"Ladies and Gentlemen, DreamWorks Animation proudly presents your hosts: Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman!"
The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show is a Netflix created by DreamWorks Animation. It serves as both a reboot of the "Peabody's Improbable History" segments in Rocky and Bullwinkle and a spin off of the 2014 animated feature also produced by DreamWorks.
The series, as with the previous incarnations, stars Peabody, the world's smartest dog, and his adopted son Sherman as they travel through time and encounter comical versions of various Historical Domain Characters. However, as their Time Travel exploits have been exposed to the world at large, here, they've decided to capitalize on it by turning it into a Variety Show.
Max Charles, who played Sherman in the film, reprises his role while Chris Parnell plays Mr. Peabody.
Ran for four seasons from 2015-2017. Likewise played on Universal Kids.
As of early 2023, the show is no longer available on Netflix as per the contract between Dreamworks and Netflix to run their exclusives for only 6 years after the end of a show.
The New Mr. Peabody & Sherman Tropes:
- Adaptation Distillation: The Netflix series ostensibly follows the movie, though other than the title characters' designs, it's more in line with the original series.
- All Just a Dream: The Charles Dickens story ends this way.
- Always Someone Better: Christine always felt this way about her sister who is pretty much The Ace. However, unlike most examples, she actually looks up to her sister and Christine's reason for lying to her about having her own show and marrying Peabody was simply to impress her. Not to be better than her at something for once.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Mr. Peabody's foster parents, Rex and Princess, two non-anthropomorphic, non-talking dogs who still treat him like their little puppy.
- Ambiguously Bi: While Mr. Peabody was happy to get his nose kissed by Queen Isabella and eventually developed a crush with Mary Anning, he also acted quite fond of Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming (who turned out to be an enemy in disguise) when the two met.
- Amen break: Used during the music for a chase scene in episode 2.
- Art Initiates Life: Koikawa Harumachi's imagination is apparently so powerful, the things drawn in his comic book can step out and come to life.
- "Bang!" Flag Gun: Sherman uses one of these on a Tank to deliver that episode's time travel envelope.
- Big Applesauce: Peabody & Sherman host the show "from their swank Manhattan penthouse".
- Bookends: "The Perfect Show" opens the first episode of the show with a tribute to History's firsts. "The Perfect Perfect Show Again Again" is all about celebrating the last episode of the season with a tribute to History's lasts.
- Boring Return Journey: After a large ordeal helping Lucy Walker climb the Matterhorn, Peabody is in no shape for the equally grueling trip back down, and simply calls the WABAC to take everyone down.
- Brown Note: Enrico Caruso can sing a High C so powerful, it causes an earthquake that causes San Francisco to break off from the mainland and start floating out to sea. note
- Busman's Holiday: A handful of the Time Travel stories start out with Mr. Peabody fully intending the trip to be little vacation, but still getting wrapped up into an adventure anyway.
- Butt-Monkey: Though both of them are submitted to copious amounts of slapstick and humiliation throughout the series, Peabody receives it more than Sherman does.
- Calvinball: Alexander Cartwright's game of baseball eventually degrades into this.
- Care-Bear Stare: In a direct shout out, after weakening the cyborg Hughes with music, the Peabodies and Shermans reveal WABAC symbols on their chests and fire rainbows with them to make The Hughes do a Face–Heel Turn.
- Chained Heat: Christine handcuffs herself to Mr. Peabody at the beginning of an episode and refuses to unlock it until her lets her sing on his show, leading a stubborn Mr. Peabody doing his best to host the show like that.
- Chocolate Baby: Peabody looks nothing like his parents.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The Petersons are nowhere to be seen.
- Oddly, when Shelby says she wants Sherman to kiss her, he doesn't even try mentioning that he has a girlfriend as a reason why he can't.
- Sandy from Jump the Whale Shark/Frédéric Bartholdi is treated as if she's Sherman's first love.
- Peabody brings Penny up in idle conversation in Brain Switch/Koikawa Harumachi. Either she and Sherman broke up offscreen, or they are still together, but Mr. Peabody doesn't want her on the show after the last time she was near the WABAC Machine.
- Contemplate Our Navels: After Peabody saves Sherman from being sacrificed to a volcano, Sherman is so shaken up from the experience of being faced with and coming to terms with his mortality, he needs some time to sit at the beach and think about things. Peabody is so taken aback by this he has no idea what to do other than awkwardly make a pun and end the episode.
- Continuity Cavalcade:
- Every historical character that had appeared up to that point is present for Mr. Peabody's fake wedding to Christine.
- Every subject of a time travel story appears in the season finale, each of them convinced that Peabody and Sherman have made their lives worse.
- In Wrath of the Hughes, Mr. Peabody finds Maria, who has survived the change in timeline and has been hiding out binge watching the season 1 dvd boxset she won in the previous episode. Peabody sees multiple clips from episodes highlighting Sherman and realizes Sherman can take care of himself.
- Continuity Nod: Peabody often brings in historical characters that appeared in the movie as close friends.
- In the time travel adventure with Koikawa Harumachi, while grabbing lunch, Peabody asks Sherman how Penny is doing. Sherman simply says "Good". A later episode features a man in a window holding up a sign saying "Where's Penny?", a common question asked by fans.
- Couch Gag: The opening sequence shows a Mr. Peabody Museum. The banners on the outside advertise the subject of the given episode's time travel story.
- Cuteness Proximity: Mrs. Hughes breaks out of her stoic state when she sees Baby Kenny.
- No less than Napoleon Bonaparte does this when given a cat. Interesting considering the (dubious) claim that the little general was a severe ailurophobe.
- Day in the Limelight: In Big Top Peabody/Taj Mahal, having lost his glasses and unable to read the actual intended time travel story, Peabody decides to instead recite from memory the story of how he met the show's swami Sweet Tune.
- Determinator: When Mr. Peabody was about to give up on time travel, an article about a man named Joe Troplong, who's determination inspired Peabody to persevere and invent the WABAC. Indeed, when they go back in time to visit him he does indeed refuse to give up on anything, even when Easy Amnesia makes him believe what he wants to do is something he's blatantly not suited for.
- Deranged Animation: The animation for the show can get pretty wild and exaggerated at points, particularly in season 4.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- When Peabody is stuck in the elevator, Sherman tries to continue the show by himself, including performing a disappearing box magic trick, realizing too late that without a second person to open the box, he would get stuck inside.
- Another episode involved a meteorite that gave out super powers, but over exposure to it causes to turn Mr. Hobson, their apartment manager, to turn into a full blown villain. Peabody fixes the problem by using the meteorite to get powers himself then flying it into the sun to turn everyone to normal. It doesn't hit him that the powers could cancel out as he flies back to space. Even lampshading it when he reverts back to normal and falls out of the sky.
- Drop-In Character: As the show is filmed live in-universe from Mr. Peabody's apartment building, his neighbors have a tendency to do this. Special mention to Christine, a wannabe singer who on several occasions tries to use the show to launch a musical career.
- Forced Transformation:
- In the episode where Peabody and Sherman meet Ponce de León, whilse searching for the Fountain of Youth, they discover a fountain that turns them into dodos. They use this against two men from the retirement home who are chasing them and Ponce.
- In the episode with John Sutter, Mr. Hobson turns Peabody into a unicorn, a dragon, a mug, and a frog.
- Framing Device: The time travel stories are usually adventure that have already happen, so the night show segments built around them as a way for Peabody to tell in between segments.
- I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: P&S go to see Marco Polo bring Chinese noodles to Italy and invent Italian pasta, only to find that Marco Polo refuses to even try them.
- Immediate Sequel: Played with, while the third season premiere opens some time after the finale, The Present-day Mr. Peabody begins narrating his time travel story exactly where the second season finale left off.
- Interactive Narrator: Every so often Mr. Peabody will interact with the Narrator of the time travel stories, which is Mr. Peabody's future self. Even his alternate version gets in on it.Narrator Mr. Peabody: I quickly devised a flawless plan to break in. We would disguise ourselves as singing telegrams dressed as giant stamp pads and...
Alternate Mr. Peabody: (Narrating) But the plan was complete garbage.
Story Mr. Peabody: Well, Mr. Narration Interruptus, what exactly is wrong with my plan? - Eldritch Location: The inside of a black hole, where the rules of physics do not apply.
- Elevator Failure: An episode opens with an elevator malfunction that traps Mr. Peabody inside for most of the show.
- End-of-Series Awareness: "The Perfect Perfect Show Again Again/Abraham Lincoln" celebrates finality as it's main topic. And while it is celebrated as the last episode of the season, the delay between "Last Episode" and "Of the Season" gets longer each time the phrase comes up.
- Epic Tracking Shot: The visuals for Katie Herzig's Telegraph song
consist of one long pan from left to right as it follows a telegram being sent along the wire. - Every Episode Ending: Like the original cartoon, every time travel story ends with Mr. Peabody delivering a bad pun.
- Eyepatch of Power: A grizzled alternate Mr. Peabody wears his bow tie over his eye.
- Framing Device: The show format provides an in-universe justification for Mr. Peabody to be narrating the time travel stories.
- Furry Confusion: Peabody's foster parents are non-anthropomorphic dogs. In addition to embarrassing him in the traditional embarrassing parent ways, they also embarrass him simply by acting like normal dogs.
- Furry Reminder: Mr. Peabody has his moments of doglike behaviour from time to time, such as being so happy with a birthday present Sherman got him that he licks Sherman instead of hugging him.
- Gelatinous Encasement:
- In an episode where Mr. Peabody is out of shape, they bring out a giant Jello cube for Sherman to dive into to kickstart the episode. Later gets bricked as Sherman takes a high dive and has to have his fall broken by the same Jello cube.
- Peabody and Sherman meet Peter Cooper right as he invents gelatin, and he takes it a little too literally when they tell him to "put a little more life in it." He makes a gelatin monster that goes around absorbing people until it kills himself after having to listen to Peter speak for 30 seconds.
- Godiva Hair: Lady Godiva herself, who's hair inexplicably lengthens enough to wrap around her top and bottom like a two piece swimsuit when she strips down.
- Grossout Show: Toilet humor is pretty rampant.
- Hiccup Hijinks: In the episode "Magic Hiccups/Gaius Maecenas" , Sherman accidentally swallows a magic flute he's not supposed to use, and gets hiccups. Whenever he hiccups, magical mayhem ensues. He's cured when the flute is taken out of his body.
- Historical Domain Character: All over the place. They include George Washington, Napoléon Bonaparte, Cleopatra, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Edgar Allan Poe and King Tut.
- Humiliation Conga: In Big Top Peabody, Mr. Peabody breaks his glasses, rendering him Blind Without 'Em, and then gets attacked by fleas, rendering unable to feel anything, and then accidentally uses an air horn on himself, deafening him. Through all this he still insists on continuing the show.
- Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Peabody's mother and father are a small and big dog, respectively.
- I Fell for Hours: As part of a cliffhanger ending, the credits to "The Perfect Show Again / Aristophanes" has the credits running over Peabody and Sherman falling off of the penthouse roof to their apparent death.
- Insistent Terminology: While Netflix considers each individual batch of episodes to be its own season, the second season finale makes it clear that in-universe, the entire 26 episodes of seasons 1 and 2 are considered to be "Season 1".
- Ink-Suit Actor: Most of the musical guests they get are real bands such a Wordsworth & Prince Paul, Jukebox the Ghost, Ra Ra Riot, JD McPherson, Katie Herzig, JD Sampson, Hammered Satin, and The Family Cres
- Informed Judaism: When his foster parents appear, Peabody mentions that his mother sent him a collar for Hanukkah.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: The Harry Houdini episode sees Tomás de Torquemada singing Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes while torturing a prisoner in those areas of the body.
- Jumping Out of a Cake: Mr. Peabody and Sherman hide Lady Godiva inside a cake that is accidentally taken to a party, which is a clear build-up to9 this trope, but it's turned on its head when the party results to be a children's one, so Lady Godiva jumping out and singing shocks the kids.
- The Lad-ette: Cleopatra, of all people. Good thing Caesar is an Amazon Chaser.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Varies by episode; sometimes Sherman just doesn't react to Mr. Peabody's puns, sometimes he groans, and sometimes he does laugh along.
- Lampshade Hanging: In the George Crum story, Sherman lampshades the fact that every time they go back in time to witness history, something has gone wrong and they have to fix it, only to be surprised when things don't go wrong right away. At the end of the story he then lampshades the fact that Peabody always has to end on a crummy pun, only for Peabody to panic as he realizes "Crum-y" is a pun and the episode ends before he can set up the pun he wanted to deliver.
- Left Hanging: In Big Top Peabody / Taj Mahal, Peabody tells a Time Travel story about how he met Sweet Tune Swami. An audience member complains that the story doesn't explain how Sweet Tune came to work for Peabody or why he could talk then but doesn't talk now, but Peabody just dismisses it.
- Logic Bomb: Seen It / Edgar Allan Poe features a heckler complaining that the show has become repetitive and stale. When someone points out the heckler's heckles are also repetitive, the heckler is unable to reconcile that fact without ruining his argument, and promptly explodes.
- Logo Joke:
- The Dreamworks Logo is a prop on the show, raised during the introduction while they are credited as if they were an in-universe sponsor of the show.
- An actual Dreamworks Animation Television card is added later into season 2: The WABAC flies into the sky, dropping Sherman off in the moon, who then fishes up the words "Dreamworks Animation Television", which Peabody is sitting on.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- Christine is the most frequent source of it as a Big Beautiful Woman. Cleopatra as well with her Impossible Hourglass Figure. Both have prominent cleavage that can count as Parental Bonus.
- Lady Godiva also counts, being naked most of her screentime, albeit covered up with her long hair.
- Mondegreen Gag: While Mr. Peabody's stuck in the elevator in the second episode, Sherman misinterprets what he's saying.
- My Instincts Are Showing: When Sherman brings a cat on stage to get rid of a mouse, Mr. Peabody tries his best to suppress his instincts, but they overcome him so powerfully he physically changes into a more feral form.Sherman: Oh no, Mr. Peabody's turned into a dog! ...(To the audience) Best not to think about it.
- Mythology Gag:
- Both the first Peabody's Improbable History and the first Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show time travel story segments are about Napoleon Bonaparte.
- In the first season finale, Peabody and Sherman give away a season 1 dvd boxset to one of their fans. The art on the DVD is very off-model for the show and looks more like the box art for the movie.
- When Peabody and Sherman enter the illustrated world of Koikawa Harumachi, Sherman redraws Peabody as his 60s incarnation.
Peabody: Ugh, I'm old! - Never the Selves Shall Meet: When Show Host Peabody and Sherman travel back into the events of one of their time travel stories, the two versions of Sherman accidentally touch, causing them to almost fuse together in the same way they did in the Movie, but the Peabodies are able to stop it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: As Peabody and Sherman try to celebrate their first season finale, all 25 previous time travel story stars interrupt and petition to get the show cancelled, claiming Mr. Peabody does more harm than good with his time traveling. Peabody tries to prove otherwise by physically taking them to watch the conclusion of the time travel story he was just telling, but accidentally meets with himself in the process, damaging history.
- Noir Episode: When Peabody and Sherman visit the first Private Eye, Allan Pinkerton.Mr. Peabody: It was time to ankle it over to Pinkerton's joint and pipe that gumshoe while he pinched his first no-good greaser.
Sherman: Why are you talking all funny?
Mr. Peabody: It's old-timey detective talk, Sherman.
Sherman: And what happened to the color?
Mr. Peabody: We just crossed over into Chicago's Noir Disctrict, where everything is in black and white. - Noodle Incident: In Brain Switch, Mr. Peabody decides to try switching brains with Sherman so he can experience what it's like to be an adult. When questioned why he happens to already have a brain switching machine, he just mentions he used to do a lot of switching in college and leaves it at that.
- Not Helping Your Case: When Enrico Caruso is accused of causing the Great San Fransisco Earthquake with his singing, Mr. Peabody tries to scientifically prove that a human voice is incapable of causing such a thing to happen with a measuring device. However the fiercely competitive Caruso takes the device as a challenge and sings hard enough to hit the Earthquake-causing level on the device, causing another earthquake in the process.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Before telling one of their time travel stories, Mr. Peabody has it officially notarized to guarantee it is a story that actually happened to them.
- One Name Only: Christine, until Bring Your Kids to Work Day revealed her full name is Christine McMurphy Bluestone.
- Our Lawyers Advised This Trope:
- In the Marco Polo episode, Mr. Peabody mentions that when Sherman was young, and refused to eat his vegetables, he would read from a rhyming book about another finnicky eater. He then laments that he would be unable to read the book on his show for legal reasons.
- Mr. Peabody and Sherman go to visit Ancient Olympia.
Sherman: Olympia.. hm... sounds so familiar. Oh wait a minute, is that the birthplace of the Olympic-Peabody: (interrupting) Ancient Greek Games! Don't wanna get the lawyers involved... - Perky Goth: Sherman dresses as one when he interviews Edgar Allan Poe.
- Platonic Declaration of Love: The beginning of "The Wrath of Hughes" has Sherman and Mr. Peabody make father/son declarations of love to each other as one of multiple things while falling.
- Real Fake Wedding: Trying to impress her sister, Christine gets Peabody to hold a fake wedding with him on-show, having Mr. Hobson officiate so that it won't count, but things get complicated when an emotional sister insists on officiating the wedding herself which would make the wedding real.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Super fan Maria somehow transcends time itself, and is completely unaffected by history being re-written.
- Saved by Canon: Because all of the time travel segments are stories of previous adventures being told in the present day, they are all guaranteed to turn out well. The only time this isn't the case is when present Peabody decides to time travel into the events of the time travel story and accidentally changes it.
- Sequel Series: To Mr. Peabody & Sherman. An introductory article in Variety states that the characters "launch the TV variety show because at the end of the movie they’re outed as time travelers, so they decide to capitalize on that." Oddly the show never really alludes to the movie much outside a few mentions of Penny.
- "Sesame Street" Cred: Some of the musical acts on the show are by actual indie bands like Ra Ra Riot and underground rapper Prince Paul.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong - Par the course for Peabody and Sherman in their time travel segments.
- Sequential Symptom Syndrome: In "Outbreak/Ancient Greek Games" Mr. Hobson experiences the symptoms of the ancient bird flu one by one as Mr. Peabody reads them out of a book.
- Shout-Out:
- John Harrington, inventor of the toilet, has to rescue Elizabeth I from his mutant turtle Scooter. Hmm, where have we heard this before?
- One episode had Sherman teach Ivan Pavlov's dogs to sing, of all things, the Tetris theme song.
- Terrible Artist: Mr. Peabody, who tries to draw a giant robot to fight a giant monster, but it is so poorly drawn that it translates to it's abilities; every attack it tries to use inexplicably backfires on it.
- The Show Must Go On: Nothing will stop the show. Be it annoying neighbors, obsessive fans, a broken elevator, a black hole or a contagious virus outbreak, Peabody and Sherman will find a way to press on.
- The Show Must Go Wrong: To go with the above, so far no episode seems to have gone the way Mr. Peabody has planned it.Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming: Oh dear, I've made a disaster of things, I should really get going.
Peabody: Nonsense! Every show is a disaster! Please, stay for the rest! - Sanity Slippage: Mr. Peabody suffers one in the episode where his parents arrive.
- Self-Serving Memory: The Perfect Perfect Show Again Again / Abraham Lincoln has Sherman telling the time travel story instead of Peabody. Instead of reading the story, he makes one up that is nonsensical, but the running theme is Mr. Peabody being incompetent and everyone in the story showering praise on Sherman.
- Skewed Priorities: When the duo is about to be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger:Sherman: This is it, Mr. P! We're about to die on live television!(cash register sound effect)Both: RATINGS!
- The Slow Path: After changing history in Ancient Greece, the past Mr. Peabody and Sherman use cryogenic tubes to return to the present to join the current Mr. Peabody and Sherman.
- Suddenly Speaking: Sweet Tune Swami's silence is apparently a result of Mr. Peabody, as he talks in the story where Mr. Peabody first met him. Both Alternate Sweet Tune and Alternate Mrs. Hughes are similarly capable of talking.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: After Mr. Peabody accidentally rewrites history, all time travelers immediately cease to exist except for both versions of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, leading to the two of them teaming up. Since the future that allows for Alternate Peabody to eventually become our Peabody no longer exists, the two of them are capable of touching without risk of fusing.
- Snap Back: "Tree House/Queen Hatshepsut" involves a forest being grown in the Penthouse, and Peabody deciding to keep it. Peabody tells everyone to look forward to the forest featuring in all future episodes, but it is suddenly gone with no explanation before the end credits finish.
- Time Travel: The WABAC is a part of the series.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Sherman loves his Taco Pudding so much he gets the company that makes it to endorse the show. Hilarity Ensues when the owners show up and hijack the show through the abuse of the contract's fine print.
- The Unfettered: As The Show Must Go On, Mr. Peabody shows an amazing ability to keep hosting the show like nothing is wrong no matter what is happening, only becoming flustered when things get really bad. The black hole in his studio doesn't become a concern until it becomes large enough to consume him and even then he keeps hosting from inside and only shows concern when the black hole begins to rip everyone apart on a molecular level.
- Variety Show: A parody of the genre.
- Vinyl Shatters: Happens when Peabody tries to host a show about his vinyl record collection, and Sherman, not knowing what records are assumes he means world records instead, and tries to use them as plates to spin, but ends up breaking all of them.
- Wayback Trip: The time travel stories.
- What Are Records?: When Peabody tries to host a show about his vinyl record collection, Sherman has no idea what he's talking about and assumes he means world records instead.Sherman: What's a vinyl record?
Peabody: It's like a CD!
Sherman: What's a CD? - Wham Episode:
- For the season finale, Peabody and Sherman try to have an actual perfect show, But accidentally kill the subject of the story, corrupting time and altering the present. Before Peabody and Sherman can do anything about it, a cyborg Mrs Hughes captures the WABAC and the credits roll over Peabody and Sherman falling to their apparent doom.
- The first half of the second season ends with Peabody and Sherman losing a bet with the show and their apartment on the line, leaving them homeless and the show cancelled.
- The second half of the second season ends with the whole cast engaging in a group hug, resulting in all their consentrated love blowing up the Earth. Then at the end of the credits, as Peabody and Sherman are floating in space, they seem to see something pass by that the viewers don't see.
- What the Hell, Hero?: "Sweet Little Lies/Allan Pinkerton" has Mr. Peabody try to teach Sherman the importance of telling the truth by strapping Sherman to a lie detector shock collar. The audience is so appalled by this they jeer Mr. Peabody into wearing one, too.
- Whole Episode Flashback: "The Wrath of Hughes" has no in-studio subplot plot as Mr. Peabody cuts right to the chase of telling the story of how the previous season finale was resolved.
- White Anglo-Saxon Protestant: Mrs. Yakamora. Mr. Yakamora is Asian, but has the accent.
