Happy Tree Friends / Tropes A to F

Happy Tree Friends Trope Examples
A - F | G - Z

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A

• Aardvark Trunks: Sniffles the anteater has a very expressive mouth at the bottom of his trunk.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Absurdly sharp everything, actually. If it can have a sharp edge in the real world, it will have a super-sharp edge in this show, and someone will be killed or maimed by it.
• Accidental Suicide: Happens quite a bit:
  • In "Easy Comb, Easy Go", Cuddles unknowingly drinks hair growth formula and pukes out his hairy internal organs before his entire insides get replaced with hair.
  • In "As You Wish", Nutty wishes for a lollipop. He tries to swallow it whole and chokes to death.
  • In "From A to Zoo", Cuddles unintentionally impales his eye on the nozzle of a helium tank, causing his eye to float upwards like a balloon as his helium-induced screams get higher and higher until he finally dies.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: The alliterative sentences for characters in starring images for the 3rd season. It was even lampshaded in the Wrath of Con Blurb. "'Wrath' was the first episode ever to be entirely developed in HD...and inventively initiated illiterated illustrations into the titles!"
• Adults Are Useless: Very much so in Pop's case. As well-meaning as he is, his lack of attention and ineptitude often leads to Cub's death (and occasionally his own). Lumpy also falls under this banner in episodes such as "From A To Zoo", and when Giggles' Mom shows up for the first (and probably last) time, she doesn't notice when her daughter's head is replaced with an acorn... or when it falls off, squirting blood in her face. The Mole also qualifies, though in his case it's due to blindness and not just stupidity.
• Aerith and Bob: To make a long story short, everyone either has a cutesy-sounding name or a Meaningful Name... except for Russell. ^note It's actually a reference to mussels, a favorite food of otters, but try to figure that out yourself.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • In "The Wrong Side of the Tracks", Lumpy's attempt to stop Giggles and Petunia's runaway rollercoaster car with his bare hands results in his feet being eroded before the rest of him follows suit and all that's left is the top of his head.
  • In "Every Litter Bit Hurts", The Mole unknowingly stabs Sniffles' foot with a waste stick.
  • In "In Over Your Hedge", Fliqpy cuts off Lumpy's feet with a length of rope.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: All the cast members are animals, and a majority of them have colors that they can't have in real life. Long story short, the characters closest to having a color shared with their real life counterparts are Pop & Cub (beige bears, and beige is a shade of brown). If you really want to stretch it, there's also Lammy (whose skin is purple but at least her sheep wool is white), Petunia (her dark blue fur and light blue stripes can be seen as an exaggeration of a skunk's black and white pattern), and Handy (whose orange fur can similarly be interpreted as saturated brown beaver fur).
• Ambidextrous Sprite: The Mole's mole, Lumpy's inverted antler, Russell's hook hand and eye patch, and Nutty's lazy eye tend to change from side to side, often in contiguous shots. This is done so often that it almost seems intentional.
• Ambiguous Gender: In the show, Flaky's gender is never directly stated and has led to some confusion; Word of God is inconsistent on the subject, but usually says girl. Jokes about her gender confusion are sometimes slipped into the show because one of the writers, Kenn Navarro, finds it hilarious to watch people argue over her gender.
• An Aesop:
  • If the series has any fairly consistent aesop, it's household safety. It's quite impossible for parents to claim that the show sets a bad example for small children, since many of the deaths involve accidents caused by playing with kitchen tools, matches, and the old favorite: not turning something off at the plug. Alternatively, the characters make very certain to turn things off, and it's something else that causes the accident.
  • "Easy for You to Sleigh" has a particularly poignant one about smoke detectors. After overcooking a turkey, Pop yanks the battery out of his smoke detector, then later in the same short he and Cub suffocate when Lifty and Shifty shove a tree in their chimney and Pop lights a fire.
• An Arm and a Leg: Though characters lose limbs left and right in this show, the only usage where it actually has plot relevance is "I Nub You," where Petunia loses her hands when a windowsill falls on them and ends up falling in love with Handy due to their shared injuries.
• And I Must Scream:
  • In "Blast From The Past", Sniffles accidentally causes an eternal time-loop of himself, Lumpy, Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy dying over and over again.
  • In "Tongue Twister Trouble", Sniffles gets frozen alive.
  • Sniffles once again. In "Tongue in Cheek" he builds a robot that mimics his every movement to capture the ants for him. This backfires, and Sniffles awakens to find that the ants have reversed the helmets, with one of the ants controlling him. Sniffles loses complete control of his body as the ants subject him to Cold-Blooded Torture via mind control before making him kill himself.
  • In "House Warming", Petunia is reduced to a burnt bloody mush that can barely even move.
  • "Can't Stop Coffin" is a nonstop And I Must Scream situation for Cuddles. He is trapped in a coffin, buried alive, has his fingers reduced to bone from scratching the lid, is set on fire, almost drowns, the wheel of a car tears his face apart, and blind Mole pulls out one of his eyes. He then drags his mangled, eyeless body across the floor until being finally crushed by the car. What's more horrifying about this is that nobody else is aware of the hell he's put through.
  • In "By The Seat Of Your Pants", Handy (who already lost both of his arms), gets his legs chopped off by Flippy, rendering him immobile.
  • In "Dream Job", Lumpy inadvertently tortures Sniffles by flipping through various channels of the TV attached to his dream helmet, forcing him to go through numerous deaths until he overpowers the TV and renders him catatonic.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Each episode ends with a lesson, cheerful thought, or general admonition like "Don't forget to floss!" Since these were inserted into the television series, they now have some distant relation to the lesson you should have learnt.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: The ending of "Read 'em and Weep". Lumpy, ironically as a priest, successfully de-possesses Cub of the tentacled beast inside him, only for Pop to kill him in an act of unknowing self-defense. As the two mourn at Cub's grave, a tentacle suddenly pops out of Lumpy's mouth...
• Animal Species Accent: Several of the characters have voices befitting of their real life species.
  • Lammy the sheep is the best example, saying "baa" whenever she talks.
  • Lumpy can make low-pitched moans like a real moose.
  • Pop, Disco Bear and Fliqpy have deep, gruff voices that many bears, real and fictional, are known for.
  • Sniffles has a shrill, nasally voice, not unlike the sounds anteaters actually make.
  • Flaky makes high-pitched screeches and whines similar to those of actual porcupines.
  • Giggles has a high-pitched voice, a classic chipmunk trait.
  • Nutty chitters like a normal squirrel.
• Animal Stereotypes:
  • Among the cast of characters is a hardworking beaver (Handy), a visually impaired mole (The Mole), a stupid moose (Lumpy), raccoon thieves (Lifty and Shifty), a cute but mischievous rabbit (Cuddles), a hyperactive squirrel (Nutty), and a bear that goes on a violent rampage when provoked (Flippy).
  • Petunia and Flaky are aversions. The former is a skunk with an obsession with cleanliness and the latter is a cowardly porcupine whose quills are never used for self-defense.
• Animated Music Video: One for Fall Out Boy's "Carpal Tunnel of Love". The band themselves only turn up for a few seconds and are abruptly decapitated halfway through. The video also manages to capture three of the show's signature styles into three minutes: Eye Scream, Brick Joke and Gorn.
• Ant Assault: There's a family of ants who frequently torment, try to kill, and, in some cases, actually kill Sniffles.
• Anyone Can Die: Every character, excluding Buddhist Monkey, Panda Mom, and Giggles' Mom has died at least once.
• Art Evolution: The character designs were refined over time, becoming less stiff and a little "cuter." For instance, the characters' buck teeth are rounder, and Sniffles' snout has gotten shorter. The animation has also gotten smoother over time, and the deaths have become more graphically detailed.
• Art Shift:
  • During the height of the show's popularity, Mondo created the KA-POW! series. Basically, they're just Happy Tree Friends shorts made in different art styles. They include "Three Courses of Death", "Books of Fury", and "Enter the Garden," starring Buddhist Monkey, a film character in the HTF universe; "Splendid's S-S-S-S-Super Squad"; "Operation Tiger Bomb", an origin story for Fliqpy; and "Mole in the City". The Lumpy short "Ski Patrol" also has a different art style, but isn't considered a KA-POW! episode.
  • As explained under the show's Awesome page, in one shot of Wrath of Con, the art style shifts to a still, painted style. Splendid even gains pectoral muscles and an Exposed Animal Bellybutton.
• Art-Style Dissonance: If all you saw about the show was the non-gory promotional material, you'd never guess its true premise in a million years.
• Aside Glance: Whenever Handy's lack of hands inconveniences him, he glares into the camera.
  • Fittingly during their date in "I Nub You", Petunia also looks at the camera angrily after she tries to grab a bowling ball.
• Asshole Victim: Lifty and Shifty, and Lumpy when he's the villain. A case could also be made for Disco Bear, Sniffles, Nutty, and, on the rare occasion that he actually dies, Splendid.
• Ass Shove: When Toothy flies off his bike seat in Brake the Cycle, he lands on the seat part minus the seat.
• Ax-Crazy: When Flippy's evil side emerges, he will kill everyone around him with no remorse. ^note Just why he's so utterly insane under his outgoing, if nervous, exterior was explored in the short Operation Tiger Bomb. It cemented Flippy's status as the most batshit crazy character in the series.

B

• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In "From Hero to Eternity", after Handy has finished shoveling his driveway, he avoids getting crushed by half of a giant snowball, which hits said driveway and undoes his work. He groans and kicks his house in frustration, causing a piece of ice to come off the roof and cut his head in half.
  • In "And the Kitchen Sink", Flaky avoids getting run over by Pop's car, only to get gibbed by the chunk of his house's wall that he was carrying behind him.
  • In "Party Animal", Flaky has the right mind to unplug her blender before removing a peanut stuck in the blades and avoids the potential hand mutilation, only to eat the peanut and discover she's allergic to it.
  • In "Ipso Fatso", when Disco Bear drives out of the gym on a runaway treadmill, he breaks through a window and the resulting shards cut Nutty and Russell into pieces. Handy is protected by his hard hat, only to get hit in the face with a chunk of pavement from Disco Bear tearing up the sidewalk.
  • Near the beginning of "Concrete Solution", Lumpy narrowly avoids shooting himself in the eye with a nailgun due to it not being plugged in. As soon as he plugs it into a nearby outlet, however, he accidentally shoots Handy in the back of the head and into wet concrete.
    • Later when Lumpy falls off the bridge, he survives the fall, then getting run over by Lifty and Shifty's van, before finally being crushed by the block that Handy's corpse was encased in.
  • In the Nutty's Party Smoochie, the "Gift" option gives Nutty a giant pair of scissors. You'd expect him to accidentally kill himself with them...instead, he tosses them away in disappointment. The balloons tied to his back then float up and slide up to his neck, strangling him, and him desperately trying to reach the scissors to cut them off.
• Banana Peel: Double subverted in Ipso Fatso. Lumpy notices he's about to step on one, and lifts his foot over it... only to see that the floor also has nails, a snake, spikes, a frayed cord, and lava in various places. Then he falls over anyway back outside and onto a bike, breaking his spine.
• Banister Slide: A more grim example than most in "Home Is Where the Hurt Is", where Giggles slides down a banister with nails sticking out of the top. Even more so, by the time she's at the bottom she's completely split in half.
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • Flippy plays with this trope - when it is worse, it's pretty horrific.
  • The actual wild bear that mauls Lumpy in Take a Hike.
• Beat Still, My Heart: Lumpy's heart after Cub rips it out at the end of "Rink Hijinks".
• Behind the Black:
  • Cro-Marmot can only move when off camera.
  • Similarly, Handy (who has no hands) will do things off camera like shovel snow and build an entire house, but once he's on screen he can't do any of the same.
  • The Mole is able to eat things off camera with his mouth covered all the time.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't do anything that reminds Flippy of the war...which happens to be a lot of things, making it more of a berserk minefield. Subverted in Without a Hitch. Flaky is hugely paranoid that Flippy will go insane and kill her, with three imagined deaths shown. He actually doesn't do anything bad at all. Consequently, she stabs him in the eye and he gets run over by a truck...
  • Nor should you kill the Buddhist Monkey's plant.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Flippy is normally one of the nicest characters on the show, but once you remind him of the war, he'll become the psychopathic murderer Fliqpy. Even Good Flippy gets this sometimes - he's one of the only characters that have killed someone for revenge.
  • Also, Lammy. Though she may seem very nice (and she is) she is schizophrenic and will kill you without meaning to whenever "Mr. Pickles is trying to kill you".
  • Flaky is generally kind, if cautious. However, in Without a Hitch, not only did Flippy not flip out, she flipped out for fear of him killing her and stabbed him, which led to him getting run over by a truck.
  • Lumpy is generally portrayed as being well-meaning but too stupid to realize the damage he causes, but in "We're Scrooged" he intentionally kills Toothy so he can sell Toothy's organs.
• Bigger on the Inside: Lumpy's trailer, as well as Mime's tent (which looks like a walled room from the inside).
• Big "NO!":
  • Splendid when he discovers his bread is burnt in Better Off Bread.
  • While not exactly a "No!", Russell does a very drawn-out "Yarr!" in the episode Sea What I Found. Given the circumstances, it's obvious that he means no.
  • Pop when he thinks Cub has been reduced to a head in "And the Kitchen Sink".
• Bizarrchitecture: "Home Is Where the Hurt Is", where everybody builds Giggles a new house. Because of Lumpy scrambling the blueprints, it ends up being a total slaughterhouse.
• Blatant Lies: The episode description for Happy Trails - Part 1: "Is this really the end of the indestructible Happy Tree Friends?" A Wayback Machine archive has Part 1 do this trope for Part 2 saying "Find out what really happened to the Happy Tree Friends!"
• Bloodier and Gorier: The show did start out as this to other adult cartoons at the time, but the deaths and injuries became gorier and more detailed as it progressed (especially during the TV season), thanks in no part to the Art Evolution.
• Bloody Hilarious: The extremely over-the-top gorey way the characters meet their demise in every episode is at least half of the show's appeal.
• A Bloody Mess: Happens in Flippin' Burgers, where Giggles gets ketchup splattered on her by Cuddles and Flippy mistakes it for blood, causing him to flip out. Promptly inverted later at the end of the episode, when Flippy dips a fry in Cuddles's blood.
• Blow Gun: In From A to Zoo, Lumpy attempts to sedate a baboon mauling Sniffles using one of these. He misses the first shot and hits Petunia instead, causing her to tumble into the snake exhibit. Lumpy tries again, but he's in such a hurried panic over Sniffles and Petunia's conditions that he accidentally sucks the dart in when taking his breath.
• Bludgeoned to Death: In "Read 'Em and Weep", the demon that has possessed Cub leaves his body. Unfortunately, Pop fails to notice that he's back to normal and smashes his head with a shovel until he dies.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Subverted by accident. "Happy Trails - Part 1" was supposed to be this. At the time, they thought it would be the last ever episode of Happy Tree Friends, and at the end of the episode, the bus falls off of the cliff, with the words "To be continued." However, they ended up creating more episodes, the first of which resolved the cliffhanger.
• Book Ends:
  • "Blast from the Past" starts and ends with Sniffles about to have a glass of milk, only for Lumpy to convince him to go with him to the playground.
  • "Pet Peeve" begins and ends with Sniffles' blob pet crawling onto Lumpy's leg, scaring him, and making him spill his bread crumbs all over himself, attracting a slew of birds that attack him.
• Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed in Double Whammy Part 2. While Flippy and Fliqpy's staple guns do eventually run out of staples, they seem to hold more than should be possible.
• Brick Joke: "Protecting the Slopes", an Art Shift short starring Lumpy, has a big one. First, he inflates Toothy using an oxygen tank, which flies away after going haywire. Later in the same short, the tank blows up over a mountainside, causing an avalanche. Then at the very end of the short, the inflated Toothy pops on a needle standing on top of a flagpole.
• Bumbling Dad: Deconstructed with Pop, in a world which pities no mistakes, or some seemingly safe decisions. If he's distracted by something, you can bet the results for Cub will be fatal.
• By Wall That Is Holey: Subverted in ''A Hole Lotta Love'.' Cuddles looks like he's about to be saved this way, but the frame of the window cuts him apart. Played straight with Mime, though.

C

• The Cameo:
  • Truffles, the other candidate from the Vote or Die event that Lammy and Mr. Pickles won against, occasionally shows up as a background character. And, of course, he's been killed at least twice.
  • Happy Tree Friends did an animated music video for Fall Out Boy's "The Carpal Tunnel of Love". HTF versions of the band briefly show up and are quickly and horribly killed.
• Camp Wackyname: Camp Pokeneyeout, which is also the name of the episode it's featured in.
• Canine Confusion: Whistle is a blue dog.
• Carcass Sleeping Bag: Flippy at one point had to hide inside the corpses of his friends and fellow soldiers to avoid detection by Tiger General's forces. This was, as can be imagined, incredibly traumatic for him.
• Carnivore Confusion: Flippy has eaten Mime's remains, and has drunk Cuddles's and Shifty's blood. This seems akin to cannibalism until you realize that Flippy is a bear, and the other three are a deer, a rabbit, and a raccoon respectively; suddenly, the issue becomes that much more complicated.
• Casanova Wannabe: Disco Bear. He always hits on female characters, but they don't see to care for him. There have been multiple occasions where, when the ladies he hits on are actually dying, he believes they are dancing.
• Cerebus Syndrome: In the beginning, Fliqpy's killing sprees were just what happened and nothing more, to have those plots turn into more serious, advanced subjects and Bait-and-Switch moments.
• Cheated Angle: Due to the characters' large heads and lack of shoulders, their arms may sometimes be drawn jutting out the side of their heads.
• Chekhov's Gun: This is one of those shows where if you see some innocuous item or event early on, chances are it'll come back at the very last second to kill the last character who's still alive.
• The Chew Toy: Everyone, apart from Splendid and Cro-Marmot (who rarely die compared to the others).
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Giggles' Mom only appears in one episode and is never seen again afterwards.
  • The Ants would later on become diagnosed with this, for they completely disappear after the TV series.
• Circling Birdies: Russell gets circling fish and starfish after being hit by Lumpy's anchor in "Off the Hook".
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The Ant Family always inflict this upon Sniffles whenever he tries to eat them. They're at their worst in "Tongue in Cheek".
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • Cuddles - Lemon Yellow
  • Giggles - Pink
  • Toothy - Mauve
  • Lumpy - Azure Blue
  • Petunia - Navy/Indigo
  • Handy - Orange
  • Nutty - Chartreuse
  • Sniffles - Sky Blue
  • Flaky - Crimson Red
  • Pop & Cub - Apricot Brown
  • Disco Bear - Gold
  • Mime - Violet
  • The Mole - Magenta
  • Russell - Aquamarine
  • Lifty & Shifty - Pine Green
  • Flippy - Mint Green
  • Splendid - Cyan Blue
  • Cro-Marmot - Lime Green (without his ice block)
  • Buddhist Monkey - Dandelion Yellow
  • Lammy - Lavender
  • Truffles - Steel Blue
• Comedic Sociopathy:
  • Plenty of it. The characters' disregard for one another's safety is astonishing, though they might just be too dim to realize what they're doing to each other, seeing as they react with plenty enough horror when confronted with another dead character.
  • The episode "We're Scrooged!" has Lumpy playing against type and taking the role of the Scrooge. He very intentionally steals the money from Mole's charity jar, then later sells the body parts of a mangled Toothy as trendy toys. His greed gets the better of him, when the last body part goes to Mole, who pays him with a pebble Lumpy threw in the charity jar.
• Companion Food:
  • In "Aw, Shucks!", Lumpy starts treating a giant cob of corn like his own child, complete with feeding it and taking pictures of it "growing up". When the cob becomes burnt and turns into popcorn, he wails over it before realizing the popcorn tastes good.
  • In "A Sucker for Love", Nutty falls in love with a box of chocolates, and dreams about how his life with it would be like.
• Compressed Hair: In Snip Snip Hooray Pop removes Cub's beanie which reveals a full mane of hair and long bangs.
• Cosmic Plaything: Any character in any situation is likely to be this. Often, they survive incredible things only to die from a throwaway detail anyway. See also Diabolus ex Machina and Everything Trying to Kill You.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: For a period of time the parental advisory featured an image of a worried Pop covering Cub's eyes.
• Crapsaccharine World: The world looks sweet and cuddly and so friendly that you can't imagine anything possibly dying in it... which makes it all the more hilarious when the inevitable bloody slaughter begins.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Every character's deaths are like this. Ironically, the least cruel and "cleaner" deaths, such as carbon monoxide inhalation, are seen as the most unusual deaths in the show.
• Crying at Your Birthday Party: A rare happy example in "Party Animal". When the Tree Friends give Flippy a surprise birthday party, he smiles and sheds a Single Tear of gratitude.

D

• Deadly Rotary Fan:
  • In "Party Animal", Flippy ties some balloons to Cuddles's neck, causing him to float up and get shredded by the fan.
  • In "No Time Like the Present", Handy gets his foot stuck on the floor with a knife, so he gets a saw to cut a hole in the floor. He cuts right where the fan downstairs is, and Lumpy, who is right below it, gets his head sliced off when the piece of ceiling is detached.
  • Exaggerated in "Mime and Mime Again" when a Bandage Mummy Toothy is shredded to pieces by a desk fan that one of his bandages got caught in.
  • Similarly, Handy in "A Handy Nanny" is shredded by Pop accidentally knocking a standing fan onto him.
• Deadpan Snarker: The guy who writes the blurbs in the special remastered HD episodes of Happy Tree Friends.
  "The safest place during a fire is in the elevator... in another building."
• Demoted to Extra: Mime and Lifty & Shifty haven't had much importance after the TV series. They haven't had much luck in the fourth season either.
  • Not just them; Nutty, Pop & Cub, Russell, Flaky, Toothy, Cuddles, Giggles, Petunia, Handy and Lammy's appearances have become rare also. Subverted with the likes of Cro-Marmot, Splendid and Flippy, though, as they have had sporadic appearances since the beginning.
• Death Glare:
  • Handy's trademark is doing one into the camera when he's in a scenario that requires hands, since he lacks them.
  • A much grimmer example is the one Fliqpy seems to have pasted onto his face at all times.
• Death Is Cheap: And how. By the end of an episode, at least one character (often more) will be dead or otherwise horrifically injured (e.g. reduced to a burnt and bloodied mush after being set on fire and having it stamped out), yet you can guarantee that they'll be perfectly alive and well by the next episode, with no regards to any past deaths. Several of the main characters on the show have died over forty times in total.
• Death of a Child: Pop and Cub's gimmick is mainly that Pop is not a competent parent and his negligence constantly costs the life of Cub, and sometimes of himself, in very gruesome ways as is the norm for Happy Tree Friends episodes. Examples include when he tries to wash him in the sink and accidentally scalds his lower half, then slices him up below the waist in the garbage disposal, and when he is cutting the hedge and accidentally slices the top part of his head off.
• Deconstructed Trope: The series pretty much answers the question of what happens if a cartoon that relies on Toon Physics and Amusing Injuries had neither of those.
  • Any time someone is killed by something that would do the exact same thing in real life.
  • Several episodes feature comical devices or fantastic vehicles, such as the driller with a bubble porthole in "Hole Lotta Love". You'd expect the driller to dig a hole around the entirety of the vehicle, but it only digs a hole big enough for the body to go through, which unfortunately destroys the porthole and crushes Mole's head.
  • In "Easy Comb, Easy Go", when Disco Bear's afro is shaved off, he tries to replace it by sticking his head in a cotton candy maker. It works, but the friction from the spinning machine gives him several blisters on his head.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The television show was sometimes advertised as "Happy Tree Friends and Friends", due to the fact that in both its original G4TV broadcasts as well as in certain foreign-country broadcasts, other shows aired along with Happy Tree Friends.
• Desert Skull: In The Carpal Tunnel of Love, although not in the desert, Lumpy's skull after getting ripped off by a tow truck cable bears a resemblance to this.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Played for Laughs. Most episodes have characters die under improbable circumstances for no other reason than Rule of Funny. Some specific examples:
  • Most blatantly, "Swelter Skelter" where the deaths barely try to make sense. Nutty is tripped and his head breaks open like an egg. And how else can frozen fire that turns back into fire when melted be explained?
  • Flaky's death in "Wingin' It" and Sniffles' in "Idol Curiosity" are even weirder. In the former, after surviving a plane crash and shark attack, Godzilla comes out of nowhere and eats her. In the latter, after evading all of The Cursed Idol's traps, the earthquake he escaped from earlier somehow takes a cab and destroys his house. He manages to evade it again, only to break in half for no reason (this could be explained as an effect of his being cursed).
  • At the end of "Autopsy Turvy" Flippy succeeds in defeating Evil Flippy, only to walk out in the middle of a road without looking and getting hit by a chicken truck that turns him into a smear.
  • Toothy's death in "An Inconvenient Tooth": after his front teeth grow from drinking water that he accidentally spilled growth accelerator into, Toothy tries to break them down, with bloody results. Once he succeeds, Lumpy gibs him with a truck carrying more of the growth accelerator.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
  • The cast sings part of it in "A to Zoo."
  • This also happens in Happy Trails - Part 1 and Take a Hike.
• Dies Wide Open: Whenever a character dies, they'll usually have their eyes remain open.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Happy Tree Friends made a special YouTube video about copyright law that will appear when a user gets a copyright strike on YouTube and the user will be forced to watch the video and take the trivia questions about copyright. This is also a case of Screwed by the Lawyers.
  Announcer: Even though YouTube is a free video sharing site, You can still get into serious trouble. You may lose all your stuff, and even worse: You can lose your YouTube account, and you will sent to jail by the FBI for copyright infringement. The video you have uploaded will by blocked according to the law (Video clip replaces with a static screen with the message "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Lumpy. Sorry about that.") You will be notified via email and your account status, and you will get a strike (Russell screams).
• Disaster Dominoes: Happens regularly. Someone will get hurt, the others will panic, leading to more severe, fatal mistakes being made, which then leads to a wider panic that tends to kill off those left standing.
  • The episode with the most notorious example of this is likely "Class Act". Nutty bites a chunk out of Sniffles, who was dressed like a massive candy cane, runs off screaming and somehow manages to get Giggles' face sliced off. The sliced-off face flies off and hits The Mole, who's controlling the spotlight, which he fumbles and directs straight into Lifty and Shifty's eyes, who were holding Flaky upside down and who, blinded, drop her, which causes her to get skinned falling down a chimney, before getting deposited on the stage floor with her muscles exposed. All this finally triggers a panic, leading to Toothy dropping a candle and creating a fire while Cuddles blocks the escape route with his costume, leading to him being pushed out of it in a cylindrical shape. Most of the characters get out safely, but are all killed when the school explodes at the end.
• Disco Dan: Disco Bear is stuck in the '70s.
• Disintegrator Ray: In an episode where characters are competing for the brightest Christmas tree, Lumpy goes a little too far, causing some folks who are exposed to the light to catch fire, and another to completely vanish, complete with charred outline on the fence behind him.
• Disney Death: Cub has one in "And The Kitchen Sink" when Pop believes he was decapitated, but he was only buried up to his head in sand. He does actually die later by drowning in the bathtub.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • In "Banjo Frenzy". Lumpy murders Giggles, Cuddles, and Toothy for laughing at him when a string on his banjo breaks.
  • Sniffles does go out of his way to eat them, but the Ants take their retaliation far beyond self-defense by torturing and killing him as painfully and brutally as possible.
• Disrupting the Theater: In the "YouTube Copyright School" short, Russell tries to see Lumpy and the Lumpettes: The Movie at a movie theater, but his view of the movie is obscured by the antler of Lumpy himself, which leads to Russell having to record the movie on his phone.
• The Ditz: Lumpy. His stupidity constantly endangers others and himself.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Both Petunia and Giggles started out with the exact same personalities with only their appearances to tell them apart. Now, Giggles is more of a Granola Girl who Really Gets Around, and Petunia gained her Neat Freak tendencies as one of her unique traits.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Lammy is sweet and innocent. Until you think about the fact that her best friend is a pickle that makes her do evil things.
• Double Subversion:
  • An example occurs in "Home Is Where the Hurt Is". Handy looks like he's about to pierce his foot on a nail, but moves his foot away from it... just in time to knock the board loose and drive the nail through his skull.
  • Another case with nails from "The Wrong Side of the Tracks": Sniffles finds a rusty nail, gets disappointed, and throws it away. You'd think that Mime would get stung with it... only for the nail to pop Mime's balloon. Then Lumpy reacts to the sound by turning around so fast that the nails on the plank he's carrying get stuck on Mime's backhead, killing him.
• Downer Ending: Almost every episode of this show ends on these.
  • Double subverted in "Class Act". While everybody is singing "O Christmas Tree" together, the school explodes, killing them.
  • "Water Way to Go". Cub ends up being buried from the neck down in sand and being trapped underwater, and Pop ends up killing him unintentionally with the propeller of their boat. While he was searching and crying out for him, no less.
  • "Read 'em and Weep". Lumpy succeeds in extracting the tentacled monster from Cub, only for Pop to absentmindedly smash him with a shovel, not knowing that he's been cured. It then cuts to the two mourning at his grave... right when a tentacle pops out of Lumpy's mouth..
  • "Crazy Antics", "Tongue Twister Trouble", "Tongue in Cheek", "Suck It Up", and "A Hard Act to Swallow" all end with Sniffles dying a horrific and somewhat disproportionate death at the hands of the ants.
• Driven to Suicide: Petunia in Wishy Washy. When she got covered in gunk, after several failed attempts to clean it off, she skins herself with a potato peeler. ^note A popular interpretation is that she was trying to clean the dirt off her and tried the potato peeler because she had nothing else in her kitchen drawer that she hadn't tried yet.
• Dwindling Party: Many of the longer episodes have plots like this, especially where all the featured characters start off in some sort of group together. By the end, typically only one (or none at all) is still alive.

E

• Ear Ache:
  • In "Snip Snip Hooray", Pop accidently cuts off Cub's ear while cutting his hair.
  • In "From Hero to Eternity", the sound from Splendid accidentally exploding Cuddles in his attempt to give him CPR blows out Giggles' eardrums.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The very first episode from 1999, Banjo Frenzy, has little resemblance to the series other than gory deaths. Most notably, Lumpy is a dinosaur with a personality not unlike Flippy; Giggles is blue instead of pink; and the art style is almost nothing like the one seen in the actual series. The most unusual of all is that, after Toothy is decapitated, his head is somehow still alive and bites Lumpy in the foot. You'll never see something like that in the actual show.
  • The first season had its fair share of this, most notably in a character's debut episode. For example, Splendid's voice was higher-pitched than in later episodes, Flippy kept the traditional HTF face even when flipped-out, and Russell had a five o' clock shadow in his first two episodes.
• Electrified Bathtub: In the "Hot Tub Shake" short, Cuddles, Giggles, and Disco Bear are enjoying a hot tub until Fliqpy throws a toaster in it, causing them to spasm from the resulting electrocution.
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: In "In a Jam", after Cuddles tinkers with the lights, he activates colored flashing lights that cause Handy to have a violent seizure.
• Establishing Series Moment: The first episode starts with a bunch of cutesy-wutesy forest critters having fun on a playground. Then one of them splatters bloodily against a tree. This tells you everything you need to know about the show's premise.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: In "Blind Date", Disco Bear's car explodes when The Mole pushes it over a cliff.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: While it is expected for episodes with a smaller cast to kill off all the characters in them, a number of episodes featuring half a dozen characters or more have also ended with everyone dead.
  • For instance: "All in Vein", "Class Act", "From A to Zoo", "Home is Where the Hurt Is", "Idol Curiosity", "Take a Hike", "Youtube Live Episode", "Claw", and the Animated Music Video "The Carpal Tunnel of Love".
  • Keep in mind that these episodes aren't the only ones where everyone dies, but the large casts in each of them add layers to their brutality. In fact, "Class Act" is the only episode to kill off every main character except Lammy, who hasn't been introduced yet (that includes Splendid and Cro-Marmot).
• Everybody Lives: Nobody dies in "House Warming"^note Which, oddly enough, is only the second episode., "Nuttin' But The Tooth", "Out On A Limb", and technically "Dream Job"^note All of the deaths in that episode were Only A Dream by Sniffles., but there's still blood and gore. Several other episodes have no gore whatsoever, most notably "Asbestos I Can Do".
• Everyone Hates Mimes: Mime. Because why else would a mime be in a show relying on pain and death? Zig-zagged In-Universe; while most characters seem to like Mime and his tricks, quite a few like Disco Bear and Flippy have always shown annoyance or perhaps even hatred towards Mime, "Mime to Five" and "Random Acts of Silence" being an example for both respectively.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Whoo boy. The antics of the other characters, the wildlife, even the darn scenery!
• Evil Sounds Deep: Flippy's voice becomes deeper and more ominous whenever his Superpowered Evil Side takes over.
• Expy:
  • Flippy is based on John Rambo. Heck, the first time he shows up ("Hide and Seek"), all his kills are shout-outs to Rambo's kills.
  • Splendid is essentially the squirrel version of Superman.
  • Lumpy looks so much like Bullwinkle, one of his antlers had to be inverted so he didn't look too much like him.
  • A particularly obscure one is Sniffles, who may be based on the aardvark from The Ant and the Aardvark shorts by the same guys as The Pink Panther shorts.
• Eye Scream: Has its own page.

F

• Facial Horror: Somewhat common.
  • In "Gems the Breaks", after accidentally inhaling the cloud of Kryptonut gas, Splendid's nose comes off, following by most of the skin on his face.
  • In "Remains to be Seen", Zombie Petunia is missing half of her face, and the part that's exposed is visibly crawling with maggots.
  • In "In Over Your Hedge", during Flippy's war flashback, he rips off his comrade's face along with his gas mask.
  • A mild and more cartoonish example in "A Handy Nanny": when Handy boils Cub's bottle, the nipple suddenly inflates and explodes, blowing off most of the skin on his face and causing his cheeks and lips to swell up.
• False Utopia: The world is cute and perfect, but for some reason, the characters always die painfully.
• Fanart: A lot in anime style, see here.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: The episode "I've Got You Under My Skin".
• Fantasy Gun Control: There are no guns that fire real bullets anywhere in the series outside of the Vietnam War-themed Ka-pow! episode (and nobody actually gets shot by one). The writers' reason? "Too easy."
• "Far Side" Island: The episode "Happy Trails Pt. 2: Jumping the Shark" has this as the main plot. Somehow, the school bus crashes onto a deserted island after falling off a cliff in the previous part, followed by the survivors' subsequent attempts to escape.
• Fartillery: In the aptly named "Breaking Wind", Splendid lets out a fart so intense it not only strips Flaky to the bone but also engulfs the entire planet. What's notable about this is that it's the only time anyone ever passes gas onscreen in the series.
• Fear-Induced Idiocy: Considering how Too Dumb to Live the characters can be, this is a rather common occurrence:
  • In "Class Act", disasters ensue during a Christmas play. Toothy runs away screaming and tosses a candle he was holding, which sets the curtains (and the whole building) on fire. In a panic, Cuddles attempts to escape through the door, but can't fit because his costume is too big, and he never considers taking it off and then running out.
  • In "Read 'Em and Weep", Cub is finally freed from the demon that possessed him. Pop does not notice and crushes him with a shovel.
  • In "Out on a Limb", Lumpy cuts down a tree, which starts to fall in his direction. He does not think to jump out of the way and just runs forward, resulting in him being stuck due to one of the branches pinning him to the ground. Downplayed, as he is already The Ditz.
• Female Monster Surprise: "Cubtron Z" introduces a Kaiju fish-like monster. You'd at first think the monster was a male as it has a male voice but at the end of the episode, the monster is revealed to act like a female showing to wear eyelashes and an apron.
• Feud Episode: Camp Pokeneyeout is this for Cuddles and Toothy, when Cuddles mistakenly believes that Toothy slingshot a rock at him and then laughed about it. They eventually make up just in time to both be crushed by a giant boulder.
• Finagle's Law: The only way of explaining some of the accidents. In one episode, Flaky manages to overcome her fear of flying in "Wingin' It", and heroically lands an out of control plane... before a shark promptly chomps her. Then he spits her out... and then Godzilla kills her.
• Fingore: Sniffles in "Tongue in Cheek", when he gets his hand sewn to the ground and one of his fingernails torn off and salt on the exposed wound.
  • One of Toothy's fingers is bitten off by a chattering teeth toy in We're Scrooged.
• Flanderization:
  • Flaky started out as afraid of actual dangerous situations (Water You Wading For, Ski Ya Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya), to half-dangerous situations (Mime To Five, Wingin' It) to almost anything (From A To Zoo, Something Fishy)
  • Sniffles started out as a generic smart guy before turning into a somewhat mad scientist who can create just about anything.
  • Nutty also was once just a sugar addict until he pretty much fell in love with candy (look no further than the episode "A Sucker for Love").
• Flying Brick: Splendid
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Most of the "irregular" episodes, such as:
  • "Ski Patrol": A parody of an old instructional video, about ski safety.
  • "Dino-Sore Days": A parody of an early Disney short, starring Cro-Marmot.
  • "Ka-Pow!": A three-episode Spin-Off starring Flippy, Splendid, and Buddhist Monkey.
  • The HTF Breaks: A series of one-minute episodes.
  • Love Bites: A series of short Valentine's day skits.
  • Kringles: Short Christmas episodes.
  • Smoochies: Animations with three options, all three of which result in the character dying.
• Foul Waterfowl: The ducks in "Mime to Five" take this to a dangerous degree, eating several characters alive.
• Four-Star Badass: The Tiger General from "Operation Tiger Bomb".
• Fractured Fairy Tale: "Dunce Upon A Time", which parodies Jack and the Beanstalk. Lumpy is the giant.
• Frisky Ferret: Tricksy is a ferret and the second winner of the Truffles' Video Bomb Competition by rainbowspetsnaz. The description written by Tricksy's creator is "A ferret with a knack for pranks and all kinds of practical jokes, Tricksy?s never up to any good. When opportunity calls, Tricksy always answers. It never ends well for anyone, and unfortunately for him, he?s no exception!"
• From Bad to Worse: Exaggerated in "Who's to Flame?". It starts off with a House Fire, but due to all the mistakes the Tree Friends keep making, it culminates into a massive inferno, which itself leads to an explosion that kills everyone except Mime.
• Fur Is Skin: Between Cuddles with his blushing cheeks, Toothy with his freckles, Lumpy with his occasionally visible tan lines, Mime with his face paint, and Disco Bear and Cro-Marmot with full heads of hair (and chest hair in the former's case), fur and skin are pretty much interchangeable.
• Furry Confusion: The main cast consists of anthropomorphic animals who live in a world where they interact with real animals, and even keep pets, such as cats, gerbils, dogs, and an elephant on one occasion. When asked about it on a forum, writer Warren Graff compared the situation to humans and monkeys, explaining that Happy Tree Friends are the next evolution of animals, and that all Cuddles the bunny sees when he sees a non-anthropomorphic bunny is, well, a bunny.
• Furry Ear Dissonance:
  • Lumpy, Handy (bar a few occasions), Flaky and Russell have no visible ears, while their real life counterparts do (granted some of them aren't very noticeable).
  • Inverting the above examples, The Mole has small, bear-like ears on the top of his head. Real moles have inconspicuous (almost invisible) ears at the sides of their heads.

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