Western Animation / Lloyd in Space

Lloyd!^note Behind him from left to right: Kurt, Douglas and Eddie.

Lloyd in Space was an animated television series from Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere, the creators of Recess, running from February 2001 to February 2004 for a total of 39 episodes.

Living far in the future, shortly after the end of World War IX, 13-year-old Lloyd Nebulon is a 7th-grade green-skinned alien (of the Verdigrean race) who lives in the Intrepidville Space Station along with his telekinetic and telepathic younger sister, 5-year-old Francine, and his mother, Commander Nora Li Nebulon, the Head of Intrepidville. The show followed Lloyd and his friends Edward "Eddie" R. Horton, a Token Human teenage boy, Kurt Blobberts, an enormous simple-minded Blobullon, and Douglas McNoggin, a geeky, intelligent Cerebellian, and their adventures throughout Intrepidville.

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Contains examples of

• Action Mom: Nora has her moments:
  • Best exemplified when the boys got into a tangle with some space pirates. She shows up and announces herself and the bad to the bone pirates freak out.
  • Deconstructed in one episode where Nora meets up with an old male friend and goes out on a date with him. Lloyd watches in horror and disgust as his mom suddenly and seemingly goes from being a badass to a giggling Girly Girl and theorizes that her date must be an evil mind-controlling monster in disguise. At the end of the episode, Nora addresses Lloyd's concerns and tells him even Action Moms like her need to unwind and have fun sometimes.
• Alien Blood:
  • In 'Thrilla At Intrepidvilla', when Lloyd prepares to fight Francine's challenger in order to save her, Kurt, going as one of the commentators alongside Douglas, comments that Lloyd is 'a kid who's going to get hurt. And then I'll have to describe his orange blood.'.
  • In Love Beam #9", a couple of episodes later, the fact that Verdigrians, or at least Lloyd, have orange blood is furthered when Lloyd blushes. An orange-like color comes to his face rather than red or a deeper shade of green.
  • While a slight inversion of the other two examples, Eddie is mentioned to have red blood (as typical for any human) in 'Neither Boy Nor Girl', with Cindy's mean head calling him a 'red-blooded freak'. While Eddie is certainly not an alien to us by any standards, he is an alien of sorts to the other aliens and based on what Cindy's mean head said, it can be inferred that red blood is an unusual trait, if not exclusive to humans.
• Aliens Speaking English: Every character speaks English, although a couple of side characters communicate through growls. Still, there's no mention of learning alien languages.
• Alliterative Name: Lloyd's mom, Nora Nebulon.
• Alpha Bitch: Brittany fits the trope to a T. Occasionally her Hidden Depths are shown to make her a Lovable Alpha Bitch too. Notably in an episode where Lloyd and Francine have a "Freaky Friday" Flip, Brittany is friendly to Francine-in-Lloyd because the latter gives her compliments.
• Ambiguous Gender: Done in one episode with a new student. Everyone takes bets on what gender they are, but their interests and presentation are so ambiguous they eventually have to ask. Turns out they're part of a species that chooses their sex when they hit puberty. Cue everyone trying to tell them which to pick. Eventually, they decide to keep their choice secret.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Francine takes the cake with this one, often using her powers to antagonize Lloyd and his friends.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: Lloyd, but he does get even in "Babysitter Lloyd".
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: The characters are regularly depicted wearing bubble helmets in space, but the helmets aren't attached to anything and they still go out in space wearing their street clothes. Kurt and Douglas don't even wear the bubble helmets.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Francine's plot in the "Freaky Friday" Flip episode. While Francine at first is joyous from all the “big kid stuff” she can do, she ends up having to face problems at Lloyd's middle school, due to most of the kids being more mature than her.
• Becoming the Mask: Brittany loved Lloyd from childhood but couldn't speak about it since first she wasn't supposed to be interested in boys and secondly she became popular. Lloyd hopes that one day she'll be able to properly admit it to herself.
• Beta Bitch: Megan is Brittany’s BFF and is usually seen at her side
• Bittersweet Ending: Love Beam No 9 reveals that Brittany actually did have a crush on Lloyd for years but had to hide it, and has only been able to admit it thanks to the Love Beam. Lloyd reverses it to let her be herself, hoping that one day she'll be able to admit her true feelings.
  • In Nerd From Beyond The Stars, Lloyd and a grown Larvel apologize to each other for screwing each other over the week before and Larvel tells Lloyd to be happy he still has a few more years of being a kid left. Though it's left unsaid, given how fast Larvel's species ages and his dad is nowhere to be seen, it's likely Larvel doesn't have a lot longer to live.

• Big Sister Bully: Inverted with Francine, who uses her power of telekinesis to torment Lloyd.
• Brains and Brawn: In an effort to avoid being bullied, Kurt and Douglas team up to
• Bratty Half-Pint: Francine, again. The fact that she has telekinetic powers only undermines her brattiness. She does seem to have standards and never uses them on her mother at least.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Lloyd and his fantasies. They cause embarrassment and humiliation for him, but at the end, they are what Lloyd would look like if he was cool and show different sides to him.
• Class Trip: The episode where Lloyd's class goes to "Wormhole National Park".

• Cruel Cheerleader: Brittany is the Alpha Bitch and her default outfit is a cheerleading uniform.
• Cute Monster Girl: Several. Brittany (blue skin and six arms but still cute), Violet (yellow skin and pink hair), Francine of course and Cindy's nice head.
• Depending on the Writer: Francine often flip-flops between a Cheerful Child who genuinely wants to spend time with Lloyd and an Enfant Terrible who takes every opportunity to insult him or make his life miserable. Sometimes she can even be both in the same episode.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: After Lloyd and his friends accidentally take off in Brock Rockman's ship, he tries to pin the blame on Boomer, to which Nora asks Brock if he really just left the keys to his classified starship with a civilian gas station attendant.
• Disappeared Dad: It's noted in "Campout on Zoltan III" that Lloyd's dad isn't around. Luckily, he has his grandpa as an older male relative
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the Halloween Episode, Lloyd and his friends found themselves stuck in a Bad Future where the space station's been decimated from an attack by an alien monster. The monster in question could cause people to turn into monsters themselves from a bite or scratch. Lloyd remains the only one unharmed while all his friends are subsequently turned and start hunting him. They spend over sixty years stuck on the station before Lloyd, now an old man, figures out a way to go home. It then turned out the whole thing was a trick Francine created with her mental abilities. Why? Because she got scared when Lloyd let her go into a fun house by herself and wouldn't take her trick-or-treating.
• Distaff Counterpart: Most of the boys have a girl of their own species nearly identical to them. Lloyd and Eddie are the only exceptions.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In Douglas' profile on the old Lloyd in Space website, it is mentioned he is from the planet 'Brainion', though he is from the planet 'Cerebellia' in the show proper.
  • In 'Campout On Zoltan III', despite their species' ongoing feud with each other, a feud that they readily joined in on, Douglas' and Kurt's fathers don't appear to have an issue with one another. While they may have been putting it to the side for their sons' sakes, 'Campout on Zoltan III' was a season one episode, while 'The Big Feud' was a season four episode. Since the crew would have no way of knowing that they'd reach four seasons, the Blobbulon and Cerebellian feud most likely wasn't even a concept at the time of production.
• Expy:
  • Mendel is an expy of Menlo.
  • Kurt is basically an alien expy of either Brooklyn or Patrick Star down to the voice actor
  • Brittany acts like (and is voiced by the same girl as) Ashley A. Additionally, her best friend, Megan, acts similarly and has the same voice as Ashley Q.
  • Lou 2000, Station's backup system, is basically a PG-rated Bender. Both are voiced by John DiMaggio.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • "The Big Feud". What starts off as an innocent school research project on one's cultural heritage ends up reigniting age-old resentment between the Blobulons (Kurt's race) and the Cerebellians (Douglas's race).
  • Nora's old male friend and date wore a disguise to make him look like a Verdigrean because he and Nora believed the people of Intrepridville would find his real appearance to be too "monstrous" and wouldn't be accepting of him, which he was really sensitive about.
  • Several webtoons from the old One Saturday Morning website imply that space aliens look down upon humans such as Eddie. Unlike the above examples, this is never looked into.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Combined with an aversion of Voices Are Mental in "Lloyd Changes His Mind".
• Feud Episode: "The Big Feud" touches on a historical feud between Douglas and Kurt's species that temporarily drives them apart.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: Young Verdigrean females have telekinesis and telepathy that they grow out of when they age. While male Verdigrean's have their thoughts projected for everyone to see for a short time during puberty.
• Gentle Giant: Kurt is the biggest character in the series but he's also the gentlest.
• The Ghost: Boomer's boss, who might not even exist.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: In one episode, Boomer and the gang (minus Kurt) came up with a lot of names for possible bands.
  Lloyd: Later, Boomer!
  Boomer: (rubbing his chin) Later Boomer?
• Grande Dame: The fat rich lady in "Pet Wars".
• Great Offscreen War: The show's marketing and description by Disney makes note that it takes place after World War IX, but this conflict never appears or is mentioned in the show proper. Though it may explain some of the Fantastic Racism as well as Mr. Nebulon being killed in said war.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Nora is green-skinned like Lloyd and is drawn in very attractive ways. It's implied that a few characters have crushes on her.
• Hidden Depths: While Larry is a lousy bridge communications ensign, in "A Place for Larry" it's revealed that he takes care of the more mundane tasks, like refilling the cooler, sending people birthday cards, and changing the easy listening background music. Things that Nora and Dunkirque haven't done before, nor know how to. Miraculously, this keeps Intrepidville from descending into chaos, which almost did (and nearly led to a core meltdown) when Larry got fired for his incompetence. But instead of giving Larry his old job back, Nora appoints him as "lieutenant of morale".
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: The months in Intrepidville. For example Chebuary, Grogust, Floontober.
• Humans Are Bastards: In "Pet Wars", the fat rich lady alien dislikes Eddie for teasing her pet.
  Lloyd: You know those humans.
• I Am What I Am: Lloyd makes this type of speech at the end of "Daydream Transceiver". After the embarrassments Lloyd’s fantasies get him into all throughout the episode, he learns that no matter what, these fantasies are still him and he has to accept that.

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Cindy's mean head. They do share the same heart, after all.
  • Eddie; while he can be a bad influence and has done or said things that clearly got under his friends' skin more than once, it's clear that their friendship means a great deal to him.
• Karma Houdini: Francine. While 'local troublemaker' Eddie, manages to get struck by karma once or twice, the wormhole episode being a prime example, Francine has never been given any kind of punishment for her actions, not even from the show's events itself. The only thing that could logically come close to being karma were the episodes 'Francine's Powertrip', 'Babysitter Lloyd', and in 'Lloyd Changes His Mind'. But even then, that kind of 'karma' is nothing when it comes to what Lloyd is put through on a near daily or episodic basis as well.
  • Despite the above example, even Eddie gets this to an extent. He goaded Lloyd into making Francine fight adults in an episode just to make some crontars and unlike the previously mentioned wormhole episode where everything does come to bite him in the ass, he doesn't get any repercussions. Lloyd, on the other hand, ends up having to clean every window on the space station. While Lloyd arguably should not get off scot-free either, Eddie should also have some kind of punishment since he was the one to originally suggest the idea.
  • Speaking of which, this isn't the first time a character does something bad and Lloyd not only gets dragged into it but also takes all of the blame. The show has a tendency to not care what he does or how wrong his actions are in comparison to others, but if he has done even one thing wrong or worthy of some kind of karma, it usually comes in full force, sometimes even letting the other people off, who may even be logically more in the wrong than Lloyd was, scot-free. Granted, he's gotten away with some things in the series, but the show seems to love to torment him whenever possible.
  • Funnily enough, Lloyd gets his own Karma Houdini moment in the aforementioned 'Babysitter Lloyd' episode. Nora manages to convince Lloyd to babysit Francine for the weekend, promising to pay him the fifty crontars he needs for a new Sci-fi bike that he wants to buy, one that he has apparently been saving up for years for. And even though Francine is more logically in the wrong by not only crashing Station's hard drive but also blackmailing her brother, Lloyd has still done some things wrong by blackmailing her back and saying that he wished Francine wasn't there at all. Lloyd and Francine reconcile and Nora returns home to see that everything went smoothly (in her eyes). With the logic of Lloyd's unluckiness in mind, one would think that some weird, coincidental events would reveal themselves, foiling the plot and having Lloyd not be paid, or even worse, something so bad happens that all of Lloyd's money he saved up has to be used to fix whatever happened, but nothing happens. Lloyd isn't paid on-screen, but he isn't not paid either. And while this leads to a strange Schrodinger's scenario of whether he was paid or not (considering Nora could have found out later) since the bike never shows up, he deserves this victory at least following all of the misfortune he suffers in the show.
• Karmic Misfire: Logically, Lloyd's only faults in The Big 1-3 were being in the wrong place at the wrong time and attempting to get out of a book report, everything else was due to adults manipulating him and the show never says anything about them receiving any type of punishment while Lloyd ended up being grounded for a month. On his birthday.
• Mama Bear: Nora, Lloyd's mom.

  Nora: I'll turn this universe upside-down to find you, Lloyd.

• Miles Glorious: Brock Rockman travels the galaxy telling stories of his exploits, but when he's in an actual battle with Nora, he reveals that he's a coward and made up all those stories.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: Somewhat played straight, no Blobullon senior citizens have been shown, but it is shown that Blobullons are born large and get larger growing up when young but become small as adults grow up, hence why, even as a 1st grade kid, Kurt is like a giant (though he seems more big boned as a teenager), and Kurt's parents are shorter than most of the teenagers and other adults in the series.
• Motor Mouth: It's most likely due to bad editing of the episodes, but Douglas and Lloyd never seem to take a breather between sentences, not once.
• Multiple Head Case: Cindy. Lloyd wants to take only the nice one to the dance.
• Never Heard That One Before: An alien worm who works at Wormhole National Park gets a lot of jokes about him being a worm working at a wormhole.
  Jake: Do you have to be a worm to work at the Wormhole National Park?
  Worm: (sighs) No.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Inverted. One of Lloyd's selves even RETURNS with him in the time-traveling episode, only to end up getting vaporized out of existence by an elderly Douglas. It makes just about as much sense in context.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Francine's powers are usually limited to levitation and mind-reading, but in "Big Brother Kurt" she suddenly has the ability to change people's appearances. This ability never comes up in any other episode. Possibly justified in that she only did it to Kurt, possibly meaning it only works on his race.
• Parental Bonus: In 'Nerd Beyond The Stars', when Lloyd meets up with a now-adult Larvel, Lloyd apologizes for pranking him the week before and Larvel apologises for ditching the group when the popular kids took interest in him. Lloyd then asks, "So when you and Brittany hung out after school...did you-?" and though Larvel pretends he can't remember middle school much now that he's an adult, Lloyd was clearly trying to find out how far he went with Brittany.
• Planet of Hats: A lot of the alien races, as demonstrated in "The Big Feud". Eddie wears a mix of clothing from different cultures, which would also suggest a One World Order.
• Prejudice Aesop:
  • The Fantastic Racism episode has a lesson about the nature of prejudice. Kurt and Douglas's families get caught up in a legendary feud between their species and it affects their children's friendship. Kurt and Douglas quickly realise that holding onto past prejudices is a silly notion and scold their parents for it.
    Douglas: "My ancestors might have been from Cerebellian, but I am from Intrepidville. And I choose to be friends with Blobulans, Earthlings, Verdigrians or what have you."
  • Another anti-prejudice moral is found when everyone suspects that Norah's date is after her. It turns out he was only trying to pass for a Verdigrian to avoid the kind of prejudice they all came up with. Another powerful message against judging someone by their appearance or because they have a different background.
• Prime Time Cartoon: After One Saturday Morning went defunct in 2002 and gave the show the boot, it became this on Toon Disney.
• Puberty Superpower:
  • Inverted with Francine. Nora mentions several times that her psychic powers will go away as she gets older.
  • But played straight with Lloyd, though only temporary, and a case of Blessed with Suck.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Defied by Nora when Lloyd and his friends start getting worried that she's acting more feminine. She reminds them that she is still a woman in addition to a commander.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lloyd gives a very well-deserved one to Brittani in Incident At Luna Vista when he calls her out for her selfish attitude.
• Rebel Prince: Boomer ran away to get away from that life, and he doesn't want to be king.
• Recycled In Space: Recess IN SPACE!!
• Rhymes on a Dime: Eddie's relatives have names that rhyme. Eddie never noticed before until Lloyd pointed it out.
  • Eddie himself has a tendency to rhyme.
• Robot Antennae: Station. He even refers to himself as a 'very large eyeball with two small antenna thingies on top' in the episode 'Gimme Some Skin'.
• Robot Buddy: Station. Although he appears to be installed in every apartment, he seems to be a close friend of Lloyd's and helps out on many of his schemes.
• Robo Romance: Station meets a girl named Midge on the Internet, but lies about his identity as an organic being to be more attractive. When he meets Midge, she's insecure that Station isn't who he said he was, until Station revealed himself to be an eye on a long rope. Midge then reveals herself to be a similar device used for military intelligence who posed as an organic being to be better compatible with the person she thought Station was.
• Secretly Wealthy: Boomer, the station mechanic, is actually a prince, much to his dismay when his secret comes out.
• Shout-Out: Station's eye is similar to HAL 9000
  • Lloyd's dream on his 13th birthday in the first episode.
• Shrinking Violet: A girl called Violet, who Lloyd meets at a slumber party. She's a lot shyer than the other girls and has trouble talking to them. Douglas refers to her as "lonely Violet" in another episode.
• Silly Reason for War: "The Big Feud" revealed that the racism between Blobulons (Kurt's race) and the Cerebellians (Douglas's race) was due to both their homeworlds sharing the same moon; the Blobulons hate the Cerebellians for "stealing" their moon (i.e. landed and claimed it). After learning of this, Kurt and Douglas thought nothing of it, until their quirks start to annoy each other, leading them to side with their people. But when Lloyd and Eddie nearly got hurt trying to stop the feud, Kurt and Douglas realize their mistake and mend their friendship for this very reason.

• Slice of Life: Going to school in outer space, of course!
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • Also Lloyd, in the pilot episode where he turns thirteen and thinks that this not only makes him a miniature adult, but also that he doesn't have to do schoolwork and stuff like that.
  • The doctor in "Francine's Power Trip". Despite citing several years of medical school, she diagnoses Francine as definitely having a virus that will make her lose her powers for 24 hours. Then when she turns out to be wrong she flip-flops and says Francine has a different disease that makes her lose her powers permanently, once again citing her years of medical school to prove she's never wrong. Of course that diagnosis was wrong too.
  Doctor: (offering to Francine, despite speaking through a holo-projector) Have a lollipop.
• Small Parent, Huge Child: Kurt's parents are both smaller than he is, since Blobullons shrink as they age.
• Space Is Noisy: Francine has no trouble overhearing Lloyd and his friends talking about her through a window from outside the space station, but then again, she can read minds. There's still no excuse how characters can talk to each other in space wearing nothing but bubble helmets.
• Spoonerism: "Wack to burk, everyone! I mean...back to work."
• Superpowerful Genetics: Young Verdigrean girls like Francine have mind-reading and telekinesis powers.
• Theme Naming: When Lloyd meets Eddie's relatives, their names all rhyme.
• Token Human: Eddie is the token human character
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Cindy is a two-headed girl where one mean head is aggressive and very tomboyish, while the other head is sweet and more feminine.

• Tsundere: Brittany is Type A Tsundere for Lloyd, as revealed in "Love Beam #9". She has never been able to reveal her feelings due to her popularity.

• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Eddie's relatives, in addition to having names that rhyme.
• Valley Girl: Brittany and Megan speak in stereotypical Valley Girl accents, use expressions such as 'like' and 'totally' a lot and are slightly ditzy, though Brittany is implied to be a straight-A student.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • The "Kurtlas" episode is clearly based on the children's book Freak the Mighty.
  • The episode "Boomer's Secret Life" (where the kids find out that Boomer is secretly the prince of his home planet, but ran away from home for a chance at a normal life) is a comedic retelling of the episode "The Fugitive" of The Twilight Zone (1959).
• World War Whatever: The show takes place after World War IX (9), not that this has any impact or mention on the show aside from the show's description.
• You Mean "Xmas": Everyone in Intrepidville celebrates a holiday called "Droimatz", but Lloyd and his family celebrate Theerlap instead.

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