History Series / Dinosaurs

* AnAesop:
** Many episodes have one. Some have a SpoofAesop (such as "A New Leaf", where the moral is [[spoiler:not so much "say no to drugs" as it is "say no to drugs or else there'll be more preachy sitcom episodes like this"]]) and some have AesopAmnesia (like in "Monster Under the Bed" where Earl decides that adults should believe what kids say no matter how unbelievable it is, only for Fran to dismiss it as a stupid lesson, and for Earl to decide she's right when [[spoiler:Baby looks out the window [[NotSoImaginaryFriend and sees]] [[NoPeripheralVision a giant squash]]).]]
** The point of the [[DramaBombFinale shockingly-dire series finale]] is that we have to take good care of environment and can't just take nature for granted, or else we'll end up going extinct like everyone on the show.
** "Out of the Frying Pan" delivers an Aesop about the perils of child stardom, as well as a nice TakeThat to [[StageMom stage parents]] everywhere.
** "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" is all about how it is wrong to discriminate against people for having different beliefs.

* AllAnimalsAreDogs: In at least two episodes, the family has one or more cavemen as their pets. Guess how they act.

* AlternateCalendar: Parodied with the fact that the dinosaur calendars count backwards since the show takes place in BC, complete with each month starting with the last day and counting down to the first, with Robbie wondering out loud about what momentous event are they exactly counting down to.
* AnachronisticAnimal: Dinosaurs coexist with (primitive) humans, mammoths, mastodons, and other Cenozoic mammals, such as dogs, cats, goats, hippos, and cows, 60 million years ago, which is 6 million years after the dinosaurs should have gone extinct.

* AnimalTalk: An interesting case where dinosaurs and other animals can communicate with each other but not to humans, which are portrayed as primitive. "The Discovery" features a dinosaur that was [[RaisedByWolves raised by cavemen]] and can communicate to both humans and dinosaurs.

* AsYouKnow: Lampshaded in "Refrigerator Day".

** Justified considering he is a baby.

* BaffledByOwnBiology: In "Dirty Dancing", Robbie wakes up from a [[EroticDream dream]] of doing the MatingDance with his crush Caroline, only to realize that his legs are still moving involuntarily, much to his surprise and confusion. He asks his friend Spike about it at school, and the latter explains that it's something that happens to all male dinosaurs when they go through puberty[[note]]It's a [[SomethingElseAlsoRises metaphor for all kinds of sexual things; in this case, erections]][[/note]].
* BaitAndSwitchTimeSkip: In the episode "Baby Talk", Fran has Earl babysit Baby for an hour while she cooks dinner, but she doesn't want Baby to watch television due to Baby [[InnocentSwearing repeating the dirty word, "Smoo"]], which was shown on "[[ShowWithinAShow Don't Lift that Heavy Object!]]" the night before. Earl does everything he can to entertain Baby without having to resort to using television, which includes singing and dancing, playing with puppets, making balloon animals, and attempting to spin plates on sticks. It is then revealed that all of that only took two minutes.

* BrokenAesop: "Earl's Big Jackpot" has Earl get injured after Mr. Richfield made him work unpaid overtime in the dark of night and he gets fired after he asks for some paid leave. This results in Earl reluctantly suing Richfield and gets $800 million dollars in damages. The story then turns against Earl as his court victory is the result of the jury being petty and bias against rich people, Earl's is portrayed as being incompetent and increasingly selfish with his newfound wealth, and Richfield fires all his employees and raises his prices sky high to recoup his losses. The overall moral of the episode is seemingly suing your corrupt, abusive boss and getting a big payday from it is wrong and only hurts everyone else.

* CatchPhrase
** The Baby's "Gotta Love Me!" and "Not The Mama", among others.
** An odd instance -- "We're going to need another Timmy!" was only used in 3 episodes, yet it sticks out in people's minds. (This one doubles as an in-universe example as it's part of a ShowWithinAShow and it sticks in the characters' minds.)
** Earl Sinclair: "Honey, I'm home! I'm hungry!"
** B.P. Richfield: "SINCLAIR! IN HERE NOW!!!"
** Charlene occasionally says "La-la" to herself.

(''Baby used some blocks to write "They think I can't spell."'')

* ChildNamingRequest: Parents can ask a local elder to name a child. In baby Sinclair's case, they, unfortunately, asked the elder just as the elder was having a heart attack, and the baby's name is officially recorded as: "Augh Argh I'm Dying You Idiot Sinclair".
** Fran is said to have a cousin who was unfortunate enough to be named while the elder was sneezing.

* ChristmasCarolers: Refrigerator Day includes carols, which are basically re-worded versions of the real ones, and are also seen being used in advertisements, which Robbie feels cheapens the holiday.

* TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong: Earl, even in the episodes where his complaints seemed to have a certain degree of validity, was ''always'' proved 100% wrong by the coda. Lampshaded/subverted in "License to Parent". In the final scene of the episode Earl gripes about how "you were right, I was wrong... Fran is perfect and Earl learns another lesson." Fran disagrees, saying that perhaps ''she'' learned the lesson this time around. [[FridgeBrilliance Which means that Earl is 100% wrong about being wrong.]]
** Also played with in "Monster Under the Bed", when after Fran shoots down [[AnAesop Earl's decision that whenever a child has something to say, no matter how ridiculous it sounds]], the kids should be believed. But then Baby tells them another [[CassandraTruth Cassandra Truth]] and Earl decides [[AesopAmnesia "I guess I was wrong, again."]]
** Earl actually ''is'' portrayed in the right in "Out of the Frying Pan", calling out Fran for playing StageMom to Baby, who is becoming spoiled and vulgar from influence. Cue NightmareSequence and HeelRealization from Fran.
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: One episode shows a reporter talking about the new couple of cavemen in the local zoo (composed of two males) and their failure to produce offspring. The zoo team concluded that one of them is sterile.

* CrapsackWorld: It's a world where the biggest, strongest, or oldest are the only ones that get a say in matters, and the decisions made are usually terrible. If you are not the absolute apex predator, you always have to watch your back from being eaten by the aforementioned biggest and strongest. And don't get us started on what life is like for small mammals.

* DeadpanSnarker: Ethyl definitely counts.

* DealWithTheDevil: Earl once traded his soul for a mug with a devil. Fortunately, [[spoiler:the mug came with a guarantee of refund for unsatisfied customers which Earl found when the devil was about to collect. Earl's refund came as a ResetButtonEnding that made time come back at the moment the devil showed up to offer the deal in the first place]].
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Played for BlackComedy. Here, it is perfectly okay for dinosaurs to [[SapientEatSapient eat still-living and equally-sentient creatures]]. The biggest and strongest dinosaurs are not above picking on, or even eating, the smaller and weaker dinosaurs. And in addition, many of the [[ShowWithinAShow Shows Within a Show]]--''Mr. Lizard'', ''Totally Hidden Predator'', ''Pangaea's Funniest Home Injuries''--all seem to involve real dinosaurs [[DeathAsComedy getting killed on-camera for the amusement of the audience]]. Basically, this is a world [[CrapsackWorld where life is cheap]].
* DependingOnTheWriter: Whether or not Ethyl lives with the Sinclairs. Ethyl's first appearance ends with her moving in with the family, but while she's often seen living with the Sinclairs, there are also episodes where she doesn't live with them. Earl invites her over for dinner with his boss in "Employee of the Month", she doesn't appear until halfway through "The Family Challenge" (not being there for the first two family dinner scenes), she doesn't go on vacation with the family in "Variations of a Theme Park", and "Slave to Fashion" has a scene with her coming over for dinner.

** Charlene's tail growing being an obvious reference to breast development.

** And the finale where [[spoiler:dinosaur-made climate change causes the species' extinction]].

* DownerEnding / DramaBombFinale: The last episode, and how. [[spoiler:The dinosaurs go extinct due to a chain of events that started with Earl's [[CorruptCorporateExecutive boss]] [[GreenAesop foolishly destroying the breeding grounds of a specific species of bug]]. The dinosaurs [[ClimateChangeAllegory try to fix the damage to the ecosystem]], but wind up [[FromBadToWorse wiping out all plant life, then plunging the planet into an ice age]] due to their short-sighted decisions. As the ice piles up, [[SuddenDownerEnding Earl has to explain to his shivering family why they are all about to die]].]]

* EverybodyDiesEnding: [[spoiler:The last episode ends with everyone dying, or at the very least doomed.]]

* ExactWords: The house gets hit by a '''meteorite'''. Earl says it's okay since they have '''meteor''' insurance. Guess what the insurance guy says? This is a spectacular demonstration of lay people not doing the research. Or possibly an {{Anvilicious}} TakeThat against perceived semantic hair-splitting by insurance agents.

* {{Expy}}: ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' has lampshaded in one episode (the episode where Sideshow Bob returns to marry Selma Bouvier) in which Bart is watching a Springfield version of ''Dinosaurs'' and he remarks that it's just like someone watched their family and copied it.

** A few episodes dealt with tensions between two-legged and four-legged dinosaurs. A bit of FridgeLogic when you realize B.P. Richfield himself, being a triceratops, is also a four-legged dinosaur even if he is shown to be bipedal.
** Mammals being treated poorly, particularly when they get shafted on a music deal in one episode. The dinosaur producers like the music and lyrics, but they don't like the idea of a mammal having created it so they co-opt it for themselves, and release the music and lyrics, but as sung by a dinosaur singer.
** Additionally, "Getting to Know You" suggests that birds aren't held in very high regard by non-avian dinosaurs (granted, the bird family in question ''were'' pretty colossal [[{{Jerkass}} Jerkasses]]).

* FlawlessToken: Monica. She's a career woman (the only one on the show), extremely intelligent (highest scores in her class), articulate, physically strong, and, judging by several of the males' reactions (particularly Roy), a HeadTurningBeauty. It's hard to miss because she's a brontosaurus, but she's also been referred to as "a female African." So, yes within the context of the show, Monica is black (though the stand-ins for "blacks" on the show are actually blue, furry mammals). But [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools it doesn't matter]] because she doesn't take crap from anyone (like when she went against the WESAYSO board members in a sexual harassment case, even though she lost) and she proves that some women don't need to be married to be happy (in "Unmarried...With Children," she let her marriage license expire because she looked back at her marriage and realized it wasn't worth the $40 renewal fee).

* FMinusMinus: Played with in "Network Genius", where one example of Earl's television shows making everyone dumb shown is Robbie getting failing grades at school. Most of his report card is F's, but one grade is an M. Robbie clarifies that his last grade is an M not because he was somehow stupid enough to fail that badly, but because the teacher grading him forgot the alphabet.

** The ''very first line'' of the first episode is Howard Handupme reporting that an asteroid that was going to crash into Earth and cause an extinction-level event is going to miss, and Earl reacts in pleasant relief like someone who's simply happy that the weather has forecasted their barbecue isn't going to get rained out. This foreshadows two things: that [[spoiler:nature isn't fated to wipe out the dinosaurs in this universe, but rather, the dinosaurs ''themselves'' will thanks to their own oblivious ignorance and lack of respect for their environment.]]
** Also in the first episode, Robbie notes that Pangea's dating system goes in reverse, and wonders what they're supposed to be counting down to.
** An episode involves future archaeologists discovering items used in the show and guessing (very incorrectly) about what they were for as we see {{Flashback}}s to the episode's main plot. It's funny at the time, but when the setting of the show is dug up someday millions of years from the present, everything is right where it is today. [[spoiler:This world looking ''exactly as it does in the show's present'' when it gets buried can't be good! Almost as if the end happened pretty rapidly, and pretty soon...]]
** In "Scent of A Reptile", Charlene discovers to her horror that all of the MacGuffin Lilies have been destroyed to make way for a 1-Hour photo booth. In other words, a species has been rendered extinct for something silly and trivial. In "Changing Nature", Charlene goes through this again when [[spoiler:she finds that the bunch beetles' mating ground has been paved over for a wax fruit factory]].
* ForegoneConclusion: We know the dinosaurs went extinct. Although it's mainly how dramatic the finale is that really hammers it.

* FreudianTrio: Earl is the Id, Fran is the Superego, Robbie is the Ego. Robbie tries to do the right thing and rambles a ''lot'' about what he thinks is the right thing and while not intentionally a troublemaker, he does make mistakes out of being a psychologically lazy teenager, Fran is more responsible and mature due to having more experience as an adult, Earl is just stupid and impulsive.
* FryingPanOfDoom: The Baby's weapon of choice.
* FullNameUltimatum: Used, at times, by Fran.

* FunWithFlushing: The episode where Baby learned to use the toilet had some of this.
* FurAndLoathing: The episode "Slave to Fashion".

* GetAHoldOfYourselfMan: When Earl starts freaking out after Robbie misses his howl, thereby dooming all dinosaurs, Ethyl whacks him with her cane and tells him to get a hold of himself.

* GoshDangItToHeck: One episode has Baby repeating "Smoo" after hearing it on TV for the first time. Earl leads a [[MoralGuardians protest group]] to get the network to stop making shows about Smoo and other dirty words (Flark, Glick).
** A conversation between Earl and Mr. Richfield in "Changing Nature" plays this trope and averts it within the span of a few minutes. Richfield responds to a question by Earl with an angry "How the heck should ''I'' know?". A couple of sentences later, Earl describes Richfield's plan to [[spoiler:drop bombs into volcanos]] as "unleashing the holy fires of Hell".

* HumansAreNotTheDominantSpecies: At least for now, since dinosaurs rule the earth while humans are primitive cavepeople.

* ItCameFromTheFridge: And they even help you get hard-to-find items, too!

* IronicEcho: At the very end of the first episode, Earl tells Baby while standing at the window that he and his brother and sister were born dinosaurs, "and dinosaurs rule the world... and we're gonna rule the world forever." In the final episode, he [[spoiler:admits to Baby that he's screwed up the world to the point where there isn't much of a world left for his children. He also says desperately, "And hey, I'm sure it will all turn out OK. After all, dinosaurs have been on this earth for 150 million years. It's not like we're going to just... disappear." One of the final scenes is Earl at the same window, watching the encroaching Ice Age that will doom the dinosaurs.]]

* JudgmentOfSolomon: In "Switched at Birth", where the baby was believed to have gotten switched with a green clone of himself from another family, he was cut in half and then put together in a weird cross between this trope and [[{{ItMakesSenseInContext}} Vegas-style stage magic]].

** Pretty much any CorruptCorporateExecutive is this.

* LaserGuidedKarma: In the first episode, after quitting his job, Earl comes across a mammal in the forest who had escaped being his dinner, and the mammal is so sad that he wants to be eaten. Earl ends up deciding not to eat him. When Earl goes back to his old job, he finds that the mammal is now his boss's assistant, and he arranges for Earl to get the raise he had previously been denied.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall
** In "How to Pick Up Girls", Earl and Baby are watching a puppet show on TV. Fran wonders why they're watching a "kids show". Earl then explains that while it is a kids' show, it has a lot of dialogue and jokes that kids wouldn't get, but older viewers would:
*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXiwXVrjYHc This quote]] from Earl on the aforementioned ShowWithinAShow;

** The episode where Ethyl tells her story about the afterlife and gets on TV for it, Earl once again mentions watching the kiddie puppet show with witty, risqué jokes. Fran once again tells Earl that it's a kids' show, and Earl uses the concept of ParentalBonus again as a defense. Fran then adds, "It'll last a year," which is how long most of the [[FollowTheLeader imitation]] ''Simpsons'' shows lasted.

* MeaningfulName: The episode "Family Challenge" had the Sinclairs competing on a game show against the [[UsefulNotes/{{Ratings}} Nielson]] family, who have an extensive knowledge of television.
** Also, Spike's name is meaningful. He has spikes.
** Characters have names related to different gas companies.

* TheMeaningOfLife: In the episode "The Greatest Story Ever Sold", [[HisNameReallyIsBarkeep Baby]] starts asking how and why all dinosaurs exist. Since this is the first time this question was ever asked, it sends all of Pangaea into a state of panic since no one knows the answer. The Council of Elders ends up [[ChurchOfHappyology creating a new cult]] to give cheap easy answers so that everyone will get back to work. The cult: Potatoism. [[OnlySaneMan Robbie]] is the only one who doesn't buy into it.
* MeekMesozoicMammal: Small talking mammals make up the dinosaurs' main diet (followed closely by ''other dinosaurs''). They are shown kept alive inside their refrigerators, and will often argue with their predator, even in the middle of being eaten.

* MerchandiseDriven: Parodied with "Captain Action Figure", which blatantly plugs its toys in the show, causing impressionable viewers like Baby to demand it.
* MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds: [[spoiler:Earl in the last episode.]]
* MinimalistCast: The only major characters (and the only ones to get their own unique puppets) are the Sinclairs, Ethyl, Roy, Monica, Richfield and Spike.

* MoodWhiplash: The final episode.

* ParentalBonus: Referenced in "How to Pick Up Girls" about how the puppet show Earl and Baby are watching isn't strictly a kids' show because it has jokes and double entendres that older viewers would like as well.
** Also done in a TakeThat to Scientology, where "Dino-Netics" is advertised on TV.
* PeopleInRubberSuits: Sorry if this [[TheUntwist shocking revelation]] has just shattered anyone's illusions here. No, Virginia, there is no Sinclair family. This is also mixed with hand-operated puppets.

* PunnyName

* RepeatAfterMe: The Chief Elder has, among other responsibilities, the duty to name babies. When Earl and Fran brought Baby to be named, the Chief Elder started feeling pain and moaned. As the scribe in charge of writing the names on a certificate wrote the moans, the Chief Elder explained he was dying. Until a new Chief Elder was elected so the Sinclairs could take Baby to be renamed, Baby Sinclair's official name was "Agh Ugh I'm Dying You Idiot Sinclair". Another victim of the trope was Fran's cousin "Atchoo".
** Not to mention a childhood classmate of Fran's, little "Burrrp Excuse Me Siegelman."

* SeriousBusiness: Collectible mugs, apparently the ultimate status symbol in Pangaea. They even have their very own cable news network.

** And staying with the petroleum theme, Ethyl is a obsolete name for a popular formulation of anti-knock gasoline from the '20s to the '60s -- the reason it's obsolete is that the "ethyl" in "ethyl gasoline" stood for tetra'''ethyl''' lead, an additive that was phased out starting in the '70s as the environmental and health effects that ethyl caused came to light.

* StrawCharacter: In the election episode, Earl's already-strawmanned [[CorruptCorporateExecutive evil big-business boss]] became a Republican-{{expy}} [[TheWarOnStraw Strawman]] who among other things described trickle-down economics as stuffing the pockets of rich people so full of money that the change would fall out and roll downhill to the poor.
** Earl himself is shown to be very conservative in his beliefs, belittling Robbie's iconoclasm and Monica's feminism as "left-wing".

* SwallowedWhole[=/=]FantasticVoyagePlot: In one episode ("I Never Ate for My Father," where Robbie becomes an herbivore and Earl tries to set him straight), a large creature swallows Robbie whole in front of his father Earl. Later on, Earl has to get swallowed alive by the same creature so that he can get himself and Robbie out of the beast alive.

* TemptingFate: [[spoiler:Earl's last quote in the entire series: "And hey, I'm sure it will all turn out OK. After all, dinosaurs have been on this earth for 150 million years. It's not like we're going to just... disappear." Cue the whole family watching the Ice Age that will doom the dinosaurs.]]

* ThemeNaming: The names of the main characters are based on oil and/or gas companies ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Oil Sinclair]], Roy [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hess_Corporation Hess]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene Ethyl]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Petroleum Phillips]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP B.P.]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCO Richfield]]). Petroleum is a fossil fuel. Since dinosaurs are the best-known fossil animals, they have become associated with oil. Earl also sounds like "oil" (but only if you affect a Deep South or strong New York accent).

* TheyKilledKennyAgain: "We're gonna need another Timmy!"

* TooDumbToLive: Each and every Timmy. Well, maybe not at first, when the experiments weren't as obviously deadly, but after how many Timmies bit the dust, and after Mr. Lizard started hiding behind lead shielding before Timmy did what he did, this was clearly in effect.
** This is arguably the [[PlanetOfHats hat]] of the dinosaurs in general, with a lot of the show's satire revolving around them have little if any sense of self-preservation. A ''Candid Camera''-type show which is a running gag in one episode has a huge carnivorous predator hidden in unexpected places and eating random dinosaurs, with the last one being a regular viewer of that same show and all he says about his predicament is, "Hey, it's the predator! Am I on TV?" and then it eats him. And that's not even getting into the series finale....

* WhenIWasYourAge:
-->'''Earl:''' When I was your age we didn't have lawnmowers, we didn't have scissors, we had to get down on all fours and graze like a cow.
* WhamEpisode: The last episode.
* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"Considering the thickness of the cloud cover, scientists predict it may be tens of thousands of years before the sun shines over Pangaea again."]]

''Dinosaurs'' is a puppet-based sitcom created by Michael Jacobs and Bob Young, which aired on Creator/{{ABC}} from 1990–94. At its core, it has the aesthetic of ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' (only the family consists of dinosaurs, not prehistoric humans) and a more family-friendly (ie, [[{{Anvilicious}} less subtle]]) brand of the kind of social satire seen on ''Series/AllInTheFamily'' and ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.

* FunWithAcronyms: The most obvious being the [[Creator/{{ABC}} Antediluvian Broadcasting Company]]. There's also '''W'''e '''A'''re '''R'''ight and '''W'''e '''A'''re '''R'''ong.

* LaughTrack: Employed against the wishes of the producers by ABC for the first few episodes, before (thankfully) being abandoned. The Netflix and DVD version of this show is thankfully laugh track-free.

** In one episode, Earl and Roy are dumping toxic waste in a swamp called "Silent Spring Recreation Area".

* {{Foreshadowing}}: In the first episode, Robbie notes that Pangea's dating system goes in reverse, and wonders what they're supposed to be counting down to.

* YouMeanXmas: The titular holiday of "Refrigerator Day" is the dinosaur's equivalent of Christmas, given that they lived eons before Christmas existed. It has also Thanksgiving and Hanukkah’ references. It celebrates the day when the dinosaurs invented the fridge, so they could maintain food without hunting, and in some cases, they fast for 2 days to honor their ancestors’ hardship.

* YouMeanXmas: The titular holiday of "Refrigerator Day" is the dinosaur's equivalent of Christmas, given that they lived eons before Christmas existed.

* WokenUpAtAnUngodlyHour: At the end of "Nature Calls", Baby wakes Earl up. Earl's slightly annoyed and grumbles that he's trying to sleep until [[ToiletTrainingPlot Baby says he wants to try using the toilet for the first time.]]

** Many episodes have one. Some have a SpoofAesop (such as "A New Leaf", where the moral is [[spoiler: not so much "say no to drugs" as it is "say no to drugs or else there'll be more preachy sitcom episodes like this"]]) and some have AesopAmnesia (like in "Monster Under the Bed" where Earl decides that adults should believe what kids say no matter how unbelievable it is, only for Fran to dismiss it as a stupid lesson, and for Earl to decide she's right when [[spoiler: Baby looks out the window [[NotSoImaginaryFriend and sees]] [[NoPeripheralVision a giant squash]]).]]

** In "The Family Challenge", after both television sets are destroyed, Earl gets the family to participate on a game show where the prize is a television set. But after spending a month preparing for the game show, they find that they don't really care about television anymore. But after getting all the answers wrong, Earl is given the choice of battling the competing father (a mammal) in a sudden death round or answer a question he has no chance of getting right. While the rest of the family wanted the TV (except for Fran, who did not know that the television was the prize), Earl proves to Fran that he enjoyed the time he spent with his family by choosing the question. [[spoiler: He purposely gets it wrong by talking about how he himself learned that family is more important than TV, but then they win a consolation prize, a tiny TV, and soon the family is back to watching TV and ignoring Fran's desire to spend more time as a family.]]
** A more subtle example: In "Hurling Day", after Ethyl gives her reasons for wanting to be hurled, stating that she doesn't know what, at her age, she has to live for, she quickly realizes that the one thing she has to live for is [[spoiler: making Earl's life miserable.]] She later learns the same basic lesson in "Driving Miss Ethyl" where, after learning that [[spoiler: all of her classmates have died]], she realizes that this is the one thing keeping her happy in life.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Georgie the hippo in "Georgie Must Die", who acted like a friendly and playful ManChild that loves making children happy, but was really [[spoiler: a ManipulativeBastard who only uses the smiles of children for his own profits to make money and avoid taxes.]]

* CassandraTruth: Nobody believes until it's too late that there's a monster under the baby's bed. [[spoiler: And when Earl decides that parents should believe what kids tell them, no matter how far-fetched, he quickly [[AesopAmnesia changes his mind]] when the Baby sees a giant squash outside.]]

* DarkHorseVictory: The episode "And the Winner Is..." revolves around the dinosaur equivalent of a Presidential election, with Earl running as an everyman candidate against CorruptCorporateExecutive B.P. Richfield. The winner is [[spoiler: the political correspondent who anchored the election coverage, by a landslide write-in vote]].

* DealWithTheDevil: Earl once traded his soul for a mug with a devil. Fortunately, [[spoiler: the mug came with a guarantee of refund for unsatisfied customers which Earl found when the devil was about to collect. Earl's refund came as a ResetButtonEnding that made time come back at the moment the devil showed up to offer the deal in the first place]].

* TheDinosaursHadItComing: [[spoiler: In the last episode, the dinosaurs go extinct due to a chain of events that started with them [[GreenAesop destroying the breeding grounds of a specific species of bug]]. When they try to fix the damage to the ecosystem, [[FromBadToWorse they just make things worse.]]]]

* DumbDinos: The dinosaurs, especially the main cast, are generally well-meaning but tend to be slow on the uptake. [[spoiler: They end up responsible for their own extinction.]] Ironically, one of the show's aversions of this trope is a ''Brontosaurus'', a common victim of this stereotype.

* EscalatingWar: The two-parter "Nuts to War" miniseries, made in response to the Persian Gulf War, where a petty territorial dispute over the rights to pistachio trees escalates into a full-blown war between the two-legged dinosaurs and the four-legged ones. In the end, there was only one two-legged casualty, [[spoiler: but it turns out Robbie is okay]].

** An episode involves future archaeologists discovering items used in the show and guessing (very incorrectly) about what they were for as we see {{Flashback}}s to the episode's main plot. It's funny at the time, but when the setting of the show is dug up someday millions of years from the present, everything is right where it is today. [[spoiler: This world looking ''exactly as it does in the show's present'' when it gets buried can't be good! Almost as if the end happened pretty rapidly, and pretty soon...]]
** In "Scent of A Reptile", Charlene discovers to her horror that all of the MacGuffin Lilies have been destroyed to make way for a 1-Hour photo booth. In other words, a species has been rendered extinct for something silly and trivial. In "Changing Nature", Charlene goes through this again when [[spoiler: she finds that the bunch beetles' mating ground has been paved over for a wax fruit factory]].

%%* GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** A conversation between Earl and Mr. Richfield in "Changing Nature" plays this trope and averts it within the span of a few minutes. Richfield responds to a question by Earl with an angry "How the heck should ''I'' know?". A couple of sentences later, Earl describes Richfield's plan to [[spoiler: drop bombs into volcanos]] as "unleashing the holy fires of Hell".

* SuddenDownerEnding: [[spoiler: Possibly the saddest sitcom ending ''ever''. After all those episodes of laid-back comedy, Earl accidentally triggers a series of environmental crises, resulting in the Ice Age that will bring about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The series ends with the main characters (along with the rest of the world) standing around quietly, contemplating their grim fate. Knowing [[DoomedByCanon something like this would have]] [[ForegoneConclusion undoubtedly happened eventually]] does not make the final episode any less depressing.]]

* ThisIsGonnaSuck: Baby's reaction to being dropped into a pterosaur nest and informed that he'll be eaten once the chicks hatch is a simple "This stinks." [[spoiler: He ends up getting away alive, though.]]

The entire series was added to Creator/DisneyPlus on January 29, 2021.

* TeensAreShort: Averted — Robbie, who started the show at 14, is either the same height or slightly taller than Earl depending on the episode.

* OverprotectiveDad: Mr. Richfield is ''so'' overprotective, he actually ''eats'' his daughters boyfriends. (He claims he only wanted to talk to the first one, but he lost his temper, and "after that, it was like eatin' peanuts.")

* PteroSoarer: One delivers the newspaper. Another showed up in a pet store, and the Scavengers base had one that kept annoying the pack leader and getting knocked around. Interestingly, the show ''does'' seem to acknowledge pterosaurs as being distinct from dinosaurs, since unlike dinosaurs they are not anthropomorphized.

* ShownTheirWork: Pterosaurs are clearly not acknowledged as dinosaurs by the show, as they are not portrayed as anthropomorphic as the dinosaurs and treated as pets or wild animals by the latter, and in "Nature Calls", one mammal correctly refers to a ''Pteranodon'' as a flying reptile.

* HollywoodPrehistory: The show is set in a world of civilized dinosaurs are and wild humans.

* AnachronisticAnimal: Dinosaurs coexist with (primitive) humans, mammoths, mastodons, and other Cenozoic mammals, such as dogs, cats, goats, hippos, and cows.

* OneMillionBC: Inverted, since the dinosaurs are civilized and the humans wild.

* AnachronisticAnimal: Dinosaurs coexist with (primitive) humans and other modern mammals, such as dogs, cats, goats, hippos, and cows.

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: A recurring theme in the series is that the toughest are the ones who end up calling the shots. Fairly justified since these are dinosaurs, after all.

* EndOfAnAge: The last episode.

* AlternateCalendar: Parodied with the fact that the dinosaur calendars count backwards since the show takes place in BC, complete with each month starting with the last day and counting down to the first, with Earl wondering out loud about what momentous event are they exactly counting down to.