History YMMV / Peanuts

** Linus makes a brief appearance in ''It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown'', in which he utters four rhyming lines. He never has dialogue like this again in any Peanuts special.

** From a modern perspective Peppermint Patty's trouble with schoolwork reads a lot like someone suffering from ADD or ADHD. She is clearly intelligent, but her main problem is her inability to concentrate on things she has no interest in.

* StockParodyJokes:
** Charlie Brown's baldness is due to him being a chemotherapy patient.
** Peppermint Patty and Marcie being a lesbian couple, due to them being tomboys and Marcie's penchant for calling Patty "Sir".
** Charlie Brown has clinical depression.

* AcceptableProfessionalTargets: ''It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown'' features a news team that only wants the mayor to say something stupid so they can put it on the air. The same special also depicts the Mayor and his council as desperate individuals that don't live up to their promises.

** Many feel that the 1980s and 1990s were a low point for ''Peanuts'' animation, often for the same reasons mentioned above, or for coming out with strange story ideas and having some of the characters act, well, [[OutOfCharacterMoment unusually out of character]] (most notably Linus in "You're In the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown.") Though there are still some good specials that came out of this era, such as ''WesternAnimation/ShesAGoodSkateCharlieBrown'', ''You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown'', ''WesternAnimation/WhyCharlieBrownWhy'', ''WesternAnimation/ItsChristmastimeAgainCharlieBrown'', and the ''WesternAnimation/ThisIsAmericaCharlieBrown'' anthology.

** Rerun, who usurped control over the strip in the last five or six years at the expense of every character not named Lucy, Charlie Brown, or Snoopy.
** Spike, Snoopy's older brother, also fits the bill, particularly during his heyday in the '80s.

** The animated specials, particularly the very early ones, have a great deal of this. The animation is crude and often off model, and some of the child actors, particularly very young ones like Kathy Steinberg (the original Sally) and [[CrossDressingVoices Jimmy Ahrens (the original Marcie)]], give very awkward readings of their lines (which are often audibly spliced together from multiple takes), but the art and the vocal performances are part of what makes the stories and especially the characters so endearing in many viewers' eyes.

* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: Rerun, during the strip's final years, began developing into a more rounded and funny character, redeeming him in the eyes of some of the fans who objected to his rise in prominence as other, more established characters faded into the background.

* MisaimedFandom: It's very common to hear Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" played on the radio around Christmas, as it's very much attributed towards ''WesternAnimation/ACharlieBrownChristmas''. However, the song wasn't actually composed for ''A Charlie Brown Christmas''; it was composed for the 1963 documentary, ''A Boy Named Charlie Brown'', and was even released on its soundtrack album before ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' ever made it to airwaves. What's stranger, aside from "Christmas Time Is Here" and occasionally "O Tannenbaum", none of the other songs from ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' tend to get radio play, giving most of the attention to "Linus and Lucy", and the song itself is never played around Halloween or Thanksgiving, where it got its own set of special renditions for those holidays.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The strip sometimes suffers from this, due both to its own cultural ubiquity and to the influence it's had on countless other comics over the last half-century.
** Consider this: Schulz's characters were considered ''dysfunctional'' in the 1950s and '60s. After comics like ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' or ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'', it can be hard to believe this considering any parent would dream to have kids as intelligent and introspective as the Peanuts Gang are.

** Franklin in particular is often criticized for embodying the FlawlessToken. When he first appeared in 1968, having a black character in a major comic strip, let alone one that wasn't an [[UncleTomfoolery offensive stereotype]], was extremely rare. Other cartoonists of the era, [[ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUS Hank Ketcham]] in particular, got themselves into trouble racially integrating their comics because they did not handle the issue with the same sensitive finesse Schulz did..

* AccidentalInnuendo:
** In [[https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2001/07/30 one strip]], Lucy tells Linus to get her some ice cream, only for him to ask her "What would you do if I told you to go get it yourself?" Her response? "I'd pound you until the sun went down, and I'd keep on pounding you until the sun came up and then I'd pound you until the sun went down again."

* AudienceAlienatingEra: There are lots of opinions on when the strip's GoldenAge was, how far it fell from that over the years, and exactly when the SeasonalRot first set in, but everyone agrees that the 1980s were the weakest period, with frequent rehashing of old ideas, misguided attempts at relevance, and the inexplicable rise of [[CreatorsPet Snoopy's brother Spike]]. Some of this was due to [[RealLifeWritesThePlot circumstances beyond Schulz's control]], namely a heart attack that forced him to slow down his working pace. While some fans maintain that the strip enjoyed a creative renaissance in the last few years of its run, others believe that it never recovered from its '80s doldrums, often citing the increasingly scratchy art. This too was a side-effect of Schulz's heart attack; though he recovered, his motor skills started to deteriorate.

* AcceptableTarget: ''It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown'' features a news team that only wants the mayor to say something stupid so they can put it on the air. The same special also depicts the Mayor and his council as desperate individuals that don't live up to their promises.

%%** Peppermint Patty's debut comic has her mention that she "Indian wrestles" her friend Roy. Acceptable in 1966, but not very acceptable now.
** The regular use of DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale can come across as this now. Lucy's bullying is often portrayed as negative but tends toward BlackComedy rather than anything serious. Even Peppermint Patty and Marcie have been shown hitting boys in a way that was portrayed sympathetically. Audiences nowaday tend to be much more critical over this sort of thing.

** The Season 2 theme song to ''The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show'' had words added to the music, among them this line: "Marcie and Peppermint Patty will be swingin'". Given [[HoYay fandom interpretations of both characters]] [[note]] Although Charles Schulz denied they were lesbians [[/note]] and [[HaveAGayOldTime usage of that last word]] today, the line takes on a whole new meaning.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcGrYA8V3FY The theme song for the second season of]] ''The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show''. ''Very'' much a product of [[TheEighties its time]], but SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic nonetheless.

** There's ''[[http://3eanuts.com/ 3eanuts]]'', a ''Webcomic/GarfieldMinusGarfield''-style attempt to recontextualize ''Peanuts'' by leaving off the final panel, which often ends up making the strip seem cruel and depressing.

** There's ''[[http://3eanuts.com/ 3eanuts]]'', a ''Webcomic/GarfieldMinusGarfield''-style attempt to recontextualize ''Peanuts'' by leaving off the final panel, which often ends up making the strip seem cruel and depressing. That said, it doesn't work nearly as well as ''Garfield Minus Garfield'' because ''Peanuts'' isn't as formulaic as ''Garfield'', and really most humorous works would come off as bleak if you trimmed out the jokes. Also because ''Peanuts'' can be pretty bleak and depressing even ''with'' the final panel.

* CommonKnowledge: The Coasters' 1959 hit song "Charlie Brown" has nothing to do with ''Peanuts'' (despite the growing popularity of the comic strip at that time and the signature line "Why is everybody always pickin' on me?" being something the ''Peanuts'' character likely would have wondered or said). Songwriter Jerry Leiber said he just chose the name "Charlie Brown" because of its simplicity.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** ''It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown'' is positively jarring in how closely tied it is to the mid-1980s, with its biggest set piece being Snoopy, clad in a torn sweater, sweatband, and leg warmers (a wardrobe he chose after trying on and then rejecting a white disco suit), going to a dance club and showing off moves that pay clear homage to ''Film/{{Flashdance}}'' while Franklin gives a display of breakdancing.
** The 90s strips were full of this, from ''Film/ForrestGump'' to Barney to the Walkman. In one of the last daily strips, Sally is writing a letter to Literature/HarryPotter. Not as obvious as Flashbeagle, but this was written around the time the books were becoming popular.

** Schulz was a big classical music fan,[[note]] His favourite composer was Creator/JohannesBrahms; he considered making Schroeder a fan of Brahms as well, but thought Beethoven's name, having three syllables instead of one, was more inherently amusing. (Schroeder does let slip in one strip - to his immediate horror - that sometimes he thinks he prefers Brahms to Beethoven, and when Lucy insists in another strip that Beethoven's birthday traditions include girls kissing the objects of their affection on the nose - whereupon she proceeds to act on this "tradition" - a shocked Schroeder says this "could start a stampede to Brahms!")[[/note]] and though his ability to read music was limited, he meticulously copied passages from various piano pieces for strips featuring Schroeder at the piano (mostly [[Music/LudwigVanBeethoven Beethoven]] piano sonatas, but works by Haydn, Clementi, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff[[note]] The very first strip featuring Schroeder at the piano from 24 September 1951 shows him playing not Beethoven, but Rachmaninoff - specifically, Measure 20 of the Prelude in G minor, Op.23 No.5.[[/note]] among others also showed up), and his pianistic "career" includes some bonuses for fans of classical music.
*** In one of the very first strips to feature Schroeder at the piano from September 1951, Charlie Brown tells Patty that Schroeder has a contract with the "[[{{Malaproper}} New York Philip Harmonic]]" to play Creator/JohannesBrahms' first piano concerto. "Why doesn't he play Brahms' second concerto?" Patty asks. "Well, after all, he's only a baby!" says Charlie Brown. Brahms' second piano concerto is widely regarded as a leading candidate for the most technically difficult piano concerto in the standard repertoire (the first concerto isn't much easier, but the RuleOfFunny is in effect here).

** In ''It's a Mystery Charlie Brown!'', Snoopy and Woodstock sneak into the school's science fair to reclaim Woodstock's nest but also play around with some of the exhibits. One of them gives Snoopy an electrical shock, and he briefly turns into a screaming skeleton.

* RefrainFromAssuming: The iconic instrumental theme song isn't called "Peanuts" or "Charlie Brown". It's actually called "Linus and Lucy".

** In one story arc, Charlie Brown is so sick he goes to the hospital. Lucy tells him that she won't pull the ball away. She doesn't... but Charlie misses and kicks her hand instead. Intended to be EpicFail, but many people had wanted Charlie to do ''just that''.
*** He also kicks the ball in the animated "It's Magic, Charlie Brown!" special.

** Charlie Brown and Peggy Jean becoming friends.

** Peppermint Patty's debut comic has her mention that she "Indian wrestles" her friend Roy. Acceptable in 1966, but not very acceptable now.
** The regular use of DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale can come across as this now.

* AudienceAlienatingEra: There are lots of opinions on when the strip's GoldenAge was, how far it fell from that over the years, and exactly when the SeasonalRot first set in, but everyone agrees that the 1980s were the weakest period, with frequent rehashing of old ideas, misguided attempts at [[WereStillRelevantDammit relevance]], and the inexplicable rise of [[CreatorsPet Snoopy's brother Spike]]. Some of this was due to [[RealLifeWritesThePlot circumstances beyond Schulz's control]], namely a heart attack that forced him to slow down his working pace. While some fans maintain that the strip enjoyed a creative renaissance in the last few years of its run, others believe that it never recovered from its '80s doldrums, often citing the increasingly scratchy art. This too was a side-effect of Schulz's heart attack; though he recovered, his motor skills started to deteriorate.

* WereStillRelevantDammit:

** In one of the last daily strips, Sally is writing a letter to Literature/HarryPotter. Not as obvious as Flashbeagle, but this was written around the time the books were becoming popular.
** ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}'' also got a ShoutOut in that last year.
** The 90s were full of this, from Forrest Gump to Barney to the Walkman.
*** On that same note, much of the first seven minutes of ''It Was the Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown!'' is dedicated to [[RollerbladeGood Linus rollerblading.]]