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Lion-O

"Thunder! Thunder! Thunder! Thundercats! HOOOOOOO!"

This Animated Show from Rankin/Bass Productions was one of the most popular Merchandise-Driven cartoons of The Eighties.

Somewhere in the depths of space, a group of aliens with feline-patterned skin/80s glam rock stars with a cat-like theme flee their doomed homeworld of Thundera. Pursued by their enemies, the Mutants, their ship crash-lands on the planet of Third Earth.

The series chronicled the Thundercats as they adapted to their new home, making allies and enemies with the natives, and battling the machinations of the series' Big Bad, a mummified sorcerer named Mumm-Ra who usually cowed the Mutants into doing his bidding. The show's second season chronicled their return to Thundera and their attempts to re-stabilize it, with an expansion of the cast of other refugee Thunderans.

The 2011 reboot of the same name can be found here.

Tropes used in ThunderCats (1985 series) include:
  • Action Girl - Cheetara. Remarkably, in several episodes she gets to save the day, on her own, when all the rest of the team has been defeated.
  • Action-Hogging Opening
  • Achilles' Heel – Mumm-Ra's reflection instantly defeats him. Averted in later seasons season 2.
  • Adult Child - Lion-O, especially in the earliest episodes.
  • After the End – The Thundercats' original homeworld blows up during the Premiere.
    • There are also hints that Third Earth is the future of our world, but what happened to the human race is not revealed.
      • A few human-looking populations are shown (the warrior maidens, Professor Dometome and his associates). Also, there are some stray humans such as Hachiman, Mandora and Safari Joe.
  • Amazon Brigade – The Warrior Maidens.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Obviously, they're all cat-based.
  • Animation Bump – The Title Sequence, "Crystal Canyon", "The Telepathy Beam" and "The Wild Workout".
  • Applied Phlebotinum – Both Thundrillium and Thundrainium fall into this category.)
  • Artifact of Attraction
  • As Long as There Is Evil – "And wherever evil exists… Mumm-Ra lives!"
  • Bald of Awesome - Panthro and Lynx-O.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space – The Thundercats universe blatantly disregards many physical facts, but none are as jarring as the fact that apparently everyone can breathe and speak in outer space just fine, thank you.
  • Bat Signal – The Sword of Omens can do this when Lion-O invokes "Thundercats, HOOOOOOOOO!"
  • Beauty Equals Goodness – The episode "Good and Ugly" subverted it: the beautiful alien was the evil one, the ugly one good. From the good alien's perspective, Lion-O and Snarf were ugly.
    • Played straight when comparing Mumm-Ra to Mumm-Rana.
    • Arguable played straight with the ugly-looking mutants, too.
    • Also, the only evil Thunderian, Grune The Destroyer, don't look very pretty...
  • Big Bad – Mumm-Ra
  • Bigger Bad - The Ancient Spirits of Evil.
  • Brother Chuck – All the mutants besides Ssslithe, Monkian, and Jackylman disappear after their first few appearances. It's possible they were still on the ship when Mum-Ra destroyed it in the second episode.
    • They're out in space. When Mumm-Ra destroys the ship, he tells Ssslithe and the others that now they have no way of contacting their fellow mutants.
    • They were featured in the episode "Fireballs of Plun-darr".
  • Bully Bulldog - Ma-Mutt
  • By the Power of Greyskull:
    • "Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats, Hoooooooooo!"
    • "Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight!"
    • "Ancient Spirits of Evil...transform this decayed form...to Mumm-Ra...THE EVER-LIVING!!!"
  • Canon Foreigner – Lynxana, an exiled Thundercat rebel from the Marvel comics
  • The Caretaker – Snarf, especially in the early episodes
  • Catfolk - They were supposed to be this, but most of the Thunder Cats didn't really look so much like animals, but more like 80's glam rockstars with a cat-theme.
    • The designs for the new series look more cat-like when paired up next to the originals, though.
  • Catch Phrase – Both the caption, and Mumm-Ra's transformation spiel. Panthro often says "If we're gonna do it, let's do it."
  • Christmas Cake - Cheetara. She appeared to be in her late teens/early twenties in the first episode, when Lion-O was still a cub. Then again, nobody ever seems to age in this show.
  • The Code - The Code of Thundera: "Justice, Truth, Honor, and Loyalty."
  • Cool Sword - The Sword of Omens not only provides Lion-O with "sight beyond sight"; it can seemingly do pretty much anything he commands it to, including (but not limited to) levitation, shooting energy blasts, and creating force fields.
  • Cosmic Keystone – The Treasures of Thundera
    • Not to mention a powerful relic actually CALLED the Keystone which makes a one-episode appearance in Season 3.
  • Cute Machines – Robear Berbils
  • Darker and EdgierThe Return comic series, and its sequel Dogs Of War. Not kid-friendly, folks.
  • Deal with the Devil – In "Monkian's Bargain", Monkian agrees to allow Mumm-Ra to make him powerful enough to defeat the Thundercats and rule Third Earth. He's so impatient that he leaves without hearing what the price is, and he's too Genre Blind to question why Mumm-Ra is giving him the power and not using it himself. After he manages to defeat the Thundercats, what happens to him is pretty scary, even if he does recover.
Cquote1

Mumm-Ra: You rule Third Earth. But it is a kingdom you will never see! Because you can never leave my pyramid!

Cquote2
  • Death World – Visit beautiful Third Earth, home to locales such as the Field of Daggers, the Crumbling Cliffs of Vertigo, and the Burning Sands of the Phosphorus Desert, and that's just for starters! No wonder most of humanity seems to have died out.
  • Defeat Means Friendship - Lion-O's theory in challenging Snowman.
  • Descriptive Ville – Their home planet, Thundera
  • Did Not Do the Research - Tigers are one of the few felines that don't hate water. Guess which Thundercat can't swim...
  • Distracted by the Sexy – Lion-O versus Tashi in the episode "The Doomgaze." And this is before she uses her titular Hypnotic Eyes against him. Lucky for him that Cheetara was there to intervene.
Cquote1

Lion-O: She's... so beautiful...
Snarf: Lion-O...
Lion-O: I-In a kind of evil way, of course.

Cquote2
Cquote1

Alluro: If you're good, I may even give you to Chilla. What a wonderful pet you'd make.

Cquote2
    • In "Exile Isle", we get this from Captain Cracker when he chases Snarfer.
Cquote1

Capt. Cracker: Come back here, you pussylover!

Cquote2
  1. Known as The Ever-Spying in the fandom.