Western Animation / Muppet Babies (2018)

Muppet Babies (2018) is a Continuity Reboot of the 1984 cartoon of the same name, premiering on Disney Junior on March 23, 2018.

The show follows the basic premise of the original, with baby versions of the Muppet characters going on all sorts of adventures in the nursery while under the care of Nanny (now known as "Miss Nanny"). They use the power of imagination and creativity to solve any problem (let's say this reboot is basically the 1980s original meets The Backyardigans). The target demographic of 4-7 year old children is still the same.

With that said, there are some differences. As opposed to the hand-drawn animation of the original, this show is in CGI, fitting in with other modern Disney Junior shows. Also, this series has two 11-minute episodes per runtime.

The main cast is as follows:

• Supervising director Matt Danner (Gravity Falls) as Baby Kermit
• Melanie Harrison (Fish Hooks) as Baby Piggy
• Dee Bradley Baker as Baby Animal
• Ben Diskin as Baby Gonzo
• Eric Bauza as Baby Fozzie
• Jenny Slate as Miss Nanny

In addition, there is a new character joining the babies named Summer Penguin, voiced by Jessica DiCicco.

A number of other well-known Muppets also appear in recurring roles. Most prominent are Camilla the Chicken, who lives in a chicken coop on the back yard with two other chickens, Priscilla and Beep; Statler and Waldorf (Bauza and Danner), the next-door neighbors who often watch the goings-on from their own house, whose balcony resembles the one at the Muppet Theater; Rizzo the Rat (Diskin), who lives in a hole in the wall and occasionally shows up to play; Bunsen and Beaker (again, Bauza and Danner), who come to visit every now and again, and Sweetums (Baker), a friendly, kind monster. Other Muppets can often be seen in small cameos or pictures on the wall.

The show is executive produced by Tom Warburton (creator of Codename: Kids Next Door, and supervising director for Fish Hooks and The 7D) with Eric Shaw (SpongeBob SquarePants, WordGirl, Arthur, My Friends Tigger & Pooh) serving as the show's story editor. The first episode is available on YouTube.

On July 25, 2019, the show was renewed for a third season. In October 2020, Jeffrey Scott, developer of the original series, sued Disney for copyright infringement and fraud, saying that they didn't offer him a chance to work on the reboot or pay him for his original ideas. Disney retaliated that Scott has nothing to back up his claims, and filed a motion to dismiss in January 2021. Finally, in April 2021, the suit was thrown out. Season 3 began on January 4, 2021 and ended on February 18, 2022.

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The show contains examples of:

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In the original series, the babies all live together full-time, with Nanny as their Parental Substitute: why they don't live with their parents is never explained. In this version, the main setting is a daycare, Miss Nanny is the babies' teacher (hence why they call her Miss Nanny), and they have their own houses and parents that they go home to.
  • Piggy's crush on Kermit seems to have vanished — possibly because the Piggy/Kermit romance has been toned down in her adult counterpart in later years and they're currently portrayed more as Amicable Exes. Likewise, this version of Gonzo doesn't have a crush on Piggy like he did in the original series.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In the original, the equivalents of Statler and Waldorf didn't appear until the penultimate season. Here, they are introduced as early as the first half of the second episode.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Of a sort; Statler and Waldorf are less abrasive than usual, but more so than their counterparts in the first run of Muppet Babies.
  • Averted with Rizzo, who's pretty much on the same Jerk with a Heart of Gold levels as his adult counterpart — though since everyone else are Adaptational Nice Guys and the stories more often center around some kind of Aesop, he does come across as a bigger jerk in comparison.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In The Muppet Show, the Swedish Chef was barely coherent and every type of Lethal Chef you can imagine. Here, he's a Supreme Chef (at worst, he needs some redirection to make a proper meal), and while he's still babbling in Mock Swedish, it's much more understandable compared to his adult counterpart.
• Adaptational Late Appearance:
  • In the original series, Baby Rowlf was an established member of the main cast from the very start. In this continuity, he doesn't show up until "The Best, Best Friend", the first half of the episode 19.
  • Scooter and Skeeter were also two of the main characters in the 1984 series who appeared since the very beginning. In this series, they can be seen in a picture on the wall all throughout the first season, but it isn't until "Win a Twin" (season 2, episode 14, part 1), where they make their first physical appearances.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • While Piggy has usually been a jerk with a heart of gold, the jerk part tends to be a bit more pronounced, making her somewhat abrasive. That's not the case here. Tom Warburton mentioned how she's just somewhat insecure and craving for attention . Indeed, the preview clips make out Piggy to be stuck up and somewhat egotistical, but not outright mean or abrasive.^note Or violent.
  • Statler and Waldorf, while much closer to their classic "curmudgeonly hecklers" personas than they were in the original cartoon, are still notably kinder towards the kids than they ever were towards the adult versions of the Muppets. It's especially noticeable with Fozzie; in one episode they even tell him he's "pretty funny". It's implied that this is a case of Everyone Has Standards — while they wouldn't show any mercy when heckling the adult Fozzie, they're not going to be too mean to a little kid version of him.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Rizzo of course wasn't part of the original Babies, but compared to his adult counterpart he's a lot calmer and more laid-back here.
  • In the 1984 series, Scooter and Skeeter were Polar Opposite Twins, Scooter being a socially awkward computer nerd, and Skeeter being an energetic tomboy who likes sports (even to the point where they sang a song about how different they are in "Sing a Song of Superheroes"). Here, while they still have differences, they're Single-Minded Twins who do everything together.
• Animal Gender-Bender: Nattie the Narwhal from "My Best Toy's Wedding" is a female narwhal, but she has a horn.
• Age Lift:
  • Animal was very clearly the youngest in the original series, but here he's around the same age as them. In addition, all the characters seem to be slightly older here than in the original.
  • Another notable example is Kermit's nephew, Robin. In the 1984 series, Robin was a tadpole and was mostly confined to swimming in a fishbowl. In this series, he's a polliwog, having sprouted legs but still retaining his tail.
• All-CGI Cartoon: As with most Disney Junior shows, the animation is CGI.
• Always Someone Better: In "My Brother Vinny", Rizzo's older brother Vinny Linguine is this to Rizzo, due to him being a famous rock star.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Show Within a Show example; in "Rizzo's Space Race", Rizzo keeps calling his friends "spoon-aronis" after seeing an episode of Jimmy Cheddah: Teenage Space Diner where Jimmy does the same thing to someone he doesn't like at his space diner. As Rizzo's friends don't want to help him if he keeps insulting them, this results in his car falling apart during the race he has with Patch. When Rizzo realizes that him losing the race was his own fault, he watches the end of Jimmy Cheddah, where Jimmy advises the viewers not to call their friends bad names. After apologizing to his friends for the way he mistreated them, Rizzo himself repeats the moral at the end of the episode.
• Art Shift: When Kermit enters the world of the Wacky Alpacas in "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", he's made into 2D just like the show is.
• Art-Shifted Sequel: From traditional hand-drawn animation, to CGI. Or, if you count the original Muppet Show, from puppets to CGI.
  • This comes full circle with the Play Date shorts using puppet versions of the show's version of the characters.
• Artifact Title: Admittedly the title is kind of this since the kids act more preschool age (even Animal received a bit of an age-up) than babies. Then again the original show was rather inconsistent at times with what age they were supposed to be.
• Ascended Extra: In the original series, Camilla was a stuffed toy owned by Gonzo. Here, she's a real chicken, and the focus of one or two episodes.
• Ate It All: In "Win a Twin", one of the events on the titular game show is to make a pizza that has Scooter's favorite toppings. Animal tries to make Scooter a pizza, but ends up eating the entire pizza before he can give it to Scooter.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  • In "Chicken Round-up", Animal gets easily distracted by other things, which keeps him from keeping the promises he makes to his friends. Not only does this allow Camilla, Priscilla, and Beep to run away, as he had earlier promised Miss Nanny he would put them back in their coop when he was done playing with them while she fixed a loose board in the fence, but it also compromises his friends' attempts to round them up again.
  • Animal does this again in "Animal and the Little Accident". Whenever he tries to use the restroom, something always comes up and distracts him.
  • In "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", Kermit becomes engrossed in watching an episode of The Wacky Alpacas, and this interferes with his job of collecting pizza boxes for Fozzie's pizzas. In the same episode, Walter becomes too distracted with doing fun things such as eating ice cream and playing video games at the arcade to get a balloon for Wanda's birthday.
• Back for the Finale: "The Muppet Babies Show," the series finale, features virtually every character who had ever appeared on the show.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", the Bad Eggs manage to win a basketball game against the Chickens. Thankfully, they and Gonzo are good sports, and agree to play another game against each other again soon.
• Baffled by Own Biology: In "Animal Gets the Sneezies", Animal is sneezing and thinks he has a disease called "the Sneezies" (first suggested to him by Kermit, who's apparently had that disease before). It turns out that it's just hay fever.
• Balloon-Bursting Bird:
  • Summer accidentally pops a balloon with her beak in "Kermit Levels Up". Later, she uses her beak to clear some giant balloons from a level of a video game.
  • In "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", a flock of woodpeckers pop the hot air balloon that Kermit and Walter deliver to Wanda for her birthday.
• Bamboo Technology: In "Summer's Car Trouble", Summer's Grandpa Pepper makes her a wind-up toy car, using a can of peaches for the car itself, checkers for the wheels, and a bottle cap for the winder.
• Banana Peel:
  • In "No Laughing Matter", Kermit tries to prove to Fozzie that he can still be funny without his Great-Uncle Schnozzie's lucky joke book by having him slip on a banana peel. When Fozzie tries to do so, he ends up kicking it into Piggy's face.
  • In "Best Friends Fixer Uppers", Beaker slips on one of the banana peels he and Bunsen use for their banana peel-powered disco ball.
  • In "Boo-Boo Patrol", Rozzie slips on one during the episode's namesake song, but Fozzie catches her before she can hit the ground.
  • Subverted in "The Ribbiter"; Kermit is reluctant to let Robin become the titular villain, so one of his ways of sabotaging Robin's chance of passing Dr. Meanzo's final test, driving a car to the finish line without knocking over a barrel of pickles, is by tossing banana peels onto the road. When Robin dodges the banana peels, Kermit uses one of Summer's frozen water balloons to create a patch of ice, which Robin slips on.
  • In "Tarzanimal", the babies put banana peels on their feet so they can use them as roller skates.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: This premise is what fuels the events of "When You Wish Upon a Rizzo". After being told about genies by Miss Nanny, the babies wish they had a genie to grant their wishes. Rizzo decides to help them by taking on the form of a genie and giving them each one wish. Fozzie's wish is to have cookies at snacktime, Animal's wish is for his drums to always be with him, Piggy's wish is to turn everything she touches glittery, Gonzo's wish is to become a chicken, and Kermit's wish is for his Mega Super Ultra Robo Dinosaur action figure to become life-sized. Rizzo grants these wishes, but they all come with drawbacks; it rains cookies from the sky, but the cookie storm rains harder, and Fozzie becomes too full of cookies to run fast, Animal's drum set turns into a dog-like creature that won't leave him alone, Piggy is unable to eat her apple slices without turning them glittery, and she also exposes her hiding places when she touches them, Gonzo isn't able to run fast with his new tiny legs, and not only are Kermit and his friends taken to his Robo Dinosaur's home planet, but the Robo Dinosaur is now chasing them down. Summer's wish is for everything to be back to normal, and in the end, it saves her friends and gets them to realize that things really were better they way they were before.
• Be Yourself: In "My Brother Vinny", Rizzo has to learn that he should just be himself instead of trying to pass himself off as a famous rock star like Vinny, his older brother. The song that Vinny sings (and Rizzo lip-syncs to while Gonzo sings backstage) is all about how it's better to be yourself instead of trying to be something you're not.
• Bedsheet Ghost: In "The Phantom of the Dollhouse", Animal gets stuck in a bedsheet when he falls off the bed he bounces on, and when he moans, the other babies mistake him for a ghost. This gives Jill the idea to trick the babies into thinking there really is a ghost in the new dollhouse Miss Nanny bought them to scare them away so she can have dollhouse all for herself. Jill later puts on a bedsheet so she can pretend to be a ghost, but her ruse is exposed when the babies catch her.
• Big Brother Instinct: "Oh Brother" introduces Fozzie's little sister, Rozzie. In the following episode, "Boo-Boo Patrol", he tries to prevent her from getting hurt, even if it means leaving her out of all the fun activities his friends have in store for her.
• Birthday Episode:
  • In "Piggy's Time Machine", Piggy becomes impatient waiting for her birthday to come, so the babies imagine that they have a Time Machine to make her birthday arrive faster. When Piggy fiddles with the controls, she accidentally sends her and her friends on a wild trip through time.
  • In "Don't Over Duet", it's Miss Nanny's birthday, and Piggy strains her voice while practicing a duet with Rowlf, so the babies use Bunsen and Beaker's miniature submarine to travel inside her body and find her missing voice box.
  • In "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", the episode of The Wacky Alpacas that Kermit watches is about Wanda's birthday, and Walter tries to get Wanda a balloon as a present.
• Blanket Fort: "The Blanket Fort", in which Piggy and Summer build a whole blanket kingdom.
• Blind Without 'Em: In "Skeeter and the Super Girls", Skeeter tries to fight crime as her superheroine alter-ego, Top Speed, without wearing her glasses, as she believes that real superheroes don't need glasses. However, because she can't see very well without her glasses, it compromises her attempts to help Piggy as Super Fabulous and Summer as Captain Icecube's attempts to stop Gonzo as Dr. Meanzo from stealing cookies from the cookie bank.
• Book Ends: The opening theme begins with a shot of the window over the nursery door with the sun shining through, before panning down to the door as the Muppets rush inside. At the end of the last episode, the Muppets leave through the door which closes, and the camera pans up to the window.
• Bond Gun Barrel: "Secret Agent Double-Oh-Frog" features Kermit tossing a water balloon at the gun barrel shaped like his pupil.
• Boyish Shorts: Just like in the prior show, Kermit and Fozzie are in shorts as is Scooter, updated from the bloomer pants. Baby Sam the Eagle is shown in the more posh version (even without shoes, as he's wearing a vest and a button down shirt), and the now older-shown Robin wears shorts like Kermit. Averted with three characters: Gonzo's in Kiddy Coveralls, Rowlf has on full length pants, and Animal has ripped jeans.
• Bravado Song: In "Sir Kermit the Brave", Kermit and Dot the Dragon celebrate their newfound bravery and confidence at facing their fears of nighttime with the song, "What's So Scary About the Dark?".
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • In "Lone Eagle", when Fozzie tries to come up with a game for Sam the Eagle to play with him and the other babies, he suggests playing jump rope, tag, or jump rope tag.
  • In "Rozzie and the Big Bad Sound", the snacks that Gonzo serves onboard the plane Kermit flies to the Cloud Giant include pickles, pretzels, and pickle-flavored pretzels.
• Broken Ace:
  • In a way, Kermit is this as shown in "Sir Kermit the Brave". Since he is the leader of the babies, everyone thinks that he is really brave. In reality, he is scared of the dark, and initially hid the fact from his friends because he didn't want them to think less of him.
  • In his debut episode, "The Best, Best Friend", Rowlf is shown to be good at many different things, including playing the piano, juggling, and he even managed to beat Fozzie in a game of Tri-Soccer Flying Baseball. In "Sparkly Star Switcheroo", he goes into a deep depression when he is unable to write a song about a shooting star he saw the night before the episode's events. Fortunately, Summer is able to get him out of it with a painting of a sparkly star she made for him.
    • "Rowlf Gets the Blues" shows another side to him. He's usually seen as a cool, laid-back and sensible guy. However, here, because his mother is going away for a week, and he says that she told him to be a brave pup, he tries to put up a facade that he's happy when he's actually sad.
• Captain Colorbeard: Kermit goes by Captain Greenbeard in "Playground Pirates".
• Cassandra Truth: Gonzo not believing that "Animal Fly Airplane" briefly leads Animal to think his friends didn't like him until he manages to land them in Paris, at which point the others apologize for not giving him a chance.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • Summer Penguin, like Skeeter before her, is a character created specifically for the series.
  • Priscilla and Beep, Camilla's fellow chicks, are also original to this series. Muppet chickens have always been white before, but Priscilla is yellow and Beep is brown.
  • Fozzie's adopted sister Rozzie is a character created for the show.
• Character Tic: Fozzie tends to wiggle his ears when he's excited, or when he's particularly pleased with one of his punchlines. This is a trait he displayed all the time in the first season of The Muppet Show, but which was dropped from the second season onwards because the ear-wiggling mechanism made the puppet too heavy.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", Gonzo substitutes for Beep in a game of basketball against the Bad Eggs when the latter injures his wing. Because Gonzo has never played basketball before, he has a difficult time trying to score points. When he finds out that Bunsen and Beaker's Cant Lose Shoes allow whoever wears them to win any game, he distracts Bunsen and Beaker so that he can borrow the shoes while they aren't looking. Gonzo manages to catch his score up to that of the Bad Eggs, but his ruse is exposed when he gets the shoes wet and they malfunction. Gonzo agrees to play fair for the rest of the game, and despite his best efforts without the Can't Lose Shoes, the Bad Eggs still win. Thankfully, the Bad Eggs and Gonzo are good sports, and they agree to play another game against each other soon, this time with Gonzo playing fair the whole game.
• Cheer Up Episode: In "Upside Down Day", Summer Penguin feels sad because many bad things have happened to her; spilling her cereal at breakfast, losing her crayons, stubbing her flipper, and missing hearing her favorite story, Seymour the Baby Seal. Gonzo diagnoses Summer as having "bad-day-itis", and tries to cure her by turning the playroom upside down, so that her frown will be as upside down as the playroom is, turning it into a smile.
• Chekhov's Gag:
  • Early in "Beaker 2.0", Beaker gets trapped in a gift box by the Gift-O-Matic when he stands too close to it while activating it. Near the end of the episode, this is how he and Bunsen trap the titular robot when it takes over Muppet Labs.
  • "Bunsen Honeydew, Show Stopper" has two. When Beaker hits a high note that causes the test tube with the Super Glowy Spritzy Spray to break, the babies hire him to sing in their Muppet Rocksplosion concert. Worried that Beaker will like performing in the concert more than making experiments with him, Bunsen tries to sabotage the concert with his Bubble Trouble Ray. Bunsen ends up getting trapped in one of the bubbles, and Beaker's high note is the only thing that can pop them. It does, but also destroys the stage lights. After confessing what he did, Bunsen makes things right by using his Super Glowy Spritzy Spray on the babies so their concert can proceed.
• Cinderella Plot: In "Gonzorella", after hearing the story of Cinderella, Gonzo wants to attend Piggy and Summer's ball dressed as a princess, but the girls insist that only girls can attend dressed as princesses, and boys have to attend dressed as knights. Rizzo takes on the form of Gonzo's Fairy "Ratfather" and gives him a dress so fabulous that his friends won't know it's him in disguise. He also warns Gonzo that the magic will wear off at "Cake-O-Clock". Gonzo has a wonderful time at the ball, and even convinces his friends to do new and more exciting ways of making crowns and dancing in the ballroom, rather than doing things by the book, but when the magic wears off, he runs away in fear, worrying what his friends will say if they find out about his ruse. Rizzo tells him that his friends liked the new exciting ways he did things, and surely they'll accept him for what he did. Sure enough, he's right, as Piggy and Summer decide to no longer do things by the old book, and instead make a new book where anyone can do whatever they please.
• Christmas Episode:
  • In "A Very Muppet Babies Christmas", it's Christmas in the playroom, and all the babies love their Secret Santa gifts, except for Kermit, who tries to trade his.
  • "It's A Wonderful Elf-Bot" and "A Merry Litter Christmas" take place around Christmastime as well. In the former episode, Bunsen and Beaker invent the Elf-Bot to create Christmas gifts for the babies, who decide to use him to make a special gift for Statler and Waldorf, but quickly get carried away and use it to make their own personal gifts. In the latter episode, when Bunsen carelessly throws his napkin on the ground, Miss Nanny teaches the babies about why litter is bad for the environment. Bunsen invents the Christmas Milk-O-Matic, a machine that can make milk candy-cane flavored, but when the machine makes it taste like shrimp, he carelessly discards the boxes wherever he pleases, so the babies have to get him to clean up his act.
• Clam Trap: In "Tagalong Polliwog", Kermit's golf ball ends up in the mouth of a clam, which closes its mouth whenever the babies try to take the golf ball back. The only fast enough to retrieve the golf ball is Robin, thanks in part to his tail.
• Clear Their Name: In "Sherlock Knows", Gonzo and Kermit find Potato next to Miss Nanny's favorite flower pot, which is broken. Worrying that Miss Nanny will never let Potato play with him again if she finds out, Gonzo decides to prove Potato's innocence as Sherlock Knows, with Kermit as Frogson. In the end, it is revealed that Miss Nanny was the one who broke the flower pot.
• Clock Tampering: In "The Froginizer", Kermit remembers that Fozzie likes to have a snack when the clock strikes noon (and Animal tries to take his snacks from him at this time), so without being noticed, he sneaks by Fozzie and Animal (as The Noodler and Meanimal) so he can set the clock to noon to distract them so he, Piggy, and Summer (as Super Fabulous and Captain Ice Cube) can get past them and to Dr. Meanzo's evil lair.
• Companion Cube:
  • Gonzo's friend Potato, who is a... potato.
  • In "My Buddy", Animal has a stuffed rabbit named Buddy, whom Fozzie becomes attached to when bad things happen to him.
  • Kermit has his Mega Super Ultra Robo Dinosaur action figure.
  • Fozzie has his rubber chicken, Sir Featherbrain. In "Wock-a-Bye Fozzie", he accidentally leaves it at home during the sleepover at Miss Nanny's house, which is one of the reasons why he doesn't have a good time.
  • Fozzie's little sister, Rozzie has a dump truck that she calls "Gunkie".
  • Jill has her Lady Sparkle doll.
  • Summer has Nattie, a stuffed narwhal. "My Best Toy's Wedding" involves her being wed to Potato.
• Continuity Cavalcade: The song "Puppy Come Home" has the Babies going through a number of the imaginary landscapes and meeting characters from the imagination sequences of previous episodes, while looking for Rizzo.
• Cooking Duel: In "The Great Muppet Cook-off", when the babies like the Swedish Chef's cookies better than Piggy's, a jealous Piggy challenges Chef to a cook-off. In the cook-off, Piggy and Chef are tasked with making three dishes; macaroni and cheese, a meatball pizza, and a cake. Chef's cooking partner is Animal, and Piggy's is Summer. Chef wins every round because he and Animal follow the recipes, while Piggy's impatience and refusal to follow the recipes despite Summer's warnings result in her losing each round.
• Cowboy Episode:
  • In "The Good, The Bad, and the Froggy", after Kermit hurts his knee in a tricycle race and no longer wants to ride a tricycle, the babies go on a Wild West adventure where Galloping Gulch has its juice boxes stolen by Gonzo the Kid and Sundance the Potato. Sheriff Kermit must ride his tricycle again so he can defeat Gonzo the Kid and save his friends.
  • In "Chicken Round-up", Animal forgets to put Camilla, Priscilla, and Beep back in their coop, and the chickens run away. The babies go on a Wild West adventure to round them up again, and Animal also needs to learn the importance of keeping his promises, as he breaks them every time he gets distracted.
  • The first Imagine Spot in "Library Leapfrog" depicts Piggy and Summer as the Ponytail Bandits, who rob the train the boys are riding by stealing the boys' animal crackers. When Robin accidentally gives the girls his video game instead of his animal crackers, the boys have an adventure to get it and their animal crackers back, starting with chasing the girls into Dead End Canyon.
  • In "Rootin' Tootin' Sheriff Showdown", Kermit and Fozzie open their own milk and cookies saloon, and need a sheriff to keep their milk and cookies safe from the Bad Eggs. Gonzo and Piggy get into a showdown with each other to see who can be the better sheriff, with each of their events ending in a tie. During the competition, the Bad Eggs steal the milk and cookies while the rest of the babies aren't looking, but Animal has witnessed their heist, and when he tells the rest of the babies, Gonzo and Piggy realize that they need to work together to get the milk and cookies back.
• Cuckoosnarker: Gonzo is uncharacteristically sarcastic in this show, but still a weirdo.
• Dance-Off: Between Kermit and Rizzo in "How Kermit Got His Groove".
• Dark Horse Victory: In "Eagle in the Middle", the babies put a lot of pressure on Sam when they want him to choose whether to watch The Wacky Alpaca Pals or Zorna: Intergalactic Space Princess during Scribble Screen Time. In the end, Sam chooses to watch a nature documentary about hermit crabs.
• Decided by One Vote: In "Eagle in the Middle", Fozzie, Kermit, and Animal want to watch The Wacky Alpaca Pals during Scribble Screen Time, while Gonzo, Piggy, and Summer all want to watch Zorna: Intergalactic Space Princess. As Sam the Eagle is the only one who hasn't chosen which show to watch, both Fozzie and Gonzo's sides try to get Sam to choose their show, but all the pressure upsets him, and at the end of the episode, he chooses to watch a nature documentary about hermit crabs.
• Decomposite Character: In the original show Camilla was Gonzo's stuffed chicken doll, while in the reboot Camilla is a real baby chicken and the role of Gonzo's Companion Cube is taken up by Potato.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: In "Kermit Levels Up", the babies pretend to jump inside a handheld video game that Kermit found.
• Delightful Dragon: Belladotta of Sweaterhelm, or Dot for short, is a polyester dragon that Kermit meets in "Sir Kermit the Brave", the series' first episode. When Kermit gets separated from the rest of the babies, Dot helps him overcome his fear of the dark by revealing that she's afraid of the dark as well, and she reunites him with his friends. In a later episode, "Puppy For a Day", Dot helps the babies search for Rizzo, who pretends to be a puppy to teach them about responsibility, when he goes missing.
• Dem Bones:
  • In "Animal and the Magic Mummy", one of the museum exhibits brought to life by the titular Magic Mummy is a T-Rex skeleton, which acts like a dog.
  • In "Robin Digs Deep", Robin's security blanket ends up in the possession of a living dinosaur skeleton.
• Demoted to Extra: Some of the main characters from the original series have been relegated to guest appearances, these being Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker, and Rowlf the Dog.
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: In "Library Leapfrog", Fozzie asks Piggy and Summer this question when he sees them in their Muffonian forms.
• Digging to China: What Animal is trying to do in "Summer Penguin, P.I."
• Distinction Without a Difference: In "Piggy's Time Machine", Miss Nanny scolds Piggy for being impatient for her birthday to come. Piggy makes the insistence that she's not impatient, she just wants her birthday to happen now.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Averted unlike the original; the theme song of the reboot is performed by Renée Elise Goldsberry, with the characters sometimes commenting throughout.
• Dog Walks You: In "Puppy For a Day", Rizzo does this to Summer when he pretends to be a puppy.
• Don't Wake the Sleeper:
  • In "Sparkly Star Switcheroo", Fozzie and Summer find a sleeping Priscilla and Beep guarding Summer's Sparkly Star painting, but they also have to hit the button that turns off the alarm system without waking them up or tripping the alarm. Fozzie does so with his hat, and nearly wakes up the chickens when he shouts, "I did it!". Then Animal runs in to warn him and Summer that Piggy is coming back, which wakes up the chickens, causing them to chase him and Fozzie. Fortunately, this distracts them so Summer can swap out her Sparkly Star painting with a non-sparkly replica.
  • In "Oh Brother", to pass the third and final test of Rizzo's Big Brother Academy, Rizzo pretends to be Fozzie's little sister and fall asleep while Fozzie has to prevent his friends from making noise and waking him up. Fozzie succeeds in preventing his friends from waking Rizzo up, but then he wakes Rizzo up when he loudly declares "I did it!".
  • In "Kermit and Fozzie's Egg-cellent Adventure", during Kermit and Fozzie's montage of finding Easter Eggs, Kermit and Fozzie find an egg surrounded by sleeping chickens. Fozzie is about to rush out and collect the egg, but Kermit stops him and they tiptoe over to the egg so as not to wake the chickens up.
  • In "Animal and the Little Accident", when the babies are in a submarine headed for Ratlantis, they come across a sleeping giant squid, and they need Animal's expert piloting skills to get past it. Animal's need to use the bathroom compromises the mission and causes him to drive the submarine into a wall, waking the squid up. The babies manage to escape from the squid, who then reveals that he just wanted to invite them to his birthday party.
  • In "Robin Digs Deep", the babies find Robin's security blanket in the possession of a living dinosaur skeleton, which is asleep. Kermit manages to successfully swap out the blanket with a ruby without waking the skeleton up, but Gonzo's phone wakes the skeleton up when Potato calls him.
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: In "The Spoon in the Stone", Piggy, Gonzo, Animal, and Summer are all knights on a quest to pull the titular spoon from the stone. While Piggy, Gonzo, and Animal set off to find the spoon by themselves, Summer stays behind to help Fozzie find his missing barrel and help Rizzo fix his cart full of cheese when one of its wheels breaks. When Piggy, Gonzo, and Animal find the spoon, none of them are able to pull it out of the stone, and they learn from Rowlf the Wizard that only a true knight can pull the spoon from the stone. Summer turns out to be the true knight because she helped her friends, and is able to pull the spoon out of the stone so that she can help the dragon guarding it who needs a new spoon to eat her soup with.
• Easter Episode: In "Kermit and Fozzie's Egg-cellent Adventure", an Easter egg hunt is held in Miss Nanny's backyard. When Kermit gets upset because he isn't very good at finding Easter eggs, Fozzie suggests to Miss Nanny that he and the other babies find the eggs in teams, and Miss Nanny likes that idea. Fozzie is teamed up with Kermit, while Summer is teamed up with Animal and Piggy is teamed up with Gonzo. Fozzie's overeagerness results in the other babies finding the eggs before him and Kermit, so Kermit has to teach him not to rush into things.
• Egging: In "Win a Twin", whenever Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, and Animal lose an event on the titular game show, eggs fall on their heads.
• Election Day Episode: In "Rizzo For Mayor", when Miss Nanny explains the concept of a mayoral election to the babies, Rizzo overhears and nominates himself as a candidate for the mayor of the playroom. Summer also nominates herself as a mayoral candidate, so the babies hold an election. Rizzo gets the upper edge by making wild promises, whereas Summer's promises are simple ones she knows she can do. Rizzo wins the election, but has a hard time fulfilling his promises, and has to learn the consequences of making wild promises the hard way. In the end, Rizzo realizes that Summer kept all the promises she made by helping him, so he lets her be mayor.
• End-of-Series Awareness: The Series Finale, "The Muppet Babies Show" takes place on the babies' last day at Miss Nanny's house before summer vacation begins, and the babies plan a special finale show for everyone. Kermit also worries that when the finale show ends and summer vacation begins, he won't get to see his friends anymore or do the fun things he used to do with them, so he tries to prolong the finale. Minor characters from previous episodes make cameo appearances, and clips from previous episodes are shown in the closing song. The episode ends with Kermit saying "See you later, friends, and thanks for all the laughs!" to the viewers.
• Enemy Mine: In "Rise of the Pickler", the Froginizer, Super Fabulous, Captain Ice Cube and the Incredible Joke have to team up with Dr. Meanzo to stop the Pickler from turning everything in Muppetopolis into pickles. At the end of the same episode, when Camilla, Priscilla, and Beep turn everything into eggs with their own remote control, the Super Muppet Babies and the villains team up to stop them.
• Ensemble Cast: The show focuses on seven characters, the six babies and Miss Nanny.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", the Bad Eggs have always managed to beat the Chickens in games of basketball, but they always play fair, which is why they find it unfair that Gonzo used Bunsen and Beaker's Can't Lose Shoes to score points.
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It: Perhaps a literal example in "Meatball Mayhem"; when the babies dislike the Swedish Chef's meatballs, they try to get rid of them by offering them to some of their other friends, one of which is Rizzo. After eating one meatball, Rizzo says, "No, thanks!", and shuts the door on the babies.
• Every Pizza Is Pepperoni: Actually averted. Kermit and Fozzie each prefer a different type of pizza. One prefers black olives, while the other prefers deep dish with meatballs.
• Evil Counterpart: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", the Bad Eggs are this to Camilla, Priscilla, and Beep.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", when Walter has to explain to Wanda why his hot air balloon for her got popped, Kermit tells Walter it was because he kept getting distracted instead of focusing on his task. He then compares it to when he neglected to get more pizza boxes for Fozzie, which gets him to realize that he didn't help Fozzie when he was supposed to.
• Expressive Accessory: Miss Nanny's socks have a different pattern in each episode, matching that episode's theme.
• Expressive Mask: Bunsen's Eye Glasses are a subtle version. The glasses themselves are stiff and round at all times, but the rims make shadows on his eyeless face that look like eyelids, and these shadows move and change with Bunsen's expressions.
• Eyepatch of Power: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", the leader of the Bad Eggs wears an eyepatch, and is an expert at basketball despite this.
• The Faceless:
  • Much like Nanny from the 1984 series, Miss Nanny's face is never shown on camera. In "Animal and the Magic Mummy", when she and the babies arrive at the museum, her face is obscured by a program she is reading. Also, in "Oh, My Gourd", she wears a robot head for her costume.
  • Like Miss Nanny, Mr. Manny from his namesake episode never has his face shown on camera, either.
• Family Theme Naming: In "Oh Brother", Fozzie's little sister is named Rozzie.
• Fantastic Slurs: In "Rizzo's Space Race", Rizzo watches a show called Jimmy Cheddah: Teenage Space Diner, which is aimed at older children. On the show, Jimmy calls anyone he doesn't like a "spoon-aroni". Miss Nanny discourages Rizzo from watching this show because the insults Jimmy says can hurt other people's feelings, and sure enough, Rizzo hurts the other babies' feelings when he keeps calling them spoon-aronis. The episode of Jimmy Cheddah ends with Jimmy learning his lesson and advising the viewers not to call their friends bad names, which inspires Rizzo to apologize to his friends and repeat the episode's moral.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: In "Don't Over Duet", the Babies use Bunsen and Beaker's miniature submarine to travel inside Piggy's body and find her missing voice box in time for a duet that she's going to sing with Rowlf.
• Fear of Thunder: In "Rozzie and the Big Bad Sound", Rozzie is revealed to be afraid of thunder, so the other babies try to help her overcome her fear, first by distracting her, then by travelling to the Giant in the Clouds to convince him to turn off the thunder. The Cloud Giant (played by Sweetums) tells Rozzie that while he can't turn off the thunder, he can explain where it comes from, which helps her overcome her fear. In the same episode, Summer reveals to Rozzie that she used to be afraid of thunder when she was her age.
• Fence Painting: In "Gonzo's Clean Sweep", Gonzo tricks his friends into doing his chores for him so that he can practice his latest stunt. He tricks Kermit and Animal into putting the blocks away by pretending the blocks are gems and the toy box is a treasure chest, Fozzie and Summer into sweeping up the leaves by pretending they're fallen stars covering the moon, and Piggy into setting the table by telling her she's serving lunch for the Queen. As a result of doing Gonzo's chores for him, his friends are behind on their chores and don't get to have their ice cream, which results in a My God, What Have I Done? moment from Gonzo and him using his new stunt to help his friends finish their chores.
• Fictional Board Game:
  • In "The Card Shark", Miss Nanny suggests that the babies pass the time on a rainy day by playing a board game called Coral Land. In this game, each player draws a colored card from the stack, and move to the space corresponding with the color on the card. Pink-colored cards are the best cards, because they let the player take shortcuts across the board. When Piggy wins the game by cheating, the babies pit her against Rizzo, and she is determined to beat him without cheating.
  • In "Animal Loses It", Scooter and Skeeter invent their own board game, Banana Whamma Jungle Jamma, and invite the rest of the babies to play it with them. The goal of the game is for one team to make it to Banana Whamma Falls. Each team has two players, and each team takes turns drawing cards and moving around the board. Some cards allow the team to move forward a select number of spaces, while others cause them to lose a turn or get sent back to Start. When Animal plays the game, he enjoys it at first because he and Piggy get very far into it, but things turn south for him when he loses a turn and gets sent back to start. Having lost games all day, he quits the game out of frustration, but comes back when Miss Nanny teaches him that sometimes playing games with your friends is more important than winning.
• Floating in a Bubble:
  • In "Bunsen Honeydew, Show Stopper", Bunsen uses his Bubble Trouble Ray to sabotage the Muppet Rocksplosion Concert out of fear of Beaker liking performing in it more than making experiments with him. After trapping the babies' musical instruments, Bunsen gets trapped in one of the bubbles and floats away in one, and ends up needing Beaker's help to pop it.
  • In "Summer the Science Penguin", Fozzie and Summer float in a bubble when they try to invent sticky macaroni by using macaroni and bubble gum. Near the end of the episode, they use this to trap the Tidy-up-inator when it goes out of control.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: In "The Muppet Babies Show", Bunsen invents a remote that can switch minds. When Kermit accidentally breaks the remote in an attempt to prolong the show, it results in Bunsen, Beaker, and Summer's minds being in each other's bodies.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the series finale, an accidentally created Muppet named Blerph appears in the bottom right at the end of the Muppet Show opening recreation.
• Furniture Blockade: In "The Copy Cub", Fozzie does this in the "Rozzies Everywhere" song when he tries to escape from Rozzie's clones.
• Genki Girl: Summer in general is quite excitable and full of energy.
• Gentle Giant: Sweetums, as per usual, is a very sweet and gentle character even though he's much bigger than the babies.
• Gesundheit: In "Fly South", Miss Nanny explains to the babies why geese fly south for the winter. Gonzo thinks Miss Nanny sneezed when she said "migration" and goes "Gesundheit".
• A Gift for Themselves: In "It's A Wonderful Elf-Bot", Bunsen and Beaker invent the Elf-Bot for the babies, which can make Christmas presents from art supplies. At first, the babies decide to use it to make a special gift for Statler and Waldorf, but quickly get carried away and use it to make gifts for themselves. Near the end, when they realize that they forgot all about Statler and Waldorf, they give their gifts back to Elf-Bot, deciding that if Statler and Waldorf can't get a gift, they don't want gifts, either.
• Gift-Giving Gaffe: In "Summer's Super Fabulous Holiday Surprise", when the babies find out that Summer's trip home is cancelled due to a snowstorm, they decide to throw their own celebration for Summer in the backyard. While Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo all think of things that best suit Summer's personality, Piggy wants everything that best suits her personality; pink, glittery, and super fabulous.
• Gilligan Cut: In "Puppy For a Day", when the babies decide to give Rizzo, who pretends to be a puppy for them a bath, he says that he'll do it, but he won't like it. Cut to Rizzo enjoying his bath.
• Girls With Mustaches: In "The Froginizer", Gonzo, as his supervillain alter ego, Dr. Meanzo, creates a ray that gives everyone in the world a mustache just like his. He tests it out on Kermit, as well as the females, Piggy and Summer.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Piggy in "The Blanket Fort" is Queen of the Blanket Kingdom, and has a whole set of rules that the others must follow, such as "no yelling", "no breaking" and especially "no saying 'no' to the queen". Eventually, the others end up breaking the rules and being sent to the dungeon, leaving Piggy all alone with no one to play with.
• Green Aesop: In "A Merry Litter Christmas", when Bunsen carelessly throws his napkin on the ground, Miss Nanny teaches the babies about why litter is bad for the environment. Bunsen invents the Christmas Milk-O-Matic, a machine that can make milk candy-cane flavored, but when the machine makes it taste like shrimp, he carelessly discards the boxes wherever he pleases, so the babies have to get him to clean up his act.
• Had the Silly Thing in Reverse: In "Playground Pirates", Kermit accidentally backs up his pirate ship, sinking the port town.
• Happy Birthday to You!: An original birthday song titled Muppet Birthday is performed during Piggy's birthday party in Piggy's Time Machine.
• Halloween Episode:
  • "Happy Hallowocka/The Teeth Chattering Tale Of The Haunted Pancakes" both follow this. The former is about Fozzie wanting to be seen as scary, while the latter involves Summer telling Kermit a story about ghost pancakes to get him to try new things.
  • "Oh, My Gourd/The Curse of the Were-Animal" both take place on Halloween as well. In "Oh, My Gourd", Kermit plants a pumpkin seed but is disappointed when his pumpkin is the smallest one, so he uses Bunen's Grow-inator ray to make it grow. When Kermit ignores Bunsen's warning to wait until the meter turns green, it turns the pumpkin into a living jack-o-lantern that requires his constant attention. In "The Curse of the Were-Animal", when Animal refuses to eat his cheese sandwich before the candy Miss Nanny sets out for the babies, Miss Nanny tells him that eating sweets before healthy food will turn him into a monster. Animal rather likes this idea, and the resulting sugar rush turns him into "Were-Animal". To get him back to his normal self, the other babies have to get him to eat his cheese sandwich.
• "Harmful to Pets" Reminder: In "Puppy for a Day", the kids have Rizzo the rat pretend to be a dog and he eats a lot of pizza, only to get some indigestion from it. Bunsen informs the others that since he's a rat, it's better for him to eat cheese
• Harmless Freezing: In "The Froginizer", Summer (as Captain Ice Cube) uses her water balloons to freeze Fozzie and Animal (as The Noodler and Meanimal) so she and Piggy (as Super Fabulous) can get past them. Fozzie and Animal are still capable of speaking to each other from inside the ice, and later escape from it when it melts.
• Height Angst: Summer in "One Small Problem" is tired of being the shortest one in the nursery. Bunsen offers to make her taller with his Enlargo ray, but it breaks down and makes her even smaller instead. After having an adventure getting Kermit's toy car from under the couch, she gets turned back to normal, but refuses an offer to be taller because she now feels more confident being the way she is.
• Heist Episode: "Sparkly Star Switcheroo" plays out like one. When Piggy believes the Sparkly Star painting that Summer made for Rowlf to be for her, Summer makes another Non-sparkly Star painting to put in its place while Piggy isn't looking. The episode's Imagine Spot plays out like a museum heist, with the babies (sans Piggy and Rowlf) as a team of thieves, and the chickens as guards.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end of "The Curse of the Were-Animal", Animal is turned back to his normal self when he finally eats his cheese sandwich. When he feels bad about eating the whole bucket of candy Miss Nanny left outside, Kermit assures him that he still has one piece of candy left, only to realize he dropped it. Camilla eats it and turns into a Were-chicken as a result. Animal even calls the trope by its name as this happens.
• Hidden Depths: Despite acting pretty much like a 3 year old version of his adult self in this incarnation, Animal proves to the others he can control himself sometimes in "Animal Fly Airplane".
• Historical Longevity Joke: This line from "Animal and the Magic Mummy":
  Statler: This Egyptian rabbit toy's over 3,000 years old.
  Waldorf: Like him!
  (Statler and Waldorf laugh.)
• Honesty Aesop:
  • In the episode, "Run Fozzie Run", Fozzie accidentally breaks a flower pot and is afraid to tell Miss Nanny the truth, so he decides to run away into the book of Bombo the Baby Gorilla to avoid having to tell her. However, when he makes his way to Bombo's house, he accidentally breaks a few of Bombo's things and tries to hide them. His friends follow him into the book, and when they, along with Fozzie, accidentally break Bombo's hammock, Kermit tells Bombo the truth and Bombo isn't mad. This gives Fozzie the confidence to tell both Bombo and Miss Nanny the truth about the things he accidentally broke.
  • In "Meatball Mayhem", the Swedish Chef makes meatballs for the babies. When the babies eat the meatballs, they find they taste terrible, but not wanting to hurt Chef's feelings, they tell him they like the meatballs. Chef believes what the babies said to be true and makes more meatballs, which the babies try unsuccessfully to get rid of. They try giving them to some of their other friends, but they don't like them, either. When they try to get Bunsen and Beaker to use a machine to make the meatballs tasty, it accidentally turns them into a monster. When Chef sees the monster, the babies tell him the truth that they don't like the meatballs, and they realize it's what they should have done in the first place.
  • In "Gonzonocchio", Gonzo borrows a book of Pinocchio from the library. When he puts it down to play hide and seek with his friends, he accidentally loses it. He then lies to his friends that someone stole the book, causing his nose to grow. He accuses the Bad Eggs, a whale with a polka-dot tail, and Bunsen and Beaker's Ping Pong-playing robot of stealing it, and with each lie, his nose grows bigger. When his nose accidentally hits a button on Bunsen and Beaker's robot that makes it go out of control, Gonzo realizes that he should have told the truth to begin with. After he defeats the robot, he confesses to his friends that nobody stole the book and that he lost it, and his nose shrinks back to its normal size.
• Human Ladder: The babies form one in "Rizzo For Mayor" to save Rizzo when he gets caught in a geyser trying to build the giant swimming pool he promised them.
• I Can't Hear You: In "Lone Eagle", the babies decide to throw a dance party for Sam the Eagle to convince him to play with them, although Sam woud much rather read his book, Hermie the Baby Hermit Crab. The loud music the babies play bothers Sam, and when Sam asks them, "Could you please turn that music down?" Kermit replies with, "Of course you can boogie down!".
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: In "Kitchen Catastrophe", Gonzo makes pickled pineapple and sourkraut sandwiches, which none of the other babies particularly like, but Sam the Eagle has a particular distaste for them as part of his status as a picky eater. When Animal accidentally brings Sam one of Gonzo's sandwiches instead of the burger that the Swedish Chef made for him, Sam tries the sandwich and discovers that he likes it after all. Just Sam's approval is enough to convince the other babies to try Gonzo's sandwiches.
• Identical Grandson: In "Animal and the Magic Mummy", the titular Magic Mummy resembles Waldorf.
• Ill-Timed Sneeze: In "Animal Gets the Sneezies", Animal disguises himself as a chicken named Kevin to avoid going to the doctor. When he sneezes, it exposes his hiding spot to the other babies.
• Impact Silhouette:
  • In "Best Friends Fixer Uppers", Beaker slips on a banana peel and crashes through a wall, leaving a Beaker-shaped hole in it.
  • In "The Copy Cub", Fozzie and Rozzie's clones each leave one at the end of the "Rozzies Everywhere" song when they run through a wall.
• Injured Limb Episode: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", Beep injures his wing, rendering him unable to play in a basketball game against the Bad Eggs. As a result, Gonzo, who has never played basketball before, has to take his place.
• Interspecies Adoption:
  • Seemingly implied in the episode "Grandpa Camp" where most of the cards the kids make have drawings of their grandparents which are of the same species, but Gonzo's is a drawing of him with two photorealistic humans suggesting this.
  • A prominent example comes in Season 3 with the introduction of Fozzie's adopted sister Rozzie, who, despite what the term "koala bear" implies, is a marsupial in a family of ursine.
• Invisibility: In "The Invisible Frog", Kermit goes to Miss Nanny's house is his pajamas, having accidentally mistaken Fun and Games Day for Pajama Day due to getting the day wrong. Not wanting his friends to see him in his pajamas, he uses Bunsen and Beaker's invis-o-spray to make himself invisible. Unfortunately for him, being invisible has its disadvantages; his teammates are unable to win whatever game they play due to not being able to see him.
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: In "The Copy Cub", Rozzie starts copying Fozzie, which gets on Fozzie's nerves, especially because Fozzie needs to practice for his Funny Joke Show. Things get even worse for Fozzie when Bunsen and Beaker's Make-Another-You-inator makes clones of Rozzie instead of one of Fozzie for Rozzie to copy while the real Fozzie practices.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Statler and Waldorf do seem like grumpy neighbors in "Hatastrophe", they do make a good point about Kermit climbing the fence being dangerous.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Not surprisingly, Rizzo. He's messy and obnoxious, but he keeps his promises and is overall amiable.
• Kiddy Coveralls:
  • Gonzo, the strangest of the kids and the only one not a recognizable animal or person, has been updated to wear red overalls down to his ankles with a yellow T-shirt. Like all the kids, he's active and playful, but stands out as the strangest.
  • Rozzie Bear, Fozzie's adopted sister who is a Tomboy with a Girly Streak, wears pastel overalls. Her favorite toy is a dump truck and she's just as comfortable playing with the girls as she is the boys.
• Kids Love Dinosaurs: Kermit's favorite toy is his Mega Super Ultra Robo Dinosaur action figure. In "A Very Muppet Babies Christmas", he hopes to get a pack of Mega Super Ultra Robo Dinosaur trading cards. In "When You Wish Upon a Rizzo", when Rizzo takes on the form of a genie and gives the babies each one wish, Kermit's wish is for his Mega Super Ultra Robo Dinosaur action figure to be life-sized.
• Lessons in Sophistication: In "My Fair Animal", Piggy teaches Animal how to be a gentleman so that he can attend a fancy tea party that she is hosting. This even includes having Animal speak properly. However, Animal finds it hard to be a gentleman, and in the end, he and his friends, even Piggy, decide that they like Animal better as his normal, wild self.
• Library Episode:
  • In "Library Leapfrog", Miss Nanny takes the babies to the library to check out books. While the other babies are excited about checking out books, Robin isn't, as he would much rather play his video game. The other babies show Robin how much fun reading can be when they go inside the books themselves and have an adventure getting Robin's video game back from Piggy and Summer when he accidentally gives it to them instead of his box of animal crackers. By the end of the episode, Robin decides that he would much rather check out the book of Zorna and the Muffonians than play his video game.
  • In "Animal Too Loud!", Mr. Manny takes the babies to the library to read books. While at the library, Animal squeaks Sir Featherbrain, Fozzie's rubber chicken, which leads to Mr. Manny taking him away and putting him on a shelf, having thought Fozzie sqeuaked him. Feeling bad for getting Fozzie in trouble, Animal tries to get Sir Featherbrain back for Fozzie without being noticed by Statler and Waldorf, which isn't easy, since all of his stealth attempts are too loud.
• Living Dust Bunnies: In "One Small Problem", a group of dust bunnies steal Kermit's toy car, and a shrunken Summer goes on an adventure to get it back from them.
• Look Behind You: In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", Gonzo distracts Bunsen and Beaker by telling them to look at a dinosaur playing a ukelele so that he can borrow the Can't Lose Shoes while they aren't looking.
• Loose Tooth Episode: In "Tooth and Consequences", Animal has lost a tooth, but he's feeling down because the tooth fairy hasn't given him anything, so he and the kids decide to visit her. As it turns out, the tooth fairy is actually Rizzo, and Animal forgot to put his tooth under his pillow and he had it in his pocket the whole time. Once Rizzo takes it, he gives Animal a painting he made himself.
• Lost Voice Plot: In "Don't Over Duet", Piggy strains her voice while practicing a duet with Rowlf, so the babies travel through her body in Bunsen and Beaker's miniature submarine to find her missing voice box. Piggy has to learn the importance of taking a break while the other babies search her body, as talking, moving around, and making loud noises all compromise the mission.
• Magic Feather: In "No Laughing Matter", when Fozzie loses his Great-Uncle Schnozzie's lucky joke book, he thinks he can't be funny without it. The other babies get Bunsen and Beaker to make a new lucky joke book for Fozzie, and when Fozzie sees that Rizzo borrowed the real lucky joke book, he realizes that he doesn't need it, as he still performed his funny joke show without it.
• The Magic Touch: In "When You Wish Upon A Rizzo", Piggy wishes to turn everything she touches glittery, and Rizzo, who takes on the form of a genie, grants that wish. At first, Piggy likes this wish, but she soon finds out it has drawbacks; when she tries to eat apple slices, she turns them glittery, and when she tries to hide from Kermit's life-sized Mega Super Ultra Robo Dinosaur action figure, she exposes her hiding place by turning the rock she was hiding behind glittery.
• Malaproper: In "Rise of the Pickler", Animal mispronounces appreciate as "a-squishy-ate".
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: In "A Tale of Two Twins", the boys invite Scooter to join them in a tricycle race, and the girls invite Skeeter to join them for a relaxing day in the spa. However, Scooter would much rather relax than race, while Skeeter would much rather race than relax, but since the twins don't want to tell their friends how they really feel, they decide to switch places with each other.
• Medium Blending: A signature staple of the original show is taken further here with the advancement of animation styles.
• Minimalist Cast: With the exception of a few one-off characters and recurring guest stars, the only characters in the show are the 6 babies, the chicks, and Miss Nanny.
• Mobile Shrubbery: In "A Backyard Divided", one of Kermit and Fozzie's attempts to get Piggy's wand back from Gonzo's kingdom is by disguising themselves as a bush. This plan fails because Gonzo sees through their disguise.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Kermit's Show And Tell short, he's shown practicing a few lyrics from "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie .
  • A piece of the backyard stage is part of the wallpaper from the original Muppet Babies scene in The Muppets Take Manhattan.
  • There are various pictures on the nursery walls showing other young versions of Muppets, including Scooter and Skeeter, Mahna Mahna and the Snowths, the Swedish Chef, Sweetums and Sam the Eagle, and Dr. Teeth and the remainder of the Electric Mayhem.
  • In "Hatastrophe", when Kermit imagines his friends going into Statler and Waldorf's yard to rescue Fozzie's beanie propeller hat, the statues resemble Big Mean Carl, Luncheon Counter Monster, Sweetums, Behemoth and one of the Frackles.
  • A line in "Piggy's Time Machine" references how every episode of the 1984 series ended with a segment where Baby Animal said "Go bye bye".
    Animal: Animal go bye-bye!
    • Also in that episode is a shot of the babies briefly being sent to an opening shot of The Muppet Show. (Specifically, the recreation of it from The Muppets (2011).)
    Fozzie: Who are they?
    Gonzo: Beats me.
  • Bunsen uses a familiar phrase when introducing his lab to the others in "One Small Problem".
  Bunsen: Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is being made today.
  • In "You Oughta Be in Pictures", Animal stops to admire a Renoir painting, a nod to him wanting to see a Renoir exhibit in The Great Muppet Caper.
  • In "Upside-Down Day" the babies briefly have the tomatoes from the garden fall on them. Fozzie comments that he usually has to tell a joke for that to happen, alluding to a Running Gag in the 80s cartoon, where his worst jokes tended to end with a tomato being thrown at him.
  • "Planet Gonzo" seems to be a reference to Muppets from Space, although Gonzo isn't actually an alien himself this time around.^note He's probably not one of them given that they are all green. Not to mention, the whole thing was probably imagined.
  • According to Matt Danner , the Muppet Babies Play Date short where Kermit acts like a director is inspired by a classic Sesame Street sketch where Kermit directed "Oklahoma".
  • "Finders Keepers" has Summer mention finding the treasure of the Mahna Mahna Valley.
  • In "Mr. Manny", when Fozzie imagines what Miss Nanny's helper would be like, the clown version in his Imagine Spot is shown to wear tall green and white striped socks, much like the 1984 version of Nanny.
  • The theater seen in "My Brother Vinny" is modelled after the theater seen in The Muppet Show, complete with a balcony for Statler and Waldorf.
  • Two from "The Spoon In The Stone" are present:
    • The blue wolf from Rizzo's story at the beginning looks like Herry wolf .
    • Kermit's outfit looks similar to what he wore in "The Tales Of Tinkerdee.
  • In "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", when Kermit enters the dimension of The Wacky Alpacas, he is dressed in his sailor suit from the 1984 series.
  • The title for "It's Not Easy Being Greeny" is a reference to one of Kermit's most well-known songs, "It's Not Easy Being Green".
  • In "No Takesies Backsies", when Piggy takes her old bracelet back from Rozzie, the other babies find it has gone missing. A logo resembling the Sesame Street News Flash logo then appears onscreen, and Kermit, now dressed in a trenchcoat, says something unrelated (in this episode's case, how he told his mom that he didn't like raisins) before beginning his report.
  • In "Muppets of the Carribean", when the babies reach the Island of Lost Toys, Animal finds his old baby bonnet, which he wore in the 1984 series. At the end of the same episode, Animal says, "Go bye bye!", which he said in The Stinger of each episode of the 1984 series.
  • In "Mitzvah For Miss Nanny", it is revealed that Miss Nanny is the daughter of the original Nanny from the 1984 series, as the two are seen in a photo together.
  • The Series Finale, "The Muppet Babies Show" is one giant shout-out to The Muppet Show, complete with a recreation of that show's opening sequence and sketches, including "Veterinarian's Hospital", "Pigs in Space", and "Muppet Labs".
• New Friend Envy: In "The Best, Best Friend", when Rowlf visits the playroom and impresses the babies with his piano playing, Fozzie worries that he's replaced him as Kermit's best friend. To try to win Kermit back, Fozzie challenges Rowlf to a game of Tri-Soccer Flying Baseball, a game he and Kermit invented, but Rowlf ends up winning. Fozzie then tries acting like Rowlf, but he, unfortunately, can't play the piano very well. When Fozzie tells Kermit that he feels like Rowlf has replaced him as his best friend, Rowlf tells Fozzie that Kermit told him he's still his best friend. Kermit also reveals to Fozzie that you can have more than one best friend.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In "Library Leapfrog", when Piggy and Summer take on the forms of Muffonians who have taken the boys' animal crackers and Robin's video game, Summer reveals to the boys that the only way to defeat the Muffin Monster they've summoned to attack them is to remove its party hat. Piggy scolds Summer, telling her she wasn't supposed to tell the boys that.
• No Antagonist: As mentioned here, there's no real antagonist here in order to keep the show happy and upbeat. The closest thing to an antagonist is Rizzo, which isn't saying much.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: As noted above Piggy lacks her usual crush on Kermit, nor does Gonzo express romantic affection towards Piggy or the (now real) Camilla (although you could argue that this does retroactively make both of them a Childhood Friend Romance in terms of this continuity). Mostly to reflect current attitudes that tend to de-emphasize romance in media targeted at very young children compared to the '80s where it was a Saturday morning show where that kind of mandate wasn't as stringent.
• Noodle Incident: In "Gonzonocchio", Miss Nanny is reluctant to let Gonzo borrow a book of Pinocchio from the library because the last time Gonzo borrowed a library book, he shot it out of his cannon. Gonzo tells Miss Nanny that the book was about stunts, and he didn't know he wasn't supposed to shoot out of a cannon.
• Not Me This Time: In "Rise of the Pickler", Gonzo as Dr. Meanzo comes up with an evil plan to turn everything into pickles, but can't find anything to do so. When Animal as Meanimal tosses a remote control into a jar of pickle juice, he uses the remote to turn everything into pickles and dons a new supervillain alter-ego, the Pickler. When Kermit as the Froginizer gets phone calls that everything in Muppetopolis is turning into pickles, he, Super Fabulous, Captain Ice Cube, and The Incredible Joke rush to Dr. Meanzo's lair. They accuse Dr. Meanzo of turning everything in Muppetopolis into pickles, but he assures them that while he thought of this evil plan, he isn't the one who went through with it because he doesn't how to do so.
• Once per Episode: There is an original song called "Let's Get On the Bus" which was first featured in the show's second season. The song is regularly sung as the characters board Miss Nanny's Bus to go on or come from a field trip to/from places such as the library or the museum.
• Only One Finds It Fun:
  • In "Rizzo For Mayor", when Rizzo is elected mayor of the playroom, one of the promises he makes is giving the babies ice cream sundaes. As he has no ice cream, he improvises using meatballs. The babies are all disgusted by these sundaes, except for Gonzo, who likes them.
  • In "A Merry Litter Christmas", Bunsen invents the Christmas Milk-O-Matic, which makes milk candy cane-flavored. The machine malfuctions and makes it shrimp-flavored instead. Gonzo is the only one who likes the shrimp-flavored milk.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • In "Animal Gets the Sneezies", Animal disguises himself as a chicken named Kevin to avoid going to the doctor. His disguise consists of him wearing nothing more than a paper beak, but it still manages to fool Gonzo.
  • In "Secret Agent Double-Oh-Frog", Summer, as Agent Purple Bird gives Kermit a false mustache to avoid being recognized by Fozzie and Gonzo as Oddfozz and Dr. Nose. This disguise manages to fool them.
• Pass the Popcorn:
  • Rizzo, in Animal Kong, at the potential distruction from the giant Animal.
  • In "Sparkly Star Switcheroo", Animal is seen eating popcorn as he watches the monitors in the Muppet Bus, having taken on the job as the lookout.
• Pepper Sneeze: In "The Great Muppet Cook-off", when Piggy tries to make a meatball pizza better than the Swedish Chef's, she decides to add an entire shaker of pepper to it. Summer warns her that if she uses that much pepper, it will make everyone sneeze, but Piggy ignores her. Sure enough, Summer is right, as the pepper makes her, Gonzo, Fozzie, and Camilla sneeze.
• Pep-Talk Song: "Get Back in the Game" from "The Great Muppet Sport-A-Thon".
• Pesky Pigeons: In "Wock-a-Bye Fozzie", the babies watch a movie called The Wacky Alpacas Eat Spaghetti 2 during their first sleepover. In the movie, Walter is trying to deliver a plate of spaghetti to Wanda for a dinner date. The first time, his spaghetti is eaten by a flock of pigeons. The second time, Walter comes a cross a giant pigeon. When Walter and Wanda finally get to have their spaghetti together, the flock of pigeons eats it again as the alpacas have a Spaghetti Kiss.
• Pet Contest Episode: In "Best in Chicken Show", Gonzo and Rizzo enter thier pet chickens, Camilla and Patch, in the Great Muppet Chicken Show. Gonzo becomes so determined to have Camilla beat Patch that he pressure he puts on her makes her feel unhappy. In the end, he learns to let Camilla just be herself, and this helps them win the show.
• Picky Eater: Sam the Eagle is revealed to be this in "Kitchen Catastrophe". He doesn't like crust on sandwiches, gooey cheese on pizza, and especially Gonzo's pickled pineapple and sourkraut sandwiches. Once he actually tries Gonzo's sandwich, however, he discovers that he likes it and it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.
• Pinocchio Nose: In "Gonzonocchio", Gonzo's nose grows when he lies, just like Pinocchio's. When Gonzo tells the truth that nobody stole his book of Pinocchio and that he lost it, his nose shrinks back to its normal size. At the end of the episode, when Animal eats Gonzo's apple slices and blames it on Buddy, his nose grows.
• Plot Allergy: It is revealed in "Animal Gets the Sneezies" that the reason why Animal is sneezing is because he is allergic to flowers, specifically the ones the other babies used in the friendship bracelets they made.
• Portal Picture:
  • In "You Oughta Be In Pictures", the monkey from Sunday Afternoon at the Grand Jetee steals Fozzie's lunchbox, and the babies jump after it, hopping from one painting to another.
  • In "Run Fozzie Run", Fozzie jumps into the book of Bombo the Baby Gorilla to escape having to tell Miss Nanny that he accidentally broke a flower pot. His friends follow him inside to try to convince him to come back and tell Miss Nanny the truth.
  • "Library Leapfrog" is filled with this, as the babies travel into different books to show Robin just how much fun reading can be.
• Post-Treatment Lollipop: In "Animal Gets the Sneezies", when Animal finally goes to see the doctor, the doctor gives him a lollipop for being a good patient. When Gonzo sees the lollipop, he pretends to sneeze so that he can go to the doctor and get a lollipop of his own, but Miss Nanny isn't fooled.
• Potty Dance: Animal does this in "Animal and the Little Accident" when he needs to use the bathroom. Gonzo sees this and thinks it looks like fun, so he dances along with Animal and asks him what kind of dance it is. Animal tells Gonzo that he isn't dancing, he has to use the bathroom.
• Potty Emergency: Animal has one in "Animal and the Little Accident" as a result of not using the bathroom when Miss Nanny asked him to. Whenever he tries to use the bathroom, something distracts him, and this eventually results in him wetting his pants.
• Potty Failure: Animal wets his pants near the end of "Animal and the Little Accident". He feels ashamed of himself for not using the bathroom when he had the chance, but his friends make him feel better by telling him that accidents can happen to anyone, and sharing accidents they had as a result of not taking their potty breaks.
• Private Eye Monologue: Summer does it in "Summer Penguin, P.I." Lampshaded when the others ask "Who are you talking to?"
• Rain of Something Unusual: In "When You Wish Upon a Rizzo", Fozzie wishes to have cookies at snack time, and Rizzo, who takes on the form of a genie, grants that wish by making it rain cookies from the sky.
• "Reading Is Cool" Aesop: In "Library Leapfrog", Miss Nanny takes the babies to the library to check out books. While the other babies are excited about checking out books, Robin isn't, as he would much rather play his video game. The other babies show Robin how much fun reading can be when they go inside the books themselves and have an adventure getting Robin's video game back from Piggy and Summer when he accidentally gives it to them instead of his box of animal crackers. By the end of the episode, Robin decides that he would much rather check out the book of Zorna and the Muffonians than play his video game.
• Replaced with Replica: In "Sparkly Star Switcheroo", Rowlf goes into a depression when he is unable to write a song about a shooting star he saw the night before the episode's events, so Summer Penguin makes him a painting of a sparkly star to cheer him up. When Piggy sees the painting, she thinks that Summer made it for her and takes it. Summer makes a non-sparkly replica of the painting, and tries to swap it out while Piggy isn't looking so that she can give the original to Rowlf. A museum heist-esque Imagine Spot takes place.
• Restaurant-Owning Episode:
  • In "Best Pals Pizza Parlor Palace", Kermit and Fozzie decide to open their own pizza restaurant, but they can't agree on how to run it, as Kermit wants a fancy palace, but Fozzie wants a family fun parlor. They soon have to agree on what kind of pizza to make when Rizzo shows up to their restaurant.
  • In "Summer's Snow Cone Stop", Summer opens a snow cone restaurant, and her friends make changes to it that she doesn't like. Summer has to learn the importance of standing up for herself even if it means having to say "no" to her friends' ideas.
• Robot Me: In "Beaker 2.0", Bunsen invents the titular robot to take the real Beaker's place while the latter gets a haircut. At first, Bunsen enjoys working with Beaker 2.0, but Beaker 2.0 soon turns against him to work on new inventions by himself, and Bunsen needs the real Beaker's help to stop him. In the end, Bunsen invents Bunsen 2.0, a robotic duplicate of himself to be Beaker 2.0's new lab partner.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: "Animal and the Egg" features scenes where the CGi Muppet Babies interact with various live-action birds as they look for the Mama Bird that the egg Animal found belongs to.
• Rule of Three:
  • In "The Great Muppet Cook-Off", Piggy and The Swedish Chef are tasked with making three dishes; macaroni and cheese, a meatball pizza, and a cake.
  • In "Gonzonocchio", Gonzo accuses the Bad Eggs, a whale with a polka-dot tail, and Bunsen and Beaker's Ping Pong-playing Robot of stealing his book of Pinocchio.
  • In "Oh Brother", the three lessons of being a big brother that Rizzo teaches Fozzie are Playtime, Storytime, and Naptime.
  • In "Boo-Boo Patrol", Fozzie doesn't let Rozzie play on the swings, the bouncy pond, and the garden.
  • In "The Invisible Frog", the babies play three different sports; basketball, egg toss, and a relay race.
  • In "Best in Chicken Show", the Great Muppet Chicken Show has three events; the Dress-up, the Obstacle Course, and the Talent Show.
• Running Gag:
  • In "Skeeter and the Super Girls", as a result of Skeeter not wearing her glasses as her superheroine alter-ego, Top Speed, she keeps running into trash cans.
    Skeeter: Where do all these trash cans keep coming from?
  • Fozzie suggesting that the babies get a giant eagle to fly them across things in "The Fellowship of the Rainbow Yo-yo." It all leads up to a cameo by Sam the Eagle.
    Sam: I am needed. (Squawks)
  • Potato calling Gonzo on his phone in "Robin Digs Deep". At one point, it wakes up the living dinosaur skeleton that the babies get Robin's blanket back from.
• Safety Worst: In "Boo Boo Patrol", Fozzie becomes so overprotective of Rozzie that he doesn't let her play on anything in the backyard out of fear that she might get hurt. He eventually puts her in Boo-Boo Time-Out, which she doesn't find any fun, especially because Gunkie is outside it, out of her reach.
• Save the Villain: In "Rise of the Pickler", Animal as the Pickler turns the biggest building in Muppetopolis into a giant pickle, which falls over and is about to flatten him. Piggy as Super Fabulous rescues him before the giant pickle can flatten him.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors:
  • In "The Teeth-Chattering Tale of the Haunted Pancakes", this happens when the babies are being chased by the titular Haunted Pancakes.
  • This also happens in "Animal and the Magic Mummy", when the babies are being chased by the museum exhibits brought to life by the titular Magic Mummy.
• Security Blanket: In "Robin Digs Deep", Robin has one. Even though none of his friends tease him for having it, he still feels ashamed of himself for still having it since none of them have one, so he asks Animal to hide it for him. Animal buries it, so the babies go on an adventure to get it back. Eventually, they find it in the possession of a living dinosaur skeleton, but when Robin stands up to it, he realizes he's brave enough not to need his blanket anymore, so he lets the skeleton keep it.
• Segmented Serpent: In "Library Leapfrog", the boys battle a giant snake-like monster made out of muffins, which Robin notes is similar to the boss in his video game.
• Send in the Clones: The episode "Counting Kermits" has Kermit use Bunsen and Beaker's Make-Another-You-Inator to make clones of himself when he commits himself to 4 activities. The clones themselves wear different colored shirts and are less intelligent than the real Kermit, to the point that one of them called Piggy "Puggy".
• Shout-Out:
  • "You Oughta Be In Pictures" has the gang recreate the art museum scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, right down to Fozzie staring at the little girl in Sunday Afternoon at the Grand Jetee like Cameron does, although in this scenario he's looking for the monkey that stole his lunchbox.
  • Fozzie's Training Montage in "The Karate Cub" features a scene where Fozzie chases after Piggy riding a bicycle similar to the montage in Punch-Out!!. The scene is even animated with 8-bit sprites.
  • In "Library Leapfrog", one of the books Summer finds in the library is called Rat in a Hat, with the cover illustration depicting Rizzo in a Cat-in-the-Hat-like hat.
  • The title for "Kermit and Fozzie's Egg-cellent Adventure" is a spoof of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
  • In "Animal and the Little Accident", swimming right next to a statue of a merman with the Swedish Chef's face are a clownfish and a blue tang.
  • In "Finders Keepers", Gonzo at one recreates Bullet Time from The Matrix.
  • In "Animal Too Loud!", the scene where the Super Muppet Babies climb to the top of the tower to rescue Sir Featherbrain is a homage to Donkey Kong.
• Show Within a Show:
  • The Wacky Alpaca Pals and Zorna: Intergalactic Space Princess. The babies trying to get Sam to decide which of the two shows they should watch fuels the events of "Eagle in the Middle".
  • In "Rizzo's Space Race", Rizzo watches a show called Jimmy Cheddah: Teenage Space Diner, which is aimed at older children. Miss Nanny discourages him from watching the show because Jimmy's insults can hurt other people's feelings.
• Sky Pirates: In "Lone Eagle", the babies play this to try to convince Sam the Eagle to play with them, even though Sam would much rather read his book. At the end of the episode, Sam decides to play this game after all when he realizes that the other babies only wanted him to play the game with them so they could be friends with each other.
• Sleep Aesop: In "Summer's Big Kerfloofle", Summer doesn't want to take a nap like the rest of the babies during nap time. Miss Nanny tells her that she needs to take her nap, or else she won't have the energy she needs to play. When Bunsen and Beaker bring a crate of green tomatoes from the planet Floofadelphia, an alien creature called a Floofle stows away in their crate. Summer befriends the Floofle, and chooses to play with it instead of taking her nap, but Bunsen warns her to stop playing with the Floofle if it turns red. When Summer continues to play with the Floofle after it turns red, the Floofle multiplies, waking the other babies from their nap. Summer finds out from Bunsen that the only way to get the Floofle back to being just one green one is to get it to calm down and take a nap. By the time she does so, nap time is over and she's too tired to play.
• Slumber Party: In "Wock-a-Bye Fozzie", Fozzie decides to have a slumber party at Miss Nanny's house when he hears about the slumber party Summer had at Piggy's house. Kermit, however, is nervous about the slumber party, as it will have been his first time sleeping away from his parents. In an ironic twist, Kermit has a lot of fun at the slumber party, while Fozzie has a miserable time.
• Sneeze of Doom: In "Animal Gets the Sneezies", Animal sneezing so powerfully, the force of the sneeze bounces him around the room.
• Somethingitis:
  • Gonzo diagnoses Summer Penguin as having "bad day-itis" in the episode "Upside Down Day".
  • "Doctor Fozzie" has Fozzie pretend to be a doctor. He diagnoses Kermit as having "green-itis".
• Sore Loser: In "Animal Loses It", Animal dislikes losing games, and is at first reluctant to play Scooter and Skeeter's Banana Whamma Jungle Jamma board game. He joins in when he is determined to win a game for once. Animal is teamed up with Piggy, and at first, they make great progress. Unfortunately, think turn south for Animal when he loses a turn and then has to go back to Start. This causes him to quit the game. He comes back when Miss Nanny teaches him that sometimes it's more fun to play with your friends than win, and he becomes a better sport as a result.
• Spear Counterpart: Mr. Manny from the episode of the same name is shown to be one to Miss Nanny, even to the point of his face never being shown on camera.
• Spoiler Title: The title of "Animal and the Little Accident" spoils the outcome of Animal's Potty Emergency in the episode, which doesn't happen until close to the end of the episode.
• Spoonerism: In "Best Pals Pizza Delivery", Kermit becomes overwhelmed with the many phone calls he recieves from the other babies wanting pizzas. When Piggy calls him, he tells her, "Hello, my name is Pizza. Would you like to order a Kermit?"
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: The theme song has two rhymes that aren't completed.
  Singer: Kermit loves adventure, Miss Piggy is the star! Summer loves to paint and Fozzie's jokes are—
  Fozzie: Wocka Wocka!
  Kermit: Hey, that doesn't even rhyme!
  Singer: Animal's on drums, Gonzo's off in a flash! Everybody duck 'cause I think he's gonna—
  Miss Nanny: Is everything alright out here?
  Muppet Babies: Yes, Miss Nanny!
• Super-Speed: In "Skeeter and the Super Girls", Skeeter's superheroine alter-ego is Top Speed, whose superpower is running very fast.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: In "Tarzanimal", Animal plays too rough when he declares himself Tarzanimal and invites the other babies to play with him, eventually driving them away. When Animal meets Tarzan (played by Sweetums), Tarzan plays too rough with Animal, which gets Animal to realize that he was playing too rough with his friends.
• Temporarily a Villain: Many episodes will sometimes place certain characters in antagonistic roles to fit the fantasy. "Animal Kong" has Animal grow to giant size and throw a temper tantrum when he isn't allowed to play his drums. The superhero episodes will have Gonzo as Dr. Meanzo with Animal and Fozzie as his sidekicks, Meanimal and The Noodler. "Library Leapfrog" puts Summer and Piggy in the role when they act like thieves and steal Robin's game.
• That Syncing Feeling: In "My Brother Vinny", Rizzo is revealed to have a terrible singing voice, but when he finds out that Gonzo has an amazing singing voice and knows the lyrics to all of Vinny's songs (in several languages, no less), he gets Gonzo to sing while he lip-syncs in a duet with Vinny. His secret is exposed when he accidentally kicks off one of his shoes and it bounces across the theater, eventually landing near Gonzo.
• This Is My Side: In "A Backyard Divided", when Gonzo and Piggy get into a feud, they divide the backyard into two separate halves, and since they're pretending the backyard is a medieval setting, they imagine their halves are kingdoms. The feud only grows stronger when Piggy's magic wand is on Gonzo's side, and Gonzo's soccer ball is on Piggy's side. Later in the episode, Kermit, Summer, Fozzie, and Animal demand their own kingdoms, dividing the backyard into sixths.
• Tightrope Walking: In "Chicken Round-up", Piggy lassos a boulder to get Kermit, Summer, and Gonzo across a canyon above a river of molasses to get to Beep and the other chickens. She, Fozzie, and Animal are tasked with holding the rope while Kermit, Summer, and Gonzo walk across it. Just as Kermit, Summer, and Gonzo get back, Animal gets distracted by a tumbleweed and lets go of the rope, causing Gonzo to fall in the river.
• Time Travel Episode: When Piggy becomes impatient waiting for her birthday to come in "Piggy's Time Machine", the babies pretend they have a time machine to travel forward in time to get to Piggy's birthday faster. When Piggy accidentally sends the gang on a wild journey through time, she has to learn the importance of patience while her friends repair the time machine.
• Title, Please!: Starting in season 2, the title cards are gone, though the titles are still spoken by the characters, as is more commonplace for Disney Junior shows these days.
  • Also, instead of the title cards being a separate animation before fading into the episode, the titles are spoken as the episode begins.
• Title Reading Gag: In season 1, there would be a title card with one of the Muppets reading the episode's name, and then doing something goofy (such as Animal doing a "King Kong" Climb on a bunch of blocks before they crumble under his weight). As of season two, however, this is dropped and the show goes with the Title, Please! approach instead.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Fozzie is very fond of noodles in this series.
  • Gonzo is very fond of pickles in this series, as he adds pickle flavoring to anything he eats.
• Translator Buddy: In "The Great Muppet Cook-off", Gonzo serves as this for the Swedish Chef.
• Treasure Hunt Episode: "Playground Pirates" has the babies looking for Miss Nanny's lost earring, pretending to be pirates searching for treasure.
• Trickster Mentor: Rizzo occasionally takes on this role, especially in the episodes where he takes on the role as a storyteller or some supernatural being (a genie, a "fairy rat-father"), where he ends up teaching the other kids some valuable lessons through some (mostly good-natured) Trolling.
• Troublesome Pet: Invoked in "Puppy for a Day". The kids want to prove to Miss Nanny that they're responsible enough for a dog, so they have Rizzo the Rat pretend to be a puppy. He causes some trouble for them, such as dragging Summer through various locations when they go for a walk and eating too much pizza. By the end of it, the kids admit that having a dog is more trouble than it's worth.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Beaker 2.0 from his namesake episode takes over Muppet Labs and kicks Bunsen out when he wants to work on inventions by himself. As a result, Bunsen needs the real Beaker's help to stop him.
• Twin Switch: In "A Tale of Two Twins", Scooter and Skeeter want to do each other's activity (the boys invited Scooter to join them in a tricycle race, and the girls invited Skeeter to join them for a relaxing day at the spa), so they dress in each other's clothes and pretend to be each other. However, their personalities compromise the situation. Scooter is an expert at mechanical engineering but is scared to jump over a puddle, let alone a canyon, while Skeeter is very athletic but doesn't know much about technology.
• Two Shorts: Again, the show is composed of two 11 minute segments as opposed to one 22 minute story.
• Unconventional Food Usage:
  • Gonzo's Companion Cube for the whole series is Potato, an actual potato.
  • At the end of "Animal Gets the Sneezies", the babies make bracelets out of macaroni instead of flowers so as not to aggravate Animal's allergies.
  • In "Eagle in the Middle", Walter and Wanda from The Wacky Alpaca Pals use a meatball as a baseball (and to a lesser extent, a rubber chicken as a baseball bat) whenever they play baseball.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Averted. In "Gonzo's Coop Dreams", Gonzo, who has never played basketball before, uses Bunsen and Beaker's Cant Lose Shoes to catch his score up to that of the Bad Eggs. After his ruse is exposed, he agrees to play fairly for the rest of the game and only needs to make one more basket to win. He gives it his best shot without the Can't Lose Shoes, and he still loses.
• Valentine's Day Episode: In "Happy Villain-tine's Day", it's Valentine's Day in the playroom, and the babies make valentines for each other. When Gonzo doesn't get any valentine cards, he thinks his friends forgot about him, and tries to take over Valentine's Day as his supervillain alter-ego, Dr. Meanzo, by taking everyone's valentines. It's up to the Super Muppet Babies to foil his plan. In the end, it was revealed that the other babies had made Gonzo a special statue, but it was too big to fit in his cubby.
• Victory Is Boring: In "The Phantom of the Dollhouse", Jill succeeds in her plan to keep the babies away from the new dollhouse Miss Nanny bought them so she can keep it all to herself. She soon finds herself lonely without her friends, and decides to apologize to them so they can play with her again.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: In "Puppy For a Day", the babies want a puppy to play with, but Miss Nanny doesn't think they're responsible enough to take care of one, so they get Rizzo to pretend to be a puppy for them. They soon find out that taking care of a puppy isn't as easy as they thought it would be, since Rizzo got them wet during his bath, got a stomachache from eating a meatball pizza, and they thought they lost him when he left to take a nap in Camilla's chicken coop.
• Wearing It All Wrong: In "The Best, Best Friend", Fozzie worries that Rowlf is going to replace him as Kermit's best friend. After losing to Rowlf in a game of Tri-soccer Flying Baseball, Fozzie tries to imitate Rowlf (even going as far as wearing the latter's clothes). Gonzo then asks Fozzie why he's acting so strange, then says that he's an expert on strange, as he wears his underwear on his head. When Gonzo puts a pair of boxer shorts on his head, Rowlf says it sounds like fun. Kermit manages to talk Rowlf out of doing it by asking him to play another song on the piano.
• Wedding Episode: In "My Best Toy's Wedding", after Summer tells the other babies about a wedding she went to, the babies get the idea to have their own wedding, where Potato will be wed to Nattie the Narwhal. Gonzo and Summer have to learn to compromise when their plans for each of their toys contrast with each other's.
• "X" Marks the Spot: In "Library Leapfrog", Piggy and Summer take on the role of pirates and bury a treasure chest underneath an X. When Animal digs up the chest, the treasure isn't the boys' animal crackers and Robin's video game that the girls took, but rather a clue to where they really are, the book of Zorna and the Muffonians.
• You Dirty Rat!: Rizzo, a rat, is used to show negative traits that children shouldn't have. In his debut, he's disruptive and selfish, and even after reforming and becoming a more regular character, he still sometimes exhibits bad traits. In one "Best Pals Pizza Parlor Palace," Kermit says he is a picky eater, for example.
• Younger and Hipper: The series usually averts this other than tweaks here and there to adapt for 2018, but somewhat in effect for Miss Nanny here (if a bit a downplayed example). Barbara Billingsley was pushing seventy when she was cast in the original while Jenny Slate was thirty-six, almost as old as the show itself, so while her gentle demeanor is still there it's less of the "maternal" variety. Also, her re-design incorporates a hoodie implying this incarnation the character herself is younger as well. It is eventually revealed in "Mitvah for Miss Nanny" that Miss Nanny is the daughter of the original Nanny.