Western Animation / Archie's Weird Mysteries

Things are getting weird in Riverdale!

"What happened to the good old days, when Jughead was the only weirdo in town?"

— Veronica Lodge

Archie's Weird Mysteries is an animated adaptation of the Archie comic book, produced by DiC Entertainment and Les Studios Tex. The series ran for forty episodes from October 1999 to February 2000, and unlike the usual, mundane Slice of Life stories that the cast is known for having, the show goes in a more supernatural direction. Thanks to a failed science experiment done in the Riverdale High physics lab, the town has become a huge Weirdness Magnet for a host of monsters, ghosts and other paranormal or extraterrestrial activity. Which is all fine by Archie, who happily hunts down and reports on all these strange anomalies for the school newspaper, while his friends find themselves equally involved in the madness, whether they want to be or not. While the show would occasionally delve into some dark territory, its tone would never go much further than the likes of other lighthearted Horror Comedy programming like Goosebumps (1995), with episodes deliberately involving a schlock B-Movie atmosphere.

In 2002, an animated movie called The Archies in Jugman was released. Featuring the gang having to deal with a frozen caveman who gets thawed out and has an uncanny resemblance to Jughead, the film has most of this show's cast and crew return to reprise their roles.

The entire series is available on DVD from Cookie Jar as of February 2012.

Can be found on the streaming service Pluto TV in rotation on the Afternoon Kids channel. It's likewise on Tubi as well.

Is now available for streaming alongside The New Archies on Paramount+.

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Archie's Weird Mysteries provides the following tropes:

• Action Girl:
  • Betty and Veronica step up to the task if needed.
  • Supreme Girl in Supreme Girl vs. Dr. Arachnid is a superheroine.
• Adaptation Name Change: Ms. Grundy's given name is Doris, instead of Geraldine.
• Adapted Out: Despite several scenes taking place inside Jughead's house, Jellybean does not appear in this series.
• Ad Bumpers: These were done in character.
  "Now back to Archiekins' Weird Mysteries"
• A Day in the Limelight: "Something Is Haunting Riverdale High" features as one for Midge, Dilton and Big Ethel, who don't receive that much focus in the comics either.
• Aesop Amnesia: Lampshaded in one episode where Archie wonders if Veronica's experience as a giantess would teach her a lesson about discrimination before deciding that it's unlikely. The ending shows it stuck at least for a little while.
• Age-Down Romance: When all the town's adults are turned back into teenagers (both physically and mentally), the now sixteen Miss Grundy hits on Archie and Reggie. Both are repulsed by the idea, although Reggie starts to warm up to it whilst the two are slow dancing together, right before the affects wear off and she returns to her proper age with no memory of what happened leaving him to flounder for an explanation.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: "Little Chock'lit Shoppe of Horrors" has a new computer program installed to help run Pop's shop. As you may have guessed, it didn't take long for it to decide humans were the weak link in the system and try to murder several members of the cast.
• Alien Invasion: Numerous episodes involved malevolent extraterrestrials, though the one from "The Jughead Incident" turned out to have been sent to Earth to judge whether or not it was worthy of joining The Federation.
• Aliens Speaking English: "Extra Terror-estrial" justifies this by revealing that there exists Translator Microbes.
• All Just a Dream: The episode "Dream Girl" does this.
• Alternate Timeline: "Alternate Riverdales", the second in a trio of connected episodes focusing on time travel.
• And I Must Scream: "Mega-Mall of Horrors" is about teenagers who are lured into a cursed mall and turned into store window dummies if they have no more cash on hand. When Archie is freed, he mentions that he could see and hear everything but just couldn't move at all.
• Androcles' Lion: After Archie and Jughead save him from a fungus monster, Jughead's hamster Fluffy gives them a ride to the top of the desk, saving them a lot of time in their race to contact Dr. Doomburg.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite how many weird mysteries they keep encountering, most of the characters besides Archie express doubt about different threats existing. Even Archie gets called out for it by Santa Claus.
• Arc Villain:
  • Medlock, for "Scarlet Night", "I Was a Teenage Vampire", and "Halloween of Horror", the three episodes connected to vampires.
  • Vinnie Wells for "Archie's Date with Fate", "Alternate Riverdales", and "Teen Out of Time", with time travel being the connecting theme.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Veronica in one episode.
• A True Story in My Universe: Archie's own Weird Mysteries article is often based on his adventures. On weeks when he doesn't have adventures, his articles turn into stories about crab people from the future and checkout lines slowing due to time manipulation.
• Bazaar of the Bizarre: Dr. Bomont's Emporium of Curios, Novelties, Antiquities, and Hard Lessons. First appears in "Driven to Distraction" and pops up every now and again to spur or provide clues on the latest mystery.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Many, many times. One notable example is "Me! Me! Me!" Veronica wishes everyone were like her. When everyone begins turning into her, she's confronted with her flaws and quickly wants to undo the wish.
• Beautiful All Along: Olga as Supreme Girl. She ordinarily appears as a pale, redhaired freshman who wears a dress that fades to her skin tone and glasses and a bun; but as Supreme Girl, she is far more glamorous and alluring. She tells Veronica that she'd rather be considered plain and unexciting as an ordinary high school student just so she'd have the privacy she wouldn't have as Supreme Girl.
• Bee Afraid: One episode had the gang dealing with mutated bees. In a surprising twist of fate, Big Ethel saves everyone by dousing the Queen with smoke, thus becoming the new queen, and commanding the other bees to never come back.
• Betty and Veronica: The originals, no less.
• Between My Legs: Both Veronica and Betty in "Dream Girl".
• Big Eater: Jughead, as usual. One episode theorizes his daily calorie intake exceeds 40,000. Another suggests the inside of his stomach leads to another world where he feeds thousands.
• Bookends: Some episodes begins and ends with Archie writing an article for his school newspaper. The ending usually has him going over an Aesop and the ending lines being, "In a little town called Riverdale."
• Bound and Gagged: Betty, Dilton and Veronica are tied and gagged with duct tape when thrown into a death trap in "Little Chock'lit Shoppe of Horrors".
• Brainwashed and Crazy: "Zombies of Love" features Archie getting drugged with a Love Potion by Veronica, growing more and more obsessed with Veronica as the episode goes on.
• Brick Joke: In "The Jughead Incident," Archie mentions someone named Olga Cappuchi as a potential candidate for the alien that's in Riverdale. Several episodes later it turns out Olga is the secret identity of Supreme Girl and she's spent months in Riverdale as part of her mission to find Dr. Arachnid.
• The Cassandra: Archie becomes one.
• Cassandra Truth: Lampshaded by Reggie in one episode.
  Reggie: Newsflash: the world does not revolve around Archie Andrews and his overactive imagination!
• Chekhov's Gunman: In "Dream Girl," Big Ethel mentions a recurring nightmare of being chased by a monster. The monster turns out to be the old boyfriend of the girl in Archie's dreams.
• Chick Magnet: Whenever something female and supernatural rolls into town, its first target is Archie. Lampshaded in one episode when Reggie asks Betty what it is about Archie that keeps attracting girls.
• Christmas Episode: "The Christmas Phantom". The episode is actually based on Santa Claus answering Archie's wish for a weird mystery.
• Clark Kenting: Used in "Supreme Girl vs. Dr. Arachnid" with Supreme Girl and her alias, Olga Capucchi.
• Clone by Conversion: "Me! Me! Me!" shows Veronica accidentally causing the populace of Riverdale to start gradually turning into duplicates of herself after making a misguided wish on a wish-granting artifact that everyone was more like her. By the time Veronica is able to reverse this, the whole town is filled with snobby teenage girls and even Archie and Betty are starting to not act like themselves.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: Naturally, Archie Comics published a tie-in comic book (thus, making the book a Recursive Adaptation). It was notable for featuring Riverdale characters like Cheryl Blossom who never appeared on the show.
• Compilation Movie: Archie and the Riverdale Vampires, released on VHS by Universal in August 2000. The movie combines all three episodes of the "Riverdale Vampires" arc, in addition to the first episode "Attack of the Killer Spuds" and edits them together with some scenes removed and the addition of an introduction from Archie about how Riverdale ended up how it was.
• Compressed Vice: Since most episodes start off by showcasing whatever character trait will complicate this week's problem, some of them can come off as this, such as Archie being a schedule freak in "Dream Girl".
• Continuity Nod: Despite some low-level Negative Continuity, there are some small nods:
  • In "Attack of the 50 Foot Veronica", Jughead apparently likes to go for an "evening think" to ponder mysteries. He meets up with Archie in "Curse of the Mummy" on one of these.
  • Lucinda's dog in "Cinemadness!" still makes the meowing sound it did in "Zombies of Love!".
  • As detailed in Aesop Amnesia, Archie mentions the time Veronica was a giantess.
• Contrived Coincidence: Played straight in one episode. In order to stop a giant pudding monster from growing out of hand, Archie and his friends need to drop a rain formula from the sky by someone who has a plane and can fly it. It just so happens that Reggie's uncle has a plane and Pop Tate has an aviator's license.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Subverted in "Monster in the Night." The executive did buy the silence of the victims, but only because his company did end up fixing the formula problem that was causing mutations and wanted to prevent the negative press from closing the new Riverdale plant, which would create hundreds of jobs for the town.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Big Moose is like this to Midge, although it's downplayed from the comics. Instead of beating Reggie up for hitting on Midge, Moose just throws him in a dumpster.
• Crazy-Prepared: Midge has gotten so used to Reggie hitting on her she's got cards with her rejections written on them so she doesn't have to waste time talking.
• Crossover: The comic book series did an issue guest-starring the original Mighty Crusaders, visiting from a parallel universe.
• Crying Wolf: In "Green-Eyed Monster," Archie refuses to believe Betty and Veronica when they tell him Dorsa Finn is possibly a monster. Despite the amount of weird stuff going on in Riverdale, Archie doesn't listen to the girls because they've been acting particularly nasty towards each other and assumes they're trying to slander Dorsa out of jealousy. It isn't until Dorsa reveals her true nature and tries to kidnap him does Archie finally believe Betty and Veronica.
• Darker and Edgier: This series actually puts the Archie gang in more scary and supernatural situations than in the mostly comedic comic books. It still retains its comedic values, however.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Dr. Bomont has a fairly sinister appearance and runs a novelty stop that's a weird mystery all on its own, but is a genuinely nice guy that tries and help Archie, as well as keep a lid on some dangerous forces like the genie in "Compu-Terror."
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • "Something is Haunting Riverdale High" focuses on Dilton building a device that ends up phasing himself, Archie, Midge, and Big Ethel into another plane of existence, basically turning them intangible and invisible. The episode reveals more about Midge and Ethel beyond Midge simply being Moose's girlfriend and Ethel chasing Jughead, respectively. Dilton also sadly notes that the only time anyone talks to him is when they need help with science.^note Which is also true given the episode format. He was missing for an entire day and no one noticed before Archie became intangible. After they get turned back to normal, Archie decides to spend the rest of the day with them.
  • "Dance of the Killer Bees" is another episode which focused on Ethel, as we learn she's also president (and the only member) of the Bee Keeping Club. Archie also inspires her to run for Prom Queen alongside Betty and Veronica, and she wins.
• Death by Materialism:
  • The villain of "Mega-Mall of Horrors" was a man who made a Deal with the Devil to sate his material desires. The ending, where he and his mall are pulled underground for losing all his victims, implies the devil came to collect him instead.
  • "Ship of Ghouls" nearly had this happen to Reggie due to a curse on a treasure if not for Archie and Betty pulling him away from it. Not so much for the zombie pirates who returned to claim their treasure and were so consumed by greed that they burned with the treasure when it fell into a lava fissure.
• Death Trap: If there's ancient ruins, there's death traps. Even the idol in "Me! Me! Me!" was originally surrounded by them; an effect expertly recreated by the museum the gang needs to retrieve it from. Why a museum would even have death traps is a good question.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Chuck Clayton and Nancy Woods appeared in one scene of the episode, "Driven to Distraction."
  • Mr. Flutesnoot briefly appeared in "Invisible Archie" and "Brain of Terror" and is mentioned in "Alternate Riverdales."
• Did Not Think This Through: Lucinda in "Zombies of Love" gives Veronica the means to make Archie absolutely devoted to her, figuring this will backfire on Veronica eventually. Lucinda didn't stop to think Veronica's misadventure might blow over onto her, when a veritable army of Veronica-obsessed people start swarming Lucinda's hut to get Veronica.
• Dirty Coward: In "Fleas Release Me," Reggie has a werewolf trying to get at him. When Archie and Jughead arrive, Reggie tells the werewolf to eat them.
• Disney Death:
  • In "Ship of Ghouls", Reggie loses one of his flippers to a shark while treasure-hunting. While looking for him, Archie and Betty happen on the same shark, briefly convincing them he's dead.
  • In "Teen Out of Time", Archie activates his time-travel gadget just as the T-Rex dives down at him, convincing Vinnie that he's been eliminated as planned.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Vinnie Wells, the main villain in the time-travel saga episodes. After being arrested in "Archie's Date With Fate" for robbing a bank (courtesy from Archie and his time belt), he manages to steal Dilton's time travel device after he was released in prison 30 years later and plotted revenge against Archie Andrews (mentioned in "Alternate Riverdales") and the entire population of Riverdale (added in "Teen Out of Time"). How his hatred all started? Archie refuses to lend him some money for Nachos during his date with Betty and Veronica. In fact the sole reason of his revenge is just because of him not getting Nachos. Ironically, the younger Vinnie would have settled for something like trashing his car instead of the "boring" plan his future self had to boss him into doing.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Green-Eyed Monster" talks about the jealousy Betty and Veronica have over new girl Dorsa Finn and Dorsa Finn, having green eyes, being a sea witch who transformed herself into Archie's ideal girl to keep him to herself.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Strongly implied to happen to Mr. Aborichi at the end of "Mega-Mall of Horrors".
• Dramatic Irony: After relating her nightmare about a redheaded vampire to Betty, Veronica insists it wasn't the vampire angle but the red hair part that scared her. Considering the object of Veronica's affection has red hair, either this is the case or she simply didn't want to admit she was scared of vampires.
• Dream Sue: In "Dream Girl", Archie ends up engaging in some lucid dreaming and turns it into this.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: "Attack of the Killer Spuds" feels somewhat different than future episodes, particularly the voice-acting being different than others.
• Embarrassingly Dresslike Outfit: "The Day the Earth Moved", Archie's father wakes him up for the Andrews family tradition one day in late March. This involves them dancing in kilts, which Archie hates, considering a kilt "a skirt by any other name."
• Enemy Mine:
  • Betty and Veronica in "Green-Eyed Monster".
    Veronica: Look, we've been rivals a long time, right?
    Betty: Longer than I could remember.
    Veronica: And we're the only two who can fight over Archie, right?
    Betty: Wouldn't have it any other way.
    Veronica: Then let's join forces and submarine this new Dorsa girl.
    Betty: Glub, Glub.
  • Scarlet with Archie, Jughead and Reggie when Medlock starts favoring Veronica over her.
• Evil Laugh: The narrator who gives previews of the episodes lets loose an evil chuckle in "Me! Me! Me!"
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: This exchange from "Fleas Release Me":
  Jughead: (discussing on how Reggie is missing werewolf criteria) What exactly is a pentagram, anyway?
  Archie: It's a five pointed star!
  (the scene changes to a police badge worn by the police officer shown earlier in the episode, who is now bandaging his hand)
• Expy: Visiting superhero Supreme Girl is a clear nod to Supergirl with her Flying Brick powers and element weakness. Her foe, Dr. Arachnid, hearkens to Spider-Man foe Dr. Octopus with his Combat Tentacles-style arms.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Reggie stops a gang of trolls from hurting some kindergartners because he had a young niece named Amy staying there. He comforts Amy and make sure she's safe before heading off.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Twice during the vampire arc.
  • After Veronica gets turned into a vampire, she gleefully proposes wanting to feed on Archie, Betty, Reggie, and Jughead... but then immediately backtracks on Jughead if only because the idea is too gross even for her.
  • Scarlet teams up with Archie to turn Veronica back to human, mostly because she's taking up Medlock's attention. But as Scarlet puts it, the idea of spending eternity with Veronica as an ally is too horrible to contemplate.
    Scarlet: Let's just say I see little reason in having an eternal night if I have to spend it with an eternal pain in the neck!
    Jughead: Wow, Veronica's so annoying that even the vampires don't want her.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Mega-Mall of Horrors: Mr. Avericci never expects Jughead to not be greedy and remain loyal to Pops' Chocolate Shop when the mall closes it.
  • The Vampire Arc: Medlock fails to understand the concept of friendship when he betrays his most loyal servant, who ends up turning against him.
  • "Little Chocklit Shoppe of Horrors" contains an example of Logic Cannot Comprehend Emotion. The Stanley 9000 doesn't understand why Pop values personal attention and people's safety over efficiency. This leads to its Start of Darkness, causing it to believe that humans are inefficient and must be destroyed.
• Evil Is Petty: The demon in "Misfortune Hunters" goes around committing random acts of mischief and chaos to terrorize Riverdale.
• Eyes Always Shut: Averted with this show's version of Jughead, whose eyes are consistently open, as opposed to the comics where they were usually closed.
• Fate Worse than Death: "Zombies of Love" almost becomes literal after Lucinda warns Veronica that Archie will eventually die from exhaustion if she doesn't undo the spell. However, death won't put an end to it as he'll still be chasing after her but now as an actual zombie.
• Fetish: Dorsa the sea creature has a thing for red-haired men. Naturally, her latest target is Archie.
• Freudian Excuse: "Teen Out of Time" establishes (when Archie meets her as a child) that Veronica's spoiled attitude came from all of the other rich kids in her private school picked on her. She chose to act even more snooty and obnoxious than them to fit in.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Reggie. The gang usually saves him because it's the morally right thing to do, but he does come through in the clutch.
• Fountain of Youth: In "Twisted Youth", all the adults become young from drinking bottled water. The reason is because a special crystal was found in the spring that bottled the water and is thus causing them to become young.
• Genre Blindness: So...after a lot of times where Archie suspects something, and it'd turn out to be real, you'd think that people would realize he's not kidding, right? Nope. A couple of episodes have people believe this, though.
• Gentle Giant: Moose. This is best shown in the final episode where he befriends the rival wrestler—a robot—and gives him a new job helping his father at the mechanic shop he runs.
• Gossipy Hens: Veronica spends the bulk of "Supreme Girl Vs Dr. Arachnid" as a ruthless gossip monger. She ends up jeopardizing Supreme Girl's mission to apprehend Dr. Arachnid by publishing an article that exposes the superhero's investigation and then later reveals Supreme Girl's weakness to trentonium. This ends up coming back to bite Veronica when Dr. Arachnid robs her dad's charity gala and uses her for a hostage, knowing Veronica's trentonium earrings will make her a decent Human Shield.
• Granola Girl: Betty has traits of this.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The subject of "Archie's Date With Fate". Archie is the only one who remembers everything due to his previous use of the time belt.
• Has a Type: Dorsa has a preference for redheaded men. Naturally, her sights land on Archie.
• Heel–Face Turn: Scarlet, the vampire girl in the second and third episode of the vampire arc.
• Hidden Depths: "Something is Haunting Riverdale High" reveals that Midge is training in gymnastics because she wants to be a stuntwoman, and Big Ethel is knowledgeable about old coins and interested in magic.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Medlock sealed his own doom when he drained the youth out of Scarlet and cast her aside. Scarlet turned out to the "Ender" of prophecy who could have brought about eternal night. But instead, she used the sun to turn him to dust.
• Hypocritical Humor: "Twisted Youth" showed this relating how the adults were trying to kill everyone's fun until we see them as teenagers...
• Improvised Weapon: The finale of the Vampire Arc sees Archie and Jughead fighting vampires with water guns that shoot water laced with garlic powder.
• Intrepid Reporter: In this continuity, Archie writes for the school paper and actively looks for engaging stories.
• Insistent Terminology: A 50 foot tall Veronica is "big-boned" not "enormous".
• Insult to Rocks: In "The Incredible Shrinking Teens", Jughead asks Archie if he's calling his room a pigsty. Archie retorts that saying that would insult pigs.
• Invisibility:
  • "Invisible Archie" has Archie and Reggie becoming invisible after accidentally spilling Dilton's potion on themselves. Reggie proceeds to act like H.G. Wells' invisible man.
  • "Something is Haunting Riverdale High" had Archie, Dilton, Midge, and Ethel turned invisible and they were in another plane of existence.
• Irony: Medlock's goal was to "befriend" (read: turn into a vampire) the "Ender", who would help him bring about eternal night. "Halloween of Horror" ultimately reveals that he had already befriended the Ender: his loyal servant, Scarlet, was the one the prophecy spoke of, but he used and cast her aside, only realizing his mistake when it was too late.
• It Came from the Fridge: One beast was a giant pudding monster, given life by a growth formula.
• It's All About Me: Veronica in "Me! Me! Me!", of course, due to a spell which, as you can imagine, didn't pan out so well.
• I Was Quite a Looker: In "Twisted Youth", any adult drinking a specific brand of bottled water becomes younger. This is especially noted when Miss Grundy turns young.
• Jackass Genie: Reggie inadvertently releases one in "Compu-terror".
• Jerkass: Reggie. He was already one in the comics, but there he's sometimes been a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Karma Houdini: Supreme Girl is understandably pissed at Veronica for posting her first article ruining the investigation into Dr. Arachnid's plans, and Veronica herself later gets caught in the crossfire after she exposes Supreme Girl's weakness to trentonium, but no one calls out the editor of the paper who allowed both pieces to be published at all.
• Kill and Replace: "Attack of the Killer Spuds" revolves around the titular spuds trapping victims in a Lotus-Eater Machine state while potato-grown clones spread over the planet, using them as a perpetual food source.
• Killed Off for Real: While a few of the villains are presumably killed off, there's no ambiguity when Medlock is dusted by Scarlet, and Nilnewz by Archie, Jughead, and Reggie, Mr. Aborichi is Dragged Off to Hell, the Trog leader is blasted to oblivion by Betty, and the pirate ghouls dive into the lava. Also, although it's quite vague, when Scarlet turns into a spirit and crosses over to the other side.
  • Subverted in the tie-in comics, which reveal Scarlet simply became human at the end.
• Kryptonite Factor: Supreme Girl, in keeping with her being a Superman Expy, loses her powers and grows weak whenever she's near an element known as "Trentonium".
• Limited Wardrobe: Veronica mostly only wore the same outfits, in contrast to in the comics where most characters (especially Ronnie, Betty, and Reggie) have an Unlimited Wardrobe. It's justified due to the constraints of animation compared to comics.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: In this case, "The Huge Mall That Wasn't There Yesterday" as seen in "Mega Mall of Horrors".
• Loves My Alter Ego: In "Supreme Girl vs. Dr. Arachnid" a new Freshman student named Olga has a crush on Archie, he in turn has a crush and admiration on her superhero persona "Supreme Girl".
• Lover Tug of War: Betty and Veronica pull this on Archie at their most petty. In "Me! Me! Me!" the real Veronica and the Veronica-ized Pop Tate both pull on Archie's arms until Betty stops them.
• Loving a Shadow: In "Cine-madness," Reggie becomes obsessed with teen actress Vanessa Blaze after seeing her in an old horror movie. Unfortunately, he finds out Vanessa died young in a plane crash and he'll never be able to meet her in person (not even considering she'd be much older by now). Reggie goes to witch doctor Lucinda for a spell that could bring Vanessa's character out of the movie and into the real world. This backfires because the movie theater stopped showing the horror flick in question, and began showing a movie where Vanessa played a badass biker woman. The biker is nothing like the girl in the horror flick and she treats Reggie like a slave. This is the least of the problems caused when the monsters from the biker movie escape into the real world as well and start making havoc in Riverdale.
• Made of Iron: Everyone. Car crashes, falling, monster attacks, getting thrown by an angry giant Veronica, no one even gets a scratch.
• Magic Pants: Averted in "Attack of the Fifty Foot Veronica" (if you don't count her earrings, which oddly grew with her).
• Man in a Kilt: Archie in "The Day the Earth Moved". For some reason, the family tradition requires the Andrews men to wear kilts and perform a Scottish dance. Archie isn't too happy about being forced to wear something skirt-like in public.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Implied in "Green Eyed Monster" where Dorsa outlives her husbands. To be fair, she's a sea creature who kept those "husbands" trapped with her forever. It was just a source of will power for whomever could survive her.
• Me's a Crowd: Veronica learns the hard way that the world's all right with only one of her in "Me! Me! Me!".
• Missing Episode: Qubo skips the vampire episodes...whether this is because the content is too dark or because the episodes were not included in syndication (they were once released as part of a DTV movie) is up for debate.
• Mistaken for Aliens: "The Jughead Incident" has two agents mistaken Jughead as the alien they were after, due to his odd personality. They kidnapped him and demanded answers, they take his obliviousness as Obfuscating Stupidity (when he asked nicely for something to eat, they see it as him giving orders). In the end, they found the real alien, ashamed for their mistake, especially when Jughead was the one to save the day (after the agents failed miserably to attack the real alien).
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Dr. Arachnid, who has four mechanical arms in addition to his normal ones.
• Mundane Solution: In "Brain of Terror", the only way to reverse a brain growth helmet that Moose has been constantly using is to cross the wires. Dilton dismisses it until Moose does it in the end. Also counts as a Brick Joke.
• Mummy: Seen in "Curse of the Mummy". He was a pharaoh who was in love with an ancestor who looked similar to Betty...but kept constantly stalling their wedding. When she died, he was so upset that he desecrated all the statue faces, shattered every mirror and even carved off the face of his own sarcophagus. He came back to life after Archie kept taking pictures of him, and stopped when every picture got ripped in half.
• Muscle Angst: Archie and Reggie both go through this in the episode "Invisible Archie" due to Betty and Veronica's attention being focused on some large jock.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "Archie, Reggie, Veronica, Betty! Jughead, too!"
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Betty and Veronica both experience this in "Dance of the Killer Bees". While both are running for Prom Queen, neither of them thought they'd lose against Big Ethel and spent most of the episode "feeling sorry for her," until Ethel told them she had fun running against them even if she probably doesn't win. Betty and Veronica then both felt horrible for being so condescending when they realized Ethel deserved to win, as she just spent her time earnestly campaigning instead of trying to tear down her competitors, like the two girls had been doing to each other.
  • In "Brain of Terror", Moose adamantly refuses to take off the brain growth helmet even though it's changing his personality and alienating everyone around him. Then Midge gets hurt because of him and suddenly he can't fix things fast enough.
  • In "Cine-Madness", Reggie's retrieval of his celebrity crush's character from the movie unleashes a band of vicious trolls on his niece's day care, nearly resulting in her getting hurt. He's horrified and vows to fix things.
  • A more downplayed version but "Something is Haunting Riverdale High" features Archie looking legitimately guilty when he realizes how badly he's been neglecting Big Ethel, Midge and Dilton after they all remark on how invisible they feel most of the time.
  • Veronica in "Supreme Girl vs. Dr. Arachnid", when she realizes her careless use of gossip has given Dr. Arachnid the edge against Supreme Girl.
• Mythology Gag: In "Driven to Distraction", at one point, Dr. Bomont offers Archie "a compact disc of Ron Dante's greatest hits". Ron Dante was the lead singer of "The Archies", the protagonists' band in The Archie Show.
  • The intro song has Jughead introduced in a My Friends... and Zoidberg fashion. The Archie Show did the same thing.
• Near-Villain Victory: Medlock succeeds in turning the whole cast into vampires, even Veronica, who was believed to be The Chosen One. But the real chosen one, Scarlet, whom he had betrayed, accepted her destiny and destroyed him.
• Never My Fault:
  • The Stanley 9000 of "Little Chock'lit Shoppe of Horrors" has this sort of attitude when it takes things too far. It gets asked to take two practice dummies to the airport in the most efficient way possible in a taxi, it drives off a cliff and ends up destroying the dummies and the taxi. It's programmed to test a new chair that feeds people, it overfeeds Jughead to the point of burying him in burgers and him asking, in clear terror, to be let go. Each time, it states the problem is humans because it can't comprehend that it's putting people in danger and it "never makes mistakes".
  • Vinnie Wells from the time travel arc blames all of his problems on Archie and Riverdale, completely ignoring his own, much bigger, role in them. After being sentenced to thirty years in prison for attempted bank robbery, he vows revenge. With some help from his future self, he rewrites the timeline to turn himself into emperor and Archie into Riverdale's public enemy #1. Still not satisfied, he tries to erase Archie from existence, but ends up apparently earning the same fate as a result. Naturally, he blames Archie again. The third time, he brings back a T-Rex to eat his hated enemy and the rest of Riverdale. At no point does he admit his own fault in any of this.
• Never Say "Die": Played with. Some alternatives like "slain" are used, but the show will pull out "death" and "die" in serious situations.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Subverted in "It Came From the Sewers". Despite being mutated, Peanut, Jughead's pet alligator, still remembers his owner and he eventually is taken to Florida to be taken care of.
• Nice Guy: The robot lookalike of Reggie in "Reggie or Not". The climax features the robot and Reggie trying to out nice each other and Reggie winning because if the robot really was that nice, he'd let Reggie win.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: There are some episodes where Archie or his friends will be blamed for the trouble:
  • Archie buying two dice for his car in "Driven to Destruction" results in his car coming to life and going Yandere on him.
  • "Fleas Release Me" has Reggie dressed as a werewolf and scaring Archie, Betty, and Veronica. The consequence is that the sheriff (who is the real werewolf) takes Reggie into custody for the werewolf attacks around Riverdale.
  • "Attack of the 50ft Veronica" has the titular character of the episode getting herself zapped with the growth ray. Guess what happens?
  • "Green-Eyed Monster" would have Betty and Veronica trying to get rid of Dorsa. Not only the attempts failed, but also Archie losing his trust in them.
  • Veronica is unknowingly responsible for getting Dr. Arachnid the means to defeat Supreme Girl.
  • "Zombies of Love": Veronica accidentally leaving the magic salt that made Archie a love-obsessed zombie at Pop's Choklit Shop (which Pop unknowingly used to flavor some french fries that everyone ate) caused many of Riverdale to become love obsessed zombies over here.
  • In "Little Chocklit Shoppe of Horrors", Dilton gets the Stanley 9000 for Pop's. It ends up terrifying every single customer and nearly kills him, Betty and Veronica.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Medlock, the vampire master, actually had all the cards that the prophecy foretold would bring about darkness. But then he betrays Scarlet, his most loyal servant, by taking away her youth to revive himself. This backfires when it turns out Scarlet was actually the Ender all along, and only fulfills her destiny because Medlock betrayed her.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Why Riverdale became a magnet for paranormal and supernatural stuff is vaguely explained with an experiment at the Physics Lab went awry.
  • We don't know why other than he must have done something to tick her off, but for some reason, Jughead is very afraid of the Tooth Fairy.
• Once per Episode: Archie always ends his closing narrations with "...In a little town called Riverdale".
• Our Vampires Are Different:
  • For starters, they are completely fine in direct sunlight as long as they are in human form or even smoke. Although as Scarlet explains it, older vampires such as Medlock can't survive in sunlight no matter what, but lesser vampires can manage with the help of heavy duty sunblock.
  • A single bite is all that is needed to turn someone into a vampire. The spell can only be broken if the original vampire is destroyed (or at least turned back into a human). It is also implied the Master can change vampires back into humans like he did to Scarlet.
  • Vampires are never explicitly said to be dead people, and could just be parasitic demons, that can convert humans. Archie unusually refers to them as living hundreds of years, as opposed to them being immortal or undead. Of course, that could be Handwaved with Never Say "Die"...
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Turning into a werewolf requires a wolf bite, the full moon, and possession of a pentagram (which is only defined as a "five-pointed star", so a sheriff's badge works just fine). Putting something silver on the werewolf will turn it back and prevent further changes. The interesting thing about the wolf bite is that it does not seem that a full wolf is needed, as a wolfdog that is mostly dog will do.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • "Beware the Glob". Pops thinks the boys saying there's a glob monster made of pudding is just a joke (despite his shop being overrun by giant cockroaches and a sentient computer) but when Jughead, burger obsessed food junkie that he is, says there's no time for burgers, something must be wrong.
  • In "Reggie or Not", Archie is the only one suspicious of Reggie's sudden shift from Jerkass to Nice Guy.
• Parting-Words Regret: "Teen Out of Time" sees Archie trying to make decisions about a scholarship to Europe and being confronted by Betty and Veronica about which of them he intends to pick. He can't decide between the two girls and the scholarship doesn't allow for Jughead to come along, so all three of them are angry at him when the time-travel part of the plot happens. When Vinnie gloats that his T-Rex ate Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead are all devastated, especially considering what they said to him the last time they saw him.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • In-Universe. Archie's column is apparently read by government agents because of all the weird stuff he's up to.
  • In another in-universe example, Veronica using the school's gossip column to report on Supreme Girl gives Dr. Arachnid an advantage for most of the episode.
• Plant Aliens: The antagonists of Attack of the Killer Spuds are potato-like aliens who are attracted to people who are distracted somehow. They wrap them up in their vines, trapping them in an entertaining dream (it's implied that the unfortunate humans have to have reached a point of total focus on their task for it to work), and create a copy of them from their vines. While a conscious person can be taken over, they can fight back.
• Police Are Useless: The one time they show up is after a 50 foot Veronica rampaged through town. She shrinks down Just in Time before they show up and they buy the She Went That Way ruse despite Veronica being naked and standing in the tent which she makeshifted a dress out of. Add to that they missed her shrinking down despite her being (at most) twenty feet in front of them.
• Prophecy Twist: Used in the three-story arc upon the chosen one who could defeat Medlock.
• Robotic Reveal: Subverted the first two times and then played straight in "Reggie or Not". First, Archie uses a magnet on the Reggie-bot and it sticks to his chest, but it's because the robot has a cookie tray on him that he was going to give to Betty. Then, Archie tosses a bucket of water on him, but the robot senses it and bends over just in time, leaving Veronica soaking wet. Last, Archie is almost run over by a truck and the robot pushes him out of the way...but half of the robot's face got scraped off.
  Jughead: Holy Cosmic Muffins! Archie was right!
• Reed Richards Is Useless: How the hell does Dilton not get have government agents knocking on the door asking for him to come up with inventions for them to better mankind? Even if a lot of his inventions wind up setting up the plot somehow, it's because they're irresponsibly used or they malfunction.
• Royal Brat: Veronica, though she's shown to learn her lesson.
• Scary Librarian: Shown in "A Haunting of Riverdale". The ghost of Quiet Violet is haunting the library for two reasons: 1) to make sure all the people who had overdue books returned them and 2) finally meeting up with Jughead to make amends over their first meeting and to encourage him to go to the library again.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: A gargoyle-like demon is released from a chest in "Misfortune Hunters" and a Jackass Genie is released from a laptop in "Compu-Terror."
• Secret Test of Character: In "Driven to Distraction", one is given to Archie, due to basically ignoring his friends in favor of his car, so the fuzzy dice he buys make the car go Yandere. Lampshaded by the proprietor of the shop that sells him the fuzzy dice, who gives him every chance to remember he's paying for them with the money he needs for his date with Veronica.
  Dr. Bomont: I always hate it when they go for the hard lessons.
• Shirtless Scene:
  • Archie gets one in the episode "Green Eyed Monster". He's surprisingly buff.
  • Jughead gets one in "The Day The Earth Moved".
• Shout-Out:
  • Betty actually dressed as Lara Croft in "Misfortune Hunters".
  • The episode with the insane Yandere of a car has Christine coming to mind.
  • When Betty calls about a big beetle on her lawn, Archie asks "Paul McCartney?"
  • The wolf-breeder Archie goes to for advice about werewolves is named Old Man Cheney.
  • In "Attack of the 50-Foot Veronica", Jughead calls the gigantic Veronica "Girlzilla".
• The Sociopath: Vinnie Wells of the time travel arc is a self-absorbed punk who can only think about satisfying his petty hungers. While he initially starts off as a petty crook using Dilton's time travel device to rob a bank (and repeatedly turns back time whenever he sets off the bank's alarm, which he always does because he never changes how he tries to break in), after thirty years in jail his older future self becomes obsessed with doing anything and everything he can to get revenge on Archie for foiling him. Vinnie proves he doesn't care if he destroys Riverdale or unravels the fabric of time and space, he'll do anything to wipe out the people he blames for his own mistakes.
• Space Whale Aesop: Respect your family traditions, kids. They may be the only thing keeping a giant worm from destroying your home town.
• Spared by the Adaptation: According to the tie-in comics, Scarlet was brought back to life by the vampires; when she sacrifies herself to save Archie and the gang once more, she is rewarded by being transformed into a living human girl. A throw-away line implies she was always a human girl under a spell, with the other, evil vampires being true vampires.
• Story Arc: Two major ones that made up three-part episodes. One dealt with vampires, and the other dealt with time travel.
• Stupid Evil: Vinnie Wells was initially happy to use Dilton's time machine to rob a bank by resetting the day so he can try again if he gets caught. The thing is? Every time Vinnie tried to rob the bank, he does it the exact same way and sets off the alarm every time without ever realizing his plan's not gonna work unless he changes his approach.
• Supernatural Hotspot Town: This version has Riverdale plagued by monsters ripped straight out of B-Movies as a result of an experiment in the school's physics lab going awry, with anomalies including a Whole-Plot Reference to Christine, werewolves, a mummy's curse, and superheroes.
• Teacher/Student Romance: When Ms. Grundy is turned into a teenager, she starts coming on to Reggie. By the time he starts coming around to the idea, she's turned back to normal.
• Television Portal: Used in "Cinemadness!".
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: In "Teen Out of Time", Vinnie Wells brings a Tyrannosaurus to modern times so that it would eat Archie and wreck havoc in Riverdale.
• Time-Traveling Jerkass: Vinnie Wells may hold the all-time record for time-traveling jerkassery. A punk who got his hands on a pocket-sized time-travelling machine called the Chrono Field Generator, he starts out by using it to rob the Bank of Riverdale. When his plans are thwarted by Archie, he decides to use the Chrono Field Generator to repeatedly ruin Archie's life, then wipe him from existence, making himself a God-Emperor of Earth in the process. When Archie ruins his plans again, Vinnie then brings in a T-Rex from prehistoric times to have it destroy Riverdale.
• Title Drop: "Archie's Weird Mysteries" is also the name of Archie's school paper column.
• Took a Level in Badass: The main cast, most notably Archie and Betty, are capable of taking down various monsters and supernatural beings in this series, which strongly contrasts from their more comedic natures from the comics.
• Tricking the Shapeshifter: Archie is able to trap the Jackass Genie in "Compu-Terror" by challenging him to get all of the ketchup out of a glass bottle. The genie shrinks down to get inside the bottle to push out all of the ketchup just in time for Archie to put the cap on the bottle.
• Un-person: This is what happens to anyone who falls victim to the Mega Mall of Horrors. They get turned into a mannequin and everyone forgets they existed.
• Unreliable Narrator: In "A Haunting in Riverdale", the former head librarian is haunting the town. Jughead remembers said librarian as the one who bullied and scared him away from the library, when she yelled at him for playing with the globe, told him a book that interested him wasn't for little boys, and finally yelled at him to be quiet because he was laughing. However, when the ghost is asked what happened, she presents a different version. She did come up and tell him to stop playing with the globe because it almost fell down on him. She did take away a book he wanted to read because it was falling apart and needed to be repaired. And she finally did admit to telling him to be quiet because he was making too much noise.
• The Un-Reveal: In "Teen Out of Time", Archie encounters his future self, and Betty and Veronica take the opportunity to ask him who he finally chose to be with. Just as Future Archie is about to answer, he is returned to his own time, frustrating the pair.
• Valley Girl: Betty's darkest nightmare is turning into one of these and losing her I.Q.
• Weirdness Magnet: Riverdale has gotten into weird cases involving potato aliens, sewer gators, giant bees, giant cockroaches, and everything inbetween. It's given a handwave from Archie stating that it was due to an experiment in the Physics Lab.
• What Does He See in Her?: Olga Capucchi is shocked when she learns Archie's dating Veronica after hearing him talk about what a horrible gossip she's become.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Supreme Girl gets so pissed off at Veronica's article on her she barges into the school's news room in costume to confront Veronica about it. While it initially seems like Supreme Girl's pissed at Veronica's less-then-flattering depiction of her, Supreme Girl's more angry at Veronica potentially ruining months of investigative work. She also calls Veronica out for actually acting out of jealousy.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The plot of "Little Chock'lit Shoppe of Horrors" started due to the Chock'lit Shoppe losing customers to a new restaurant named "Speedy Burger", who uses microwaves to serve food faster. Though the Stanley 9000 helped him regain customers, Speedy Burger ceased to be mentioned, so it isn't seen if they're still a problem after the Chock'lit Shoppe was returned to normal. Though considering they reheat pre-made food with microwaves, they would have probably shutdown.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Pulled on Archie in an episode where he unleashes video game monsters on Riverdale. Their leader goes after him for shamelessly killing so many of his men and bragging about it.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Attack of the Killer Spuds" to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There was also Little Chocklit Shop of Horrors to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• Witch Doctor: Lucinda, whom the gang consult on occasion to help them in "Zombies of Love" and "Cinemadness".
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: A cute little alien does it to Archie and the gang so he could gain their trust and make an alarm disruptor device so he can collect Riverdale's plutonium and sell it on the black market.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Betty is convinced that Gleebo, the cute little alien of "Extra Terror-estrials", is like ET The Extraterrestrial, in that he wants to go home and needs to build a transmitter. However, she's hit with the hard truth; Gleebo is a rude, quick tempered thief, the machine he was building wasn't a communicator but a device to hack into security systems and the two ugly alien menaces chasing him were in fact police trying to apprehend him. Guess she saw that movie too many times.
• Yandere:
  • When Archie's car comes alive, it quickly becomes obsessively possessive of him.
  • In the episode "Zombies of Love" after Veronica gets a voodoo witch to give her a love potion (disguised as salt) which she would secretly feed to Archie, Archie becomes this; it starts with him being overly affectionate and soon Veronica becomes his obsession. It gets worse when Veronica leaves the salt at Pops for Jughead, Betty, Reggie and everyone else there to use by accident. Towards the end she has everyone chasing after her obsessively, saying that she was theirs. Shudder.
  • In "Dream Girl", we are treated to Maria Knot, a redhead girl from Archie's dreams who scares off other women so she can be with him forever in dreams and reality.
  • Dorsa from "Green Eyed Monster" is a yandere for ALL men with red or orange hair.

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