ALF Tales was an animated Spin-Off of ALF, featuring the Alf characters in various classic stories, usually fairy tales. Alf's girlfriend, Rhonda, usually featured as the leading lady. Larson Petty often figured as the villain of some episodes and Madame Pokipsi would often play a Wicked Witch. Interestingly, most episodes would parody a different movie genre (e.g., Cinderella was an Elvis Presley movie, and Rumpelstilskin was a detective movie).
This series provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: The father in "Cinderella" parodies this. Instead of being dead or missing, he's a riff on a '50s sitcom father and never questions how obviously awful the Wicked Stepmother and stepsisters are to Rhonda's Cinderella.
- Animated Actors: Each episode begins with the characters taking the stage while Alf introduces the week's story to the audience.
- Chekhov's Gag: In the Robin Hood episode, Rick thought they were adapting "Little Red Riding Hood" and dressed for the part, only to be told to change into the Friar Tuck costume. Later, at the archery contest, Alf's Robin Hood is wearing the red cloak as part of his disguise.
- Clingy MacGuffin: In "The Wizard Of Oz", the Ruby Hightops are stuck on Alf's feet. He can't take them off, and when the Wicked Witch tries to take them, she gets electrocuted.
- Cross-Cast Role: In the Elves and the Shoemaker episode, Sloop was cast as the Shoemaker's wife, and he makes it clear he was Dragged into Drag for this. The complaining gets to the point of Larson Petty (playing the Shoemaker) breaking character a couple times to scold Sloop for not being a professional about all this.Sloop: I'm suing the writers!
Larson: [hitting him] Stick to the script! - Dirty Cop: The police officers (played by Larson Petty and Sloop, naturally) from the Goldilocks episode, who take all the Three Bears furniture when offered it as a bribe by Goldilock's friends, then force Goldilocks to buy it all back from them at an outrageous price.
- Fairy Tale Episode: Funnily enough, the entire series is composed of these.
- Gender Flip: Not employed very often, but some of the episodes would have Alf take on a role that was originally a girl, though usually Rhonda would play the heroine.
- This was parodied in the Alice in Wonderland episode, where Rhonda complained that she should have been Alice.
- Headless Horseman: In the Sleepy Hollow episode, of course, as Alf's Ichabod Crane finds himself plagued by the ghost and warned to leave town or else. He even encounters multiple versions at once and discovers it's one "Scooby-Doo" Hoax after another (Brom scaring him away from Katrina, Da Editor wanting to boost newspaper circulation, another guy wanting to boost city tourism, etc.). However, just as Ichabod is about to leave town with Katrina, he sees the ghost is Real After All.
- High Heel Hurt: In the Elves and the Shoemaker episode, the man's wife stays loyal to him for years, but the invention of flats sees her suddenly announce she's filing for divorce. She asserts she never loved the Shoemaker and only stayed by his side because it would've been really, really painful to walk away in spiked high heels.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the John Henry episode, John (Gordon) grabs a remote and presses a button, which causes the screen to briefly switch to a fat cat that cleaned out a refrigerator. During the show's first season, Garfield and Friends aired in the same timeslot.
- Literal Metaphor: In the Sleeping Beauty episode, the Princess, who is being held captive by the evil sorceress, is told by the three wizards that the truth will always destroy evil, as in, all she needs to do to escape and defeat the sorceress is read aloud from a fact book.
- Man Versus Machine: Combined with Cooking Duel in the John Henry episode, which turns Henry from a railroad worker to a celebrity chef battling a food-making machine.
- Naked People Are Funny: The Emperor's New Clothes, naturally. After the moral is stated and the Emperor is satisfied with the tailor's real work, he still decides to disrobe, saying this is the only chance he'll ever have to walk around town naked.
- No Fourth Wall: Alf and sometimes others would often break character to comment on a given development.
- Noir Episode: "Rumplestilskin" from Season 1. To entice a king into marrying his daughter (Rhonda), a father claimed she could spin straw into gold, but she'll be imprisoned in the dungeon for life if she can't actually do it. She makes a deal with the eponymous imp to get out of this, but she's told that if she can't guess his name in an allotted time, she'll have to give up her firstborn. She hires private eye Sam Shovel (Alf) to learn the imp's name before it's too late.
- Off to See the Wizard: The "Wizard Of Oz" episode, of course.
- Performance Anxiety: Sam Shovel from "Rumplestilskin" suffers from crippling stage fright, due to a disastrous club performance. Being under anything resembling a spotlight completely immobilizes him.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The repeated Headless Horseman hoaxes frustrate Ichabod into declaring he's done with the big city and moving back to his old home. Just before he and Katrina leave, the ghost turns out to be Real After All, prompting everyone at the party to clear out.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Rhonda fights tooth and nail in "Sleeping Beauty" to overcome the evil sorceress so that she can kiss the sleeping prince, only for his clock radio to wake him up instead. She refuses to settle for this, though, and uses a magic wand to put him to back to sleep so that she can wake him up properly... several times.
- Shout-Out: Among others:
- Rapunzel is partly a parody of Sunset Boulevard.
- Cinderella is an Elvis Presley movie.
- Aladdin is a spoof of the On the Road movies.
- Jack and the Beanstalk parodies Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, with Title Drops to nearly all his movies and injokes (such as a pair of villains called Martin and Landau).
- Trumplica: In "The Elves and the Shoemaker", Larson Petty plays "Donald Tramp", an initally down-on-his-luck shoemaker who begins exploiting the elves' labor to line his own pockets the instant their shoes prove popular.
- Vanity License Plate: On the Rumplestilskin episode, this is how they find out the title character's name. Alf even says "His vanity will be his undoing."
- X-Ray Sparks: Happens to the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard Of Oz" when she tries to forcibly take the Ruby Hightops off Alf's feet.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Da Editor in the Sleepy Hollow episode is introduced firing an employee for wanting to spend time with a sick son. He then takes it back and offers the employee a raise. Upon the offer being accepted, the editor promptly fires him, bragging about saving even more money now.
