Phineas and Ferb/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• 104 days of summer vacation. Assuming (inaccurately, but still) that one segment equals one day, that gives us 52 episodes - the golden number for syndication.
• Why is Doofenshmirtz so desperate to be a good father? He had an awful childhood, and children of Abusive Parents often become abusers themselves. He's afraid he'll become like his parents. Overlaps with Fridge Horror
  • He doesn't abuse Vanessa. Instead, he treats Norm that way.
  • Extreme conditions breed extreme responses. Doofenshmirtz is clearly going to both extremes.
  • Here is a bit of an extension to the fridge: Doof's parents were very nice to one of their children and awful to another. Doof is very nice with Vanessa and awful with Norm. Hmmm?
• Phineas, Ferb, and Candace all seem to be well versed in multiple musical instruments. Three guesses who taught them to play. (Does the name 'Lindana' ring a bell?)
  • Except I don't think she played any instruments as Lindana. She didn't even really sing. She was probably hired for her looks.
    • She has, however, been known to play piano, guitar, and triangle as part of the Free-Form Jazz Band.
      • In "Bullseye!" she says, "Knock it off, Candace. You didn't think lip-synching was my only talent, did you?" Maybe jazz music and her other artistic endeavors are her way of compensating for the fact that her fame came from a role where she didn't use musical talent.
• At first, it seemed rather odd that Phineas and Ferb accepted that a male Perry could lay an egg. However, it's possible that Phineas just isn't mature enough to understand where babies come from.
  • Candace also took it for granted that it was Perry's egg, so that doesn't really work. Also Phineas and Ferb have got to be at least 9, which is pretty old not to know the facts of life.
• In The "Chronicles of Meap", Ferb suggests that perhaps not all of the modifications he made to Meap's ship were technically street legal. This seems to be borne out by the fact that the next time we see Meap's ship in "Rollercoaster: The Musical", it's back to its original design.
• The name and nature of Ferb; He's the one that does most if not all the heavy lifting, a man of action. And a verb is something that describes an action!
• In "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!" the haunted house the boys designed for the express purpose of scaring away Isabella's hiccups failed to do so. At first it seems to be just a lead up to the part where the fear of Phineas getting hurt from falling scares it away for her. Then you realize that for the entire musical number of the episode Isabella is with Phineas as they tour the house trying to scare her. Phineas is someone she trusts no matter what, as long as he's at her side there was no way she'd be frightened.
  • Not to mention he was also holding her hand for just about the entire number.
• "In Phineas and Ferb Get Busted" during the montage of Candace’s calls, it included "building giant tree house robots", which was ironically one of the few instances where Candace did not call to bust them. It seems like an inconsistency in canon until you realize that it was all Perry's dream and he probably just assumed she would have called her mom over it.
• In "Swiss Family Phineas" Candace talks about how the boys could slingshot them back home. Phineas asks her if he can use that one later. In "Phineas and Ferb: Summer Belongs to You!" they do just that and are able to make it home on time.
• The main Phineas and Ferb page being split. The caption underneath the picture is supposedly Candace attempting to bust her brothers for making a TV Tropes page, so of course the tropes would be split in two & moved on to seperate pages!
• Except for Isabella and Milly, most of the Fireside Girls are drawn with only two patches on their sashes while Isabella and Milly are drawn with three patches on their sashes. Isabella is understandable since she's their troop leader, but Milly is a mystery. But then, in the episode Isabella and the Temple of Sap, you learn that Milly has an extra Help Thy Neighbor patch (thus explaining where that extra patch on her sash came from).
  • Izzy's sash actually is a secondary one. She has one covered in patches. Pinky ate it once.
• In 'Ask a Foolish Question', Doof's newest invention is the 'All-purpose-inator' which does everything his other inators do. This is also the episode that lampshades Made of Explodium, with Doof outright asking 'Why does everything explode so easily?' or something of the sort, when his plan literally blows up in his face. The Fridge Brilliance comes in when you realize that, two episodes earlier in 'Phineas' Birthday Clip-o-rama' we were treated to several short montages of all the running gags in the show, usually with one or two Noodle Incident worthy clips thrown in for fun. In the case of Doof's inators, this was the Blow-itself-up-inator. Just guess why the All-purpose-inator exploded.
• In "Dude, We're Getting The Band Back Together!", Phineas and Ferb were rounding up the members of Love Handel to reform for their parent's anniversary. Danny was lured back by Phineas simply asking (after Danny's musical number). Bobbi was a bit more difficult, he needed reminded that we was fabulous, the musical number was mostly for show. Sherman, however, took the whole musical number before he was willing to join. The point of this entry? Each member was more difficult than the next.: It was a difficulty curve.
• Another from the above troper: in "Don't Even Blink", Phineas says that he has no idea why their projects keep disappearing, but that "you should never look a gift horse in the teeth". The origin of this saying is that it was common back in the old days to a) look at a horse's gums to determine its age and to b) give old horses away to unsuspecting farmers, and the saying basically means that you should never question something good because you might not like the reason it happened. The reason the inventions keep disappearing was because of Perry and Doof fighting, and in the movie Phineas seemed pretty upset that Perry was an agent.
  • And then after seeing the movie, you realize WHY Perry makes all their inventions disappear...
• In promotional pictures for the upcoming movie, alternate!Candace, who lives in a grittier, Doofenschmirtz-controlled Tri-state Area, is shown with what appear to be a Bo staff. Normal Candace plays every instrument starting with "B". Coincidence, or will Alternate!Candace utilize a bow, a Bazooka, a Blunderbuss, and a Banjo in the fight against the regime?
• Candace constantly uses her Blessed with Suck to protect her brothers. Her inability to bust them, protects against the dystopian alternative realities we've seen.
• How did Dr. Doofenshmirtz get back from Mars, when the portal to Mars was sucked into itself? Easy, Perry's been scanning all of Phineas and Ferb's inventions, to be replicated later.
• In 'Raging Bully', Doof's plot has to do with his birthday and birthday cake. Near the end of the episode, when his plan is foiled, he goes out of his way to save the cake before trying to make a getaway-- he even said "I still have my cake!" when it seemed like he was going to get away for a change. Moments later, a group of Dunkelberry bats starts to swarm him, destroying the cake in the process. Doof literally could not have his cake and eat it, too.
• In "Mommy Can You Hear Me?" Doofenshmirtz thinks Perry has switched places with a regular platypus when he takes his hat off. But even he's not that stupid, right? It made sense when I rewatched "Oil on Candace," where Perry fools Doof's professor into thinking he's a regular platypus. When Doof insists that it's Perry, he says he fell for this trick a couple of times before he got wise. "Mommy" must be intended to take place near the beginning of summer, before "Oil on Candace." That also explains why Jeremy is nowhere to be seen (he and Candace weren't a couple yet) and how she could be laid up for weeks and not go insane like she almost did in "The Best Lazy Day Ever" (because she hadn't failed to bust her brothers many times yet so her commitment to the goal hadn't yet escalated to the point where it dominates her life).
• Candace couldn't remember buying that poster about hypnosis, or understand why she ever would have bought it. It must be because the person selling them used hypnosis to make her buy it. Maybe this isn't so much "Fridge Brilliance" as it is "this troper taking way too long to get the joke," but still.
• If anyone's ever wondered why the Eastern European-born Heinz Doofenshmirtz has such a good command of Spanish? Look no further than Meatloaf Surprise and the mention of his grandfather, José Doofenshmirtz.
• Why is hitting on Isabella one of the "least likely" things that Irving would do, even though we've seen him hit on Candace and Stacy? Because he's a fan, and, like every member of the fanbase, he ships Isabella with Phineas and/or Ferb.
  • Or else he only likes older girls.
• "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister" establishes that Candace is 5'8". The way she's drawn, her neck makes up 8% of her height. So, if we take her absurdly stylized anatomy seriously, her neck is about 5½" long. In "Run Away Runway" there's a scene where the French fashion designer's assistant holds a tape measure up to Candace's neck. If you pause it, you can see that her neck does indeed measure 5½". That's right, the creators actually went to the trouble of calculating the length of Candace's neck for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sight gag! Incidentally, since the guy with the tape measure is French, it should probably have been marked in centimeters instead of inches.
• In "Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Max Modem!" Candace and other women sing backup for Lindana, but the backup vocals sound male (and actually sound a lot like the Cars). This seems like a mistake until you realize that, since Linda was lip-synching to a pre-recorded vocal track, all the backup singers probably were too. Candace was blissfully unaware that her actual singing wasn't heard by the audience.
• Why did Cow!Dr. Doofenshmirtz have udders? He used the Mind-Transfer-inator with a female cow.
• The part where Isabella says, "How can I panic when I'm holding your hand?" seemed a bit odd at first, since she's never that overtly affectionate with Phineas. Then I realized that, since this takes place after summer ends, maybe Isabella and Phineas are now more open about their feelings for each other. That or she's taken the flirtation up a notch in her efforts to break through his obliviousness.
• Much more obvious than the other examples here, but it can still be difficult to catch without a rewatch of the episode. In "The Chronicles of Meap" we see that Meap takes a liking to Candace early on, specifically after she proclaims herself as being responsible for busting people doing what they are supposed to do. Naturally, as an Intergalactic Security Agent, that's a concept Meap finds relatable (and he essentially repeats it word for word after he gets the universal translator).
• In "Escape from Phineas Tower", it seems out-of-character for Isabella to let Phineas enter a death contraption without attempting to come with him or stop him, especially since her biggest fear is him getting hurt. But then she, Baljeet and Buford spend the whole episode kind of bored, hanging out in the backyard and attempting to sleep-prank Candace, and you realize that they know Phineas and Ferb will be fine. They are, after all, Phineas and Ferb. So while Buford, Baljeet and Isabella are nervous about stepping into the device themselves, they're so confident in Phineas and Ferb's bizarre, physics-defying power that they've ceased to even care. (As Phineas tries to impress them with the dangerousness of the thing, Isabella dryly comments, "Wow, he's really selling it hard.")
• In "Suddenly Suzy," when Candace had to babysit Suzy and so she rid the house of every possible weapon, why did she throw out her teddy bear too? Because if Suzy learned Candace slept with a teddy bear she could use that info to blackmail her.
• How did Santa sneak that "Sal Tuscany" CD into the presents for that OWCA party during the Christmas Special? It's implied that at least one of his reindeer (who was present at the party) is a secret agent... (As for the implications of Santa knowing the secret agent status of his reindeer, it's shown in other episodes that Santa is already familiar with the OWCA, so Santa, being Santa, probably has special privileges in that respect.)
• In "Split Personality", why is Jeremy-Obsessed!Candace such a flake? Because Bust-Obsessed!Candace got all the focus, determination, and attention to detail. She said it split them in half, but it was more like a 60/40 split.
• In "Rollercoaster: The Musical", Phineas says he wants to "build a rollercoaster but this time with songs and dancing." Phineas seems to have noticed that "Rollercoaster" was the only episode where there was no song, as Disney had not asked the creators to put a song in every episode yet. Hence, it is their only adventure that was an unmusical and thus can have a musical version.
  • Except "Lights, Candace, Action!" didn't have a song either.
• In "Excaliferb!", when Phineas and Ferbalot are experimenting with their potions, Phineas, at one point, turns himself into a monster called a manticore. He then proceeds to say "A manticore! With a lion's head!" That last sentence may seem unnecessary at first, since most of his entire body was also that of a lion's, but if you learn a thing or two about mythology, you would discover that classical Greek manticores had human heads. So Phineas was actually pointing out this genuine difference from the norm of manticores.
• Quite possibly one of the best examples of Fridge Brilliance is the episode concerning Buford and his goldfish. Throughout the whole episode he is absolutely heartbroken and begs Phineas and Ferb to help him locate it. Think about it: the only friend this bully seems to have is a fish; after the episode the other kids are more accepting of him as part of their group, meaning they figured out how truly lonely this kid is.
• Why does the book Carl reads to Monogram has a lot of the Phineas and Ferb cast in it? Remember in the episode where Candace has a broken leg, they had written a Genre Busting book series? This could actually be one of the books, and Doofensmirtz escaping at the end is setting up their next book.
• The episode "Monster From the Id" reveals that Baljeet has a phobia of contraction words, explaining why he hardly ever uses them. The only times he has is in the episode "The Baljeatles", during his rant against the Summer Rocks camp, and "Unfair Science Fair", when he's waiting for the judges. So why did he pluck up the courage then? Because both of those times, he was feeling severely angry/excited, respectively. Both anger and excitement are capable of overruling fears when present in a sufficient amount.
• In the episode "Remains of the Platypus", we get an ordinary day (By the show's standards, anyway), but with every segment of the day given to us in reverse order. This leads to an outrageous It Makes Sense in Context slash In Medias Res opening and a hysterical How We Got Here plot. After watching the episode a few times, however, one might notice: Many other episodes of this show actually result in equally bizarre endings, and this one only seemed absurd because we received it out of context.
• The way Doofensmirtz was driving in "The Donkleberry Imperative", it's no wonder what happened when he took Vanessa out for her driving lesson.
• In "Summer Belongs To You", we witnessed Phineas's out-of-character yell "GET ON THE TRIKE!". Come "Bully Bromance Breakup" however, and we see Phineas/Ferb have issues with not being able to do their projects. With Candace being unreasonable, she was prohibiting them from completing their Big Idea (around the world in one day)... so Phineas briefly snapped as a result, then when they continued onward a second later, he was completely fine.
  • Another way to look at it: By being unreasonable, Candace was making their Big Idea impossible to accomplish. Phineas and Ferb defy impossible on a regular basis.
• In "Meapless in Seattle", Mitch reveals that he is a member of Meap's species inside a mechanical suit, and can also shoot a death ray from his mouth. The death ray of the Meapians appears to be strong enough to block one another if fired directly at each other, which explains why in "The Chronicles of Meap" Meap did not use his death ray on Mitch even though he did so on Mitch's robots, instead using physical force, whereas during the climax of "Meapless in Seattle" it might have been too risky to directly engage with the cute-ified Mitch, but even then Meap only used his death ray to block Mitch's attack.
• Mitch's nickname "Big Mitch" makes sense considering that "Meapless in Seattle" showed that other, regular Meapians appear to be much smaller than him. That episode also revealed that he was actually inside a mechanical suit the whole time, but not even Meap knew about that so presumably the other Meapians wouldn't have either.
• This is more obvious than many examples here, but it still took a while for it to click for me. At the end of the title sequence, Candace yells out to her mother, presumably not too far offscreen, and tells her that Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence. What happens immediately afterward? The title sequence disappears.
• If the time machine in "Quantum Boogaloo" really did go to the original rollercoaster, and not the one in the musical, then maybe Ferb originally had a crush on Isabella at the start of the series, but he developed feelings for Vanessa instead during "I Scream, You Scream".
• This troper first found it very odd that the Nerdy Albert is voiced Diedrich Bader. Then i rememberd that Albert is the brother of a Looney Fan. Remember the other time he dealt with a crazy fan?
• Though it could be argued that Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz is able to cobble together his various -inators and still get them to work just because of the Rule of Funny alone, "Out to Launch" and "Thaddeus and Thor" both imply that Doof is incredibly skilled with his hands. Perhaps the same dexterity that lets Dr. D perform great shadow puppets and get the cup-stacking world record also comes in handy when building his outlandish devices!
• The worst punishment on Meap's planet being "time outs" explains why it appears that Meap needs to defeat and arrest Mitch over and over again.
• In "Sci-Fi Pie Fly," Buford refuses to believe that aliens created the crop circles around Danville. Phineas, Ferb and Candace have encountered aliens multiple times, Isabella met Meap and Mitch, Baljeet built a portal to Mars, but as far as This Troper can tell Buford is the only member of the group who hasn't interacted with an alien before now.

Fridge Horror

• Most of Doof's inventions can be frightening if not played for laughs. For example, in "Don't Even Blink" he builds an Invisible Ray which he intends to use on the Fireside Girls who knock on his door, trying to sell him cookies, so he won't have to look at them looking in at him through his window. When he's fighting Perry later, he reveals that the Invisible Ray has a disintegration setting, which annihilates Phineas and Ferb's latest invention. Let's go over that again: he installed a disintegration ray into the invisibility ray he meant to use on the Fireside girls. Woah.
  • It gets worse: The invisible one would make the girls invisible... but hide them from their parents, their friends.... that is a Fate Worse Than Death. Granted given how little thought Doof usually gives his plans he probably didin't think of that, but that arguably makes it worse. It is lessened a bit by the fact that The Fireside Girls are close freinds of our heroes, who would no doubt make turning someone visible their project for the day, but imagine if another troop who doesn't have a pair of geniuses they work with on a regular basis got caught in it. "shivers"
  • If made invisible The Fireside Girls would also be blind considering their corneas would be made invisible.
    • Then again Perry and Doof were able to cope fine in one episode when they were turned temporarily invisible. Cartoon physics.
• His childhood is also horrible to contemplate, once you get past how absurd it is. Can you imagine how it would feel to be forced to stand perfectly still for hours at a time? Or how heartbreaking it would be to not only be The Unfavorite to your brother, but to a dog? Or how humiliating it would be for a boy to be being forced to wear dresses in public? It's amazing Doofenshmirtz isn't in an asylum, foaming at the mouth.
  • Well, when you consider how bizarre this whole show is, that might be a logical explaination.
• Platypode are the only mammals that don't dream... Which means that the ending of "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted" can't be Perry's dream, and thus must be canon!
  • They aren't blue and don't fight evil either
    • Actually, platypode do dream. That they don't is an urban legend.
    • And Perry's turquoise!
• In "It's About Time!", when they first got to the museum, we see skeletons of one of their old pets, and the guy that took him in to live on their farm.
  • That's not even fridge horror. That's regular horror.
• The People Jars in Quantum Boogaloo - death by exploding because you grew too big for your jar!
  • We also don't know if the children are awake or not! And imagine what it would be like for them if they were...
  • Picture that...now close your eyes and imagine Phineas and Ferb themselves having to go through that. Because, during the entire time that alternate timeline existed, they did. For twenty years. Just thinking about it....*Shudder*....
• So let's say the molecule scrambler WASN'T there when the steamroller came by in Just Passing Through...
  • Or let's say the rollercoaster hadn't snagged on a plane that happened to be passing by. Or let's say the girls hadn't managed to cross the chasm in the maze using shoelaces. These are just a couple of examples. It's only through sheer luck that Phineas and Ferb haven't killed themselves and everyone they love.
    • To be fair, those kind of situations tend to be started by Contrived Coincidence at least as often as they are resolved by them, so Phineas and Ferb can't exactly be blamed for them.
      • True, but some of the inventions, like the maze and the tower, could have been lethal even without Contrived Coincidences.
• In Unfair Science Fair Redux, Candace steps through a portal to Mars, which immediately breaks. This being a show for children, she was perfectly fine. Now imagine that this show was a little more realistic and she couldn't breathe...
• In Doof Side of the Moon, one of the floors of the tallest building in the world was subletted by Phineas and Ferb. Just what happened to those people when the entire building was taken into space...
  • The same that happened to Doof.
• An in-universe example: "Where did the giant floating baby head come from?"
  • Especially weird, since the answer is definitely not the giant baby from "Oil on Candace".
  • Finally revealed to be a floating baby head dimension several dimensions clockwise from ours.
    • Wow, that just opens up even more fridge horror. If the baby heads are coming from a dimension several clockwise turns from ours, that could mean there's a hole in their reality. That's slightly uncomfortable enough until you remember that the dimension directly next to theirs was formerly a terrible, terrible place run by an evil dictator, until Phineas and Ferb saved it. You have to wonder what could happen if other-dimension-Doof lost his Choo-Choo-Train all over again...or worse, broke it.
• Just where did all those helmets and weapons come from in "Ask a Foolish Question"? Thats right, Danville was the site of a rather large battle...
  • They're the helmets Phineas, Ferb and their friends wore during the chariot race in "Greece Lightning".
  • Then again, Phineas and Ferb did want to reennact some war in Danville in "The Curse of Candace"...
  • This one could also be an in-universe example for Doofenshmirtz.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz: "Why are there so many helmets buried in the Tri-State Area?"

• Gee, after the natural disasters in Japan I sure hope Stacy's cousins are okay, considering they were never mentioned after "Summer Belongs to You!"...
  • They were never mentioned before "Summer Belongs to You!" either. Besides, there's no indication that the recent events in Japan also happened in the Pn F-verse. We don't even know which summer the show takes place during.
• In Rollercoaster the Musical, Candace imagines herself as butter to be spread over her brothers as toast.
  • You're taking things a little literally, aren't you?
• In "Traffic Cam Caper", Candace took an awfully long time in trying to decide whether to save evidence to bust Phineas and Ferb, or save Phineas's life.
  • Not to mention, she only made that decision once the disc fell off the ledge. Of course, she could have saved them both if she hadn't been holding that ball.
    • To be fair, it wasn't that long a drop. Injury? Yes. Candace getting locked up? Maybe. But death? Not likely.
    • It was a drop from a bridge into a running river. Do you know how many people have died from getting swept away by rapid flood waters? If she hadn't made that decision soon enough, Phineas would have drowned, no matter how short a drop it was. The Fridge Horror comes into play when you can clearly see that she almost didn't.
• Assuming it's not a continuity error...Perry seems to have been pretty young when he was adopted by the boys. He was part of OWCA from that first day. Do...do they use Child Soldiers?
  • Well, if you remember the Museum episode, Perry only started battling Doof when he was old, so maybe the OWCA just needs families to take care of young agents while they are being trained.
• Ever consider what it would really be like to be Candace? And be so sure that your brothers built all these bizarre, out-of-this-world inventions, but have them constantly erased by completely improbable circumstances just in time for your mom not to see? (And by "completely improbable", I mean "you just jumped up and started eating their funhouse so your mom wouldn't be able to see it, even thought you were the one who had wanted to show it to her.") Wouldn't you question your sanity? Your life? Everything that you knew? (Granted, Stacy and Jeremy know, too, and Candace deals with it sort of well. But still. That inexplicable talking zebra makes you realize that there's some serious Through the Eyes of Madness going on.)
  • Speaking of how much it would suck being Candace, can you imagine riding a wobbly, jury-rigged flying bike several thousand feet into the air to board an alien spacecraft, like she did in "The Chronicles of Meap"? Furthermore, "Bowl-R-Ama Drama" establishes that Candace is deathly afraid of heights. This is actually sort of "Fridge Heartwarming" because she's willing to undergo tremendous psychological torment in order to rescue her brothers.
  • The zebra's in an alternate reality in the movie... he's not just a figment of a deranged mind.
  • Which means Candace can see through the dimensions. This is not the mark of a crazy person how exactly?
    • Because the dimensions actually exist?
    • Wait, does this mean Candace is a Cortexiphan kid?
• The announcer in "Raging Bully" says this about Buford: "He's from a bad home. His hobby is breaking bones." Think about the implications of the first sentence.
  • The version this troper saw on YouTube says "He's missing a chromosome" instead of "His hobby is breaking bones." So I guess they changed it so as not to imply Buford was mentally disabled.
    • You are right, it was changed to remove any Unfortunate Implications.
  • Actually a main star of the show, Candace, does not live with her birth father, for reasons that have not been explained.
    • Not really that shocking. If Linda and Phineas and Candace's father are in fact divorced, mothers tend to get custody more often than fathers anyways.
  • Think about the implications of the second sentence. Just how many bones has he broken?
  • (Original poster) Broken home means that a family has some problems, not necessarily divorce. I put this under fridge horror because coming from a broken home could be part of the reason Buford is a bully.
    • Not exactly. We learned why he's a bully in a previous episode: he beat up the local bully to get his fish back, and therefore had to take his place (because all shows need a bully of some kind, y'know).
  • Buford having a bad home might be the reason why he spent most of his pre-bully days with Biff the Goldfish.
• Why is Linda washing a human skull in the sink at the end of the Skiddley Whiffers episode?
  • And what happened to her first husband...oh.
  • And why was Candace completely indifferent to the situation?
  • Maybe because she didn't notice. When she's busting, details tend to slip her mind, among other things.
  • There's a perfectly innocent explanation for the skull: Her husband runs an antique store, and the skull is a recently acquired carving.
• Remember Split Personality? And how the look-away-inator made those brain surgeons look away during the procedure? One can only hope she didn't get permanent damage from that.
• The supercomputer from "Ask a Foolish Question" was built to answer any question and to predict future events with 100% accuracy. The result? It was created with the knowledge of its own destruction. Indeed, the computer spends the episode carefully crafting the events that will lead to its "death." Viewers are reminded of this by the supercomputer’s final line, "I knew this would happen."
• Although it's played for laughs, the Combininator in "Canderemy" is some serious, Cronenbergesque Nightmare Fuel if you stop to think about it.
• In "Escape From Phineas Tower", the evil AI traps Phineas and Ferb in a giant shield, announcing its intention to cut off their air supply. Okay, no problem! They'll trick the shield into expanding until it surrounds the entire solar system! Wait a second, can't it still cut off the air?
  • I don't think it can suck away planet's individual atmoshphers. And most of the milkyway dosn't have air anyway
  • They said that they programmed it to get more intelligent every time Phineas and Ferb escapes. What's stopping the Tower from realizing that they escaped him through logic, and going back to get them? Fridge Horror indeed.
  • Plus, it could set up traps all over the galaxy
• A minor case occurs in the episode with Meap, the ridiculously cute alien. Candace claims to have learned not to judge a book by its cover, then sees a huge zillion-eyed blob monster and runs away. Meap says, "Uh, actually, that's my mother-in-law, so... yeah, she's correct. Let's get out of here!" What kind of creature did Meap marry?
  • He married the adopted daughter of that creature?
  • Stop judging a book by its cover, guys.
  • Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism?
    • No, not that. Meapless in Seattle has provided proof that the thing that is his mother-in-law is not one of his kind.
• In Picture This, Doofenshmirtz builds a mime-inator, a device that traps people into invisible boxes and uses it to trap all mimes over the tri-state-area, but nobody notices because when the mimes try to call for help and get out of the invisible box, it looks like just one of their own acts. Eventually, Perry destroys the Mime-Inator and the invisible box Doofenshmirtz used on him, but we never see agent P freeing the trapped mimes.
  • At least the robot is OK.
• In "Perry Lays an Egg", the strange bird that hatches from the egg is said to be "the natural enemy of the platypus". Presumably one had built a nest in Phineas and Ferb's yard because it knew there was a food source (i.e.: platypus) nearby. As a secret agent, Perry would probably have been able to defend himself from threats had the newly-hatched bird not flown off, but imagine if he'd been a regular pet platypus (and we know there are a good number of platypuses in Danville)...
• The ending of "Monster of the id". Just imagine what would happen if Baljeet didn't shut the machine off in time!
  • Speaking of that episode...in the end, Buford is seen still inside Candace's mind, flirting with her Id. (Yes, you heard me right.) Now, that's all fine and dandy, until you realize: Candace is no longer hooked up to the machine. So, even though the details of how the machine works are kind of vague, it's safe to assume that, until she jacks into it again, Buford could be trapped inside her subconscious forever.
  • Also in that same episode her Id is seen using Ducky Momo as a club. So does that mean it was Ducky Momo that led to her wanting to bust her brothers so much?
  • And also, we see Candace's Id whacking through trees in her attempt to smash the children. The trees are more or less concentrations of Candace's memory. So... unless it was a creation of her mind the Id smashed through, Candace's Id just wiped out a few sections of her memory.
    • Wait... maybe THAT'S why she constantly has AesopAmnesia! Holy... Candace's busting urges (ie: Id) are so strong that her own Id wipes her Aesop memories so that she can still bust the boys!
• Platypodes live for an average of 10 years. Perry only has another 5 years to live.
  • Real ones anyway. The future episode showed him still alive (though very old) 20 years into the future.
• In "Let's Bounce", Candace accidently gets hit with an anti-gravity ray (intended for something else). If she hadn't grabbed the tree when she had, how far would she have floated up? (There seems to be a limit to it, as the intended targets only float about 20 feet above and stop). And also, how far would she have fallen...?
• Early on, we know that Irving is obsessed with two boys, for no real reason. then come "Not phineas and Ferb", we learn he is bullied by his older brother. do the math...
• In "Meapless in Seattle", we learn that, on Meap's planet, the most severe judicial punishment you can inflict on a criminal is a time out. As in, the timer-set, go-stand-in-the-corner kind of time outs you give small children. Conisdering how cute-based the society of that planet is, you would think that the crime rate was so low that this wouldn't be a problem, but Mitch and Prof. Yore provide evidence of otherwise. Add the fact that the place clearly has had wars in the past, since they're ready for it at a second's notice, and you start to wonder how the heck this place hasn't turned itself into the exact opposite of what it is. Crosses with Fridge Logic.

Fridge Logic

• In the time-travel episode, when Phineas and Ferb wonder if they can encounter their future selves, we hear that Ferb's "at Camp David". The clear implication is that Future-Ferb is President (since Future-Phineas is a Nobel Laureate). Ferb's from England, not to mention that his given age is thirty.
  • Well, it is the future; there could have been a couple of amendments passed since the present day.
  • And he could always be in the Secret Service. He's definitely the type.
  • Perhaps he was there with his wife, Madam President Vanessa Doofenshmirtz-Fletcher (age 36).
  • maybe he is an advisor, or the head of NASA or something.
  • So... What you're saying is... Isn't he a little young to be in Camp David/the president/etc?
  • He could be an authority figure visiting from some other country (presumably England).
    • Now cut that out!
  • In the same episode, Day 1 (Rollercoaster) Phineas and Ferb reference the Wood/Metal bonding tool despite the fact that they don't know they need it yet.
    • What if they were their Rollercoaster: The Musical counterparts? All the scenes shown in Quantum Boogaloo were identical in both the musical and the pilot.
    • They were; you can see the Future Candaces in the parking lot of the grocery store during Rollercoaster: The Musical. Hos exactly this works when Phineas and Ferb had a huge musical number ("Carpe Diem") when the Future Candaces were supposed to be talking to them remains a mystery, however.
  • Rollercoaster: The Musical took place in another dimension that we didn't see in the movie?
  • A stranger Fridge Logic: How could Stacy be the President of Uruguay if she's either American or Japanese?
    • Maybe she was born in Uruguay and went on to live there as an adult, despite growing up in America and having a parent from Japan. Then there would be no problem with her being president (so long as she provides her long-form birth certificate).
• Doofenshmirtz skips telling Perry a Backstory he's already told him, which would make sense if not for the fact that he thinks Perry's a dog.
  • Doofenshmirtz would explain his schemes to anyone, Jeremy ("The Lizard Whisperer") and Vanessa ("Hail Doofania!") for example.
    • It seems like it was a error, but then when you think about it, Doof was talking to us, not Perry.
• Apparently Doofenshmirtz is depicted to be a victim of this, with his over-the-top schemes. Subverted once when he brought the matter up himself.

Doofenshmirtz: Behold, the Voiceinator! It bio-mechanically turns normal air into Doofilium, which will make everyone else's voice high, therefore making my voice deeper by comparison. I was going to lower my own voice, but then it seemed like too much trouble.

• • If he's evil why does he have to change? Instead everyone else should change to meet his standards.
• Phineas and Ferb get within a few seconds of failing to make it around the globe in forty hours. How is it that they are able to build a skyscraper that reaches the moon in less than twenty hours even though it spans almost ten times the distance?
  • Because going around the world meant they had to leave familiar Danville.
  • Did you see the musical sequence in which the building is made? Most of the building got taller by itself.
• In "We Call it Maze", Doofenshmirtz and Perry are in space. You know, no gravity. So then, why does the bay door fall down when Perry removes the lock from the chain?
  • For the same reason both Perry and Doofenshmirtz were able to stand on the floor?
  • Aritifical gravity? In spite of his lack of common sense, Doof is certainly smart enough to do that.
• In "Oh, There You Are, Perry", Doofenshmirtz briefly meets a hillbilly-looking desk clerk on his way into The Regurgitator's lair. At the end of the episode, the lair gets blown up, including the possibly fake motel at the top. So, did the desk clerk die or what? (The dude's scene was so short that the censors had probably forgotten about him by this point.)
  • He didn't have any spoken lines and moved in a very robotic manner when Doof mentioned the Regurgitator-- I, for one, assumed that it was a robot installed to cover the Regurgitator's lab. No way a (non-sentient) robot can sell him out, after all.
• How does Doofenshmirtz know Perry's real name?
  • I always assumed it was in a letter from OWCA. "Dear Doofenschirtz, you have been upgraded from a minor threat to a major threat. We have assigned Agent Perry the Platypus as your nemesis. Have a nice day."
  • He's heard his theme song.
  • To say nothing of the fact that Perry is literate and intelligent. The fact that he can't talk is in no way an obstacle to him communicating.
• In the episode "Phineas's Birthday Clip-O-Rama" Irving has a clip from "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted" in his recorded set. Considering the events of that episode were Perry dreaming that Candace was having a dream, how on Earth did he ever get it on film?
  • It's a clip show thing.
  • There is really no boundaries for Irving's tapes. It may be stuff from dreams, or things from a future which did not happen due to time traveling, or things that did not happen at all.
    • Irving's a Fourth Wall Observer.
  • Dreams come from what we experience in day-to-day life, right? Maybe that one segment actually happened and it just got reproduced within the dream?
• In the episode with the Space-Laser-inator, the said device disappears just as Linda comes home. Phineas and Ferb then remark upon the discovery of the true use of the machine that they are happy they didn't built in the laser, which is shown standing around in the garden. When their mom comes looking, there should still be a gun-like looking laser standing around.
  • This is the source of considerable discussion on the Headscratchers page (sad as that may be). This troper's take is that, since we don't see where the laser is in relation to the characters, it could just be out of Linda's view.
• In the musical episode, at the end of Doof's dance number, one of the dancers asks if they're done and she can go pick up her kid from school. In the middle of summer vacation.
  • Summer school, perhaps?
    • Really, there could be a number of different events like cubscouts or an art class or whatever being held at the school that she needed to pick him up from.
      • Just because Phineas and Ferb's school is on summer vacation doesn't mean every school is. Not all kids are lucky enough to get 104 days off.
• Candace has been trying to make Jeremy her boyfriend since at least 5th grade. Have you ever stopped to think about how weird that is? At the beginning of summer (after 9th grade, based on her age) her and Jeremy are hardly even friends. They've never gone out or hung out together. In "One Good Scare..." she needs an excuse to call him, and in a couple early episodes she's ecstatic that he so much as comes up and talks to her. So she's spent a large portion of her life obsessing (and it really is obsessing) over one boy, yet she has done so little to cultivate a relationship with him that, after 4 years, he still sees her as little more than an acquaintance from school. Suddenly Suzy's quip about Candace's deep-seated emotional problems seems apt.
  • It seems like he's liked her for a while and she's just shy or afraid of embarrasing herself so she wants an excuse to call him. And she makes such a big deal out of him taking to her because of how much she likes him.
• In "Tour de Ferb" there's a flashback to 1957 where we see a man get mauled by a tiger in India, while Baljeet's voice-over makes it clear that that's his father. Wait...what? Baljeet is roughly 10, yet his dad is roughly 75? It doesn't get any less weird when we remember that his mother looked maybe 40 in "That Sinking Feeling."
  • Dunno about the dad, but at the very least his mom could have been older (thirties ish) when she and Mr. Raj met, married, and had Baljeet. It happens.
  • A case of child marriage? It was quite common in India in the past.
• Perry's Ferb disguise in "Traffic Cam Caper" is spot-on. So why do his other disguises all suck?
  • Most of the other disguises are used on Doof.
• Candace is lactose intolerant. This isn't even a one-off joke, there are at least 3 episodes that mention it. So she shouldn't have been able to eat the grilled cheese sandwich in "Journey to the Center of Candace" without experiencing vomiting or diarrhea (which would have made things easier for Phineas and Ferb). And before somebody says it must have been made from soy cheese I'd like to point out that it was a random sandwich she found lying around in the garage. Its origin and purpose were a total mystery to Candace, yet she ate it without hesitation.
  • Two possible reasons for that: it's possible that, because of Candace's lactose intolerance, the only cheese in the house is dairy-free, and Candace assumed that the sandwich had been made at the house. Another reason could be she's taken lactase supplements recently.
  • She's not lactose intolerant, she's allergic to dairy. Which could make it either slightly better (if it's only as severe as her wild parsnip allergy), or much, much worse.
  • Speaking from experience, some dairy products such as yogurt or processed cheese can have a lesser effect than straight up milk or butter. If the cheese in question was single-wrapped American slices, there's a chance she could eat it without (much) effect.
• In Brain Drain, the kids eventually (accidentally) take control of Perry's movements and actions, under the impression that it's a "Perry level" of their video game. At one point, Buford takes the flies buzzing around the dump to be powerups and the kids test that theory out, much to Perry and Doof's disgust. In Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat? Linda mentions that Perry's food is mostly earthworms and insect larvae. Problem?
  • It was a junkyard fly. They live in the sun-baked stagnating bacterial breeding ground of human garbage. Even a platypus, which normally digs its food out of muddy river banks, would find that gross. Alternately it might have been because it was a hard-shelled adult insect, which isn't generally part of the platypus diet.
  • Or Perry doesn't actually like his food and just eats it to keep up his "just a pet" ruse. After-all, he enjoys the 'human' food Doof shares with him.
• How come Phineas and Ferb can make massive and complex creations that look professionally-built down to the smallest detail, yet the signs they make are hand-painted and look terrible? Actually, this might be incongruous on purpose.
• If Isabella's pet is a secret agent, then why did Pinky- someone with human level intelligence- eat her sash
  • Pinky also tries to eat the shrunken kids in "Hide and Seek," and doesn't understand the concept of television in "Interview with a Platypus." So it's entirely possible he really is that dumb, and Perry just happens to be humanly-intelligent. He is considered the best in the field by his boss, after all.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity, as in the case of Perry. Both want to keep up the illusion that they're mindless house pets.
• When Phineas and Ferb were trapped in the dome in "Escape from Phineas Tower," why didn't their friends just dig under it to rescue them? I can understand Buford giving up after the most obvious solution fails, but Isabella is crazy resourceful, and Baljeet is supposed to be some kind of genius.
  • Probably didn't have time to think up and execute such a plan before the tower trapped them all anyway?
  • They didn't give up, they're just Genre Savvy enough to know that Phineas and Ferb are pretty much invincible and can get out of a situation like that on their own. That's why they spent the rest of the episode sitting around bored instead of acting frightened or mounting rescue attempts.
• In "Phineas' Birthday Clip-O-Rama!", Candance takes Buford's videos so she can bust her brother. But those videos were supposed to be shown on his birthday party. So she could have easily bust him is she hadn't took the disk.
  • She probably was too busy busting to be aware of that.
• In "It's about Time" the inator-of-the-week froze Major Monogram and later a Tyrannosaurus rex. When it was destroyed, the T. rex stayed frozen. So shouldn't Monogram also be permanently frozen?
  • No one wanted to de-froze the T-Rex. They found a way to return him to normal.
  • I suspect the next time the T-Rex shows up, he'll be wearing a hat.
• When Phineas and Ferb became boring. Perry went with Doofenshmirtz to repair his inator to change them back to normal, and accidentally hits their Mom. Now her mom is too Dynamic and returns with Doof, again, to repair the Inator. Why he didn't used the one that the agency copied from Doof.
  • Because the movie, while technically canon, is functionally separate from the rest of the series. Also, it would have ruined the punchline.
  • Also, maybe he needed Doofenshmirz's help with the machine. Or maybe he needs premition to use the copied -inator and didn't have the time
• In both the alternate dimension and the bad future doof takes over the tri state area. The show gives reasons as to why this happens which make sense until you consider that the tri state area is in America. So why is the U.S.A letting a evil dictator secede from the country?
  • Well, it is another dimension. American laws could be way different.
• Danville sits directly on the junction of three states. Can you imagine how fiendishly difficult it would be to prosecute wide-scale criminal activity in Danville? When you really think about it, it’s probably the reason why Phineas and Ferb never face any legal retribution for their shenanigans, and most certainly the reason why Doofenshmirtz chose the town as the headquarters for his evil operations. The only thing that keeps this from crossing over into Fridge Horror territory for me is that Danville seems to have a rather low crime rate otherwise, and no one ever really dies there. "I’m/we’re okaaaaaaay!"
• In the episode "Finding Mary McGuffin" the boys are looking for a man that has been to a garage sale and has a German accent. One man they speak with has a Texan accent, but the question that is implied to have been asked was whether he had an accent or not because he answered he doesn't have an accent, when in fact he did.
  • That's the joke.
• Why does Candace feel the need to bust Phineas and Ferb in "Perry the Actorpus"? All they really did was enter and win a contest that made Perry a Spokesanimal for the company hosting the contest.
  • In a previous episode, she wished she was an insta-star (i.e. famous). So in addition to absolutely hating that her brothers cannot get away with anything, and the fact that busting them is as essential as breathing to her (currently, she'll eventually mellow out), she's possibly jealous that Perry's getting that chance and that the boys are behind it.
• In the episode "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat" Candace was sweating milk while in a platypus body. Seeing as male platypi do not lactate, this means she became a female platypus bearing Perry's resemblance and Perry could very well have become a male human bearing Candace's resemblance.
  • Rule of Funny, perhaps?
• In the episode "Bully Bromance Breakup", we find out that Phineas has an almost OCD-like tendency to panic if he can't invent anything, until he's snapped to the point that he did in Summer Belongs to You, only in this case, his entire world view and summer enjoyment wasn't on the line. So...was the episode "The Best Lazy Day Ever" separate from canon or something?
  • Well, maybe if it was his idea to not build something, he's okay with it.
  • I took it to be a control issue, as much about doing what he wants to do as much as anything else.
  • Phineas' Big Idea in "Best Lazy Day Ever" was to do nothing the entire day. And since they accomplished that, there was no reason for him to panic.
• Here's some logic for you, in "Birthday-Clip-O-Rama", the clips Ferb had included clips from "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted". How the hell did Ferb manage to film Perry's dream? I mean, the kids do the impossible on a regular basis, but still.
  • Well, they got said clips from Irving, and it has been theorized with evidence that he is a Fourth Wall Observer.