Oggy and the Cockroaches

And you think escargots are gross...

The slapstick trickster cartoon. You know the drill: some character pulls a mean one on another. The victim retaliates. Both parties get caught up in an escalating spiral of cartoon violence. Hilarity Ensues, until houses are leveled down, forests are ravaged, cities are lain waste, and the world goes Kaboom!!. Then they start it all over again in the next episode.

This time-honored formula, featured in many Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry shorts, gets a revival (originally as a Show Within a Show in the episode of Space Goofs "Venus Junior") in the French production Oggy and the Cockroaches (Oggy et les Cafards). Each 7-minute short (there are 195 of them) follows the life of the blue rotund cat Oggy, who has the misfortune to share the same house with three cute but naughty roaches: Dee Dee, Marky and Joey. Their sole purpose of existence is to have fun with Oggy by pulling a series of practical jokes. Oggy is sometimes helped by his cousin Jack, a green cat with a knack in mechanics and a short fuse. Factor in a burly neighborhood bulldog named Bob, and you have a great slapstick set-up.

Oggy is renowned for its expressive use of mime--the cats may make cat sounds or (rarely) speak in gibberish, but there is no dialog, and written words are kept to a minimum. Without the need for dubbing, the show is able to reach a wide international audience, such as countries like India, Italy, and the Philippines, where there is a huge fan base for the series.

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This show contains examples of:

• Absentee Actor: Marky and Joey don't appear in "Happy Campers" and "Safari, So Good", Joey and Dee Dee don't appear in "Hip Hip Hip Hypnoses", Dee Dee and Marky don't appear in "Perpetual Motion" and no cockroaches appear in "The Pumpkin that Pretended to be a Ferrari". Also, "Shoplifting" is the only episode without Oggy in it.

• Accordion Cat: Occasionally happens.
• Adorkable: Oggy, big time.
• Aerith and Bob: In a show where characters have names like "Jack" or "Bob", Oggy's name seems out of place.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The cast and background characters who are animals have this: The cats; Oggy is blue, Jack is green. The cockroaches; Dee Dee has a blue body and orange head, Marky has a grey body and green head and Joey has a pink body and purple head. Character such as Olivia and Bob, on the other hand, avert this.
• Amusing Injuries: DEAR LORD, to say that the injuries of the characters are amusing is an understatement. This is like Tom And Jerry Up to Eleven, and by GOD, is that saying something.
• And I Must Scream: Oggy is victim to this, especially certain things like being trapped in a piece of paper, becoming part of the cockroaches' train track, or turned victim of a voodoo doll made out of clay. Occasionally, Jack too, especially in "Jack in a Box" and "Oggy's Puzzled".
• Angry Guard Dog: Bob, even though he's not a guard dog himself.
• Annoying Laugh: The cockroaches.
• Ascended Extra: Bob, by Season 4, where he shows up even more frequently than the last three seasons.
• At the Opera Tonight: "A Night at the Opera" features Jack as the headliner of an opera, with Dee Dee attempting to shove his way into the spotlight, all while Oggy attempts to stop him, along with Joey and Marky, from ruining his cousin's night from behind the scenes.
• Balloon Belly: The cockroaches once filled Oggy's belly with helium, making Oggy to believe he was pregnant.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Pretty much the Trope Codifier. All the major violence happens offscreen and the audience only sees the results.
• Belly Dancer: Three are conjured by a genie in "3 Wishes and You're Out".
• Big Bad: The roaches, in a way.
  • Bigger Bad: While the roaches are all mischievous and probably a bunch of jerks, judging by some episodes, Joey seems to be the biggest jerk of them all.
  • Jack was this in "The Dictator" and "Life's a Beach". And in both episodes, he got punished real hard.
• Big Ball of Violence: Often seen with Bob the Dog and Oggy.
• Back From the Dead: {{{1}}}
• Big Eater: Dee Dee the cockroach. Also an Extreme Omnivore. Oggy also shares this quote.
• Bigger on the Inside: Oggy's house is a PRARDIS ("Purple Roof and Relative Dimensions in Space").
• Bloodless Carnage: Pretty much the reason why this cartoon reaches out to a wide demographic.
• Butt Monkey: Oggy and Jack. The cockroaches too.
• Camp Straight: Oggy
• Can't Stand Them Can't Live Without Them: As much as Oggy hates the roaches, he hates life without them even more.
• Cats Are Mean: This is mostly for Jack, although Oggy is no saint either.
  • Olivia is probably the only one who averts this trope.
• Characterization Marches On: Jack, in earlier seasons, was more of a Mad Scientist than the tough type he is today. In the later seasons, the mad part was dropped.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Monica.
• Chocolate Baby: Selina is the baby of Jack and Monica, but has pink fur.
• Coat Full of Contraband: Parodied by the cockroaches with their chests painted and wearing watch-less trenchcoats in "Black and White".
• Cockroach Popsicle: Not exactly with ice, but in "Oggy Van Winkle", Oggy discovers a gun that can freeze people, which he uses on the cockroaches. When the cockroaches are thawed out by a passing poodle, they find themselves in the future, where Oggy and Jack have become elderly. Later, at the end, they use it on Oggy and Jack, who then wake up even further into the future, where the cockroaches are old too.
• Comedic Sociopathy: And how!
• Country Cousin: The cockroaches' cousin comes to visit in "Roachy Redneck". He's a farmer with a disgusting food palate, and, much to the disdain of his cousins, manages to get on the good side of Oggy.
• Crazy Prepared: Jack sometimes.
• Creepy Cockroach: Duh.
• Crossover Punchline: Night Watchmen has Oggy and the cockroaches falling into acid and turned into slime, and they enter a washing machine, which turns them into clothing, animals, then aliens... except that the "aliens" are clearly the titular characters of Space Goofs.
• Cultural Cross-Reference: The show has referenced SpongeBob SquarePants twice (which is understandable, since the show airs on Nickelodeon): In "Run Olivia Run", one shot has a person wearing a Spongebob costume while another episode has Oggy hiding in the mailbox and popping out to receive the mail in a similar manner to Spongebob in "Chocolate with Nuts".
• Cut and Paste Suburb: Oggy and company live in such a suburb. Oggy's house's roof is a different color. This becomes a problem in "Little Tom Oggy" when Oggy and Dee Dee get lost in the neighborhood.
• Depending on the Writer: In each episode, it will be determined if Oggy (and sometimes Jack) or the Cockroaches wins in the episode they are starring (though sometimes, they both can lose).
  • Also it depends on the episode which character is the bigger jerkass if at all.
• Diet Episode: Oggy's Diet" and "Dee Dee's Diet". In Oggy's episode, it was so he could catch the cockroaches easier; for Dee Dee, it was so he could avoid being caught. Dee Dee actually managed to shed the pounds...only to gain them back in the end.
• Deranged Animation
• Driving Test: The car is destroyed, but Oggy gets a pass. The instructor is blind.
• Drunk with Power: Jack in "The Dictator".
• Everything's Better with Penguins: They apparently work for Santa Claus.
• Exposed Animal Bellybutton: Oggy and Bob.
• Expy: The meaty doctor from "Face Off" seem to be similar to Wall from Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi.
• Fantastic Voyage: Dee Dee gets a close up view of Oggy's Bizzarchitechture insides in the episode 'Globopolis' where it soon turns out Oggy is operated by tiny ghost-clones.
• Fat Cat: Oggy.
• For the Evulz: When the cockroaches aren't trying to get food or some other object of interest from Oggy or Jack, they're just messing with them for fun. But sometimes, it can be vice-versa.
• Foreign Queasine: In "Roachy Redneck", the cockroaches' redneck cousin brings along with him his specialty cheese recipe. It's moldy, has worms crawling in it, and can knock out even his disgusting cousins with one sniff, while he eats it with no problems. It also ends up having very strong plant-growing properties, much to the delight of Oggy.
• Fountain of Youth: The episode "Back to the Past" features Oggy, Jack, and Bob accidentally facing the wrath of a witch (because the cockroaches accidentally teared up the witch's hat and placed the blame on them when it fell) and turned into elementary school-aged kids, with Olivia and Joey forced to track the witch down to reverse the spell, while Dee Dee and Marky watch over the three. In the end, the same thing ends up happening to Joey, Dee Dee, and Marky.
• Furry Confusion: Watch "The Neighbor's Cat".
• Interspecies Romance: Oggy once had a very pretty human girlfriend who has a crush on one of the roaches. Oggy of course was jealous
• Gonk: Many of the human characters in the show.
• The Goomba: Bob, sometimes.
• Gratuitous Spanish: The "El Salsafiore" record.
• Hiccup Hijinks: In "The Hiccup", Oggy suffers through a bout of them throughout the episode, with the cockroaches using them to their full advantage to mess with Oggy even further. He's cured by the next day, only to suffer from a continuous sneezing fit.
• Jerkass: All of the characters share this trope. Rarely, Olivia can also be this.
• Karma Houdini: Some episodes have the cockroaches getting away with the most monstrous pranks, much to the viewers' annoyance.
  • Some other episodes have the cockroaches nearly getting away with what they have done, until Laser-Guided Karma (which can sometimes involve, in much more disturbing levels, Hoist by His Own Petard) comes and kicks their unholy ass. Most of the time when it happens, Oggy is usually the bearer of this karma.
• Kick the Son of a Bitch: In the episode "Copy Cat", after his prized golden figurines are destroyed, Oggy does this (literally) to his robotic clone, Bob, and the cockroaches, sending them to the moon.
• Kissing Cousins: Jack, Oggy's cousin, is attracted (and has the feeling reciprocated) to Monica, Oggy's twin sister. One episode has them with an infant.
• Klatchian Coffee: "Shake, Oggy, Shake" has Oggy accidentally drinking a super brewed coffee (courtesy of the cockroaches pouring tons of grounds in his espresso press). He ends up a jittery hyperactive mess throughout the episode, and it doesn't help that it's chores day.
• Leitmotif: Bob the bulldog has a French-horn theme, while Jack is often accompanied by electric guitar. The cockroaches have their theme tune, harpsichord, or both. Oggy shares his theme tune with the show's opening.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: "Oggy VS Super Roach" has Dee Dee getting struck by lightning and having his strength increased. At the end, it happens to Marky, Joey and Oggy as well (the first to of which use it to get revenge of Dee Dee, while the last of which used it to eradicate the roaches from his house).
• Literally Shattered Lives: This happens to Jack after getting covered in cement in "Beware of Destruction". Oggy has to put him back together, and then it's just a matter of Jack "shaking off" the cement layer once he gets wet. In the first comic book, Oggy somehow ends up in pieces when the cockroaches shatter a mirror while his reflection's in it. They then start putting him back together like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
• Losing Your Head: Oggy from gets this after repeatedly opening and shutting a door in "It's a Hard Day's Noise".
• Man Child: Oggy.
• Meat-O-Vision: One of the cockroaches gets a snootful of mushroom spores and sees Jack as a giant roast chicken. And tries to eat his leg.
• Mime-and-Music-Only Cartoon
• Musical Theme Naming: The cockroaches are all named after members of The Ramones.
• Nice Guy/Girl: When not in chasing mode, Oggy is pretty much like this. Olivia too.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The roaches are named after members of the punk band The Ramones.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: STRONGLY subverted: When a character (most especially Bob) beats someone up (mostly Oggy or Jack), the audience only sees the results, which are quite awful. The roaches also did some on themselves.
• Punishment Detail: In "The Dictator", after slapping Jack's hand, Oggy is relegated to cleaning the entire kitchen with a brush. Interestingly, he did the same thing in "Soldier for a Day", only this time, he finished it quicker than "The Dictator", and he was not cleaning a kitchen, but an outhouse.
• Put on a Bus: Monica.
• Recurring Character: Bob, Monica, Pink-nose Cop, The Penguin, and Olivia.
• Relax-O-Vision: The show does this frequently, even having the characters either move the camera, or put a picture in front of the camera to stop us from seeing the ensuing violence. They do show the result of the violence though.
• Santa Claus: As a giant godlike anthropomorphic Christmas stocking. Which makes it all the more funny when he accidentally trips over a tree stump and destroys the last standing Christmas tree in a forest.
• Stock Sound Effects:

• Stock screaming woman sounds mostly if a character screams.
• Uncommon stock baby crying sounds are used if a character cries with the exception of Olivia.

• Screwy Squirrel: The three roaches, to the extreme.
• Slapstick
• Series Continuity Error:

• Both Oggy and Jack are afraid of heights but their fear is never shown in the same episode.
• Sometimes, Monica is depicted as Oggy's twin sister or Oggy's old friend.

• Sphere Eyes
• Spiritual Successor: To Tom and Jerry, carrying over many tropes into an entirely new generation.
• Squashed Flat: The cockroaches survive this all the time. (except in one episode where Oggy kills them)
• Start My Own: When Oggy lacks allowance to get tickets for a circus, Jack starts his own to cheer him up, but it becomes I anything but interesting.....until the cockroaches kick the tricks up a notch. The result: a severely brutal bout of Amusing Injuries for Oggy and Jack (the former got literally sliced in half while the latter got electrocuted).
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Oggy was this when he had a live-action human head in "Face Off"
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Ping-nose Cop and The Inspector from "The Fugitive".
• Tarot Motifs: After breaking a mirror on Friday the 13th, Oggy draws three different Deaths and a Nuke.
• Toothy Bird: The penguin and the bird Oggy rode on in the pizza episode.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Oggy's sister Monica looks just like him, except for some Tertiary Sexual Characteristics.
  • This is averted with Jack, who is Oggy's cousin yet doesn't even have the same fur color.