Phineas and Ferb/Headscratchers

Note: Before posting a question, ask yourself "Can this be answered by Rule of Funny?" If the answer is "Yes. Yes it can", consider whether posting it is a good idea.

There's a hundred and five eps of Phineas and Ferb before they play the season ender. And the weekly-ish problem for all of the fanbase is finding Fridge Logic to enter.
Like maybe...

Note that examples related to The Movie should go to its respective page.

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• Why is it that their parents always give in to Candace's begging to be in charge? I love Candace (as a character), but it seems weird that they wouldn't have learned from past events that whenever they put her in charge, she freaks out. She also threw that party... err intimate get-together. Why don't they just get a baby sitter?
  • The only episode I can think of where she's specifically put in charge is Summer Belongs to You, and my guess is that it's only because both parents were going to be gone for a couple days. Even in the first episode, Linda says that no one has to be in charge, and finally relented by saying she was in charge if a satellite crashed into the house. Candace just likes to think she's in charge most of the time.
  • Maybe they figured that Candice being In Charge basically meant they'd have one person ready to call the authorities in case of any real troubles. They just didn't have the same ideas of what was a crisis as Candice did.
• How come Swampy (of Love Händel) never lost his librarian look, even after the band got back together?
  • In their introductory episode he didn't fit into his old costume anymore. As for since then, well I guess we can blame him not getting another one on Limited Wardrobe.
• Why doesn't Candace just buy a camera? I mean, yeah, we all know it'll get damaged by the end of the episode, or the film will suffer the same problems as Al Bundy's film when he got the pictures of the aliens, but still. A cheap disposable camera's only a few bucks!
  • She tried taking pictures once. The film got wet the SECOND before she got back to her house!
    • Her phone has a camera on it, and she never thinks of using it.
    • She did end up using the camera in one episode, but she stuck her thumb on the lens.
      • That was Buford's thumb, not hers. At least, that was implied.
    • She gets a camcorder in "Tour de Ferb," yet still fails.
    • She even brought a whole TV filming crew in Leave the Busting to Us. Was it too good to be true? Yes, yes it was.
    • Let's face it, Candace is an enormous Cosmic Plaything. Anything she uses to bust the boys that would be practical for anyone else will somehow fail, in the most outlandish of ways if necessary.
      • She lost two phones offscreen between "Rollercoaster" and "Candace Disconnected." Maybe they had photos on them that provided conclusive busting evidence, and were thus inevitably destroyed by fate.
• It's attracted a surprising amount of viewers over the target demographic, and everyone's thinking it, so it only belongs here: "Aren't you a little old to be watching Phineas and Ferb?"
  • "Why yes. Yes I am."
  • Word of God has said: "The truth is, we make this cartoon for ourselves," ... "We don't make it for children; we just don't exclude them"
• Where on earth do Phineas and Ferb get the money to build their inventions and buildings? Surely their parents would notice the large bills they've been getting...
  • "I know what we're gonna do today, Ferb. Make fraudulent credit cards to fund the things we'll do the next 103 days. We'll start by getting some people's identities off the Playstation Network..."
  • The city might be sponsoring them. IIRC, they are shown to have helped the government and for them to even be getting permit, they must have done something extraordinary.
  • The royalties from "Gitchie Gitchie Goo."
  • Consider: the boys live in a standard middle-class neighborhood. Despite having a mom with LOADS of money (she was a pop star), the boys live relatively modestly. It could be Linda(na)'s royalties money goes toward there inventions, at least until they have their already listed royalties.
  • Don't forget, some of their inventions have profited, like the rollercoaster, the fashion line, the movie, the inaction figure, you get the picture...
    • Dan Povenmire's explanation (as of Comic Con 2011) is that they made some investments with the money they charged for riding the rollercoaster. Really good investments, apparently.
• Does Danville only have one television station? Even with cable? (see "The Fast and the Phineas").
  • Actually, no, in Perry Lays An Egg, Candace is shown watching the show's equivalent to Animal Planet because she was to lazy to change the channel.
  • Not to mention the UNcovery Channel from "What Do It Do?".
• Isn't Phineas a bit young to be ordering crazy scheme kits from Acme Same-Day Delivery?
  • Why, yes. Yes, he is.
    • "Don't worry. He's new."
• From where does Perry pull out his hat from? A secret pocket in his butt?
  • The same place Meap gets his photos.
• From where does Meap pull out his photos from? A secret pocket in his butt?
  • The same place Buford gets his velvet rope.
• From where does Buford pull out his velvet rope from? A secret pocket in his butt?
  • The same place where Pinky gets his hat.
• From where does Pinky pull out his hat from? A secret pocket in his butt?
  • The same place where Perry gets his hat.
    • Which is also the same place that Kowalski from The Penguins of Madagascar show gets his clipboard and crayon.
    • Which is to say, none of your damn business.
• The answer is obvious: Hammerspace
• If the goal of Perry's assignments is to "put a stop to Doof's plans", Doof will just come back with another plan, like he always does. Why don't they just order Perry to destroy him?!
  • Because they're the good guys. If Perry the Platypus killed someone, I would turn off the TV and curl up in my sock drawer sobbing about how I just saw a cute fuzzy animal brutally slaughter a man in cold blood. Yeah. Leave the destroying things to the bad guys.
    • Is it wrong I laughed at "a cute fuzzy animal brutally slaughter a man in cold blood"?
      • Yes. Yes it is.
  • Beside, Doof is a Harmless Villain who is not even remotely evil. Do we really need to destroy him?
    • But he has "evil" in his company's jingle...
      • He's a Noble Demon.
  • And they're nemeses. Perry would lose his livelihood if Doofenshmirtz kicked the bucket.
  • Yeah, Perry's job is to keep him in line, not to destroy him.
  • And Another Thing: They wouldn't be able to destroy Doofenshmirtz, he has Joker Immunity. It's even Lampshaded by Vanessa in one episode: "He'll be fine. He blows up all the time."
• Minor complaint, but didn't Mom notice the big freakin' laser (for reference, Phineas and Ferb get the blueprints for a Space Laserinator instead of an ice cream machine, but neglect to attach the laser before it blasts off into space) in the end of You Scream, I Scream? It's pretty hard to miss.
  • Because of the swoosh pan, it's not made clear where the laser is in relation to the characters. All we see is that it's at a corner of the fence and somewhere to Phineas' right. That corner could be out of Linda and Candace's view if they have one of those wraparound yards.
    • The aerial view in "The Flying Fishmonger" confirms that there is at least one corner of the fence that would have been invisible from the patio.
  • Maybe she was distracted by the giant sundae bowl Ferb was holding.
  • Perhaps for the same reasons she didn't notice the big freakin' flame in the tree (in "Rollercoaster) or the huge gaping hole in it from the explosion the next day?
    • All that explosion did was pop open one of the secret exits Perry uses for his hovercraft (as seen in "Traffic Cam Caper"). It must have closed up again by itself soon after.

Candace: Tell me you don't see a huge gaping hole in our tree! Linda: All right, I don't see a huge gaping hole in our tree.

• How can Phineas and Ferb be such geniuses and still not realize that Perry shouldn't be able to lay eggs because he's male? Ferb being the big animal expert of the two should especially know this.
  • Short answer: Perry is exceptionally good at his job, and no one would suspect something as absurd as a platypus secret agent anyways.
    • Not entirely convinced Ferb doesn't know. Phineas thinks Ferb set up the whole "secret agent adventure" thing, and Ferb never got a word in edgewise about it. It's perfectly reasonable that Ferb figured it out, but hasn't bothered to say anything. He is Ferb, after all.
  • Perry might be female. Note how in the episode where it switched bodies with Candace, she sweats * milk* while in its body (Platypi lack nipples so they ooze milk- but only the females!) Also, that episode's stinger fantasizes about Perry continuing her career as a teenage girl.
    • Perhaps when the switch occurred, when Candace was in Perry's body, they... switched genders? Somehow? Thus making 'Perry' able to 'sweat milk'. But that explanation also means that 'Candace' turned into a boy in the switch, meaning there wouldn't be the whole 'Perry the Teenage Girl' thing. Just considering is all.
    • I've always assumed that when Candace and Perry switched bodies they actually swapped some of their gender characteristics as well. For example, because Candace is a girl and is now in Perry's body Perry('s body) is now able to sweat milk. Likewise, Candace('s body) does not have breasts (however we can't tell because she was already flat-chested), and everything was switched back to normal when P&F got Candace's and Perry's brains in their correct places. In short, Perry is undoubtedly male, and Candace is undoubtedly female.
    • They swapped hormones, perhaps? Your average teenage girl has a lot more body mass than a Perry-sized platypus. Assuming brain chemistry got transferred, it could work out
    • Plus if Perry were female, the Squick of its relationship with Dr. Doofus would be lesser... except for the bestiality angle, that is...
      • Just because you dislike slash doesn't mean a man/platypus pairing is inherently less squicky if said pairing is straight. Also, "Dr. Doofus" is Dr. Doofenschmirtz.
  • ...They are just kids.
    • Candace, however, isn't.
  • They seem to devote all their time to engineering and event planning projects, they probably don't have time to also study biology.
  • Phineas and Ferb build crazy inventions every day. Their minds don't seem to be bound by the impossible. Perry laying an egg elicits a similar "Cool!" reaction as Steve the chameleon inexplicably turning giant.
  • "Perry" can be a girls name. Perry also doesn't have the poisons spurs on his hind legs, if he did Doof'd be paralyzed and blind by now. A female platypus isn't out of the question, seeing as people mistake the gender of their pets all the time.
    • Perry is a pet. The family most likely had Perry's spurs surgically removed.
    • Female platypi still have spurs, they just don't produce venom. A spur could probably still be used in combat though. Also males only produce the venom in mating season, which is from june to october (in other words, when the show takes place).
    • Venom production rises during the breeding season, but that doesn't mean it's completely down for the rest of the year. The spurs of female platypuses usually drop off after a year or two, incidentally.
  • Ferb also doesn't know that platypi aren't the only mammals that lay eggs, so he doesn't know everything about animals.
• After watching It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World again, I realized this - the boys' dad was in on this caper and actually took part in the monster truck show in his own backyard; Later on in another episode, a roller derby took place with the boys' grandmother (Phineas and Candace's grandma) being in on what was going on; They made a canyon in the backyard to help their grandfather (Ferb's to be specific) recapture his glory days. So why is it only Linda that Candace is so worried about telling? If their dad and grandparents are completely okay with the boys' projects, then why wouldn't their mother be? And even if she wasn't, wouldn't their dad speak up for them?
  • The non-canon episode where they get busted does show that their dad would stand up for them, and even their mom accepts it after a while, provided it's realistic.
  • Lawrence was working off the assumption that Linda knew about the kids' full size monster trucks, when she only knew about their faster than light remote-control/slot car versions, and she had given permission for their slot cars, so, he assumed it was okay that they had the full size one. He knows she holds the power in the relationship, being an ex-pop star and all that...
  • Lawrence also saw Phineas and Ferb literally turn the garage upside-down in one episode. He asked Linda if it was okay and she said yes, not taking it literally. He just assumes she understands and doesn't think about it too much. He's also probably aware of Ferb's building skills.
  • The non-canon episode also had Lawrence saying that building those crazy inventions was alright as long as they were safe and nothing was harmed.......well, until the missing screw of the invention causes it to topple off and destroy half of their house.
  • However, the episodes 'She's The Mayor' and 'Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo' had shown that she would not approve of their inventions, the former being shown her about to punish them before time was altered and the latter being shown banning all imagination and creativity and stuffing their children into adulthood as the punishment.
  • You have to remember though that both of those are dangerous (You could fall off a rollercoaster and you can get seriously injured from that town [all of the bites they got, and maybe even a rattle snake or two]) But if it's safe that won't seriously injure the boys she would be ok with it.
  • If Candice proves the boys capable of one amazing feat (like building a whole western town in a day) it tends to show she wasn't imagining all the other times, including the rollercoaster. Candice gets a belated apology for "all those times" from her Mom in the future in 'Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo' when she demonstrates the reality of time travel.
    • Okay, so we've established that that Linda's husband and parents know about (some of) Phineas and Ferb's inventions, and don't disapprove of them. So how do these inventions never come up in conversation? Another question this raises: Since Candace knows that they know, why doesn't she try to get them to bust Phineas and Ferb, or to back her up when she tattles to her mother?
• What does Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. do exactly? And are there any employees besides Doofenshmirtz, sorta-Norm, and might-possibly-be-counted-as-an-intern Vanessa?
  • Actually, the episode "At the Car Wash" showed some other people working in the building.
  • Perry got mistaken for a new temp in one episode
  • It does evil, of course! And in one case Doofenshmirtz was shown paying off the showgirls that turned up in his dance number ("I must impress my Professor") so presumably he hires people as needed. He doesn't seem to use any actual henchmen like other evil scientists do, but if he needed some I am sure he could get them from some temp agency. Might be good thinking, economically speaking.
  • He's pretty good on his own. Sure, he could always get someone to perfect the traps or keep Perry restrained better, but that takes all the fun out of it.
    • The way the announcer talks about the Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. blimp in "The Fast and the Phineas" makes it sound like it's a real corporation, and that the audience is expected to be familiar with it. Might be an example of Continuity Drift.
• Phineas and Ferb's schemes are never shown to be malicious or nasty in nature and are said and shown to be nice guys both in-show and by Word of God. However - this lyric in the theme song confuses me about the whole thing: Or driving our sister insane. So it a goof-up or a Rule of Rhyme?
  • They do deliberately annoy Candace sometimes (although it's not exactly a common feature of the show like the credits suggest). For example, they tried to embarrass her at the skate park in "Crack That Whip," and their constant comparisons of her to Medusa in "Greece Lightning" weren't very nice.
  • Probably Rule of Rhyme; else, maybe the whole summer is just a plan to improve Candace's mental health by getting her to adopt a more laid-back attitude, via the Socratic tactic of breaking down her conceptions about the world.
    • They're driving her insane by getting away with making all of their inventions. They're not doing it on purpose, they love her. (See the episode where Candace calls 'Bust-Em' to catch Phineas and Ferb in the act, and how much Candace can predict of the episode due to being extremely savvy by that point)
  • There is evidence that Phineas was originally going to be more spiteful. In the original pitch, he even added "it's a short drive". They simply didn't rewrite the song.
  • Re-watch the first episode, the rollercoaster one, Phineas has a different attitude than he does in the rest of the series. Note how he says at one point on the ride "We should've charged more" to my knowledge, for the rest of the series they never profited from their adventures (even when they were rock stars and toy manufacturers) or rather, the goal of their adventures was never for profit. Also, in the rollercoaster episode, Phineas lies to Candace; she asks the boys what they're doing and he says "Homework." For the rest of the series Phineas never lies, in fact they usually tell the truth flat out and leads to their mother saying something about their 'imagination."
  • As someone who grew up with two older sisters, this troper thinks it's just a contractual obligation of siblings. My sisters are awesome and I totally can't imagine life without them, but that doesn't mean we didn't enjoy bugging the hell out of each other. On that note there was also the episode "Crack That Whip", where Grandma Betty Jo asked who wanted to go to the park and embarrass Candace and the boys were only too willing to volunteer.
    • And even that 'spiteful' act is very tame. They just outshine her, probably by accident seeing as they invite her to join immediately. They probably don't even know how to bug her on purpose.
  • Its an example of both The Artifact and Characterization Marches On Tropes.
• Why are there so many people supporting Ferb/Vanessa when it's already been shown that Vanessa has a boyfriend closer to her own age? Considering the episode Johnny appears in (the Love Händel episode) is one of the most popular episodes of the series, I doubt they're actually just forgetting he exists. (Not to mention that if Vanessa actually was romantically interested in Ferb, it would make her a pedophile.)
  • Well, technically she'd only be a pedophile until he hits his teens, which is in three to four years. After which it's just a straight May-December Romance. Anyway, at about six to seven years apart it's not that big an issue compared to some real life examples.
    • Actually, Vanessa would already be an adult by the time Ferb's a teenager. She'd probably already be married by the time he turns 18.
      • Ferb is a pimp. He gets with everyone anyway. Johnny's just gonna have to get used to it, or else get in line.
  • It's really more of a March/May romance (or would be, if it actually happened. Still weird until they both get older (though it has been noted Phineas and Ferb are, by Word of God post-pilot, not any specific age beyond "less than fifteen", he still looks at most twelve or thirteen so there's still a bothersome age difference).
  • There's also the fact that Ferb is a little boy. Little boys have crushes on older girls. Vanessa is never shown to actually be interested in him. (And the creators sort of are forgetting Johnny-- when was the last time you saw him?)
  • While the idea is kind of creepy, Ferb somehow manages to make it work. Blame it on Rule of Cool.
  • who wouldn't develop a crush on her?
  • To answer this; # 1; Johnny's a Boy of the week. Fans are more likely to ship a recurring character with another recurring character than with one who showed up for one episode that one recurring character crushed on. # 2; It's not real, so it's okay to do that kind of thing. If you think obsessing over which fictional character has sex with which is very serious, You Need to Get Laid. # 3; Rule 34. # 4; Fan-Preferred Couple. I know you had yours #5; People love their interactions. #6; This is a fandom where one of the most popular ships is a mad scientist and a (possibly) male secret agent platypus who treats villainy/heroism ploy as a very complex love relationship. Compare that to Ferbnessa, Ferbnessa has no Squick on it at all.
  • Guys, here's something that finally disproves all these notions: An upcoming episode called 'Brain Drain' had Vanessa reveal that Johnny is now her boyfriend. Other than so, it also reveals two facts; One, Johnny looks like he'll become a recurring character, and Two, Ferbnessa shippers will make the Internet explode into flames.
    • Vanessa broke up with Johnny in "Minor Monogram".
  • Word of God confirms they will get together once they're older. YMMV on what that means, seeing as this is a show that doesn't shy away from the issue of divorce.
    • Actually, he Really said that he likes to think that they get together, he never said that would actually happen. Sorry, I'm a nitpicking fiend.
• How does Doofenshmirtz have custody of Vanessa when Charlene is clearly the more competent parent?
  • They seem to have joint custody of her. She lives with her mother most of the time before going to her father's place. Oddly enough, Dr. D seems to be a fairly good, if incompetent, father to her so no one worries about her.
    • No, Heinz has custody, because Charlene is paying alimony.
      • You're thinking of Child Support. Alimony is to pay for the divorcee's standards of living if he or she wasn't working (or making less money) in the relationship.
      • In "Finding Mary McGuffin when Doof shows up Vanessa says it's "not your weekend", so clearly either they share custody or Charlene has custody with Doof having visitation rights.
      • To me, it seemed like Doofenshmirtz mostly took care of her, for a given value of "took care of", in the present of the show, hence the alimony. As for the past, it is likely that they either changed the agreement (like if Charlene was promoted and had less time than Doofenshmirtz) or, my assumption, Vanessa meant "This is a weekend that is not yours".
  • By sheer dint of her absence in most episodes it struck me that Doofenshmirtz didn't have custody most of the time, and assumed it was probably a matter of visitation rights.
• Considering how mellow all the adults involved with the boys' antics tend to be about the whole situation, why does Candace think that busting them to her mother will get them in trouble? Why's she even so obsessed with doing so in the first place? On the rare occasions she goes with what they do, she seems to like it. Is she just a control freak hopped up on sibling rivalry?
  • Yes. No, I'm not kidding, that's pretty much it.
  • According to Word of God, it's mostly because she knows she wouldn't be able to get away with the same stuff.
  • It's not out of the realm of possibility that as a child, Candace would get in trouble for things that were a lot less dangerous than going into freakin' SPACE. Combine that starting point with being repeatedly made to look like a lunatic and you have a perfect recipe for obsession.
    • I think it's more that she thinks she wouldn't be able to get away with it. So yeah, she's basically just nuts.
      • Well, if "The Secret of Success" and the upcoming "Candace gets busted" mean anything, this might be justified.
  • The first episode almost wrote this in stone.
    • I think it's become a quest to prove her point and show her mom that she isn't crazy. Plus, after all those failed attempts, wouldn't YOU be frustrated? She just got caught up in it and it's practically a habit.
  • Having just watched the episode "She's The Mayor" on Disney XD, I thought...yeah, personally Linda was getting too serious at that incident. I thought she would be impressed to see that the boys built such a thing, because unlike the rollercoaster in "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", at least it wasn't unsafe. Same with most of their inventions, i'd think she'd consider that the boys are trying to have fun.
    • How the Hell is a group of unsupervised children with antique tools safe? Pretty easy for someone to get hurt, or a valuable tool to get broken. Given, better than most episodes, where they're using power tools. I think that's a major part of it, that's easy to forget, even when the invention itself isn't dangerous, its construction almost definitely was. You don't let kids play with power tools.
  • "What Do It Do?" makes it look like Phineas and Ferb would get in trouble if their mother knew about the things they built (except they didn't build that one). Also, when I saw this same discussion on another page, "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" and "She's the Mayor" were brought up as further evidence.
• If Candace is allergic to dairy, why is her favorite food grilled cheese sandwiches? Okay, maybe her favorite food is grilled non-dairy cheese sandwiches, but even if that is the case, she probably wouldn't/shouldn't eat grilled cheese sandwiches she found lying around because she wouldn't know if they were made with non-dairy cheese or not.
  • Maybe she loves grilled cheese sandwiches so much that she'll eat them despite the unpleasant reaction she'll experience later.
  • Some people are only mildly allergic to dairy. {{Daviot This Troper}} has a friend who can eat cheese or yogurt all day long, but drinking milk will make him sick.
  • As cheeses are literally aged milk, the lactose eventually begins to decompose at the hands of the bacteria living in it. Most cheeses contain significantly less lactose than milk, and Candace's dairy allergy is most likely lactose intolerance...
  • She was making up rhymes. She isn't going to change her name to Larry, either.
  • After about two weeks, lactose man loses all of his power.
  • She's talked about being allergic to dairy other times. In 'The Wizard of Odd', she dreams a 'non-dairy frozen treat sidewalk', implying that she has some aversion to dairy.
  • Apparently, in a recent interview, Word of God said it was soy cheese she was eating, but it seemed like they forgot they added that line in the song.
    • You can clearly tell in that interview that Dan and Jeff never put two and two together until the fan asked that question. The "soy cheese" answer was just an attempt at humor.
• How did Perry the Platypus eat his own hiney when he was trapped in the chocolate? (Not his hiney, the hiney of the chocolate coating). He shouldn't have been able to turn around inside the coating, since it was skintight and most likely cooled solid while enmeshed in his fur.
  • I think this one is so ridiculous that it wasn't supposed to be taken seriously.
  • Remember when he got out of a trap by replacing himself with a fake dummy while in the trap? His escapes aren't supposed to make sense.
• In "Attack of the 50ft. Sister" everything in the universe grew to giant size, so when Candace went back in time to when the rollercoaster was built she should have been giant.
  • Maybe the paradox-correcting code in the time machine also keeps a person's atoms the same size as local atoms as well as adjusting their relative dimensions in space, so they don't explode and destroy the entire Tri-State areaworld? If the universe is constantly expanding at the level of the very fabric of space, the universally-targeted, one-time-use growth serum should have had pretty much the same effect as stopping everything where it was for a short time while letting space continue to expand. Which is pretty much BS by the actual theories I'm referencing, but hey, it is Phineas And Ferb. There's also the possibly that the potion wore off after a while (with the universe snapping back at the same time as Candace and the watermelon, or earlier and causing them to shrink back earlier as well due to a sort of whirlpool-suction effect since it was much less concentrated when targeting the entire universe with one small bottle), and Phineas didn't know more about it than that it worked in several stages and only worked once, but that is so much less awesome than the previous suggestion.
  • The show is not done in chronological order and it is very possible that "Attack of the 50ft. Sister" happened after "Quantum Boogaloo".
    • In which case, when Candace (and Phineas and Ferb and Isabella) traveled to the future, they should have been tiny. Unless the troper a couple paragraphs down is correct and the growth was either temporary or reversed in the meantime.
    • "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister" has to happen pretty early in summer, because Phineas says he doesn't have a shrink ray and doubts it's even possible to build one. Not only did he build one in "Journey to the Center of Candace," but "Hide and Seek" establishes that he and Ferb somehow retrieved it from Pinky's body and have had it lying around ever since. So either "Attack" happened before "Journey" or Phineas was just being a dick. Also "Journey" can't occur very late in summer because Candace acts like taking a walk with Jeremy is an unprecedented level of closeness in their relationship.
  • When they were building the time machine, they key component was a purple lightbulb that made whatever it was in contact with go backwards in time with the rest of time going normally... dammit, I was sure I was going somewhere with this.
  • Maybe the growth potion wasn't permanent? There could be a missing scene where Candace grew really tiny, tried to tell her mom, and then the universe shrunk back to normal.
  • I always assumed she shrunk back down at some point in the episode Hide and Seek.
  • The grownup Candaces appear in "Rollercoaster: The Musical!" (implying they've traveled to that time), which most likely happened after "Attack of the 50 ft. Sister".
    • "Hawaiian Vacation" confirms that the Universe shrunk back. The growth elixir only works once (which is why Candace and the watermelon stay the same size, getting smaller in proportion to their surroundings), and it works on the A-Primes (whose particles should have grown with the rest of the Universe). It also definitely takes place after "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister," because Phineas says the growth elixir is "left over." So at some point everything must have reset, otherwise the growth serum would no longer work on anything. It's also worth noting that the aliens in the other universe (the one that things hit with the goawayinator go to) are always the same size in relation to people from the main universe.
• When Candace (who travels 20 years into the future) finally proves to her mom that she's not crazy and Phineas and Ferb did indeed do everything on the show, the mom is clearly just learning that Candace was right all those years ago. Candace proves it's possible to bust the boys, as she mentions, but she plans to keep trying to bust them in the proper timeframe, even though this will likely prove to be futile for the reason that we clearly see the bust is 20 years later. I understand that Candace has no minor role in the show, and needs to try if the show is to be as entertaining as it is, but really? If any later episodes ever have Candace bust them in the right time, perhaps as the end of it, what happens if the writers overlook the events of the episode I'm describing, and they get busted before 20 years into the future? Time travel is really not that good for plot. Note that I'm in Canada, getting family channel, which shows reruns all the time and doesn't promote their showings of new episodes all that much, so I have no way of knowing if the show is still going, meaning that last point may or may not be valid. Also, I spent an hour writing that giant block of text, the majority of that spent choosing words to use. If any of this is considered spoilers, please apply the spoiler block directly to the foreheadpost as you see fit.
  • Realize that The Stinger of that episode eliminated the whole thing from the timeline, and thus, presumably, Canon.
  • Phineas and Ferb will never get busted, as that is the whole premise of the show. So no worries about a time paradox in that department. Also, it has pretty much been established that time can be altered very easily. So perhaps knowing that they can be busted is enough to change Candace's actions to perhaps probably bust them some day.
• Why don't Candace and Stacy have breasts when they're 15? Puberty is supposed to start between 8 and 13 for girls.
  • Perhaps they're just a bit flat? It happens.
    • You must have missed the episode "Candace Gets Busted."
  • This troper's mother didn't really have breasts until she was pregnant. Some women are just flat.
• In the Love Händel episode, Sherman (the drummer) claims he lost his sense of rhythm after falling asleep in a metronome factory. Wouldn't such an experience have more of a subliminal-message effect, giving him perfect rhythm?
  • ...ummm.... Not every metronome was ticktickticking at the same frequency. It was probably just random ticking for the whole time he was asleep.
    • Besides it was all in his head. He didn't actually lose his rhythm.
    • Considering the episode shows he has an almost superhuman sense of rhythm, this actually supports the theory that sleeping in the metronome factory actually improved his rhythm. I mean, think about it: How would they know if the metronomes they were making weren't faulty if they weren't all ticking in sync all the time?
  • Rule of Irony. A place of perfect rhythm made him lose his.
  • Fridge Brilliance: His subconscious decided that, since he could not match the perfect rhythm of the metronomes, he had somehow "lost" his sense of rhythm. In reality, the only difference was that his standards rose, which led to a lack of confidence in his own abilities.
    • This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
  • Um... it did.
    • No, really, it gave him perfect rhythm. Even just sitting there in the library stamping books he kept perfect time. He just didn't realize it, probably because whenever he tried to play the drums he couldn't do it, presumably because he was thinking too hard about it. He didn't realize he still had rhythm (which he clearly had the whole time, which is why the song is hilarious) until Phineas and Ferb got him to start playing the drums without him noticing. Yeah, basically he spent years convinced he'd lost exactly what he'd gained.
• At the end of Christmas Vacation, Jeremy gives Candace a pair of earrings. But those "earrings" look a lot like a single ring. It's like they originally planned to have them get engaged, but changed their minds at the last minute and didn't bother to reanimate the scene.
  • That doesn't really seem to be the case. They do kind of look like a ring, but some earrings just do. I honestly doubt there was anything more to it.
  • That was the idea, wasn't it? The audience is supposed to think at first that he's giving her a ring and jump to the obvious conclusion.
• Why do I hear so many phrases in Phineas' voice since I stared watching the show and reading the pages for it here? Good news, everyone, I know what we're going to do today! ...It's not for everyone. (Even the phrases that aren't his! ...stupid "Candace outburst voice".) It's like the ohrwurm nest of voice acting, when you factor in Perry the Platypus... and by that I mean, Perry the Platypus's archnemesis! (Please forgive the format, it was originally written to conform to WMG markups.)
  • heheh, I'm so glad someone marked the Futurama part. No joke, I read that in Prof. Farnsworth's voice, and it immediately switched to Phineas'. Without me trying.
  • Whatcha doooooin?
  • You think that's bad? This troper can't listen to a single song without it being Phineas and Ferb-itized in my head. The mileage definitely varies, but it sure is fun listening to rap songs and having parts of "Spa Day" in my brain instead.
    • Beats having something in the episode set off something from another fandom. Every time this troper hears the bom-bom-inator's Heartbeat Soundtrack in The Baljeatles, he expects them to start singing Breaking Out or Keep Quiet by The Protomen.
    • Phineas and Ferb's song "Kick It up a Notch" features Slash from Guns 'n' Roses. Now I can't help but imagine P 'n' F singing G 'n' R songs. "With your bitch-slap rappin' and your cocaine tongue you get nothing done..."
• What happened with Candace's and Phineas' Dad and Ferb's Mom? I haven't seen a single mention of either of them. Many kids keep in touch with their parents even after one of them remarry, what happened with theirs?
  • Word of God says that they'll never address it - the current set of parents are good enough. Probably gonna provoke Angsty!Candace/Phineas/Ferb fics though...
  • It's debatable, but the fact that Candace refers to Mr. Fletcher as "dad" is a strong indicator that her bio father is out of the picture in a way that keeping in contact might not even be possible.
  • I believe that it's supposed to match Marsh's childhood experience, and that the origin of the mixed family is simply not important for the kids. At least that's what the Other Wiki says.
• Why doesn't Candace just get witness testimony? Phineas and Ferb's schemes are pretty high-profile, so everyone in Danville outside of their parents must know about what they do. It wouldn't be that hard.
  • Because nobody but her actually cares?
  • Because Danville is apparently an odd enough place that most people simply accept what's happening and don't consider the boys' work worth contemplating after it's finished?
  • She did at one point. She got Stacy and Jenny to help bust Phineas and Ferb. It fails. Hurrrrrrr.
  • Pride. She probably believes herself The Only One Allowed to Defeat You. Or she simply didn't think of it.
  • She's tried witness testimony repeatedly. At this point, Linda refuses to believe anyone. See 'Hawaiian Vacation'; the hotel manager, completely independent of Candace, attempted to inform Linda that her sons were misbehaving. Linda jumps to the conclusion that Candace put him up to saying that.
• Is Candace still a Fireside Girl after "Fireside Girl Jamboree"?
  • I don't see why not. She hasn't had a birthday since then, so there can't be an age restriction that she passed, though if there is a minimum meetings attended requirement, she might have fallen below it and had her membership revoked.
  • We know she was involved long enough to be photographed for the Fireside Girls' magazine (probably just because she wouldn't pass up a chance in the limelight).
  • The episode "We Call It Maze" had a new Fireside Girl admiring Candace for her 50-patches record, so it's somewhat implied that she still is, but isn't active in their activities anymore. (Remember that she only became a Fireside Girl because she wanted the tickets for the Paisley Sideburn Brothers concert, even though she could've avoided all the trouble since Isabella is allowed to bring guests)
• Why don't they just stop Doofenshmirtz by getting his alimony cut off? I'm pretty sure using your alimony for evil means is grounds for the government to put a stop to the payments.
  • If they really wanted to put a stop to his evil schemes, they'd just close down Blueprint Heaven.
  • Did you ever think that maybe Charlene really doesn't pay him too much alimony, and Doofenshmirtz Evil inc. is self-sustaining? If you can get the materials and labor for even cooler inventions on a daily basis from two childrens' pocket money, I'm sure one guy, a robot, and a family member/errand girl (de facto intern) can keep such a company afloat. Doofenshmirtz's apartment is in the Dooofenshmirtz Evil Inc. section of the building and we don't know what the rent-lease-buy situation is like there, so it's possible that he doesn't even pay office rent.
    • No. Seriously, as soon as I heard Doofenshmirtz bring up the alimony, from that point on I assumed it was the basis of pretty much all his funding. He refers to his ability to buy a pet, cost not being an option, as being based on a huge monthly alimony, and when you actually look at what he does, it seems like any business venture he's gone for has either been counterproductive, or stopped somehow (usually fueling a backstory monologue). Also, as noted above, we rarely see anyone working at Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc., so I assumed the occasional hires we do see have been temporary hires for specific purposes (excluding Norm, who he doesn't have to pay). The existence of the company seems to be more a matter of Doofenshmirtz's vanity (and an excuse for an awesome jingle) than an actual money-making business. Also, the building seems to be his house more than an actual office building.
  • Also there have episodes which focused on Vanessa trying to bust her dad in a very similar format to Candance and her brothers (on purpose, I know, I know), which would go to show that Charlene doesn't actually KNOW that he is "evil," which shows that the government (beside the company Perry works for) probably would also not know what he does.
    • Several episodes have implied that Doof owns his whole building, and he also seems to have people who rent out the rest of the building. The alimony checks from his ex-wife are also shown to be rather large; his 'big alimony check' is big enough to allow him to buy a ten thousand dollar Perry-disguised-as-a-dog in the pet show episode.
    • In the movie, we see Heinz trying to persuade his elderly neighbour to buzz him into his apartment. Maybe he just owns a single floor of the building. Either that or as the above troper said, he rents it out.
• What happened to the Candroid?
  • It became Skynet.
• What happened to the Ferbot that got taken away and was never seen again?
  • Off having adventures in New Orleans.
  • About where everything else goes when thrown into the back of a garbage truck.
    • • ...Damn you.
• What was Norm ready and waiting to burst out of the screen if Doofenshmirtz was watching the film to find out what the Enemy of the Platypus actually was?
  • He wasn't. He'd seen the film beforehand.
• In "Toy to the World," did Doofenshmirtz really say that the 4-inch across model of the Entire Tri-State Area! was an exact 1/100 scale replica?
  • Four inches? I think it was considerably bigger, but you're right, it's much too small.
    • I probably meant either two or four feet (curse my absent-mindedness!). But I'm glad it's not just me.
  • This troper took it to be something life 1in= 100ft, or some units that make it work better (this troper is also bad with distances). He knows from model railroading that the units on either side of the scale don't have to be the same. (HO scale is 1:87, 3.5mm to 1 foot)
    • This troper is good with distances (and math in general). 1 ft. is about 87 times longer than 3.5 mm, so the scale is correctly shown. 1 in = 1 ft wouldn't be 1:100 scale, it would be 1:1,200.
    • In architectural and engineering drafting/modeling that's not how scale factors are stated. It would be written as 1" = 100', or 1":100', and read as '1 to 100' so the show was correct with the inch/ft generally left to be assumed based on industry [in architecture, it is almost always assumed that it is an inch to feet conversion].
    • It looked like just one city, rather than the entire Tri-State Area. I think this is a case of the writers and animators not being on the same page.
• In the one where they all go up into space, Doofenschmirtz's evil plan is...to make shadow puppets on the moon. How is this evil at all, let alone enough to warrant some sort of government-ish interference?
  • It's not. But it's disruptive (or at least slightly suspicious), and Doofenshmirtz is doing it so [MajorMonogramVoice]it must be stopped at all costs[/voice]. Or at least figure out what he's doing. [voice]And then stop him. We're counting on you, Agent- I mean...[/voice] Ahem.
  • They didn't know what he was doing. Perry was sent to figure that out. For all they knew, he could have been attempting to blow up the moon, which would fit with his past history. They send Perry to determine whether Doof's success would have any lasting effects, and allow him to use his discretion from there. Perry generally decides to foil Doofenshmirtz regardless of the threat posed.
  • Doof wants to be foiled. "Thwart me, Perry the Platypus."
• The Wummer faction is simply absurd! Wummer is (in this context) summer in winter (or would be if I ever stooped to using such a silly term to describe seasonal portmanteau)!
  • I'm sorry, you must be new here. May I direct you to the Rule of Fun page?
    • ...That doesn't stop Wummer from being summer in winter... * grouchy-pout face*
    • What I mean is that this page is for oversights, plot holes, or inconsistencies that are the fault of the writers. Anything that is nonsensical but is in the show anyway because something that makes more sense is less fun is Rule of Fun and falls under Acceptable Breaks From Reality. It's not fair game for a headscratcher, because that would include the very premise of the show.
    • For the record, it's officially described as winter and summer combined and things to that effect. Either portmanteau is acceptable in this case, just like 2+ 3 is the same as 3+ 2.
    • Well it was just for one day.
  • Who thinks it would be hilarious if, in the next Christmas Episode, Doofenshmirtz tried to create Wummer (Summer in Winter) and Norm said, "Some People Call It S'Winter"?
• If Charlene believes that nobody is evil, what does she think Adolf Hitler was?
  • There are people in real life who subscribe to that belief. The fact that people do evil things cannot dissuade some people from believing that human nature is inherently good, and that any and all evil acts are incidental.
  • He couldn't have been all bad. He loved his dog.
    • And he was a vegetarian!
    • That doesn't really count, since he was a vegetarian for medical reasons. And thanks to PETA we know vegetarians can be evil.
  • Hitler, like all major evildoers throughout history, thought he was doing the right thing. Like it or not, but that's what he thought. In a way, Doof is the complete opposite of Adolf Hitler: A man who wants to do evil things, but never really succeeds.
  • Adolf Hitler? On a Phineas and Ferb page? Godwin's Law.
  • Is noteworthy that, in Phineas and Ferb, Rousseau Was Right, so maybe Hitler never existed in that universe.
    • Or he was prevented from ever reaching his evil goals, thanks to Agent G(oldie), an O.W.C.A. operative working undercover.
  • Charlene didn't say it expecting a bunch of Genre Savvy people in a different universe to pick it apart and throw a bunch of anti-examples at her; she just wanted to tell her daughter that Heinz wasn't pure evil. If Hitler was mentioned to her, she might say 'okay, except for Hitler.'
  • In other words, she was just making a sweeping generalization as a dismissal. You know, to prove a point? Like people often do in real life? I mean, how often have you heard "Oh, please, nobody can be that stupid!" or "I can't believe you hate/love [whatever]! Everyone loves/hates [whatever]!" or stuff like that?
    • This Troper took it as meaning "Nobody you know is evil; that's too serious a word to apply to your father just because you don't like visiting him."
    • Huh- "Like people often do in real life?" Why do you feel the need to make a sweeping generalization to prove your point?
    • "People often do in real life" isn't a sweeping generalization. That would be "Everybody always does in real life."
• Why did the Fireside Girls not know about the Breaking The Record For The Number Of Badges Earned In One day badge if the previous record was "six badges, held by our very own Adyson Sweetwater"? Did the Fireside Girls founder make the badge up because she knew Candace had earned the fiftieth badge deserved to get in before the ticket deadline (in which case, shouldn't previous record-holders have been awarded the badge retroactively)? Did Addie not get the badge as an oversight? Was the badge only recently introduced (in which case, the retroactive awarding of the badge may or may not have been a necessity as retroactively counting recorded requirements for badges varies in real-world analogues of the Fireside Girls)?
  • It definitely wasn't made up on the spot (because Candace didn't need to become a Fireside Girl in the first place). But, it was probably just made up by The Scout Leader in case of such a situation. In that case, she making it up for such a situation would be pretty damn smart, even if she didn't really need to enforce it in the first place.
• How did Doofenshmirtz create Doofelium if only about 118 elements exist in the known universe? Also, what is the reason for Pizzazium Infinianite existing?
  • Again, Rule of Funny. Just Bugs Me is supposed to be for glaring plot holes or mistakes, not for nonsensical things purposely done for laughs. Those "elements" were just the writers having fun. It's even lampshaded when "pizzazzium infinianite" is shown in a Peroidic Table, and it's put way down on the edge of the table's border.
• In the "Musical Cliptastic Countdown", Phineas and Ferb openly acknowledge that Perry is guest-starring in a clip show. Wouldn't they wonder why their pet got a role on the show?
  • Actually, possibly not; they would probably think it makes as much sense as any other explanation for where Perry goes every day.
  • These are the same kids who, on a whim, built a fully-functional time machine and once had an alien space ship randomly crash in their backyard (then actually upgraded said ship). Having a pet host a music video show is probably one of the least weird things they can think of.
    • Not to mention that Monogram shows Perry as Secret Agent in front of a crowd of people..one which were Irving. Didn't he think at least one those people would tell Phineas "Hey Your Pet is A Secret Agent"?
    • No, because no one ever recognizes that Agent P=Perry (well, except Doofenshmirtz, but even he takes a few episodes to catch on, and then lampshades it). Monogram still can't recognize Agent P without his hat, and he knows that he's posing as a pet with his "host family". Honestly.
  • I'll answer your question once I repair this wall.
• So does mom just not read the newspaper or watch the news on TV? I highly doubt that not even one of the amazing things Phineas and Ferb do would not make it in the news. Granted, Worst News Judgement Ever probably does not occur much in their world, but I imagine that someone would still devote a large article to two boys building a city-wide rollercoaster or creating the newest toy fad. Perhaps the local news team has the same amount of luck Candace does.
  • No, no she doesn't. She didn't know about their seats on the city council, hasn't seen the Doofenshmirtz Wreaks Havoc articles, and didn't see PFT's magazine cover(s?) or the advertisment for the Phintastic, Ferbulous Car Wash. However, for things like the rollercoaster and the Mix-And-Mingle Machine it seems like it's just not newsworthy (except when it's Canon Dis Continuity).
• Linda clearly goes out often and interacts with many people over the course of the show, so how is it NO ONE talks to her about the boys' devices. Obviously she's never gonna believe Candace and she's not gonna listen to the words of a bunch of 10 year old, but their were plenty of adults who took part in the games/rides they created. Everything they do is big news, so how is this family not famous? Surely someone walked by the house and talked to Linda . It wouldn't matter if it was the 200th episode and the end of summer, I'd still be asking "What was with that giant rollercoaster your sons built anyway?" Better question, why doesn't Candace get all the grown ups to back her up, surely Linda isn't gonna think the entire city has a wild imagination.
  • The projects are generally only up for a few hours in the afternoon, and then only used by kids, besides the rare instances where they do something different (like make a one-hit wonder, create a fashion line, etc.) I'm not surprised she hasn't heard of it, why would the kids that are involved tell her about it?
  • Maybe people assume Linda knows what's going on. And on the flip side, Linda may think that either A: they've listened to Candice's crazy rumors, or B: they're exaggerating something her sons did. The fact that everyone enjoys the boys' ideas/inventions probably keeps Linda from really getting upset. No complaints, no problems, why worry?
• Why exactly are the agents of the Secret Agency all animals, run by humans? And how were they all okay with "Agent T" vanishing in late November?
  • 1. Because it's funny. 2. Agent T didn't vanish. Carl said they "lost" him, implying he got eaten (Thanksgiving is in late November).
  • Major Monogram himself remarks on this at one point when he encounters difficulty trying to communicate with several of the agents.

Major Monogram: "Carl, remind me again why all the agents are animals?"

• • They're not all animals. Don't forget about Planty the Potted Plant.
• Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo has a lot of errors when examined. How did the Rollercoaster!Phineas know about the bonding tool? He wouldn't even know he'd need it for at least 20 more episodes.
  • This. Most of the problems seem to stem from the fact that the writers apparently forgot that by halfway through the episode, Phineas, Ferb, Isabella, and the young Candace are their "Rollercoaster" selves (from the beginning of the summer) and not their time-machine-operating selves (from mid-summer).
  • Isabella make the entire episode stop existing during the credits
    • Actually judging by a scene from the Rollercoaster Musical episode which takes place after this episode,which shows the future Candaces arguing, it might have been Musical Rollarcoaster versions of them all.
    • If the day the Candices intervened was the Musical day (and it appears it was), and if the trip forward in time to get the bonding device happened before Musical Day, then many paradoxes and problems go away. Musical!Phineas knows about the bonder. Musical!Isabella knows where and when to intervene to prevent the trip at the end.
• How the heck did they come up with the number 104? In these parts, summer vacation only lasts around sixty-five to seventy-five days.
  • Their school board is very generous?
  • One episode is two days of summer, making it 52 episodes, the standard amount of episodes a Disney show has.
• Why does Phineas look nothing like any one in his family? While Ferb's is clearly a case of Strong Family Resemblance.
  • Phineas looks like his genetic father.
• I get why Linda was so upset over the Flying Car of the Future - Today! and the rollercoaster, but why was she so angry about the frontier town? They weren't putting themselves or anyone else in danger, and they weren't modifying things that didn't belong to them. I can see being angry that they did this with no adult supervision, but her anger seemed out of proportion to the situation.
  • Again, why does everyone forget the part where you have unsupervised children using dangerous tools? Yes, for once they weren't using power tools, but that antique saw is less than child proof. Not to mention the damage you can do to the antique tools in question.
    • And that doesn't get into the part where they actually put up the houses, equally unsupervised, your average kid would end up with a house falling on top of him pretty easily, and Linda seems to be more grounded in what we consider the real world, rather than the absurd world everybody else (saving Candace) is living in, so freaking out about it makes perfect sense.
  • She realized that if Candace was right that time, then she was probably right every other time and that they HAVE been doing irresponsible things.
    • How do you know it wasn't dangerous? That old coot seemed pretty crafty to me...
• How the heck did the Old Coot end up being Mayor anyway? It was awesomely funny but it still doesn't really make sense. Doof's invention just reversed time to the beginning of the episodes, I don't see how it could CHANGE time.
  • The space rift managed to make an alien randomly exist. I'd rather take issue with that than the Old Coot winning an essay contest.
    • It didn't make the alien randomly exist. It exists in a universe independent of ours ("It's a Mud Mud Mud Mud World" et al). Doof's time rewinding device had the unwanted side effect of bridging the gap between universes. Once time started moving forward again at a point just prior to where the episode began, the new timeline quickly diverged from the old timeline due to free will or the butterfly effect or whatever. It seems to make perfect sense.
    • Fair Enough but how could The Old Coot send a good enough essay to win a contest? Did they REALLY think any essay wrote by him would have a crazy metaphor.
      • I wouldn't put anything past those people.
      • The part that bugs me is, during the speech, they call him "the old coot" instead of his name.
• In the sauna, what is up with Major Monogram's body?! When in uniform, he clearly has broad shoulders and thick arms. When in the sauna, he has the same body as Lawrence!
  • Maybe the shoulders of his uniform are padded to make him look more manly or something?
    • If you look closely in other episodes, the sleeves of his uniform do appear to be very loose.
  • There's actually an episode where Major Monogram was shaving and has broad shoulders. Perhaps he hasn't worked out during that moment?
• Doofenshmirtz said in "Crack That Whip" that he was unable to grow facial hair. But he was seen with a goatee in a flashback in "Unfair Science Fair" and appears to need a shave in "Hawaiian Vacation".
  • He lied.
  • Or that he forgot.
  • "What's the deal? I didn't know you had to shave." "Oh, I don't. It's cinnamon."
• The De-Evolution-Inator in "Hawaiian Vacation". No. The platypus is basically a link between reptiles and mammals--still laying eggs, but capable of producing milk. A human should not be closer to a reptile than a platypus. Also, no way the triceratops later evolved into an insect.
  • Again, comedy show running on Rule of Funny. When every other device shown in the TV show is impossible with real life physics all for the sake of gags, are you really so surprised they don't take biology seriously as well?
    • Yes. Yes, I am. The thing is, most breaks from reality are meant to be Refuge in Audacity ridiculous. This one is not so, thus I am skeptical of whether it was an intentional mistake or a scientific failure.
    • Listen to your own points. "Meant to be ridiculous." It was. Most of the humor regarding the inventions of this show are built exactly on how ridiculous they all are. It's ALL INTENTIONAL for the sake of Rule of Funny (which, contradictory to what you think, is NOT solely based on Refuge in Audacity--read the trope description). It can't be a scientific mistake when they are not trying to be accurately scientific in the first place. It has Doof turning into a single celled organism with eyes, a mouth, and functional human thought. How can you note that and still be skeptical that they didn't give a fuck about being scientifically accurate for the sake of Rule of Funny?
      • What's funny about humans being closer to reptiles than platypodes are?
      • The absurdity is even lampshaded when Doofenshmirtz winds up with one big ear and says "I don't get this one."
  • A few episodes later Doof mentions his de-evolution-ator again, and admits he doesn't even know what evolution is, just that it has something to do with monkeys. Knowing him, he probably just made something that changes an organism's species and though evolution-ator sounded catchy.
• Suzy's Face Heel Turn in "Suddenly Suzy" never mad sense to me. It's said that she only acts evil while Jeremy is around but there's been plenty of times where she's acted evil and Jeremy is nowhere to bee seen.
  • She doesn't necessarily do it only when he's there to see, but rather when she can make a power play out of it; when she does do things like the Squirrels in My Pants thing, it serves to cause Candace to act like, well, Candace and thus freak out and usually run off screaming.
• I don't think this goes under Rule of Funny, but it may be a "just roll with it" type of thing, since I'm pretty sure most of the episodes are meant to be in Anachronic Order: in "The Summer Belongs To You," the events of quite a few previous episodes are mentioned, and there's clearly been quite a bit of Character Development with many of the characters at this point, particularly Candace, Buford, and Vanessa. At first glance, it seems that the characters have been through just about as much as we, the audience, have seen them go through. Yet the special takes place during the summer solstice, which in the Northern Hemisphere is between June 20 and June 21. Depending on when their school let out, there hasn't even been a month of summer by this point. I can't say that this bugs me that much, since so much in this show isn't meant to be taken seriously, but it is distracting when I try to think of "The Summer Belongs To You" as a major event in many of the characters' individual character arcs.
  • Well, there aren't 104 days of summer vacation anywhere in the real America, so there's no way of telling how much happened before this. Perhaps their school lets out in April?
  • If the summer solstice really is the midpoint of their summer vacation (as suggested in "Summer Belongs to You"), and it is 104 days long, then their last day of school must have been April 29 or 30.
  • Phineas specifically states in "Summer Belongs to You" that their vacation is more than halfway over, so it's entirely possible all of the episodes (even the ones that aren't in the summer, like "Christmas Vacation") could have happened already. Plus, Word of God (as another troper mentioned above) says that the show takes place over multiple summers, so it's also possible some episodes happened the previous summer.
  • That's mostly true. The Word of God referring to how long these episodes are for the length of summer was really more of a Shrug of God: They explained that they could spill over into another summer once they reach the 104 episodes, but it was never stated that the show has already taken up multiple summers.
  • "Candace Loses Her Head" takes place on July 11. In other words, by the second episode, the audience's point of view has already skipped two months of Phineas and Ferb's summer vacation. I don't think the writers planned this out very well.
  • It can get real confusing if you stop and think about what events came first (if you're under the impression all of the show happens in one summer). The P&F Wikia tries a little bit, but to truly try to understand, you need a calculator, compass, and several thousand pounds of string. The only given dates in the show are the summer solstice (June 20th or 21st), Candace's birthday (July 11th as seen in "Candace Loses Her Head"), and their parents' anniversary (June 15th). Then again, Phineas kind of lampshades it in "Summer Belongs to You" when he just blah-blah-blahs the rest of the events in Ferb's journal.
• In "Summer Belongs To you", Perry and Major Monogram arrest Dr. Doofenshmirtz stating that there are a ton of outstanding warrants. If they really wanted to arrest him, why haven't they done so before? It's not like they don't know where he lives.
  • I don't think they had time during those moments. Since first, Major Monogram was kidnapped by Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Second, they were in search of Vanessa before they arrest him. Maybe so they could put Vanessa (who was considered a "victim" of her father) to safety.
  • I like to think that Perry realizes Doof is largely harmless, and he gives him a pass unless he thinks Doof crossed a line.
    • Which he had, of course. Usually, Doof's schemes involve the same pattern: 1. Invent Somethinginator. 2. Use it. 3. ??? 4. Rule the Tri-State Area. This time, he kidnapped Major Monogram, Agent P's boss, transported him halfway around the world in the luggage portion of a jet plane, and aimed to ruin his credibility and bring down the Organization. It's easy to see why Perry would deem that scheme more worthy of a proper arrest.
• In the title sequence... what happened to the fourth penguin? "MOM! Phineas and Ferb misplaced a penguin!"
  • It went to the same place that the mouse went.
    • Mark my words, that brick is going to crash into someone's head one day.
• Was the "Bouncin' Along" montage in "Summer Belongs to You" supposed to be in chronological order? Because if it was (and even if it wasn't), they were going all over the place, backtracking, and at least once went literally halfway around the world, about as far as the possibly could have (Western Europe to Australia).
  • I don't know. The more important question surrounding that episode is: How the heck did they not run into a storm, or at least an overcast area where the sun wouldn't have been shining? Plus, in Australia, isn't summer winter?
    • Nah, it's S'Winter.
    • It was probably a sunny winter day in Sydney. If they're not cold in the Himalayas, they're not cold in a coastal Australian winter.
  • Songs have an odd place in the continuity of episodes. Witness "When You're Small" from Hide and Seek. Some of the events shown during song that appear on screen could not have happened within the continuity of the episode as quite a few of them take place outside of the house and the gang did not really leave the house until Candance took the shrinking machine.
• If it's sunny in places like Japan and Paris, why isn't it nighttime in Danville? For the sun to be up in those places, it would've had to go down in America, and Phineas and Ferb should logically be there for sunrise if they kept on the sun's tail. They made the sunlight and therefore the day, last longer than twenty-four hours, but that's only from their perspective as the non-globetrotting populous of Danville would've had nightfall well into their trip, therefore ending their day. Please tell me this is making some kind of sense.
  • That's exactly correct. The whole thing lasted about "40 hours" (quoting Adyson) - they left Danville just after sunrise on Day 1 and got back in the evening of Day 2, but the point was that the sun never set on them.
• Doofenshmirtz recognizes Perry by his fedora, and even realizes that it's really him in Candace's body when she puts it on. How did he know that Peter the Panda was a separate secret agent then? He wears a fedora too, and doesn't speak either.
  • Rule of Funny?
  • It's a slightly different shade of brown?
  • In that episode with that evil rabbit, it's shown that each agent apparently has some kind of bar code in their hat so that they can be computer identified. So... Doofenshmirtz can read bar codes?
• Why do people keep saying "Not one word." to Perry? He can't talk!
  • They keep telling him that because the audience knows he can't talk. It's a joke.
• In "Fireside Girl Jamboree", Phineas claims their project wasn't miraculously cleaned up, and they spent all night cleaning. If that's the case, why did Candace not bust them?
  • ...Because she was sleeping?
    • But the invention still would have been there during the previous evening. What about then?
  • She was trying to buy those tickets. Yes, that means that the one day she could have busted her brothers, she didn't.
• A bit of nitpicking here, but in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted," upon being carried away by the O.W.C.A. agents, Phineas comments "Hey, I haven't even finished my cereal." The family was eating bacon and eggs.
  • Answer: He hasn't even started eating his cereal yet either.
  • While we're on the subject, why was Ferb holding a spoon if they were eating bacon and eggs?
    • This violation of logic is a subtle indication that it's still a dream.
• In Quantum Boogaloo, wouldn't someone using the time machine and who went back or forward in time come back exactly after they leave?
  • No?
• In 'Let's take a quiz', Candace claims she needs to be famous to impress Jeremy. So far, she's starred in a music video ("Comet Kermillian"), sung alongside the guest stars on a popular reality show ("Flop Starz"), and released a song with her mother's band ("Jerk de Soleil"). Despite all of this, a TV quiz show is what she needs to become famous? Huh?
  • A teenage girl thinking irrationally? How unrealistic.
• In "Jerk de Soleil," how does Jeremy get a copy of the CD, and listen to the song that Candace recorded only hours earlier?
  • The same way Phineas and Ferb get all of their stuff delivered to them within an hour or less? Magic.
    • You don't need a wizard if you set your watch to Cartoonland Time.
• During the "Evil Boys" song, Candace mentions the backyard beach and the treehouse robots, despite her actually LIKING those things. Why would she point them out as examples of their "evil"?
  • Because she failed to bust the boys; her fatal flaw is that she let's her self-imposed mission sully any fun she could or even does have, after all.
• Hey, where's Perry?
  • It's the greatest mystery of all.
    • He left Journey in 1998, citing health problems.
• In "Picture This" Candace took a photo of Mom's upper body without a blindfold on, but when she happens to put the photo in the Go Getter at the same time Mom is trying to break a piñata, Mom is still brought back to the backyard with the blindfold on and her body intact. This contradicts the earlier scene with Grandpa Fletcher.
  • Rule of Funny
  • Or they adjusted the machine's settings so it wouldn't dismember people. For some reason, ensuring that people's entire bodies were teleported with them also caused their accessories to teleport with them.
• Is there a trope for every single character in a work somehow all being masters at playing guitar? Phineas, Ferb and their friends can all play guitar, Candace and Stacy can, the Mom and Dad can, Jeremy can and as such is for some reason the only guy who is refered to as a guitarist despite the fact everyone can play one, Doofenshmirtz can, despite in a later episode needing lessons from Jeremy, Major Monogram can, despite also needing lessons later. Even Perry can play the banjo! I mean, I know it's a musical cartoon, but several of the songs and jokes happen in-canon with guitar playing in full view. So why, after all this, is Jeremy the only one referred to as a guitarist?
  • He's the only one in a band (not including Linda). And, to be fair, Candace plays the bass guitar.
    • And the banjo.
    • And the bassoon.
    • And the bugle.
    • And the bongoes.
    • And the balalaika.
    • And the bagpipes.
  • Actually, Perry didn't play the banjo during the episode. It was just an accident when he wore the banjo when he crashed into Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. However, Perry did play the guitar with advanced skill in "The Lizard Whisperer". And since when did Lawrence play a guitar? As far as this troper knows, Lawrence could play the keytar and keyboard in "Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Max Modem!". And in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!", the episode where Stacy played the guitar was just a dream, so we wouldn't know if Stacy could actually play a guitar or not. About the "a lot of characters could play the guitar", this troper would assume that they could only play the guitar at a basic level. This also applies to other instruments.
• Hey, aren't you kids a little young to be starting a Headscratchers page?
  • Yes, yes we are.
    • Sorry Phineas, he's new.
  • Think about it. Age really isn't the issue here, right?.
• Major Monogram flirting with Inspector Initials. Did the writers forget he's a married man?
  • Even married people are known to flirt. Some seriously, and some not so seriously.
  • Wild Mass Guessing: She's his wife. (Or, alternatively, the writers just forgot he was supposed to be married.)
• In Rollercoaster: The Musical, after Doofenshmirtz's song, one of the dancers says that she needs to pick her kid up from school. Tell me what is wrong with that.
  • It could possibly have been Saturday school, or summer holiday catch-up classes. Or maybe we're getting close to the end of the holidays, and a few schools have started up early (private schools have a tendency to do this where I live).
    • Not every school has 104 days of summer vacation, thank you very much!
    • That dancer was particularly well conserved. I bet that by school she meant daycare or something like that.
    • Or the kid is also a dancer. Or taking classes for something else, and it's just easier and more natural to say school, as opposed to "guitar lessons" or some such nonsense.
• So why did Doofenshmirtz have to jump off the high dive as a child if his mother had forbade him from swimming in public pools?
  • This could be a clue that Doofenshmirtz is making up some or all of his emotionally scarring back-stories.
    • Well, maybe I should give you an emotionally scarring frontstory!
      • That doesn't even make sense!
        • It doesn't have to, I've got a monster truck!
  • My guess is that, because he refused to jump, they banned him from using it at all.
    • Let's also not forget that the high dive wasn't above a public pool. It was the Gimmelschtump Public Wetness Maker. It just had water in it on alternating Thursdays.
• Why didn't Candace and Jeremy combine to make one person in "Canderemy"?
  • They were barely touching when the ray hit them, so only the parts of them that were in contact (that is, their hips) fused.
    • Yeah, but Phineas and Ferb weren't touching at all at the end.
      • Well, the ray that P&F got hit by had been festering in the satellite for the episode, so maybe it just increased in intensity while it was in there.
      • It's also possible that the combination between two objects is randomized each time.
• In "Undercover Carl", when Carl attempts to decode Phineas' catch phrase out to "Let's help Doofenshmirtz destroy the Tri-State Area", does anyone else find it odd that Monogram immediately believes him without question? "Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today" has only 10 syllables, and no "s"s. What is this supposed to be an example of?
  • Rule of Funny?
• How does Doofenshmirtz know Perry's name? Or a better question, how does Doofenshmirtz know that Carl hula dances in private to a song called Dr. Coconut?
  • In Oh, there you are, Perry Doof received a gift basket that explained that he was downgraded as a threat. Possibly the time he was assigned Perry to him he received a different gift basket that explained him that Perry the Platypus has been assigned to him.
    • But Major Monogram and Carl only ever refer to Perry as Agent P. Why would they refer to him as Perry The Platypus when it's in a gift basket?
      • Granted. But perhaps it was just because the letter was more formal and included the full name so that Doof can use Full-Name Basis.
      • There are at least three different Agent P's, Perry, Peter, and Pinky, they probably address the agents by their initials one on one but use their full names when they need to be clear which agent they're talking about, wouldn't want a new villain preparing a trap for Peter the Panda when he was actually assigned to Paul the Porpoise after all.
  • Doof probably has tried to spy on the Agency for counter-intelligence.
• In "Brain Drain" what was the point of Buford playing sick when there's no school?
  • He did say he was being lazy. He probably couldn't be bothered getting out of bed.
  • He didn't say he was playing sick. He just said he was lazy. What makes you think he was playing sick?
• Something that really bugs me is that whole "platypi are the only mammals that lay eggs" thing. There are two actually. The other one is called an echidna. Why has no one noticed this yet? I mean, I know it's a relatively unknown animal but you'd think they'd do some research on something they make such a big deal of.
  • As much as I love this show, the lack of fact-checking on the part of the writers and animators is really appalling. Alpine-dwelling dodo? T. rex with three fingers on each hand? Red blood corpuscles dividing? It's amazing that this stuff makes it into production without anybody along the way noticing and correcting them.
    • Why would it be amazing when it's not an Edutainment Show that frequently features blatantly (and lampshaded) scientifically impossible things? It does not need research, and it ignores facts in the service of Rule of Funny. The Alpine-dodo, for one, is precisely that. It's supposed to be absurd that it's an Alpine dodo, that's part of the joke. You might as well be complaining about why Bugs Bunny is not a scientifically realistic rabbit. Besides, Just Bugs Me is for logical issues with the plot, not for complaining about how the creators aren't up to your standards.
  • Make a big deal out of? Ferb said it once randomly at the end of "Rollercoaster" and it's never brought up again. How is that making a big deal out of it?
  • Well I'm sure they brought it up more than that. They brought it up in the one about the platypus monster at least. But anyway that's not the point right now. Whether they make a big deal out of it or not they still should of made sure it was right before they said it.
    • The fact that they've only said it twice (and one time being a joke about "platypus monsters") is a valid point. They probably stopped saying it when the creators realized it wasn't true. It's not that big of a deal.
• Just a little one. Why is a Mexican-Jewish festival, when the majority of Mexico's population (87.99%) is Catholic?
  • Hey, it can happen. From what I've read, there are about 50,000 Jewish residents in Mexico City.
  • Also playing off the strange mixed racial background that Isabella (and presumably the other people at the festival) are part of. The juxtaposition is striking, and that's what makes it funny, while still raising a point that there are people with this background.
  • Because Rule of Funny; Mariachi meets Fiddler on the Roof.
• When rearranged, Sal Tuscany does not make Santa Claus. It makes Santa Clus.
  • Exactly; it wasn't Sal Tuscany that was rearranged, it was A Sal Tuscany. Doof actually says that.
  • "Sal Tuscany" can be rearranged to spell "Santy Claus," though.
  • He did mention an embarrassing leftover "Y".
• In Christmas Vacation, did the snowman Perry built actually crashed into vegetables like in the credits unharmed, leaving a carrot to Perry which is not his nose? Then how come when Major Monogram ate the carrot, Perry felt disgusted?
  • I'm not completely sure, but if I remember correctly Perry didn't look disgusted. More like shocked or slightly horrified. Maybe he just really wanted a carrot and didn't like that Moonogram took his?
  • I always took it as the time during the episode was on Christmas Eve, and the time in the credits was Christmas morning. Although it's been a while since I've seen that episode, I'm pretty sure Perry reacts differently to the second one.
  • Perry was shocked because it WAS the snowman's nose Monogram was eating. The snowman got hit by a plow the first time around.
• So Carl built robotic replicas of the Flynn-Fletcher family. Creepy. But why did he build a replica of Perry if the robot was supposed to be operated by Agent P?
  • So it could be operated by another agent if Agent P was out of commission?
    • The problem is that most of the agents are the same size or bigger than Perry. If memory serves, the only ones that aren't are the koi fish and Agent S. Both of whom would have a hard time operating a robotic replica and flipping through at least three different reference books simultaneously, as they're all lacking in limbs. And before anybody says it, I know-- "He's a platypus, he doesn't do much."
    • This Troper remembers that there's also an agent mouse...
• I know this is Disney and all and that it probably wouldn't happen but...shouldn't Candace be locked away in an insane asylum by now or at the very least having many hours of the therapy? From Linda's POV, Candace has lost total contact with reality and is completely bonkers (not that she isn't already of course). Linda should be worried that her daughter will just snap completely and go on insane raging rampage of some sort.
  • Same deal with Vanessa and her mother. Vanessa probably seems even less sane, since even Candace never made the claim that a harmless pet platypus is a secret agent.
  • Linda bought books about dealing with crazy teenagers like Candace, so she must be at least aware of how to take care of Candace. I don't think Linda would consider Candace to be crazy enough to get sent to an asylum.
  • Additionally, she seems to be chalking it up to teenage hormones (she doesn't take Candace's friends too seriously either).
    • I think the question that should be asked instead is, if Linda thinks Candace is fantasy-prone and unstable, why does she keep leaving her in charge when her and Lawrence are gone?
      • Especially because she's prone to leaving the house on a whim to try to bust them.
    • Probably because each time Linda and Lawrence come back home, Phineas, Ferb, and Candace are always seem unharmed.
• In "I, Brobot," Candace says she's failed at busting Phineas and Ferb 19 times already. Assuming the episodes "really" happened in production order, and assuming she tries to bust them in each prior episode (I can't remember if this is true), this leaves 2 attempted bustings unaccounted for, right?
  • Correction: She didn't try to bust Phineas and Ferb for anything in "Lights, Candace, Action," "Get That Bigfoot Outa My Face," "Tree to Get Ready," or "A Hard Day's Knight." "Toy to the World" is a borderline case, since she called her mom to bust the boys, she didn't drag her over to see what they'd done (as far as we saw). So there are 6 or 7 projects Candace tried to bust Phineas and Ferb for prior to "I, Brobot" that we never got to see. Or the episodes are in anachronic order.
  • In the first episode her and the mom mention the boys training monkeys to juggle bicycles, so it's implied the rollercoaster wasn't the first project.
  • Well, there could have been some other days we're not shown where she tries to bust them.
• Given that Candace has her own cell phone as early as the first episode, why is she constantly shown talking on the house phone in front of the sliding door?
  • Because she uses both. Is that really that hard to believe?
  • Not that strange, really. Would you waste your minutes using your cell phone if the home phone was right there?
• What are Pinky the Chihuahua and Peter the Panda's code names? Agent D, C, and P are already taken.
  • They probably still call them Agent P. In the episode where Perry ends up in Pinky's lair, doesn't the woman call him Agent P before seeing it's Perry and not Pinky?
    • That's probably it-- Pinky and Peter are probably in different organizations. O.W.C.A isn't the only one that's been shown in an episode. (Granted, that was Inspector Initials' division, and dealt with humans, but that's not the point.) The duplicates probably don't matter-- none of the agents who report to Monogram have had the same letter as another... Ignoring Agent T, the turtle, but since, according to Carl, they 'lost' Agent T the turkey around Thanksgiving, it doesn't really violate the theory.
      • That would explain why Peter the Panda plays by different rules than Perry (e.g. foiling Doofenshmirtz during a musical number).
• In "Oil on Candace," Dr. Doofenshmirtz shows his former professor the drillinator, meltinator, deflatinator, and woodinator, and tells her none of them worked. But they all worked! They weren't used on their intended targets due to Perry's intervention, so the schemes failed, but the inventions worked. Why would he say they didn't?
  • Maybe his schemes failing is what he meant by them not working. They didn't do what they were supposed to do so they didn't work in the way he was hoping.
• Did Phineas and Ferb ever do something that is strictly against the laws of psychics as the show sometimes jokes?
  • They've made an anti-gravity machine in "Undercover Carl".
  • I'd say the teleporters in "Does This Duckbill Make Me Look Fat?" and "Picture This" probably violate the laws of physics. Especially the first one, which explicitly breaks matter down and recreates it from its constituent particles.
  • Then there are the various episodes where a given space is somehow increased in volume (like the funhouse in "One Good Scare Ought to Do It" and the control center in "Out to Launch") or area (the yard in "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror"). But I'm not sure if that falls within the "laws of physics" as you're defining them.
    • We can add the football X-7 arena in "My Fair Goalie" to the list of projects that are bigger on the inside than the outside. The artificial environment in "The Great Indoors" also looks that way, but the impression of wide open spaces and long distances travelled could be an illusion (like on the holodeck in Star Trek).
    • The haunted house didn't really look like it was bigger than it was on the outside, the control center was Ferb "maximizing space", and I always thought they sort of just moved people's houses for the beach. I don't think any of them would really count as breaking the laws of physics.
  • Better question: Is this a serious question, or are you trolling?
  • Let's see... they've repaired a time machine, used it at least twice, they built a skyscraper that reaches the moon, they've built an anti-gravity rug, they shrunk themselves and went into Candace, they built an elevator to the moon (mentioned but unseen), they unfroze a caveman alive, built a teleporter, a rainbow machine, a portal to Mars, an animal translator, a growth elixir, an interactive video game, a giant paper mache airplane, shrunk themselves on a rainy day, built x-ray specs, built another teleporter (for lost stuff), passed through everything, built an anti-gravity machine, made growth elixir, split Candace, built a molecular separator, super-fast shoes, a super computer, a super mobile phone with teleportation app, and a hair-growing machine. The other things they've done should be physically possible in some way. Note: this list should be expanded as time goes on.
    • If we're gonna get technical, antigravity isn't impossible. It's already been achieved on a small scale (and a larger scale if you believe some conspiracy theories). Passing through solid matter is also theoretically possible by circumventing the Coulomb force.
      • Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here, but I'd like to add Phineas Tower to the list of impossible inventions. By my calculations, it would take approximately one sextillion (10 to the power of 21) square miles of plexiglass to pull off that ending. Of course, the alien spaceships are especially impossible.
    • I don't think most of those things are really against the laws of physics. They're amazing and scientific but I don't think they really break any laws. Impossible =/= Laws of physics. The antigravity machine counts since gravity is a law of physics (they even mention it.).
    • Then you don't know physics. The first episode alone has a roller-coaster going into space and then reentering (with unsuited people not getting crushed by the force that would take, not dying from vacuum exposure, and not burning up on reentry), and you're seriously saying that doesn't strike you as breaking the laws of physics? Never mind the utter impossibility of most of their inventions.
    • I never said anything about the roller coaster (although that honestly feels more like a cartoons breath in space thing and don't blow up on entry because it's a kids cartoon, especially since they didn't really build it to do it) I'm just saying impossible doesn't equal breaking a law of physics.
  • maybe I should have worded it "did they do anything that is impossible?" and I don't think something that is possible in theory like a time machine should be brought up as something impossible.
  • So just impossible and possible in theory doesn't count? Hm, I don't think there was anything. Maybe going inside and bringing things out of video games?
    • Your own words just above: "They're amazing and scientific but I don't think they really break any laws." I brought up the roller-coaster example to give just one example where the laws of physics were broken. And when laws of physics, when brought up, refers to the known laws of physics. When you bring that up, that's the assumption people are going to make. Also, just because something is "theoretically possible" doesn't mean that it's presentation isn't still erroneous. Back when heavier than air flight was still theoretical, people came up with all sorts of plane designs that did not and could not work. So even if what the machines in the show do may be theoretically possible someday, how they're designed and their operating mechanism (when described) still break the laws of physics.
    • 1. The laws of physics in the Roller coaster episode were broken because having them blow up isn't very kid friendly. 2. He said that "theoretically possible" doesn't count. 3. The designs don't really have anything to do with it. It brings it back to it being a kids' show and the guys in charge not wanting to figure out how to build a time machine/animal translator/etc. just so it looks accurate.
• Why jump to the conclusion that the Martians don't know what music is? All Candace said was "Crank the tunes!" For all she knows, they probably just didn't understand what that meant.
  • Jumping to conclusions wouldn't exactly be out of character for Candace.
• How can Danville be at or near the shared border(s) of three states, but also border an ocean (vide "Atlantis," "That Sinking Feeling")? I don't see how those two qualities could coexist.
  • Rule of Cool. Seriously there's no way to explain it other than for plot purposes. Also, did it ever say all those places were around Danville? Was there a map or did we get confirmation from Doof trying to take over the Tri-State Area again or something like that?
    • The map from "Just Passing Through." Now that I've dug that up, it actually provides a pretty good answer. I'm assuming those are the borders of the states joining there by the western edge. Danville is presumably on the large bay that makes up most of the border between the state on the north and the state on the southeast.
  • And if you look closely, there's several groups of three states that could work, esp if you include major rivers.
• Why are there so many references to Phineas and Ferb travelling in time twice? The timeline where they travel through time a second time in "Quantum Boogaloo" was ultimately replaced with one where future Isabella gave the boys a device from the future, mooting their need for the time machine. So from the point of view of the characters, they only travelled in time once.
  • Well they traveled backward in time, then traveled forward (in different time machines), they may count that.
  • Isabella showed up in a time machine with the tool that they needed, and they were smart enough to figure out that they were responsible for her being there in the first place, so they know that technically, they travelled in time twice.
• In the "Chronicles of Meap" character commentary, Doofenshmirtz decides that he doesn't like Ferb right off the bat. No accounting for taste, but fine. Later on-- after My Ride from Outer Space and Vanessa's appearance-- his major reason for not wanting Vanessa to have anything to do with him is that he's a "hoodlum" and that the modifications he made to Meap's cruiser weren't "Technically 'street legal". I can accept the Papa Wolf tendencies-- it's part of what makes Doof so endearing-- but why is he using that as his excuse? He's evil and he wants his daughter to be evil like him. While the rest of us know that Ferb isn't evil, the argument doesn't seem to hold much water coming from a Mad Scientist.
  • I think it's supposed to be Hypocritical Humor.
  • Also, Doofenshmirtz didn't have anything to do with the monster at the convention. He was pitching an idea for a t.v. show at the time. The monster was Phineas and Ferb's.
    • That was the point-- the monster is the most 'sinister' thing that Ferb had taken part in. The hottip was referring to the throwaway line in "Chez Platypus" where Doof says that a lot of self-proclaimed evil-doers are weird; since the most that the monster could qualify the boys for is Harmless Villain status, the Chez Platypus argument probably wouldn't apply.
• Is it just me or has the Giant Floating Baby Head's design changed?
  • Screenshot from its first appearance: [1]
  • Screenshot from its latest appearance to date: [2]
• You know how Perry goes all Papa Wolf if Phineas and Ferb are in danger? Well, "Road Trip" has Perry battling a scheme of Doofenshmirtz' that very well could have killed the entire family...and he doesn't seem to take any more seriously then the usual assignment. Am I missing something?
  • Well they can't add something to show how he's connecting the latest scheme to Phineas and Ferb every episode.
  • The only thing Doofenshmirtz did in that episode that even sort of affected the Flynn-Fletchers was connecting their vehicles so he didn't have to focus on driving, which didn't seem to really cause any harm and no one even noticed. And when Perry's GPS override thing in the Flynn-Fletcher RV started acting up, and actually put the family in danger, he wastes no time in saving them. So yeah, the "Boom Juice" could potentially be dangerous, but it wasn't exactly an immediate threat with them just driving down the road.
  • In fact, the second after Doof attaches his truck to the Flynn-Fletchers' truck Perry starts hitting Doof VERY hard. I mean, he is not usually that violent.
• What was with the ending to "Mommy Can You Hear Me?"?!
  • It is a Shout-Out to the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • Yeah, outside of the context of it being a parody it doesn't make any sense.
    • It doesn't have to, I've got a monster truck!
    • There's an equally baffling reference to the same movie during the "Lunar Taste Sensation" musical sequence.
• What was the point of the projectile from the staininator hitting the flying carpet? It didn't destroy it, and didn't seem to affect anything at all. I feel like I must be missing something.
  • I'm not really sure either, but I think it had something to do with Linda wanting tile in the living room at the beginning of the episode. At the end, the Staininator hits the carpet as it lands and turned it a different color (purple I think) and Linda walks in and tells Lawrence how much she loves the "new" carpet instead of tile.
    • I'm nearly positive that's exactly the reason.
• Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" has audio flashbacks to various episodes, but one doesn't actually come from the episode. The Candace sound bite says, "Mom, Phineas and Ferb are in my large intestine!" This sounds like it must come from "Journey to the Center of Candace," but there are 3 problems: 1. That line wasn't in the episode. 2. Candace didn't call her mom until after the submarine was out of her body. 3. The submarine was never in her large intestine (the song even makes a point of this). What gives?
  • Well, it is a dream. Perhaps Foreshadowing?
• After the episode with The Beak, shouldn't Doofenshmirtz still be Mayor?
  • It was more of a "mayor for the day" (or rather a "mayor until all this blows over and they can't blame me for it") kind of thing, not a permanent position. Plus, I doubt Roger would have the power to make Heinz permanent mayor even if he had wanted to.
• In the film, when we see alternate-Doofenshmirtz' flashback, he doesn't have the scar and stitches, but he does have the eyepatch. So, are the wound over the eye and the loss of the eye unconnected?
  • Yes, yes they are
• If Peter the Panda works for the OWCA like Perry, why was he fighting Doofenshmirtz? It's safe to assume that not only would he have his own nemesis, he would know that Heinz already had one as well. And why didn't the OWCA call him out on this? The only real explanations are 1) He's new, or 2) He wasn't working for the OWCA. But correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't Peter confirmed as an OWCA agent? If Peter had finally defeated his own nemesis, I'd assume that either the OWCA would assign him a new one or dismiss him entirely. I just don't understand why he was there in the first place, and most importantly, why the OWCA was okay with it.
  • Maybe he started as a new OWCA agent, but started with his old fedora and was given a trial by "borrowing" someone's nemesis. Because he did a good job, he was given his own nemesis, being a new member of the OWCA.
  • Well, Peter was originally from Seattle. He was probably part of another organization/division there, which could have completely different nemesis rules. Then when he moved to the Tri-State Area he joined up with OWCA/a local division, and would probably have been assigned his own nemesis.
• In "Picture This", Linda attended the Mexican-Jewish festival. Is it actually allowed to attend events which are focused on a religion that you aren't, like, say, a Christian goes to a Jewish-related event?
  • ...why would that not be allowed? In my experience, someone not of religion X visiting an X-related event is given a warm welcome. (Side note, many Christians celebrate Jewish holidays, like Passover, for heritage-type reasons.)
  • Mexican-Jewish festival sounds more of a cultural thing than a religious thing.
  • How do you know her religion?
    • Well, Linda's definitely not Jewish. Proof: the Flynn-Fletcher family doesn't celebrate Hanukkah.
    • Even if it were religious, it's not like people from other faiths are barred from attending outside of a few very formal ceremonies. I'm a Christian, but have still attended a few Hanukkah parties.
• In "Rollercoaster: The Musical!", during Carpe Diem, Perry can be seen with the cast, standing up and with his fedora. But at the end of the song, he walks in as a mindless pet. Was the last part of the song supposed to be symbolic to the audience, and that's why Perry was acting like a mindless pet, or are the characters aware that he's a secret agent outside the Fourth Wall, if that makes any sense?
  • It is not like the Musical Episode had a Fourth Wall at all. By the time Carpe Diem started, the Fourth Wall had already lost its ninth life.
• Very minor, but in "My Fair Goalie," when Ferb misses the goal at the end, shouldn't Beckham have said "It missed the goal by a kilometer" instead of "It missed the goal by a mile"?
  • I'm not sure, but I don't think the word "mile" has completely disappeared from British English. I think it's still used for hyperboles like that.
    • Huh. You learn something new every day.
      • Brits tend to use imperial measurements for distances, i.e. referring to a person as 5'10" and such.
  • I'm possibly being redundant here, but "missed by a mile" is an expression. I'm brought up on the metric system but saying "missed by a kilometre" just sound weird to me.
  • In England we still use miles (usually, but not exclusively, for travel related distances e.g. 120 miles from here to London, 60 miles per hour speed limit etc.) We do use centimetres and metres as well, but kilometres aren’t used very often. It would be more natural to say 'mile' than 'kilometre'.
• "Last Train to Bustville" establishes that Linda's eyesight without her contacts is very poor. But in "Tour de Ferb" Candace drags her out to look at the boy's project right after she comes out of the shower (and clearly hasn't had an opportunity to put her contacts on). How did she expect her to see it? And how could she even read the billboard at the end?
  • They Just Didn't Care
  • Candace didn't think it through. Also, Linda didn't read any billboard at the end, she just saw Doof's wombat advert and was shocked at it.
  • Apparently she thought to wear a bike helmet into the shower. Why not her contacts?
  • ...I have never met anyone who removes their contacts just to shower.
  • Actually, much like Linda, this troper is Blind Without'Em. I have to put in my contacts so I can shower.
• Did Isabella ever get the rodeo clown patch? In Robot Rodeo she was playing the part of a bull rider and not a clown, which kind of negates the point of putting on the rodeo in the first place. She obviously didn't have the patch in the first place, since they specified that the troop was missing the rodeo clown patch as a whole, so yeah...
• Aside from the Status Quo Is God excuse, why, exactly, would Perry have to be relocated if Lawrence had become the leader of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N? It seems like that would warrant an agent being in the Flynn-Fletcher household around the clock. Sure, Perry's got Doof to consider, enemy-wise, but foiling his plots usually takes what, half of an afternoon? There's the 'You've grown too close to the boys' card, too, but with all of the WMGs about Perry being there to monitor them/make sure they don't go from child prodigies to miniature evil scientists, that doesn't quite fit, either.
  • It's because Perry usually attends L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N-related events, in which he would see Lawrence, and Lawrence sees Perry. Then Lawrence would somehow realize that his pet Perry the Platypus is Agent P and dispose him, because he'd be very smart, of course. Just look at Dr. Doofenshmirtz-2 in Across the 2nd Dimension!
• In "Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Max Modem!" Linda casually mentions that she's been lip-synching to somebody else's singing for her whole singing career. She doesn't seem at all bothered by the fact that she's been misleading audiences. Does this seem wrong or out-of-character to anybody else?
  • The audience had already knew?
  • I always thought she recorded the song first, then only lip-synched for the live shows.
  • Actor Allusion-Olivia Olson sings "I'm Lindana and I Wanna Have Fun".
• How does Doof exactly make an income?
  • It's been said in the show that he gets alimony from his ex-wife, and borrows money from her on top of that. Of course, it's hard to believe that covers everything, so we can speculate about other unmentioned sources of income. For one thing, some of his inators are clearly marketable.
    • Some episodes (e.g. "The Fast and the Phineas," "Flop Starz") strongly suggest Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc. is an actual company, (although others make it look like it's just one pathetic man and his robot). If we go with the former interpretation, there are operations going on besides what we see onscreen, and there could easily be enough revenue to cover inators, platypus-related damages etc. Doofenshmirts could also be leasing out parts of the building (although that brings up another inconsistency, since in some episodes he owns the whole building and in others he just owns or rents the penthouse).
    • Doof does mention that he gets a big enough alimony check that he can easily afford a ten thousand dollar Perry-dressed-as-a-dog. And I always thought Doof owned the whole building and leased the rest out as residential property.
  • In the car wash episode, Doofenshmirtz falls through the building and we can see offices and stuff. And in the movie, he tried buzzing his neighbour.
• Why hasn't anyone famous in-universe heard about Phineas and Ferb's schemes? I'm pretty sure if a plane was flying over their house that the plane would wanna photograph what's going on. Also, why do people walking down the street never notice P and F's plans?
  • They do notice it. They just don't care about it.
  • Danville is a very odd town even without the boys and Doof's antics. The citizens are probably too jaded to really see this kind of thing as being worth commenting on after it ends.
• In the episodes where Candace busts Phineas and Ferb, why does their mom always get furious?! If I saw my sons creating a rollercoaster, turning my car into a flying car and creating a mini-town out of antique tools, I would be ESTATIC knowing my sons were geniuses with such amazing talent and potential. In those scenarios, Linda complains how unsafe their projects are when they CLEARLY know what they're doing! I would tell them to make copies of their blueprints and to sell all the copies! I would reward them thousands of times if my sons could build this kind of crap! So why does Linda always react so negatively in these scenarios instead of positively like she should?!
  • More like why wouldn't she? How would you feel if you found out all this stuff was going on in your own backyard and everyone but you knew about it? She probably felt like an idiot.
  • She's also a mom. You know how much they worry about their children's wellbeing. She's just acting the way a Real Life mom would if she found out her kids have been using power tools and building precarious structures without adult supervision. Unfortunately she's not Genre Savvy enough to know her family lives in a universe where characters don't die or get grievously injured.
  • She's always seemed more shocked than angry when it happens, and why shouldn't she be? I don't know if you've noticed, but Phineas and Ferb's projects aren't exactly the kind of thing normal children do. Sure, they tell her about them most of the time, but they're outlandish that they're easy to write off as childish imagination. Actually walking out and seeing your child on a gigantic structure, doing something impossible is probably enough to give any parent a heart attack. After the shock wore off, she'd probably be incredibly proud, but still worried about them pulling this kind of thing for fun.
• There are tons and tons of animal agents. They're apparently all assigned to a nemesis, most of whom are a larger threat than Dr Doofenshmirtz (since "Oh, There You Are, Perry" indicates he's on the fence between supervillain and minor threat). So how come we don't see any of this going on? Besides one episode with Poofenplotz and a couple episodes where Doofenshmirtz teams up with other low-level evil scientists, it really doesn't look like civilization is being constantly assailed by supervillains.
  • That's because the animal agents are really good at what they do.
  • Or perhaps none of the villains are all that good, and Doof was just downgraded to minor threat because Perry is the best and they wanted him available to fight the Regurgitator.
    • Pretty much. Doofenshmirtz was going to become the leader of LOVEMUFFIN before Lawrence got into the picture. It seems like his only competition is Rodney, who's shown to be worse than Doofenshmirtz.
• Why is Doof an idiot in Doof 'n' Puss? It was written by Dr Doofenshmirtz himself, so wouldn't he make his Author Avatar a Marty Stu?
  • He is clearly a troper (just make a list of all the tropes he has referenced), WMG so he did this specifically to avoid getting his character called a Marty Stu.
  • This is Doof we're talking about. It's entirely possible that this is his idea of a Marty Stu version of himself.
• Ginger's crush on Baljeet is a running joke throughout "Isabella and the Temple of Sap." So how come she never acts on it, even in the episodes that place her and Baljeet in the same scene?
  • How about she's just shy?
  • It's more than likely that it was just used as a plot point, since it hasn't really been brought up again.
• I'm suprised no one has asked about this yet but... what exactly does Candace gain from busting Phineas and Ferb? I mean most ambitious characters do the things they do for some sort of reward so... what is Candace's reward for doing such a persistent thing? And what would happen AFTER she does it?
  • She probably wanted bust them for a mixture of reasons. Safety-consciousness, sibling rivalry, a power trip, etc. The reason why she keeps trying to bust them is escalation of commitment a.k.a. the grasshopper effect, the cognitive bias that causes a person's emotional investment in the pursuit of a goal to be increased cumulatively by repeated impediments, even though a logical appraisal would reveal that the cost of continuing the pursuit outweighs the expected benefit.
  • In addition to what was written above, I would imagine that by this point she would also be trying to prove she's not crazy.
    • It must be sheer irony that she makes herself look crazy while proving she's not crazy... I think that's [beyondtheimpossible]
• So....how exactly did Candace's dream in "The Wizard of Odd" have a sub-plot with Agent P, Doofenhsmirtz and Major Monogram? She doesn't even know the latter two even exist!
  • In "The Ballad of Badbeard" she met Doofenshmirtz, saw Perry in agent mode, and briefly saw Monogram on a video screen. She was out of her gourd at the time, so she probably doesn't remember it, but it stayed in her subconscious mind and emerged in her dream. And we can assume she doesn't consciously remember the details of her dream either. That is, unless the OWCA zaps her with the amnesiainator every time she remembers her hallucination/dream of Agent P so she won't blow his cover...which would be pretty funny.
  • Or that Candace's dream is also Perry's dream.
• In "Last Train To Bustville", they're trying to take a train up Dearheart summit, something that's never been done before and was considered impossible. So why did those train tracks even exist?
  • Maybe older, smaller trains could get up it, but now the tracks are disused. Maybe no one realize the difficulty of getting a train over the summit until after the tracks were finished.
• In some episodes, Doofenshmirtz says he's been working on a certain invention for a while, and in one of them, Major Monogram says that Doofenshmirtz has been awfully quiet for a while, but Perry apparently goes to fight Doofenshmirtz every day?
  • Easy: he doesn't. They probably just don't show those parts (because that doesn't make for a very interesting show).
• Why has Isabella not given up on Phineas by now and try someone else like Ferb or Baljeet?
  • Why would she? Plenty of people stick to the same crush for years, even if the object of their affection appears completely oblivious. And besides, Phineas is her best friend, and they've had their moments. Phineas hasn't outright stated he's not interested in her, either. There's no real reason for her to stop, really.
• How exactly would the boys be busted for the invention of Ferb Lantin? Kids make up secret languages all the time. It's just kids stuff.
  • Most kids don't make their secret language a HUGE craze, with everyone in town speaking it.
    • That's not exactly what the headscratcher is saying. So what if it's big enough to spread? That's how memes and trends are born. It's not dangerous, or stupid, or idiotic. That being said, I'm pretty sure it's just habit for Candace to bust her brothers by now. Even if Linda had seen it, she would just have been surprised that it caught on. She didn't think too much of Phineas and Ferb's aglet craze after all.
• Scrolled along and hope I didn't miss this but why exactly hasn't Doof ever been arrested by OWCA? In the episode introducing the Regurgitator *cue thunder*, Perry is reassigned back to Danville after the Regurgitator winds up in jail (after not particularly doing something, but that's a while 'nother mess). In the episode, Dr. D has specifically been downgraded from a major threat. If being a 'major threat' is enough to warrant getting arrested, you have to wonder why they don't just lock him up. The only possible in-universe explanation I can think of is that Dr. D isn't enough of a menace to actually arrest (afterall, the whole point of the aforementioned episode was showing how much more of a serious threat Regurgitator *cue thunder* is). But if that's the case, you got to feel bad for Perry having to waste every day managing the moron.
  • They've never constituted in the show that he is a major threat. There are probably levels between major and minor threat that people get assigned in the O.W.C.A. Doof is probably just slightly above "minor threat". And he has been threatened with arrest before (most notably in "Summer Belongs to You"), so they will act if even "minor threats" do something as large and dangerous as threatening an entire convention.
• During the song Give Up in The Last Train to Bustville, it shows everybody giving up on what they were doing. What is the guy on the operating table giving up on? Life?
  • That would be Fridge Horror.
• What does Isabella see in Phineas that keeps her from giving up?
  • Well, he's creative, optimistic, and very bright.
• 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.
  • She didn't know any of that.
• In "Let's Take a Quiz" why did they let Candace use her cell phone? For all they knew she could have been cheating.
  • Maybe they allow her to use lifelines. It is a parody of shows like "Who Wants to be a Billionaire", anyway.
• In "Bully Bromance Breakup", Phineas is finally given a character flaw: an almost OCD-like tenancy to panic if he can't invent anything when given the opportunity to. As entertaining as it was to see him finally be given a weakness in a normal-length episode, it imposes a serious Continutiy Error: The episode "The Best Lazy Day Ever". In that one, Phineas is repeatedly given purposefully obvious chances to build stuff, and he...doesn't. He declines it very calmly and doesn't break a sweat once. If it was any other show, it really wouldn't bug me, but since this show is so continuity heavy for a cartoon, it's almost as if they gave him that weird habit just for the sake of answering the fanbase's prayers for character development for him.
  • Well to be fair, in Best Lazy Day Ever, Phineas's plan WAS to do nothing. And whenever he has a plan, everything else fades in the distance
  • It's more like this: When Phineas has a Big Idea, he does it, and enjoys it. Including "Best Lazy Day Ever", it was his Big Idea to do nothing for the day. "Bully Bromance Breakup" however, is the first time he's FORBIDDEN from doing a Big Idea, despite how much he wants to... hence the behavior is not a Continuity Error at all.
• In "Perry the Actorpus", why would Phineas and Ferb make a machine to keep Candace from busting them? Aren't they not aware that Candace wants to bust them? Besides, it would make more sense if the machine was made by Thaddeus and Thor, being Mandy's own little brothers. Not only that, Mandy seems to rarely get in touch with Candace, moreover Phineas and Ferb.
  • Actually, the machine was made to keep teenage girls from busting their brothers if the case is too extreme. Also, Phineas and Ferb proved themselves to be better at building this kind of stuff then Thaddeus and Thor.
  • Phineas and Ferb have been known to take requests. That thing may have been a commission.
• If Isabella is supposedly cuter than even cute-ified Mitch (who was cute enough to transfix the entire Meapian army and even Phineas), how come the other Meapians (and for that matter other people on Earth) weren't rendered immobilized by the sight of her? Does this cuteness thing only work if the cuteness is intended to be weaponized?
  • The answer's easy. If you watch the scene again, Isabella visibly ups her normal cuteness, hence out-cuting Mitch. Then when it's over, she stops being abnormally cute and goes back to regular cute. It's only when she's truly trying to be cute that she might supposedly entrance people with her cuteness.
    • And while thinking about it, what about the hippie from the tree sap episode? Wouldn't he get hypnotized too? Look closely: Only Isabella's eyes are being overly cute, not her entire self, so the effect is not nearly as strong.
    • I figured, but what about the preceding scene where she snaps Phineas out of his trance with only her regular looks, thus implying that she's already cuter than Mitch? Maybe less "power" is required to undo transfixations than to actually immobilize someone?
  • On the subject of cuteness, how can someone actually be scientifically cute? Wouldn't cuteness be more of a subjective thing? Then again, this is Phineas we are talking about, so he may have odd ideas on cuteness.
  • Would Isabella have even been affected like Phineas was when he looked at Mitch?
• What would happen if the cutonium was used on Isabella?
  • ...Don't even suggest it. I don't think world could take so much cuteness...at least Phineas probably couldn't take it.
• If it's a Universal Mustache Translator, why couldn't Meap talk to the Meapian on the other end of the communicator?
  • Maybe it doesn't work in the user's language, since he/she can already speak it.
• If Isabella had looked at Mitch when he had become cute, would she have been affected like Phineas was or simply would have stayed the same?

Mom! Phineas and Ferb's fans are pointing out Fridge Logic!