Go Animate / Tropes General A To B

GoAnimate Trope Examples
General examples: A - B | C - D | E - G | H - L | M - R | S - Z
Examples in specific videos: A - F | G - Z

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A

• Abusive Parents: Seen in spades. The parents ground their children for everything short of breathing, and often inflict physical maltreatment upon their kids, such as making them listen to loud music on speakers or forcing them to wear diapers past their infanthood. Some videos even have a kid getting grounded for simply existing or practically nothing.
• Accentuate the Negative: The rant videos, which mostly cover only the negative qualities or simply what the user doesn't like about the subject. What sets the GoAnimate rant videos from normal criticism videos like this is that, most of the time, the user is being dead serious when they're using this trope in their rants (including their Fan Hater-charged remarks).
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: "Acceptable" might be a bit of a stretch, but most videos that involve the misbehaving character causing a ruckus at their school tend to ignore the student seeing a school counselor or anyone to talk about the kid's behavior and jump straight to the kid getting suspended/expelled so they can get grounded faster.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: D.W. Read. As a consequence of Arthur being the most targeted character from his eponymous show, she is commonly portrayed as an innocent victim of Arthur's schemes (like Rosie) with her trademark brattiness rarely coming into play, if at all. But that's not to say that she never gets in trouble and grounded...
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Don't expect Caillou, Dora, Little Bill, Arthur, or any other kid show characters to be the wholesome lovable heroes/heroines they are canonically. Most of the time, they are portrayed as the most troublesome and naughty kids in the universe who sometimes cause trouble just for the heck of it.
  • Their parents are not much better, as most of the time they are unreasonable Jerkasses regardless of how nice or lovable they are in canon. Caillou's dad Boris, in particular, is just a hair's length away from being straight-up evil.
  • Zig-zagged with Barney. In some videos, Barney is an utter jerk, while in others there are two Barneys with different attitudes.
• Adapted Out:
  • Pretty much any non-human character from Dora the Explorer. Even Diego hasn't been seen in very many videos. This is possibly justified, in that Boots and the others are not human, and non-humans are pretty difficult to translate into any of GoAnimate/Vyond's former themes. Meanwhile, Dora (being much more well-known and popular — and thus more hated) tends to be far more of a target than Diego, making Diego Gets Grounded videos less widespread (Though that doesn't really explain Diego's absence in the many videos involving his cousin outside of the odd few).
  • Baby Bop, BJ, and Riff are almost never seen in the grounded videos. The children are only seen in videos where Barney is killed by other characters; even when they are generic children rather than specific ones who appeared on the show. Still, some people have attempted to put in these three characters.
  • Many videos involving Little Bill ignore the existence of the majority of the supporting cast and only feature Little Bill and his immediate family.
• Adults Are Useless:
  • In some Grounded videos, many of the adults seem to be (sometimes willfully) blind to what the kids (usually the troublesome "baby show" ones) want or need. At least until they start acting out.
  • Sometimes, a troublemaker will realize that they screwed up horribly and run to an adult figure, their parents, or the police for help. As soon as the troublemaker reveals that they caused the mess, they instantly get arrested or grounded without being given a chance to explain themselves further.
  • Characters will get grounded or otherwise punished even if it's clear to the adult characters that the mess the target character caused was an accident and/or it was something the character clearly didn't expect or want to happen.
• Advice Backfire: There are a number of videos that attempt to hand out social advice, (such as this one) but wind up unintentionally falling under this for numerous reasons. Usually, this is because what the user deems as "awesome" still comes off as somewhat socially awkward, among various other reasons. Like, who cheers and boasts about washing their hands or not being scared of PSAs from the 70s?
• An Aesop: Some newer videos from users like Everything PC Gaming try to squeeze out one. However, the extremely harsh punishments for a troublemaker's bad actions can make them appear aggressive.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Errors are extremely smart and will prevent all attempts to get rid of it, including powering down, installing anti-virus programs, upgrading your computer and unplugging your computer.
• The Alcoholic:
  • Some videos depict Caillou drinking beer. One video displays Caillou picking up a bottle in front of a nightclub, drinking out of it (assuming it's Dr. Pepper), and getting drunk. He proceeds to shoot a bartender, get Dora drunk, punch a random old guy off a building, and finally start driving drunk. They crash into the house, and Boris is shocked and implies this has happened before by asking "I smell beer... Did you get drunk again?". Later, Caillou is arrested.
  • Other videos may depict Caillou going to a bar, killing the bartender for beer, going home and into his room and chugging away. He wakes up and pukes. Boris rushes in but smells something familiar. OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH!
• All Crimes Are Equal: Any sort of criminal act or misbehavior can be shown to be grounds for the troublemaker's arrest (or even execution in extreme cases) if so chosen by the troublemaker's authority figures, regardless if the misdemeanor was accidental or something as petty as littering, losing a library book, or breaking a sibling's belongings.
• All Just a Dream: Videos can wind up turning out to be dreams, whether for a fairly sensible reason (such a series of random, non-grounding related events that lead to the lead character being killed) or just at the whim of the user. See also Dream Sequence below.
• All of the Other Reindeer: The plots of some "(Character) Misbehaves at (Store)" videos are kickstarted by the main character being the only person who doesn't have a certain object (which can range from a hot new electronic device to a Rugrats "Tommy Troubles" VHS tape) and being made fun of by all their peers because of it, leading to the main character asking their mom or dad to take them to the store to get one.

• Anachronism Stew: One of the infamous GoAnimate: The Movie videos (uploaded in 2013) was supposedly made in 2006 In-Universe; however, GoAnimate wasn't founded until a year later. This also extends to the video's plot, in which one of the lines involves PC Guy trying to steal an Adventure Time toy, despite the fact that said show didn't begin airing until 2010.
• And That's Terrible: Implied. The grounded videos hint on how bad that their troublemakers' actions are, by how much backlash that they receive from their parents (and often extending to many other characters), how long that they are going to be grounded for, and how serious that their punishments are. It also applies to those where the troublemaker commits much less serious actions, or even those that are innocent.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Rarely is anyone shown being upset over a trouble-maker being grounded, arrested, or even killed in some way. Sometimes a video will show everyone celebrating the fact that the trouble-maker is out of their hair with parties and trips to Chuck E. Cheese's and the like. Tropes Are Not Good, however: the "(troublemaker) Gets Executed" videos take this trope up to levels that are beyond disturbing, as they present the characters as openly celebrating the death of a troublemaker (who is often a child) to the point where the news reports on it.
• Angrish: Characters will often yell out "OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH!" or "GRRRRRRRRRR!" when they're mad.
• Angry Dance: Due to a lack of suitable animations, many characters (especially the Comedy World ones) will often have the "dance" gesture applied to them when they're angry.
• Animesque: The Chibi Peepz, Chibi Ninjas, Ninja Anime, and anime themes are all anime style. Lil Peepz also features animesque hairstyles and Cartoon Classics has a few anime expressions like sweat drops and anger veins.
• Annoyingly Repetitive Child: Many videos will have the troublemaker annoying their parents into taking them to a restaurant by repeating, "I want to go to [restaurant]!" while doing an Angry Dance.
• Ant Assault: Several videos have troublemakers put bullet ants on their target's chairs because of how painful their sting is.

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Often occurs in the videos where people repeatedly get in trouble, such as ones where the troublemaker of the day has a set amount of strikes before getting grounded/expelled. The troublemaker will simply be given a strike for things that would normally get them expelled immediately or even arrested. They can get away with killing someone or punching a teacher with only a strike. But if they get a final strike for something like throwing a tantrum over not getting what they wanted for lunch, the teacher will go ballistic and kick them out of the school.
• Artistic License – Law:
  • Many videos show the jury being composed of the accused's parents, siblings, teachers or colleagues, regardless of not if said characters had witnessed the actions the accused had done. The jury's information usually consists of Parrot Exposition galore, spending more time belittling the accused character's personal life rather than giving actual evidence against them. The sentencing also takes a few hours, when in real life, lawsuits can take up to many years, and at the shortest, months, to finish.
  • Regardless of the character's actions, life-time imprisonment or the death penalty (both of which are heavy sanctions that are usually used for serious crimes) are both tossed around as common verdicts in many videos, even if the crimes are as simple as tossing a paper cup on the ground or creating a fake VHS or television opening video.
  • As demonstrated in "X gets Y arrested" videos, dropping any food on the ground counts as littering, no matter if they are in plastic containers, wrapping or whatever.
• Artistic License – Law Enforcement: In many videos, troublemakers get innocent people arrested by littering a soda bottle, running away, and making it look like the innocent person littered it. When a cop drives by, they immediately arrest the person for littering, even if they say they were just putting it away, and lock them up in jail. In real life, this kind of arrest would not be allowed, and would get the cop's badge taken away.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Many "(Character) Misbehaves On The Way To See (Movie)" videos (especially if they involve Caillou) have a bit where the character attempts to impede their progress in getting to the theater by getting a hamburger at a fast food restaurant and wrecking the car with it. They do this by somehow tossing the burger several yards ahead of the car as it is moving down the road, and hitting the burger causes the car to wipe out spectacularly. (The wind from the car moving would blow the burger back, for one thing, and a typical burger should not be able to cause a car to fly into the air and/or flip over. If anything, all you would get is a flat hamburger.)
  • In "(Character) does Chores" videos, the troublemaker leaves the tap running, causing the entire house to be submerged in water. Unless the tap does not have a plug in it, this is physically impossible. Even though a house can be flooded by an over-running tap, it usually only reaches three feet, and it is impossible for it to flood the entire house.
  • Sometimes one of the troublemaker's punishments during a "Punishment Day" video is being forced to take a "one-billion degree shower", which is impossible as the evaporation point of water is 212°F. Even if it's just a comedically overexaggerated number, the shower is apparently so hot, it sets the troublemaker on fire, which is physically impossible unless the troublemaker was showering in molten lava.
• Artistic License – Prison: In some videos, whenever a troublemaker is arrested for committing a serious crime, they're denied basic amenities like a bed, a toilet, a sink, food, and water. In real life, criminals are always given these amenities regardless of their sentencing, and refusal to do so is a human rights violation.
• Art Shift: Insomuch as it can apply to here, some users have gradually been making an effort to make Caillou, Dora and other animated characters look more like how they do in their home media over time.
• Art-Style Clash: Many videos commonly mix and use multiple GoAnimate themes, most commonly with Comedy World and Lil' Peepz, due to their character creation features.
• Asshole Victim: Most of the characters getting grounded or however punished are intended to be seen as getting their just desserts. (However, it doesn't always work.) Other characters wind up being this when they provoke the troublemaker of the day just to be mean, and it results in the troublemaker retaliating.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Many videos have kids growing to an enormous height and going on a rampage through town or in a building when they can't get their way. One particular video features Caillou doing this, then promptly destroying the Freedom Tower and the 9/11 Memorial.
• Author Appeal: It's not uncommon to see several of these in a typical GoAnimate video, nor is it to see users who share similar interests with each other. Among the most popular examples appear to be railway/airplane enthusiasm, vanity plates, logos of companies, and Nintendo series (particularly Super Mario Bros.).
• Author Avatar:
  • Some users insert themselves into their videos as GoAnimate (or Vyond) characters, either as a Creator Cameo, the person being wronged/injured in a "Grounded" video, or sometimes even as the person getting grounded.
  • It's not hard to infer that the characters who are against the troublemakers share the same opinion of things as those of the users themselves, considering how much detail is often put into the parent or friend characters' description (as simple as they can be) of why something sucks.
• Ax-Crazy: A number of characters are liable to cause mass mayhem or beat up or murder people at the drop of a hat. Caillou's dad Boris, in particular, is often portrayed as this (either intentionally or unintentionally) by a number of users. Caillou himself can be this, too, but that's really Depending on the Writer.

B

• Baby Morph Episode: Some videos feature the troublemaker either turning someone into a baby or being turned into a baby as punishment.

• Balloon Belly: The whole point of "(Character) Gets Fat At (Place)" has this (i.e. gaining weight unrealistically fast from food) happen to the troublemaker when they eat a ridiculously large number of food there.
• Bathroom Control:
  • In several videos, a troublemaker will ask if they can use the bathroom, but the teacher will turn down their request. The student solves the problem by crapping on the teacher instead.
  • Sometimes when characters are sent to detention, the detention monitor will list the rules, one of them being no bathroom or water breaks.
• Bathroom Stall Graffiti: The Cartoon Classics bathroom background.
• Bedlam House: A lighter form of this concept due to site limitations (it's set in more the equivalent of a group home since GoAnimate didn't have an equivalent setting), the ill-advisedly named "Mental People's Home" series of videos within is this; usually the residents have no need for mental health services and it's used to take kids off exhausted parents' hands, and the caretakers' punishments are extreme.
• Berserk Button: Across many videos:
  • Caillou's mere existence is sometimes enough on its own to enrage Boris.
  • Some videos have the troublemaker-of-the-day flipping out if denied what they want at a restaurant, not getting a toy they want, or in general not getting anything they want.
  • Some of the Dora videos have Dora's trademark exploring making her parents and grandmother very angry, often for unexplained reasons.
  • Alan Cook hates Disney, but he hates fake VHS openings even more.
  • Certain videos have peeing/pooping on the floor of the house the troublemaker visits being an oddly specific pet peeve for the house's owners.
    "Now don't pee on my properties."
  • Caillou will not let you get away with it if you try to teach him friendship.
  • Don't call the janitor a "toilet man".
• Better than a Bare Bulb: There are many "grounded" videos out there that try to seem witty by adding random fourth-wall breaks to the mix, referencing memes (usually ear rape-centric ones), and lampshading everything (such as Hand Waving ridiculous things as the result of "GoAnimate Logic"). They usually tend to be far more cloying and annoying than clever or funny.
• Bewildering Punishment: A fairly frequent occurrence, whether it's the trouble-maker showing a Never My Fault attitude when they get in trouble or because they have no idea why they are being punished, such as when they get grounded for no stated reason or for reasons beyond their control.
• Big Damn Movie: It's not uncommon to see some users produce feature-length GoAnimate movies, whether ironic or not. These videos, much like the rest of the fandom's creations, tend to range between surprisingly decent or hilariously Narmy.
• Big Eater: In "Character Gets Fat At Restaurant" videos, the troublemaker will order and wolf down an extremely large amount of food.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Nearly all of the families in the grounded videos, but especially those of Caillou (Ax-Crazy dad, apathetic mom who enables dad, hot-tempered Jerkass son, only sane girl daughter) and Dora (Obscenely Abusive Parents, apathetic Jerkass grandmother, Jerkass Woobie daughter, bully cousin).
• Big Storm Episode: There are videos involving a character getting caught up in a major storm, usually ones that spawn tornadoes (almost always EF5 in scale). The determination of punishment is usually left to if they caused the tornado or if they did something during it that earned their ire.
• Big Word Shout: In "(Character) Yells Out The Word (insert random word here)" videos have the troublemaker shouting out a word that is so loud the whole world, sometimes even further, hears it.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Often, the kids act completely civil and nice until they are wronged or don't get their way, after which the gloves come off. This is more evident in the "(Character) Misbehaves at (Place)" videos.
• Black Comedy:
  • Both from the groundings and from the things that cause the groundings at times. For instance, we have the time Caillou and Dora the Explorer grilled Rosie for supper.
  • While he's no longer around now, many people familiar with the grounded videos will tell you that the user Isaac Anderson was one of the most notable producers of videos containing examples of this. Many of his videos revolved around escalating and rather violent battles between Boris and Caillou with Doris, Rosie, and other people caught in the middle, with any injuries or casualties Played for Laughs. (And almost always ending with Caillou (sometimes along with Rosie or Doris) grounded or dead.)
• Blatant Lies: In "X Gets Fired From Y" videos, the offender will lie through their teeth over having a certain item. It's one thing if they say they just don't have the item, but when the customer actually sees the item...
• Blowing a Raspberry: There's an expression for Comedy World characters called Taunt, depicting the character blowing a raspberry, which also is commonly used for Comedy World characters "kissing" each other.
• Born Unlucky: A troublemaker in grounded videos can be this. Sometimes (often in an uploader's first video out of the trouble maker), they get grounded for nothing or something that wasn't their fault.
• Bowdlerise:
  • There was a version of the GoAnimate video maker that was meant for schools and had weapons, alcohol, and tobacco props removed.
  • Users themselves tend to do this to the material they're parodying. Cartman's infamous "fuck me" rant that's become the basis of the "(Name) Misbehaves at (Place)" fad, for instance, becomes "engage me" or "*EEEENK* me.*"
• Butt-Monkey: Some troublemaker characters are characterized as particularly unlucky in certain grounded videos, in particular the original character Macusoper Busters, and Warren Cook.

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