and slang rather than the Altean ones that were used until the series' end. It also suggested that the Galra Empire was limited to the Milky Way rather than spanning multiple galaxies.
• Season 3 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power showed that the Horde's species naturally exist in an atmosphere incompatible with Etheria's own and that Horde Prime towered over his clones while being quite broad and muscular. While Prime was shown to be just a bit taller than his clones, the other two ideas were dropped in Season 5.
• The pilot of Rick and Morty is fairly different from later episodes. For starters, Rick runs away from danger panicking, he belches more often with his stutter being more pronounced and his voice not being as harsh. A plot point of the episode is the Portal Gun having a charge and the duo having to use the Galactic Federation's inter-dimensional portals, which Season 3 was explicit in saying the Federation does not have. And there is no stinger.
  • When President Curtis of the United States first appeared in "Get Schwifty", he was designed to be, more or less, an expy of Barack Obama, the sitting President at the time, and was shown as a Reasonable Authority Figure. By Curtis' next appearance, in "The Rickchurian Mortydate", Donald Trump was the President of the United States. From thereon out, Curtis was written more as a boorish Psychopathic Manchild as a Take That to Trump, with a persona that's rather incompatible with his first appearance.
• Season 1 Family Guy was very different from its later seasons. The Griffins had empathy for other people, Meg was voiced by Lacey Chabert instead of Mila Kunis, Stewie was a clear cut Token Evil Teammate who lacked any Hidden Depths or Ambiguously Gay moments, Brian was a dog with human traits instead of a human trapped in a dog's body and was the moral Only Sane Man rather than the Liberal Douche he evolved into. The voices and artstyle were a lot less refined and the setting was more of a Crapsaccharine World rather than a Crapsack World. There were also a lot more similarities to The Simpsons and the Cutaway Gags had more bearing on the story and were more grounded in reality than their later counterparts, such as mentioning that time they were at a dinner party rather than that time they took part in the Trojan War.
  • A prime example was the Season 1 finale, "Brian: Portrait of a Dog". The plot centres around a heat wave breaking the Griffins' air conditioner and entering Brian in a dog show to win the money to buy a new one before he, embarrassed begins championing for the equal rights of dogs, being supported by Lois and opposed, relatively speaking, by Peter. As early as Season 5, Brian's liberal policies would make him opposed to air conditioning's harmful ozone effects with Peter being the one who respected Brian as an equal with Lois treating Brian as a semi-sentient lower lifeform. For bonus points, the episode had the Griffins' address as being "725 Spooner Street" instead of "31 Spooner Street".
  • Meg used to be pretty much Peter's favorite child. Sure, he embarrassed her and asked her to take the blame for wrecking the cable transmitter, but he also offered to buy her a car and tried to give her a sympathetic reason for it. It was implied all she had to do was give him a hug and a kiss and he'd listen to anything she said, and even at his stupidest it was clear he just wanted her to be happy. Post-cancellation, she became his punching bag.
• American Dad!:
  • The Smith family was very different at the start. Stan was more of a Bumbling Dad rather than the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist he later was and his hardcore Republican stance was also more prominent, Francine had some clever and deceptive moments instead of her Dumb Blonde persona, Steve was a snarky Entitled Bastard rather than accepting his nerdy persona, Hayley was the Only Sane Man and intelligent on a regular basis instead of being a slacking Know-Nothing Know-It-All who only remembered her skills whenever the plot called for it and Klaus was openly psychotic and had a crush on Francine.
  • The biggest shift in character was easily Roger, who started out as a shy shut-in instead of the abrasive Jerkass he later became. In the first season, Klaus could destroy Roger with one word rather than the other way 'round that later seasons so frequently used. "Roger Codger" even treated his wearing a disguise as a new idea of his instead of something he'd been doing for decades. The early episodes also implied that he'd only recently been stranded on Earth and was making attempts to return home, before it would later be established that he'd been on Earth for decades, staying because he preferred it to being among his own kind.
  • Even beyond the family, the early seasons had much more overt political humour and Take Thats at the George W. Bush administration, such as painting advisor Karl Rove as a Card-Carrying Villain or having a whole episode about Gay Conservatives. By around the fourth season or so, this would be ditched almost entirely in favour of more on straight-forward adventures. It's hard to imagine the Season 1 family fighting a Bad Santa, time travelling, entering dreams or actually going to space.
• On Fancy Nancy, when Madame Lucille's ballet class first debuted in the season 1 episode "La Danse Of Friendship", Nancy and Bree were the only regular characters to attend the class while the other students were just incidentals. Starting in season 2 with the episode "Nancy's Mermaid Ballet", all of their friends (Rhonda, Wanda, Lionel, Grace, and Nancy's cousin Jonathan) are shown attending the class as the other students.
• In early episodes of Barbie: Dreamhouse Adventures, when Barbie has flashbacks to when she was a child, we see them as 2D drawings. Later episodes would show flashbacks in the same style as the series, but with lighter shading in order to show that it's the past.
• The first Halloween Episode of Sofia the First, "Princess Butterfly", calls the holiday All Hallow's Eve. Halloween itself would be name dropped later in the series.
• In its first two seasons, Thomas the Tank Engine was rather different. Still being a loose adaptation of The Railway Series, the show had a more realistic tone, more violent crashes and the characters were generally Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists and Anti-Heroes. Around Season 3, the show began to take on a more "whimsical" tone, with tamer crashes and the leads being more clean-cut good guys. It also took a while for the show to really pin down that it was about Thomas, other characters receiving Myth Arcs all about them where Thomas barely appeared.