WMG / Muppet Babies (1984)

In this world, Your Mind Makes It Real. Literally.

In several episodes, the babies say something like, "Where are we?" "We're in X's imagination." Somehow, they can see something they're not imagining but someone else is and take each other "into" someone else's imagination. For example, Gonzo once comments how it's interesting Animal always thinks in crayon. And the world the kids explore in that instance looks exactly as Animal imagines it, not how they would each imagine it, as you would expect if it was all in their heads. The dangers in all the fantasy sequences are treated as if they're real and need to be thwarted without merely imagining they're not there anymore or at least imagining a simple solution. Things happen none of the kids expect, or all the kids can see what one person "imagined." Plus, several individual instances point to the things the kids "imagine" really happening.

• In the episode about Beaker's fear of the dark, Kermit says, "The monster's in Beaker's mind. Only he can stop it!"
• In "Back to the Nursery," the babies imagine that a time machine takes them back in time. When they return, Gonzo sees their time machine in a real picture in Nanny's real yearbook that wasn't there before.
  Scooter: But... that's impossible.
  Gonzo: Nothing's impossible if you use your imagination.
• In "The Daily Muppet," Piggy feels the couch shake when the aliens Gonzo imagined run back to Mars under it, but she assumed it was caused by Gonzo, who was nowhere near the couch. How could she have felt something Gonzo imagined without even knowing it was there?
• Gonzo has no idea what's going to appear in the closet whenever he opens it. If he was just pretending to see Storm Troopers firing at him, he would at least know they would be there.
• In "Skeeter and the Wolf," even after the fantasy is over and the kids are talking with Nanny, they seem to fully believe that the wolf from their fantasy really ate Fozzie.
• Finally, there's the fact that either: this entire version of the universe only exists because Miss Piggy imagined it in one of the Muppet movies, or the live-action Muppet universe exists because Kermit imagined it in "When You Wish Upon A Muppet."
  • Recursion Is Occuring.

...which would make Miss Piggy this franchise's Reincarnation of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Kermit, obviously, is Kyon.

Skeeter died tragically between the events of Muppet Babies and The Muppet Show.

• Robot Chicken managed to one up this WMG by having a sketch where Kermit drowned Skeeter after she beat up Fozzie, Gonzo, and Piggy.
  • Then somebody starts murdering them. Turns out Scooter is dressing up as Skeeter to commit the murders.
    • Then Camilla murders him in revenge for Gonzo's murder. Fun times.
• Jossed by The Muppet Show Comic Book, if you consider that canon.

Nanny is Angelina Jolie.

The Muppet Babies are all the kids she's adopted. She retired from acting and moved to the suburbs.

• What happened to Brad?
  • They got divorced

Disney is currently plotting to buy every single franchise/company that owns the copyright to all stock footage used in this show so they can make a fortune form the fans who have been pining for a dvd release for years.

They're off to a great start; they've already got the biggest one — Star Wars — down.

• What do you mean "start"? Disney purchased the Muppets - that was the start. Then it purchased Marvel so it can show the Spider-Man episode among others. Purchasing Lucasfilm (Star Wars) is practically the end, so where are the Dvds already?!!
  • What about Ghostbusters? It even referenced Pee-wee's Playhouse once^note Which is a CBS reference, since that's where both shows were airing..
    • They're saving it for last. Once all the profits roll in from the other companies they have under their belt, they'll be able to purchase it in no time!

Skeeter is alive and well.

Ozzy Osbourne had one daughter who chose not to be on the famous "Osbournes" reality show, wanting to maintain her privacy. When the Muppets grew up, Skeeter made the same decision. She decided she was done with the spotlight, and went on to go to college, get a regular job, marry and have a family. Even her more famous brother Scooter is rather low-profile compared to the other famous Muppets; he's never had a lead role in a movie, was never more than a side-character, and works as a back-stage techie. It's no surprise his sister would choose to leave show-biz altogether. He probably still calls Skeeter every week and sees her on holidays.

Skeeter became Scooter's stunt double.

Skeeter IS on The Muppet Show.

When the twins hit their teenage years, Scooter retained more or less the same appearance, attitude, hairstyle, glasses, etc. that he had in childhood, but Skeeter rebelled and adopted a very different personal style. She bleached and straightened her hair, lost some weight, got contact lenses, started wearing groovier fashion and makeup, learned to play guitar, joined a band... and changed her name to Janice.

• Except "Baby Janice" appeared in one late episode.
  • That's where Skeeter got the name "Janice" from.

Gonzo's story in "Fozzie's Family Tree" were inspired by real, but vague, memories.

"Muppets from Space" confirmed Gonzo's alien origins. This makes sense, considering that baby Gonzo was already claiming alien heritage. Where it gets confusing is that the adult Gonzo seemed almost as surprised as everyone else to learn of his heritage. The explanation? Gonzo never "knew" he was an alien...but he fantasied about it. And those fantasies were based off of small, foggy memories from his earliest years. Throughout the Muppet show and the movies, hints of Gonzo's being an alien continued to be dropped, so his "family tree" story was only the first of many nods.

Oh, and the "decolonization" of "Muppets from Space?" We saw what happens when the government finds out about an alien on Earth. Obviously Kermit convinced Gonzo to keep mum about his origins, for his own protection.

The babies are clones.

Dr. Honeydew, as part of an ongoing experiment, created a series of cloned Muppet children (starting with Beaker and himself, then moving on to Kermit, Miss Piggy, and he rest), giving them artificially boosted intelligence, explaining both their overactive imaginations and their ability to talk at such an early age.

• The reason adult Skeeter never shows up in any mainstream Muppet works is that there is no adult Skeeter. Honeydew accidentally cloned Scooter twice, and altered the DNA of one of the twins so they could be told apart.
• Why don't Baby Bunsen and Beaker live in the nursery with the other babies? Simple. They view their adult counterparts as parental figures, seeing as they're both their creators and their DNA donors. Naturally, they want to be closer to the Muppets who gave them life.

Nanny really is Mrs. Cleaver.

In the TV movie Still the Beaver^note the pilot for a later TV show, which was initially called by this name, but later moved to TBS where it was renamed "The New Leave it to Beaver"., which first aired a year before this show premiered, her husband Ward is established as having passed away^note This is because Hugh Beaumont, the actor who played him had passed on as well., making her a widow. It could be said that she took the job (possibly part-time) for whoever is actually looking after the Babies full time. As for the sweater, skirt and striped socks, that's probably just a case of the Limited Wardrobe trope in animation.

Muppet Babies is an alternate universe where all of the Muppets are babies.

Except for Statler and Waldorf who are adults, but speaking of the Muppets...These baby versions of the Muppets have their own show just before they become adults/original versions of the Muppets. Is this a possible reason that Muppet Babies takes place before The Muppet Show?

Muppet Babies and The Muppet Movie are part of the same canon, even though they seem different.

Did the Muppets really live together as babies, as in this show, or first meet as adults, as in The Muppet Movie? The answer is both. As babies they all lived in foster care with Nanny, because for various reasons, their parents couldn't take care of them (if Muppets from Space is to be believed, Baby Gonzo had no family at all). But eventually they all either went back to their parents or to other homes, and as they grew up, they forgot about each other – they were just toddlers, after all. But when Kermit set out to break into show biz, by sheer coincidence he ran into each of his old friends (as well as new ones like the Electric Mayhem band, Sweetums, Sam the Eagle, etc.). Even though they didn't recognize each other, the fact that they were friends as babies is why they clicked so well as adults. And eventually they all met Nanny again, who reminded them of their past together and gave them the Christmas home movie shown in A Muppet Family Christmas.

The Muppet Babies cartoon is just a cartoon within the canon of The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie, but based on the Muppets' real childhoods.

This ties into the above guess. It explains why Muppet Babies seems to take place in the '80s, with '80s pop culture references, when the Muppets were already adults in the '70s. They really did live together as toddlers, but it was in the '50s. When they were reminded of their past together (see above), they decided to produce a show about it for kids, but decided that they needed to make it relevant for modern kids by including modern pop culture references. So what we see in the cartoon is actually a fictionalized version of the Muppets' childhoods.

The Bean Bunny on Muppet Babies is actually the father of the regular Muppets' Bean Bunny, whose full name is Bean Bunny Jr.

How else to explain the fact that the Muppet Babies Bean is the same age as Kermit, Piggy, et al, but the regular Bean is a child while the others are adults?

The play of Snow White that Nanny and the kids saw at the beginning of "Snow White and the Seven Muppets" was Snow White Live at Radio City Music Hall.

It played in the early '80s, after all, and with the sunken-eyed look of the dwarfs' masks, it's no wonder that Fozzie should mistake them for aliens!

The Babies are all victims of abuse living in foster care

That is why all the babies live together in that Nursery. It is a foster home for neglected or abused children. The babies are all victims of either physical sexual or emotional abuse and they use their imaginations to cope with the abuse. This could also explain why Beaker doesn't speak. He's been a victim of some sort of abuse most likely sexual and has developed PTSD.