Fridge-Heartwarming: When Lao Shi is pissed in "Dreamscape", Rose is hiding behind Jake while the others take his screams with little trouble. Seems just fun... Then you remember that Rose is Huntsgirl, raised by the Huntsclan, who until just a few months before hated dragons with a passion, and is disarmed while facing a furious dragon master who in his youth defeated and nearly killed the goddamn Dark Dragon while in the same room of the one dragon that made her realize that they're not all evil. Now, what would you do in her place?
For the #1 threat the Magical Community, the Dark Dragon didn't really seem as threatening as he was made about to be since he was defeated thwarted fairly easily in all of his appearances. In the finale episode, Rose is even able to hold her own against him after he battles all the dragons. But it also occurred to me that he had the unique distinction of being the only dragon ever to go bad. The sheer danger of one of the most powerful magical creatures (and a protector creature) becoming evil and the psychological damage may have likely contributed to his perceived threat.
What's more, it may also count as The Corruption personified (or dragonfied) when one bears in mind he also convinced one of the Dragon Council to join the dark side.
In universe, it's explained as due to him being an Outside-Context Problem; since all dragons are good in this universe, they've never had to develop the necessary skills to take one down if the need ever came up.
Then there's another piece of Fridge Brilliance: The Dark Dragon literally controls one of the other 13 greatest threats already, the #11, the Shade Demons.
The episode "Haley Gone Wild" becomes brilliant when you take two episodes into account: "Bite Father, Bite Son" and "Hero of the Hourglass". In the first episode, Lao Shi explains to Jake that the reason the Dragon council allowed Susan to marry the human Jonathan was because the latter apparently had a good heart. In the second episode, even though he can only go by the Huntsclan's perception on dragons being "monsters", Jonathan refuses to tell anything about dragons, because he loves Susan. Jonathan may not be aware of magic, but he has a strong moral compass considered valuable even amongst the Dragon Council. The brilliance comes in when one sees in the climax how exactly the Pooka's spell over Haley is broken. All it takes is Jonathan's tirade ("That show is a load of brainwashing, young lady!") to bring Haley back to her senses. In a way, that same moral compass saved the day.
Also take into note what we have seen of Jake's cousins: as this page notes below Jake at his worst is more mature than his relatives, and as Lao Shi hasn't been training Jake for that long, the difference probably began with 'the mortal' father who brought him up on manners and boundaries.
Fridge-Heartwarming: In the Season 1 finale, Rose still kept a picture of her and Jake from the dance he brought a Nyxx. While a good indication of how deeply she reciprocates Jake's affection, it's also food for thought why she loves him: bear in mind that was also the dance where her date Brad stood her up for another ("prettier") girl. And it doesn't help that she recently moved to that school, which almost made it an unhappy experience. Jake was the one who made her smile again when he wanted to dance with Rose instead. That was when she knew his feelings for her were unconditional.
It also explains why Brad is considered an Abhorrent Admirer. She remembers that it was him who dumped her for "the prettiest girl" at the dance. And one can imagine how annoying it is for Rose to deal with Brad repeatedly trying to sweep her off her feet when she remembers how shallow he was at the dance. He can pretend that breakup at the dance never happened, but Rose knows in her heart-of-hearts she'd rather have Jake for her boyfriend.
In "A Befuddled Mind", Spud succeeding where the other students failed at cracking the code becomes very symbolic. As he says, they're looking at the code in only one aspect (representing that their approach at being successful in life is one-dimensional). But to solve it, you need to look at the code "in 3-D" (meaning that Spud has a balanced, well-rounded life of being fun and smart).
Looking back on "The Talented Mr. Long", it occurs that there's history behind why Spud never suspected that his great-grandfather's magic words really were magic words meant to seal away the evil djinn. Assuming this great-grandfather was on his father's side of the family, bear in mind that Spud's father is a logical-minded accountant who tried to stifle his son's sense of fun. Although he was not successful at making his son dull and unimaginative, it does paint a picture that somewhere down the lineage, the great-grandfather's descendants stopped believing the stories about magic or the djinn, and turned their sights to more realistic things.
In "The Shaggy Frog", Huntsboys # 88 and 89 still being around may seem like a case of the show still needing some form of the Huntsclan to raise the stakes every now and again. However, it could be foreshadowing that anyone can resume the Huntsclan occupation, even the alternate-universe Rose.
Lao Shi often tries teaching Jake to (in his own words) "trust no one". Seems strange, given his role... Then you think about Chang (a dear friend, and possibly an intimate one), the majority of his own relatives (Jake at his worst is more mature than any three of the relatives outside the immediate family, aside for Lao Shi himself), that thing about having had a fling with his own mortal enemy and it ending bad, and all the messes that his loyal friend Fu Dog does on a daily basis, and you realize he's perfectly justified in not fully trusting anyone.
Also, he's an incredibly stern teacher to Jake. Point is, Jake is theoretically responsible for all of the United States, and his only back up are Sun Park, who will eventually have to go back to Korea, his talented but inexperienced sister Haley, his arrogant, inexperienced and not-so-talented cousin Gregory, and Lao Shi himself, who is quite old and could end up crippled from old age or killed because he's not strong as he used to. Jake has an enormous responsibility, and Lao Shi is trying to make him capable of taking it before he can't help anymore... And apparently the much nicer teacher Sun Park reasonsthe same way, given the first thing she does when Jake got himself suspended in "Being Human" was to increase Haley's training many-fold and give her the doll of Madge the Motivational Unicorn.
Jake using Cupid's arrow on Rose when he believed she didn't love him anymore in "Love Cruise" seems evidence of Jake growing obsessed with her as Lao Shi believed. Then you remember he's permanently on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Rose's love was one of the few bright spots in his life, and you realize Jake was just scared beyond reason at the thought of losing her like he did in the Season 1 finale.
Leads to a dose of Fridge Horror. After Rose pulled her Heroic Sacrifice and nobody knew if he had succeeded in saving her, Jake flew away in anger, but the following morning he's almost calm, and just hoping she's alive and happy. What did he do that night?!
Crossing with Fridge Tear Jerker: In “The Academy”, Sara foresaw the events of “Homecoming”; she says she sees “a circle of skulls” (the crystal skulls), and “magical creatures crying in agony”. But it was Rose’s Heroic Sacrifice that stopped the Huntsman’s plan before he could even fully make his wish, right? So where was the second part of Sara’s vision? Well, remember what she said back in “Body Guard Duty”? “Our visions always come true, just not always in the way you expect.” Having that in mind, there was technically one magical creature that did cry in agony that night… Jake.
Why did Stacey fall for Spud at the end of the series? We see in "The Rotwood Files" that she's into sensitive Nice Guys, meaning that she likely started to like Spud after realizing how genuinely sweet he is.
Regarding Jonathan's Taking It Well reaction, relatively speaking, to finding out that his son, daughter and father-in-law are able to change into dragons; there are actually several plausible explanations for his change of heart compared to when he broke up with Susan in high school over it:
In high school, Jonathan was just a kid. He was immature and still taking life for granted. Several decades of raising Jake and Haley mellowed him into a responsible adult who knows better and loves Susan no matter what she is or isn't.
There are hints that he remembers future!Jake telling him about him having a great life and two kids that he loves with Susan, as well as the Huntsclan kidnapping him for interrogation. He just kept quiet because he wasn't sure how to process all of that trauma when Susan and Jake denied it in the past. In the future, he goes This Explains So Much and tells Jake he knew something about his family was special.
The Power of Love was at play, in terms of his love for his kids. No matter how strict he may be. Jonathan has been established as a Papa Wolf who will take on anyone threatening his son and daughter. When Susan and Fu Dog tell him the truth, his bigger concern is that Jake is going up against a magical threat alone and his son needs help.
In "Breakout", after Rose has knocked him out and has dragged him off to the Huntsclan hideout, she holds Huntsmans’ hand as he wakes up. It’s a small thing, but if she hadn’t, he would have been more suspicious of her.
Derceto might already have been smitten with Lao-shi before meeting him in "Something Fishy this way comes", as she has read Jake’s report on him in "Hong Kong Nights" highlighting all of his good sides.
In "Legend of the Dragon Tooth", you see Haley wearing a hockey uniform during her, Trixie, and Spud’s attempts to pull out her loose dragon tooth. Haley doesn’t seem like the type of girl who’s into sports, much less a high-impact one like hockey. That uniform was most likely Jake’s from when he was little.
In "Hong Kong Longs" Jake is addressed as the newest member of the dragon order by a member of the dragon council, which is odd as both his sister and cousin Greggy can both transform fully into dragons and Haley already have an official dragon master in Sun Park. It could be explained that it’s because he’s the newest World Dragon, but it makes even more sense that he’s the newest member of the order when three facts of the series are considered:
The dragon council are known to keep track on any potential members and judge them based on personality and how they manage different situations, and even includes a review of the dragons’ parents character. This point helps explain why Haley and Greggy are not members yet.
Haley is still only eight years old and (despite her precociousness and prodigy levels of talent) has proven not being able to stomach the stress of being a world dragon yet, cracking in less than a week. Even if she has been called upon to be a stand-in for her brother and has helped him on occasion, doing it full time is too much for her.
Greggy is at best immature, self-centered and doesn’t have much skill as a dragon and there is nothing that indicates that he even has a dragon master. In addition to this, his mother Kathy is obnoxious and condescending to others, which aren’t positive traits to have in a magical protector.
In "No body’s Fu" Marty the Grim Reaper is seen standing in line to get a license renewed. It’s initially a funny little cameo, but the implications are humongous. If the Grim Reaper needs a license, then that fact amps up the importance of the Magical department and their rules to an amazing degree. In short terms: Death personified needs their permission for something! Really shows the scale of the situation Fu is in.
It is implied that the general frowning on human/dragon relationships is due to the fact that dragon powers have been shown to be hereditary, with Susan Long not having dragon powers due to generation skipping as proof. They are afraid that if diluted enough over the generations, the powers will fade and dragons will be extinct altogether. Secondly, not every muggle love interest might be as understanding as Jonathan and the dragon(s) has to spend every waking moment keeping up The Masquerade, a problem that wouldn't exist if both lovers are dragons.
In "The Hunted" Rose has a unicorn figure on her desk whose neck she twists around to access her Huntsclan armory. While the act is symbolic of her Huntsclan allegiance at the time, the fact that the figure isn’t a real unicorn signifies how she’s not going to harm any magical creatures going forwards.
Haley's breakdown in "Being Human" seems sudden until you realize that, like Jake, she has to not only perform the duties of the American Dragon but also her normal routine and schooling, except that Haley attends a private school and has many activities that demand a lot of her attention, much more so than Jake who has a normal workload you'd expect from someone his age and is used to working through failures that he can shrug them off with an "Aw, man!" and strive to do better. Combine Haley's regular workload with the suddenness of her new American Dragon duties and her being the The Perfectionist and it's no wonder she started cracking so fast.
In the final battle against the Dark Dragon Trixie and Spud are trying to use a Huntsclan staff when Spud presses a button which sprays water on them; funny, yeah, but if you're going to be fighting fire-breathing reptiles that would come in handy if your clothes were set ablaze.
Why is Haley's training so light compared to Jake's? For starters, she's only 8, and she's got far less dragon responsibilities, because she's only next in line to be the American Dragon. In "Being Human", when she temporarily takes over for Jake, Sun makes her training just as heavy as Jake's was. Before then, she was only next in line, and they had plenty of time before she would even take on a substantial role in the field, but once she actually becomes the American Dragon, she needs to train far more rigorously to meet the demands of the job.
In "Act 4, Scene 15", Spud is on his laptop, helping Jake find the Huntsclan's tomb. He then tells Jake he found something on an urban myth website; a photographer went into a cave on the outer edge of Central Park, and was never seen again. All that was found was his camera… with a photo of the Huntsclan insignia on it. This strongly implies that the Huntsclan murdered an innocent person who was unlucky enough to stumble upon their tomb. And if they're willing to go that far just to keep their secret hidden… who knows how many more people have "gone missing" because of them.
In "Something Fishy This Way Comes" has this and a dose of Fridge Brilliance. The Kelpie has been stated to have been on the loose for a year, which is about the same time as Jake has been the American dragon at this point. The Mermaid City and officials might not have thought it a good match to pit a new inexperienced dragon against the #2 greatest threat to the magical community.
The horror sets in when you realize that the mermaid detectives didn't tell Lao Shi about it either, leaving plenty of time for the Kelpie to attack and devour several magical creatures. To hammer it home, the Kelpie transforms into a number of them during the episode, A troll, a dog and an elf. Those deaths are on your fins, mermaids!
Huntsboys 88 & 89 are all that's left of the Huntsclan after they were wiped out, and plan on continuing their work. That means in time, a new Huntsclan will be reborn.
In "Dreamscape" it's revealed that Rotwood has a Chimera sealed in his subconsciousness, the #6 greatest threat to the magical community because of its powers in the dream realm, where it can cause horrifying nightmares afflicting an entire city. There might be an extra reason Rotwood is so mean.
This leads into a case of Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Irony: No mention is made of how the Chimera got into Rotwoods subconsciousness or how it was trapped there. It possible that Rotwood's sheer desire to catch a magical creature led to it being trapped in his mind, but without his knowledge.
In "Feeding Frenzy", while it's played for laughs, Spud and Trixie are revealed to have been eaten by the sharkwoman of the episode. While it's bad enough to get eaten by a shark, the real fridge horror lies in how long they had to stay there. Logically they'd have been eaten in New York and the episode mainly takes place in Florida Keys. The pair had been in the stomach of a sharkwoman for more than the time it takes her to swim over 1000 miles!
Jake using Cupid's arrows to make Rose love him has another layer to it: Lao Shi has taught him "trust No one". While Lao Shi most likely were referring to people that Jake'll deal with while on Dragon-duty, this example shows that the advice might be getting to Jake in his private life.
The Avimetrus steals youth and leaves its victims old and frail. How many hasn't been kids one second and then a fragile elder the next? And that's the survivors! It's impossible to gauge how many have been piles of dust have been left behind over the years.
The Grim Reaper is a position that requires one to defeat the existing one. Marty is the current one and choose, willingly, to fight and defeat the former holder of the title and then claim souls afterwards. The jolly prankster wanted to be around people on the verge of death for a living!
Jasmine's powers in "Dragon Breath" can become this. Remember that Trixie and Spud had their souls switched at the end of the episode, how many others had that happened to? Not to mention, none of them ever mention it again, combined with the fact that neither Lao Shi and/or Fu Dog are opposed to brew up magical mindwipe potions.
The Huntsclan's grand equinox hunt. Hunting sentient beings is bad enough, but they do this twice a year and have been for many years turns nasty quick. Just the thought of how many thousands of magical creatures died during those hunts is mindblowing.
A minor one, but one of Susan's relatives tried to give her 99 living gnomes as a wedding gift. These gnomes are sentient magical creatures and tried to make a run for it as soon as they came out of the box. This looks a lot like slavery, which is performed by (assumingly) a guardian of the magical community.
This isn't the only case of it, Goblins were shown to trap and trade sentient fairies and keep them as pets for their children.
Fu Dog, with a life expectancy of several hundred years, will eventually outlive each of the main characters of the show.
Sarah of the Oracle twins will see a lot of people die, it's all but stated she has already seen Jake's death when she first met him, since she asks if he wants to know the day and time of his demise.
Since Sarah only sees bad futures, all the deaths she sees are probably unpleasant and Jake can only hope he performs a Heroic Sacrifice of some sort as he's probably not passing away in his sleep at a ripe old age, that is his absolute best option when it comes to his demise!
Actually, it's not necessarily guaranteed to be that bad for him. Remember, this is one of the girls who considered tying shoelaces to be a "good" event. Their perception of good and bad is probably a little skewed. For all we know, Sarah considers all deaths to be bad things.
The Dragon Council is not as squeaky clean as one would expect.
Ordering their members to mindwipe regular humans if they find out about the magical world, even if they're the best friends of the Dragon. And they don't send out others to do it, they send the dragon that knows them. That's cold.
Admittedly, this could be Lao Shi's decision, which only makes his teaching methods all the more harsh and severe.
The council seems to have no problem with training children to deal with dangerous criminals, murderous beasts or world ending threats.
The Council also have a level of fascism going on, such as deciding whom dragons that are stuck in human form, such as Susan, can marry. While Jonathan passed the muster, how many hasn't over the years? Not to mention, them accepting that Jake was with Rose is almost impossible under those circumstances.
In extension of the above, the council decides whether an individual can be a world dragon based on how the parents are as people, not the individual themselves. An irresponsible parent who had a decent kid could be ruled out based on this alone.
The wish wiped the Huntsclan from existence, that includes the children and the members of the Huntsclan that was on a lookout in the hospitals. Imagine the effect on the clinic when one or several of your co-workers suddenly start floating before disappearing and no one can explain why.
What's worse, their entire arsenal still exists, weapons and technology years ahead of their time, another organization could come in and take those inventions, or children might find their way into the bases and start playing. Jonathan showed that even adults can carelessly create mass destruction when he accidentally activated the self-destruct mechanism.
Apparently, this world allows for little troll girls to have pets that are cursed monsters, which can infect normal people, so they turn into Were-monsters.
Yan Yan and Fu Dog are shown to each pilot fighter planes from World War I, which all but states that both were participants (they appear to have fought for different sides then too). This raises a whole lot of questions, like how many did they shot down during the war? And even more gruesome: Did magical communities across the world fight each other during the war a well?
When Pandarus stole leprechaun gold, he indirectly caused several leprechauns to die as without their gold, they’re unlucky and will perish as a result.
A lot of the creatures in the series are generalized and the most notorious are put in a list of the most dangerous ones who’re naturally mistrusted by the rest of the magical creatures. This serves to make the magical community a hotbed for Fantastic Racism. Which is enforced by the dragons themselves!
Brad's being Held Back in School is given for his having a license and that's all funny and stuff, except in "Being Human" Brad announces that he's just pulled his fourth eighth grade pre-graduation prank on Rotwood which means he's been in eighth grade since he was at least 13-14 years old, if not later considering how Book Dumb he is. It becomes really not funny when you remember that Brad was Jake's competition for Rose (if briefly until Rose saw his true colors) and how Brad might actually be a legal adult at this point; age of consent in the state of New York is seventeen, Rose is at most fifteen at the end of the series. Not sure if this counts as Getting Crap Past the Radar or just some unfortunate math on the creator's part, but yikes.
Why do Jake and Haley's dragon forms look canid in appearance? According to one of the writers of the show on the Toonzone forums, at one point there were plans to reveal that their father Jonathan was a werewolf, therefore making both siblings Heinz Hybrids.
. Seems just fun... Then you remember that Rose is Huntsgirl, raised by the Huntsclan, who until just a few months before hated dragons with a passion, and is disarmed while facing a furious dragon master who in his youth defeated and nearly killed the goddamn Dark Dragon while in the same room of the one dragon that made her realize that they're not all evil. Now, what would you do in her place?
