Web Video / Teen Titans The Abridged Series

"As long as it's none of that wannabe-anime crap. That stuff is ruinin' Cartoon Network."

— Cyborg

The Abridged Series of Teen Titans (2003). Like other recent series, manages to avert Larynx Dissonance by having several voice actors of both sexes.

Posted on YouTube by Chaltab.

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This series contains examples of:

• Artistic License – Linguistics: Raven's PSA on German has the words in an English grammatical structure.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Beast Boy lampshades this in episode 10, but Cyborg tells him to "stop criticizing city planning and focus on the bomb".
• All Up to You: While Beast Boy and Raven stumble upon, work out and abandon a relationship on the sidelines, Cyborg is forced to take on Raven's "Trigon" personality shard by himself. He wins.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Played for laughs, but what's especially notable is that they stick.
  • In "The Replacement", Blackfire successfully replaces her sister Starfire on the team.
  • In "Aqualad Sux, L.O.L.", formerly "Deep Six", Trident and his clones conquer the world.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: parodied and lampshaded by Aqualad when he is talking about Trident:

  Aqualad: On Atlantis, he is a criminal and I am a good guy, because he is ugly and I am pretty.
  Raven: You are! You are!

• Big Damn Heroes: Beastboy refers to Aqualad as one in Episode 8.
• Black Comedy Rape: Implied.
  Cyborg: They stole my freaking arm while we were off-camera!
  Starfire: That's better than what they did to me off-camera.
  Beast Boy: T.M.I., Star.
  • Although Word of God invoked is that Starfire was tickle-tortured, a "grave insult" on Tamaran.
• Brown Note: Fix-It is defeated by being deluged with... Wedding Peach episodes. "Truly, a fate worse than dying."
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Robin does this while disguised as Red X.
• Captain Obvious: Aqualad calls Beast Boy this, who just responds "Hey, don't diss Captain Obvious! He's a cool guy!"
• Catchphrase: "Sure, it's not like we have anything better to do."
  • "This will require teamwork/Good teamwork!" while Robin defeats the enemy with one punch.
  • "Sweet Cthulhu!"
• Character Exaggeration: Played with, somehow, regarding fake-Starfire duplicating Starfire's canon ludicrous ditziness.
  Cyborg: (as fake-Starfire drinks mustard) I think you're over doing it. Star wasn't that dumb.
  Blackfire: Oh, trust me. She was.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Raven ("I hate all of you") as well as Robin and... everyone else, except possibly Cyborg.
  • Lampshaded more than once in the Thunder and Lightning episode.
    Robin: This city already has its own destructive jerks! The Teen Titans!
  • Another example is a running gag where the Titans are confused when people refer to themselves as friends.
    Raven: Destroying the national park didn't work. And destruction is all we know how to do!
• Crossover Ship: Beast Boy's nightmare is being in a Slash Fic with Sephiroth. invoked
• Depending on the Writer: Lampshaded by Starfire.
  Robin: Are you an alien or just dense?
  Starfire: The writers of this show could never seem to decide.
• Discriminate and Switch: When the Titans go clubbing
  Beast Boy: I bet Cyborg can do a mean robot.
  Cyborg: Oh sure, just because I'm black you assume I can dance.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Robin reading the announcer's notes leads to the Narrator changing the plot so that the villain is right behind them.
  Robin: "Since when is he God?"
• Do-Anything Robot: "[Cyborg's] machines can do anything the plot calls for."
• Don't Explain the Joke: Mumbo explains all his jokes and he still thinks they're funny.
• Driven to Suicide: Robin's Heroic Sacrifice in the season 1 finale is changed to this, as he realizes he's "trapped between two groups of idiots!"
• Follow the Leader
• Freudian Excuse: It's starting to look like the Tamaranean royal family had a dark history well before Blackfire met the Titans and replaced her sister.
  Starfire/Blackfire: I know how you feel, Cyborg. One time, I had a trusted little sister who left me to die in a frozen wasteland far from home. But I got her back. I got her goood.
• Game Master: Bobcat's Dungeon Master Role in Episode 7 when the Puppet King attempts to use Starfire and Raven as slaves. Raven wants to make her and Starfire immune to the attack along with making Cyborg snapping out of the attack as well.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Raven lampshades how Puppet King is this by asking a lot of questions the actual episode didn't answer.
• A God Am I: Raven's gung-ho personality, who demands worship as lord and savior.
• Hypocritical Humor: Batman's reaction to episode 2
  Batman: I can't believe that Robin did that. You don't just replace a teammate and act like nothing happened! Where did he learn that kind of behavior?
  Other Robin: Oh, gee, I can't imagine where.
  Batman: Shut up, Jason.
  Other Robin: I'm Tim!
  Batman: Whatever.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Bizarrely inverted at the end of the first season when Robin infects himself with the probes.
  Robin: Too late.
  Slade: You-you're just doing this to manipulate me! It's not going to work! I'm not your teacher anymore! You can just be orange!
  Robin: But Slade, if you let me die, you're no better than I am.
• Interactive Narrator
• I Resemble That Remark!: Starfire (well, Blackfire) pulls this off:
  Robin: I think you should apologize [to Raven].
  Beast Boy: Dude, she ruined breakfast! She should be the one apologizing!
  Robin: I agree with you, but women are irrational creatures. It's why they always win arguments.
  Starfire: I...am...not...IRRATIONAL! (bursts into tears)
  Robin: (to Beast Boy) Look what you made me do. Now go apologize to Raven while I deal with Starfire crying for the next 3 hours.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: In episode 11, after a few references were made, Robin wondered who declared it obscure reference day. He then gets annoyed when Starfire claims a Doctor Who reference would be obscure.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: According to Robin, what the team agreed to after their encounter with Mad Mod.
• Literary Allusion Title: episode four "How to be an Anime Without Really Trying" from "How to Succeed in Business...."
  • Arguably episode five also, "Full Metal Panic!" referring to the manga series of the same name.
    • Also, "All of Me," for the Steve Martin movie.
• Meanwhile, Back at the…: As ever, with a bit of Superfriends parody
  • Some would say it manages to become an Overly Long Gag by the second episode.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The line "Actual Dialogue" will flash at the bottom of the screen if it's something particularly bad that the characters really did say.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In episode 3:
  Robin: Titans, this will require teamwork!
  Beast Boy: Oh, so we're gonna get to sit around while you kill it with one punch again?
  Robin: No, this will require actual teamwork.
  Beast Boy: That's new.
  Robin: I know. I'm scared too.
• Running Gag:
  • "History will forgive me! Just like Joseph Stalin and Benedict Arnold."
  • "Soon after, at the Benedict Arnold Memorial Bridge..."
  • "Later, back at the Joseph Stalin Memorial Park..."
  • "Sometime later, at Genghis Khan avenue..."
  • "A short time later, at Vlad the Impaler speedway ..."
• Russian Reversal: The blue fungus in the fridge says "food eats you".
• Self-Deprecation: Robin describes Slade as "almost as bad as the guys who make an abridged series of an 8-year-old cartoon show".
• Ship Tease: Word of God is they're aiming to do this for every ship. The biggest being when Robin and Raven's mutual Comedic Sociopathy ends with a "make-out session behind the tree."
  • Or when Raven and Beast Boy break up after "dating for ten seconds".
    Beast Boy: You're a hot girl who runs around in a swimsuit. Of course I like you.
• Shout-Out: Raven's 'destruction' quote above is a reference to a Futurama quote about 'murder.'
  • There have been a couple references to Freakazoid, too; Raven "throws a barrel" at a monster in episode three, and the dance club in episode two plays the Freakazoid theme song. Also, Beast Boy uses the phrase Crud Vapors as an expletive.
  • "Your dad [Trigon] is Vash the Stampede?!"
  • When encountering multiple Ravens in her head, Cyborg's first guess is basically the plot to The Death of Superman.
• Something Else Also Rises: Apparently, the basis of how Starfire's flight works.
• Start My Own: Cyborg, with obligatory Futurama homage.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Aqualad confesses to having no idea what Trident wants with nuclear waste. Robin suggests that maybe Trident thinks he's on Captain Planet and just pollutes as a hobby. Aqualad responds with this trope. (Unlike most examples, it's actually used in agreement)
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Starfire thinks of Robin in terms of "friendship and nothing else, and certainly nothing involving chains and hot wax."
• Take That!, "second-rate magical girl anime!" (likely Affectionate Parody, considering TokuTenshi's involved...)
  • Episode 5's closing stinger takes a shot at Family Guy's cutaway gags.
  • Grant Morrison gets a knock at their unusual storylines in Episode 8, with the introduction of Pices the Aquadog.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: "Gravity trumps pink, bitch."
• Wonder Twin Powers: Thunder and Lightning take the form of a Deus ex Machina.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: Done with a flashback to the first episode. Gizmo could learn from Fix-It.
  • Starfire's not an alien, she's just a cloud of swamp gas...
• Your Mom
  Robin: Slade, stop. Stop hurting Starfire! Go ahead and keep hurting the others.
  Slade: Sorry, I only have one button. It's all or none.
  [pause]
  Robin: ...okay, stop hurting them all, I guess.
  Slade: Wow, you... you really had to think about that, didn't you?
  Robin: Yo' momma had to think about it last night!
  Slade: Robin, my mother's 105 years old and weighs 341 pounds. She has varicose veins as wide as my forearm!
  Robin: Okay, okay, no more "yo momma" jokes!
• 0% Approval Rating: Robin thinks he is this after the Red X debacle, but then Starfire reminds him that she is actually Blackfire, having successfully framed her sister and sent her to prison, and thus is not that perturbed by his evil phase.

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