Series / Round the Twist

Have you ever
Ever felt like this?
Have strange things happened?
Are you going round the twist?

Round the Twist was an Australian TV show that every Aussie and Brit who grew up in The '90s likely remembers watching. The show was about the Twist family — 14-year-old twins Pete and Linda, little brother Bronson and widowed father Tony, a.k.a. "Dad" — who live inside a lighthouse that seems to be a beacon for the supernatural. Ghosts, weird creatures and mysterious magical objects abound—from magic gumleaves to haunted toilets to super-power-inducing underwear, the show revelled in the weird, the revolting, the hilarious, and the downright disturbing (which did get it in trouble with the Australian censors at the time, who felt that the rude, sexually suggestive humor and scenes of horror were too much for viewers).

Also appearing in the show were the Twists' neighbour Nell, the former lighthouse keeper who knew more than she let on; Fiona Richmond, Pete's love interest and Linda's best friend; Mr Ralph Snapper, their strict and unlikeable teacher, and Ms Fay James, Bronson's teacher and Tony's love interest. In the antagonist role were Harold Gribble, the slimy real-estate agent and later mayor, his uptight wife Matron Gribble, their school bully son James Gribble, and James's sidekicks Tiger and Rabbit.

Four series of 13 episodes each were made altogether, produced in 1989, 1992, 1999 and 2000, originally for the Seven Network but later picked up by The ABC. The first two series were based on the short stories of children's author Paul Jennings, who also wrote the scripts. Due to "creative differences" Jennings left the show after that, taking the rights to his stories with him. When the show was revived seven years later by the ACTF (presumably to up the number of episodes to 52, i.e. one for every week of the year), it consisted of original stories written by a new team of writers. During the 7 years the show was off-air, The Genie from Down Under (a similar but far less popular show also made by the ACTF, but with an explanation for the unusual events that occurred) took its place. Around the same time, the even-lesser-known series Driven Crazy, also based on Jennings' stories, aired on Network Ten.

The show was also run in Britain on CBBC and in America on Fox Kids (around the time that FK was airing horror comedies, like Goosebumps (1995), Eerie, Indiana, and Toonsylvania. Fox Kids in America even advertised Round The Twist as an Australian version of Goosebumps^note though it's more like Eerie, Indiana in that there's a running storyline rather than being strictly episodic), and hence the series has some recognition in both places.

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Provides examples of:

General tropes

• Bringing Running Shoes to a Car Chase: In "Ice Maiden", Tony has to perform an emergency stop on a public road^note In an open-topped Land Rover Series III without seatbelts. to avoid running over Bronson as he rolls down a hill inside a trolley. He then has to get out of the car and chase the trolley along the pier, fails to catch it before it falls of the end, then jumps into the water to save his son from potentially drowning.
• Butt-Monkey - Poor, poor Pete.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Pete saying he's a dog trapped in a boy's body and Tony gradually opening up to the idea of it sounds like a typical coming out story, only instead of being gay or transgender Pete is a were-dog.
  • In episode 7 Pete encounters a red-faced, drunken old man with a scraggly beard sleeping on the roof of a school. He's a registered Santa and has an ID card with a large number on it.
  • Linda’s reaction to being an Invisible Streaker is happily shed her clothes, free to be naked and unashamed as a "spirited adventure". One might get the impression she has nudist tendencies.
• Cool Old Lady - Nell.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive - Gribble is a small town version of this.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune - Tamsin West, the original Linda, sings the opening and closing themes. They kept the same music even after Linda was recast.
• Credits Montage - Usually includes a few outtakes^note Mostly actors laughing at the ridiculous stuff they have to do. and deleted scenes.
• Eat the Camera - How the opening credits end. On Bronson in series one and two, Linda in series three and four. Also happens to Rabbit at the end of "Spaghetti Pig-Out", when Pete is about to rewind his spaghetti vomiting, and Tiger at the end of "Whirling Derfish".
• Eccentric Townsfolk - The whole main cast, although the Gribble family are particularly nasty.
• Enemy Mine - Every so often, the Twists would team up with the Gribble family to deal with a worse enemy or a bigger problem. In the first episode of Season 3, it's even lightly parodied when Gribble, Tiger and Rabbit, who have been chasing after Pete for the entire episode, are suddenly called upon to help him out, and the reply is "Okay, we'll give you a hand, but then we'll beat you up."
• Ensemble Cast - Pete, Linda, and Bronson - no one is the main character, but Linda probably gets the least plotlines revolving around her.
• Episode Tagline: In the episode "Without My Pants", one of the characters is cursed to say, "without my pants" at the end of his sentences.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" - Matron Gribble, a hospital matron, is called "Matron Gribble" by everyone (except, obviously, for the rest of the Gribble family). Her actual first name, Cecilia, is only spoken once in the very first episode.
• Finale Credits - The season 1 finale "Lighthouse Blues" has the same style end credits as a normal episode, but season 2's "Seeing the Light" has a montage of the entire season instead of just that episode. Season 3's "The Big Rock" has the whole cast standing together waving and shouting "See You Next Time"^note Notably it's the one time when the whole case actually would be seen again. and season 4's "The Isle of Dreams" begins its credits with a long zoom out shot from where the final scene left off.
• Flanderization: To some extent. If you watch from the first to the fourth series straight through, you'll see that Bronson in the first series is less obsessed with "toilet humour" and does not mix up his words as much, while Linda has a mild obsession with judo and Pete's obsession with girls is toned down. Come the fourth season, Linda has turned completely "New age hippy" and Bronson is obsessed with anything gross. Pete on the other hand winds up going through women quite a bit.

• Gender Flip - The character Nell is based on Stan, the old lighthouse keeper from Paul Jennings' short story "Lighthouse Blues". Originally, Nell was a man named Tom in the show but Jennings changed the character into a woman when he was told there were too many male characters. The name "Tom" was re-used for Nell's dead older brother.
• Half-Arc Season - Each series had an arc subplot that was finally resolved in the season finale. For the first series, it was the mysterious music coming from the top of the lighthouse. For the second series, it was the ghosts of brothers Matthew and Jeremiah who kept appearing unseen around the lighthouse. For the third series, it was the Viking Book of Love, which would make whoever a poem inside was read to fall in love with the reader. For the fourth series, it was the mysterious figure Ariel who kept appearing out of doorways in the air. There were also shorter arcs in the second and fourth series involving Bronson: the first time was the question of why he was never taking off his shoes, and the second time was why he was collecting foul smells with his "Smell Sucka". Additionally there was Mr Gribble's continuing efforts to acquire the lighthouse and sell it in the first series, and his run for the Senate against Nell in the second series.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place - The Shipwreck Coast^note This is real place in Victoria: the location of more than 600 shipwrecks
• Lampshade Hanging - During season one, Pete, Linda and Bronson are discussing the ongoing mystery of the mysterious music coming from the top of the lighthouse. Replies Bronson, 'Yeah, it always plays music when something creepy is about to happen' moments before they spot the mysterious sea chest that is that episode's weirdness of the week.
• Last-Name Basis - The Twist kids all call James Gribble "Gribble" (at least in the first two series — in the revival, they call him "Gribbs" like Rabbit and Tiger do). Gribble and his gang accordingly call them "Twist".
• Lighthouse Point - Where the family lived.
• Minored In Ass Kicking - Sometimes Linda comes across as a soppy, intellectually-bent spirituality-geek. For all that, she could kick your arse.
• Moral Guardians: The show almost didn't see the light of day (and was the subject of a lot of censorship issues) in its native country of Australia (with the season three premiere "The Big Burp" giving them the most trouble) and when it was exported to the UK (though not America, surprisingly), due to its gross-out humor (most of which centered on vomiting, urination, body odor, and defecation), mild sexual content (references to incest, Kissing Under the Influence, pregnancy, homosexuality, and interspecies romance), and subject matter that most Moral Guardians wouldn't find appropriate for children's TV (nudity, death, and Nightmare Fuel).
• Motor Mouth - Tiger, who can never resist playing commentator to whatever's going on. It's especially prominent in Season 1 when he's played by Cameron Nugent, but to an extent in the other seasons as well.

• Naked People Are Funny: Pete in "Wunderpants", The Gribble gang in "Quivering Heap" and Linda in "Linda Godiva" are all caught in the nuddy.
• Nightmare Fetishist - Bronson. Most of the characters, actually.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up - Over the whole series, Pete and Linda have only aged from 14 to 15 and Bronson from 7 to 8. They always have the same teachers and appear to always be in the same year at school, despite the school year having apparently ended twice (in the first & third series).
• Only Known by Their Nickname - Rabbit and Tiger. (Although we do find out Tiger's surname, Gleeson.)
• Parental Obliviousness - Tony on almost all occasions, though often it's because the kids are deliberately keeping him out of the loop. Fay, though she only gradually becomes a parental figure to the kids, is also a frequent victim of this and may in fact be a worse case than Tony.
• Poor Communication Kills - A staple of Fay's relationship with the Twists. It sort of makes sense, because Fay in many ways is the newcomer who hasn't quite figured out how the family works and as such tends to miss obvious cues or take everything at face value. Still, it's noticeable how much trouble everyone could have saved themselves if the kids, and to a lesser extent Tony, had just bothered to explain things to her — or if she hadn't been in the habit of jumping to conclusions every time something weird happened, because the conclusion she usually jumps to is "the kids hate me."
• Quirky Town - Port Niranda.
• Series Continuity Error - There's a whole bunch of them from series to series. One major example is that Nell is elected to the Victorian Senate in the final episode of Series 2, as the culmination of a continuing storyline throughout that series — come Series 3 this is completely ignored.
  • Alternatively, this could just be Negative Continuity between series, depending on how you look at it.
  • Regarding Nell: her name is Nell Rickards throughout the show except for Series 2, where it appears on her campaign poster as Nell Sands.
    • Also, Nell says in Series 1 that she never married, but in Series 4 an episode revolves around Linda & Pete travelling back in time to the 1940s and interacting with her and her future husband.
  • The number of times Tony and Fay have been engaged and have broken it off can be a little confusing, but it all tracks — up till Series 4. Tony had proposed to Fay again in the final episode of Series 3, and Series 4 has a continuing storyline about them having a baby — and when the baby is born in the final episode, there is yet another marriage proposal between them despite there never being any indication they weren't still engaged.
  • The characters' changing appearances due to the recasting could count as well, particularly if their appearance becomes a plot point — for instance, Bronson's red hair becomes important in a Series 2 episode while Series 1 Bronson had brown hair, and a Series 3 episode involves all the characters being related to a particular 8th-Century Viking woman while Series 2 Fiona was Aboriginal.
  • Arguably the worst is how Series 3 & 4 saw Linda and Pete actually de-age to 13, even though they actually arrived in Port Niranda at 14.
  • Another pretty bad one is how in Series 3 & 4 everyone seem to forget all their experiences with ghosts. It gets directly laughable in Series 4's Face the Fear, where the Gribble gang try to scare Bronson with ghosts, and he somewhat nervously claims that ghosts don't exist. Despite him having encountered ghosts several times in all four series. Even his nervousness doesn't make sense, given how most of the ghosts he's met have been non-malevolent or even friendly.
• Supernatural Hotspot Town: The fictional Australian town of Port Neranda, where the Twist family encountered bizarre supernatural phenomena every week; due to more lax censorship standards in Australia, things could happen on the show that simply could not be gotten away with on an American program, ranging from haunted toilets to underwear that gives people superpowers to a frog capable of jumping so hard that it reaches escape velocity... and then lands unharmed, blowing up a competing frog in the process.
• Supernatural Soap Opera - There were always elements of this in the show, but the third seasons takes it to extremes.
• Surreal Theme Tune - It mashes up the words to several nursery rhymes for its verses, including "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", "Rain Rain Go Away" and "Humpty Dumpty".

• Unexplained Recovery: Several episodes. For example, in "IMU/UMI", after Pete and Mr. Gribble have their brains switched after a mishap with a virtual reality game, the episode ends with Pete getting his brain back, while Mr. Gribble has his brain swapped with a rat. In the following episode, however, he is back to normal - despite it being stated that the carnival that hosts this game won't be back in Port Nirranda for a while.

Tropes of season 1 and 2

• Adaptational Heroism: Happens to a few of Paul Jennings' less heroic protagonists when their stories are given to the Twists. Pete is more sympathetic than Marcus from "Lucky Lips", learning his lesson from his failed attempts to steal a kiss from Fiona and apologising to her in the end, while "The Copy" has Linda and her clone both willing to sacrifice themselves for the other.
• All Just a Dream - Several episodes ended this way, as a result of being adapted into a continuing series from standalone stories.
  • A particularly bizarre example is "Santa Claws," which not only has Pete falling asleep in the first scene, thus establishing All Just A Dream right away, but features a Framing Device within the dream - Pete telling the story of how his mouth was shrunk.
• And You Were There - The episode "The Gum Leaf War": Nell appears as "Aunt Tuneless", Mr Gribble as her feuding neighbour "Foxy" and Gribble as "Foxy Jr".

• Bad "Bad Acting" - In the episode "Nails", for the school play auditions.
• Bowdlerise - The episode "Birdsdo" is based on a story called "Birdscrap".
• Butt-Monkey - Poor, poor Pete. Rabbit has his moments as well, in particular the ending of "Spaghetti Pig-Out".
• Christmas Episode - A very Australian take in Season 1.
• Clothes Make the Maniac - In "Copy Cat", Bronson finds an ancient Mongolian copy cat hat that compels whoever is wearing it to copy what they see. Linda wears it during the `Birdman’ competition and she copies a seagull soaring through the sky. But Dad and Gribble aren't quite so lucky when they wear the copy cat hat.
• Cold Open - The pilot "Skeleton on the Dunny" has a title card but no opening montage or theme music.
• Covered in Gunge -
  • In "Birdsdo", Pete and Linda get dive-bombed by seagulls until they're covered from head to toe in bird excrement.
  • In "Sloppy Jalopy", Pete gets shoved into a pool of foul-smelling sludge.
• Creator Cameo - Aside from producer and director Esben Storm's recurring role as Mr Snapper, several crew members make cameos through the first series — including Paul Jennings as Ben Byron's ghost and director Steve Jodrell as a hospital doctor.
• Curse Cut Short -
  • In "Birdsdo":
  Pete: It'll be a death worse than fate: drowned in droppings, perished in poop, showered in -
  Linda: I can feel a breeze.
  • In "Spaghetti Pig-Out":
  Bronson: What if [Gribble] froze you while you were having a sh -?
  Pete and Linda: BRONSON!
  Bronson: Shower! I was going to say when you were having a shower.
• Does This Remind You of Anything? - In "Smelly Feat" Bronson chucks his shoes through a classroom window and everybody inside passes out as if it's a stink bomb.
• Eating Contest: The eponymous Spaghetti Pig-Out, between Pete, Rabbit and two girls who forfeit fairly early. Gribble tries to help Rabbit cheat using the remote control to fast-forward his eating, but it ultimately causes him to vomit dozens of bowls worth of spaghetti over the audience at the end. And then Pete retrieves the remote control and presses rewind.
• Enslaved Tongue: A skeleton's curse forces Pete to end every sentence with "without my pants".
• Facial Dialogue: Ben Thomas (Pete II) pulls some very contorted expressions when getting hypnotised or smelling Bronson's feet.
• Fictional Political Party - When Mr Gribble runs for the Senate in the second series he belongs to the fictional "Progressive Conservative Party", who have the same party colour (blue) as the real-life Liberal Party.
• Flashback with the Other Darrin: "Yuckles" has Tony and Bronson looking through an old photo album, in which the pictures of Bronson are all his second incarnation (Jeffrey Walker) instead of his first (Rodney Mc Lennan).
• Gone Horribly Right - The frog race in "Wunderpants" is set up as a big event, only for the whole audience to sit around bored when the frogs just sit in the middle of the floor, forcing Tiger to commentate on people's fashion choices. One boy suggests that the frogs are conserving energy because the humidity is too low, so Tiger sprays the floor with a hosepipe. Sure enough the frogs all get moving and the crowd's excitement returns... but then Gribbs's frog Mugger eats all the other frogs in the ring.
• The Hat Makes the Man - In "Copy Cat", the Mongolian cat hat forces its wearer to copy any action it sees.
  • Hat of Power/Hat of Flight - Said magic hat also grants the power to fly (if the cat sees a bird)!
• Halfway Plot Switch - "Wunderpants" starts off being about Pete's microwaved briefs giving him superpowers which he uses to almost win a cross country race, then he goes swimming but finds the briefs shrink rapidly and force him to remove them, leaving him to hobble home nude after his clothes are stolen. The rest of the episode is about a frog race.
• Hypno Fool - One episode featured Pete acting like a chicken whenever the word 'now' was mentioned. It also featured a counting chicken which was made to regress (or ascend) to a past life of being a mathematician.
• Kissing Cousins.
  • Kissing siblings in "Lucky Lips" due to the magical lipstick.
  • Done indirectly in "Ice Maiden" when Bronson becomes infatuated by an ice sculpture to the point of kissing it. He then discovers that the sculpture was based on his cousin Terry, about whom he has been having psychedelic nightmares. He very quickly abandons his loathing of her and seems very happy about her sleeping in his bedroom. He smiles at her in a rather amorous way throughout.
• Kiss of the Vampire - in "Quivering Heap" Pete plays Dracula in a school production, and the sexual connotations of biting Fiona's neck are noted a few times.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: The cause of the remote control affecting the real world in "Spaghetti Pig-Out".
• Mall Santa - Nell ends up being this in the Christmas episode. She gets attacked by the 'real' Santa.
• Mistaken for Masturbating - In "Wunderpants", Linda and Fiona see Pete fiddling with the waistband of his trousers - which we are even shown in a close-up vertical panning shot.
  Pete: Just checking.
  Fiona: What?
  Pete: My underpants they feel funny, they feel tingly.
• Murderous Mannequin: Animated, but not murderous. "Know All" is an adaptation of the short story "Know All" by Paul Jennings. A mannequin is part of one of Tony's art pieces around the time that the Twists find a chest filled with costumes, which only much later they learn are from a circus of which all members have perished in an accident. Intrigued by the find, they each dress up and find themselves bestowed with the talents and characteristics of the original owners. For fun, they dress up their scarecrow in a clown's outfit. This causes it to come alive and, being empty beforehand, to strongly take to the love the clown had for the other clown. Tony, who's the Fortune Teller, arranges for the mannequin to be dressed up as the other clown to reunite the loves. As both the scarecrow and the mannequin steadily become human-like due to the costumes, they decide to join the circus.
• No Animals Were Harmed - not shown after "Wunderpants", in which a large frog is graphically shown devouring several smaller frogs, only for Pete's frog to crash into it at high speed causing a huge gooey explosion.
• No Party Given - Nell, when she runs for the Senate against Harold Gribble. She uses the colour green, like the real-life Australian Greens — who were founded the same year the series was broadcast, so it's unclear if she's meant to be a Green or not.
• Or Was It a Dream? - Episodes which ended with All Just a Dream would incorporate this into their final scene, to suggest the dreams were real in some way.
• Our Ghosts Are Different - Lots of variation. The ghosts often seem bound by different rules - some ghosts are mute, whereas others can talk. While most ghosts have Unfinished Business, one episode a ghost that needed to pass his 'scare test'. Also featured are a ghost dog and a ghost seagull, among other things.
• Our Mermaids Are Different - Linda falls for a merman at one point, though neither of them know he is a merman at the time and his transformation is one-way.
• Plant People: The Cabbage Patch Fib.
• Posthumous Character - Although the show does have a large number of ghost characters, there is one character who properly fits the trope: Nell's "nutty" older brother Tom, who is referred to numerous times throughout the first series. He lived in the shack near Ghoul's Cave and owned the rubies from the episode "Birdsdo"; he also invented the cloning machine in "The Copy". Tom actually makes a non-speaking appearance in ghost form in the first series finale "Lighthouse Blues", along with the rest of Nell's family.
• Pun - Many, particularly from Pete.
• Reincarnation - Played for laughs in Next Time Around. Pete is the reincarnation of a fireman, Nell's nephew Tom is the reincarnation of both a flower seller and a champion wrestler, and Russell the rooster turns out to be the reincarnation of an Oxford maths professor.
• Rewind Gag - Done in "Spaghetti Pig-Out" due to a magical remote control that Pete uses.
• Running Gag - "Without My Pants". Runs the risk of turning into an Overly Long Gag, but it's pitched so well that you're still finding it funny when poor Pete clearly isn't.
• Scary Scarecrows - Having discovered a trunk filled with circus clothes, Tony decides to dress their scarecrow in a clown outfit, causing it to later be possessed by the dead clown, and chase Linda, who was dressed as the clown's lover, thereby successfully managing to combine Scary Scarecrows with Monster Clown in one easy step. He becomes a lot less scary when he's reunited with his lover, the other clown from the same circus, whose clothes are put on a mannequin.
• Series Fauxnale - "Seeing the Light" ends the second season and has many elements of a Grand Finale (such as the implication of Pete and Fiona hooking up), after which there is an eight year break. Series 3 is basically a reboot which stories no longer adapted from Jennings' stories and most of the earlier story arcs ditched.
• Serious Business - The frog race in "Wunderpants" is seemingly organised just by children and takes place in an old barn, but it has entry fees, betting, a semi-professional filming operation and Tiger excitedly commentating on everything.
• Shameless Self-Promoter - Harold Gribble, once he becomes a politician.
• Shower Scene - Pete in "Sloppy Jalopy".
• Spared by the Adaptation: Thanks to executive meddling, Nell survives the events of "Lighthouse Blues", (and the rest of the series) unlike her counterpart Stan.
• Stealth Insult: During Tony's first meeting with Ms James, he comments that Pete and Linda are embarrassed to be seen with their father. She rather politely replies, "Yes, I can understand that."
• Strawman Political - Harold Gribble, arguably. He is pretty much the "evil developer" straight up and down: trying to force people out of their homes and carelessly damaging the environment in the name of business and "progress". He's contrasted with the more reasonable mayor.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Happens in "Spaghetti Pig Out". The bullies use the super-powered remote control to have James win the eating contest by "fast-forwarding" him. It does help him ingest an enormous quantity of pasta in a very short time, but as soon as the fast-forward stops he suffers from a bad case of Balloon Belly and starts feeling very sick.
• Take Off Your Clothes: Pete telling Linda to take off the clown's outfit, which was causing the scarecrow clown to chase her. She misunderstands him at first.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: "Lucky Lips" ends with Pete getting a consensual kiss from Fiona.
• Tongue on the Flagpole - Bronson gets stuck to an ice sculpture he kisses.
• Transfer Student Uniforms - The Twist kids themselves at the beginning of the series. Same for Andrew in "Nails", who gets mocked for his private school uniform by Gribble, who then finds out that it's the same school where his father might be sending him.
• Two-Teacher School - Mr Snapper (Pete & Linda's drama/literature teacher) and Ms James (Bronson's teacher) are the only teachers we ever see at the school. In one episode we see the principal, Mr Splodge who gets turned into a baby at the end of the episode.
• Unfinished Business - A big part of the series when Paul Jennings was still writing. Most of the ghosts had this as their reason for hanging around, notably the ghosts who formed the Story Arc for Season 2.
• Universal Remote Control: There's an episode called "Spaghetti Pig-Out" based on the Paul Jennings story that features the remote that can control real life, although it lacks the "looking like green chocolate" attribute that it has in the book.

Tropes of season 3 and 4

• Aborted Arc - The senate election plotline from season 2 is never mentioned again and Gribble essentially just goes back to being an abrasive property dealer.
• Broken Pedestal: The Twist kids all experience this at once over their television idols in "TV or Not TV".
• Chained Heat - Faye handcuffs herself to Mr Gribble, shortly before going into labour, in the last episode.
• Character Filibuster: Pete in "Bird Boy" has to blather on for a long time while Bronson helps the bird escape. His audience are visibly annoyed.
• Creepy Doll: Veronique, Linda's old china doll in "Toy Love."
• Express Delivery - Combined with Mister Seahorse in "The Big Burp". Pete becomes pregnant by holding hands with a dryad after peeing on her tree. After an accelerated pregnancy, he gives birth through his mouth while handcuffed to his worst enemy.
• Godwin's Law of Time Travel - Pete and Linda's time-travel back to 1944 saw them distract a look-out who missed an (unnamed) enemy fleet, thus leading to the South Pacific New World Order...where everyone wears their underwear on the outside.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Linda's shadow with Linda in Shadow Play
• Fairytale Motifs: This season seems to focus a lot more on themes from fairytales.
• Heli-Critter - In "The Whirling Derfish", Bronson swallows a rare whirling derfish and discovers he now has the ability to swim incredibly fast by using his penis as a propeller.
• Horny Vikings - A group of them shows up in the second episode of Season 3. They leave behind "The Viking Book of Love" which ends up being a recurring element in the season.
• Interface Spoiler: Ariel is referred to by name in the credits of every season 4 episode, even though her identity is not known until the last episode.
• Invisible Streaker - Linda, in the "Linda Godiva" episode, turns invisible thanks to an enchanted perfume spritzer — but her clothes remain visible, so she has to take them off. Of course, Pete accidentally deactivates her invisibility at exactly the wrong time, leaving her naked on horseback in front of a large crowd.
• Living Shadow - The episode Shadow Play
• Mister Seahorse - The first episode of season 3 is "The Big Burp", where a dryad lets Pete pee on her tree while running away from some bullies, and Pete learns that when a man urinates on a dryad-possessed tree, he becomes pregnant.
• Mystical Pregnancy: Pete's predicament in the above-mentioned Season 3 opener; one of the rare times when a male character is exposed to this trope.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Linda owns a doll that's dressed like an 80s rockstar and has a broken nose. The doll's name? Michael.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Pete gets bit by a Transylvania Flea from a flea-circus, he transforms into a hairy wolf. He then has 'puppy love' with Fiona's dog
• Reality-Writing Book - The Viking Book of Love
• Remember the New Guy? - Anthony, the Twists' nerdy friend (and Dogged Nice Guy to Linda) shows up in Season 3 without any introduction, and the other characters treating him as if he'd been there all along.
• Retool - In Series 3 & 4, the series loses its focus on ghosts and their Unfinished Business and became an Australian version of Eerie, Indiana.
• Samus Is a Girl: Before Ariel's identity is revealed, the Twists refer to her as male.
• Soapbox Sadie - Linda becomes this, sort of, when a botched haircut gives her the power to read minds.
• There Are No Adults - In the episode "The Big Rock" all the adults in Port Niranda are sucked into an alternate universe after the final poem in the Viking Book of Love is read. Naturally, the town goes to hell in a few hours.
• Trapped in TV Land - The Twist kids in "TV or Not TV". It winds up being turned on its head though as the Twist kids use this to their advantage and threaten to reveal the truth about their "heroes."
• The Worm That Walks: The lint monster builds itself a body out of dust, dirt and lint.

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