Web Animation / Carl

A teenage boy and his pet Piranha Plant trying to get through life.

Carl is a Slice of Life Teen Drama web series created by FreezeFlame22 and the first installement released after the cancellation of The Koopa Kids.

It centers around the life of Carl Mitchell, an Ordinary High-School Student, his friends Boo Who, Blooper Squidd and Dry Bones, his crush, and later-on girlfriend, Grace Grey and her three friends Talia Richards, Roxanne Smith, and Kylie Allenby, as well as his family, which is composed of his mother Linda, his step-father Calvin, his step-brother Logan, and his half-sisters Carrie and Sally. The show focuses on the lives of Carl and his friends and showcases their school, social and family life.

Carl was initially conceived as a spin-off series of FreezeFlame22's 2013 series, The Koopa Kids, where Carl originated in (where was a side character with a different design and personality who would always die in every episode he appeared in). However, The Koopa Kids was ultimately cancelled and replaced with a new series, Bowser's Koopalings, due to Freeze no longer being proud of the work he had done with the series, causing Carl to lose any lingering connection it had to The Koopa Kids and earn an identity of its own as a series.

The first episode was uploaded on YouTube on January 17th, 2017 and the fifth season of the series ended on November 27th of 2022, with FreezeFlame22 having confirmed that there will be a sixth season. On May 28th, 2022, it was announced that the first three seasons of Carl would be remastered in order to give them a much-needed updated sprite and voice-acting work and to correct some inconsistencies the early episodes have, these episodes won't contradict anything of what's stated from season 4 onwards and will keep the original episode premises intact, with them receiving some tweaks so they can be suitable for newer audiences.

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Carl contains examples of:

Tropes A-F

• Abusive Parents:
  • Dominik Bones has made it clear more than once that he doesn't give a damn about Dry Bones. His son could literally die and he couldn't care less.
  • Nessa Squidd is verbally abusive towards her kids. Given that she has had to raise five kids on her own ever since her husband died however, it may be a result of her been stressed and not because she is nasty by nature.
  • Talia's parents are overcontrolling and emotionally abusive of their daughter. Is not that they are intentionally bad people, they are just too strict for their own good. Following their divorce and Mrs. Richards departure to the Marine Kingdom, Talia's father has turned into a full-blown neglectful and emotionally abusive father who punishes Talia for the smallest things she does. What's worse, he thinks all of this abuse is good parenting.
• Adults Are Useless: Most of the adults in the show are shown to be either incompetent, abusive, unbearable, or all three combined. The parents of the main characters are particularly notorious in this regard:
  • Dry Bones is verbally and emotionally abused by his father on a daily basis. Dry Bones could literally die and his father would likely celebrate it. Dry Bones' Blatant Lies and jerkish personality is basically a defense mechanism he developed in order to combat the fact that his father destroyed any self-esteem he once had.
  • Blooper is regularly bullied by his older brothers mainly because his mother has basically given up on life and resorts to blow off all the stress she has accumulated by insulting her children.
  • Talia's parents pester her all the time and fail to see that the reason why she resents them in the first place is because of the way they have always treated her. Even worse, her father thinks all of this is good parenting.
  • Roxanne's parents essentially treat her like a trophy. They do nothing but brag about her all the time and completely fail to see that their daughter is an emotional wreck as a result of her failed relationships. Also, during the time Roxanne was kidnapped, her mother did nothing but angrily demand that people helped her while also demeaning anyone who tried to contribute or comfort her, whereas her father straight up didn't even notice that she had been missing for a month. There's also them either forgetting about the existence of their older son Liam, or constantly comparing him to Roxanne, which is likely the reason why Liam is who he is today.
  • Kylie seems to have a complicated relationship with her parents, especially with her mother. She casually mentions how her mother is often unfaithful to her father and doesn't seem to think very highly of either of them.
  • Generally averted with Carl's mother, Grace's father who often look out for their children's well-beings. Carl's step-father Zig-Zags this, as while he definitely tries, he sometimes fails at being a good example for his kids.
  • The Toad Town High faculty is this in spades. Coach Johnson, the gym teacher, is a Manchild who would rather play games with his phone and pursue a childish crush on Principal Staffordshire than teach class, Mr. Morris often complains about having to do his job and how much he hates the students and yet he still wonders why neither none of the other faculty members or the students respect him, Ms. Bishop was always uninterested in doing her job and openly insulted her students when teaching class. She eventually quit her job and left the Kingdom altogether. Steelix, the previous principal, was never concerned about the students' education and is even implied to have sexually harrased some of them. Staffordshire, the current principal, is far more competent than Steelix and knows how to do her job, but she tends to give detention to the students for very minor things. The school also has a severe bullying problem in the form of Gooper and his Gang of Bullies, but that's mainly because Gooper doesn't respect adults or authority figures for that matter.
• Apathetic Teacher:
  • Mr. Morris, who always complains about how much he hates his job and his students all the time.
  • Ms. Bishop. She always seemed uninterested in her job and openly insulted her students while class was in session.
• Big Eater:
  • Roberto. His body shape speaks for itself.
  • Carl's younger sister, Sally, often comments on being hungry and eating a lot
• Blatant Lies: Dry Bones lies about being rich all the time, most likely out of insecurity and to cope with the fact that his living conditions are horrible and that his father hates him.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The girls. Roxanne is blonde, Grace and Kylie are brunette, and Talia is redhead (though it's not her real hair color. She's actually brunette).
• The Bully: Gooper and his gang, but him and Mary-Lynn stand out the most.
• Catchphrase:
  • Grace: "Oopsie!"
  • Linda: "Silly me!"
  • Gooper and his gang: "Shut up, Flaig!"
• Characterization Marches On:
  • The first few episodes merely present Grace as a simple love interest for Carl instead of having her be the clumsy dork she is in later episodes.
  • The first few episodes portray Calvin as a Wicked Stepfather, being quick to verbally demean Carl, making out with Linda in front of the children, and generally coming off as unpleasant. As the series went on, Calvin's characterization was shifted to that of a step-father who is blunt and strict, but truly cares for the well-being of Carl. An early episode also has Calvin singing rap music in the shower, whereas later episodes have Calvin state very often how much he hates rap music.
  • In the first season Logan is shown to be indifferent to Carl at best and a Big Brother Bully at worst. Nowadays, this behaviour of Logan towards Carl would be absolutely unthinkable.
  • In his debut episode, Coach Johnson was an imposing no-nonsense war veteran whom many female students had a crush on. Not long after that, he became a Manchild who barely knows how to do his job, has a childish crush on Principal Staffordshire, and who overall is perceived by everyone as being incredibely pathetic.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • "Carl Sr.", an imagination of Carl's biological father that was prominent during the first two seasons of the series, hasn't made a single appearance ever since "The School Dance (2/2)". This is most likely beause his role would consist in appearing to boost up Carl's confidence and give him advice whenever he needed it, and ever since Carl and Grace started dating Carl is less shy and more confident in himself (to the point where he is not afraid of Gooper anymore), thus not needing "Carl Sr." anymore. He doesn't even appear in the remasters, with Calvin fullfilling the role of Carl's father figure instead.
  • Humphrey Onix, the principal of Toad Town Grammar, has not made an appearance in the series since "Toad Town Grammar". This could be due to both Principal Steelix being replaced by Principal Staffordshire, rendering their rivaly useless, and Toads not being a major resident species in the Koopa Kingdom (they used to be at first, but that was because the show originally took place in The Mushroom Kingdom before it was Retconed to take place in the Koopa Kingdom).
  • Many of the background characters from the first two seasons were retired from the series as a result of the character sprites undergoing Art Evolution, being replaced by much better-looking and more expressive characters.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Carl's biological father left his mother and him before he was born.
  • Blooper's father was eaten alive by a shark back when he was a child.
• Dreadful Musician:
  • Logan's trying to make a name for himself in the rap industry. That said, his music is said to be terrible by other characters.
  • Whatever you do, don't let Mary-Lynn sing.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In what is a Call-Back to his counterpart's role in The Koopa Kids, Carl would often imagine himself dying in gruesome ways during the first couple of episodes. This gag was soon dropped from the series altogether.
  • Gooper's gang rarely told Flaig to shut up during the first few episodes. In addition, Mary-Lynn was portrayed as being part of the gang rather than just tagging along with them only because she is dating Gooper.
  • Kylie is just a background character during the first few episodes of Season 1, and didn't get a talking role until episode 4. It certainly feels strange to see Grace, Talia, and Roxanne go to a party without Kylie in the very second episode of season the series.
  • Many of the Koopa Kingdom's (The Mushroom Kingdom back then) local wildlife was composed of... Pokémon. This is very prominent in episodes like "Pidgey Problems" and "Too Much Water", which feature Pokemons as part of the main plot. Later episodes use wildlife belonging to the Super Mario franchise.
  • In "The Hike", Calvin states that after Princess Peach became the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom, she legally allowed Koopas to live in the kingdom. Good, except it was later established that the both Carl and Bowser's Koopalings take place in the Koopa Kingdom with Bowser as the ruler, and that Toads were exilled from the land rougly one thousand years ago. Not only that, but when Peach herself appeared in a Flashback Episode of Bowser's Koopalings, she states that she and the Toads she lives with were exiled from Toad Town and had to settle in Dinosaur Land.
• Family Theme Naming: Mary-Lynn's sisters are named Sheri-Lynn and Amy-Lynn. She also has an aunt whose name is Terri-Lynn.
• Floating Timeline: Exaggerated compared to other shows set in the FF22 universe. The titular characters and his friends have been high-schoolers ever since the show started in 2017. Carl and the boys, Grace and the girls, their classmates, Gooper, Mary-Lynn and Flaig are all stated to be 15-to-16 years old high-school freshmen at the start of the series (with the school year explicitly having started on September of 2017 and ending on May of 2018), but their age gets a bit more ambiguous as the series goes on: Season 3 of the series starts during a new school term, meaning their second year at Toad Town High, making Carl and co. sophomores, on September of 2018 and ending on May of 2019. Starting with season 4 however, things get a bit more confusing, as the characters are all stated to be on their third year of high-school, which started on September of 2019, making them juniors, which would peg them at 17-to-18 years old, but the passing of time becomes more apparent in the sense that New Year's 2020, Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2021, and Spring Break of 2022 are all celebrated in season 5, and the characters are still on their third year of high-school and not looking any older three years later. Likewise, Bob is 18 years old at the start of the series, which would make him a senior, but is still in high-school at a point where he should be 20 years old (granted, given that he isn't the smartest it is entirely possible that he simply got Held Back in School). Needless to say, if it weren't for the Floating Timeline, the main cast would have graduated by the fifth season of the series.
• Four-Girl Ensemble:
  • The Ditz: Grace
  • Deadpan Snarker: Talia
  • Really Gets Around: Kylie
  • The Smart Girl: Roxanne
• Four-Man Band:
  • Deadpan Snarker: Carl
  • The Smart Guy: Blooper
  • Casanova Wannabe: Boo
  • Butt-Monkey: Dry Bones
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Jim Flaig is this to Gooper's gang. "shut up, Flaig!" is heard quite often.

Tropes G-T

• Gossipy Hens: Janie and Oscar are Toad Town High's main source of gossip.
• Hypocrite: Mary-Lynn gets angry whenever she finds out that Gooper has been cheating on her... despite the fact that she has cheated on him on numerous occasions. The same also applies to Gooper.
• Interspecies Romance: Blooper, a squid, is in a relationship with Roxanne, a Koopa.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Calvin may seem a little too stern and uncaring sometimes, but he genuinely cares for his family and considers Carl as much of a son as his biological kids.
  • Sure, Dry Bones tells a lot of Blatant Lies and may seem obnoxious at times, but it would be wrong to say that he does not care about his friends.
• Like Is, Like, a Comma:
  • Camp Gay and Valley Girl siblings Oscar and Janie speak like this.
  • Leon, the main antagonist of the "Summer of '19" duology, always incorporates "like" in his Surfer Dude talk.
• Love Triangle: There used to be one between Blooper, Roxanne, and Gooper. Blooper has feelings for Roxanne, who seems to be oblivious to it. Roxanne on her part is being blackmailed by Gooper into dating him, as he's threatening to tell everyone about how she made out with him while dating Tucker (which he pretty much emotionally manipulated her into doing) and ruin her reputation. Roxanne later admits to Blooper that she too has feelings for him, but can't bring herself to dump Gooper out of fear that he'll destroy her reputation and make her lose her friends. Thanks to Carl however, Roxanne gets over her fear and uses Gooper's blackmail against him, confessing on her own accord, dumping Gooper for good, and starting a relationship with Blooper.
• Local Hangout: Many of the characters in Carl go the local Goomburger.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Kylie is a snarky popular girl, but she isn't the nasty type.
• Lovable Jock: Tucker is a very decent guy, once you manage to get past his short temper that is.
• NEET: Logan dropped out of school and doesn't have a job. To be fair, he wants to pursue a career as a rapper, but has had little to no success regarding that.
  Logan: I'm an online rapper, and my song's got eleven downloads.
• Missing Mom:
  • Dry Bones' mother died before the events of the show.
  • Grace's mother left her, her father, and her sister to join a feminist cult when Grace was still a child.
  • Logan's biological mother ran off with a scuba instructor when he was still a baby.
  • Talia's mother left the Koopa Kingdom and went to live to the Marine Kingdom after getting a divorce.
• Non-Indicative Name: Despite the name, there are little to no Toads living in Toad Town.
• Protagonist Title: Who do you think the main character is?
• Put on a Bus:
  • Coach Ronson, the former PE Teacher, was taken away by the gorvement as a result of being mistaken by an alien at the end of "Detention". He was later replaced by Coach Johnson.
  • Ricky Steelix, the Toad Town High principal, was fired from the school in "The New Principal" and replaced by Sydney Staffordshire, with the reason being heavily implied to be sexually harrassing some of the students. He made a return in "Summer of '19 (2/2)", revealing that he had gone to Ocean Side in order to get away from the scandals, and has since become a janitor at Toad Town High.
  • In "Happy Anniversary", Miss Bishop, Carl's Homeroom teacher, was stated to have been offered a job at a school somehwere in the Kaktus Kingdom and moved there permanently as a result. Carl even lampshades how she will never come back.
  • Talia's mother was stated to have divorced Talia's father, packed her bags, and moved to the Marine Kingdom in "The Thanksgiving Dinner".
  • After breaking up with Kylie in "The Valentine's Bowl", Emily tells her that she will be transferring schools just so she doesn't have to see her again. At the end of the episode, Emily is seen getting into a bus, leaving Toad Town for good.
• Series Continuity Error: In "Boo's Big Date", Grace states that Boo once said her grandmother was hot. This contradicts the events of "Mr. Mitchell vs Mr. Grey", in which Grace's grandmother is shown to have died before the events of the show, with her ushes being kept in an urn at her home. Granted, Boo could have simply seen a picture of what Grace's grandmother looked like when she was alive.
• Shout-Out: The end of the intro, with Carl, Boo, Blooper and Dry Bones lassoing the show logo into the frame, is very similar to what Doug Funnie does in the intro to his eponymous show. The classic intro is an even more blatant Homage to both the Nickelodeon and Disney intros, with much of the action taking plance against a plain white background.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Someone should wash Dry Bones' grandfather's mouth...
• Social Services Does Not Exist: It's anyone's guess as to why Dominik Bones hasn't been arrested for his constant neglect and emotional abuse of Dry Bones yet. In a more notorious regard, Carl even told Calvin about Dry Bones' situation but he was completely unfazed by it (Granted, Carl didn't give Calvin the details).
• Stacy's Mom: Quite a lot of male teenagers have noticed how attractive Linda Mitchell is. Boo in particular is very fond of her.
• Sucky School: Toad Town High. The most well-known faculty members to the audience are either Apathetic or Sadistic, it has a notorious problem of bullying as seen by Gooper and his gang, the previous principal cared more about looking better than the rival school than the well-being of students, and the new principal, while definitely more competent and concerned with the education of the students, has established some exaggerated rules and gives the students detention for the tiniest things. It seems to be doing well academically speaking ever since Staffordshire became the principal, and Coach Ronson and Miss Bishop have left the school too.
• Teacher/Parent Romance: Grace's father, Felix, is dating Toad Town High's Principal, Sydney Staffordshire.
• Those Two Guys:
  • Mark and Harry
  • Ruby and Rain
  • Oscar and Janie
  • Carrie and Sally
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Grace's bubbly and dorky personality contrasts with Talia's relaxed and relatively serious personality. This dynamic is kinda contrasting to Roxanne's smart and kind girly girl and Kylie's sassy and sarcastic tomboy.

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