Anime / Space☆Dandy

Space Dandy! He's a dandy guy... in space.

"A flair for the dramatic, a love for the ladies, and one sweet head of hair. That's the Dandy way!"

— Toonami promo

In the far-flung future, there is a demand for exotic aliens. If there's some crazy bright pink tentacled monstrosity out there that you want in your zoo or some strand of genetic material your scientists want a gander at, then Space Dandy is the man for the job.

Dandy is an alien hunter, someone who is paid to find new, undiscovered alien species. It's an industry where the prize goes to the person who finds aliens the fastest. Dandy and his companions, QT the worn-out robot, and Meow the cat-like alien from Betelgeuse, fly around space in the ship Aloha Oe to far-flung planets in search of strange beings.

While he's determined to get the job done, at the end of the day, Dandy would rather just spend his time with the lovely waitresses at BooBies. Meanwhile, they're being chased by minions of the Gogol Empire, for reasons unknown...

From Studio Bones, the creators who brought you Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Eureka Seven, and Soul Eater, comes Space Dandy, a fourth-wall-breaking retro-futuristic Raygun Gothic sci-fi fantasy adventure comedy series. The series made headlines when it was announced that Shinichiro Watanabe — creator of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo — would be heading it. It didn't take very long for Funimation to acquire the rights to dub it, and very shortly after that, it was announced that Toonami would be airing it.

The news didn't stop just there. When Toonami picked up the rights to air it, they gained the rights to air it first. The series debuted both the English dub and Japanese dub at the same time, and continued to air in the US every Saturday night at 11:30 EST/10:30 CST. Taking the time zone difference into account, this is a few hours before Japan aired it on Sunday (the exceptions being the season finales, which were both aired on TV Osaka three days before the English release, as well as the very first episode, which was briefly available with subtitles via Madman Entertainment streaming approximately two days before the official airdate).^note Sunday night is when most stations in Japan air new anime series. In another surprise, Animax Asia, which also simulcast the series in South East Asia at the same time as Japan, aired the show in both Japanese and English, using Funimation's English dub. In Australia, SBS Viceland airs the show.

The series' first season ran from January 3, 2014 to March 26, 2014, with a second (and final) season announced in mid-March at AnimeJapan and then confirmed for an English broadcast after the finale's credits. The series' second season began on July 5th, 2014 and concluded on September 24th, 2014; as with the first season, it was nearly simultaneously released in English and Japanese.

Now has a character sheet; feel free to go forth and fill it with tropes.

Note: Due to the comedic nature and setting of this series, IN SPAAAAAAACE! is going to get a lot of mileage on this page.

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Here come the tropes, baby!

• The Abridged Series: There are four known abridged shows.
• Accidental Art: Dandy drew a pair of breasts on the Complimentary Ticket to Legato out of boredom while trying to figure it out at BooBies. Later on Dr. Gel sees the booby drawing on the ticket, which coincidentally turned out to be a mathematical figure that he needed to solve the equation he had been working on the whole episode.
• Accidental Hero: Without even realizing it, Dandy inadvertently prevented an intergalactic war from breaking out at the end of episode 20.
• Accidental Pun: The CORE and ALE robots lose their kore and are pun theme naming, but instead almost sound like alcohol based names (CORE for Coors and ALE for ale) in the English version.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: Wormholes. The process of going through one is... chaotic, to say the least. Bonus points for the one that Dandy and Meow get sucked into actually taking them into an alternate dimension.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Vic Mignogna as another blonde-haired, elegant ladies man, with an affinity for roses and a hidden bad temper.
  • Johnny Yong Bosch is a military leader with an awesomely flamboyant cape and a giant robot? Add in a mask and you've got Zero! Not to mention his style of civilian dress and the way he kicks people call to mind Ichigo Kurosaki. Plus he dreams of being in a rock band, while JYB has sung vocals for his own, Eyeshine, for years!
  • Not the first time Colleen Clinkenbeard played a redheaded woman named Scarlet.
• Affectionate Parody: Of exploitation movies and space adventure shows with cheesy narrations.
• Alien Blood: Played straight throughout. It's especially noticeable in Episode 4 when a Zombie Apocalypse leaves a hospital's walls spattered with blood of every imaginable color.
• Alien Geometry: Catherine, Dandy's Ex-girlfriend, is a 4th Dimensional being. She's basically two interconnected rectangles inside each other (technically a Tesseract), and she's able to move them around. Not too different from Ramiel. There's also Paul, Catherine's most recent ex-boyfriend, who comes from a 2D universe, which itself has the ability to invade the 3D universe. It's entire existence is like something out of a video game.
• The Alleged Car: The Aloha Oe's warp drive is on the fritz and its teleporter takes several minutes to work. And yet it somehow has a self-destruct device capable of destroying a planet.
  • Then again, ALL spacecraft, including the equivalents of sports cars and family vans, seem to have a warpdrive. Given that the very nature of warpdrive technology involves literally bending spacetime around the craft, yet is so commonplace that it's considered mundane, just goes to show how advanced technology is during Dandy's time; planet-buster missiles probably aren't any more uncommon than your average Rocket Propelled Grenade is to our time. However most people who aren't Dandy are probably way too smart to even THINK about using one...
• All for Nothing: More often than not, efforts by Dandy and his crew to capture a rare alien for registration come to naught.
• Alternate Calendar: The year it takes place in is Space Century 0014.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song/Replaced the Theme Tune:
  • Between the Japanese original and the Funimation version, the show gets two awesome sets of themes. The OP in Japanese is "Viva Namida" written by Yasuyuki Okamura and the ED is "X-Jigen e Yōkoso" or "Welcome to the Xth Dimension" by J-Pop singer Etsuko Yakushimaru. The dub replaces both of these with disco-jazz instrumentals [1] [2], which fit the Zeerust influence. Viva Namida began airing for the dub starting from Episode 8.
• Alternate Universe: Episode one of Season 2 deals with alternate universe versions of Dandy and his crew, who end up trapped in our Dandy's universe due to constant pulling of cosmic strings.
• Always a Bigger Fish: The planet Dandy and his crew find themselves on in the first episode runs on this trope.
• Ambiguous Gender: QT seems to flop between being a boy or a girl from episode to episode. Justified in that QT's a robot, and thus doesn't technically have one, however, other robots seen throughout the series have clearly defined genders. The series would eventually stick to using male pronouns.
• And the Adventure Continues: The final episode has Dandy rejecting godhood and resetting the world back to the beginning of the first episode. The To Be Continued message is replaced by "May Be Continued?" in English.
• Animation Bump: Once the action gets going in this series, the animation quality is completely insane... as is the animation itself.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Pyonium is used as a crucial piece of evidence in a murder trial where Dandy is the suspected murderer.
• Appropriated Appellation: The trio was given the insulting nickname of Team BBP (Blockhead, Bonehead, Pinhead) when they entered the race in episode 7. Since then, the crew has adopted the name for themselves.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • The fact that manipulation of space is possible in the 2-D universe implies that gravity exists in that universe, but in a 2-D universe with a finite speed of light and a non-zero gravitational constant, everything is a black hole because the escape velocity from any particle, no matter how small, is infinite.
  • In the multiverse episode one of Meow's alternates is a Schrödinger's cat, a paradox produced by the Copenhagen interpretation which contradicts the Many Worlds interpretation.
• Art Shift: Every episode is assigned a different art director behind it, so each one has differences in animation quality and character designs from the last and the next.
  • Episode 9 has a noticeably different feel to it compared to the rest. Aside from the vibrant use of colors for the setting, the character designs for Dandy and Meow are different from other episodes. The episode in general could be compared to the beautifully bizarre alien forests and settings found in Samurai Jack. It also has art reminiscent of Korean animator Peter Chung and French comic artist Mœbius.
  • Episode 11 is mostly done in in Deliberately Monochrome with graphite painted backgrounds.
  • Episode 16 once again does this, and it's much more noticeable during the whole thing. Outlines for every character are very thin, and not to mention how they look outside of the strange fish planets. And during the boat ride between the two planets, the animation gets a bump up to Deranged Animation levels.
  • Episode 18 could best be described as Hayao Miyazaki meets The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • Happens to Dandy in episode 7, when he reaches a speed that is incapable of mortal comprehension. He wakes up in an unknown location 5.67 billion years later to be greeted by a buddha-like statue of himself.
  • Defied in the finale, which has the narrator, who is revealed to be God, offer Dandy to become the new God of all the universe. Dandy decides that he'd rather be able to grope boobs and butts as a mortal instead, and resets the universe back to episode 1.
• Assimilation Plot: Episode 4 has one that accidentally kicks itself to a start, to boot. By the end, everyone turns into a zombie. This turns out to be a very good thing, since that means no one is different and everyone is immortal, which means that war become unnecessary and peace reigns everywhere. Things are a bit lethargic, though.
• A-Team Firing: Used on Dandy himself while he's running away from a horde of Ragians in the 3rd episode... he's just that bad a shot.
  Dandy: Why isn't my beam working on these things? What's wrong?
  Meow: Usually, you have to hit them first.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A giant mecha made out of junk vs. A giant QT.
• Auto-Tune: QT's voice actress is processed through a digital modulator to make her sound more like a robot. It's more apparent in the English dub, but the Japanese version has it, too.
• Bag of Kidnapping: In episode 19, Dr. Gel and Bea kidnap BooBies waitress Honey with this method.
• Bar Full of Aliens: "BooBies", which is basically Hooters IN SPACE! Apart of having the girls as the main eye candy, it's also a common place to reunite for most of alien species and even some of the waitresses are alien too.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Dandy and Meow apparently have no problem surfing off of an exploding planet and into space in nothing but a pair of underwear and a vest, respectively.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Pine-Pine, Scarlet's chubby coworker at the registry office. She takes scarlet to a cocktail party to help her find a date but she's the one who ends up being surrounded by guys.
• The Big Damn Kiss: The only way to stop Scarlet's Mobile Suit pilot ex-boyfriend's rampage was for her and Dandy to prove to him that she's moved on.
• Bilingual Bonus: The 2 giant robots at the start of Episode 10 are named C.O.R.E (コレ/これ) and A.L.E (アレ/あれ), pronounced Ko-ray and Ah-ray. They mean "This" and "That" respectively.
• Bishie Sparkle: Surrounds Prince during the first half of episode 7, but quickly lost along with his composure once he realizes Dandy is actually getting ahead of him. Regains them once he realizes his feelings for Dandy.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The sweet and innocent QT seems to be a little too willing to abandon Dandy and Meow to a horrible demise to save his own skin.
• Bittersweet Ending: Surprisingly plentiful for a series focused on comedy and wacky hijinks.
  • The ending of episode 4. The entire universe, including robots and the narrator, have all became zombies, but due to every living being turned into zombies, there are no more wars or no more discrimination, so everybody can live a happy and peaceful (undead) life.
  • Episode 21 is melancholic all throughout, full of philosophical musings on the meaning of life and death. In the end, when given the choice of a happy pseudo-afterlife or resurrection, Dandy opts for the latter, which leads to the destruction of Planet Limbo and Poe, though a Flash Forward shows that Dandy and Poe eventually reunite in what is implied to be the actual afterlife.
  • Episode 23. Dandy and Scarlet break up their Fake Relationship, but are heavily implied to have fallen in love with each other. Dandy rushes off his ship to seek out Scarlet for a movie date, but he just barely misses her at the bar she was at. He manages to catch up to her in the street and call out to her... only for a passing train to cut them off long enough for both to walk away. The next day, it's business as usual as Dandy attempts to register an alien with Scarlet, though it's hinted that they still have feelings for one another.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: When Dandy and QT first see Meow at the local BooBies, they wonder what it could possibly be. No knowledge of what species it is or where it comes from... all while QT is looking at a guide book with a detailed drawing of a Betelgeusian's anatomy, inner organs, and bone structure. Elsewhere in the series, there are aliens that are just downright weird everywhere.
• Black Comedy: The main protagonists have unappealing flaws, there's ridiculous male-oriented fanservice, the aliens range from Ugly Cute to entirely horrific, satire creeps into the show now and then, and the reset button endings for each episode means that Anyone Can Die and be fine the following week... in a comedy!
• Bland-Name Product:
  • BooBies, which is quite obviously Hooters IN SPAAAAAAACE!. Some branches even have their waitresses wearing T-shirts with a very similar logo, with a koala in place of the owl.
  • Chwitter is the universe's most popular form of social media.
  • Though all the text besides "whiskey" on it is in the alien script seen throughout the series, one episode has a bottle that is pretty clearly supposed to be Jack Daniels whiskey.
• Book Ends:
  • The series starts with Dandy saying how the only thing that matters in this universe is the booty. The series ends with Dandy saying that the only thing that matters in this universe is legs.
  • The first and last episodes end in Dandy kickstarting the complete destruction of the universe.
  • The music from the cold open in which we're told who Dandy is gets a reprise in the final episode, in the scene where we're told what Dandy is.
• Bottle Episode: "Nobody Knows the Chameleon Alien, Baby", sort of. While we still visit a few planets, the majority of the episode is spent inside the Aloha Oe ship where the crew is hunting down the shapeshifting Chameleonian.
• Boyfriend Bluff: Episode 23 has Scarlet get Dandy into this to keep her Psycho Ex-Boyfriend off her back. By the end, it seems like the two of them have developed feelings for one another.
• Brand X: In "There's Always Tomorrow, Baby", there's a bag of Loys potato chips, which has the same design for Lays potato chip bags.

• Butterface: In the high school episode, Dandy goes to prom with a girl who isn't much to look at, with freckles and thick coke bottle glasses that needed for her nearsightedness. But she has such a great ass that it gets its own training montage and musical number.
• Buffoonish Tomcat: Meow, while not an utterly dumb cat, he is rather Book Dumb and can be prone to having a Butt-Monkey status with Amusing Injuries.
• Button Mashing:
  • Dandy tries this on the warp drive in episode 3. It doesn't end well.
  • In episode 4, he attempts this to get Meow's nurse to come back.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The "spider" in Scarlet's bathroom in Lovers Are Trendy, Baby is in fact a human-sized, fleshy looking creature covered in eyes and what looks like a humanoid mouth with a mustache. Even Dandy didn't see that coming.
• Call-Back: In episode 12, QT finds a love for fishing. In episode 18, the episode starts with the crew casually fishing, with QT chastising Dandy for doing it wrong.
  • In a humorous canon breaking example, in episode 19, Meow says a starving Dandy looks worse than he did when he was a zombie, though that episode ended with the entire universe, including the Narrator, turning into zombies with no sign of turning back.
• Call-Forward: When the Chameleonian was transformed into a radio, it was humming a song that was sung in the climax in the Musical Episode.
• Captain Ersatz: The Jaicro Empire's Humongous Mecha A.L.E. is the Ideon.

• Cassette Futurism: Quite literally in "There's Always Tomorrow,Baby", where Meow's room on his home planet is shown to have a "Sany" boom box with actual cassette tapes. Meow also uses a device that looks like a contemporary smartphone.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Literally every last alien shown in the series is conceptualized by a different artist. This was Shinichiro Watanabe's intention, in order to ensure that each alien really is alien.
• Cat Girl: Meow's got quite a few action figures and a dakimakura (anime body pillow) of them. Also, Meow himself is one of these in at least one Alternate Universe, though strangely enough still possessing a clearly male voice.
• Cessation of Existence: Being the Butt Monkeys that they are, Dr. Gel and Bea end up getting sucked into a 2-dimension universe in episode 24. Near the end of the universe, their own actions result in them moving to a 1-dimensional universe. At the end of the episode, something causes them to move into a Zero-Dimension universe.
• Cerebus Syndrome: While the show never loses its comedic tone, starting with episode 5 the series begins to alternate between comedy and drama more frequently, essentially making this show a Dramedy as opposed to the Gag Series it was initially billed as. The series stays mainly comedic more often than not. Only a handful of episodes take a more non-comedic approach to the story, such as when Dandy finds himself on a planet for the dead.
  • The majority of the sadder episodes of the series are in the back half of season 2, with a lot of it being filled with more melancholy episodes.
• Chekhov's Gag: The food QT buys in episode 3, which is so disgusting it makes Meow pass out after eating it. Luckily, it has the same effect on the ravenous alien chasing them later on in the episode; they're only able to defeat it by feeding it hundreds of boxes of the stuff.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Dandy's surfboard in episode 6.
  • Meow's Chwitter addiction leads the Gogol Empire to Dandy's location in the 2nd episode.
• Chekhov's Skill: In the 6th episode, Dandy says at the start that he used to be a huge surfer, with Meow and QT not buying it, thinking he bought all the surf boards just for show. At the end of the episode, he shows he wasn't just talking big, surfing on geysers and debris from the exploding planet they were on. And then 9 episodes later, his surfing skills come back when he surfs on the river of time to find a less dead version of Meow and QT.
• Cliffhanger: Episode 26 picks up right where episode 25 leaves off, with Dandy's capture by the Gogol Empire.
• Clique Tour: In episode 17, Dandy is a New Transfer Student at Baberly Hills High School. After he accidentally sits at the cool kids' table in the cafeteria, the Alpha Bitch gives him a lecture, in the form of a song and dance number, on the high school hierarchy that explains where the cliques fall on the totem pole.
• Cold Open: In season 1, every episode would open with the same segment telling you who Space Dandy is, with images showing him and his team hunting aliens and setting up a Zeerust Scifi vibe that really didn't apply to the series as a whole, though that was undoubtedly the joke. Starting with season 2 however, the show started having cold opens that set up the plot for the episode.
• The Collector: Ukulele Man in episode 15 likes to collect smiles. This means keeping those who's smiles aren't good enough as statues in his back yard, including Meow and QT.
• Conflict Ball: Played for Laughs when Dandy and Meow end up on opposing sides of a war between an alien who only wears underwear and an alien who only wears a vest. Even though both have the same end goal of getting the two to make peace and come in for registration, they still keep getting caught up in the war and getting in fistfights for no good reason.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In episode 19, Meow references back to episode 4 when they all turned into zombies.
  • The ending credits for the final episode shows a reference to every episode in the series, such as the ramen noodle dimension, the zombie movie theater, the racers, Trucker Dandy, and 2D space, among everything else.
• Cool Starship: It might have its problems, but there's no denying that the Aloha Oe is still a very cool-looking ship.
• Cozy Catastrophe: In episode 4, the result of the Zombie Apocalypse is that thanks to every living being turning into a zombie, there is complete bliss and peace due to no more wanton destruction and war. There is no more discrimination since all aliens are now zombies and need no more differentiation from each other.
• Crossover Punchline: In episode 8, Meow apparently finds where the fridge ejected from the airlock of the Bebop landed.
• Cypher Language: The show has its own alphabet that is shown on various signs and viewscreens. It can be decyphered into Japanese, English and Engrish. A transliteration can be found here
• A Day in the Limelight: All the main protagonists has had at least one episode focusing on them.
  • "There's Always Tomorrow, Baby" focuses on Meow. It mainly involves him coming in to terms with his home life and whether or not he should've gone to space.
  • "Even Vacuum Cleaners Fall in Love, Baby" focuses on QT. It revolves around him falling in love with a coffee maker.
  • "A Gallant Gentleman In Space, Baby" focuses on Honey. It shows what she does on her days off, and the Hidden Depths therein. She drives a motorcycle, watches live wrestling, she's half-cloudian and has a mean hook.
  • "Lovers Are Trendy, Baby" focuses on Scarlet.
• Dem Bones: Admiral Perry seems to be only a skull with some bony arms sometimes appearing.
• Denser and Wackier: Than Shinichiro Watanabe's previous directorial works.
• Department of Redundancy Department: During the Opening Narration.
  Narrator: Space Dandy! He's a dandy guy...in space. [...] These are the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and his brave space crew. In space.
  • The preview for season 2 gives us this gem:
  Dandy: We're adventuring the continuing adventures of Space Dandy in space!
• Depending on the Artist: As the animators (and the animation directors) were given a fair bit of free reign, and with the animation style changing on a per-episode basis, this is to be expected.
• Deus ex Machina: In true Greek drama fashion, when Dandy and crew are stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop and don't even notice, God clues them in on their situation.
• Didn't Think This Through: Dandy's secret weapon at the end of the first episode is quickly met with his realization of this.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Admiral Perry orders the invasion of Planet Legato because it kept bothering him about an overdue library book.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Right as Prince realizes that he's in love with Dandy, the show cuts to a shishi-odoshi filling up and spilling a rather white looking liquid. And then moments later, as the announcer says, Dandy's ship rams Prince's ship from behind, leaving him looking rather happy.
• Double Entendre: This exchange between Dandy and Honey at the beginning of episode 7:
  Honey: No way. *gasp* You actually came, I can't believe it!
  Dandy: Well, yeah. I came yesterday and I came today, too. And don't you worry, I'm sure I'll come tomorrow, baby!
• Downer Ending: Episode 9 ends with Dandy destroying Code D in his attempts to obtain its core for registration. However, this also destroys Planet Planta's wondrous ecosystem, leading its inhabitants to lose all sapience and devolve back into plants. In the end, it was All for Nothing, since the core turned out to be a non-biological meteorite.
• Due to the Dead:
  • Dandy builds a rocket coffin to give Pup the send-off she deserved, even though he only knew her for about 10 minutes.
  • In Episode 21, Dandy is given funeral rites which he is very much aware of, due to everyone else on Planet Limbo also being dead themselves
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The planet in episode 6 after the doomsday missiles are launched. Dandy and Meow are able to get away from that one alive.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Meow's family likes to call him by the name "Mew," and the moment Dandy hears this he just laughs. Notably, Meow's not embarrassed by it, though, when it's said by an old high school friend of his whom he once had a crush on, and a couple of his other old friends call him by his real name instead of a nickname.
• The Empire: The Gogol Empire, who are hunting down Space Dandy for an as-yet unknown reason.
• Episode of the Dead: There's an episode in the first season about Dandy and his crew trapped a rare alien, who's a Zombie Infectee, first biting and infecting Meow and later the whole hospital where Dandy and QT left him thinking he was just "sick". The first half ends with the entire cast turned into zombies. The second half reveals turning zombie hasn't affected their minds much, and they've also stopped aging or needing food. Thus when the rest of the universe were converted into zombies, it becomes a utopia.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: The universe is doomed as soon as the Gogol empire gets its hands on Dandy. Even though Dr. Gel and Bea die in multiple episodes, the existence of infinite parallel dimensions ensure that Dandy's pursuers will never stay down.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "Space Dandy is a dandy guy...in space."
• Explosion Propulsion:
  • Dandy employs this tactic repeatedly during a race. Then at the end after Prince's mouse Squeak rigs Dandy's ship with dynamite and Meow drops food in the fuel tank, Dandy propels out of time into a realm faster than thought and reawakens five billion years later revered as a god.
  • In the series finale, Honey uses an explosion destructive enough to destroy a city to propel the Little Aloha up the tower where Dandy is being held captive.
• Expy: Despite naming conventions, the Gogol Empire is clearly a representation of Google, Inc. So much so that Episode 2 has them tracking down the Aloha Oe with an interface named "Gogol Galaxy: Street View". In the finale the true Admiral Perry bears a striking resemblance to Google's CEO, Larry Page.
• Extreme Omnivore: Deathgerians. An alien species known to eat anything it chooses. So terrifying, that Dr. Gel immediately withdraws his entire armada orbiting the planet that Dandy is stuck on and gets the hell outta there.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Much like its predecessor, Dandy's crew basically never actually get the alien they are hunting for in any given episode. One time they do actually catch it and get rich, but Meow dies and is forgotten by Dandy and QT, and regardless everything is back to normal by the start of the next episode.
• Fanservice:
  • Lampshaded outright by Dandy in the episode 3 preview, basically saying "next time on Space Dandy... anime fanservice!" All the while showing scenes of a large breasted woman in a tight outfit.
  • Dandy ends up providing some himself in episode 6, which he spends the majority of in only his underwear. When he and Meow surf through the cosmos, he glistens and his hair falls out of its usual pomp, making him look quite handsome indeed.
  • The second half of episode 8 opens up with Dandy taking a shower, features a slow, full body pan up his naked backside, and he spends the rest of the episode only wearing a towel.
• Fanservice with a Smile: Space Dandy likes to hang out at BooBies, which is Hooters IN SPAAAAAAAACE! QT even refers to it as that restaurant with the jiggly waitresses and not-so-hot wings.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Meow's home planet of Betelgeuse is just straight up rural Japan. Everything you've ever seen in every other anime that takes place in Japan, you'll find on Betelgeuse.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel:
  • Dandy and QT admit that they never got the warp drive fixed, despite Meow's insistence on using it. As such, initiating a warp in space sends you to weird areas where you can literally pull a chain and possibly result in all of physics breaking down and who knows what else. This may have possibly jump started the plot.
  • Dandy later reveals that warping isn't even possible. What people in the 3D universe call "Warping", they're actually just slipping between the boundaries between two universes to appear somewhere else.
• Fattening the Victim: The plant aliens in the southern hemisphere of Planet Planta fatten up Meow and turn him into Foie Gras. Or so they planned, but things were set right at the end of the episode and Meow was none the wiser. He was a Fat Idiot.
• Female Gaze: Thus far in the series, there's been as much fanservice coming from Dandy in various states of undress as there has from the female characters.
• '50s Hair: The eponymous character himself sports a frondous greased pompadour with long sideburns, along with a lot of references from The '50s.
• Four Is Death: Episode 4 has our intrepid heroes encountering a zombie apocalypse, and all becoming zombies themselves. And eventually the entire universe follows suit, and literally every living thing becomes undead.
• Food Porn: In Episode 2, the various bowls of ramen Dandy and Meow eat from are shown in delectable detail with even some of the more alien ones looking very appealing.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
  • In episode 4, even the narrator is affected by the Zombie Apocalypse.
  • In episode 14, eventually the Aloha Oe crews from Alternate Universes start bringing narrators from other dimensions who argue with each other over things like how much time has changed between scenes.
• Friending Network: Meow is constantly updating his profile and posting pictures (mostly of Food Porn) to the intergalactic version of Twitter or Instagram. The bad guys quickly take notice.
• Gainax Ending:
  • The ending of episode 7 has Dandy's racing ship going at a speed beyond mortal comprehension, where he ends up billions of years later and is greeted by a gold Buddha-ish statue of himself. We never find out who won that race.
  • Episode 26 serves as this for the series. Dandy's revealed to be a cosmic constant, The Multiverse implodes, The Narrator turns out to be essentially God and offers Dandy the title, and the entire series is reshaped into a Kudzu Plot.
• Genki Girl:
  • 033H is super happy and energetic to meet Dandy (since he's a Human), and is always chipper and peppy.
  • Erssime was happy to meet Dandy and immediately help him on his quest to catch a rare alien.
• Genre Shift: Episode 4 starts out as zombie horror, but halfway through the episode, it turns into a Werner Herzog-esque documentary about lives of zombies after the main characters all get turned into zombies.
• Genre Throwback: To Raygun Gothic. Everything about this series fits the bill. The space ships, the space stations, the space suits, the space weapons...
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Subverted in the High School episode. Dandy's potential love interest, the only girl uncool enough to spend time with him, is a Shrinking Violet with a plain face and cokebottle glasses. Dandy doesn't find her attractive, but he figures, oh I bet She Cleans Up Nicely. He removes her glasses, only to realize that she doesn't look any better from squinting without them, and quickly puts them back on.
• Godhood Seeker: After Bea reveals himself to be a triple agent, he claims he'll become a god with all the Universe's Pyonium at his control. He makes this declaration with the megalomania usually associated with the trope.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: QT intentionally censors himself after Meow asks the internet for advice and gets nothing.
  QT: Bleeping trolls!
• Got Me Doing It: After hearing Dandy talk about booty so much during the musical number in episode 17, Sofia messes up her self-indulgent song by repeating "Booty, booty, booty" like Dandy had been doing.
• Grand Finale: The preview for the series finale shows QT, Meow, Scarlet, Honey and Johnny venturing into the Gogol Empire's homeworld to rescue Dandy and save the universe.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: The opening theme, "Viva Namida", has lyrics that contain Gratuitous English ("Everybody, c'mon!") and Gratuitous Chinese (再见！^{Reading and translation} zàijiàn! (Goodbye!))
• Great Offscreen War: It is occasionally mentioned that the Gogol Empire is at war with the Jaicro Empire, but none of the characters ever get directly involved in it. At least, until the last episode...
• Green-Skinned Space Babe:
  • BooBies is stacked with any number of booby possessing alien species. Two boobs, four boobs, human boobs, lizard boobs...
  • Crusher Girl, one of the contestants in episode 7, is basically a blue-skinned Twi'lek in S&M gear.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: In episode 10, Dandy, Meow, and QT all get stuck in a mobius loop due to a huge release of Pyonium energy. They all remember the repeated days, but are apparently too dumb to notice anything strange, simply assuming that the town is monotonous. QT is the first to become suspicious and finally the crew realizes something is up.. After coming to the completely wrong conclusion about what was happening, the narrator has to finally explain it to them.
  Narrator: Get it through your heads and GET ON WITH THE STORY!
• Gun Twirling: Followed by failure to re-holster.
• Halfway Plot Switch:
  • The first half of episode 4 is a Zombie Apocalypse horror story. The second half is a bizarre, undead Slice of Life episode.
  • The first half of episode 8 is about the crew finding a dog that was abandoned alien world shortly before she dies. The second half is about the crew being menaced by the microscopic aliens that were living on the dog the moved onto Meow.
• Hated Hometown: Meow hates his home planet and never wants to return there. It turns out there's nothing much to do there, and life there involves living in a crowded house with his Massively Numbered Siblings and taking over the bleak family business of manufacturing screws.
• Hidden Depths: All of the main characters plus some supporting ones get at least one episode where some of their backstory or motivations are explored and the characters are shown to not be as purely wacky or superficial as it initially seems.
• High School: Episode 17 takes place in a very American high school IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
• Hope Spot: In episode 4, Dandy gains some competence and successfully escapes the zombified hospital. Then it turns out his helicopter pilot is a zombie.
• Human Shield: Robot, actually. Dandy uses QT to bash all manner of alien zombies with since he's a robot and can't get infected. He turns into a zombie anyway.
  QT: What are you doing, Dandy!?
  Dandy: Oh, quit your whining! You'll be fine, okay? You're a freakin' robot, you can't catch zombie!
  QT: YOU'RE SO MEAN, I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIEND!
• Humongous Mecha:
  • The nameless red robot on the alien planet in the first episode.
  • Then there's the much smaller, but much more agile Hawaii Yankee.
  • The Jaicro Empire's superweapon named A.L.E., that looks like the Ideon.
• Hypocritical Humor: Space Dandy starts the first episode lecturing QT about how men who objectify women because of their boobs are the lowest of the low... He thinks they should be objectified for their butts instead. Made more humorous by episode 2 where he goes on about how great boobs are, only for QT to mention how earlier he was saying butts are better.
  • In episode 7, Meow makes a remark about how prince is stealing their animal sidekick schtick by having an anthropromorphic rat on his crew, the alien in question threatens to sue Meow for speciesism and then calls the Betelguesian a "cat bastard".
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Dandy pulls out a filled punch-card that guarantees a free meal at BooBies.
  Dandy: We may be poor as hell, but we still have a free meal as long as we got these sweater puppies.
  QT: How long have you been waiting to say that line?
  Dandy: Longer than you think!
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming, Baby: Every episode's title ends with "baby."
• If It's You, It's Okay: Prince is one of these, having fallen for Dandy during the final stretch of their race.
• Indestructibility Montage: Episode 10 features a "Groundhog Day" Loop where Dandy, Meow, and QT they are stuck in a mobius loop and reliving the same day over and over again. They discover that the tear-off calendar on the wall has been infused in Pyonium. A short montage is shown of them trying every destructive method they can think of to remove the page off, but nothing works. Eventually, they get the idea to use an industrial lathe machine to force a drill bit into the edge of the calendar to eventually pry it off and force the next day to come.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny:
  • After activating their translators, the aliens in "The War of the Undies and Vests, Baby!" speak English as if going through a Google translator. Much Engrish and the bad of grammar they speak.
  • It happens again in Episode 9 with the Plant Aliens, though not as severe, mostly just dropping occasional articles.
• Interactive Narrator:
  • When the Aloha Oe crew mistake being stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop for all of them gaining clairvoyance, the narrator directly yells at them for being stupid and explains what's really happening.
  • In the episode where many alternate versions of Dandy, Meow, and QT end up in the same universe, eventually other narrators end up there too and start arguing with each other.
    Meow: Aw crap, one was enough!
  • In the episode where Scarlet goes on a date with a Cloudian and everything seems to be going well, the Narrator starts talking about how the Cloudian's cloud changes depending on his mood, Scarlet and the Cloudian suddenly look at the camera annoyed, and the Narrator apologizes for killing the mood.
  • The Narrator is God himself. He's the only one who knows all the completely unrelated things that has happened to Dandy in every episode.
• It Came from the Fridge: Episode 8 has a brief scene with Meow opening up an ancient looking fridge and finding a purple blob that he chases around and attempts to eat. It's implied to be the same fridge from Cowboy Bebop.
• Jive Turkey: The Narrator busts out all the slang when describing Planet Trendy in episode 23:
  The Narrator: This is Planet Trendy, a poppin' joint where all the hippest couples in the universe droppin' it like it's hot. If you wanna show your bae that "You da man", then you better turn up here. E'rrbody in da place be swaggin'. Don't matter whether shorty like hangin' outdoors, or getting krunk in da club. If you got the skrilla, then Planet Trendy got yo back.
• Kudzu Plot: All the episodes over the whole series are seemingly unrelated to each other, and in a way they are, but The Narrator reveals himself to be God, and explains that he recalls everything that happened in every episode.
• Lame Pun Reaction: The Narrator gives this after explaining what remains of the planet Eden.
  Narrator: Behold, the remains of the planet Eden. It used to be a real garden spot.... Garden spot? Really?
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: THE ENTIRE GALAXY at the end of episode 11. The distribution of mysterious video tapes, cassette tapes, laser discs, and other outdated media formats that had the ability to erase the memory of anyone who played them from knowing that they even exist in the first place. This resulted in a giant galactic war that nobody remember ever happened.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Episode 2 delivers this to Meow. Eating all of Dandy's food and causing them to constantly get found by the Gogol robots comes to bite him in the end when he ends up dropping the ramen bowl Pops made for him, and Dandy gloats about how great the ramen tasted.
• Laugh Track: Lampshaded by Dandy, who'd been hearing laughter all throughout episode 19. It was revealed it was coming from a pair of invisible aliens known as Ambiancians.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In Episode 16.
    Bea: Dr. Gel. I found him!
    Dr. Gel: Don't you say that every week?
  • In Episode 22: Bea laments how tired he is of getting blown up every week. Dr. Gel acknowledges as well.
    Dr. Gel: Ahh, it seems we face annihilation yet again.
    Bea: Dust in the cosmic wind, sir.
• Lecture as Exposition: Professor Duran explains what Pyonium, AKA the God Particle, really is.
• Left Hanging: A minor example, but at the end of episode 5 Dandy's ship is still locked up for a parking violation without them having any money to get it out.
  • In the episode where Dandy drops a dead Meow and QT into a river of time to find a earlier version of them that isn't dead, we never see if his plan works because the episode ends right after he stops the villain responsible for it.
• Lemony Narrator:
  • The narrator is just as much of a pervert as Space Dandy, and has just as much of a clue of what's going on (as does anyone else watching the series). Anyone who's watched the Funimation dub of Sgt. Frog has a pretty good idea of what they're in for.
    Narrator: [as a picture of a human surrounded by an increasing number of aliens shows up on screen] Humans are but one of a myriad of species. There are countless others. Like that one. And those... and all of them. Far too many to name. No seriously, I'm done.
  • His entire narration of the second half of episode 4 following Dandy's zombification. He starts turning into a zombie too at the end of the episode.
  • He starts crying at Pup/Laika's death in episode 8.
  • In episode 14, eventually alternate-universe versions of him start appearing, whom he almost immediately begins bickering with.
  • The series finale reveals that the narrator is actually God.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • Dandy, when Adelie gets captured in episode 5, suddenly shows that he's a fierce bounty hunter. It's even more impressive considering he's stuck in the body of a stuffed penguin the whole time.
  • Happens again in Episode 11, when Dandy is surrounded by the Gogol Empire fleet and he activates the Aloha Beam.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Scarlet's hair bun gets undone during her scuffle with the Gogol robots in episode 2. It happens again in 23 while on the ski-slopes, at the beach, etc. while "dating" Dandy. Both times show her drop the Prim and Proper Bun demeanor but in different fashions: the first shows her angry and the second shows her friendly.
• Lighter and Softer: Than both of Watanabe's most famous productions, Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo which was also lighter and softer than the former show. However, Space Dandy has more in common with the former than the latter setting wise, even though its much more of a comedy than either of the other two.
• Lilliputians: In episode 8 has small people boarding Dandy's ship. They're fleas.
• Limited Animation: Episode 16 is notably, and intentionally low budget. It goes with the Art Shift style that often happens from episode to episode, as each one has a different head artist.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Meow's childhood friend Kate the waitress at the hostess bar (who thus dresses in a sexy, feminine manner), reveals that she's gay and is the bar hostess' lover. Considering the tension caused by what Dandy, QT, and Meow had been going through, this causes Meow to snap.
• Living MacGuffin: Dandy himself. What little there is of an ongoing plot in the series finally boils to a head in the final episode, all because of Dandy.
• Loads and Loads of Races: As it's Dandy's job to hunt down undiscovered aliens, there's a lot of them, in addition to unique one-time background characters.
• Lucky Charms Title: Officially it's "Space☆Dandy".
• Macross Missile Massacre: Dr. Gel fires off everything he has in a last ditch attempt to escape a black hole. It doesn't work.
• Male Gaze:
  • Episode 2 starts off with Dandy trying to receive payment from Scarlet for the last batch of aliens they captured (including Meow). There's a nice closeup of her crossing from one leg to the other in her chair. Beyond that example is BooBies in general.
  • The protagonist's first line of dialogue in the series is "Boobies, boobies, boobies!"
  • Balanced out by episode 6, which has so many scenes of Dandy in just his underwear that it earns a Female Gaze star.
  • Taken even FARTHER in Episode 8, in which Dandy spends half the episode in a towel... AFTER seeing two gratuitous shots of his bare butt (including a slow pan up his entire back half.) Drool.
• Mars Needs Women: Human babes in bikinis are just as attractive to aliens as they are to Humans.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Meow has six younger siblings living with his parents back home on Betelgeuse.
• Mind Screw:
  • Episode 21 features a very unique interpretation of the afterlife.
  • Episode 26 renders the entire second season, if not the entire series incomprehensible, while at the same time explaining an incredible amount.
• Mocky Mouse: Prince's crew has a member named Squeak, who has a similar appearance to Mickey Mouse and is a lawyer as a rib on Disney's ligitious nature.
• Moment Killer: The Narrator interrupts Scarlet and Gentle Nobra's moment while explaining the Cloudian's ability to reflect his feelings through his cloud. Their reaction is quite priceless.
  Narrator: "Oh, did I kill the mood?"
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Many of the alien species, but most prominently, the Deathgerian.
• Most Writers Are Human: For a universe full of countless aliens and alien cultures, the prominence of humans and Earthen culture over alien values is a bit ridiculous. For starters, only 3 written languages, Space, English, and Japanese kanji (apparently no other alphabet was worth taking from Earth) are seen. Even though almost all the actual customers aren't human, most of the employees that work at Boobies are human, a presumptuous assumption that humans would be considered one of the most beautiful species across the universe. The odds that a human, Scarlet, would be the one in charge of fronting alien registration desk are astronomically low. Most other important characters look almost exactly like humans like the space elves and the Gentooans.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The Pops scene in episode 2. Most of the scene plays out in a more serious tone compared to the rest of the episode, and Pops' flashback even has a bit of whiplash of its own when it uses a little Black Comedy to show how exactly Pops killed someone, only to get serious again after that (including a Tearjerker moment where Dandy asks Pops if he wants to join his crew, only for Pops to decline and ultimately stay in his private dimension for seemingly eternity. The episode then comes back around to comedy again once Dandy and Meow leave Pops' dimension.
  • The entirety of episode 4 manages to have three. The first one, rather minor, turns from the team engaging in awkwardness following Meow's zombification, generally lighthearted in tone up until he causes the outbreak at the hospital and causes a shift into horror-survivial-action. The second shift occurs after Dandy's zombification: the heroes turning into zombies isn't actually bad, and the scenario starts with the narrator giving a slice-of-life monologue about how they have learned to adapt to their new zombie lifestyle (eating yogurt, claiming death insurance, etc.). A third (minor) shift occurs when it is revealed insurance companies have hired zombie hunters to take out zombies that have mooched off said death insurance policies. It's soon reversed again when the zombie hunters and insurance company workers themselves get zombified and the narrator returns to a slice-of-life pace.
  • Episode 5, compared to the dense and wacky nature of the series up to that point, is a largely serious tale with very few gags about Dandy catching an alien orphan and bonding with her as he takes her to the alien registration center.
  • Episode 8; before the commercial break, the first half is fairly low key with Dandy finding a dog and growing attached before the dog dies, happy at finding Dandy and the last hours of companionship, of old age and is implied to be the lost Russian dog sent up in Sputnik II. Come back from commercial; hijinks, the death of an alien species, and another near death averted by circumstance.
  • Episode 21 is a Mind Screw-laden episode in which Dandy dies and wakes up in a bizarre form of afterlife. Much of the episode consists of Dandy vainly trying to deny his fate before ultimately accepting it, with very few gags in between. It's also one of the few episodes in which the destruction of whatever planet Dandy's on isn't Played for Laughs.
  • Episode 26 is... special. While most of the episode plays up the Space Opera concept considerably, we have occasional instances of silliness, such as Bea's complete 180 after revealing himself to be a Jaicro spy or Dandy's rejection of Godhood in favor of going to BooBies. But the crowning moment has to be after he obtains Dr. Gel's ship to save the Universe from destruction: After a heart-wrenching scene of Dandy about to accept his fate when his ship is nearly incinerated, he takes one last look at his video feed... and sees a rather prominent view of Honey's ass, giving him a Heroic Second Wind.
• Ms. Fanservice: While there are plenty of beautiful women that appear throughout the series, the scantily-clad and buxom Honey is the show's most reliable source of fanservice.
• Multiboobage:
  • The Deathgerian in episode 3 has a dozen of them all bunched up in a cluster. Naturally (and thankfully), they are censored for the Toonami broadcast. A lesser example is the first episode, which depicts at least one BooBies waitress with three breasts.
  • A slightly less squicky one appears in episode 8, during Dandy's montage of babes before his imminent doom.
• The Multiverse: Episode 14: "I Can't Be the Only One Baby!", has Dandy, QT, and Meow jumping from one alternate universe to another, each time meeting themselves from that universe. In one, the three are the most successful alien hunters in the universe. In others, Dandy is a Space Trucker, a ninja, a Mobile Suit pilot, and even a Titan. Each universe even has its own narrator. And as the series finale reveals, both the Narrator and Dandy are the same across all universes.
• Musical Episode: Episode 17 takes place in a school where musical ability determines one's place in the school hierarchy. As such, it soon becomes a parody of High School Musical.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Deathgerians. Even the Gogol Empire is afraid of them.
• The Necrocracy: Sometimes You Can't Live with Dying, Baby ends with the whole universe becoming zombified. It is a surprisingly peaceful and benevolent version of the trope that sees the end of all war and discrimination. Everyone involved simply gets on with their un-lives.
• Negative Continuity:
  • The very first episode ends with everyone being blown up and killed, followed by "THE END" and the Narrator saying that's all there is for this show. The second episode begins with our heroes looking for ramen. Lampshaded by QT in the episode preview after the credits.
  • The third episode has the team forgetting about Meow after he's eaten by the Deathgerian.
  • Episode 4: the entire universe becomes zombified. Everyone lived in peace and happiness. The End. To Be Continued.
  • The seventh episode ends with Dandy getting flung into the far future to the end of the universe, with "THE END" popping up again (and Dr. Gel and Bea possibly get killed again.)
  • Episode 8 plays with this, with it looking like the Aloha Oe crew is going to be sucked into a black hole until QT reveals they can warp away. Dr. Gel and Bea aren't so lucky .
  • At the end of episode 14 all the alternate Dandys, Meows, and QTs successfully put each other back into each other's universes except for Emo Dandy and his crew, who take the places of the main crew and become the new stars of the show.
  • Episode 19 finally shows there is some semblance of continuity, when Meow references back when Dandy was a zombie.
  • The series finale reveals that Dandy is a universal constant in all alternate universes, the Narrator is God of all universes, and that ALL of the episodes are canon as a result.
• Nested Mouths: Ragians, seen in Episode 3, have a vertical-jawed mouth, out of which comes another, horizontal-jawed mouth on the end of a long tongue.
• New Transfer Student: Dandy somehow manages to pass himself off as one in order to attend Baberly Hills High School in episode 17.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A few times:
  • Dandy in the first episode destroys a planet full of unregistered aliens, himself and his crew with one of his "last resort" tactics which typically involve someone or something blowing up.
  • Fourth episode, the crew do this by inviting a zombified alien on board and, through Meow, turning the whole universe into zombies.
  • Eighth episode has Dandy causing Planet Machinia to turn into a black hole after accidentally killing off the last two Machinians keeping the planet intact.
  • Ninth episode gives us Dandy managing to destroy another planet, this time regressing sentient plant life back to their leafy forebears. Though nobody actually predicted such an outcome would happen, as it wasn't intentional. Also, at least one of the plants wanted the regression to happen.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Episode 4 features alien zombies, and robot zombies once QT is infected... somehow.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Exaggerated in episode 4, where the same zombifying disease affects not only every kind of alien it encounters but also robots.
• No Fourth Wall: The series establishes that there isn't a fourth wall at all within mere moments. QT asks why he and Space Dandy are discussing the topic of boobies. QT references the poor fourth wall being abused time and again.
• No Romantic Resolution: While one of the last few episodes focuses heavily on Dandy's relationship with Scarlet, and even suggests that the two may be falling for each other, by the end of the series, Dandy's relationships with both Scarlet and with Honey receive no real resolutions beyond acknowledging that they both care about him as a friend.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Gogol Empire can't even catch one man. Dr. Gel dies in almost every episode he appears in. The super weapon of the week always fails miserably. Except for the last episode, where they capture Dandy and almost rewrite reality.
• Number of the Beast: The Gentooans can only use their body-switching abilities for 666 seconds a day.
• Oh, Crap!: Spoken in rapid succession by Dandy during the climax of episode 6.
  • Also said flatly by Bea in episode 8 when he and Dr. Gel warp into a singularity caused by Dandy and crew inadvertently killing the Machinians. They unsuccessfully try to escape by firing missiles into it. Painful death ensues.
• One-Hit Wonder: In-universe. Space Dandy forms a band called the Dropkix, who played one song on loop for two hours at a club and broke up after performing their only major gig. The song was called "Lonely Nights".
• The One Where Everyone Dies: Half the episodes ends with the protagonist trio or some of them dead (including an Episode of the Dead where the whole universe is zombified), always beginning the next episode alive as if nothing happened. It's later revealed that all the episodes really happened, since the narrator is God and makes a Cosmic Retcon at the end of every episode.
• Opening Narration:
  Space Dandy! He's a dandy guy...in space. He combs the galaxy like his pompadour on the hunt for aliens. Planet after planet he searches, discovering new creatures both friendly and not. These are the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and his brave space crew. In space.
• Orphan's Ordeal: In episode 5, Dandy helps a young alien orphan girl find her long lost grandfather.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: A wormhole our heroes come across has its entrance in the food dispenser of a ramen stand. It leads to another dimension.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Apparently anyone can be affected by zombie bites. Yes, even robots and the narrator. Not that it's a bad thing. They're also capable of intelligent thought just as much as the living, and many of them eventually wean themselves off of raw meat and switch to eating yogurt instead, so that the bacteria will cause them to ferment instead of rot.
• Out of Focus:
  • Season 2 sees Meow and QT demoted to Those Two Guys in most episodes in order to focus on Dandy's relationship with the episode's new character. Frequently they don't even leave the Aloha Oe or notice that Dandy is gone.
  • The last episode of the first season is similar, except QT holds the star role.
• Perpetual Poverty: Like Watanabe's other show featuring bounty hunters in space, the Aloha Oe crew often strike out in finding rare aliens to bag and tag and are often short on everything from supplies to money. They manage to collect a several thousand woolong reward on a Deathgerian in episode 3.
• Phlebotinum Breakdown: The warp drive on the Aloha Oe is constantly broken. That doesn't mean it won't take them anywhere, one just can't ever predict where it will take them. There's also a small chance of hair-loss during transit. Averted in episode 8, when Dandy asks why they can't escape from a black hole by using their warp. QT explains they can, they just didn't already because he assume Dandy didn't want the warp to mess up his hair.
• Plant Aliens: Planet Planta is inhabited entirely by living plant people. Apparently their society is broken up into 18 main republic states on the northern hemisphere, while a simpler, lower class species inhabits the southern hemisphere of the world.
• Pokémon Speak: The Dr. Gel and Bea from Kid Dandy's universe does this.
• The Power of Lust: In the final episode, Dandy sets off to save the universe in the way only he can, but he's having trouble flying towards an anomaly that is causing it all. He glances at a monitor where all his friends are watching him, and upon seeing Honey's fine booty and thong, gets the determination to push forward.
• Previously on…: Remember the Narrator mentioning that there was an intergalactic war taking place between the two largest empires in space in the first episode? Yeah.. It's sort of a big deal, and episode 10 starts off by actually explaining something plot relevant.
• Product Placement:
  • iPhone-like devices show up throughout the series.
    • QT's 'battery charging' indicator in episode 13 looks like it came straight off an Apple device.
  • In "A Race in Space Is Dangerous, Baby", Bea sits down to watch TV in Dr. Gel's ship with a Family Computer and a MSX2.
  • In the Book Ends of "There's Always Tomorrow, Baby," Meow is playing Space Galaga (a soon to be released Space Dandy themed Galaga game) on one of said iPhone like devices.
  • The alternate dimension Bearbrick Dandy and crew in episode 14.
• Puppeteer Parasite: QT is temporarily taken over by a tech-savvy alien in episode 8.
• Rapid Aging: Episode "We're All Fools, So Let's All Dance, Baby". While dancing to the music from an old vinyl record, several characters age rapidly into old age.
• Raygun Gothic: The setting of this series takes this to full effect.
• Reconstruction: Probably one of the few examples in media which isn't a more cynical take on the Zombie Apocalypse trope. In episode 4, the Aloha Oe crew turning into zombies isn't actually a bad thing, since while they initially face existential despair concerning their new undead life, they get used to it through various absurd measures (having yogurt as part of their diet, mooching off of life insurance). Later in the episode, when the entire universe becomes zombified, there is actually no more war or wanton destruction, since everybody as a zombie means an end to discrimination between different species (everyone simply identifies as a zombie) and they all get to live in complete bliss and peace.
• Red Herring: In the "Groundhog Day" Loop of episode 10, a mention of a broken part preventing them leaving is often followed by mention of Meow's science project, which is a model of the part that Meow's father makes screws for in the factory, appearing to be a setup for a reveal, but never pans out.
• Refusing Paradise: In Episode 21, on Planet Limbo, Dandy is given the choice of being dead but happy in a world without sadness, or resurrecting in a universe where he never died in the first place. Since Dandy believes you can't have happiness without sadness, he decides to be resurrected.
• Retraux: A throwback to the scifi serials of 1930s and 40s, with a style and soundtrack straight out of the 70s.
• Rewatch Bonus: "A World With No Sadness, Baby" finds Dandy stranded on Planet Limbo, where everyone else seems to already be dead. Dandy is later confronted by the Night Horders, who claim that Dandy is "An affront to the natural order" and thus cannot be permitted to stay. The episode reveals that Night Horders are the "logic" of Planet Limbo, and they cannot comprehend Dandy's existence. This makes much more sense after the reveal in the final episode that Dandy is a universal constant who exists in all realms of the multiverse. He's not something that Death can comprehend.
• Robo Romance: One episode is about QT having a romantic relationship with a sentient female coffee maker machine, though ultimately she chooses another robot over QT.
• Rod-and-Reel Repurposed: Space Dandy uses a retractile fishing rod to catch things or beings (like Meow in the first chapter) as well to hang on high places.
• Scenery Censor: The nude woman on the magazine Dandy is reading in "Sometimes You Can't Live Without Dying, Baby" is censored by the handle bars of the steering wheel.
• Secret Ingredient: While the Phantom Ramen is explicitly stated to be the result of incredible skill, with all its ingredients being mediocre on their own, it ends up being implied to have one anyway: the tears of a lonely old man. When Dandy discovers this, he isn't grossed out and even seems emotionally moved.
• Series Fauxnale: The very first episode ends with Dandy's death.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Dandy spends all of Episode 9 exploring a planet only to find that there is no reward for his findings.
• Shapeshifting: The Chameleonian in episode 12 pulls a number on the crew, from inanimate objects to doppelgangers.
  Dandy 1: I'm the real one, obviously.
  Dandy 2: Well, I was me before it was cool.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• A Side Order of Romance: Dandy loves to visit the Boo Bies in his down time and seems to mostly work as bounty hunter just to fund his trips there. Honey is a waitress there who at first just seems like a recurring extra, but gradually becomes a love interest and ally, and even shows up to rescue him in one episode.
• Silly Reason for War: In episode 6, the crew crash-land on a desolate planet where a war has been fought 10,000 years. Why? Because one species likes to wear underwear, and firmly believes that everyone who wears vests should be killed, and the other species firmly believes the opposite. This war has been going on for so long that the "Undians" and the "Vestians" are each down to the Last of Their Kind. Dandy and Meow are dragged into this, after the Undian tears off Dandy's pants and sees he wears underwear, and Meow's garment is assumed to be a vest by the Vestian.
• Silly Simian: Dr. Gel appears to be a giant bearded gorilla who wears a G-shaped monocle (or possibly an eyepatch) and periwig. He is the series' Butt-Monkey in an almost meta sense, and on at least one occasion, the series uses him as a joke because of his animalistic nature.
• Similar Squad: CCH from "Race in Space Is Dangerous, Baby." Prince, Squeak, and High Spec correspond to Dandy, Meow, and QT, respectively.
• Simple Country Lawyer: The prosecutor in episode 25 has a southern accent and wears a mostly white suit, but he doesn't claim, or appear to claim, that he's a simple country lawyer.
• Single-Biome Planet:
  • Planet Machinia, the galaxy's designated dumping spot for junk. The entire planet is one giant junkyard, and QT geeks out at the possibilities of what he can find.
  • Planet Legato is a single gigantic library.
• Skewed Priorities: The Narrator says he probably should have mentioned that there's an intergalactic war going on between the two largest superpowers in the galaxy a little sooner in the first episode.
• Sky Surfing: In Episode 6, Dandy uses one of his prized space surfboards to escape from the exploding planet with Meow.
• Small Town Boredom: The entire planet orbiting Betelgeuse is essential Rural Japan IN SPACE!— a low density, post-industrial area with nothing to do and lots of poverty. Meow hated growing up there, and got away as soon as he could to travel through space. He was very reluctant to return, and his return confirms that yes, it's still boring.
• Snap Back: No matter what destruction Dandy sees or causes, it's reversed in the next episode without explanation. The last episode provides an explanation.
• Snot Bubble: The comatose grandma in episode 22 is sporting one while she snores.
• Something Else Also Rises: When Dandy throws a bola and accidentally ties a jellyfish-like alien together with two waitresses, the alien's head turns red and inflates to a tremendous size. And then explodes.
• Something We Forgot: Episode 3 ends with Dandy brushing this off after realizing they forgot to rescue Meow from the Monster of the Week.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: In the 10th episode of when the gang stays on Meow's home planet and are caught in a time loop, at one point Meow drunkenly proposes to his childhood crush Katie who is working as a barmaid, to his disappointment and horror she reveals to him that she's a lesbian and is married to the female bartender.
• Space Elves: Dandy and QT run into a number of them in the manga. They also happen to be the space elf equivalent of Yakuza.
• Space Opera: There's a few elements, like the war going on in the background, but they're massively downplayed.
  • The opening narration to the show plays the show up to be a very pulpy space opera with the heroes trecking the galaxy, heroically fighting off aliens, and rescuing damsels in distress. The actual show is...not quite like that.
• Space "X": Space Dandy and his Space Crew on Space Adventures! In Space! With Space Facebook!
• Speaks Fluent Animal:
  • The Narrator can translate for the aliens. He can also speak zombie.
  • Meow reveals he can speak dog when he reacts to Pup complimenting his hat. Not that he's necessarily translating her correctly...
• Spiritual Successor: Of sorts.
  • Besides being another of Shinichiro Watanabe's works to air on [adult swim], it's also a successor to Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun, three Space Western anime that got much more popular in America when they aired on Toonami and [adult swim]. Space Dandy is already getting to air on Toonami first, and while it isn't quite a western per se, it still has a cool badass cruising around (IN SPAAAAAAACE!) along with his Badass Crew (well, kind of badass anyway). The success of those late 90's anime on the network probably had something to do with it.
  • Taking this one step further; the disco and techno style of the music combined with the setting ends up being rather reminiscent of Daft Punk's Interstella 5555. Which also aired on Toonami long ago.
• Splash of Color: Used all throughout episode 11 after the box is opened. Only select objects like Dandy's red shirt, QT's face, Honey's hair, and the Aloha-Oe's engines are in color.
• Spoiler Opening: Not in the ED animation, but in the content of the lyrics, essentially spoiling the narrative of episodes 24 to 26 and the overarching reason why the show is as weird as it is.
  Hey Everett, according to you, there are lots of different worlds. I'm not sure I understand.
  (...)
  Going is fine, but what about going home?

• Starfish Aliens: Most of the main and supporting cast are humans (or possibly Human Aliens), Humanoid Aliens, or Rubber-Forehead Aliens, but most of the rest of the aliens come in an amazing variety of shapes and colors, from plants and marine life to giant crystals and floating worms.
• Stealth Pun: Aside from the narrator's obvious garden spot pun, he remarks that Planet Eden was blown all to hell.
• Straw Nihilist: Touched upon in episode 21 during one of the many discussions on the nature/meaning of life and death. One being asks another what the point of life is if everyone is guaranteed to one day die, suggesting it is meaningless and why people live if death is inevitable. His conversation partner calls such a mindset conceited, suggesting that the man is a lower lifeform for caring, and telling him to die if life is that meaningless to him.
  Woman: The gall of such conceit. Tiny forms of life there are which 'scape the naked eye. They do not ask what for of the cosmos. Go die, if life without reason is so loathsome to you.
• Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: Dandy sings one at the end of the Musical Episode.
• Tactical Withdrawal: Space Dandy knows when to leave when things become too much to handle.
  Space Dandy: OK... new idea. Ready or not, RUN AWAY!!!!
• Teleportation with Drawbacks:
  • The Aloha Oe has a matter transporter. Unfortunately, it's an unreliable older model that works very slowly, and in the first episode it teleports a giant alien monster on to the ship instead of Dandy and Meow.
  • QT upgrades the transporters in episode 9. Dandy and Meow are gone instant puff of smoke, but QT fails to mention that the speed comes at the sacrifice of accuracy until after they were gone and already falling from the sky.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Dr. Gel has this reaction in Episode 11 when he discovers a formula that he concludes can only lead to the death of whomever knows it. And then his ship gets blown up moments later.
• Tidally Locked Planet: Episode 16 gives a rather interesting take on this. The planet "Girlfriend" ended up becoming a satellite to the planet "Pushy Boyfriend". PB is extremely cavernous and contained its own ocean inside the caves. When Girlfriend started to orbit, the entire body of water becomes locked in orbit, so the ocean moves as a giant pillar over the surface of the planet, not quite connected to the other.
• To Be Continued: Most episodes end with つづく ("To be continued"). The Grand Finale ends with the phrase "May Be Continued?"
• Training Montage: Dandy and Freckles prepare for the prom with a montage in episode 17, complete with 80s-style montage music.
• Transforming Mecha: The Aloha Oe's escape pod, Little Aloha, can transform into the Canti-esque mecha Hawaii Yankee.
• Trying Not to Cry: The Narrator gets choked up, trying to hold back his tears over the Tear Jerker moment in episode 8.
• Trolling Translator: Meow intentionally mistranslates the barks of the dog they find on Planet Machinia, because he's a cat and she's a dog... After Dandy activates his Universal Translator, Meow shuts himself up quick as Dandy gives him a Death Glare.
• Tsuchinoko: QT catches a few during his brief interest in fishing. They seem quite easy to come by though one of the tsuchinoko's is actually a shapeshifting Chameleonian.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: In episode 25, the murder victim is an alien that looks like a muscular but fat and ugly humanoid dude with light blue skin, and his wife is a gorgeous alien girl who works as a waitress at BooBies. He was actually a very popular masked wrestler. Also, he wasn't really dead.
• Universal Translator: Dandy has a translator on his wrist. Turns out the Ragians that chased Dandy in episode 3 only wanted to warn him about something far worse.
• Unknown Rival: Space Dandy didn't really interact with the Gogol Empire, or much less was aware of their existence, until almost the very end of the series.
• Unobtanium: The fabled element Pyonium.
• The Unpronounceable: Meow's real name is actually quite a common name for Betelgeusians, but neither Dandy nor QT can understand it, so they just call him "Meow" because he looks like a cat. Meow isn't amused by this.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The Galaxy hospital pronounces Meow dead on arrival, even though he's clearly still walking. They admit him, and nobody at the hospital thinks this is all that weird.
• Vagina Dentata: Ragians, the horde of aliens from episode 3, have vertical mouths with another mouth inside that extends out like a Xenomorph.
• Wacky Racing: The premise of episode 7 is a giant space race.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Aloha Oe has the Aloha Beam, and it requires a firing sequence straight out of Space Battleship Yamato to use.
• Weirdness Magnet: Pyonium turns out to be a literal example, as the time-and-space-distorting "god particles" are attracted to each other: the bigger the concentration, the stronger the pull. Dandy has unwittingly been carrying a huge amount of Pyonium within himself the entire time, making him a Weirdness Magnet.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: BooBies.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Episode 13 focuses on QT trying to understand what it is, when he finds himself falling for a clearly feminine-looking coffee maker robot.
• Wham Episode: The Gogol Empire finally captures Dandy at the end of episode 25, setting up the finale
• Wrestler in All of Us: Honey takes out Dr. Gel with the flawless execution of a powerslam in episode 19.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In episode 4 Dandy uses QT as a weapon against the zombies assuming that he won't become a zombie due to being a robot. He's wrong, as QT becomes a zombie less than a minute later.
• X-Ray Sparks: Episode "The Gallant Space Gentleman". While Dandy is on Dr. Gel's ship he's hit by an electrical bolt and you can see his skeleton inside his body.
• Yandere: Scarlett's ex-boyfriend, Dolph, is straight up crazy about her and won't let her go. He's also a mobile suit pilot.
• You Never Asked: QT's explanation for why he didn't mention that they could warp away in episode 8.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Alien zombies. The virus doesn't discriminate against any form of life. Including robots and God. Fortunately, (un)life continues on as normal, even after you become a zombie. In fact, in the long run universal zombification actually turns out to bring about peace between all races because everyone's technically the same kind of creature by that point, and there's nothing to die for anymore.

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Stay Dandy, baby

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