History Radio / AdventuresInOdyssey

** The original art for the 25th album, "Darkness Before Dawn", bears a suspicious resemblance to the famous painting "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog".

* "Triple Decker Sundae", part of the "one will fall" arc, ends with [[spoiler:Olivia walking in on Zoe and Pastor Knox's conversation about her doubt in faith and learns Zoe walked back on her promise to keep Olivia's doubt a secret, and refuses to hear out her side of the story. She then rebels against her own faith by going to an ice cream store ([[OOCIsSeriousBusiness and not Whit's End either]]) and ordering a [[TitleDrop triple decker sundae]] despite it going against her past teachings about gluttony, with her faith effectively being on ice.]]

* TomboyWithAGirlyStreak: Camilla Parker, the youngest of the Parker children, is primarily depicted as the [[PassionateSportsGirl athlete of the family]] and is not written as particularly girly[[note]]The AIO Wiki describes her socks as having rigor mortis and notes that while she will wear princess dresses on occasion, it would be rare for her not to get it torn or grass stained[[/note]], but she is also depicted taking crochet lessons.
** Traci Needlemeyer, a minor character in the early '90s, may be one, as she plays baseball and enjoys building model trains, but the latter fact surprises Curt Stevens in "What Happened to the Silver Streak?", as he remarks he didn't think Traci was the type to enjoy getting dirty. (In that episode, a remake of the Officer Harley episode "The Case of the Missing Train Car," the role of Warren Summers from the original was rewritten for Traci.)

* TheAtoner: Richard Maxwell, Monica Stone (although slightly subverted, since neither wished to become Christians and were not pressured afterwards).

* BigLabyrinthineBuilding[=/=]BuildingOfAdventure: Whit's End. Even Whit indicates in some episodes that there are places in it that he doesn't know about.

* BurgerFool / BadJobWorseUniform: Bernard recounts meeting his wife Maude while she was dressed in a chicken costume promoting a fast-food joint.

* FireAndBrimstoneHell[=/=]FluffyCloudHeaven: One episode has Whit attempting to explore the concept of the afterlife using the Imagination Station. Unfortunately the program succeeds a bit too well, as Whit ends up addicted to the Edenic garden and the presence of his dead wife and son, and Eugene finds himself in hell (while Eugene is an atheist at this point, he has internalized more Christian theology than he realizes; the writers were presenting Christian theology as is, that nonbelievers end up in hell, rather than making any judgments on Eugene's character in itself).
** [[NightmareFuel Whit ends up having a heart attack]] as he doesn't want to leave and Eugene fell victim to a week-long HeroicBSOD. Of note, this is one of the scariest and most [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids mature]] story lines in the entire series.

* GoneHorriblyRight: Recognizing that Connie has been prioritizing time with Mitch over God in "Between You and Me," Whit puts together a BatmanGambit where he begins to intentionally avoid Connie to try and teach her why avoiding God isn't something she can sustain. It works a little ''too'' well -- as luck would have it, it happens around the same time that Mitch is offered a new job and could potentially move away. This sends her spiraling into a distressed state where Whit's absence takes an even further toll on her emotional well being, and makes her begin to feel as if God abandoned her. When she finally manages to get a hold of Whit again, he explains that it wasn't his intention to send her into a depression but still talks sense back into her.

** [[spoiler: Slightly subverted; in reality, Richard was holding a very realistic-looking water gun, and just wanted to [[BreakTheHaughty feed Regis a slice of humble pie by making him beg for his life]]. He even points out to Whit and Connie that he's already out of jail and he isn't going to waste his second chance at freedom on killing Blackgaard.]]

* [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield Where the Heck is Odyssey]]: It's probably somewhere in the eastern Midwest area (it's east of Iowa, west of Chicago, and north of the Mason-Dixon line), but the clues don't get any more specific. Averted during the original "Family Portraits" pilot series where it's explicitly said to be in Ohio, but that has since been retconned.

* ThemeTuneCameo: Part of the AIO theme starts playing on Bernard's radio as he switches through stations in "First Hand Experience".

* KidsShouldntWatchHorrorFilms: In "The Mailman Cometh", when Marvin and Tamika Washington grow jealous of the privileges their older cousin Xavier gets and attempt to prove to their parents that they are old enough to have the same privileges he does, one of the things they do is sneak into a horror movie called ''Revenge of the Raptors'' that Xavier went to see (when they were supposed to be seeing the latest ''Betsy the Bumblebee'' movie). The kids scream their way through the entire movie and are unable to sleep without a light on that night, and [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin Wooton inadvertently busts them]] when he stops by the next morning to return Marvin's jacket after finding it in the theater showing the raptor movie.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Almost played ''literally'', in "Best Intentions."
---> '''Harlow Doyle:''' Wait here while I put on some ''camouflage''!
---> '''Sam:''' How?
---> '''Harlow:''' By wiping this dirt all over my face. There. How do I look?
---> '''Sam:''' Like somebody who needs to wash his face. Is that how you blend in with the scenery?
---> '''Harlow:''' No, so they'll think I'm down on my luck and give me some lunch. Only one problem...
---> '''Sam:''' What?
---> '''Harlow:''' I'm not sure it was dirt. Whoo!
** In "Family Values", Bart gets away with slyly mentioning having a secret stash of "stuff [he] wouldn't want the wife to see".
** While commenting on the filthy lyrics of songs written by his son Rodney in "You Gotta Be Wise", Bart shrugs the complaints off with "Okay, so the kid has a lot to learn about anatomy!"—exacerbated by the fact that Dale Jacobs calls it "pornographic".
** In "Sixties-Something", Bart declares that "everybody tuned in and dropped out" in the sixties—a reference to the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out", coined by Timothy Leary in a speech advocating for psychedelic drug experimentation.
** In "The Y.A.K Problem", Sarah explains to Mandy that they've got "candy hangovers".
** In "Green Eyes and Yellow Tulips", Bart Rathbone shouts that Novacom cannot bring their "smut" to Odyssey's TV programming.
** In "The Buck Starts Here", Jared accuses Whit of telling the mayor of Odyssey to pass a new puberty tax. (It was actually a property tax.)
** Speaking of puberty, in "First Love," Connie mentions that she used to be a Little League pitcher... until she turned twelve and "something happened" that made her throw funny and her mother make her wear dresses. That same episode also has her attend an unchaperoned party in which it's mentioned that the majority of the kids are drinking (though not Connie).

* PoorCommunicationKills: In "Two Friends And A Truck", Bernard tasks Eugene with watching his old run-down pick-up truck as he looks into buying a new one. Whit points out that the truck has several technical quirks, but doesn't actually say what any of them are until Eugene parks the truck at the top of a hill...and the truck goes rolling down it anyways and crashes. It's only then that Whit points out that the parking brakes have long since quit working.

* CreditCardPlot: "A Little Credit, Please"

** ReverseMole: Tasha Forbes

Some of the most recurring characters are the employees at Whit's End. Over the years, this has included: rebellious teen-turned-convert Connie Kendall; super-techno-genius Eugene Meltsner; his distant cousin and professional window-washer, Bernard Walton; Eugene's wife, a substitute teacher named Katrina; part-time spy and Whit's son Jason; and Whit's friend and local antique dealer, Jack Allen. The show has also had various casts of kids of varying eras. The first included chronic troublemaker Curt Stevens; budding journalist Lucy Cunningham-Schultz; sisters Robin and Melanie Jacobs; all-American siblings Donna and Jimmy Barclay, the boy and a girl of the Barclay's eventual ABoyAGirlAndABabyFamily set-up. The next era included young writer and resident sweetheart Mandy Straussberg, her brother David, and her best friend Liz Horton; cousins Alex Jefferson and Cal Jordan; another rebellious teen-turned-convert, Aubrey Shepherd; Jared [=DeWhite=] and his younger brother Trent; Marvin and Tamika Washington; and Grady [=McKay=]. The most recent era (dubbed "the relaunch" by fans) includes the Parker siblings, Olivia, Matthew, and Camilla; junior detective Emily Jones and her older brother Barrett; Barrett's rival Jay Smouse; reformed troublemaker Buck Oliver; Connie's half-sister Jules; and Wyatt Perkins and his high-strung older sister Bridget.

Some of the most recurring characters are the employees at Whit's End. Over the years, this has included: rebellious teen-turned-convert Connie Kendall; super-techno-genius Eugene Meltsner; his distant cousin and professional window-washer, Bernard Walton; Eugene's wife, a substitute teacher named Katrina; part-time spy and Whit's son Jason; and Whit's friend and local antique dealer, Jack Allen. The show has also had various casts of kids of varying eras. The first included chronic troublemaker Curt Stevens; budding journalist Lucy Cunningham-Schultz; sisters Robin and Melanie Jacobs; all-American siblings Donna and Jimmy Barclay, the boy and a girl of the Barclay's eventual ABoyAGirlAndABabyFamily set-up. The next era included young writer and resident sweetheart Mandy Straussberg, her brother David, and her best friend Liz Horton; cousins Alex Jefferson and Cal Jordan; another rebellious teen-turned-convert, Aubrey Shepherd; Jared [=DeWhite=] and his younger brother Trent; Marvin and Tamika Washington; and Grady [=McKay=]. The most recent era (dubbed "the relaunch" by fans) includes the Parker siblings, Olivia, Matthew, and Camilla; junior detective Emily Jones and her older brother Barrett; Barrett's rival Jay Smouse; reformed troublemaker Buck Oliver; and Connie's half-sister Jules.

* AStormIsComing: Thunder rumbles in the background in both "Gathering Thunder" (as the Israelites are temporarily defeated by the Bones of Wrath) and in "The Time Has Come" (as Eugene comes to grips with how helpless he feels in the fight against Blackgaard and Jack straightforwardly tells him that he's being driven toward a decision toward Christianity). Also in "The Sacred Trust," as Lucy and Heather are making a "sacred trust" to keep whatever "big secrets" they have to tell each other ([[spoiler:Lucy is forced to break the trust when Heather confesses she's sneaking away to a teen disco without her parents' knowledge]]).

* BaldOfEvil: Bennett Charles in the Novacom arc.

* KidsShouldntWatchHorrorMovies: In "The Mailman Cometh", when Marvin and Tamika Washington grow jealous of the privileges their older cousin Xavier gets and attempt to prove to their parents that they are old enough to have the same privileges he does, one of the things they do is sneak into a horror movie called ''Revenge of the Raptors'' that Xavier went to see (when they were supposed to be seeing the latest ''Betsy the Bumblebee'' movie). The kids scream their way through the entire movie and are unable to sleep without a light on that night, and [[CanGetAwayWithNuthin Wooton inadvertently busts them]] when he stops by the next morning to return Marvin's jacket after finding it in the theater showing the raptor movie.

Aside from the individual half-hour segments, the show has featured two major long-running, ([[CerebusRollercoaster more mature]]) arcs. The first dealt with the plots of Dr. Regis Blackgaard to take over Whit's End as part of a larger goal that slowly came to light over its course. (Whit was, unfortunately, [[PutOnABus away on a secret archaeological expedition]] [[CharacterOutlivesActor in the Middle East]] during the finale.) The second arc dealt with a plot by the communications company Novacom and a computer program they created, in which Eugene was a major, [[PutOnABus if completely absent]], player. A third, shorter but sequential 12-part serial "The Green Ring Conspiracy", concerning a counterfeit ring, has been also been released, notable again for its level of maturity in storytelling. As of this writing, a fourth saga concerning an evil mastermind named Morrie Rydell has also been unfolding.

* {{Adorkable}}: Eugene falls into this sometimes.