Video Game / SPY Fox

"I'm in there like swimwear."

SPY Fox is a series of point-and-click children's games made by Humongous Entertainment. The first installment was released in 1997, with the series ultimately spanning three Adventure Games and two arcade-style shooter Gaiden Games.

The series follows unflappable superspy SPY Fox on his adventures, most of which involve stopping some kind of evil mastermind from conquering the world in one way or another. The series is an Affectionate Parody of spy films in general and James Bond movies in particular.

The Adventure Games, in order, are:

• SPY Fox in Dry Cereal (1997)
• SPY Fox 2: Some Assembly Required (1999)
• SPY Fox: Operation Ozone (2001)

The shooter Gaiden Games, in order, are:

• SPY Fox in Cheese Chase (1998)
• SPY Fox in Hold the Mustard (1999)

The series also spawned multiple children's books (which may not have been published), including SPY Fox: The Official SPY Manual and SPY Fox: Twenty Thousand Leaks Under the Sea, as well as a SPY Fox Comic-Book Adaptation. Humongous also released a number of promo materials for the games, including stories featuring new villains who have never appeared in the games, such as Dr. Morrie Arty, Dr. Fu Manch Hugh, and Baron Von Bluefield.

The premises, by installment

• In SPY Fox in Dry Cereal, William the Kid has kidnapped all the dairy cows in the world and hidden a Milky Weapon of Destruction on the Greek island of Acidophilus. SPY Fox travels to Acidophilus in order to disarm Kid's Weapon and free the cows.
• In SPY Fox in Cheese Chase, Russian Blue returns and steals the Limburger cheese from the Museum de Fromage. SPY Fox travels around the globe in order to recover the cheese.
• In SPY Fox 2: Some Assembly Required, Napoleon LeRoach has hidden a Giant Evil Dogbot at the World's Fair. SPY Fox travels to the fair in order to turn off LeRoach's Dogbot.
• In SPY Fox in Hold the Mustard, King Konglomerate sends his army of robots to steal all the tomatoes in the world. SPY Fox travels around the globe in order to destroy the robots and protect the tomatoes.
• In the SPY Fox comic, Napoleon LeRoach returns and has stolen all the compost in Britain. SPY Fox breaks into LeRoach's secret headquarters in order to recover the compost.
• In SPY Fox: Operation Ozone, Poodles Galore has launched a giant, ozone-depleting aerosol can into orbit. SPY Fox travels around the globe in order to destroy the aerosol can.

A demo version of Dry Cereal can be downloaded from Infogrames.

Now available on Steam.

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Tropes in the SPY Fox series:

• 555: Fox enters the Spy Mobile Command Center via a phone booth with this number.
• Absent-Minded Professor: Professor Quack.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Napoleon LeRoach has a secret base built in one, including an escape pipe to Fiji. And one to SPY Jail, of course.
• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Captain Drydock in Dry Cereal.
• Accidental Misnaming: It's William, not Billy!
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Cheese Chase and Operation Ozone.
• Affectionate Parody: Of the spy film genre, mostly James Bond with a little bit of Get Smart.
• Air-Vent Passageway: In SPY Fox 2, there is one point where you have to jump down a fan room using a cape and land on an air vent to make it to the next room. He also does this during the prologue of the third game, ending up in the bathroom of an enemy base.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: The desert in Operation Ozone is home to the Prickly Pear Cactus (which must be obtained in the respective path), despite the map clearly showing the location as being in Africa.
• Ambiguous Syntax: Is the title character a vulpine who also happens to be a secret agent or is his given name actually Spy Fox? If it's the former, then for some reason he feels the need to introduce himself by his profession.
• Animated Tattoo: There's a pelican in Dry Cereal who has one, and he's so eager to show it off that he'll do it every time you try to talk to him. To be fair, it changes to something completely different every time you talk to him, and one of them is of him showing off his tattoo, so it's understandable why he'd be proud of it.
• Animation Bump: The graphics got better with each installment, both with their color pallet but also with the number of drawings in the character animation. Fox himself went from a Perpetual Smiler to having a broader range of facial expressions.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking
  • The Society of Meaningless Evil, Larceny, Lying and Yelling (S.M.E.L.L.Y.)^note Oh yeah, Spy Corp's evil archnemesis..., the villains of Some Assembly Required.
  • Russian Blue's crimes (in which she was acquitted for) include "jay-tangoing" and "tangoing out of season."
  • According to Captain Drydock he and SS Winaprize have faced Hurricanes, Whilpools, Giant Squids and a nasty tax audit.
• Assembly Line Fast-Forward: In the Venus flytrap path in "Some Assembly Required" has a worker inside the Dogbot doing some assembly work on a conveyor belt. Fox needs to press the speed button to make it go fast so he can snatch the goggles from the worker without looking, as he would be too busy on the assembly line.
• Astral Finale: Operation Ozone's final areas all take place above Earth, with Poodles Galore's orbiting space station and her secret moon base.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: LeRoach's plan for the Giant Evil Dogbot in Some Assembly Required. He pulls it off, but SPY Fox is narrowly able to deactivate it before its rampage gets too out of hand.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: A handful of the main characters. Fox himself is probably the most jarring example, wearing a full tuxedo without shoes.
• Beary Friendly: Bea Bear, who appears in all three games to offer advice and helpful items for Fox.
• Berserk Button: William the Kid being called "Billy."
• Big Bad: William the Kid in Dry Cereal, Russian Blue in Cheese Chase, Napoleon LeRoach in Some Assembly Required and the Comic-Book Adaptation SPY Fox, King Konglomerate in Hold the Mustard, and Poodles Galore in Operation Ozone.
• Big Good: Monkey Penny.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Mobile Command Center in SPY Fox 2.
• Blatant Lies: When Mr. Udderly details how he was kidnapped by Kid's nappers, he paints himself as far busier and far braver than the actual footage of his kidnapping shows.
• Boats into Buildings: In SPYFox in Dry Cereal, SPY Corp has set up its Acidophilus base in the cabin of a ship that is buried underground. Only the ship's bow can be seen aboveground, where it is disguised as a phone booth. Fox has to enter a special phone number in the "phone booth" in order to activate a secret elevator to access the base.
• Bond, James Bond: Fox always introduces himself this way. "The name's Fox, Spy Fox." Of course, this implies that he's either introducing himself by his profession (see Irony) or that's his real name.
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: Occasionally, "I'm in there like swimwear!" is said by other characters, which is lampshaded by Fox.
• Bound and Gagged: Both Mr. Udderly and Plato Pushpin are first seen like this, with Spy Fox having to rescue them from the main antagonist of their respective game.
• Break the Haughty: William the Kid is hit with this after SPY Fox successfully ejects him into Evil Villain Jail. Furious at his defeat, he vows revenge......only to realize he has no clue how to escape his prison, and seemingly resigns to his fate.
• Broken Bridge: In all three games, SPY Fox arrives at the main hub to find that everywhere is closed, and things don't open until he's established the Evil Plan of the game (by rescuing Udderly or Pushpin in the first and third games, and by entering the Chateau LeRoach via the service entrance and talking to LeRoach in the second).
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer
  • Fox is a Deadpan Snarker with a somewhat juvenile sense of humor about everything, but he's darn good at his job and always gets the bad guy.
  • Quack comes up with some weird gadgets, but they all work spectacularly.
• Camera Spoofing: SPY Fox has to do this in Some Assembly Required's regenerator path, using a postcard. Despite text on the postcard being plainly visible, the guard never catches on.
• Card-Carrying Villain: S.M.E.L.L.Y. stands for "the Society of Meaningless Evil, Larceny, Lying and Yelling." That should give you a good idea what the organization is like.
• Catchphrase: Fox: "I'm in there like swimwear!"
• Company Cross References:
  • In Dry Cereal, if Hong Kong Doodle is blocking the path to the captive dairy cows, one of his Cock-a-Doodle Fu moves is the Pajama Slam. The icon in the top left of the page for this move is a lunchbox.
  • At the beginning of Operation Ozone, if Fox follows the instructions to the rocket-powered origami skateboard in the wrong order, he will end up creating dioramas of Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, and the head of Pajama Sam.
  • Also in Operation Ozone, in the path where Fox needs to get a freshwater pearl for Professor Pushpin's congeal pill, Fox can ask Herman the Fisherman to tell him a fish story. Herman will tell him that he had a big yellow fish on his line once, but it pulled out a pair of plastic safety scissors, cut the line, and got away, referencing the events of Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse.
• Continuity Nod
  • The ski chase scene in Some Assembly Required ends with Fox ski-jumping into the airplane from Dry Cereal.
  • During the boat chase scene in the opening of Operation Ozone, the Dogbot from Some Assembly Required is seen buried in garbage on a trash barge.
  • In the final cutscene of Ozone, Fox says he knows Cockadoodle Foo, a call back to a puzzle on the "white water" path in Dry Cereal.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: SPY Fox, which was published in the British magazine Planet PC.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Talking to Monkey Penny will cause SPY Fox to ask a pointless question, followed by her asking why he isn't doing what he should be.
• Cool Car: SPY Fox's Asti Spumoni SPY Car from Dry Cereal and Operation Ozone.
• Cool Ship: The M.E.S.S. (Multiple Environment SPY Ship) from Hold the Mustard. A giant version (M.E.S.S. II, the Super SPY M.E.S.S.) appears in Operation Ozone.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: William the Kid in Dry Cereal, King Konglomerate in Hold the Mustard, and Poodles Galore in Operation Ozone.
• Cultural Translation: The UK dub of Dry Cereal changes the President of the United States to the Prime Minister and, in a rare visual change, the White House to the Houses of Parliament.
• Cunning Like a Fox: The sole reason why a fox is chosen for a spy hero.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The opening cutscene of Cheese Chase.
  SPY Fox: She won't get away with this. Not with Fox, SPY Fox, on her trail.
  (Russian Blue zooms away in her car)
  Professor Quack: Uhh, it appears that she's getting away with it, SPY Fox.
• Cutting Off the Branches: While they aren't needed, of the paths you randomly get from "Dry Cereal" imply that they are canon to the later games. Walter Wireless always appears in "Some Assembly Required" even though he only appears in the Car Chase path of "Dry Cereal" (and in SAR he expressly refers back to the first game), and Fox mentions about Cock-a-Doodle Fu (if Hong Kong Doodle is blocking the path) in "Operation Ozone".
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Monkey Penny.
  • Walter Wireless, particularly in Some Assembly Required.
  • SPY Fox himself. He always seems to have some kind of quip for any situation.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Some Assembly Required's unused cutscene.
• Developer's Foresight
  • Dry Cereal has dialogue recorded for the extremely unlikely event that the player will attempt to get more Chicken Knuckles after using them on the alligators, although due to a coding oversight it doesn't play.
  • Attempting to contact Monkey Penny with the watch inside Mobile Command Center in all three games will have Monkey Penny call him out for contacting her while you're in the same room as her.
• Didn't Think This Through: In Operation Ozone, Spy Fox discovers the hard way that dramatically announcing your presence to the villain before sabotaging her evil plan is... unwise.
• A Dog Named "Dog":
  • A fox who is a spy named "SPY Fox." Though this might possibly be a code name.
  • A monkey named Monkey Penny.
  • A poodle named Poodles Galore.
• Donut Mess with a Cop: Used as a puzzle in Operation Ozone; in the path where you have to get the Secret Donut XY as an ingredient, there will be a cop in the donut shop who will excitedly run up to eat every donut you try to order, and the player has to figure out how to get rid of him.
• Double Take: The worms in Dry Cereal do this in the White Water path.
• The Dragon: Russian Blue in Dry Cereal.
• Dragon Their Feet: Russian Blue evades capture in Dry Cereal and returns to steal the prized Limburger Cheese in Cheese Chase.
• Dual Boss: Hold the Mustard's eighth and final Florida Swamp Lands level.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Dry Cereal is the only full game set in a named geographical location that is explicitly based on a real place; barring Hold the Mustard, subsequent games mostly take place in nonspecific Everytown, America settings. Even the various locations across the world in Operation: Ozone are never specified beyond the continent they're on, simply being called "the jungle" or "the desert."
  • Dry Cereal is also the only game not to show the villain's backstory and the only main game in which Fox is voiced by Robert Zenk rather than Mike Madeoy.
• End-of-Series Awareness: Operation: Ozone, the third and final main game, ends with Spy Fox saying that he's thinking of taking a vacation.
• Eternal Engine: The inside of the Dogbot in Some Assembly Required.
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It: When Spy Fox asks if the food in the cantina is any good, Bea responds there's a reason there aren't any rats in that part of town.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Hold the Mustard.
• Evil Laugh: Lampshaded by William the Kid near the end of the first game.
• Expanded Universe: The Tie-In Novels (if they were even published) and Comic-Book Adaptation.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, the weasel who is accepting invitations to the deck party on the S.S Deadweight gets a pretty surprising one when Fox shows his (forged) invitation. This comes after he turned him away the first time.
  Weasel: Not you again! How many times do I have to tell you? This is a private party and without an invitation, you are not allowed to go on board! Sheesh! (Cue Spy Fox theme when Spy Fox whisks out his invitation) The nerve of some people. You'd think they would... (sees invitation) YEEHEE!!! Let me see that. Signed, Russian Blue. (Cue Heel–Face Turn) Oh sir! We are ever so honored to have you on board with us today. Please, feel free to come and go as you wish.
  Spy Fox: (dryly) Why thank you. How gracious of you. (to the player) What a weasel.
  Weasel: I trust you will have an enjoyable visit. Aand if there is any way in which I can kiss up to you any more sir, I trust you will let me know.
  Spy Fox: But of course!
• Expy: Many characters are naturally ones of their James Bond counterparts; SPY Fox for James Bond himself, Monkey Penny for Money Penny, Quack for Q, SPY Corps for MI6, S.M.E.L.L.Y. for S.P.E.C.T.R.E. - the list goes on and on.
• Extreme Omnivore: Professor Quack devours every blueprint that he shows to you that instructs how to use a particular gadget. Various comments from Quack about the blueprints suggest that they may be edible stationary.
• Failures on Ice: Spy Fox ends up wobbling around the ice rink for a few seconds if he tries skating without the proper diagram loaded in.
• Falling into Jail:
  • In the Golden Ending for Dry Cereal, Spy Fox reprograms William the Kid's robot pilot to send his blimp to Spy Corps. Jail and sets of William's pilot ejector seat. Spy Fox escapes safely on the blimp's only parachute, while William falls and lands in a cell at Spy Corps Jail.
  • In the one for Some Assembly Required, Spy Fox meddles with the sewer's pipe system so that LeRoach's planned escape route to Fiji will instead lead him to a prison cell. Spy Fox then flushes LeRoach down the pipe, sending LeRoach into a prison through the cell's faucet.
• Fan Boy: Elmo is the Amazing Caped Cod's biggest fan.
• Femme Fatale: Russian Blue would be a good candidate. She basically seduces SPY Fox with a tango, even in a red dress.
• For the Evulz: Subverted - despite S.M.E.L.L.Y.'s title as a Society of Meaningless Evil, Larceny, Lying and Yelling, most of its villains actually have the plain objective of bringing around some sort of profit to them. LeRoach is also not of this trope by instead planning to wreak havoc on the World's Fair to seek revenge for being too short to go through a turnstile and being publicly laughed at for this deficiency when he was younger.
• Freudian Excuse: LeRoach's reason for coming up with the Giant Evil Dogbot plot? Because he was made fun of for being too short for a particular ride at the World's Fair, after having waited over 12 hours to get onto the ride.
• Fun with Acronyms: The M.E.S.S. (Multiple Environment SPY Ship), as well as SPY Corps' nemeses N.O.G. (Nectar Of the Goats). Another Nebulous Evil Organisation S.M.E.L.L.Y. was headed by several different villains, and under each new boss the meaning of the acronym changed. Under Napoleon LeRoach, it was Society of Meaningless Evil, Larceny, Lying and Yelling, under Dr. Fu Manch Hugh, it stood for Slightly Maniacal Evildoers and their Legion of Local Yokels, and under Baron von Bluefield, it meant Scheming Masterminds Exhort Lowdown Laboring Yahoos. Under Dr. Morrie Arty, it was spelled S.M.E.L.L.I.E., and stood for Self-Managing Elegant Little League of International Evildoers.
• Furry Confusion: The main plot of Dry Cereal revolves around the dairy industry. Feral cows exist and are used to provide milk. The CEO of the dairy company is an anthropomorphic bull.
• Game Within a Game: The three SPY Watch games featured throughout the series.
• Glad I Thought of It: In "Some Assembly Required", after Agent Grace Fully gives Spy Fox the S.M.E.L.L.Y. trash bag she states it needs to get to Spy HQ. He states he has a better idea, he should get the bag to Spy HQ.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The SPY Corps organization to which SPY Fox and his team belong.
• Gruesome Goat: William the Kid, the main villain of Dry Cereal, is a goat who kidnaps dairy cows for his Milky Weapon of Destruction so he can take over the dairy industry.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: William the Kid's fortress is powered by this, shown in the Diode path. Getting the right diode first requires turning off the fortress' power, by removing carrots that were dangled in front of the hamsters.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The bosses in Hold the Mustard are all about a fifth of the length of the normal levels, and all it takes to beat them is to stand in one spot and hit their weak spot, highlighted on the radar. Their only way of attacking is by their robots, but on most of the bosses, you'll end up destroying it before they can even make it to you.
• High-Class Glass: William the Kid from Dry Cereal wears a monocle.
• Hindenburg Incendiary Principle: William the Kid's getaway blimp in the Golden Ending to Dry Cereal; after William is ejected and (literally) thrown into Evil Villain Jail, the blimp ends up descending to Earth and is heard exploding among crashing.
• Honor Before Reason: In Operation Ozone, Spy Fox feels the need to dramatically declare himself to Poodles Galore before sabotaging her space station. Naturally, this gets him captured. Fortunately, after freeing himself, he learns his lesson for take two.
  Spy Fox: This time, I'll keep my actions to myself!
• Hub Level: The first two games have a sort of central square where most of the other areas can be accessed from. Averted in Operation Ozone, where you instead use your SPY Car to fly around the world.
• Humongous Mecha: The Giant Evil Dogbot in Some Assembly Required.
• I Broke a Nail: This is how Monkey Penny manages to defeat Poodles Galore.
• Idiot Ball: William the Kid in Dry Cereal, who after getting his ascot caught in the door leading to the kidnapped dairy cows while trying to escape his facility just leaves it there to make his getaway. Spy Fox himself lampshades how absurdly easy William just made things for him.
• I Know Kung-Faux: In Dry Cereal SPY Fox must learn Cock-a-Doodle-Fu to get past a certain N.O.G. guard. This becomes somewhat of a Running Gag in the later games.
• Impact Silhouette: A rare inversion happens in Dry Cereal — when you use the laser toothbrush on the steel door, Spy Fox cuts it out exactly in his outline for when he's standing still. Weaponized in the second game with one of the ways Fox can evade the Mooks from S.M.E.L.L.Y during the ski chase scene.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Spy Fox is not very physically strong, and most parts of the game where he can don a disguise have an option of feminine clothes or a feminine name, without him reacting negatively (or reacting in any way, really).
  • In "Operation Ozone," receives a message in a lipstick tube. His automatic response is: "Sorry, that's not my shade. I'm an 'autumn.'"
  • Also in "Operation Ozone," Spy Fox has to paint his nails as part of a puzzle. His response is, "The machine painted my nails. And they look pretty!"
• Invisible Wall: Hold the Mustard's Outer Space levels each have one at the top and one at the bottom.
• Iris Out: At the end of Dry Cereal.
• Irony: The main character openly admits to being a secret agent whenever he introduces himself, despite the fact that the entire point of spying is to conceal your identity. Of course, this being the kind of game that it is, either nobody intuits that he's admitting to being a spy or Spy Fox is his actual given name.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Russian Blue is a Karma Houdini in the first game, having left the scene before Spy Fox could confront her. She eventually gets her due in Cheese Chase.
• Lampshade Hanging: From the second game:
  Walter Wireless: And the 74 million dollar question is...who invented the retractable TV?
• Level Editor:
  • Cheese Chase. Like with all over Junior Arcade titles, it is limited, with only three of eight possible level themes selectable and the level terrain being unmodifiable outside of simple pieces, among others.
  • A level editor for "Things From Space" in Some Assembly Required exists, but can only be accessed through the game's debug mode.
• Limited Loadout: Spy Fox can only carry four spy gadgets at a time. He has to either return it to the vending machine or consume it to get another. He will however leave some on the ground for puzzles that would otherwise require the gadget many times.
• Literal Surveillance Bug: Walter Wireless, who is also an expy of Tom Brokaw.
• Little Jimmy: Featured in Some Assembly Required, during a Parody Commercial for Lard on a Stick, with a little bear cub named Jimmy who calls for Yucko for Lard on a Stick, which he enjoys even though it makes him nauseous. The commercial ends with this father-son moment with Jimmy's Standard '50s Father...
  Jimmy: Isn't there anything Yucko can't do?
  Father: (chuckles and pats his head) Wouldn't you like to know, Jimmy? Wouldn't you like to know?
• Logo Joke: Cheese Chase has a different intro to the Humongous Entertainment logo at the beginning of the game.
• Long Song, Short Scene: "Chase Scene a Go-Go!" is surprisingly much longer than what is actually heard in-game. Thankfully, the whole theme gets played in Cheese Chase.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Played with. In Operation Ozone, Professor Pushpin is counting on Spy Fox to bring him four objects to form his congeal pill. One of the paths in the game is a Prickly Pear Pizza. After Spy Fox gallivants all across the world to get the prickly pear to make it and brings it back, Pushpin eats it. When Spy Fox asks, Pushpin spouts an Expospeak Gag saying he was hungry and glad that Spy Fox could deliver it.
• Mad Libs Dialogue: SPY Fox is one of the few Humongous games to actually use dialogue for puzzle solving. In every main game, Fox has a notepad where clues and important information are stored in the form of RebusBubbles that he can use to interrogate other characters. Often, the line of Fox asking the question will be generic with the subject differing each time.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: In Hold the Mustard, halfway through the bonus Atlantis levels, King Konglomerate is revealed to be some sort of rodent (possibly a gerbil or guinea pig) piloting a gorilla robot. He then has to abandon his robot suit due to it getting wet and breaking, and he doesn't get it back for the ending.
• Marathon Level: Hold the Mustard has a reputation for being full of these, sans the boss levels mentioned above. They are about 4 to 5 minutes early on, and for a game with 101 levels, that is outrageous. Then you get to the ones with double the amount of enemies.
• Master of Disguise: Parodied in each of the adventure games, where SPY Fox has only to don the appropriate uniform to go incognito.
• Match Cut: In a parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the third game's intro ends with the SpyCar destroying a monkey's fruit stand whilst driving off a dam, during a car chase. The monkey then angrily tosses a banana into the air, which morphs into Poodles Galore's space station.
• Mini Mook: The Gyro Grub, Gnat, Red Oy, and (to a lesser extent) Spry robots from Hold the Mustard.
• Miserable Massage: In the Some Assembly Required, Fox is getting info from a bear massage therapist. Her massage routine is obviously painful for Fox, which he politely brings up each time you ask for her services. At one point she'll even fold him up into a paper airplane and fly him around the booth.
• Misguided Missile: In Dry Cereal, after putting the fuses together, the missile flies off, and we hear SPY Fox say, "I guess that guided missile was misguided." Then it flies back, crashing into the door, and then he says, "Of course, I planned that. I like a dramatic pause."
• Mismatched Atomic Expressionism: Possibly as a Shout-Out to the decades in which this parody of the Tuxedo and Martini spy genre originated, all of the games' art styles are very angular and geometric, the basic aesthetic mismatches its fills and strokes, and is limited in animation.
• Mission Control: Every game but Cheese Chase has Monkey Penny play this role, joined by Professor Quack in Hold the Mustard.
• Most Common Card Game: In Dry Cereal, one mini-game has SPY Fox play a game of Go Fish for trinkets with a big pig, Artemis J. Bigpig, a parody of Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon.
• Multiple Endings:
  • All three of the Adventure Games have two endings: one where the Big Bad gets away, and another with a few more screens of gameplay culminating in the capture of the Big Bad (see Press X to Not Die below). Which ending you get slightly affects the last cutscene: SPY Fox gets a smaller award in the inferior endings, and during the end credits of Dry Cereal William the Kid has an extra line.
  • Hold the Mustard always ends the same way, but finding the bonus Atlantis levels gives the ending a visual difference (see The Man Behind the Curtain above).
• Musical Nod:
  • One of the two pieces of waltz music from Dry Cereal is a re-arrangement of the Sam's Room theme from the Pajama Sam games No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside and SockWorks.
  • Several bars of "Chase Scene a Go-Go!" from Dry Cereal and Cheese Chase are lifted from one of the level themes in Pajama Sam's SockWorks.
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: "The name is Fox, SPY Fox."
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: In Dry Cereal, the way to the stables holding the dairy cows may be intercepted by a pool full of hungry alligators. The way for Fox to get past them is by feeding them chicken knuckles with secret sauce that put them to sleep.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Bea the bear is seen with a different job in each of the adventure games; She runs the Greek Cantina in Dry Cereal, is a masseuse at the World's Fair in Some Assembly Required, and a bee keeper in Operation Ozone. She's also mentioned being a former "Cockadoodle Fu" fighter and a figure skater. She explains in Operation Ozone that Artimice J Bigpig eventually bought out the cantina and LeRoach's Dogbot crushed her massage stand when it went on a rampage at the end of Some Assembly Required.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed
  • Artimice J Bigpig is heavily modeled after actor Sydney Greenstreet, and his voice actor even says "Gad!" like Greenstreet's character in The Maltese Falcon.
  • The security guard for the Dogbot Kitchen Entrance in Some Assembly Required has a Paul Lynde-like inflection.
  • Walter Wireless has a blatant Tom Brokaw personality and voice.
  • Fox's vocal characterization is not a shout out to Get Smart. It's Maxwell Smart's voice, coming out of a fox who is not Maxwell Smart, spoken by an actor who also is not Don Adams. Mind: blown.
  • Mr. Udderly's voice is based on Don Knotts, complete with him quoting a line from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.
  • In Operation: Ozone, the doughnut shop is staffed by aspiring actress Pia Zadoughnut. It's safe to assume that her namesake is a comment on the character's acting abilities.
• No OSHA Compliance: The control room in Poodles Galore's space station. The entrance to the room has no guard rails preventing a drop into the aerosol (actually leading to Spy Fox getting knocked off the ledge when the station starts to blow), and there's no foot path from the entrance to the control panel; Poodles uses a grappling hook to get in and out of the room.
• Oh, Crap!: Twice in short succession in Operation: Ozone.
  • When Poodles Galore catches the congeal pill the first time, preventing Spy Fox's sabotage, Fox's eyes widen in shock.
  • When Spy Fox succeeds in throwing in the congeal pill the second time, causing the entire space station to start to explode, Poodles mutters a flat "Uh oh."
• Origami Gag: In the third game, Operation Ozone, Fox infiltrates a Scottish hydroelectric dam in a parody of GoldenEye's introduction sequence, and an informant there gives him a sheet of paper from which to build a rocket-powered origami skateboard. The player's job is to click on the three parts in the proper order to build the skateboard. Clicking on the parts in the wrong order turns the skateboard into an origami model of one of three Humongous Entertainment characters; Pajama Sam's head, Freddi Fish, or Putt-Putt.
• Parental Bonus: More prominent in this series than most of the others by Humongous Entertainment. In addition to all of the shout outs listed below, a lot of the wordplay might be a little too sophisticated for grade school-aged players to pick up on right away.
• Permanently Missable Content: Once you complete the quests that require you to use the ID-Card and Name Tag machines in Some Assembly Required and Operation Ozone respectively, attempting to reuse either machine will cause it to self-destruct.
• Piranha Problem: Mr. Udderly first appears tied up over a tank of piranhas. Spy Fox quickly points out how odd it is to have such a tank in the middle of a Feta cheese factory, and also quotes the reputation of piranhas being able to render a cow into a skeleton in moments (...which Mr. Udderly is). Cheese Chase also plays this straight.
• Potty Emergency: In Dry Cereal, Sal, the sailor on the S.S. Deadweight won't let you look at the map in the control room. During his conversation, he mentions that he needs to use the restroom as the result of drinking 17 bottles of prune pop, but he can't leave his post until his shift ends and his replacement arrives. You have to change the time on the time clock according to the time Bea tells you, then show up in a sailor hat in order to get Sal to leave.
• Power Perversion Potential: Averted with the X-Ray gum, where if you try to use it on Monkey Penny she will snark at you.
• Press X to Not Die: Or more accurately Click Here To Not Let The Bad Guy Get Away, near the end of each adventure game, you'll get the bonus ending if you succeed.
• The Professor: Professor Quack.
• Psycho Poodle: The main antagonist of SPY Fox 3: Operation Ozone is Poodles Galore, a poodle who wants to destroy the Ozone layer with a giant aerosol can-shaped space station to heat up the planet Earth so people will be forced to buy her SPF 2001 sunscreen.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Every Mook in Dry Cereal.
• Punny Name
  • The (fictional) Greek island of Acidophilus is named for the bacteria which causes milk to turn into yogurt. Appropriate for a game involving dairy products.
  • Pia Zadoughnut, the waitress at the pizza place or doughnut place, depending on the path you're on.
• Recycled Premise: Elements from the previous games would be reused in the later installments.
  • "Some Assembly Required": The Amazing Caped Cod acts similar to Captain Drydock as he lost his lucky charm, and Fox needs to get that charm back.
  • Operation Ozone: Elements from the first game were reused, such as Spy Fox using a code number on a machine to access Spy Mobile Command Center, saving the guy who was captured by the bad guys and important to stop them, and one of the areas has a safe guarded and Fox needs to use a gadget that would capture them.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Cheese Chase reuses music from Dry Cereal while Operation Ozone reuses music from Some Assembly Required.
• Regional Bonus: Operation Ozone got an additional two songs. The Music CD page of the American version's help file mentions "two funky, hip SPY Fox bonus tracks" which were supposed to be available from Humongous Entertainment's website but were ultimately never offered; these are likely the same two songs.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The first game's plot takes California's Got Milk? campaign and runs with it to cartoonish proportions. William the Kid even jokingly quotes the ad during the game's introduction, and set up a conspicuous "Goat Milk?" billboard in his fortress. It also hides the entrance to the area containing the kidnapped dairy cows.
• Rod And Reel Repurposed: Dry Cereal begins with SPY Fox skydiving from an airplane without a parachute, and needing to use one of his spy gadgets to make a safe landing on the island of Acidophilus. One of the gadgets SPY Fox can have with him is a fishing pole, which he can then use to latch onto a helicopter.
• Running Gag: In the second game: "Well of course it's smelly if you got it out of a trash bag!" "No, not smelly, S.M.E.L.L.Y.!"
• Same Language Dub: Much like other Humongous Entertainment games, there exists a UK dub, which makes the James Bond references much more apparent.
• Script Swap: Russian Blue only dances the tango, but the only music played at her deck party is waltz. Spy Fox slips in a sheet of tango music to distract her into dancing long enough for him to plant Walter Wireless in her purse.
• Sequel Hook: SPY Fox tries this on Monkey Penny during their chat upon Fox landing on Kid's blimp and Monkey Penny telling him not to let Kid get away:
  SPY Fox: But what about the sequel?
  Monkey Penny: There are plenty of other villains out there. We'll be fine.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • In the second game, one of the things you need to obtain is the off code for the dogbot. However, there are a finite amount of pre-determined combinations that the game may give out to you, meaning you can very easily try to guess the code, totally bypassing all of the puzzles that you are otherwise expected to go through to get it and skipping a large chunk of the game. You still have to take care of the off switch, however.
  • Similarly, though to a lesser extent, the third game's bonus ending sequence has a puzzle where you need to reach the security camera room of Poodles' secret base and figure out what fingernail pattern you need to deactivate the force field. Again, there are a finite number of pre-determined possibilities for this, so it isn't too hard to attempt to guess the correct one. This allows the player to completely bypass all of the puzzles needed to reach the camera room.
• Shoe Phone: Every single gadget is this. Laser toothbrushes, X-ray gum, booby trapped coins, cheese and safe cracker kits...And that's only in the first game!
• Shout-Out: Mostly to James Bond. The ridiculousness of the gadgets and Fox's Don Adams-esque voice are a nod to Get Smart.
  • In the second game, Monkey Penny asks Spy Fox if he's alright after a crash landing, to which he coolly replies "Shaken, but not stirred."
  • Fox's Cool Car is an Asti Spumoni, a take off on Bond's Aston Martin (and also the name of a sparkling champagne).^note Although the goofiness of a cool spy car named after a cheap sparkling wine is also part of the joke.
  • Poodles Galore's name is a cross between Pussy Galore from Goldfinger and Toodles Galore, Tom's most frequent love interest in Tom and Jerry.
  • And speaking of Goldfinger, both the "white water" path on the first game and the "beauty clay" path of the third game require Fox to wear a wetsuit. Both times, he removes it to reveal his perfectly dry dinner jacket underneath, a nod to the opening of that movie when Bond does the same.
  • When William the Kid ends up in the Evil Villain jail, he says "I would've gotten away with my evil plan if it weren't for that pesky Spy Fox!" in a nod to the "You Meddling Kids" quote spoken on several Scooby-Doo cartoons (though A Pup Named Scooby-Doo indeed had the gang be called "pesky kids.")
  • The Cold Open of Some Assembly Required borrows the Alpine setting and the protagonist out-skiing goons from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
  • In Dry Cereal, the cutscene where three mooks eye a recently dropped coin is reminiscent of the three-way duel at the climax of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
  • On the non-spy-related references, Captain Drydock's voice characterization in Dry Cereal is a reference to Captain Kirk, right down to his speech about the sea being "the final frontier". And his boat is called the "SS Winaprize".
  • "A spoonful of LeRoach's fingerprint makes a steel door go down."
  • Most of the songs on the jukebox in the bowling alley in Operation Ozone are named after various Bond films, including Moonbaker, The Man With The Golden Bun, From Poodles With Love, For Your Pies Only, and Live And Let Fry.
  • Operation Ozone begins with Fox bungee jumping off a dam into an air vent and exiting the vent into a bathroom stall. Sound familiar?
  • Also during Operation Ozone, Spy Fox tries to convince Monkey Penny he was employing the "Limp Biscuit Maneuver" against Poodles.
  • Doll and Lee. See "Single-Minded Twins" below. Fox also greets them by saying "Hello, Dolly!"
  • At one point in the Jungle in Operation Ozone, Fox has to outrun a giant chicle.
  • In Operation Ozone, the code to enter Poodles Galore's moonbase corresponds to a five-note jingle, nodding to a similar song-based password in Moonraker (which itself is the alien melody from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which the jingle in Operation Ozone is a lawyer-friendly pastiche of).
• Single-Minded Twins: Some Assembly Required has Doll and Lee, twin sheep sisters who run the food cloning exhibit. Considering their profession, as well the fact that they're named after Dolly, the first sheep to be cloned, one of them might possibly be a clone.
• Skewed Priorities: After receiving the pizza or doughnut from Pia, SPY Fox comments that it may be the key to saving the planet. She then asks in a horrified manner if he's referring to Planet Hollywood. When he explains he's referring to Earth, she doesn't really care as much.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The Hold the Mustard soundtrack mostly maintains a fairly laid back tone, even as you desperately scramble for your life in the merciless Bullet Hell the later stages are rife with.
• Spy Catsuit: Monkey Penny wears one, though it's really only visible in Operation Ozone. The rest of the time, it just looks like she wearing a black shirt.
• Stating the Simple Solution: At the beginning of Operation Ozone, Fox acquires a lipstick container that has a message in it. He initially thinks that it's encoded on the container in some cryptic way, until the Chief suggests him to look inside of it. He turns out to be right.
• Stern Chase: Inverted in Cheese Chase, which has SPY Fox follow Russian Blue around the world for 100 levels.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: Operation Ozone (the third game) is unnumbered.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: If you ask Mr. Udderly about Russian Blue, he'll think you're talking about an Umbrella Drink. If you ask Professor Quack the same question, he'll give you the same answer.
• Sweatdrop: If Mr. Bigpig is losing at Go Fish, he will start very obviously sweating like a pig.
• Take Your Time
  • Fox will fall for as long as it takes while you're choosing which gadget to make a safe landing once he jumps out of the airplane in the opening of Dry Cereal, thankfully sparing us a very, very dark opening to what would otherwise be a short game. He'll even start cracking jokes after a while.
    "Am I falling or is the ground just coming towards me?"
  • Later, once you've disarmed the Milky Weapon of Destruction, you can take absolutely as long as you like to get to the stables where the dairy cows are being held in spite of the fact that Billy the Kid is escaping all the time and the cows are about to be drowned in milk. (Indeed, the puzzle you need to solve to get to the stables may require you to go all the way back to the town.)
  • Although the diode path on the same game contains perhaps the only aversion of this in any Humongous game: once you turn the power off, you only have so long before it comes on again.
• Tie-In Novel: May not have been published.
• Title Drop: Lampshaded at the beginning of Some Assembly Required:
  SPY Fox: On the side it says "'Some Assembly Required.' Sounds like an excellent title for one of my adventures."
• Trash Landing: SPY Fox does this in the opening cutscene of Cheese Chase. The stunt seems to have been planned out, as seconds later the dumpster collapses to reveal Fox ready for action on his SPY Scooter.
• Tuxedo and Martini: SPY Fox is a parody of these types. Doubles as Limited Wardrobe, as he almost NEVER changes into anything else that he can't just wear on top of it.
• Two Decades Behind: The entire premise of Operation Ozone, as its title suggests, revolves around the hole in the ozone layer, an environmental issue that had largely been solved by the early 1990s, over a decade before the game was released.
• Unreliable Narrator: See Blatant Lies above.
• Unwinnable: Some Assembly Required's unused cutscene replaces the Restructo-Lux room's only exit, so if you unlock the cutscene, the room can only be escaped by using the game's debug mode or ScummVM's debugger.
• Useless Item: Depending on which path you are sent into, some of the gadgets available to you won't be of use and will only serve as inventory clutter if you take them with you.
• Video Game Caring Potential: In Dry Cereal, it's possible to go back to the Feta Factory after rescuing Mr. Udderly and turn the piranha pool's temperature back to a comfortable level. This has no effect on gameplay, though.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can keep dropping Mr. Udderly into the pool of piranhas without consequence, minus a quip from Spy Fox. The same can be done with Plato Pushpin; before you acquire the right gadget needed to save him, you can hit him with the bowling ball as many times as you like.
• Villain Ball: Le Roach keeps sending you back to the jail you have already escaped from. You can go and talk to him as many times as you want. Despite a Hand Wave saying that SPY Fox destroyed the jail's security system so completely they've been unable to fix it, it never occurs to Le Roach to deal with him another way.
• Waxing Lyrical:
  • Played with towards the end of Some Assembly Required, when Napoleon LeRoach finally gets his dinner after Spy Fox gives the Julia Child expy the fork, a line is sampled from Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'":
    LeRoach: Spit Roasted Boot Bearnaise! My favorite dish!
    Hippo Cook: This boot was made for eating.
    LeRoach: Then that's just what I will do!
    Hippo Cook: Pretty soon, that boot is going to be inside of you.
  • When greeting the sheep sisters, Spy Fox tells them: "Hello, Doll, Lee! So nice to have you back where you belong!"
• We Will Meet Again: Spoofed; William the Kid in Dry Cereal vows that jail will not be able to hold him for long......until he realizes he has no idea how to escape, ensuring that he will not be able to strike again.
• What's an X Like You Doing in a Y Like This?: Spy Fox asks Bea this in the cantina. Bea says she asks the same question every morning.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Depending on the path and how you play. In the third game one of the possible items you need to get in your Fetch Quest for Plato Pushpin is a pizza. When you give it to him it turns out that he didn't actually need it for the Congeal Pill, he was just hungry. That's a good enough joke on it's own, but if the player happens to bring him the pizza last it makes it seem like he was willing to put the entire planet's safety at risk because he was hungry.
• What the Hell, Player?: Monkey Penny dislikes it if you call her while you are in Mobile Command Center. Also if you try to use the X-ray gum on her.
• Whoopee Cushion: Dry Cereal begins with SPY Fox skydiving from an airplane without a parachute, and needing to use one of his spy gadgets to make a safe landing on the island of Acidophilus. One of the gadgets SPY Fox can have with him is a whoopee cushion, which he can land on, after which it makes a rude sound.
  SPY Fox: Phew! Pardon me! That airline food will get you every time. That's certainly not the kind of entrance a super spy like myself normally makes.
• World of Funny Animals: Every single character in these games is a half dressed or Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal.
• World of Pun: As an Affectionate Parody of James Bond, this was inevitable, considering that series' reputation for puns.
• Wraparound: In Hold the Mustard, horizontally but not vertically (even in the Outer Space levels, which prevent vertical wraparound with Invisible Walls).
• Worm in an Apple: In one path of Some Assembly Required, an informant named Lenny bursts from a candy apple before Spy Fox can eat it, thinking the vendor was the informant at first. After giving Fox a clue written on a leaf, Lenny tells him to throw the apple in the trash - with Lenny still inside.
• You Meddling Kids: In Dry Cereal, after being caught, William the Kid spoofs the classic Scooby-Doo villain line: "I would've gotten away with my evil plan, if it weren't for that pesky Spy Fox!"
• You're Insane!: In Dry Cereal, Spy Fox says this to William the Kid after the latter announces his evil plan to drown the cows in milk so he can take over the world with his "delicious goat by-products".
  Spy Fox: Delicious? You must be insane!
  William the Kid: Insane, you say! You're the crazy one, if you think you can save the cows!

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