Series / 31 Minutos

"¡Tulio, estamos al aire!"^note Tulio, we're on air!

Bodoque:"What a moron, that clown."

Tulio:"Yeah, He doesn't know that puppet shows went out of fashion!"

Bodoque:"Last time I saw one, I fell asleep!"

Tulio:"He's going to lose all his money! Have you ever seen anything lamer than a puppet?"

Bodoque:"Yes, multiple puppets!"

Tulio:"Oh, look at me, putting it on my hand!"

Bodoque:"Look at me, I'm a poor little child with nothing better to do than watch TV shows with ragdolls!"

Tulio:"I can't afford cable!"

— Tulio Triviño, host of 31 Minutos, to Bodoque. They're both puppets.

31 Minutos^note literally '31 Minutes' is a Chilean TV series created by Álvaro Díaz and Pedro Peirano, parodying Chilean TV news and hosted by puppets. The show began as edutainment running on national Television^note non-cable broadcasts roughly equivalent to state networks in the US but with higher production values than local stations, but near-immediately shifted focus to a Work Com caught somewhere between The Muppets and Anchorman with just enough educational material to keep their funding. Episodes usually involve the main host, Tulio Triviño getting himself and the rest of the cast in trouble while on the air, and field reporter Juan Carlos Bodoque acting as a Foil to Tulio, all the while producer Juanín Juan Harry tries to salvage the broadcast.

The show has several recurring segments, such as a music ranking with music critic Policarpo Avendaño playing the show's original music videos, the "Nota Verde"^note "Green Report", officially "Green Note" in English hosted by Bodoque, a red rabbit who educates the audience on nature and the environment, and the adventures of ""Calcetín-con-Rombos-Man"^note Literally, "Argyle-Sock-Man", a sock with an argyle pattern, a superhero parody centered around An Aesop taken from UNICEF's Convention of Children's Rights. These are intercut by a Framing Device of the crew in the studio getting into some manner of mischief, which took over more of the runtime as the show went on.

Originally aired from 2003 through 2005 on state-owned broadcaster TVN^note the name 31 Minutos is a reference to the station's twice-daily news broadcast, 24 Horas, with a movie released in theaters in 2008. Nickelodeon aired the show internationally until 2007, and Cartoon Network picked up the show in 2015 with the release of the fourth season. Despite its heavy focus on Chilean culture, geography, history and humor, it was a hit across Latin America, and somehow wound up massively popular in Mexico and Brazil, rivalling its country of origin. The show was a cultural phenomenon in Chile due in great part to its witty comedy, catchy songs, and excessively sardonic surreal sarcastic non sequitur and often dark sense of humor. Several episodes had to be censored for broadcast standards across Latin America, particularly those involving Ludicrous Gibs or copious amounts of blood gushing out of puppets. Note that the creators are huge fans of Monty Python.

The show took a seven-year production hiatus due to the massive theatrical failure of the Movie putting the entire production in the red. The brand recovered through live shows and concerts, including several appearances in Lollapalooza Chile and the Viña del Mar Music Festival. A fourth season was announced to be in the works in 2012 and aired October 2014. Since then, the show survives on YouTube, with all four seasons in their uncensored Broadcast forms, every single music video made for and after the show, Live Shows, among other things. Though there are no plans for a fifth season, the original staff regularly make new educational shorts funded by UNICEF and the Chilean government ranging from single PSAs to short miniseries, aimed at explaining major events such as the national Census or the COVID-19 pandemic to children.

A character sheet is in construction Here

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Note: since this series includes a lot of significant Spanish names, please try to give them a translation to English. You can always use notes or labelnotes: name[[note]]Translated name[[/note]] or name[[labelnote:Translation]]Translated name[[/labelnote]]

This show provides examples of:

• Acid-Trip Dimension: At the end of the song "Mundo Interior".
• Adaptation Decay: In-Universe example. In one episode the characters wanted to give an edutainment turn to the show and tried to put on stage their take on Don Quijote de la Mancha. It didn't work:
  Bodoque (The Narrator): Suddenly, Sancho sees a threat in the distance!
  Juanín (Sancho Panza): Oh, Don Quixote! I see a threat in the distance!
  Tulio (Don Quixote): Don't worry, my loyal secretary. No enemy poses a threat to me.
  Bodoque: What they didn't know is that their archenemies are coming... the vampire windmills blocked their passage!
  Tulio: The vampire windmills?! Are you sure Don Quixote goes like this?
  Bodoque: More or less, Tulio. I'm sure about the vampires, but I came up with the windmills thing. Just go with it.
  Tulio: These evil windmills won't defeat us, Sancho!
  Juanín: It's a sign of our progress, Don Quixote!
  Tulio: They defeated us! Run! Run, Sancho!
  Bodoque: Go back to the stage, you cowards!
  Vampire Windmills: Yeah, come back.
• Afraid of Needles: Tulio in 'La invasión de los Tramoyas'.
• Alliterative Name: Tulio Triviño, Mico el Micofono, Juanín Juan Harry, Balón Von Bola
  • Letter Motif: All tramoyas have names that end with 'ín' and surnames that ends with 'illo' (Benjamín Listillo, Fermín Virutillo, Valentín Trujillo, etc.), save for James J. McNamara).
• All Just a Dream: In 'El funeral de Tulio'.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Mario Hugo is in love with Patana, something that was confirmed in The Movie (see Can't Spit It Out below).
• All There in the Manual: Several stuff like the backstory of the characters or the name of some unnamed characters are only given in merchandising or interviews that the characters do in magazines, but never in the show.
• Always Someone Better: Patana upstages Tulio in "La co-animadora" to the point Tulio decides to quit before finding out Patana had been offered a better job in another newscast.
• Art Shift: The little bumpers that open and close Policarpo's Ranking Top are in 3D.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
  • The song "Severlá". The video seems to take place in Egypt, with the whole desert and mummies theme, but the lyrics are just some vaguely Arabic sounding words which at the end are revealed to actually be Spanish backwards.
  • Most Japanese in "Japonés" is pure gibberish and even some of the actual words are used incorrectly (Beikoku is stated to mean "rice" when it's actually "United States").
• Ascended Meme:
  • In 'La amenaza siluria II', the clip of the first Tulio interview is a parody of 'Super Taldo', a Chilean viral video of an old unaired news report about a boy with Tourette's Syndrome.
  • In 'El video', the last blooper shown is a parody of an infamous leaked blooper reel of the Chilean TV show 'El mundo del Profesor Rossa'.
• Automobile Opening: The intro features Tulio driving into the studio.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The cast's interaction to each other usually vary from abrasive to abusive, but in the episode "Bodoque Deprimido", Tulio's attempts to cheer up his friend include giving him his own new and expensive clothes, paying off Bodoque's enormous gambling debts out of his own pocket and allowing him to be take his place as the show's anchor. In the end, the cast of the show ends up quitting TV altogether to go work with Bodoque on the radio
• Big Bad: Cachirula in The Movie, with sentient doll Estrella de Lana as her Dragon.
• Big Eater: Dylan Manguera, but thanks to Juan Carlos Bodoque, he knows better and gets better.
• Big "NO!": In 'Enfermosis', by Calcetín con Rombos Man when his long-lost brother reveals his identity, followed by a Big "YES!" from his part.
• Brick Joke: In 'Estiércol', in a "Toilet Throwing Contest", Sasquatch throws a toilet who doesn't fall (and he complains about not getting his prize because of that). Later in that episode, the toilet hits Tulio, and Sasquatch comes to claim his prize.
• Broken Record: One song per season ("Lala", "Boing Boing Boing", "Guácala" and "Arwrarwrirwrarwro").
• Betty and Veronica: Guaripolo´s Veronica to Mario Hugo´s Betty and Patana´s Archie.
• Bland-Name Product: Tulio who got a Relox watch, it's made of gold, covered in supergold with diamond adornments and gears of plastirubber.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Juan Pablo Sopa, the lawyer that "talks like an idiot" is a subversion to this trope. He does speak like an idiot (only winning his case representing Mr. Manguera because the judge also talked like one), but he charges his fees like a genius.
• Cain and Abel: Calcetín con Ramones Man wanted to kill his brother Calcetín con Rombos Man for abandoning him. Lampshaded when the first claims "Who am I, my brother's keeper?"
• Can't Spit It Out: In The Movie, Mario Hugo never really gets to confess his love for Patana until the climax. Even then, his feelings are instantly rejected.
  • Except he offhandedly told her but she just doesn't care.
  • He does confess it in "El secreto" just to get rejected by an "And I don't care."
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Tulio attempts to in "Risotron", only getting boos from the eponymous machine.
• Carnivore Confusion: A hilarious example; during the first episode, Mico the Micófono's segment had him asking the "people" on the street what they thought about food. At one point, a group of pieces of meat said that they were vegetarians... and then the scene cuts to a group of vegetables chanting "Meat! Meat! Meat!".
• Cartoon Creature: Most notably Tulio and Juanín.
• Cast of Snowflakes: The puppets vary greatly in color, shape, material and movements, making them highly identifiable, this is exploited for comedy in "Lulo Serrucho" where a saw impersonates several people by copying colors and materials but remains in the very recognizable saw shape, with the characters somehow being unable to tell him apart from the real thing.
• Chekhov's Gunman: A Boy Band made of five muscular men from The Movie. They first appear at the start singing a song for Tulio's birthday, and reappear during the final battle, successfully defeating Cachirula's giant robots though the Power of Hotness.
• Christmas Episode: Every cliche is used, lampshaded and crushed during it. Plus, it was made against the character's will, they had to improvise it at the last second and everyone, except for Policarpo, hated being part of it because they were missing spending the holiday with their families and relatives.
• Christmas Miracle: Invoked at the end of the Christmas Episode): after forgiving Juan Carlos Bodoque for losing everyone's gifts at the horse races, everyone expected to be rewarded with more free gifts. After claiming to "have learned their lesson" and asking "Hey, where are our gifts?" a few times, everyone gets crushed under a rain of gifts, which culminated with Santa Claus himself popping out from nowhere to fall over the characters.
• Clip Show: The penultimate episodes of seasons 1-3 are this.
• Coca-Pepsi, Inc.: Tio Horacio promoted a "Panashiva" color TV on his show, a play on Panasonic and Toshiba. Incidentally, "Panashiva" was an actual brand of cheap and shoddy electronics sold in Chile during the early 2000's.
• The Collector of the Strange: Huachimingo collecting fluffs.
  • In "Enfermosis", Je-Jin unleashed his collection in the channel, of what exactly? Diseases (weird virus, bacteria and germs).
• Commuting on a Bus: Carla Rubio was a reporter of the 'Ranting Club' segment in the first few episodes until it was said to had taken "vacations against her will" and was replaced by Rosario Central. She only appears briefly in two later episodes, where is clearly stated that she was fired.
• Costume-Test Montage: To Tulio, in the opening credits.
• Couch Gag:
  • From season 2 onwards, a little pig-esque finger puppet named Carlitos Lechuga attemps to tell an Aesop under the Aplaplac logo after the closing credits, only for the logo or something else to hurt him badly. He gets his revenge during a (surprisingly long) Matrix-esque montage, where the Aplaplac logo transforms into a humanoid mecha, but Carlitos dodges every attack, kicks the mecha in the shins and sends him running away, crying.
  • Season 4 features Carlitos Lechuga doing the Weather Report at the end of the episode, only to be victim of the weather he's informing about.
• Crazy Memory: Balón Von Bola
  Balon: Back when I was little, depression did not exist, neither did friends nor the Atlantic Ocean.
• Credits Gag:
  • In 'La gotera', the credits mimics the ones from El Chavo del ocho and all the crew members listed in them has the name of a Chespirito character as nickname.
  • In 'Asesor de imagen', the episode ends with Cossimo Gianni firing all the crew and them quitting himself. All that happens with the credits still rolling. At some point Cossimo complains about the font of the credits and he asks to change it.
• Crossover Punchline: 'La Coanimadora' with TVN's actual late news program, Medianoche.
• Curse Cut Short: A clear one happens to Bodoque before meeting Amapola Polar in the season 2 premiere episode, "Vacaciones" (Vacations).
  Amapola Polar: [off-screen, to Bodoque, who is playing a harmonica] Si vienes acá, ¡deberías escuchar los sonidos de la naturaleza! ^TranslationIf you come here, you should listen to the sounds of nature!
  Bodoque: ¿¡Que se mete, vieja con—?! ^TranslationWhy you bother, you old bi— (it's implied that he was going to say conchuda, roughly "bitch") [see Amapola Polar] Oh, mil disculpas. Juan Carlos Bodoque, para servirle. ^TranslationOh, my apologies. Juan Carlos Bodoque, at your service.
• Darker and Edgier: Season 3 from the rest of the series. Damn, just the premiere is so dark even blind people would distinguish it from the usual level of darkness, starting with a Does This Remind You of Anything? of electric fans being (presumanbly and supposedly) kidnapped, and ending with a Karma Houdini. This being 31 Minutos, this is all Played for Laughs.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone except for Tulio, especial mention to Bodoque and Policarpo.
• Deal with the Devil: The song 'Parque de diversiones' (Amusement Park) where a kid is given a whole park for himself by a seemingly kind man. However, the kid then discovers he cannot invite his friends because the contract he signed says so. He tries to escape, but the park's gates are locked and, to make matters worse, the seemingly kind man turns out to be non-other than the devil himself, who wants to kill him. It's just a nightmare.
• Deliberately Monochrome: In "Ahorrando", in the sports segment, Balón Von Bola and Raúl Guantecillo appear completely in black and white. This is because, as part of the plan to save money to hire Dennis Dannis, the crew decided to use for that segment, the oldest camera available. In contrast, the graphics on screen and Tulio are still colored.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: In a segment of the show of Tio Horacio (supposedly broadcast decades before 31 minutos), the aforementioned host tells a kid that being left handed is a disease. When Tulio reprimands him in the present, Tio Horacio responds that back in the day it really was a disease, and so were things like having long hair or speaking English.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The "Maligna Máquina del Mal"^TranslationEvil Machine of Evil from "La Liga del Mal"^TranslationThe Evil League.
• Depraved Kids' Show Host: Tío Horacio to dangerous extremes, although he's the same on and off stage.
• Deus ex Machina: Provided by the literal God, who shows up out of nowhere in "La Amenaza Siluria Parte 3" to solve both the main plot and the story of Calcetín Con Rombos Man. And then just to top it off, he performs the greatest miracle of them all: Give the whole cast beautiful blond hair.
• Disappeared Dad: Parodied with the song 'El Huerfadino' (The Godorphan). Where Percy, the singer, talks about how he has never met his godfather and wonders where he could be with the same seriousness as if he were talking about his father.
• Dreaming of a White Christmas: Parodied in 'Calurosa Navidad' (Hot Christmas) where a group of hot, tired and uncomfortable people disguised as Santa Claus sings about the problem of celebrating Christmas during summer.
• Driven to Suicide: Parodied in 'Patana Enamorada' (Patana in love) where Mario Hugo takes a hangman´s noose upon discovering Patana is not in love with him... And he uses said noose as a swing.
  Mario Hugo: It´s too late, Tulio! I'm gonna swing here for months and years until I die of boredom!
• Drunk on Milk: During his depression, Bodoque starts drinking powdered juice, claiming that he'll drown his sorrows by drinking until all the chemicals in it make him pass out. Tulio and the rest get worried as if he was drinking rubbing alcohol.
• Drunk with Power: Raul Guantecillo after substituting Tulio in "El video", relegating the main characters to the newsroom.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Mario Hugo, apparently, as seen in 'Patana Enamorada' (Patana in love). She is in love with Guaripolo, so he makes a scheme to break them up...which involves him dressing into drag and pretending to be Patana's friend Tootsie. It works too well since Guaripolo breaks up with Patana, preferring Tootsie over her. When poor Mario Hugo says that it's actually him on drag, Guaripolo doesn't care at all and hugs him tightly. Mario Hugo is understably shocked by this.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Juanín and Balón made cameos on the background of the studio one episode before their formal appearances.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The puppets' designs were quite different. Also, the voices weren't fully developed, particularly in the case of Tulio, whose voice is deeper and calmer than in later seasons.
  • Early episodes are more of a Sketch Show with the "news" as the skits and the studio scenes serving merely as a Framing Device, without any actual plot happening besides some kind of Running Gag (the first and third episodes don't even have any of these, actually). Tulio isn't a jerk at all and various main characters weren't introduced yet, most notably Juanín Juan Harry (as a result, Tulio was told he was on air by an offscreen voice, voiced by the same voice actor as Bodoque). Word of God considers "El Señor Amable" (S1, E07) as the true first episode, as it marks Juanín's first appearance, has Tulio adopt his "schmuck" personality and does have an actual plot carried throughout the whole half-hour.
  • Two segments present in the first handful of episodes, "El club de los reclamones" and the telenovela spoof "Los Titeres" were dropped for being "too boring", as recognized by the characters themselves.
• Edutainment Show: Heavily zigzagged. While the show's main objective is comedy, Juan Carlos Bodoque's Nota Verde gives real information on environmental and archeological themes, and Calcetín Con Rombos Man usually delivers an aesop about children's rights. But the news segment more often than not deal with the trope in a mercilessly parodic way
  • Parodied in 'Educativio': The "educativional" segment begins with a parade of nubers a la Sesame Street, only for the number "5" coming before "4", leading to an all-out fight.
• Empty Quiver: The plot of the "Nota verde" segment of the episode "La liga del mal", dedicated to nuclear energy, is about Tío Pelado stealing an atomic bomb.
• The End of the World as We Know It:
  • The appropiately named 'El fin del mundo' (The End of the World), where a prophet said the world will simply end by the end of the show. When the show ended, the world came to an end, but an identical one came up in its place.
  • In 'Maguito Explosivo' (Exploding Magician) an asteroid was headed to earth in just a few minutes.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: According to Bodoque, while telling a bedtime story to his niece and nephew, cowboys are a Hollywood invention.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Most of the characters are selfish, lazy, greedy and rude, but still are morally outraged by the things Tio Pelado tries to pull off.
  • Tulio seems genuinely shocked about how incompetent Guaripolo is when he replaces Juan Carlos in his ecology report. In short, Guaripolo advises children to burn tires.
• Everything Talks: It's assumed that all the objects in the show are sentient, save when the plot requires otherwise. This is particularly so in the first episode, when, at a certain point, a toilet seat asks for a roll of toilet paper to bring him juice.
• Exact Words: The studio spends the whole duration of an episode cutting costs so they can hire Denis Danis, the fastest painter in the world. Turns out, he is the fastest... But as a result his portraits are terrible, and they barely resemble the people they're supposed to portray. They said he was the fastest, they never said he was fast and good.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. Cosimo Gianni, the show's image consultant, shows up every once in a while to make intrusive changes that usually result in little more than the suffering of the cast.
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: In the Calcetín Con Rombos Man segment of 'Lulo Serrucho', and the beginning of 'Lo recuerdo muy bien' (I remember it very well).
• Face–Heel Turn: In 'La Liga del mal' (The Evil League) Patana fakes one to stop said team.
• Faking the Dead: In 'El estiércol' and in 'El funeral de Tulio'.
• Female Empowerment Song: The song 'Minilolas' is about a trio of girls who are together doing good and taking on any man who offends them. The song was made in conjunction with UN Women Chile for Women's Day.
• "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: In 'Maguito explosivo', when they want Maguito to lose his 'addiction' to explosions.
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: In 'Alcancía'.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Most of the characters with fingers ^note Some has three (Rosario Central, Sr. Manguera), others has oven glove like (Huachimingo) and others don't have at all (Bodoque, save for "close-ups"), including the ones where the puppeteer wears the hand as a glove like Tulio and Patana, not unlike The Muppets.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Their take of Pinocchio has the fairy marrying Geppetto and becoming negligent parents.
  • Damn they also become drunkards and only pay attention to him because he is inside a broken T.V.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Season 4 has TONS of these.
  • A particularly good example of this are the names of the bottles that appear in "Oestelandia". Some may be considered very common names like "Botella de la Abuela"^TranslationGrandmother's Bottle , "Leche de burra"^TranslationDonkey Milk, but also there are some subtle ones like "Aguarrás" or "Pájaro verde" ^note An alcoholic beverage very known in the prisons in Chile. It is made by aguarrás, paint, varnish and other components. Because of that, it is known for being very toxic for human consumption. At some point of that episode there's even a bottle of "Fitupo Jugoso"^TranslationJuicy Fitupo.
  • In one episode of season 4 after Tulio ditches a date with his on-and-off girlfriend Cindy (who is apparently Japanese), after returning with her, after breaking up with her, for ditching her in a date the credits roll with scenes drawn in Ukiyo-e style of her torturing him one of these including using the Death Note on him.
  • A particularly horrifying one is the one in the commonly mentioned episode 1 of season 3, in this episode a muteelectric or fan is kidnapped and it turns out Mr. Manguera was the kidnapper, when he's arrested he's surrounded with other ("supposedly") kidnapped electric fans and just below the focus of the camera you can barely see he's with the kid, under a blanket, to confirm the worst, the police call him a "pervert".
• Full-Name Basis: Played with. Whenever someone says Calcetin con Rombos Man's full name, his Leitmotif plays in the background while everyone turns to the camara.
• Fun Size: Carlitos Lechuga.
• Funny Background Event: Anything the tramoyas do at the background of the set.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • The band LLUEHHHB. The name is short for "Latidos Latinos Urbanos Emergentes Hip Hop Hermanos Brothers". Wow.
  • "Un ratoncito duro de cazar" gaves us the CPLLDLCP, the "Comando Pro Liberación De Los Compañeros Peluches".
• Furry Confusion:
  • Mario Hugo is a chihuahua but seems to have truckloads of pet dogs.
  • Also, although the main characters are shown in different clothes several times and Juanin spends a good portion of The Movie naked, the first episode showcases a nude photoshoot, with the nudity being that the puppets involved remove their "skin" revealing the hands controlling them.
• Gilligan Cut: In "El funeral de Tulio", Patana tells Juanin that the news of Tulio's death have reached Juan Carlos Bodoque and she assumes that Juan Carlos must be mourning Tulio and regretting that they ended their friendship, the next scene has Juan Carlos Bodoque laughing and being happy at the news that Tulio had died.
• God in Puppet Form: And a very ugly one, with — according to Tulio — a terrible taste on music.
• Green Aesop: The aptly named Nota Verde of Juan Carlos Bodoque. They tend to always talk about either about something bad happening to earth and how to solve it, or just about some interesting natural phenomenon.
• Hand Puppet: Taken to its Logical Extreme by using socks (or whatever object) without even putting a minimal effort to convert them into sock puppets. In particular concerning the Calcetín con Rombos Man sketches.
• Hated by All: Mr. Manguera, as he's an invoked Jerk with a Heart of Jerk who gets (positively) flanderized.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: Bodoque, as he's forced to do ecological reports while actually wanting to be the anchor man of the show.
• Having a Blast: Maguito, after his second appearance, was seen to be always exploding at random times.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Tío Pelado in The Movie, after Cachirula fires him after he gets her Juanín.
  • Calcetín con Ramones Man.
• High-Pressure Blood: That was rather an "I just take a dump all over the radar" episode
• Hilarious Outtakes: Fake ones are shown in 'El Video' and in reports about the channel telenovela. Actual ones appear on DVD.
• How We Got Here: The episode "El meteorito" starts with the meteorite falling towards the studio where the show is made. Once it has fallen, the episode takes us "6 minutes and 41 seconds before".
• Humanity Ensues: Naturally inverted in 'La amenaza Siluria III" where the main crew are turned briefly into their voice actors.
  Tulio: "That was the worst thing that had happened in my life. I even had a nose!"
• Instrumental Theme Tune: A version With Lyrics called 'Yo nunca vi televisión' is used in-show.
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: In the episode "Japonés". The premise is that Japanese businessmen bought the show and adapted it to their culture, but two Chinese songs are used (these being the theme song to Hong Kong movie Para Para Sakura and the Chinese version of "Anything Goes" seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and one of the segments has clips from a Korean supermarket.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Tulio, especially in The Movie.
• Kaiju: The Sasquatch. He is actually average human size, though.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: During the episode 'El Secreto', Tulio paid for hearing a secret about Policarpo, and once he heard it he got in shock to the point of not being able to work. He literally got sick from keeping it and the doctor who saw him literally said the only cure would be for him to reveal it.
• Lampshade Hanging: At the beginning 'Maguito Explosivo' Tulio is worried because at any moment he's going to be interrupted, like in all previous episodes.
• Laugh Track:
  • Parodied in the episode 'Risotrón' (Laugh-a-Tron), with a device that makes everything funnier (Except Tulio) by laughing.
  • Played straight in the Calcetin con Rombos Man segment of 'Patana', which is a spoof of an skit of the Chilean sketch show Jappening con Ja.
• Last of His Kind: Juanín in The Movie. Huachimingo was believed to be this until said movie.
• Leitmotif:
  • ¡Calcetín con Rombos Man! Da-dara-dara! (characters look at the camera while this plays)
  • Every presentation of Patana as her alter ego "La Sombra" (The Shadow) is accompanied by mystery music.
• Lie Detector:
  • In the scientific convention reported in "La coanimadora", was presented a "Truth Machine", invented by Huachimingo, who presents the machine disguised as a scientist. In response of something said by the user, this machine yells "True" or "False". It doesn't works as Huachimingo expected when Mario Hugo interviews him...
    Mario Hugo: Hello, from 31 Minutos. In what consists your invention?
    Huachimingo: Well, this is the machine who tells the truth.
    Truth Machine: ¡False!
  • As part of her investigation in "Relox", Patana, disguised as "La Sombra" (The Shadow), uses a "Truth Machine" on Policarpo. When the user is lying, he receives an electric shock from the machine. When Patana asked if he took Tulio's Relox watch, Policarpo answers "No", and the machine doesn't do anything. Then Policarpo declares that he, as an entertainment journalist, never lied, and the machine gives him an electric shock.
• Limited Wardrobe: The whole cast most of the time, but averted with Tulio.
• Living Dinosaurs: Anacleto is the only remaning dinosaur, and he feels quite lonely.
• Loony Fan: Calcetín con Hongos Man.
• Lost Him in a Card Game
• Long-Lost Relative: Mario Hugo's mom in 'La mamá'.
• Love Makes You Crazy: In The Movie, Cachirula is incredibly obsessed with taking endangered animal species away to her zoo-island so they can be her pets and, by extension, her friends. If one refuses to escape, she beheads them and places their heads on her wall, something Juanin finds out the hard way.
• Made of Explodium:
  • Dante Torobolino drank a can of explodium and is regularily exploding ever since. In his titular episode ("Maguito Explosivo") has, without counting footage form previous episodes, 79 explosions. 44 of them happen in his own Theme Tune.
  • At the end of 'Cirugía', Tío Pelado exploded over his failed self-surgeries.
• Meat-O-Vision: In the beginning of "La amenaza siluria III". After a week trapped into the space, and inside the malfunctioning spaceship, the crew started to become hungry. The episode starts with Tulio seeing Juanín as a roast chicken, then Tulio became aware that Bodoque started seeing him as a roast chicken, then Policarpo does the same with Bodoque, then Patana with Policarpo, then Mario Hugo with Patana, ending with an actual chicken seeing Mario Hugo as a roast chicken.
• Mistaken for Gay: Tulio and Bodoque when they reconciled after a fight with a hug, and a paparazzi took them a photo to say they were a couple.
• Mind Screw: Parodied with one of the Japanese “News segments” in ‘Japonés’, which consists of a group of real children with boxes decorated like faces over their heads, dancing and moving randomly, while some sad music and a lot of Japanese-like gibberish (including some random stats) fly through the screen, ending with a white drawing of one of the decorated boxes with a sad face over a black background (with a white text and a weird voiceover that say mere gibberish). After the segment is over, we get to see Tulio staring at the camera, as if what he he just saw had fried his brain.
• Mood Whiplash: In one episode, Calcetín Con Rombos Man discovers that some products with his image are being sold without his consent (and at very expensive prices, to boot) so he decides to track the source and discovers they are being manufacturated on a ship anchored on international waters, by one of the show's recurrent villains, who claims to have reformed and decided to make merchandise out of admiration for the man who showed him the light. Calcetín Con Rombos Man is initially flattered and happy to see an old foe reforming, until he discovers that his products are being manufacturated by children. Slave children, forced to work in inhuman conditions, being fed just once a week and forced to drink alcohol to keep them quiet and obedient. He promptly releases the children and takes them to an Orphanage of Love.
  • Done In-Universe in the episode '¡Qué lástima!', where Cossimo wants to keep it as pitiful as possible in order to raise the ratings, yet the characters can't stop doing "funny" stuff instead.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Several songs featured in the show. The best example probably is "Mi equilibrio espiritual" ("My spiritual balance") by Freddy Turbina, a song about how awesome and admired he has become since he finally learned to ride a bike without training wheels.
• Muppet Cameo:
  • Tulio and Juan Carlos Bodoque being interviewed by Felipe Camiroaga and Tonka Tomicic in Buenos Días A Todos in 2008. Bodoque even gets a kiss from Tonka.
  • Bodoque interviewing Pedropiedra in 2011.
  • The whole main cast was interviewed in make believe in the press conference of the 2013 Viña del Mar International Song Festival.
  • Tulio and Juanín interrupted the news broadcast of 24 Horas to promote the return of the show in 2014.
• Musical Episode: Last episode of each season, although they are actually clip shows of all the music videos of the season, and usually a new song.
• Nepotism: Parodied with Policarpo's Ranking Top. All the artists are his family or friends. For example, Cucky is his bodyguard, Percy is his best friend's godchild, or Lino and Lana are the kids of his neighbor twice-removed.
• Never Learned to Read: The Calcetín con Rombos Man segment of the episode "Día libre" features a pencil artist in his art exposition, who avoids any instance of read or write something, like giving a speech or signing an autograph. When Calcetín con Rombos Man arrives to the exposition, the artist confess to him that he never learned to read and write. He focused so much on drawing, that he thought reading and writing had no importance. After he confesses, a teacher among the visitors offers him personal lessons.
• News Parody: The concept (at the beginning) was to show stuff that kids care about as if they were actually important news. And even after development, there are a lot of humor derived on showing ridiculous situations as real news.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Several characters share traits with analogous Chilean media personalities, although the creators deny they were intended as parodies.
• No Ending: 'Mugre' does have an ending, but it was so ambiguous and short that much people don't get it. The fact that it was simply removed in syndication by seemingly no reason doesn't help.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Juanin, Cossimo, Bodoque and Policarpo give one to Tulio off-screen during the credits of "La Co-animadora"
• Non-Indicative Name: The song 'Papá, te quiero'; its title literally means 'Dad, I love you', but in the lyrics is told in the sense of "Dad, I want you [to do me favors]".
• No Title: The episodes were officially untitled until they were released to DVD.
  • Ascended Fanon: The titles of the first two seasons were taken from a fan website.
• Off with His Head!: This is the fate for whoever attempts to escape Cachirula's tyranny in The Movie, though we never get to see any actual beheading, and the only two people that go through this are the Blonde Buffalo and Cachirula's right-hand doll Estrella de Lana, although the latter gets better just by sewing herself back together.
• Older Than They Look: Despite that Status Quo Is God time does pass including the hiatus. Thus meaning that Patana is in her early thirties by the end of season 4 considering that she entered the channel in her mid-late teens. Despite that, her puppet hasn't changed
• Once per Episode: "¿Qué te pasa, Policarpo?", which translates to "What's happening to you, Policarpo?".
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: To Policarpo, it never mattered how bad things were, whenever he started on his Verbal Tic Tulio would ask him if he's OK and Policarpo would tell him why he was in such state. In 'El Secreto', Policarpo gets mayorly offended and starts his Verbal Tic and when Tulio asks him why, he yells at him:

  Policarpo: Don't touch me!

• Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: In Universe, El Huachimingo, a rare, rabbit-like animal that supposedly went extinct 1500 years ago... That promptly gets found almost immediately, and then becomes a regular on the show.
• Overly Long Gag: In 'El secreto', about one minute of the characters astounded staring silent after discovering Policarpo's secret. He's bald, his hair is actually a wig.
• Overly Long Name: "Bailan Sin Cesar" is performed by Latidos Latinos Urbanos Emergentes Hiphop Hermano Brother, usually shortened to "LLUEHHB"
• Pals with Jesus: Not exactly friends, but they tend to very casually talk with God in several episodes as if he were just any other person.
• Painting the Medium: Every mention of Calcetí­n Con Rombos Man is followed by everyone turning to the camera while a snippet from Calcetín con Rombos Man's Leitmotif is played. In one episode his leimotif is played so many times that Calcetín Con Rombos Man yells at the musics to stop playing it, and the musicians themselves grab their instruments and walk away, offended.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Lulo Serrucho. He is a Master of Disguise who can fool everyone. He is a hand saw, and his disguises involve just getting some fabric with the overall pattern of whoever he is trying to impersonate, and said disguises always follow his hand saw shape.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Dante, in his second episode. When you can blow up a huge asteroid by yourself, you can officially consider yourself a WMD.
• Photo Montage: The credits of 'No te vayas, Juanín', with photos of a party at Juanín's house.
• Piggy Bank: Patana tries to break one until the piggy bank start running.
• Pokémon Speak:
  • Juanín when he was little, as revealed in The Movie, prompting Tulio and Bodoque to name him.
  • "El diario de Juanín" gave us the cat known as "El gato que empuja"^note The Pushing Cat. DISEÑAU!
• Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Calcetin con Rombos Man speaks in a high-pitched voice when posing as his Secret Identity Cesar Quintanilla.
• Power Incontinence: Maguito had to take some self-control classesto avoid blowing up at the drop of a hat. Referenced in his Theme Tune (which replaces the usual ending theme) at the end of 'Maguito explosivo', where he is said to be more unstable than a volcano.
• Product Placement:
  • Parodied in 'Cebollas', where at first they are forced to shill a brand of musical glasses and then a brand of onions, making the whole show around them and having to do such things as drinking onion juice and wearing onion-scented deodorant, failing miserably at pretending they aren't disgusted.
  • The segments of the show of Tio Horacio present the show as little more than a big, blatant, irresponsible and highly manipulative commercial.
• Protest Song:
  • Parodied with Guaripolo's 'Mala'.
    Guaripolo: "No more trucks, no more whales, no more revolving doors, no more batucadas, no more forests, no more carpets, no more remote controls, no more school vans and no more schoolkids."
  • Also parodied in 'Amurrao', where a toddler complains about long road trips.
• Punny Name:
  • Joe Pino. His name is pronounced the same way as "yo opino" ("I think that..."), and he's the guy who's always giving his opinion on anything.
  • Lino and Lana, the artists that sing 'Mi mama me lo teje todo' (My mom knits everything for me). They are common nicknames, but they literally mean "linen and wool".
• Rage Quit: At the end of "La Mona Lisa" after the late-late-late-late night show only draws the attention of an obnoxious presidential candidate, Juan Carlos and Juanin leave Tulio alone talking with him.
• Really 700 Years Old: Huachimingo says to have been hidden for 1.500 years.
• Retool: The third season is vastly different from the first two, as most episodes deal with the misadventures of the core characters instead of featuring news. This was remedied in the fourth season, however.
• Retcon: In the episode "El despido" Mico reveals that the show is recorded in a truck, but in other episodes after this, we see clearly that is recorded in a studio.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Tulio is the only member of the cast that doesn't idolize Tío Horacio. As the episode goes on we find out Tio Horacio is an irresponsible, abusive and manipulative host, but then we learn that the reason Tulio hates him is not because of that, but because Tulio himself was a victim of his cruel mockery on national TV.
• Rule of Funny: Makes the news show either one of the most respected of the world or the dumbest.
• Running Time in the Title: Subverted. The "31" was chosen arbitrarily and in fact, only a handful of episodes run 31 minutes.
• Saving the World: At the end of 'Maguito explosivo', where the titular Maguito must fly to an asteriod about to destroy earth, so he can explode it before it lands.
• Saw It in a Movie Once: In 'Maguito explosivo':
  Cirilo Pila: "The only way to avoid the colission would be we make the asteroid explode."
  Jackson Aceituno: "And how do you know that?"
  Cirilo Pila: "Because I saw it in a movie once..."
• Scout-Out: In The Movie, it's explained, by flashback, that Tulio and Bodoque were hiking through the woods as Boy Scouts when they met Juanin.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Everyone in Tulio's family yawns this way.
• Self Promotion Disguised As News: In-Universe with the coverage of the network's telenovela, as noted above.
• Self-Titled Album: The soundtrack for the first season, unintentionally also a case of Running Time in the Title.
• Sliding Scale of Living Toys: Estrella de Lana from The Movie is quite obviously a sentient doll. This is particularly so near the end, when she manages to recover from being beheaded by just sewing her head and body back together.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Dante Torobolino, in his first appearance. None of his tricks went right, and even when he almost drowned in a Houdini-esque trap, he insisted he was doing it right.
• Sickening Sweethearts: "Son Pololos"^note Pololo/a is "boy/girlfriend" in Chilean Spanish., a Season Four song about two high school lovers. And how.
• The Smurfette Principle: Besides Carla Rubio from the earlier episodes and her replacement Rosario Central, Patana is the only female character in the main cast.
• Snap Back: Several episodes end with the cast fired or working at something completely different.
• Soap Within a Show: The mock-soap opera Los Títeres (The Puppets) announced by Policarpo during the first season.
• Something Person:
  • Calcetín Con Rombos Man (Argyle Sock Man). Oddly, he's an actual sock and not a man.
  • One-shot examples are 'Hombre de plumavit' (Styrofoam man) and '1/2 Hombre' (Half-man).
• Species Surname: Raul Guantecillo. Tenison Salinas has a given name and Balón Von Bola has both.
  • Don't forget Mico el Micófono!
  • Meanwhile, Juanin appears to have a Species ''First Name''.
• Spin-Off: It generated two spinoffs:
  • Micos y Pericos (Monkeys and Parrots), made exclusively for Guatemala.
  • Las vacaciones de Tulio, Patana y el pequeño Tim (Tulio, Patana and Little Tim's vacations). All 12 episodes are available on the show's official YouTube channel.
• Straw Fan / Meta Guy: In 'Un ratoncito duro de cazar', Ratón del water makes fun of a fan website that had a section with a list full of the show inconsistencies.
• Strictly Formula: Calcetín Con Rombos Man segments, although they loosen up a bit on the ones with an Story Arc.
• Stylistic Suck: 'Guaripolo And Sopapiglobo versus Vampire Chaplin'
• Superhero Episode: 'La Liga del Mal'
• Take a Number: In the "Calcetín Con Rombos Man" segment of the episode 'El árbol furioso', in order to be attended by a medic of her problem, Perfectina Gómez took a number. Perfectina's number was 109000, and immediately after, a nurse called the patient with the number 14.
• Take That!:
  • The "Teletón" special made between the first and second season was only made to mock the annual Chilean television event. In particular, they outright treat the people running the telethon as scammers, mock how most artists are people barely anybody ever heard of, and have Teletón host "Don Mario" appear as a carboard cutout.^note The carboard cutout appears to be a dig at how Teletón host Mario Kreutzberger is best known for hosting variety show Sábado Gigante (under the name "Don Francisco"), which initially aired in Chile, but was later brought by Univision, who moved the show to Miami, Florida. As a result, most of Kreutzberger's appearances in Teletón since then tend to be very brief, if not outright done via satellite.
  • In the song "Lucía la sandía" (about a watermelon named Lucía, which according to the song is somehow a celebrity and made her hometown famous), its lyrics include the phrase "no es rancia ni huele mal como otras Lucías" ("it is not rancid or smelly like other Lucías"), at which point (a puppet of) a woman appears saying "Were you talking about me?" The puppet has the exact same hairstyle and sunglasses as Lucía Hiriart, the widow of infamous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
• Television Geography: Although The Movie don't mention being located at a specific setting, the single city displayed is made-out of different cities both in Chile and Brazil.
• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo: In 'Japonés' the network was bought by a group of Japanese businessmen, and they forced the cast to make a lot of changes to stereotypically pander to Japan.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: In 'Maguito explosivo', Maguito is the only one able to destroy an asteroid heading to Earth thanks to his power of exploding himself.
• Title Sequence Replacement: The syndication version of season 1 features the title sequence from seasons 2 and 3, instead of the original one.
• Toilet Humour: Frequent. What else do you expect when the first episode features a report called "La Ruta de la Caca" (The Poop Road)?
• Traumatic Haircut: The song 'Me cortaron mal el pelo' (They've cut my hair badly).
• Unreadably Fast Text:
  • In "Huachimingo sin hogar", the special programming done to inform about the earthquake begins with a news-ticker at the bottom of the screen, that moves extremely fast. Among the news items, a movie actor helps those affected with free DVDs of his movies and a benefit soccer match ends in a riot leading to further destruction.
  • Also, the credits for the "Ballet Boxing" fight in "Oestelandia". If you pause the screen to see them, you'll notice that both Balón Von Bola and Raúl Guantecillo are just the hosts, all the rest of the credits are for Tenison Salinas.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: The main cast (save for Juanin) range from annoying to selfish to downright abusive to each other, so it's funny when terrible things happen to them.
• Vacation Episode: 'Vacaciones', which behaves like an ordinary episode but showing Busman's Holiday clips of the characters instead of news.
• Verbal Tic: Policarpo’s “Top Top Top...”
• Villain Song: Cachirula attempts to sing one in The Movie, but is unable to because her flying chair malfunctions. The complete version was done later for an advertisement.
• Villain Team-Up: "La Liga del Mal" (The Evil League) in the episode of the same name, formed by Tío Pelado, Calcetín con Hongos Man and Chancho Irarrázabal.
• Visual Pun:
  Bodoque: "I said 'Run the tape', and the tape ran away!"
  • The incredibly dark season 3 premiere can fall into this as Mister Manguera seems to have kidnapped kids with mental issues or he just steals fans.
• Voiceover Letter:
  • Parodied in "Patana". As Tulio begins to read his sister Felicinda's letter about Patana wanting to be a reporter, he looks around in surprise searching for the source of the voice. Then, Felicinda straight up talks him back.
    Felicinda's voice: I'm writing to tell you that I'm no longer angry with you even though you never returned to your town Titirilquen after you became famous!
    Tulio: Hey, but...!
    Felicinda's voice: Let me finish!
  • In "Ahorrando", when Tulio tells to Juan Carlos about the plan to save in everything to hire Dennis Dannis, Juan Carlos stops to talk, and to present the "Nota verde" segment, he starts to give Tulio some papers which content is voiced by Bodoque, to "save words". The segment finishes when Tulio receives a letter, and the content is the traditional "Esta fue la nota verde. Soy Juan Carlos Bodoque" ending, voiced by Bodoque himself.
  • At the beginning of "31 minutos Educativio", Tulio tells Juanín he will read in silence the letter that Cindy sent to him. While he's reading, we hear Cindy voicing her letter. Lampshaded by Juanín who tells that voice is being heard.
• "Wanted!" Poster: For Guaripolo aka "Professor Guaripolus" in 'Oestelandia'.
• War Is Hell: The updates about the war of "Salsacia" and "Conservia".
• Welcome Titles: The title sequence starts with Tulio commuting to work. Once he arrives at the news station, he interacts with some of his co-workers. Other reporters are introduced with them presenting the news. The technicians are shown doing their work and preparing the set.
• Who Would Want to Watch Us?: Several episodes mention that the show is terrible and unsuccesful, although this varies between episodes according to Rule of Funny.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Tulio's fear of whales. Justified in The Movie.
• Workaholic: Juanín Juan Harry hates vacations. His friends take advantage of this and overload him with their own to-do things when the cast goes on vacation, and Juanin actually thanks them for it. In The Movie, when he becomes one of Cachirula's "pets", he pities the fact that she doesn't make them work in order for them to retain their value.
• Wrap Around: One instance has Bodoque showing a new "trick" to Tulio. Telling him to keep sight on his arm, which he stretches offscreen, but then it reappears on the other side, and hits Tulio in the head.

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