History Podcast / RedPandaAdventures

The series can be both silly and serious by turns. It takes place during the Great Depression, and many episodes deal with the poverty of the time, whether it's crimes caused by it, the Red Panda's secret identity trying to use his money to help with it, or Kit's background on the streets growing up with it. It also [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] many SuperHero tropes, especially those of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks. More recent episodes have gotten generally darker, as the series' timeline moves into UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

* GenreThrowback: The series is essentially a love letter to UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks. Series creator Gregg Taylor has expressed his disdain for the more angst-driven storylines of post-[[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] comics and films. Which is not to say that this series doesn't do some heavy lifting from time to time.

* ActionGirl: Kit, despite being both the {{Sidekick}} and the LoveInterest, is ''never'' the DistressedDamsel, and is capable of both making plans and kicking ass. Even on one occasion when she ''is'' a DistressedDamsel, when Barker Whistance-Smith captures her in "The Most Dangerous Game", she actually gets free on her own before the Red Panda finds her. In one episode, O'Mally recognizes that the Squirrel's been inactive because of a noticeable drought of beaten up thugs.

** Season Six: The Archangel, the Nazi's head of Fourth Column activities, becomes the primary antagonist for the season.

*** The first half seems to have [[spoiler:Deadly Nightshade as the new Fourth Column leader]], but the situation fizzles out in two episodes and the last four episodes are general situations of the week.

* DecoyLeader: The primary gimmick of the Archangel, the leader of the Nazi spy rings in Canada, is to send a stand-in anytime Archangel is expected to be in on the job. Whether it's just practicality or sending the stand-in on a suicide mission [[YouHaveFailedMe as punishment for failure]], they are almost all fanatically loyal to the true Archangel and will kill themselves upon capture, some even attempting to [[TakingYouWithMe blow up or otherwise kill anyone else with them at the time]]. By about the fourth time, the Red Panda and Flying Squirrel stop assuming they've captured the real one. Archangel uses this trick even among his own inner circle, as in "All the King's Men", [[spoiler:Harry Kelly [[spoiler:identifies the true Archangel by noting that, while one man was running the meeting, everyone was deferring to someone else entirely]].

** The heroes try to convince the bad guys to make money doing things legitimately, or work to help people. But a lot of them are ''completely nuts''. This does not keep the good guys from using their technology whenever

** In "The Gadget", the titular device is [[spoiler:the atomic bomb.]]

** The season nine finale, "The Gadget", ends on [[spoiler:the Red Ensign taking Friedrich von Schlitz to his final doom at the A-Bomb testing site]] in Trinity, New Mexico. In this case, the "this concludes" monologue is omitted entirely, going straight to the reading of the cast list while an explosion is heard in the background.
** "The Final Problem" is the ''Red Panda Adventures'' chronological GrandFinale. It trades the "This concludes" monologue in favor of an announcement by series creator and voice of the Red Panda Gregg Taylor announcing that, while this is the final episode chronologically, they will still be releasing new episodes that simply take place at varying points in the Red Panda's and Flying Squirrel's careers.

'''Flying Squirrel:''' When you said "I'm not doing to do this if you don't come with me."\\

** Harry Kelly probably counts as well. As late as "All The King's Men", when he's been working for the Red Panda for years, he still practically squeals with excitement when the Flying Squirrel lets him set off a gas grenade.[[spoiler: Definitely counts are he is now in training to replace the Red Panda as the city's resident superhero, the Black Eagle.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: "The Missing Link" features, as a PosthumousCharacter, a scientist who had a tendency towards this in his inventions. Described in the episode are an airborne method of moving electricity that loses too much power in the transference process, a de-evolution beam that worked only as long as it remained on its target, and a mobile cloud cover that couldn't move as fast as the fighter planes it was intended to cover. The Mad Monkey got hold of these designs and combined them to create a de-evolution ray with a wide area effect contained within his slow moving, monkey-shaped zeppelin that allowed him to create an army of ape men under his command.

* RichIdiotWithNoDayJob: The Red Panda's secret identity. He actually ''was'' one, until he decided to take up crime fighting out of boredom and grew to love it enough that the rich idiot became a SecretIdentityIdentity.

* TripleShifter: For much of the series, this trope is avoided as the Red Panda's secret identity is a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob and Kit is the rich idiot's chauffeur. This allows them to be together at nearly any moment without arousing suspicion of superheroics or needing other employment. Early on, when Kit confirms that she still gets paid to ''be'' a chauffeur, the Red Panda notes she does because she wouldn't be much use as a sidekick if she had to get a second job. This changes later in the series, when many of the Red Panda's agents enlist in the military during the build up of World War II. Kit takes a job at ''Daily Chronicle'', owned by the Red Panda, to make use of the paper as a source of information. From then on she's generally shown balancing her work life with her hero life, such as worrying about filing a story at the office about recent villain-stomping, or being exhausted at the paper when hero matters keep her busy.