Western Animation / Big Mouth

♫I'm going through changes.♫

"Everything is embarrassing!"

— Nick Birch

Big Mouth is a Netflix animated comedy series from co-creators Nick Kroll and Family Guy writer Andrew Goldberg. It stars Kroll, John Mulaney, Jessi Klein, Jason Mantzoukas, Fred Armisen, Maya Rudolph and Jordan Peele. Jenny Slate was previously a part of the main cast until her departure in 2020, being replaced by Ayo Edebiri; however, she still provides additional voice work.

The show follows best friends Nick and Andrew, as well as their close-knit group of friends at their middle school, as they go through puberty together. Along the way, they're "helped" by two hormone monsters, Maurice and Connie, who guide them through their sexual awakenings.

The show's first season was released September 29, 2017. The second season premiered on October 5, 2018. Shortly before its third season on October 4, 2019, Netflix announced that three additional seasons had been greenlit, bringing it up to six. A spinoff focusing on the hormone monsters, entitled Human Resources, was announced shortly thereafter, eventually setting a premiere date of March 18, 2022. The fourth season premiered on December 4, 2020. The fifth season premiered on November 5, 2021. Season 6 premiered on October 28, 2022. Netflix announced on April 24, 2023 that season 8 will be the final season, and Human Resources will end on season 2.

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This series contains examples of

• Accidental Public Confession: In "Guy Town", Guy Bilzerian gloats that it doesn't matter if the titular apartment complex for single men is a mass of safety violations because he has bribed half the city council and blackmailed the other half. Matthew, who was filming one of his vlogs, smugly informs him that he has been Caught on Tape.
• Actor Allusion:
  • A billboard for Oh, Hello! On Broadway, which Nick Kroll (Nick) and John Mulaney (Andrew) wrote and starred in, can be seen in New York City when Nick and Andrew visit it in "Pillow Talk". There's also a poster for a movie called Stay Out, spoofing Jordan Peele's (Ghost of Duke Ellington) directorial debut Get Out (2017), which was released several months prior to season 1.
  • In season 2, Jordan Peele gets to drop the title of Get Out during Andrew's skit about STDs.
  • In Season 2, the Shame Wizard is described as having a Harry Potter accent, in reference to his voice actor having played Remus Lupin in the movies. His whispering in people's ears to bring out the worst in them is also similar to how Ares conducts his schemes in Wonder Woman (2017).
  • Matthew references Girls in "Requiem For a Wet Dream", in which his voice actor plays the character of Elijah.
  • Gina's knock-off Carmen Sandiego sleeping bag in "Dark Side of the Boob" is in reference to Gina Rodriguez taking on the role in Netflix's then-upcoming series featuring the character.
  • In the background of "Disclosure The Movie: The Musical!", there's a poster of Detective Florez giving a presentation on "Street Smarts!"
  • When Missy says that she's going to watch Game of Thrones, Mona, her new hormone monstress, mentions that she prefers Westworld, which stars Mona's voice actress, Thandiwe Newton.
  • Jessi has a book You'll Grow Out of It—written by her voice actor Jessi Klein—in her locker.
  • Counselor Harry, voiced by John Oliver, sets up a scene transition by saying "And now, this," referencing the segment of the same name on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Even more blatant is the following episode, where Harry gives a speech and then plugs a hashtag at the bottom of the screen (which is a Running Gag on Oliver's show), with "Last Camp Tonight" written to the right of the hashtag.
  • Some of Andrew's dialogue alludes to voice actor John Mulaney's stand-up:
    • When Andrew is in the restroom, he says "Someone's in here" in the same "carnival barker" voice that Mulaney used in New In Town.
    • In "A Very Special 9/11 Episode," when Jessi and Nick are throwing out New York stereotypes, Andrew shouts "Stand clear of the closing doors, please!" in reference to the MTA subway announcement. Mulaney mocked that subway announcement in one of his Saturday Night Live monologues.
  • Mr. Keating's room includes a copy of the "Cones of Dunshire" game that Ben invented in Parks and Recreation. Adam Scott plays both characters.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Missy is ridiculously smart and Wise Beyond Her Years, and has her fair share of cute moments.
• Adults Are Useless: Not all the time, but some of the wackier antics that the Bridgeton Middle School kids get into would be shot down just from mentioning them by any responsible real-life adult. Lampshaded in "Rankings" at Devin and Devon's child wedding when Lars — the minister — says they're there because "No adult has stopped them". This is given a lot more focus in season 6 when Nick and Andrew have to fix their families problems after swapping bodies with Marty and Nick's grandpa.
• Aesop Amnesia: Predictably, given that most of the characters are 13 years old. While most episodes contain a lesson the kids usually forget it, often within the same episode. Lampshaded by Lola in Rankings:
  Lola: Shut up, Missy! We'll learn our lesson later!
• Agony of the Feet: Maurice jokingly breaks a glass while shouting "Mazel tov!" when he tells Andrew that he'll be a man after watching a porno with his friends. Because he didn't wrap it in a napkin (and doesn't wear shoes) it hurts quite a lot.
  • In one episode, Lump steps on a nail and doesn't even seem fazed by it! He also dismisses Andrew's insistence on going to the hospital.
• All Gays are Promiscuous: Averted. Matthew's never had a boyfriend or a first kiss, partially because of his homosexuality. And after he starts dating Aiden, he even worries that he's too much of a prude while hanging out with Aiden's friends, who claim to be very sexually active, before Aiden assures him that they're exaggerating.
  • Played straight with Jay, though he's bi.
• All Just a Dream: "Requiem for a Wet Dream", and, to an extent, "Super Mouth" and "Nick Starr".
• Alphabet Song: Coach Steve, who can't read and doesn't truly understand letters, has his own version of the traditional alphabet song in which the letters are replaced by what Coach Steve thinks they are.
  "Teepee, fat guy, sideways moon, other fat guy, sideways comb."
• Always Identical Twins: Most, if not all, twins revealed in the show are identical. Mila and Lotte are a pair of identical European Creepy Twins, and Season 5 reveals Connie's twin sister Bonnie, who just looks like Connie with shorter hair and glasses.
• Always Someone Better: Jessi feels insecure about her physical traits, often comparing herself to women she considers more attractive, such as her charming classmate Gina, book protagonist Fatima and cantor Dina.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Nick's parents. His mom Diane is introduced making him pay the "snuggle tax" so he can be excused from dinner.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • Andrew, which is the focus of "Am I Gay?". In the end, it's still left ambiguous but he's not worried about it since he learned sexuality is just a spectrum. He seems to feel attracted to The Rock but is also clearly attracted by Missy. Also should be noted that in season 4 Andrew seems incredibly attracted to Jessie's new boyfriend, Michael Angelo, and mention that he "haunts his erotic dreams".
  • Jessi's mom is having an affair with a woman, despite having been Happily Married to Jessi's father years ago. When backed against a corner, she sadly admits she is not sure what she is right now and doesn't have the answers Jessi wants.
  • In season 5 Jessi herself begins having erotic fantasies about Ali, a pansexual girl. However, she isn't ready to commit to a label by the end of the arc.
• Ambiguously Brown: Jay Bilzarian and his family. Brad, the couch cushion who he has sex with, says he has a "hot Mediterranean ass," implying they're of Greek ancestry (he's also played by the unambiguously Greek-American Jason Mantzoukas). Additionally, their surname is of Armenian origin.
• Animated Shock Comedy: Barely an episode is devoid of dealing with mature topics like sex, drugs, crime, and containing profanity. Think South Park but with teenagers and being far more outspokenly liberal-progressive on the political spectrum than South Park's libertarian-centrist ideology.
• Arc Words: "You're thinking about it, and we're talking about it."
• Artistic License – Biology: Crops up from time to time, but the biggest example has to be when Jay has sex with his pillow, and the pillow gets pregnant.
• Artistic License – History: Unlike his Ghost, the real Duke Ellington never sang. Ever. He hired other people to do that. Otherwise, his portrayal as a Chivalrous Pervert is pretty much Truth in Television.
• Artistic License – Religion: Scallops are shellfish, so the show's numerous Jewish characters shouldn't be eating them. Especially not Andrew's father. But you would at least expect Jessi's parents to not serve them at her bat mitzvah. Most modern Jews, especially reform Jews, do not exactly keep kosher, but it's still noticeable at a religious event.
• Art Shift: The POV from Missy's Coca-Cola high is rendered in a Lisa Frank-style.
• Attempted Rape: Daniel has a history of trying to force girls to give him oral sex while making out with them after they've said no.
• Bait-and-Switch: In one episode, Nick's parents start getting frisky in bed and the camera pans over to the clock which reads 12:00. It then changes to 12:01, implying that they had sex for exactly one minute. It turns out they had sex for twelve hours and one minute.
• Bait-and-Switch Performance: In "Lovebugs", Nick decides to perform a grand gesture at Walter's recommendation, performing a song for Jessi. While the audience initially sees a very heartfelt and well-performed ballad, in actuality, Nick is off key and unable to strum the guitar, leading to a very awkward moment between the two and Jessi admitting she's not attracted to him.
• Be Yourself: A few episodes have this moral.
• Big Applesauce: You're never lost in New York City...
• Big Bad Duumvirate: In season 4, Tito, the Anxiety Mosquito, is the central villain, affecting Andrew, Jessi, and especially Nick. However, he does get help, while he and the Depression Kitty team up to tear away at Jessi's mental health, he and Nick Starr, Nick's future evil persona, team up to wreak havoc on Nick's life.
• Big Brother Bully: Jay has two of them. Nick has one as well, though he is far more downplayed than Jay's. All three of them are politically incorrect villains.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Nick has two of them. The first with Jessi, and two episodes later with Andrew.
• Big "SHUT UP!": In the Valentine's Day special, Andrew delivers one to Caleb after an aggressive confrontation with Missy, and Caleb happens to open his mouth at the wrong time.
  Andrew: SHUT THE FUCK UP, CALEB!
  Caleb: Okay.
• Bisexual Love Triangle:
  • One to represent Jay's bisexual awakening. Though, in this case it's between his female pillow and the male couch cushion. He tries to spend equal time between them and forced to choose which one he prefers. He realizes he likes both of them but for different reasons.
  • Season 5 shakes up Nick's crush on Jessi by having Jessi develop a crush on Ali. While Nick and Jessi have been friends for a while and Jessi really wants it to stay that way, Ali is Jessi's more daring new best friend, and Jessi develops an unrequited crush on her similar to Nick's unrequited crush on Jessi.
  • Season 5 has Jay choose between Lola, his equally-wild ex-girlfriend with whom he's still in love, and Matthew, a much neater and rational person who takes Jay in when he's lost all hope. At the end of the season, Jay chooses Matthew, because he and Lola are too unstable together and he'd like to try being with someone more put-together for a change.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The show makes frequent jabs at being a Netflix series.
  • In a meta moment, Andrew and Maurice discuss the incident where he raped Garrison Keillor's decapitated head and whether it went too far, Maurice claims that Netflix insisted on it.
  • A third season episode features a brief jab at a controversial fellow Netflix show with Maurice lampshading that teenagers should not commit suicide, even though it makes for captivating programming.
• Bittersweet Ending: Season 3 ends with the end of Nick and Andrew's friendship, Jessi being moved to the city with her evil mother, and Missy becoming so heartbroken that Nick doesn't like her that she becomes asexual. On the bright side, Jay has brought his Dysfunctional Family together peacefully.
  • Season 4 counts as this too, but thankfully on a much more cheerful note. On the negative side, Jay and Lola break up, Matthew's relationship with his mom remains strained after coming out, but on the positive side, Missy embraces all parts of herself, Andrew is able to deal with his anxiety, Jessi learns to deal with her depression with the help of the Gratitoad, and all three of them help Nick with his problems. Nick also accepts Rick as his hormone monster. And while Matthew may be having issues with his Mom after coming out, his dad accepted him for who he is.
• Black Comedy Rape: Maurice skull-fucking Garrison Keillor's decapitated head.
• Bloody Hilarious: The episode "Guy Town" has audio of Tyler screaming and swearing about how much it hurt for his horn to come in during the entire credit sequence.
• Book Ends:
  • Season one starts and ends with Nick talking to Maurice in his bedroom at night. In the first episode, Maurice and Nick have just met and the latter has no idea about puberty things, while in their meeting at the season finale, Nick has learned to wait for puberty until the proper time comes, and is assigned a Hormone Monster then.
  • Season two starts with Nick trying and failing, under Rick's tutelage to masturbate, almost spraining his dick in the process. The season ends with him successfully masturbating for the first time, this time under Connie's tutelage.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Jessi, when under the influence of Connie the Hormone Monstress.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall
  • Maurice just shatters the fourth wall in "Sleepover: A Harrowing Ordeal of Emotional Brutality" by directly addressing the Netflix users that may be binge-watching the series, and then previews "Girls Are Horny Too".
  • The "To Be Continued..." on the end of "Dark Side of the Boob" is interrupted by the Shame Wizard, who calls out the viewer with "Why don't you continue it right now, you lazy piece of shite?" before cackling.
  • "Girls Are Angry Too" ends with Maury and the ladybug hyping the viewer for season three, namedropping the episode "How To Have An Orgasm."
• Brick Joke: A subtle example. In the second episode, a man in a Minions t-shirt can be seen when they get to the Statue of Liberty. No attention is drawn to him. Later, Matthew mentions seeing him and makes fun of him.
  • Shame Wizard brags, repeatedly, about owning Nazi dildo memorabilia. Later, we see the Nazi dildos displayed in his office. This also sets up another brick joke in season three when he gets caught buying said dildos at a Nazi meeting.
• Broken Aesop: While the show generally takes a pretty nuanced look at dating and relationships, it has occasion to buy into double standards.
  • Lola's physical abuse of Andrew- including breaking his wrist, beating him with a baseball bat, and blacking his eye- are all treated as either humorous or justified, without any adult or child character addressing partner violence or domestic abuse.
  • Disclosure the Movie: the Musical, tries to be the MeToo episode, but also plays male #MeToo stories for laughs and seems to portray the manipulative, sexually-harassing boss Meredith as an example of female sexual empowerment.
    • The Shame Wizard starts off making characters experience self-loathing over things ranging from immutable characteristics like their sexual orientation to actions they had no control over like the outcome of a presidential election when they're not of voting age. Shame is originally presented as an unhealthy emotion which causes spiraling, which is often true to real life. The end of the episode tries to present shame as healthy in small doses because it prevents people from repeating hurtful or unhealthy actions and prevents chaos. Not only does it seem to Hand Wave the original presentation of shame as a destructive force - to say nothing of the needless shame felt by LGBTQ+ folks like Matthew - the "positive" aspects of shame seem more in line with other emotions like guilt, remorse, fear, or empathy.
    • For context, the difference between guilt and shame can be summed up by this line from the Shame Wizard: [Andrew] didn't DO a bad thing (guilt) he IS a bad thing! (shame)
• Bust-Contrast Duo: Both Jessi and Missy are flat-chested, but are accompanied by Hormone Montresses Connie and Mona, who are noticeably curvy. As is standard for teens and their Hormone Monster companions, the teens are sensible yet impressionable, while the Hormone Monsters are wise yet hedonistic.
• The Cameo: The Shame Wizard, after prominence throughout Season 2, is reduced to one appearance per season, appearing in the third season premiere as well as "The Funeral" in Season 4.
• Camp Gay: Matthew, whom Andrew goes to for advice when he thinks he might be gay.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Andrew eavesdrops on Lola and Terry in the theater, then after accidentally revealing himself, tries to run away and is caught by Lola:
  Lola: Oh my God, typical. What are you still doing here?
  Andrew: Nothing. 'Cause I didn't see anything. [farts again] Sorry, I fart when I'm lying.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: The plot of The Rock of Gibraltar, an erotica that is highly popular with the main cast of kids. Gustavo and Fatima are in love, but can't be together due to their families' disapproval. To circumvent this, Gustavo has himself transformed into a horse so they can spend time together, but any sex is still off the table... right?
• Caught with Your Pants Down: In "The Shame Wizard", Andrew gets caught by Leah masturbating to her swimsuit.
  • It gets worse in "The Funeral", when he is caught masturbating. In front of his dead grandpa's open casket. By his entire family.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: Exaggerated. It turns out that the Hormone Monsters work for "Human Resources — We Manage People" (presented by Acura), which manages all stages of human life. There is a Childhood Office, Department of Puberty, Center for Adulthood, Geriatrics and Bureau of the Dead. Nick, Andrew and Jessi find their way here when Tyler accidentally leaves a portal open.
• Central Theme: Growing Up Sucks, but it's okay cause you will always have people who care about you.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Lola, who is extremely sensitive over her friendship with Devin, and later Gina.
• Clip Show: Season 6 episode Rice Purity Test contains many clips of the kid's exploits from the first five seasons.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The show gleefully uses every four-letter word in the book.
• Color-Coded Characters: The main five kids are associated with certain colors in one way or another:
  • Nick with blue: he wears blue, is the protagonist, has blue eyes and has issues with size (in other words, his balls are blue).
  • Andrew with green: he wears a green long-sleeve polo and has green eyes, both literally and metaphorically.
  • Jessi with shades of red: she's a Fiery Redhead feminist who wears magenta-pink pants.
  • Missy with yellows and browns: she often wears a yellow shirt and overalls (she's even compared to the Minions), has a Granola Mom and is the most "yellow" of the group.
  • Jay with black: he wears a black vest and has raven hair, is into magic (classic stage magicians wear black tuxedos) and has the bleakest home life of the group.
• Company Cameo: Even putting its numerous fourth wall breaks aside, Big Mouth often references its host service Netflix. Sometimes it's in a positive context (like in "Pillow Talk," when Nick sobs over his parents grounding him from watching Netflix), sometimes it's more negative (like in "How To Have an Orgasm" when Maury makes fun of the 13 Reasons Why backlash), and sometimes it's a mix of both (Nick gushing about Netflix to Gina in the Season 2 trailer, only for the scene to cut out when he offers to share his password).
• Cool Big Sis: Nick's sister Leah has been shown answering his questions about the romance novel that's got most of the female characters obsessed. Another episode shows Leah letting Nick and his friends stay over for a party, albeit begrudgingly.
• Country Matters: The show is not immune to occasionally dropping C-bombs like it's a British show.
• Creator Cameo: Series producer Chris Prynoski, whose studio produces the show, often appears as a background character, wearing his trademark thick-rimmed glasses and fisherman's cap.
• Crossover: Has a crossover with Queer Eye in "Disclosure, The Movie; The Musical!", when the Fab Five come by to help Coach Steve.

• Cutting Back to Reality: In "Lovebugs," we're treated to a dreamy sequence of Nick serenading a lovestruck Jessi... then it cuts back to reality, where he's singing off-key and Jessi's just awkwardly waiting for it to be over.
• Delayed Family Acceptance: Matthew finally comes out to his devoutly religious mother after she finds his text exchange with his boyfriend Aidan. She responds by cutting him out of activities they used to do together including the church bake-off. After several fruitless attempts to try and persuade her to come around, Matthew tearfully comes out to his ex-military dad, who admits he knew, and reassures Matthew that his mother still loves him, and while it will take some time, will come around in her own way.
  • Jay attempts to come out to his family as well as introduce Matthew as his boyfriend in Twenty Two and You however he's unable to successfully come out to his biological family. His parental figure Coach Steve however is very happy for him.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: Nick and Andrew encounter one at a gas station bathroom during theirs and the Glouberman parents' road trip to Florida.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Subverted, then played straight. Lola deliberately breaking Andrew's arm when he breaks up with her is Played for Horror, but none of the characters react to it as such, let alone Andrew himself. Further played straight when Lola continues to abuse him (including blacking his eye while beating him with a baseball bat) and Andrew and other characters simply accept this as justified for his breaking up with her.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • In-Universe. Missy gets a little too frisky with Andrew when they're kissing and accidentally bumps her mons pubis^note The bit of fatty tissue right above the genitals into his crotch. She shames herself for being too forward, but Andrew doesn't hold it against her. However, his parents automatically assume that he assaulted her.
  • Within the storyline of Disclosure: The Musical, Meredith is a corporate executive who abuses her position of power to try and coerce a male employee into sex and then assaults him when he refuses; everyone writes this off as a fear of female sexuality and no character ever considers the possibility that a woman could abuse her power for sexual purposes the way male executives routinely do. Missy even finds a sense of empowerment playing Meredith, with other characters treating this as a positive experience for her.
• Dream Sequence: Very commonly used on the show. This also applies to pretty much every conversation somebody has with a Hormone Monster or other supernatural being, as even people standing right next to them are generally unaware of the sidebar. Likewise, the kids will sometimes have mass-hallucinations, such as the vignettes in "The Planned Parenthood Show" or the musical number during the Slut Walk in "The Girls Are Angry Too", which they discuss afterward.
• Droste Image: Double Subverted. Coach Steve's driving lessons video in "Obsessed" directed to himself (which Nick and Andrew are watching to teach the latter how to drive) has him apparently burn his penis with spilled pizza. He puts up a laptop showing a video containing himself...giving a lesson on what to do if he burnt his penis with pizza. In it, he mentions driving to the hospital - then asks if the first Steve remembers how to drive, which makes him pull out the same laptop, which plays the original video.
• Dying Dream: "The Hugest Period Ever" opens with Jessi's dream of drowning in a wave of her own period blood.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Nick and Connie get this in Season 2. Nick spends the entire season feeling bad about the fact that his puberty was getting off to a bad start, which led to him going through three Hormone Monsters that were terrible for him. Connie pushing Jessi into becoming a toxic person compelled Jessi to cut Connie out of her life. When both characters go through some development, Connie is assigned to Nick. Now Nick has a Hormone Monster who can help him understand girls and Connie has a human who isn't too broken for her to be a bad influence on.
• Eat the Camera: Nick's nightmarish fantasy of being in a freak show in "The Shane Lizard Returns" ends with a zoom into his open mouth as he lets out a Big "NO!".
• Escapist Character: In-Universe. Fatima, the heroine of the erotic novel "The Rock of Gibraltar". Several women picture and fantasize of being her. Barbara's Imagine Spot was of herself in Fatima's place in a scene where she dances with the sensual Gustavo, to escape her husband's annoying and nonsensical complaining. Later, The Hormone Monstress is using the "You are Fatima" phrase to encourage Jessi.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Maurice has pretty much encouraged all sorts of immoral behavior in name of sex and generally acts nasty towards people. However, even he will not stand for porn addiction and will even sacrifice himself to save someone in the pornscape.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Even Maurice is shocked when Jay's brothers make Andrew and Nick jerk off onto a cracker and then one of them be forced to eat it.
  • Andrew and Nick are both chronic masturbating (Andrew's case) perverts with skewered views on women, but they're disgusted by Daniel trying to force Leah to give him head. Even Jay eventually realizes how messed up this is.
  • Meta example: The writers have no qualms showing some truly disgusting things if they can make it funny, but when it comes to outing a teacher as a hebephile, they only get as far as a foot massage before delivering the comeuppance.
• Expy:
  • Coach Steve's hormone monster Rick sounds like Gollum.
  • In "The Green-Eyed Monster," the French skunk smoking weed at Jessi's apartment resembles Pepé Le Pew.
• Extreme Omnisexual:
  • Maurice the Hormone Monster will stick it in anything. Even a decapitated head. At one point, he punches a hole in the wall and decides to start fucking that as well.
  • Maury admiringly commented that Jay has sex with just about everything, including but not limited to his ongoing sexual relationships with a variety of different pillows and cushions in his house.
• The Faceless: Andrew's Imagine Spot has him, Leah, and "Leah's friend" in the moments leading up to a threesome. The friend doesn't have a face because when Andrew saw their Instagram post, he zoomed in on her boobs and stared at them so he can't remember what it looks like (Leah somehow knew he did this, but she and her friend apparently liked it).
• Fan Disservice:
  • When Maurice shaves off all of his fur, his naked body shows off tan lines, a misshaped head and lots of wrinkles, even in places that were never covered in fur to begin with.
  • Subverted when Missy's mother takes her and Jessi to a ladies' spa. While the sight of old, fat and unshapely women is icky, Connie's song about loving your own body shows that this isn't something to be ashamed of.
• Fake Guest Star: Andrew Rannells, who plays Matthew, has appeared in every season and majority of the episodes. While his original appearances were short segments of episodes, his appearances in later seasons have become more fleshed out with his own storylines and relationships with main cast members. He appeared in every episode of Season 7 (with the exception of the episode focused on outside characters) and played a substantial role in each one. Despite this, Rannells's credit remains in the guest star slot.
• Fired Teacher: Mr. Keating becomes one after Andrew harasses him into launching a profanity-filled tirade against Andrew in the classroom.
• First Kiss: Unsurprisingly given their ages, these are major events for the characters and are depicted as such.
• First-Name Ultimatum: Played for Laughs when Connie tells Jessi that a true sign of a young woman going through puberty is wanting to call her mother by her first name. Surely enough, when Jessi's mother comes in to check on her, Jessi bellows "GET THE HELL OUT, SHANNON!" at her.
• First Period Panic: Jessi gets her first period on a school field trip, while wearing white shorts. She has a minor breakdown while hiding in a public washroom and gets a no-nonsense lecture about the travails of womanhood from the Statue of Liberty, but eventually rallies.
• Flanderization: Much like Ned Flanders himself, Elliot Birch was once a representation of a well-adjusted, sensible and professionally successful father; he then went on to become an over-the-top needy, sensitive effeminate (starting from Guy Town) - just because he was previously shown to be cultured and open-minded about sex and pleasing his wife. Season 6 finally fleshes out Elliot's character, exploring his heritage and backstory further.
• Foreshadowing: There were many hints that Jay is bisexual.
  • In "Sleepover: A Harrowing Ordeal of Emotional Brutality", it's shown that his brothers constantly hurl homophobic slurs at him.
  • In "Drug Buddies", an extremely stoned Nick offers a blowjob to whoever gets him an ice cream. Jay says that he's up for it because "a blowjob is a blowjob" and tells Jessi to not make it gay.
  • In "Smooch or Share", he says that he wouldn't kiss Matthew not because he wouldn't kiss a guy, but because Matthew hurt his feelings.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Jay's "stripper" that he hired for Devon's X-years-in-advance bachelor party turns out to be an 8-year-old girl dance flossing. She shows her age by holding up all of her fingers, of which there are four on each. Lampshaded when Connie tries to coyly suggest to Jessi to pull a five-finger discount, but Jessi points out that she only has four fingers, "but that's pretty standard animation".
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The Season 6 episode "F**ked Up Friday" fittingly involves a mass body-swapping outbreak.
• Freudian Excuse: The commercials for Jay's father's law firm are all full of terrible relationship advice influenced by his own volatile relationship with Jay's mother. In turn, Jay is an arrogant misogynist from the terrible influence of his father and general lack of affection from his mother and brothers.
• Friendly Ghost: Nick and Andrew frequently turn to the ghost of Duke Ellington for advice.
• The Friend Nobody Likes
  • Coach Steve. He's a nice guy, but has No Social Skills and is really annoying.
  • Zig-zagged in Jay's case. In some episodes, the main gang either finds him as a mild annoyance to outright hatred while in other episodes they actually do like spending time with him.
• Gag Penis: In "The Shane Lizard Rises," the other kids are startled to see the bulge in the Go-Gurt Burglar's speedo. This makes all the other characters, especially the boys, feel bad about themselves.
  Matthew: No wonder he's always giggling.
• Gayngst:
  • Jay is bisexual, but he goes through a lot of this at the end of season two. Eventually, he learns to accept himself for who he is.
  • Matthew's parents suspect that their son is homosexual and haven't taken any drastic action, but they're still holding out hope that he'll get married to a woman after all. In Season 4, he has a more pronounced issue when he gets outed and his mom doesn't accept that he's gay, leaving him to choose between his new boyfriend and his beloved mother. Thankfully, his stereotypically conservative father turns out to be supportive, and tells him his mother just needs time.
• Good Parents: Excluding Jay's neglectful mother and misogynist father, Lola's perpetually Missing Mom, and Marty, most of the other kids' parents are largely caring and supportive despite their quirks. Even Jessi's unfaithful mother and stoner deadbeat dad value her over anyone else.
• G-Rated Drug
  • Missy doesn't do too well with sugar and goes crazy after downing a whole six-pack of Coca Cola.
  • Andrew later gets addicted to porn. Zigzagged in that it really is a common addiction.
• Gross-Out Show
• Guys are Slobs: The all-male apartment complex run by Jay's dad is filthy from top to bottom, including a pool that is repeatedly mentioned to be home to parasites.
• Happily Married:
  • Nick's parents very clearly love each other very much.
  • Jessi's parents used to be, but are not anymore.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • The bachelorette in the Bachelor parody choosing the pull-out method as her preferred form of birth control, even when it's made clear that literally any other kind would be both safer and more reliable, sends the (unfortunately true) message that someone who's given the best option still has the free will to make the worst decisions.
  • Some queer people are perfectly happy staying in the closet to their families because of how much more difficult being out would be. Matthew pretends to be straight for his conservative parents only because he believes that having to constantly answer stupid questions they'd ask about his sexuality and love life would be worse.
  • A lot of season 5, while not even remotely subtle, makes it very clear that not every friendship is worth turning into a romance.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Jessi briefly gets this reaction from men when she shows off her Sexy Red Bra. Deconstructed as the sudden attention, objectification from the boys and enviousness from the girls, makes her uncomfortable enough to run into a bathroom stall and cry. She decides to never wear the red bra again.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Nick and Andrew. The two have been best friends for years and always have each others backs.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: The entire premise of the show, and fueled by the fact that the kids are being goaded on by Anthropomorphic Personifications of their hormones. Not all of the characters are driven to sexual lust. For example, Jessi's Hormone Monstress, Connie, pushes her into other forms of delinquent behavior such as running away and stealing, with Jessi showing only a little interest in sexual matters.
• Humiliation Conga: Daniel, who was far too pushy in asking for oral sex, is not only shamed by all of the party guests (who've long known of his antics), but Nick takes the time to throw up into his hat before Leah dumps it on his head and Jay trolls him with an overly-long handkerchief trick before flipping him off. Then when Daniel leaves, his tires have been slashed by Nick's brother and apparently dies off-screen before the episode ends.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog:
  • Jessi has one such excuse in "Obsessed".
  Jessi: I'm gonna go check the...stocks market. And I'm leaving. Goodbye.
  • Andrew has come up with a few, including that he had to reupholster a chair for his cousin's wife.
• The Ingenue: Missy qualifies, particularly in the earlier episodes. Subverted in season two onwards when she starts developing sexual desires of her own.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Gina and Ali not only have the same names as their actresses, but also look remarkably like them as well, despite the 20+ year age difference.
• Insidious Rumor Mill: In Season 5, Missy gets angry at Jessi and Ali for upstaging Missy at a protest she started. After being consumed by hate, Missy anonymously spreads a rumor online that Ali cheated on her girlfriend with Jessi, turning everyone against them and prompting Ali to fight Missy physically.
• Insistent Terminology: Maurice wants you to know that it's a Pornscape, not a porn world.
• Interspecies Romance: Jay and his pillow. "She" even gets pregnant in one episode.
• The Internet Is for Porn: The subject of "The Pornscape" is how much porn there is on the Internet and how easily pubescent teens can get addicted to it.
• Iris Out: Parodied at the end of "The Shane Lizard Rises" when the iris closes around Lola's neck, suffocating her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold
  • Maurice and Connie, the Hormone Monsters. Despite their overall bad influence, they are trying to help their respective kids through their sexual awakenings and want what's best for them. Maurice even performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save both Nick and Andrew's lives in the Pornscape.
  • Jay is an obnoxious, messed up kid with some really skewed views on women and sex, but it's all due to his AWFUL home life with an amoral father, an alcoholic and neglectful mother and two horrible, misogynistic, homophobic asshole brothers. In general, however, he means well, genuinely wants to be friends with the rest of the gang and joins in on giving Daniel his just desserts at the high school party once he actually understands how terrible his actions are.
  • Matthew is actually kind to Jessi, and even expresses sympathy for Lola of all people. He's also just as horrified as everyone else by Andrew dragging Lars out of his wheelchair.
• Jewish Parents: Andrew's parents, especially his father, who's prone to Jewish Complaining.
• Jizzed in My Pants:
  • While at the school dance in "Ejaculation", Andrew and Missy grind against each other while slow dancing, causing Andrew to make a mess in his pants.
  • It happens again in "Drug Buddies", when he and Lola "rub fronts" with each other—as well as her squeezing his butt twice while they grind.
  • Yet again when Andrew is imagining a threesome with himself, Leah, and Leah's friend - he succumbs right before he can get involved.
• "Jump Off a Bridge" Rebuttal:
  • When Duke is telling the story of how he lost his virginity at age 13 in 1913 to Nick, Andrew, and Jay, he mentions wanting to go to Atlantic City with his co-players that summer. He tells his mother this, and is met with one of these (with the "recently constructed" Brooklyn Bridge the subject). Duke dismisses it by saying "Mother, I wanna see the world!" but she doesn't budge.
  • Coach Steve actually does jump off the Brooklyn Bridge in Season 3, when one of the Queer Eye guys is trying to teach Steve to say no.
• Just Friends: The subject of the third and tenth episodes of the first season, respectively.
  • First, Jessi tells Nick that she wants to go back to being friends after a failed attempt at a date. Nick agrees, but Nick doesn't realize at first that this means she's no longer his girlfriend and deals with the embarrassment of being dumped by telling the whole school that he dumped her. Jessi chews him out about it, but they make up in the next episode.
  • In the same episode, Andrew questions whether he and Nick are really just friends. They are.
  • Later, Andrew frightens Missy off by telling her that he loves her and wants to spend the rest of his life with her. He takes it even worse, crying for days and then becoming addicted to porn in an effort to get over her.
• Karma Houdini: Andrew never gets punished for everything he did to get Mr. Keating fired.
• Kids Are Cruel: Granted, a lot of them are just confused and frustrated because of puberty or, in Jay's case, have been subjected to some really bad life advice. Others are simply shallow due to their popularity.
• Knight Templar: The Shame Wizard in season 2 has a belief system that he's doing the kids a favor by inducing crippling shame onto them. It's shown that entirely lacking shame in anything isn't a good thing either in some situations, but he was also shown as going overboard.
• A Lady on Each Arm: Harvey Fierstein has them when walking out of the concert hall as Duke introduces himself to him.
• Kinky Role-Playing: When Jay has sex with his pillow, he pretends to be a famous 40-year-old magician. This causes confusion when his pillow turns out to be alive, she gets pregnant, and she actually thinks Jay is forty instead of thirteen. He also pretends to be 40 when hooking up with Jessi, which creeps her out since she's also thirteen, which makes Jay look like he's role-playing as a pedophile.
• Kissing Cousins: Andrew's cousin Cherry flirts with him in "Florida" and goads him into making out with her. The messed-up nature of the topic is discussed a lot before it actually happens, and Cherry even shames him for hooking up with her when they get caught despite being the one who suggested the idea in the first place (and still pursuing him in the following episode). Later episodes acknowledge that he'd still consider it, and she even still appears in his sexual fantasies.
• Little Miss Snarker: Jessi's prone to dishing out a lot of snark when she thinks it's justified.
• Lonely Bachelor Pad: Guy Town is this in spades. It looks like a run-down multi-story motel that was converted into apartments for bachelors and divorced men, the latter of whom are mostly Guy Bilzerian's clients (and he owns the place).

• Lyrical Dissonance: "I Survived Jessi's Bat Mitzvah" has the song "Life Is a Fucked Up Mess", in which all the characters lament their lives (Nick and his mother's fallout, Jessi's family breaking apart once her mother's cheating is outed, Andrew's father's issues with scallops and the end of Andrew and Missy's relationship) to the tune of an upbeat electric slide, which is milked for all the laughs they can as Matthew gets his solo:
  "People are horrible!
  It's all just heartbreak and misery!
  No one is truly happy!"
• Made Myself Sad: When Maurice shows Andrew a gay sex scene from Dallas Buyers Club, he tells Andrew not to think about AIDS so the scene will be sexier. Seconds later, Maurice looks sad and says he's thinking about AIDS.
• Male Frontal Nudity:
  • In "Ejaculation", when Nick jumps out of Andrew's closet to scare him, Andrew's Modesty Towel comes off and they panic as Andrew tells him not to look down. Nick does and we are treated to a half-second zoom-in on Andrew's junk.
  • In the same episode, after Nick's parents sex it up, his dad gets out of bed and his penis is shown for a second.
  • In "Steve the Virgin", Lola pantses Nick while he's stuck hanging in midair on a zipline, thus unable to cover himself. As everyone (Nick included) is shocked, there is a several-second-long zoom-in on Nick's exposed junk while his single pubic hair is freaking out. To make matters worse, they notice he's got a Teeny Weenie. His dad exposes himself in an attempt to make Nick feel more comfortable with being exposed, but ends up getting arrested for indecent exposure.
  • It happens again in "Smooch or Share", with Nick riding around the school gym on a Segway with no pants on—complete with another zoom-in on his talking pubic hair.

• Marijuana Is LSD: In "Drug Buddies", Jessi peer pressures Nick into trying some of her father's edibles with her. Jessi is less severely affected than Nick, but she shares a hallucination with him that their arms have merged and that they can communicate telepathically. People around them just see them holding hands and talking to each other. Nick goes on to have several other very vivid hallucinations.
• Mature Work, Child Protagonists: The show stars middle school children undergoing puberty, but is aimed at adults so it can explore the more explicit, taboo side of puberty.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In "Requiem for a Wet Dream", Jay actually manages to successfully perform his "teleportation" trick on Jessi and Matthew, neither of whom ever rehearsed it with him and both are surprised that it seemed to have worked.
• Medium Blending
  • Maurice shows Andrew a photo of his brother. It's Nick Nolte's mugshot.
    "Love that crazy asshole!"
  • The "Gay Test", where Maury cycles through photos of (in order of androgyny to masculinity) Tilda Swinton, David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie as Jareth and Dwayne Johnson, just to gauge where his interests lie.
  • The Season 5 finale has a live-action Nick Kroll himself showing up to have his own character be again reminded that everything that happened was his own fault, but also reassuring him that his friends and family are still there and rooting for him.
• Mental Health Recovery Arc:
  • Starting with the end of season 2, this becomes Jessi's main arc, in coping with the multiple things that happened in her life like her parents' divorce, moving to the city and being unable to adjust, etc. After her first encounter with the Depression Kitty, she becomes a recurring figure in Jessi's mind, and even teams up with the Anxiety Mosquito. She starts improving in season 4 when she moves with her father, in the process improving her relationship with her mother, and befriends the Grattitoad.
  • Nick goes through one in late season 4, as repeated fallouts between him and his friends and a number of mistakes, especially trying to kiss Jessi while she was emotionally vulnerable and needed a friend causes him to close up emotionally and be particularly subjected to the Anxiety Mosquito's attacks. He improves towards the end with the help of his friends and the Grattitoad.
• Mistaken for Pedophile:
  • In "The Shane Lizard Rises," the titular character gushes about leering at children in their bathing suits, disgusting Jessi and Connie. He quickly clarifies that he's rusty and he meant that he only enjoys the shame of those kids.
  • In "The Green Eyed Monster," Andrew stalks his teacher, Mr. Keating, and insists he think about Andrew when eating out his fiancée. When Mr. Keating snaps at Andrew and insists this won't be the case, he gets fired.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: Happens to Jay in "Everybody Bleeds" when security guards capture him for his talk of wanting to make the Statue of Liberty disappear when it was just a magic trick. They later release him when impressed by his tricks.
• Motor Mouth: Missy enjoys talking a lot.
• Musical Episode: While most episodes feature a musical number, the season 3 episode "Disclosure the Movie: The Musical!" focuses on a school musical.
• Never My Fault: Daniel manages to turn this into an art. Not only does he try to force multiple girls to give him head then accuse them of assaulting him with blue balls and Slut-Shaming him when they call him out, but accuses his female victims of being misogynists by not allowing a man to take the initiative of helping them towards their sexual liberation by giving him head. He concludes that party culture itself is the real enemy here.
  • The Head Of the Resource Department, AKA Nick Kroll, points this out to Nick as the real source of his problems during season 5; rather than accepting responsibility for his actions and learning to deal with frustration or disappointment, he blames imaginary beings like the Hormone Monsters or the Love Bugs for his actions, or rages at the rest of the world for not giving him everything he wants on a silver platter.
  • Marty refuses to take any responsibility for his actions in season 6 after accusing Barbara of having an affair, causing her to temporarily move out and Andrew to begin wetting himself. It takes Andrew and him swapping bodies to finally become comfortable expressing how he feels about Barbara and saving their marriage.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Coach Steve after being fired as a coach, which he lampshades in "Cellsea."
• No Bisexuals: Played with. While "Am I Gay?" ends with the moral that sexuality is a spectrum that includes more than just straight or gay, the actual concept of bisexuality doesn't come up until the end of season 2, when Jay discovers that he's attracted to boys as well as girls, even though he doesn't use the word "bisexual." The episode "Rankings" deals with bi erasure directly, as none of the boys even believe bisexuality is even real following some misinformation from a new student who brags about being pan.
• No Fourth Wall: The characters frequently acknowledge that they are in a Netflix series.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The monsters of Human Resources in general, only want to help people understand their emotions, although they do have their Jerkass employee's.
• No Periods, Period: Averted. This is a show about puberty after all; the second episode has Jessi's first period as a focus of the plot.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: It varies from episode to episode on just how real or not both Hormone Monsters are, and who can and can't see them. It's implied that everyone who is going through puberty has contact with them however, with Nick being an exception since he is able to interact with Maurice in spite of not getting to puberty yet.
• N-Word Privileges:
  • The Ghost of Harriet Tubman uses them (both "negro" and a cut-off N-word) when calling out Duke for comparing his desire to play ragtime to what she faced escaping slavery.
  • In "The New Me," Jay calls the public pool "gay" in a derogatory context, then says it's okay for him to do so because he's bi.
  • Discussed in "The Hugest Period Ever" when Missy's cousins Lena and Quinta use the N-Word. They say Missy can say it too but Missy (still voiced by Jenny Slate at the time) looks at the camera and says "It is not okay for ME to say that word".
• One of the Guys: Jessi is a tomboy who doesn't seem to have many female friends. Gina also falls into this category, though that's initially because all the guys are lusting after her.
• Only in Florida: Season 3's "Florida" has the Gloubermans and Nick take a trip to the state, which is portrayed as a sweltering hive of reckless sex (including incest) and violence, and by the end of the episode the lower half of the state sinks into the ocean. Maurice even sings a song about how "anything goes in Florida."
• Only One Name: Coach Steve's surname isn't revealed until season 2. It is also Steve.
• Only Sane Man: Jessi plays this role on occasion, though she definitely has her moments where she's just as hormone-crazed as the boys.
• Organ Autonomy: Sex organ autonomy, of course. In "Girls Get Horny Too", Jessi has a pleasant and informative conversation with her vagina via a hand mirror (and later has more vulgar ones).
• Orgasmatron: The bad future depicted in "Nick Starr" includes a product called "Oh Yeah!", a form of smelling salts that somebody can sniff to immediately get an orgasm. Nick is practically addicted to them, since he lives without companionship.
• Our Nudity Is Different: Defied. When Duke and Maury arrive in Atlantic City and head to the beach, the latter excitedly mentions how the girls' typical-for-the-time extremely conservative bathing suits make them "basically nude".
• Overly Long Gag: The entire credits sequence of "Guy Town" plays over Tyler screaming about how much his horn coming in hurt.
• Parental Abandonment: Jay's parents left him at home while they were going on vacation.
• Parents as People: Jessi's parents are the best example of this in a cast of wacky parents. While they both love her very much, their home has suffered throughout the years because of their unhappy marriage. Jessi's mom is frustrated that she has to be the breadwinner while her husband is an irresponsible stoner which leads her to cheat on him with another woman, their Cantor to be specific.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: The nonsense word "nogawooski" becomes a minor Running Gag in Season 5.
• Period Shaming: Jessie gets her period at summer camp, but her tampon slips out during swimming practice and is witnessed by the entire camp. The boys are revolted while the other girls delight in the fact it wasn't any of them. Jessie then spends the rest of the summer hanging out with fellow outcast Natalie.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: According to an offhand comment from Maurice, all the dinosaurs left Earth on spaceships.
• Pink Is Erotic: Pink is a common sight in erotic scenes; when Jay explains his technique for having sex with his pillow, it's a pink tin of beans that he uses for his technique, Coach Steve loses his virginity in a room filled with pink wallpaper, Missy masturbates by humping a worm toy while sleeping in a pink bed, and Connie the Hormone Monstress poses seductively with a towel in the Season 5 trailer.
• Practically Joker: In "The Shane Lizard Rises," Andrew's dick of all things turns into "the Chode-ker" after he douses it with too many chemicals. It escapes and blows up a hospital at the end of the episode.
  Chode-ker: Why so serious, Andrew, Feeling a little... nuts? [Evil Laugh]
  Andrew: Maury, we need to get to a hospital before my dick wins an Oscar!
  Chode-ker: I just want to watch your balls burn!
• Prehensile Hair: Connie the Hormone Monstress can move her hair in appropriate positions.
• "Psycho" Shower Murder Parody: Done when Missy is showering and rehearsing her lines for the school's Disclosure musical. Mona, her new hormone monstress, sneaks up on her and pulls the curtain while finishing the stanza.
• Punny Name: Jay's dog is a pitbull named Featuring Ludacris.
• Rage Against the Author: In the Season 5 finale, Nick demands to talk to the one in charge of Human Resources. This is Nick Kroll himself, in live action to boot! The cartoon Nick lashes out at his creator for torturing him to work out Kroll's childhood problems, but Kroll insists that they're writing this scene together, and Nick has to deal with his monsters himself while also appreciating the people who love him.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • Downplayed. No actual rape occurs, but Daniel has made multiple attempts to force girls into giving him oral sex against their will, then Slut-Shaming then when they don't. The show depicts him as an amoral asshole who blames literally everyone and everything for his own terrible actions and he's given his just desserts at the end when Nick throws up in his hat, Leah dumps it on his head, he gets his tires slashed and may have died by the episode's end.
  • Continued in Season 3, where Mr. Lizer takes advantage of Lola’s crush on him to make her rub his feet and walk on his back, then emotionally manipulates her into keeping quiet and thinking it’s her fault for Andrew seeing them together. By the end of the episode, Lizer is not only fired, he gets trapdoored offscreen by Lola, which leads to his toenail puncturing his testicles, and “fileting his penis shaft” when he tries to pull it out. It’s a very long scene, and it ends with him asking hoarsely if anybody has a Ziplock bag.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: Of the "if one joke falls flat, another one is coming up in five seconds" variety.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Andrew is the hormonal, hot-tempered Red Oni to Nick's more collected Blue Oni.
• Retcon: Season 1 had Connie making an appearance as Missy's Hormone Monster in "Head Pusher". The following seasons have Missy basically be without any Hormone Monster, and she doesn't seem aware of them either, and she gets her supposed first one in Mona in season 3.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • The teaser for Season 2 had Maurice and Connie turn into kaijus and attack the school. Nick points at them and cries out "It's our Hormone Monsters!", when his own Hormone Monster wasn't among them. Now that Connie has become Nick's latest Hormone Monster, his line makes more sense.
  • Lampshaded by Andrew in "Guy Town" when he mentions the "fleshlight" during the poker game shot during the song, and asks the viewers to rewind it if you didn't see it.
  • In the very first episode, when Maury pulls up his fur, he has Connie's name tattooed underneath.
  • In "My Furry Valentine", Andrew finally makes a basket, and gloats how he never made a shot on the entire series. And he was absolutely right!
• Rise of Zitboy: Less common for the trope, "The Shane Lizard Rises" covers back acne, with the Shame Wizard making Missy feel insecure about hers. She has a nightmare sequence about her back being a planet full of giant corrosive pus.
• Rule of Funny: Whether characters can see others' monsters varies depending on whether it works for the joke at hand.
• Running Gag:
  • Jay (or occasionally someone else) trying to give blatantly terrible relationship advice, or saying something wrong/absurd, immediately followed by another person telling them to stop quoting Jay's Dad's television commercials.
  • In "The Shame Wizard", a lot of people keep mentioning a Mac and Cheese restaurant only to reveal they're lying about it.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Naturally, in "The Head Push", as seen in the Shout-Out below.
• Ship Tease:
  • The entire show is filled with this between the Twice Shy couple Andrew and Missy.
  • Gina/Nick through season two, as Nick is in love with her and she starts slowly developing feelings for him as well. It sadly crashes and burns during the sleepover, when Nick tells his friend about touching her boob and it spirals into Devin publicly Slut-Shaming Gina, and even with the Shame Wizard gone, Gina doesn't forgive Nick.
  • The latter part of season 2 starts adding some to an unlikely couple: Jay/Matthew, as Jay kisses Matthew on a dare and the Shame Wizard makes Jay think that Matthew is attracted to him. It goes further when at the sleepover, they actually go on to full blown make out. The second Season Finale implies Jay is not fully over that experience and is more or less still attracted to Matthew. The two finally become a couple towards the end of season 5 however Matthew dumps him at the end of season 6.
    Jay: I barely remember or think about it at all, all the time.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: Played straight and justified with the main cast, who are in middle school and just starting puberty. Subverted with older teenagers such as Nick and Jay's siblings, who are just as tall as their parents.
• Shout-Out:
  • Connie refers to how a kiss should work by comparing it to having sex with Stanley Kowalski.
  • There are a couple of scenes in "The Head Push" that parody Seinfeld, complete with the theme music and the exterior shots of Tom's Restaurant. Nick takes on the title role, while Andrew plays George, Jessi plays Elaine, and Jay plays Kramer. And, surprisingly, Nick Kroll and Jessi Klein's imitations of Jerry and Elaine are pretty much dead-ringers for the real thing!
  • The final act of "The Pornscape" is an extended parody of Apocalypse Now.
  • Lampshaded when Matthew refers to Jessi as his "Marnie", complete with him proceeding to literally call out, "Shout out to Girls!"
  • The skits of "The Planned Parenthood Show":
    • Missy's skit heavily borrows from several Space Opera works, which includes a crew reminiscent of Star Trek and allegories to Star Wars, including Connie speaking by only saying, "Chewbacca sound" and using the same font for the title.
    • Matthew's skit is a The Bachelorette style show where Leah meets different contraception methods and talks with them as if they were romantic candidates.
    • Nick's dad's story is a whole shout-out to Forrest Gump.
    • Although Andrew's story isn't based in any one particular horror film, it has quite a few references to Get Out (2017) towards the end, which includes Nick's family prepping him for surgery and The Ghost of Duke Ellington making a title drop.
  • Andrew heavily advises Nick to watch Unfaithful and implies he has a crush on the lead actress.
  • In "The Department of Puberty", Connie refers to an angered Jessi as Lady Bird.
  • The Depression Kitty shares her design with Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat.
  • The Shame Wizard has an autographed poster of Septa Unella in his office.
  • "My Furry Valentine" has plenty of shots that parody When Harry Met Sally....
  • When feeling stressed in "Drug Buddies", Connie says she's going to go lie down and watch The Great British Bake Off because "they're so nice to each other".
  • The third season finale, "Super Mouth", is chock full of comic book/superhero references but the most standout is the DC Comics ones.
  • When Jessi is thrown in a car for idiots, among the people in the car is Ollie from Garfield
  • “Horrority House” has a bit where Andrew goes through a death montage to Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up”. Natasha Lyonne even cameos as her character Nadia from that show.
  • Missy's hallucinations have several references to Us, including a Missy in a red jumpsuit with a cut out of people holding hands and a Missy killing with a pair of golden shears.
  • When Jay tries fingering Lola, his first attempt is compared to Godzilla just blundering in and destroying everything in the process. His second attempt, following Lola's guidance, features the Knights of St. Joseph (representing Lola's pubic hair) at the drawbridge representing her genitals. They are a reference to the French knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
  • The police officer in Vermont who pulls over Mario and Andrew while Andrew is attempting to visit Bernie looks like “Thorny” Ramathorn from SuperTroopers.
  • When the kids enter the portal to "Human Resources" to find Nick a new Hormone Monster, they do so through a closet a la The Chronicles of Narnia.
  • Jessie's therapist in season 4 has a collection of toad figurines, including one of Hypnotoad.
• Sickening Sweethearts: Nick's parents are so in love with one another (and open about their sex life) that it grosses their kids out.
• Slut-Shaming:
  • Daniel accuses the party guests of doing this to him when they call him out for trying to force multiple girls into giving him head and then spreading rumors that they're sluts when they refuse him.
  • Gina faces this just for being buxom and getting male attention—none of which she has any control over.
  • Tallulah Levine also deals with her fair share of this trope, after refusing to give a guy a blowjob and having him tell everybody that she did.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Guy Bilzerian is by no means a good lawyer, but he has the arrogance and cocky attitude of a household name.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: In real life, Guy and Jenna Bilzerian would probably not be allowed to retain custody of their kids. Likewise, Jessi having been a runaway reported to the police, or Lola seemingly living alone with her mother constantly away would also both be candidates for scrutiny. But, to keep the comedy going, the in-universe attitude appears to be every family for themselves.
• Soda-Candy 'Splosion: Rick swallows soda and Mentos as a form of suicide after realizing Jessi won't love Nick back, resulting in his stomach exploding.
• Song Parody:
  • "Everybody Bleeds" is an extended parody of "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M., complete with a giant tampon with Michael Stipe's face.
  • "Am I Gay?" has a pastiche of Queen, sung by the ghost of Freddie Mercury.
  • Season 2 has "I Love My Body", which borrows a lot of it's style from Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive".
• Spirit Advisor: The Human Resources monsters and ghosts such as Duke Ellington serve as this.
• Stealth Pun: Missy gets frantic and starts hallucinating on Coke. As in the soda.
• Straw Feminist: A lot of female characters are this, including Jessi and her mother Shannon. While they espouse feminism as an ideological principle, in practice they are often extremely judgmental towards other females. Neither Jessi nor Shannon is above Slut-Shaming people they dislike or resent. Many of the girls at school are even worse, especially Devin and Lola. The subversive element is in the fact that men who claim to be "feminist" are almost always explicitly smacked down for it, whereas the female characters are subtly depicted as being hypocritical.
  • Jessi takes a dislike to Gina, whom she has gone to school with since first grade, because puberty has given the already-attractive Gina ample breasts and a lot of attention from the boys. In "Rankings", Jessi is particularly upset that she is not considered one of the hottest girls by the boys, and even laments that she shouldn't want to be, but does anyway.
  • Shannon refers to her ex-husband's new girlfriend as a "slut", even though Shannon cheated on him while they were still married. She can also be catty about other womens' appearances (including Jessi's).
  • A "Slut Walk" organized by the girls to protest Mr. Lizer's new dress code falls flat. Devin and Lola openly believe that they are protesting for girls' right to be a "cock tease" to boys. All of the girls, Jessi included, are mean to Missy for not wearing clothing intended to arouse the boys. This despite the protest supposedly being about how wrong it is for the boys to see the girls as sex objects.
• Sudden Anatomy: Maurice grows several more arms while weighing the pros and cons of Andrew and Nick ejaculating on a cracker.
• Summer Campy: The first few episodes of season 4 takes place at Camp Moheegan Sun, with Nick and Andrew struggling with their failing friendship and the fallout of the season 3 finale. This is also where Nick encounters Tito The Anxiety Mosquito for the first time.
• Teacher/Student Romance: In the third-season episode "Disclosure the Movie: The Musical!", Mr. Lizer manipulates Lola into doing inappropriate favors for him. Andrew witnesses one and tells Jessi who, in turn, convinces Lola that what happened was wrong. When confronted about it, Lizer says too much, incriminating himself further.
• Teeny Weenie: Nick deals with some self-consciousness over the size of his penis starting in "The Head Push" and persisting as something he struggles with. His father also has a small penis but is completely at peace with it.
• That Man Is Dead: A lighthearted example. After befriending Coach Steve, the Shame Wizard decides to be called "Shane Lizard", the name Coach Steve erroneously believed it to actually be.
• The Unfair Sex: Played with a lot. Generally, the conflicts in the show are blamed on the boys. Subverted often by the fact that the girls don't do it out of actual malice, but because of their own issues, which are just as often made worse by the boys. Alleviating this further is that the girls are just as likely to vilify each other as they are the boys.
  • The best example might be the “Hump and Dump” incident and its aftermath. Andrew shouldn’t have done that to Lola, but throughout the episode he was clearly terrified of her. She bullied him into being her boyfriend, insisted they French kiss in the school hallway when he was obviously uncomfortable with it, made him change his plans and come over to her house, and was the one who initiated the “front grinding”. He finally decides they have to break up when she exhibits mannerisms identical to his emotionally abusive father. And in response she breaks his wrist, indicating that he was right to be afraid of her. She does not respect him or his boundaries, insults him to his face, isolates him from his friends, and doesn’t try to develop any kind of emotional connection, so her interest in him is as physical as his is in her, the only difference being that she wants it to be ongoing instead of a onetime thing. He is depicted as the bad guy.
• Time Abyss: Maurice the Hormone Monster mentions being 75 million years old, and both he and Connie the Hormone Monstress have been around since the dinosaurs.
• Title Drop: After they kiss, Jessi tells Nick he has a "big mouth". He later drunkenly tells himself he has a big mouth after telling Jessi he saw her mother kiss another woman.
  Nick: Me and my big mouth. [belch] "Big Mouth." That's the show. That's the show.
• Too Much Information:
  • Coach Steve is a little too upfront about a close call with a dump he takes at 7-Eleven in "Everybody Bleeds".
  • Andrew lays out his after-school routine to Nick and Jessi in a little too much detail in "No Nut November".
• Trans Equals Gay:
  • Jay asks Matthew this in "Requiem for a Wet Dream" when he genuinely doesn't know. Wanting to humiliate Jay, Matthew not only tells him that they are the same thing and insists that Jay tells everyone that.
  • Subverted with Natalie, who thought her discomfort with puberty was due to being a gay boy, but after singing with Freddie Mercury about her sexuality didn't make her feel any better, she looked into transgender forums and realized she was actually a girl.
• Truth in Television:
  • As disgusting as some of the topics can be at time, Big Mouth portrays the journey through puberty with absolute Brutal Honesty.
  • The whole issue with the Shame Wizard of season 2. There actually is a strong relationship between people's desire to uphold social standards and how sensitive they are to shame and guilt.
• Undying Loyalty: Nick to Andrew; Nick was willing to live in the Pornscape for the rest of his life with the possibility that he might be molested, if it means that he can stay by Andrew's side.
• Unusual Euphemism: Coach Steve refers to having sex as "made thick in the warm."
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Jay's neighbors don't seem bothered that a pubescent boy is watching them have sex. They even say hi to each other!

• Villain Has a Point:
  • While the Shame Wizard enjoys tormenting people a tad bit too much, he is absolutely correct in that without shame people would succumb to their most base urges and the result would be anarchy. The kids prove this when they drive him off and proceed to run amok.
  • The Depression Kitty, who is not at all benevolent, nonetheless hits the mark in that Connie has done a very bad job with Jessi. Even Jessi herself agrees with this and symbolically gives herself over to the Depression Kitty willingly because she feels that Connie only makes her life worse and has deprived her of the virtues she used to be most proud of.
• Voice of the Legion: Maurice tells Andrew to "Tear [Nick]'s fucking head off!" in a demonic voice when Nick punches Andrew in the mouth.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The kids sometimes puke in disturbingly graphic detail.
• Wham Episode: "I Survived Jessi's Bat Mitzvah" is focused on Jessi learning that her mother is having an affair with her Cantor no less and eventually confronting her about it. At the end, Jessi starts an undefined relationship with Jay.
• Wham Shot: For the first episode, Nick witnessing Maurice at the end, as it reveals that he isn't just a hallucination made by Andrew's brain.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Andrew and Missy's song about all of the weird physical feelings they feel when they think about being in love with one another in "Requiem for a Wet Dream."
• The Whitest Black Guy: Missy's cousins joke about Missy and her dad being this when they do a jingle for their Carob Pie in "Thanksgiving.
• Wild Take: Nick does a Tex Avery-style one when introduced to Tallulah. Unfortunately, it doesn't go back to normal after, leaving his eyeballs and extended tongue lying on the floor.
• Wrong Bathroom Incident: Coach Steve has been known to walk into the women's bathroom from time to time. Not out of malice, but rather his own staggering idiocy.
  "Did I walk into the triangle-body locker room again?"
• Your Head Asplode: A Running Gag on the show when characters learn shocking information:
  • Nick, Andrew, Jay and Maurice's heads all spontaneously combust upon discovering that girls are capable of being horny. Later in the same episode Lola's head explodes from Nick reciting an erotically passionate speech from a romance novel.
  • Andrew and Jessi's heads explode when they learn Coach Steve lost his virginity to Jay's mom.
  • Jay's explodes again after he realizes that while Nick is on vacation with the Gloubermans, Jay can take over his life and the Birch parents are completely OK with it.
  • Nick, Seth, and two other campers' heads explode after their camp counselor introduces a trans girl to them.
  • Missy's head explodes when her cousins tell her that her parents haven't let her embrace her black identity. Mona uses the fire from the explosion to light her cigarette.
  • Lola's head explodes after finding out that Jay is supposed to make her feel good too during intimate moments between them.
  • Jay's head explodes after Charles tells him he thinks magic is cool.

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