Western Animation / Victor and Valentino

Clockwise: Grandma Chata, Achi, Victor, and Valentino. Missing: Charlene, Pineapple, Maria Teresa, Don Jalapeño, Xochi, and a lot of other characters.

Victor and Valentino is a Cartoon Network animated series created by Diego Molano. The show follows the adventures of Mexican half-brothers Victor and Valentino after they are sent to live with their seemingly supernatural grandmother in the strange and quirky town of Monte Macabre for the summer, finding mystical and crazy things at every turn.

The original pilot was released on November 2, 2016, as a "Cartoon Network Minisode" and can be viewed here. The series was originally slated for a late 2018 debut but was later pushed to a March 30th, 2019 premiere in both the United States and Latin America. A second season was announced as being in production on July 15, 2019. After a year hiatus, the third season aired in August 2021.

---

Victor and Valentino contains examples of:

• Ambiguously Human: A few characters are implied to be supernatural creatures.
  • Chata is revealed to be some sort of deity in the pilot. The series ignores the events of the pilot, but there are still hints of this, like her mood controlling the lake during the Summer Solstice in "Hurricane Chata".
  • Chata's friend Sal appears to be just an eccentric Cool Old Guy, but in "Go With The Flow", a mysterious wind follows him wherever he goes. When he's flying along with the boys, who are wearing his magic headband, he casts the shadow of a feathered serpent. "Follow the North Star" reveals that he is actually Quetzalcoatl.
  • A lot more blatant with Tez, who we do learn is a real sorcerer as his debut episode goes on, but his eyes also turn catlike towards the end of it. He also mentions having fought a feathered serpent who ate his foot... or was it a crocodile?
• Affectionate Parody: "Lonely Haunts Club 3: La Llorona" is a homage to The Blair Witch Project, complete with Found Footage and multiple instances that parody the latter's Signature Scenes.
• All Part of the Show: In the Series Finale "Fall of the Fifth Sun", a tourist assumes that all the bizarre events happening, including Tez and Sal fighting as Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca are just special effects for the celebration.
• Art Initiates Life: In "Balloon Boys", the boys go with Sal to visit the Nazca Lines, which as legend has it makes anything drawn on the ground come to life. Victor and Valentino test this by making their own lines; first Victor gives himself a bigger brain, then Valentino turns Vic into a monkey, then Vic turns Val into a (literal) big crybaby. When they are stranded on the ground, Victor draws a giant dragon to scare away a pack of vicious alpacas, which backfires when the dragon then comes after them, and they have to erase the drawing to save themselves.
• Art Shift: Charlene's story about who La Llorona is in "Lonely Haunts Club 3: La Llorona" is done in stop motion animation.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In "Sal's Our Pal" despite all the hell Vic, Val and Sal go through to prevent Tez from essentially becoming mayor of Monte Macabre? He ends up winning anyway due to a misunderstanding about stopping the votes for him.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In "The Boy Who Cried Lechuza", Victor wants to be pampered so he pretends to have a broken leg. Later he is taken away by the Lechuza, who turns out to be an exaggeratedly maternal creature that won't let her "children" leave their nest and do anything for themselves. Victor realizes he doesn't want to live that way forever, especially when the Lechuza tries to feed him by regurgitation.
• Bedsheet Ghost: While pretending to be El Pintor, Pineapple dresses up like one to scare Victor, Valentino, and Charlene in "The Lonely Haunts Club".
  • In "El Silbón", Victor does the same as Pineapple in the former episode, except backward and has the arm holes cut out, for his Haunted Corn Maze to scare the twins, but no surprise it didn't turn out as he hoped as they're not scared at all. Too bad they put Victor's bedsheet ghost costume forwards.
• Belly-Scraping Flight: Victor steals Sal's headband, which sends both brothers flying uncontrollably. Taking it off makes them plummet, and they kick up spray from the surface of the sea when donning the headband again pulls them out of their death dive.
• Bittersweet Ending: By the Series Finale, Tez has been stopped and Monte Macabre is saved. But Tez still managed to kill Isabella and just because he has been stopped does not mean the Tzizimimes aren’t still a threat. Their leader is apparently poised to finally reassemble her body and plan something.
• Bland-Name Product: The titular card game in "Suerte" is very similar to Lotaría.
• Briar Patching: Victor intentionally misspells the phrase "¡Estás atrapado!" so HueHue will say it. HueHue corrects it and utters it a third time, trapping him back inside the alebrije.
• Broad Strokes: Does this for the various myths it depicts.
  • Miclantecuhtli and Hunhau are from the Aztec and Mayan mythologies respectively, but the show makes them into brothers.
  • Huehuecoyotl never had a final fate in mythology. Chata instead states that he was sealed away in an alebrije, and the flashback implies that this was done by Tezcatlipoca.
• Canon Discontinuity: In "Welcome to the Underworld", it's demonstrated that the events of the pilot are non-canon as Victor, Valentino, Mic, and Hun don't recognize each other. It's not known how the duo knows Achi, however, as their first meeting also took place during the pilot.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • The voice and face of Itzel, the kind girl who wears a headdress that resembles an eagle at the Hidden Skate Park, look and sound similar to Vanellope von Schweetz.
  • Grandma Chata is a big fan of a chubby singer named Juan Lindo, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Mexican singer Juan Gabriel.
• The Cat Came Back: No matter how much Victor and Valentino try to escape Xochi in "The Babysitter", she's always one step ahead.
• Cerebus Retcon: While it was implied to be important in its debut episode, the temple from "Decoding Valentino" becomes even more sinister upon the reveal that Isabella is a Mega Tzitzimime using magic to communicate with the other Star-beings.
• Chicken Pox Episode: "La Planchada", in which Victor catches chicken pox from Valentino, but brags that he's "faster than germs" and is in denial. After infecting all his friends in a game of tag, he summons La Planchada, a spirit that heals chicken pox if you are worthy. When La Planchada comes that night, she cures Val but not Vic, unless he makes amends to all the kids he infected, and threatens to flatten him with her iron if he doesn't.
• Childish Tooth Gap: Victor and Charlene both have a gap in the middle of their teeth. Victor's highlights his immaturity and rowdiness, while Charlene's is wider, accenting her Creepy Child demeanor.
• Chupacabra: Valentino goes out looking for one to photograph in "The Dark Room", using Victor disguised as a goat as bait. The Chupacabra appears and takes Victor to his lair, where Valentino discovers that it's actually a vegetarian that loves animals; the sucked-out remains people find are actually his sculptures of them.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Valentino is usually a good cook, but in "Go With The Flow", he makes a bad-tasting meal on purpose to try to make Sal leave. Sal not only likes it, but he also mentions never leaving if he continues to cook like that.
• Correction Bait: In "Folk Art Foes", Victor misspells "Estas atrapado", prompting Huehuecoyotl to correct the spelling and say the phrase a third time after Vic & Val had said it a couple of times before.
• *Crack!* "Ow, My Back!": Don Jalapeño in "Know It All".
  Don Jalapeño: Ay, my espalda!
• Crazy-Prepared: In "Folk Art Friends", the boys free Hue Hue so he can help them get back his minions. Hue Hue refuses, and when they try to trap him again, he breaks the alebrije... but the boys have made dozens of spares. Next, he tries to close their mouths so they can't say "Estas atrapado!" three times, but Victor had a tape recorder with a recording of the phrase.
• Crossover: "Villainy In Monte Macabre" is a crossover with Villainous .
• Cross-Popping Veins:
  • In "A New Don", the boys prank Don Jalapeño to see if they can make him so mad the veins on his forehead pop out. He finally does after seeing the mess they made in the store after fighting the star creature possessing him, especially when Valentino moved his bookmark.
  • Valentino gets so mad at Victor in "The Collector" when the latter ends up using Valentino's most valuable coin (which he needed to complete his coin collection) to win a foosball game, leaving Valentino's coin collection permanently incomplete. Lampshaded by Victor:
  Victor: Val, you're scaring me! I can see the veins on your forehead.

  Ironically, Valentino says this to Don Jalapeño when he tries to get a refund on the foosball machine to get his coin back.

  Don Jalapeño: NO REFUNDS!!!
  Valentino: I can see the veins on your forehead.
• Crying Wolf: In "The Boy Who Cried Lechuza", Victor fakes an injury to get out of doing chores. Don Jalapeño warns him that if he cries too loudly, the Lechuza, an owl monster attracted to the sound of crying children, will whisk him away. Eventually, Victor's ruse is revealed, and when he actually gets injured when the taco cart runs over his leg, everyone ignores his cries for help... except the Lechuza.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Charlene and the Bone Brothers.
• Death by Adaptation: While the real Rey Mysterio Sr. is still alive, In the world of Victor and Valentino he's dead.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Mic and Hun might be the lords of the Underworld, but they're generally cheerful and upbeat. Unless you tick them off.
• Do Wrong, Right: HueHue corrects Victor's bad spelling of "Esdas Etripado" to "¡ Estás atrapado!" that sends him back to his alebrije, and then when he boasts and says it properly, he gets trapped inside the alebrije.
• Dual-World Gameplay: A rare non-video game example. The enchanted luchador masks that Victor and Valentino have to allow them to see and interact with the spirit world on the mortal plane, but only as long as they wear them. Victor exploits this by taking his mask off to bypass walls in the spirit world.
• Dumpster Dive: In "Pokin' and Proddin'", Val infiltrates Tez's palace by working as an intern. He's supposed to extract information and hand it over to Victor at the dumpster behind Lupe's bakery, but he is distracted and forgets to do the drop. Every time Vic appears, he's covered in garbage from waiting in the dumpster all day.
• Empty Nest: The reason La Llorona cries in "Lonely Haunts Club 3 La Llorona" is that she's lonely as a result of her 20 kids growing up and leaving.
• Expy:
  • The unhinged TV executive-turned-coyote from "On Nagual Hill" resembles the screwball version of Daffy Duck, right down to being voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, who voiced the character multiple times, and even uses the same voice.
  • La Pablita from the fourth Lonely Haunts Club is basically La Pascualita with a name change.
• Fat and Skinny: Valentino is heavyset while Victor is skinny.
• Fisher King: During the Summer Solstice Chata's mood affects the waters of Monte Macabre. Laughing makes waves, annoyance makes spouts and complete distress creates a turbulent storm.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Victor's the foolish one, always looking for shortcuts and prone to goofing off; Valentino's the responsible one, always doing his chores and being cautious, sometimes to a fault.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Averted for the human characters. In the Villainous crossover, Val concludes that Flug and Demencia are from another dimension because they both have four fingers, which he considers too anomalous to happen twice nearby.
• Free-Range Children: The Skate Park Kids. It's never made clear whether they live in the jungle where the Hidden Skate Park is located, or if they just visit from nearby towns in their free time.
• Genius Loci: "Cleaning Day" reveals that Chata's house has a life of its own, making a hellish droning noise whenever the brothers refuse to clean their messes, eventually trapping them within a series of frequently changing catacombs (going lower into the catacombs when they don't obey the objective), and releases them when they get the job done.

• Genre Savvy: In "It Grows", Valentino almost jumps through a broken window to reach his brother, but he gets worried about the broken glass and goes through the door instead.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Since the show takes place in a Latin American town, characters often drop untranslated Spanish words or phrases.
  • This is Played for Laughs in one episode where Achi upon being asked a request says "No," and repeats in Spanish ... "No."
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: In "Forever Ever", Victor and Valentino are cleaning out Maria Teresa's attic when they accidentally activate a strange statue that controls time. After spending hours cleaning, the statue resets the time and they have to start over again. Once they realize what's happening, Victor uses this to do whatever he wants with no repercussions. Eventually, they discover the statue, and Victor breaks it, which rather than fixing time, now makes it go backward. Fortunately, they get to the point when the statue is activated and Victor can stop it, setting things back to normal.
• The Hermit: The TV executive-turned-coyote from "On Nagual Hill" has become one of the hostile variants, living in a pile of garbage that he is insanely possessive of. It’s implied that this behavior is due to him going insane from being trapped as a coyote.
• Hold Up Your Score: In "Dance, Reynaldo, Dance!", a dance contest is judged by Sal, Don Jalapeno, and Maria Teresa. While the latter two give most of the acts bad scores, Sal gives everyone a ten.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: In "Lonely Haunts Club", El Pintor's ghost mentions that he doesn't like to spend each Dí a de Los Amantes by himself, and just wants some company.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: The theme song doesn't have any lyrics.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Victor in "Know It All", where he keeps claiming "I know!" to everything. He ends up releasing a flock of demonic bats because of this, and he confesses that he always claims to know everything because he's afraid people will think he's dumb.
• Lampshade Hanging: In "It Grows" after Vic's mustache grows out of control and begins to attack people, Val panics and says that he is just a kid and can't keep dealing with stuff like that every week.
• Letterbox: "Fistful of Balloons" makes heavy use of this to give the episode a more cinematic feel, as part of its spoof of Spaghetti Westerns.
• Lazy Bum: The Lechuza's "children" Hoot, Caw, and Talon. They are perfectly content being fed predigested food and wearing diapers that are regularly changed if it means not having to work. He may have been willing to fake an injury to get out of working, but Victor isn't OK with living that way.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Victor has a bad habit of leaping before he looks, more often causing more trouble for the two. In the pilot, for instance, he just barely manages to get Valentino and him out of the Land of the Dead by flinging the tacos Valentino made at the guardians, who take a liking to them and decide to let the two go in exchange for the recipe.
• The Lost Lenore: "Lonely Haunts Club" involves Victor, Valentino, Charlene, and Pineapple exploring a haunted mansion of an artist who supposedly died of a broken heart when his beloved walked out on him on his wedding day.
• Louis Cypher: In "Suerte", one of the Suerte characters is El Colorado, a devil that traps the townspeople in the game. After Victor is trapped inside the game, he manages to break El Colorado's curse by telling the truth and confessing that he cheated at Suerte, a 4 x 4 bingo-like game with picture cards.
• Love Potion: Charlene attempts to make one in "Charlene Mania". It fails to work on Victor (all it does is make him lose his hair), but it makes everyone else in town obsessed with her
• Man-Eating Plant: The plants on the left side of Don Jalapeño's hidden plant dimension could destroy the town, as seen with the two-headed monstrosity fueled by Victor and Valentino's squabbling.
• Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: "Oneiric Vic" has no spoken dialogue, the entire story is told in pantomime.
• Missing Mom: In "The Fog" Victor and Valentino want to call their father and tell him about leaving Monte Macabre. No mention is made of their respective mothers.
• Never My Fault: Victor, almost constantly. In "Suerte" he gets captured in the card game for attempting to cheat and isn't freed until he admits it.
• Nightmare Face: Abuela Chata in the few times she gets angry at her grandsons, complete with Voice of the Legion.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • El Pintor's fianceé Hiamante strongly resembles renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. El Pintor himself is based on Kahlo's husband, famed muralist Diego Rivera.
  • Oswaldo Pescado from "Victor the Predictor" is a parody of Latin TV personality Walter Mercado.
• Ominous Fog: In "The Fog", Vic and Val try to leave Monte Macabre, but keep running into a mysterious fog that magically returns them back. They realize it was created by Tez to keep the people trapped inside the town.
• Our Alebrijes Are Different: Alebrijes are used to trap evil spirits, like the Aztec god of mischief Huehuecoyotl (whom the main characters accidentally free in the first regular episode). To trap them again, one has to make another alebrije and say "Estas atrapado!" ("You are trapped!") three times.
• People Puppets: In "A New Don", Don Jalapeño talks about creatures from the stars who come to Earth to make people do strange things against their will. He ends up possessed by one who is after his scrapbook of paranormal phenomena for some reason.
• Picked Last: The conflict of "Dead Ringer" stems from Valentino getting picked last in a game of soccer.
• Pocket Protector: In "The Fog", a "Sal's Your Pal" button pin that Sal gave him saves Victor from getting stung by Tez as a giant scorpion.
• Reaching Between the Lines: In "Folk Art Friends", Hue Hue gives Valentino a "Take That!" Kiss over the phone.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Victor is the impulsive Red Oni to Valentino's cautious Blue Oni.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: "Folk Art Foes" shows Victor being bad at spelling, something HueHue is annoyed by and corrects. Victor uses this so HueHue will correct him and say "¡ Estás atrapado!" for a third time, allowing Victor to trap him back into the alebrije.
• Scare 'Em Straight: Chata's house tries to teach the boys to clean up their room, by putting them in a series of cleaning, gradually going up to more dangerous, ironic punishments (such as a monster made out of the trash they've accumulated). When they do get done, the house drones at Victor for even leaving his shoes on the floor, and he's quick to put them in the closet.
• Shared Universe: With OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, which reveals that Mr. Gar is from Monte Macabre. By extension, this also means Victor and Valentino shares its universe with Scooby-Doo (or at least Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School), Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and some iteration of Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Ship Tease:
  • In "The Lonely Haunts Club", Charlene and Pineapple dare Victor and Valentino to explore a haunted mansion with them Charlene urges Vic to pick a bouquet to put in her hair, so she can supposedly resemble his Amante. She then urges Vic to read some love poems out loud to summon El Pintor's ghost. Meanwhile, Valentino discovers that Pineapple has a checklist written by Charlene which ends with her getting a kiss from Dí a de Los Amantes. When Vic and Charlene see a table set up, they decide to dine together and summon the ghost. Just when Charlene is about to trick Vic into sharing some of her "ghost shield potions" on his lips by kissing her, Val comes in and tells her that the whole experience has been a trick to get Vic to go on a date with Charlene. As soon as Vic realizes that everything on Dí a de Los Amantes resembled a date, the ghost of El Pintor appears, telling them that he was just lonely from spending each Dí a de Los Amantes all by himself, and just wanted some company. Afterward, Vic admits the Dí a de Los Amantes isn't such a bad holiday, and when Charlene tells Vic she didn't think he was good boyfriend material, Vic says that he could be if he wanted to which makes her smile as she walks away.
  • In "The Babysitter", Xochi babysits the duo. Later, when they sneak out of the house, they discover that Xochi is taking dancing lessons, and deserting her babysitting duties. Xochi, Vic, and Val race to get back home before Grandma Chata and Don Jalapeño do, and Xochi asks Valentino to hold on tight and put his arms around her while on her bicycle. Later on, when Xochi takes the brothers up to the rooftop to see the fireworks and admits to them she was taking dance lessons to impress a certain someone, Valentino dances with Xochi.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Beetlejuice, when the duo try to send HueHue back to the underworld by uttering "¡Estás atrapado!" three times.
  • In "Welcome to the Underworld", the heads of Papyrus and Sans, A Real Magic Skeleton, Manolo, and several characters from Grim Fandango appear in the mouth of Mic when he laughs
  • At the start of "Love At First Bite", Valentino reads a Gone with the Wind parody called Gone With The Wagon.
  • "It Grows" contains a parody of "Low Rider" by War.
  • "The Lonely Haunts Club" is a reference to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club".
  • Hue Hue calling the boys at the end of "Folk Art Friends" spoofs the ending of Silence of the Lambs.
  • “Los Perdidos” is a parody of ''The Lost Boys”, with the leader of the vampire gang even having a mullet like David.
• Skate Heaven Is a Place on Earth: "The Legend of the Hidden Skate Park" features an ancient skate park hidden in the jungle, where kids go to skate away from adults and their rules.
• Slippery Swimsuit: In "Hurricane Chata", Valentino loses his swimsuit trying to save one last Coco Frio; the swimsuit serves as a Dead Guy Hat Shot. Later, he's seen covering himself up with a duck floatie.
• Smart Ball: Victor in "Love at First Bite". While he usually has to be saved by Valentino after his antics get him in trouble, here the roles are reversed as Valentino is in love with a mysterious girl whom Victor finds suspicious. When the girl turns out to be a man-eating snake monster, Victor is the one who comes to the rescue.
• Spot the Imposter: In "The Other Don", the boys find two Don Jalapenos fighting each other. Victor can expose the impostor by pulling out a potato bug; since it was established earlier that the real Don is afraid of bugs, the fake Don is the one who doesn't freak out.
• Stalker with a Crush: Charlene to Victor.
• Start My Own: In "The Dark Room", Valentino tries to get into the titular photography club, but its demanding leader finds his pictures too insipid and rejects him. In the end, Valentino starts his own photo club, the Bubblegum Club, where everyone's invited and encouraged to take pictures of whatever they like.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Ultimately how Victor regains his living body in "Para-Vic". He pranks Ximena, the ghost inhabiting it through a variety of shenanigans to get her out of his body. What does the trick? The classic Banana Peel prank down a flight of stairs… a prank that actually can be fatal in real life.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: In "Go with the Flow", Chata's friend Sal comes to stay for a while, which the boys find a nuisance. Their attempts to make him leave on his own prove futile, as his chill nature and eccentric personality make him immune to their tactics. By the end, however, after having an adventure with Sal, they are begging him not to leave.
• Transformation Horror: In "Tree Buds", Victor slowly transforms, his legs turning wooden before he becomes a small tree rooted into the ground. Also, most of the child characters are quickly pulled into a tree and the treehouse is built in its branches, becoming a part of them. Everyone is aware of their transformations the entire time and able to complain.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Sal’s Our Pal" ends with Tez being elected mayor of Monte Macabre, much to Vic and Val’s distress.
  • "The Other Don" ends with The Reveal that Isabella is really the Mega Tzitzimime.
• Wham Line:
  • In the ending of "Tez Breaks Bread":
    Tez: I know they are just children, but they are more unpredictable than we anticipated. Now if you want me to get rid of the brats, I need stronger poison.
  • "Starry Eyes":
    Valentino: Where is the real Isabela?
    Mega Tzitzimime: Haven't you figured it out? I am the real Isabela!
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Monte Macabre is implied to be somewhere in Mexico, but one episode has the characters visit the Nazca Lines in Peru by hot-air balloon, the round trip implied to take place in a single day.
• X-Ray Sparks: In "The Great Bongo Heist", Victor gets zapped, and deliriously asks, "Did you see my bones just now?"
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: In "Pobrecito Pete", Valentino thinks he made the horse Pete sick by feeding it rotten guavas, but in the end, it turns out that Pete was pregnant and was giving birth.

---