Western Animation / Atomic Betty

Atomic Betty reporting for duty!^note L to R: Robot X-5, Atomic Betty, and Sparky

"Call me up, I'm your girl!
Toughest chick in the alien world!
Ain't got time for pink and lace!
This girl's built for outer space!"

— Theme Tune

Atomic Betty is a Canadian/French Adobe Flash-animated series produced by Breakthrough Entertainment and Marathon Media for Teletoon, with Atomic Cartoons doing the animation. It was created by Trevor Bentley, Mauro Casalese, Rob Davies, and Olaf Miller, with Kevin Gillis, creator of The Raccoons, serving as developer and producer.

The series follows the adventures of Betty Barrett, a middle school girl from the suburbs of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. In most respects, Betty is your average Canadian 12-year-old: she enjoys playing in a garage band with her classmates, likes visiting her grandmother, has a crush on a friend's older brother, and regularly daydreams about becoming an astronaut and traveling to outer space. The only problem is that she's pretty flaky, constantly disappearing whenever her bracelet starts beeping for some reason and returning hours later with some strange excuse. The truth is that the astronaut thing isn't just a daydream: unbeknownst to (most of) her friends and family, Betty lives a double life as a Galactic Guardian, a member of an intergalactic police force under the command of a fish-like alien named Admiral DeGill. Alongside her crew, a Little Green Man named Sparky and the robot X-5, Betty travels the cosmos and does battle with all sorts of foes, including her arch-nemesis Maximus I.Q, a cat-like alien, and his (literally) two-faced, monkey-like assistant Minimus P.U, who desire to rule the galaxy.

The show's Denser and Wackier final season, entitled Atomic Betty: Mission Earth, would switch up the format by having Galactic Guardian Headquarters relocate to a secret base underneath Moose Jaw Heights, much to Betty's anger and dismay. This quickly results in both her personal and Galactic Guardian lives becoming even more hectic, as she struggles to prevent the locals from learning about the existence of aliens while also dealing with all the villains that have now made attacking Earth their number one priority.

The series ran for 78 episodes over the course of three seasons, premiering September 2004 and ending January 2008. The show has also aired on American airwaves, with the first two seasons airing on Cartoon Network's Miguzi block during the show's original run, and the entire series seeing airtime on The Hub years later.

In 2010, Atomic Cartoons announced plans for a Sequel Series called Atomic Betty Redux, which would have starred the teenage Betty that was seen in this show's Grand Finale, but development was ultimately cancelled due to other projects taking greater precedence.

This series provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: This was implied at toward Max Sr. toward Maximus and later on, Max Sr. Sr. toward both of them.
• Achilles' Heel: Maximus can't swim, and really hates water.
• Action Girl: Even when not in her Galactic Guardian uniform, Betty can still kick a ton of butt.
• Aliens Speaking English: Averted in some episodes of Season 3. The trope is otherwise played straight.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Sparky's mom, Zulia, has the tendency to date villains.
• All Part of the Show: In "When Worlds Collide", trick-or-treaters mistake The Chameleon's spaceship for a ride and assume his battle with Betty in space is all part of the spectacle.
• Alpha Bitch: Penelope Lang, full stop. She's as snobby and spoiled as these kinds of girls can come.
• Amazon Brigade: Pontifadora makes one in the Mission Earth episode "Girl Power" using a crystal that turns Megan, Sarah, and other aliens into large amazons.
• An Ice Person: Iciclia, whose magic staff grants her ice-themed powers.
• The Artifact: Maximus I.Q.'s resemblance to Purrsy and Admiral DeGill's to the goldfish that can be seen in some shots of Betty's room are leftovers from the original concept of the show, in which Betty's space adventures took place at night and were dismissed by her parents as dreams about her toys and the pets.
• Badass Adorable: Betty certainly is a cute little girl, but she's also the greatest of the Galactic Guardians and a dedicated defender of the universe.
• Badass Family: Betty and her maternal grandparents are galactic guardians (her uncle from "Rodeo Robots" is a cowboy) and her parents, while almost never seen fighting, have shown Greenbeard's gang what they're made of. And they thought they were fighting against actors.
• Bad Future: The Grand Finale "The Future Is Now!" has Betty visit one where the Galactic Guardians are reduced to La Résistance in a universe ruled by Maximus I.Q.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Subverted in the Season 3 premiere. Galactic Guardian HQ is successfully destroyed, but Maximus is robbed of the satisfaction of being the one to push the button. And they just build a new HQ on Earth anyway.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy:
  • At the end of "Werewolves of Zeebot" Noah is shown completely nude from the front and we can see he has no genitals.
  • In "Who's the Baby Now?" the aliens that have been turned into babies remove their diapers to throw at Infantor, and are shown diaperless from the front with no genitals.
• Berserk Button:
  • Max Sr. apparently hates being called "worthless" by his own father and would have nearly beaten up his younger self if Maximus didn't interfere.
  • When Maximus can't sleep due to too much noise, he goes on a destructive rampage.
• Between My Legs: This is how we're introduced to Pontifidora, along with the title card for the episode.
• Big Bad: While he's not the sole recurring villain in the show, Maximus I.Q. remains the most prominent foe and the greatest nemesis of the Galactic Guardians. About half of all episodes star him as the bad guy.
• Big Eater:
  • Sparky and his mom. His species has four stomachs, apparently.
  • Penelope's fat friend Megan is often shown eating, though they rarely show her actually pigging out.
• Big Little Brother: Infantor's little brother is much bigger than him.
• Born Unlucky: The episode, "Hi-Jinxed", features a villain named Jinx who’s suffered from bad luck all his life. Throughout the episode, he constantly suffers misfortune: his pants fall down a couple times, he often trips, he hides from the heroes behind a huge rock only for the rock to immediately get destroyed by a lightning bolt, etc.
• Brainless Beauty: DeGill's two (later three) groupies.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Koreena prefers to build robots to do her work for her and when she was training in the Galactic Guardian academy she cheated off Betty's notes.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Megan has a big M on her sweater, possibly so viewers don't get her and Sarah's names mixed up.
• The Bully: Duncan Paine, whose also an Abhorrent Admirer for many of the girls.
• Bumbling Dad: Betty's dad has shades of this. He is a very competent salesman and a loving father, but also quite clueless and oblivious at times.
• But Not Too Foreign: Penelope and Sarah are only partially Asian.
• Butt-Monkey: Noah exists mainly to be pushed around by his classmates. Even after getting promoted to a Galactic Guardian in Season 3, he still gets no respect and is usually used as a test subject for X-5's inventions.
• Captain Colorbeard: Greenbeard, the space pirate who antagonizes Betty every now and then. He actually does have a green beard.
• Captain Space, Defender of Earth!: Atomic Betty follows in the footsteps of the likes of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command as a semi-parody of the classic Raygun Gothic space superhero.
• Captivity Harmonica: This was partially seen during one part of "Like Father, Like Scum" with Max Sr. (hidden in the shadows at that point) playing it before the Berillum Boys bust Max Sr. out of his prison.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In "The Pre-Teen Queen of Outer Space" when the Drones need a new queen they intentionally seek out the most evil female in the universe.
• Cassandra Truth: Penelope has discovered the existence of the Galactic Guardians on multiple instances; from messing with Betty's bracelet, to reading one of her "captain's logs", to even receiving a letter from her future self detailing everything... she quickly dismisses all of these things as being elaborate pranks or part of Betty's weird space obsession on each occasion.
• Cats Are Mean: Played straight with Purrsy, Koreena, Maximus and his family, but the episode "Noah's Bark" shows that Maximus's race is not Always Chaotic Evil.
• Cats Hate Water: Maximus can't swim, and really hates water, almost to the point of it being an Achilles' Heel to him.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Unlucky Noah has a crush on Betty, who instead favors Chaz and Dylan. However, every now and then, there's some Ship Tease suggesting Betty is aware of his crush.
• Christmas Episode:
  • "The No-L 9" (which doubles as a Musical Episode) has Betty and her grandmother celebrating Christmas only for Maximus I.Q. to ruin things by shrinking down planets to use as ornaments, including a legendary constellation of singing planets where Betty's disappeared grandfather turns out to be living. Also features a number of heartwarming moments.
  • There's also the first season episodes "Jingle Brawls" and "Toy Historyia". The former has The Chameleon try to give Maximus a "present" in the form of giving the Supreme Evil Overlord an opportunity to watch him destroy Atomic Betty. The latter sees Infantor hold Santa (who is a Human Alien here) hostage and demand him to give all the good kids' toys to him.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Penelope's cat Poopsie appeared in the Season 1 episode "Power Arrangers" and was never seen again. In the Season 2 episode "The Market" Penelope was seen visiting his grave.
  • Paloma (and Juanita) at the beginning of Season 3 (no one exactly knew why she was written out), save for a cameo in "Love Bites".
  • Dylan disappeared near the end of Season 2 and was replaced by Penelope's brother Chaz in Season 3. Since Penelope would no longer have a rival for Dylan's affections, there was no longer a need for him, so the second to last episode before the Season 2 finale has Penelope falling out with Dylan after spending an entire episode getting humiliated in her efforts to get with him while in "No-Hit Wonders", he was last seen in the dance competition and gets disqualified when he loses in the dance.
  • Beatrixo had an unnamed pet cat in her first appearance, but it was never seen again after that.
• Clark Kenting: Sparky wouldn't recognize The Scribe as "Milton Scrivener" until the scribe took off his mask and put on "Milton"'s glasses.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The three Betty Clones are coloured red, orange, and blue to differentiate them from our Pink Heroine.
• Combat Stilettos: Betty wears these as part of her uniform.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: The Empress from "Battle of the Bots" is captive by Maximus on the planet of Crushdon, though when she sees her rescuers along with robots, she begins complaining about them along with her allergies. Granted, she goes back with Maximus while the reward is simply a letter stating that her people don't want her because she's a snobby empress anyway.
• Cool Cat: The show's feline characters (alien or not) are usually shown to be this. Although they are generally assholes, they are also suave, intelligent, and graceful (albeit in an aloof manner).
• Cool Old Lady: Beatrixo, Betty's grandmother and a former Galactic Guardian. She sometimes comes out of retirement to help her granddaughter fight evil.
• Costume Copycat: In "Cosmic Comicon" a bunch of people are dressed like Betty and there's a Running Gag where Sparky keeps mistaking them for her. He even mistakes a coat rack with a costume hanging on it for her. Betty tries to talk to him, but he asks her who she is.
• Covers Always Lie: The title card for "Trading Spaces" shows Penelope in a Galactic Guardian uniform. The episode has nothing to do with Penelope joining the Galactic Guardians nor does it have anything to do with Penelope wanting to try on a similar outfit to Betty's.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • How mean Penelope and her friends are varies from episode to episode.
  • Beatrixo switches between Lethal Chef and Supreme Chef depending on what the plot calls for.
  • Duncan has a crush on Penelope, but her opinion of him changes all the time.
• Denser and Wackier: Mission Earth has a number of gags that are cartoonier than anything the previous seasons ever did, as well as the addition of comedic skits at the end of every episode.
• Diet Episode: "Eternal Elixir" has a subplot where Betty's mom puts Purrsy on a diet after he's gotten fat.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Betty's mother's father. For 30 years, he had been stranded on another planet and presumed dead by his wife and daughter.
  • Sparky's Dad was never mentioned even in episodes where Sparky's Mom appears.
• Disney Death: Paloma nearly dies from having her energy drained to open the forbidden box her father is contained in.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Chameleon stole the Scythian President's brain because the President called Maximus a villain "when everyone knows he's a SUPER-villain".
• Ditzy Genius: Dr. Cerebral can invent hi-tech gadgets, but he's lacking in common sense.
• Do-Anything Robot: X-5 is equipped with not just fighting skills and his own smarts, but loads of gadgets for almost every situation.
• Doting Grandparent: Beatrixo dotes on Betty far more than Betty's own mother does.
• Double Entendre: "You're about as brilliant as the dark side of Uranus!"
• Dumb Muscle: Betty's orange clone, due to the fact that her DNA was modified with an alien with such qualities.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Paloma, whom was first actually seen in the TV series in Season 2's The New Neighbor was actually first seen in the Gameboy Advanced Game that was released before Season 2 was made.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: After two seasons of her home planet happily serving as an example of the opposite trope, Betty is annoyed to find Earth become this in the third season thanks to Galactic Guardian HQ relocating to her hometown.
• Easy Impersonation: In "The Way of the Weiner" the Betty Clones went around town causing mayhem and framing Betty for it. Everyone fell for it, even though they stayed in their superpowered forms and in those forms only one of them looks even close to her.
• Embarrassing Slide:
  • In "Lulu on the Loose" when DeGill shows he's already aware of the situation via hidden camera, when he first turns the screen on it briefly shows his groupies dancing in their underwear.
  DeGill: Oops! Wrong channel.
  • There's a non-accidental example in "Captain Sparky" when Sparky records over Penelope's embarrassing recordings of Betty and her friends with a video he somehow recorded of Penelope in Cucumber Facial playing with her cat.
• Enemy Mine: Betty teamed up with Maximus against a common foe in "Takes One to Know One".
• Enfant Terrible: Infantor is a sadistic, megalomaniacal supervillain who also happens to be a mean and spoiled toddler.
• Epic Fail: In "Self Sabotage" Noah is so unathletic he's dead last through most of the race, right behind Megan.
• Evil Gloating: Maximus does this a lot and is such a Card-Carrying Villain that he tells Minimus that gloating is an important part of being a good villain.
• Evil Twin: Atomic Dodger, the twin brother of Atomic Roger and a criminal unlike his brother.
• Even Evil Has Standards: This is mostly seen when Maximus is around either his father or grandfather, the latter which Max Sr. only helps his son due to his own father mocking them both.
• Eyedscreen: These are common during action scenes, allowing the series to fit more action into a single shot.
• The Faceless: Noah's mom. Her only on-screen appearance was in "Captain Sparky" and only her arm was shown.
• Faint in Shock: In "The No-L 9" Betty's mom understandably faints upon seeing her dad for the first time in 30 years.
• Fartillery: In "Great Eggspectations" Sparky feeds an elephant baked beans so its farts will power the ship.
• Fat and Skinny: Megan and Sarah respectively, who are Penelope's Girl Posse.
• Flexing Those Non-Biceps: In "Beach Blanket Betty" Noah does the forearms-turn-into-limp-noodles variant.
• Forgotten Birthday: In "Cat Fight," Betty's mom thinks her husband forgot Purrsy's birthday, though it's played more like a Forgotten Anniversary scenario.
• Fountain of Youth:
  • The Youthinator in "Bold Age" where Maximus' grandfather, Max Sr. Sr., used it to make people old, and giving that youth to elderly like himself (and Penelope's grandmother).
  • In "Who's the Baby Now?" Infantor uses a ray gun to turn people into babies en masse.
• Freudian Trio: The fearless leader Betty is the Ego, the sardonic and logically-minded X-5 is the Superego, and the goofy and excitable Sparky is the Id.
• Friendly Enemy: Megan and Sarah get along fairly well with Betty when they're not following Penelope's orders.
• Gasshole:
  • In "Family Feuds" Betty's mom is an accidental example for one scene. When she demonstrates her leg exercises to Betty a fart slips out just before it cuts to the next scene.
  • In the episodes "Winter Carnival" amd "Werewolves of Zeebot" Sparky eats things that make him fart. In "A Finful Of Dollars" he belches green gas in someone's face and mentions hiccuping makes him toot.
• Genetic Memory: The first time Queen Penelobee meets Atomic Betty she notices see seems oddly familiar.
• The Ghost: Betty's mom has a sister we never see; the mother of Betty's bratty cousin Kyle.
• Green Around the Gills:
  • In "Max Land" Betty's mom turns green when she finds out Beatrixo is making them beef tongue for dinner.
  • In "Beach Blanket Betty" Penelope, Megan and Sarah turn green when they get seasick.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: In "No Business Like Snow Business" when Betty's mom cheers her on as Betty plays ice hockey, she yells "Get another home run!"
• Half-Human Hybrid: Beatrixo and Auntie Matter's father was an alien. This also makes Betty and her mom part alien.
• Hidden Depths:
  • In "The Market", Penelope is shown crying at her cat's grave.
  • In "The No-L 9", Penelope spends the entire episode decorating her house in a ridiculous amount of decorations so she can win a contest, but when Beatrixo wins instead due to light display created by the titular constellation, instead of being mad that she lost she's filled with the Christmas spirit just like everyone else watching, and the first thing she does is hug her father.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Penelope is shown to be a horrific singer in "Circus Sparkimus".
• Horrible Judge of Character: Sparky's mother has a terrible habit of dating villains.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Paloma and Pandora's parents are a human size Cat Girl and a demon about 10 times that size.
• Humanoid Female Animal: DeGill and the Rockettes are members of the same fish-like species, but the Rockettes are much more humanoid than DeGill.
• Identical Granddaughter: In "Bold Age" when Penelope was aged up and her grandmother was aged down they each ended up looking like the other, except the aged down grandmother has thicker thighs than Penelope.
• Informed Ability / Informed Flaw: According to the bee-people in the episode "The Pre-Teen Queen of Outer Space", Penelope is the most evil female in the universe. Yeah, she's mean, but she's not that mean.
• In-Joke: There is a real Moose Jaw located in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan is Canada's prairieland, very open and very flat. The idea of there being a Moose Jaw Heights is just silly.
• Interspecies Romance: A one-sided example in "Love Bites" when Betty's dad falls in love with Purrsy after getting bitten by an alien bug.
• I've Heard of That — What Is It?: In "A Finful Of Dollars" Sparky is excited to try beef jerky, then asks what beef jerky is.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Beatrixo in flashbacks to her days as a Galactic Guardian.
• I Will Wait for You: In "The No-L 9" we learn Beatrixo has been waiting 30 years for her husband Jimmy to return after he went missing in action.
• Jackass Genie: In "Reeking Havoc", Sparky finds a huge sneaker with a genie named Schmoz trapped inside. Schmoz tells Sparky he will grant him three wishes, but purposely makes his first two wishes backfire, putting Sparky and his friends in danger. Then when Sparky tries to make Schmoz happy by using his third wish to set him free, Schmoz states that he will now track down all of his old masters and destroy them as revenge for making him grant their wishes.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Minimus' two personalities. The book was even mentioned in the episode where he got stuck on "Hyde" mode.
• Jerkass Realization: X-5 when Sparky is hit with a "stupefactor ray". X-5 spent all episode mocking Sparky's intelligence, and is upset to see him reduced to an actual idiot.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Penelope can be this at times.
• Jumped at the Call: Admiral DeGill offers Noah a job as a Galactic Guardian after he learns Betty's secret at the end of "No Space Like Home", and Noah takes to it with great enthusiasm.
• Kavorka Woman: Sparky's mother Zulia has managed to score at least three different guys who are genuinely attracted to her.
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: In "Power Arrangers" when Betty is staying with Penelope and her friends for the night, they watch a monster movie that scares Penelope and her friends witless while it doesn't faze Betty a bit.
• Large Ham/Evil Is Hammy: Maximus I.Q. revels in this. He claims it's a prerequisite to being a good supervillain.
• Lean and Mean: Whenever Maximus is shown without clothes he appears to be very skinny.
• Lethal Chef: In "The No-L Nine" Beatrixo's Christmas cake is shown to be so hard it has to be cut with a blow torch, and when Betty's mom asked her if she wanted to stay at her grandmother's place longer she only agreed as long as she didn't have to eat any more of it.
• LEGO Genetics: Maximus created the Betty clones by combining Betty's DNA with the DNA of three different alien women.
  • How Queen Penelobee was created.
• Leitmotif: Penelope has a classy orchestral theme that plays every time she appears.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In "Aarrgh...It Be 'Olidays!" Betty's parents help defeat Greenbeard and his crew, though they think they're just actors.
• Little Green Men: Sparky and his mother Zulia appear as such.
• Magic Skirt: Betty, in an episode where she swings by her knees on a trapeze.
• Masquerade: Betty has to keep the existence of aliens top-secret to the rest of Earth — something that gets much more challenging in Mission Earth.
• Mooks: The Morbidian Bloodmonks usually serve this role for Maximus I.Q., although he occasionally turns to using robot soldiers or aliens in suits of armour instead.
• Mecha-Mooks: Maximus's robot army.
• Missing Mom: Principal Peterson seems to be Regeena's only parent.
• Mister Muffykins: Purrsy is the feline version of such, a mean and spoiled Siamese cat whose owner seems to love more than her own daughter at times.
• Motive Decay: In her first appearance, Iciclia's main goal was to steal enough montegoberries to keep looking Young and she was foiled. In her next appearances, she's only seen Young-looking and there's no mention of her dependency anymore.
• Mr. Exposition: Admiral DeGill's usual role in an episode if it isn't centered around him is simply to inform Betty and her crew of their mission for the episode.
• Multiple Head Case: In "Spliced" Penelope and her posse get spliced together, becoming a three-headed mutant.
• My Beloved Smother: Betty's mom treats Purrsy like a second child. Whether he loves it or hates it depends on the episode.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: This appears to happen with Sparky in "If the Shoe Fits" when he attempts to compliment the leader of an alien race after they lose their Universal Translator, but once they get it back they find Sparky's translation was correct. It's just that these aliens take compliments as insults and vice versa.
• Naïve Newcomer: Noah after he joins the Galactic Guardians in the third season.
• Naked People Are Funny: Sparky is shown nude in the episodes "No Space Like Home" and "A Finful Of Dollars".
• Never Mess with Granny: Betty's grandma is a former Galactic Guardian.
• Never My Fault: Koreena blames Betty for her being kicked out of the academy when it was her cheating off Betty's notes.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • The voice of Betty's dad is based on Jimmy Stewart.
  • The voice of Penelope's dad is an impression of Mr. Howell, even often dressing like him.
  • Principal Peterson's voice and hockey obsession are meant to parody Canadian hockey commentator Don Cherry.
• No Name Given: Betty's parents were never given first names, and their last names are only revealed in a spinoff book.
• Non-Action Guy: Noah. Starts to move away from this during Season 3.
• Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Paloma is revealed to be this in the Season 2 finale, being the child of a shapeshifting alien and a demon.
• Note to Self: Future Penelope tries to do this so she can learn Betty's secret earlier. It doesn't work, as her past self just mistakes it for a prank.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Maximus. He loves destroying planets.
• One-Winged Angel: Maximus gets this in "The Amulet of Shangra-La-Di-Dah" temporarily.
• Only One Name: Betty is only ever referred by her first name in the show. Her last name being "Barrett" is revealed only in some spinoff books, although it is hinted at in the series when Sparky refers to Betty's mom as "Mrs. B".
• Our Werewolves Are Different: In the episode "Werewolves on Zeebot" The Chameleon uses the powers of the Red Moon of Zeebot to turn the citizens into werewolves.
• Playing with Fire: Betty's red clone possesses these powers due to the alien DNA Maximus used in creating her.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The last episode of Season 3 introduces an older Betty who would later become the intended star of the ultimately unmade sequel series.
• Read the Freaking Manual: In "Night of the DeGilla Monster" DeGill clones himself, but the clone turns out evil because he didn't read the manual.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Maximus and Max Sr. both give out their reasons on why they don't want Max Sr. Sr., after he is snatched by them, to continue running things and why they don't want him around for too long.
• Remember the New Guy?: Season 3 introduces Penelope's brother Chaz and Principal Peterson's daughter Regeena. Chaz's previous absence is handwaved by saying he was at boarding school.
• Retcon: Beatrixo was introduced as Betty's dad's mom in her first appearance, but later retconned to being from the maternal side of the family tree.
• Revenge Myopia: Masticula wanted revenge on the jury who convicted her of her crimes and sentenced her to an eternity frozen in ice, ignoring the fact that she was in fact guilty.
• Rise of Zitboy: In "Pimplepalooza" tiny pimple-like aliens that need host bodies to survive infect the faces of everyone in Moose Jaw.
• Robo Speak: Noah while wearing a robot costume for Halloween. X-5 felt offended by the idea of robots speaking like that.
• Rogues Gallery: Atomic Betty has a very large cast of recurring villains. In addition to Maximus and Minimus, we have The Chameleon, Dr. Cerebral, Infantor, Iciclia, Pontifadora, Hopper the Chopper, Max Sr., Nuclea, and Bombshelle, to name a few of them.
• Rubber Girl: Betty's blue clone has these powers, inherited from her alien DNA.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: In "The Way of the Wiener" the Betty Clones stay in her superpowered forms for unexplained reasons.
• Shout-Out:
  • Maximus's Achilles' Heel being his fear of water doesn't sound too far off from Signs.
  • In "Galactic Idol", Maximus tries singing three times and out of two of those times, he is dressed like Slash and Prince.
  • In "Case of the Missing Kanushu", The Lord of the Rings is referenced when DeGill tries to stop the red wasp from passing by. He almost succeeds in breaking the bridge, though due to him small and using a weaker wasp part, it does not go well. However, he is still grabbed by the wasp crashing through the bridge and dragged to the bottom with Sparky shouting for him. Granted he does survive though.
  • Both "Evil Idol" and "Galactic Idol" are also a shout out to American Idol.
  • "The Minion" is about Maximus making what is essentially his own version of The Apprentice.
  • One episode has a parody of Dr. Phil make an appearance.
  • The empress in "Battle of the Bots" has the hairstyle of Leia. Maximus and Betty occasionally engage in duels with laser swords as well.
  • Several episode titles, like "Power Arrangers", "Mad Maximus", "The Trouble with Triplets", "Toy Historyia", "The Manchurian Guardian", and "A Finful of Dollars".
• Skewed Priorities:
  • In "The Scribe" Sparky is more interested in the book he's reading than helping the others on a mission, causing Admiral DeGill to be captured. Betty calls him out on this.
  • In "Toy Hystoria" when Santa Claus is kidnapped, Sparky is more upset about the fact that there won't be any presents.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Atomic Roger believes himself to be the greatest Galactic Guardian. However, he usually ends up having to be rescued by Betty because he's too busy admiring himself.
• Soup Is Medicine: In "The Fungus Among Us" Sparky thinks X5 is catching a cold, so he makes him homemade slugworm soup (said soup comes in handy later in the episode to defeat the villian)
• Space Police: The Galactic Guardians, who protect the universe from various supervillains.
• Stock Sound Effects: In "Who's The Baby Now?" one of the babies heard crying has the same cry as Kate from Arthur.
• Stout Strength: Though briefly seen in "The Big Dig", Max Sr. proves to be a bit dangerous around Hopper the Chopper and his gang (before he's wedgied by Hopper).
• Stuffed into a Trashcan: In "The Way of the Wiener" Betty's orange clone does this to Penelope while cleaning up the mess she made, supposedly mistaking her for trash.
• Sure, Let's Go with That:
  • Betty lost her diary with notes of her missions as a Galactic Guardian. When Penelope found and read the diary, she assumed the entries were all made up and Betty allowed her to believe that.
  • Betty thought Noah's poem to her was written by Duncan to Penelope. Noah let her think she was right.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In "The Market" Penelope tries to keep a raccoon as a pet and learns the hard way they don't make good pets, it ends up trashing her room and attacking her.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In "Bracelet Yourself" when Sparky is disguised as an Earth kid he says he's "the new kid, not an alien at all."
• Theme Tune Cameo: In the short "Prank'd" Sparky sings a parody of the show's theme song about himself while in the shower.
• This Is No Time for Knitting: In "Galactic Guardians No More", Betty announces that it is time to start baking while they're under fire from numerous enemy ships in their own ship — which had been previously decommissioned as a military vessel and turned into a traveling pie shop. Of course, Sparky and X-5 question her timing, but this is part of her plan to save the day: she uses the dough as improvised ammunition for the ship's torpedo launcher, then lures the enemies close to the sun to bake the dough into a debilitating mass.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: In "Amulet Of Shangri La-De-Da" Sparky's face turns purple when he looks down through the clouds (because he's scared of heights)
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: DeGill is often seen with three fish girl groupies called the Rockettes who are much taller than he is.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Betty and her love of sports, comics, and adventure is the Tomboy to Penelope and her interests in fashion, trends, and shopping.
• Transformation Sequence: Betty gets a very brief one each time she switches to her Galactic Guardian outfit.
• The Un-Favourite: Betty sometimes feels like this, with her mother often treating Purrsy like a second child.
• The Unreveal: The reason why Paloma kept her secret from Betty.
• Toilet Humor: Some fart jokes here and there, and "A Fungus Among Us" has a subplot about having to clean Purrsy's litter box.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: In "No Business Like Snow Business" Betty gets on the boys' hockey team unbeknownst to Penelope who mistakes her for a guy and starts putting the moves on her until she takes her helmet off.
• Villain Over for Dinner: Sparky's mom has a bad habit of doing this. Her son even calls out on it when it happens for the third time in the series.
• Villain Song: "Virtuoso of Insanity" features plenty of these, given that the episode is entirely about Maximus performing opera. Maximus also gets a brief one in "The NO-L 9" where he boasts about his greed.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song "This Cat Is Coming After You" on the album, being about Maximus.
• Vocal Evolution: Compare Penelope's voice in the first season to the later seasons. In the later seasons, it's far more snooty and whiney.
• The Voiceless:
  • Penelope's Asian friend Sarah rarely talks. In Mission: Earth, she had a mere two lines in the entire season, both in the same episode.
  • DeGill's groupies. Most of the time they just giggle , though the green-skinned redhead gets a line in "A Hard Day's Fight".
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: The Chameleon's defining ability, which he puts to good use in both combat and espionage.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: One moment Betty's trying to fit in with her classmates, the next, she has to save the universe from Maximus I.Q.
• Watch Out for That Tree!: Betty to Noah in "Beach Blanket Betty" while they were surfing.
• Weirdness Censor:
  • In "Wedding Crashers" ,Auntie Matter kidnaps Grampa Jim right in front of Betty's parents' eyes. While they are shocked by the kidnapping and start to worry, the fact that an alien did it is completely ignored.
    • In "Queen For a Day" Penelope doesn't find it odd someone looks and acts just like her. However, she thought it was a video game.
  • In "Spliced" when Penelope and her friends are spliced together into a three-headed mutant they don't seem to notice. Averted with Regeena, who reacts with either confusion or horror at the spliced mutants she sees.
• With Friends Like These...:
  • In the episode where everyone thinks the end of the world is coming, Megan and Sarah turn on Penelope, stealing her jewerly and knocking her to the ground. At the end of the episode they're back to being practically her servants.
  • In "Girl Power" upon finding out Regeena is the principal's daughter she makes Regeena her new best friend and ditches Megan and Sarah.
• Younger Than They Look: Sparky is younger than his voice makes out. He's actually a kid.
• Zonk: Parodied, as the secret "Project Zonk" that the crew has to protect in one episode ends up only being taco sauce.

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