Western Animation / WordGirl

WordGirl and her sidekick, Captain Huggyface.

"From the planet Lexicon; watch out, villains, HERE SHE COMES!"

WordGirl is an animated television show on PBS. The titular character is a superheroine who fights crime with her powers of literacy as well as her powers as a Flying Brick. The show is an Affectionate Parody of the superhero genre and uses writers from sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, plus actors known for ad-libbing ability, in hopes of making a show as entertaining for adults as it is educational for kids.

WordGirl uses her great vocabulary to fend off villains such as The Butcher, Mr. Big, Dr. Two-Brains, Granny May, Tobey, and Chuck The Evil Sandwich-Making Guy. She never reveals her alter-ego to anyone, including her own family. She and Huggy use their crashed spaceship as a secret hideout.

The series ended with the two-part episode "Rhyme and Reason", which was released online on August 7, 2015. A comic book adaptation was published by KaBOOM! Comics.

See also the character sheet and the episode recaps.

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The show provides examples of:

Tropes #-L

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Subverted. When Miss Power takes over Fair City, intending eventual world domination, Captain Huggyface takes WordGirl to a Lexiconian lair which holds their tome of "Super-Advanced Secret Battle Rules". While the local villains rampage against Miss Power, WordGirl gets a montage of devouring the whole book. However, after all the build-up, when WordGirl shows up for the showdown, she doesn't have any new superpowers, but she has the power of knowledge. WordGirl knows that Miss Power doesn't have any powers, neither superhuman nor ordinary, as long as other people are happy with themselves. This time, when Miss Power begins showering vitriol at her and the villains' way, WordGirl doesn't stand for it and begins lifting everyone up. Left powerless, Miss Power and Colonel Gigglecheeks are forced to flee. The world is saved.
• Accent Relapse: Guy Rich speaks with a Southern accent until he reveals himself to be an ordinary person, not the affluent man he led everyone to believe he was.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Many characters have mistaken Captain HuggyFace's name for something like "Captain Hoozywinks" or "Colonel HairyFace".
  • The Whammer can never get Chuck the Evil Sandwich-Making Guy's name right.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Inverted. Tobey's Mecha-Mooks occasionally refuse to obey him, sometimes even turning against him. Notable in particular with his WordBot in the episode by the same name, which he programmed to be "devoted" (one of the words of the day) to him, only for it to turn against him when he keeps paying too much attention to WordGirl and decide to be devoted to destruction instead.
• All Your Powers Combined: When Victoria Best steals most of the other villains' powers in "Don't Mess With The Best".
• Alliterative Name: Besides the characters important enough to be on the Characters page, we have Bampy Botsford and Hal Hardbargain.
• Always Someone Better: Steve McClean's appearance has him like this to Dr. Two-Brains, taking away all his popularity.
• Ambiguously Brown: The Botsford family.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The producers wanted it to look like it could have been made in the 60s, 80s, or today. No internet, no home computers (the only computers seen take up almost half the room), small corner TVs, a few passing references to home video, and the journalist wannabe works at a newspaper a la Jimmy Olsen. Even the family car looks like a station wagon from the 70s. They claimed if cell phones were ever used, they would've been bulky devices circa 1995.
• Arc Words: Every episode has two (or four in the case of two-part episodes), which are the words that the episode is teaching. In each case, WordGirl will define the words at some point in the episode.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Bob finds himself on the receiving end of this in "The Rise of Miss Power" when he makes his disdain for Miss Power's methods clear to Becky, only for her to tell him that she doesn't care what he thinks and that "You're just the sidekick". The look on his face after hearing this is heartbreaking, to say the least.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Tobey's gigantic Mecha-Mooks.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: WordGirl's "Emergency Plans".
• Badass Boast: When a woman tells Miss Power that Earth doesn't need her as a new ruler and they have WordGirl, she responds with, "No she can't. I defeated WordGirl. And now this planet is mine. And if you don't like that, well, there's a nice cozy jail cell for you. Just ask District Attorney Botsford."
• The Bad Guy Wins: Downplayed example. In "WordGirl and Bobbleboy", TJ's success in his WordGirl bobblehead dolls business distracts our heroine so much that she gets smashed to the ground by Chuck's Crusher. Luckily she gets better, but the villain featured for the rest of the episode is Dr. Two-Brains and not Chuck.
• Bad Mood as an Excuse: What was Tobey's reasoning/excuse for why he was having one of his robots wreak havoc around town? He was mad he didn't get invited to Katie's birthday party.
• Ballad of X: The episode " The Ballad of Steve McClean".
• Banana Peel: Captain Huggyface uses one to defeat the Whammer in "Crime in the Key of V".
• Batman Gambit: A beautiful one by Becky against the titular character in "Victoria Best". To retrieve the trophies Victoria stole from everyone, WordGirl organizes a cracker-eating competition between her and Captain Huggyface. Huggy, being Huggy, wins easily, and his trophy is a golden net. Victoria can't stand, sit, or lie down with being second-best, so she tries to summon the trophy. She can't summon it slowly and inconspicuously with her clarinet; her mouth is too dry to play it. In a rage, Victoria summons the net with her eyes, but the speed with which she summons it traps her beneath the net. WordGirl then threatens to keep her there unless she hands everyone's trophies back, and Victoria is forced to comply.
• Beard of Sorrow: Doctor Two-Brains gets one when he falls out of the #1 villain ranking.
• Berserk Button: Some of Tobey's robots go berserk because of things other characters say or do.
• Big Red Button:
  • In "Mecha Mouse", Two-Brains is defeated by one of the self-destruct variety, which he put on his well-designed power armor. Also, the button is on the exterior, which Two-Brains can't touch anyway.
  • Then there's the "Holy Cow! Don't Press This Button!" button.
  • And the "Merge With Copier" button.
• Big Word Shout:
  WordGirl: Change it BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!
• Bilingual Bonus: In "The Fill-In", the fictional ancient city Santa Palabra means "Saint Word" in English.
• Big "NO!": Employed quite a few times in the series.
• A Birthday, Not a Break:
  • The titular character of "Becky's Birthday" (as WordGirl) has to fight the Energy Monster despite it being her birthday.
  • The whole premise of the two-part episode "A World Without WordGirl", where Becky gets fed up always having to fight crime repeatedly as WordGirl and miss out on her birthday party.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: This is inverted in the short "Play Date". While at Becky's house, Tobey calls the Botsfords "imbeciles" for having a TV. Becky^note who doesn't yet know that Tobey is a villain says that she and her family are not idiots because they "only watch PBS." She gestures to the PBS logo and smiles.
• Black Comedy: From "Two Brains Quartet":
  Mayor: Whoa - a dog from the old days! That dog is probably dead now.
• Blatant Lies: You'd need to be Super Gullible to buy Becky's many excuses whenever she must change into her superheroine identity. And, fortunately for her, the characters are!
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Happens very often, with characters talking to/arguing with the narrator. In "Lunch Lady Chuck", Chuck reaches up out of frame to give the narrator a sandwich.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: "Worrrrrrd Up!"
• Calling the Old Man Out: In "Meat My Dad", the Butcher calls out his dad for constantly guilt-tripping/badgering him into moving back in with him and forming a criminal duo together, something the Butcher makes it pretty clear he doesn't want to do.
• Cardboard Prison: Being caught and sent to jail never seems to get rid of the villains. Somewhat justified by the fact that the Warden is one of the most staggeringly incompetent characters on a show absolutely stuffed with incompetent characters.
• Cartoon Cheese: Thanks to Two-Brains's cheese addiction, there are more examples of this in the show than you can count.
• Character Catchphrase: Warden Chalmers has "...I'll eat my hat!" Made funny by the fact that he actually will eat his hat, and seems to enjoy the taste. He started having them made out of meat after his first one didn't taste so good.
• Character in the Logo: Silhouettes of WordGirl and Captain Huggyface are featured in-between the "Word" and "Girl" in the show's logo.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: "Who Wants Candy?"
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Exaggerated in the episode "Two Brains' Quartet". Dr. Two-Brains doesn't even try to win legitimately despite multiple protests from his henchmen that they could probably win and cheating is likely to backfire. They end up disqualified, but the henchmen plead to perform anyway, and their song is amazing — the mayor outright states that they probably would have won if they hadn't already been disqualified for cheating.
• Clear My Name: WordGirl has had to do this in multiple episodes, notably in "The Wrong Side Of The Law".
• Cliffhanger: The two-part stories "The Wrong Side of the Law", "WordGirl Makes a Mistake", and "A Better Mousetrap." It's one of the featured words in the second half of "A Better Mousetrap", with WordGirl providing the definition.
• Cliffhanger Copout: At the end of part 1 of "WordGirl Makes a Mistake," Mr. Big uses the Lexonite to disable WordGirl by clipping a collar around her neck with a star-shaped chunk of it on. No wait, come part 2 a few minutes later, she's been put in a Lexonite cage instead.
  • Parodied in "Kid Math." At the end of Part 1, Dr. Two-Brains traps WordGirl and Kid Math in a metal cage.
    Kid Math: Actually, I think I could break out of this pretty easily.
    WordGirl: No! A superhero needs to know how to build suspense so the audience gets excited!
    Kid Math: Really? Okay, I mean... I'll never break free of this heavy cage with my not-strong arms! In fact, I don't even HAVE arms!!
• Clip Show: "A Better Mousetrap". The first half features WordGirl reminiscing with Scoops about the many times that she's defeated Dr. Two-Brains. At the end of the first half, Two-Brains takes over the show, then in the second half, he shows a series of clips designed to humiliate WordGirl.
• Continuity Cavalcade: "Showdown at the Super Secret Spaceship Hideout". Dr. Two-Brains discovers the room where WordGirl keeps mementos of all of her past adventures, including weapons from all of the other villains and a display that has all of the different ray guns Two-Brains has used in the show. The episode even gives a nod to the fact that Dr. Two-Brains once penned the book "Superheroes and You: A Practical Guide".
• Continuity Nod: In the episode "Tobey's Masterpiece", Tobey asks Becky the last time he's seen her and she references the events of the former's introduction in the arc shorts where he threatened to destroy her house with a robot.
• Contrived Coincidence: Very, very often with the themed villains. One episode's plot is even based around lampshading this trope.
• Cool Old Guy: Bampy, Becky's grandfather, who is the only non-main character to know her secret identity and can jump and backflip like nobody's business. He takes down a giant robot with just a screwdriver! Twice!
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
  • "Have You Seen The Remote?": When it turns out Tobey had a tracking device all along.
  • "Line Lessons With Lady Redundant Woman": When Lady Redundant Woman is told everyone already knows what it's like to be treated rudely.
  • "WordGirl Makes A Mistake: Part 2": Both when the handyman has a dictionary and when it turns out Mr. Big already got his casserole dish back.
  • "Mr. Big's Mini-Golf": When Mr. Big finds out that Guy Rich wasn't a villain.
  • "Cleanup In Aisle Eleven": When Lady Redundant Woman realizes the grocery store manager just wanted money for the food she was taking.
• Crush Blush: A few times Tobey, a ten-year-old, blushes because of his beloved WordGirl.
• Cute Kitten:
  • Little Mittens, the cutesy kitten the Butcher finds in "Meat with a Side of Cute". He even invokes this by distracting WordGirl with its cuteness.
• Cuteness Proximity: Little Mittens, a big-eyed kitten, successfully distracts WordGirl in "Meat with a Side of Cute" with its adorable nature.
• Cutlass Between the Teeth: Parodied; In "Bampy Battles Bots", Becky’s grandfather recounts defeating a colossal robot while carrying a screwdriver between his teeth.
• Darker and Edgier: Subverted in "Don't Mess with the Best". Dr. Two-Brains tells Victoria Best that if she really wants to get rid of WordGirl and prove she's the best villain, she should push that red button on the back of his cheese ray. Turns out it just sprays Victoria in the face with gunk, causing her to drop it and allowing Dr. Two-Brains to pick it back up.
• Deathbringer the Adorable: Lil' Mittens, originally named "Meat Hook".
• The Dentist Episode: Several characters visit a dentist "WordGirl vs. Tobey vs. The Dentist".
• Department of Redundancy Department: Many of the characters speak redundantly as a means for the show to indirectly teach kids synonyms. Warden Chalmers gets a special mention though.
  Warden Chalmers: Today is a historic day in history, for, on this historic day, history will show that we have indeed made history.
  • And Lady Redundant Woman is literally made of this trope.
• Disguised in Drag: Mr. Big disguises himself as an elderly woman in episodes "Big Business" and "WordGirl Makes a Mistake".
• Double Entendre:
  • WordGirl: "Hold it right there, Butch...er?"
  • In "Play Date", we get this fun little exchange:
    Becky: You're awfully mischievous.
    Tobey: Mischievous! Are you trying to impress me with your vocabulary?
    Becky: I'm not trying to impress anyone.
    Tobey: Why didn't you just say I'm a naughty boy, hmm?
  • In "Re-Enter, The Butcher", Reginald refers to The Butcher as a "smelly wiener man".
  • In "Re-Re-Enter, The Butcher", the Grocery Store Manager tells The Butcher he'll have to "leave [his] personal meat at home".
• Do Wrong, Right: The villains have their Villain Code rulebook and get angry when one of them breaks said rules.
• Drunk with Power: Leslie has a brief moment of this in "Leslie Makes It Big".
• Early-Installment Weirdness: It took a few episodes for the narrator to start mentioning the associated vocabulary words of the day in the title cards.
• Edutainment Show: The main purpose of the show is to teach more advanced vocabulary words to children.
• Empathic Environment: In "Rhyme and Reason", rain begins to pour when Becky and Violet's friendship, as well as Rhyme and Reason's, end. Both friendships eventually mend.
• Enemy Mine:
  • WordGirl joins forces with Dr. Two-Brains in the episodes "Mouse Army" and "Dr. Three-Brains".
  • In "The Rise of Miss Power", all of the show's villains team up against Miss Power and help WordGirl defeat her.
• Episode Title Card: Every episode has one. In most episodes, it's during the title card that the narrator explains what vocabulary words to watch out for.
• Et Tu, Brute?: After being betrayed by the Learnerer, the Amazing Rope Guy experiences a Villainous Breakdown.
• Even the Dog Is Ashamed: When Becky's done something immoral, Bob makes his disappointment visible.
• Evil Is Angular: So it's fitting that Miss Power, the villain lineup's biggest threat, has plenty of triangles in her character design.
• Evil Is Hammy: Most of the villains are this way.
• Evil Laugh: Pretty much all of the show's villains have their own.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • WordGirl does this to herself at one point. As she's lecturing the Learnerer about why his Verbal Tic of adding suffixes unnecessarily to words is annoying, it suddenly occurs to her that he said that he had been learning her moves!
  • From "By Jove, You've Wrecked My Robot!":
    Becky: Well, Bob, realize means to figure something out, to understand something. Like how Tobey realizing all those things made him think I'm WordGirl. [screen pans to the right, showing a grinning Tobey] And how I just realized that I probably shouldn't have defined that word.
• Face Palm: In one of the episodes of "May I Have a Word?", Phil's prize for winning the initial game is a life-size Beau Handsome cut-out, which he says he doesn't want. When he learns that his prize for winning the bonus round is a larger-than-life Beau Handsome cut-out, he facepalms.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: As a PBS Kids show, none of the characters use realistic guns—be they heroes, villains, or police. However, some of the villains do use cartoony Ray Guns.
• Fan Boy: Glen is one to Dr. Two-Brains. And an in-universe Ascended Fanboy no less.
• Female Monster Surprise: The Energy Monster is female and is named Maria.
• Feud Episode: The titular villains from “Rhyme and Reason” have this when the latter is so fed up with the former that he breaks up with her.
• Finger Gun: The Amazing Rope Guy briefly makes finger guns in "Gift Pony".
• Flaw Exploitation: The emotional kind. Miss Power targets other characters' insecurities to Break Them by Talking and she encourages WordGirl to do the same.
  Miss Power: [To WordGirl while training her] Well there's more to combat than just the physical. For example, how do you think I was able to beat The Butcher so easily?
  WordGirl: Well, by being stronger and faster than him.
  Miss Power: No, well yes, of course, but I was also able to find... his weakness. One of his biggest fears.
  WordGirl: He gets upset if people think he smells bad.
  Miss Power: Exactly.
• Forgot About His Powers: We see the villains in jail frequently, yet nothing is ever done to stop them from using their superpowers, except in "The Return of the Reprise of Lady Redundant Woman". It's as if they don't have powers while in jail.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself:
  • Implied in "Vocab Bee". When Scoops starts to suspect Becky is WordGirl, he points out how Becky went as WordGirl for Halloween.
  • Averted in "Tobey's Tricks and Treats", where Becky goes as Pretty Princess. Instead, her best friend Violet goes as WordGirl.
• Formally-Named Pet:
  • Granny May's cat "Colonel Mustard".
  • The other two monkeys in the show - General Smoochington and Colonel Gigglecheeks.
• Four-Fingered Hands: All human characters - and even the monkey - have four fingers.
• Freak Lab Accident: Dr. Two-Brains's origin.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: "Dr. WordGirl-Brains" has this happen WordGirl and Dr. Two-Brains. It's mixed up a bit by the fact that the mouse brain isn't affected by the mind-swap, meaning that WordGirl in Two-Brains' body becomes an evil cheese-seeker while Two-Brains in WordGirl's body doesn't feel like it anymore and takes on her heroics in the interim.
• Free-Range Children: Despite Becky's parents showing protective tendencies, she and all her other classmates frequently get to go anywhere and everywhere in the city without an adult around. Even at school or other adult-supervised events, Becky always manages to sneak away without too much trouble. On a few occasions, Becky has even been kept somewhere overnight or very late into the night, and her parents don't seem worried in the slightest.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Re-Re-Enter, The Butcher", when The Butcher is attempting to rob the grocery store, you can see the sign above the aisle behind him indicates said aisle has chainsaws, crowbars, and zombie-repellent.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: Meant to be a remedy for Becky's hiccups in "Word (Hicc)Up!".
• Funny Background Event: In "The Pretty Princess and Mr. Big Power Hour" after Leslie asks Mr. Big to explain his plan, Leslie glares at Mr. Big in the background while preparing his sundae as he is clearly making up the steps of his plan on the spot.
• Games of the Elderly: In the episode "Bonkers For Bingo", Granny May retires from crime and takes up playing bingo, becoming a city bingo champion thanks to a massive streak of luck. It turns out that her "luck" was really a result of her lucky charm - a magnetic duck, which allowed her to manipulate the metal bingo balls to control which numbers were called.
• Glad I Thought of It: Mr. Big does this in "Scary with a Side Of Butter" where he takes credit for Leslie's idea, much to her disappointment.
• Gray Rain of Depression: Occurs when Becky and Violet's friendship, as well as Rhyme and Reason's, end. Both friendships eventually mend.
• Green Aesop: In "Earth Day Girl", especially during the "cleanup montage", which is so campy and over-the-top that it may be a Stealth Parody.
• Grumpy Old Man: Scoops's grandpa. He always has the same frown in all of his appearances.
• Halloween Episode: "Tobey's Tricks or Treats".
• Hand Rubbing: There are times the villains rub their hands together when in the villainous mood. The Narrator once called one of them (i.e. Tobey) out on it.
• Height Insult: One of Miss Power's attempts to break WordGirl by talking involved her telling her she's "too small". It didn't work.
• Hiccup Hijinks: "Word (Hicc)Up!" has Becky/WordGirl get hiccups, which makes it hard for her to fight crime. She's also not fond of her dad's methods of curing her. Eventually, she gets cured thanks to Chuck The Evil Sandwich Making Guy, but then she gets hiccups at the end again when her father scares her.
• High-Class Glass:
  • Reginald the jeweler.
  • Count Cloudy in "The Pretty Princess and Magic Pony Power Hour".
• Hurl It into the Sun: How WordGirl destroys Mr. Big's Lexonite machine at the end of "WordGirl makes a Mistake".
• Hypocritical Humor: Lampshaded in "Earth Day Girl".
  Birthday Girl: The Earth is trying to steal my birthday! It's giant, green, and spoiled!
  Narrator: Hmmm... you could be describing yourself, Birthday Girl.
• Idiosyncrazy: Almost every single villain has some kind of an absurd gimmick that all of their crimes are themed around. Discussed in "The Young and the Meatless". Lady Redundant Woman and The Butcher keep trying to steal the same things because they are both meat and matching or redundant sets.
• Idiot Ball: The Botsfords throw a holiday party during the Christmas Special, and the theme is...cheese. In a city where the number one villain is infamous for stealing cheese almost daily. Three guesses about what happens to kick off the episode's conflict.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Becky/WordGirl constantly misses out on fun things due to her obligations as a superhero, leading her to actually wish she was normal in "A World Without Wordgirl".
• Impact Silhouette: Used a few times when the larger villains, especially The Whammer or Nocan, enter a building to steal something. Sometimes it's combined with a There Was a Door.
• Implied Death Threat: WordGirl physically folds a large bar of steel into a small, crude ball live on broadcast to represent what would happen if the villains were doing any crime. In other words, she literally broadcasts the fact that she allows the villains to live. The best part is that she did this to ensure that she wouldn't get interrupted while watching her favorite TV show again because she missed the finale the last time she was busy fighting crime.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Mr. Big gets excited when he learns that Leslie Took a Level in Badass and nearly took over the city while he was away.
• Incest Subtext: Becky/WordGirl and TJ. Averted a bit, because technically she was adopted. She still finds it gross, though. And, to be fair, TJ has no idea that WordGirl is his sister.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: One of the newsmen has the same face as another random townsperson (who wears an orange shirt), but there's no indication that they're the same character. Stranger still, both of them have a striking resemblance to Dave, the manager of the copy shop where Beatrice Bixby works.
• Inkblot Test: Used in "Mobot Knows Best" as a joke rather than to make a statement about any of the characters. Becky's art project appears to be a Rorschach test that bears considerable resemblance to The Butcher.
• Insult Backfire: When an overly aggressive WordGirl calls Dr. Two-Brains's plan stupid, he essentially goes, "And your point?"
• Intergenerational Friendship:
  • Steven Boxleitner and WordGirl at the beginning of the series.
  • Possibly Exposition Guy and Eileen in "The Birthday Girl's Monstrous Gift".
• Interspecies Romance: Whichever shipping you may prefer, any character with WordGirl is this. Even with the most-canon shipping, WordGirl and Scoops, she's still an alien, which might make things slightly... odd, if there are any signs of a serious relationship.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: When Chuck the Evil Sandwich-Making Guy decides to reinvent himself as "The Handsome Panther", it quickly becomes clear that he knows well-nigh nothing about real panthers (e.g. the fact they're nocturnal).
• It's a Wonderful Plot: "A World Without WordGirl" is about Becky wishing WordGirl never existed as her birthday wish and being transported to an alternate universe where Chuck dominates the city as a result of WordGirl not being there to stop him.
• It's Been Done: In "Mr. Big Words", the reason that Mr. Big makes the entire town speak in only big words is so that he can make a profit off his new product - a book he's invented that gives them the definitions of those big words. WordGirl is quick to point out that Mr. Big just created a dictionary, which he had no idea existed already.
• Jekyll & Hyde: Dr. Two-Brains is both the selfless, intelligent, and kind Dr. Steven Boxleitner, and the murderous, monomaniac, cheese-obsessed Squeaky. An accident in Dr. Boxleitner's lab caused them to fuse.
• Jerkass:
  • The new assistant librarian. He's more obsessed with fining late books.
  • Dr. Two-Brains's ex-number-one fan Glen Furlblam. After failing to impress his idol, now he wants to outdo him.
• Kryptonite Factor: In "WordGirl Makes a Mistake":
  Mr. Big: I don't get it, Leslie. WordGirl has always dominated me in the past, both in her battle skills as well as her flawless way with words. Something... mmm... fishy is going on around here.
  Leslie: It's the meteorite, sir. It's from her home planet — Lexicon. Whenever a superhero comes into contact with a meteorite from their home planet, it takes away their superpowers. Haven't you ever read a comic book, sir?
• Lampshade Hanging: The show loves to do this.
• Left the Background Music On: Whenever The Butcher and Dupey interact, romantic music plays. Everyone wonders where it's coming from, then a guy apologizes and turns off his boombox.
• Leitmotif: Many of the characters/villains have their theme music. Not to mention the word-defining music and the melodramatic sadness music, just to name a few...
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In "Line Lessons with Lady Redundant Woman", WordGirl struggles to stop Lady Redundant Woman's impolite copies, but then she gets serious when one of the copies breaks her favorite unicorn figurine.
  WordGirl: (in an angry whisper) That... was... Angelface. Come on, Huggy, let's finish this.
• Limited Wardrobe: Lampshaded with both Dr. Two-Brains's and Becky's wardrobes.
• Living Prop: A large number of the townspeople and pretty much all of Becky's classmates who aren't Violet, Tobey, Scoops, Victoria, or Eileen.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Anyone who isn't Captain Huggyface, to Becky's identity as WordGirl. Not even her adoptive family is aware.
• Loony Fan: A bit of a spin with Glen, who emulates (until he decides to replace) his hero, Dr. Two-Brains... who happens to be a villain.
• Love Triangle: The two main romances of the show form a triangle. Tobey crushes on WordGirl, who doesn't like him, while she crushes on Scoops, who doesn't seem to notice.

Tropes M-Y

• Made-for-TV Movie: "The Rise of Miss Power", which premiered on February 20, 2012.
• The Man Behind the Man: Mr. Big to Chuck in "Bongo Rock".
• Meaningful Name: The Butcher's the "Butcher" because a butcher deals with meat, and he can summon any meat with his bare hands, and the "Butcher" because butchering something is spoiling it by dealing with very badly, and he is a criminal who spoils the days of people.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: In "Mr. Big Words", every step of Mr. Big's plan works perfectly right up to the very end. Once his victory has been assured, he reveals his ultimate goal to WordGirl: force people to talk with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and sell a book of large words and their definitions so they can understand each other, making millions in the process. When it's pointed out to him that dictionaries exist, he becomes disheartened and willingly lets WordGirl destroy his machine.
• Medium Awareness: At one point, Becky gives a thumbs up and winks at the camera. One of her friends then asks her who she's winking at.
• Memetic Mutation: In-universe: In "Yes Monkey", Mr. Big calls Captain Huggyface a "chipmunk", which causes WordGirl to later refer to him as a "chip monkey".
• Mind-Control Eyes: Anyone under the influence of either Mr. Big's mind control or Victoria Best's hypnotic recorder will show these (glowing green spiral eyes for the former, purple circles for the latter).
• Minion with an F in Evil: At one point Granny May attempts to enlist the help of her hulking grandson Eugene, although this is foiled by Violet when she caters to his timid nature.
• Misleading Package Size: In one episode, Becky receives a Pretty Princess and Magic Pony Power Hour toy in the mail. The toy itself is pretty small, but it comes in a package bigger than even Becky herself.
• Misplaced Retribution: In "The Rise of Miss Power" Mrs. Botsford punishes Becky and TJ with chores for defending Miss Power, along with Scoops who isn't her child and didn't even say anything.
• Mocking Sing-Song: In "Tobey's Masterpiece", Tobey sings "I defeated WordGirl" a couple of times to the tune of "Ring Around the Rosie" when he thinks he finally did just that.
• Mood Whiplash: Among other examples, in "The Young And The Meatless", the viewers go from being amused to being sad to be amused again in the ending. Even The Butcher himself temporarily stops being distraught just so he can find out what a word means.
• Monster Fangirl: One episode reveals Tobey has a fangirl who adores him and is aware of his villainy.
• The Movie: "The Rise of Miss Power" is a special four-part episode that's marketed as a movie.
• Multi-Part Episode: "The Rise of Miss Power" is billed as a Made-for-TV Movie, but is technically a two-part episode (four parts if you count the Two Shorts in both parts as separate episodes).
• Mundane Utility:
  • Tobey's artistically gifted robot, as well as his minor-do-gooding robot in "Tobey, Goes Good".
  • WordGirl uses her super-speed to clean her room in "Super-Grounded".
• My God, What Have I Done?: Becky has a moment of this after she wishes that WordGirl never existed, not knowing that the birthday cake was enchanted due to the Energy Monster's overload.
• Name McAdjective: Steve McClean, a one-off villain from the episode "The Ballad of Steve McClean".
• Never My Fault: When a group of rightfully pissed-off supervillains asks Mr. Big why he hypnotized his allies just to build him a miniature golf course, his justification for his actions is to blame Guy Rich (a villain who faked being richer than him). As he puts it, if Guy Rich hadn't shown up to brag, none of what happened would've happened.
• Never Say "Die": Becky is almost "done for", "finished off", told "good-bye" by a villain preparing to crush her with a giant robot, and we're often told it could be "the end" for WordGirl. Since the main character is 10 and the target audience is not quite that age, we're never told she's going to be killed by the few dangerous bad guys.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Tobey has one of these in the episode "Cherish is the Word" - he draws a Valentine's Day card for WordGirl picturing him holding hands with her and a robot ready to destroy her in the background (the robot happens to be dressed like Cupid and is aiming its bow and arrow).
• No Communities Were Harmed: Fair City is based on Boston. The city's park is modeled after the Boston Public Garden, the baseball stadium resembles Fenway Park, and the subway system resembles The T. The show's animation studio, Soup2Nuts, was headquartered in the Boston area.
• Not a Date: "Have You Seen the Remote?", is a fine example. (On WordGirl's part, at least.) Because we all know that the most efficient way to search for something is to go to the park and eat ice cream.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: None of the characters seem to age. Becky herself has two birthdays in the show, yet she still seems to be a ten-year-old fifth-grader.
• Not Me This Time: In "What A Tangled Knot You Tie, Amazing Rope Guy" many of the other criminals go to jail, despite declaring their innocence, because The Amazing Rope Guy impersonates their identities and crimes.
• No Smoking: Borderline averted in one episode, where Becky's Muggle dad uses a cigarette lighter to light a candle on a magic cupcake. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but even that's pretty envelope-pushing for PBS.
• Not-So-Innocent Whistle: Becky's dad does this once, and Hal Hardbargain does it in "Rat Trap".
• Not Where They Thought: A Running Gag is one character (dubbed Exposition Guy) running to wherever Becky happens to be and screaming about the newest crime taking place. He then asks, "Is this the police station?" and runs elsewhere once the characters inform him that it's not. This cues Becky to transform into WordGirl.
• Oh, Crap!: Dr. Boxleitner gives this expression when Squeaky presses the red button that causes the experiment to read his mind to turn the two into Dr. Two-Brains.
• Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: In "Yes Monkey", the Mayor does this when he pulls out the wrong note card for a prepared speech in presenting yet another key to the city to WordGirl and Captain Huggyface.
• Once per Episode: The vocabulary words, which are noted during the Episode Title Card.
• One-Joke Fake Show: More like a fake movie series, but the episode "A Questionable Pair" has Scoops taking Becky to see the seventh "Whoopsie" movie, which are comedies about a man who keeps disguising himself into wacky situations and saying "Whoopsie!" every time something funny happens.
• One-Steve Limit: While most of the characters, villains or not, have nicknames, this trope is true for the most part. However, it's subverted in "The Ballad of Steve McClean", most likely for subtle comedic effect in that Steve McClean takes Dr. Two-Brains's Number 1 spot on the Top Villains List, and Dr. Two-Brains's original human name was Steven Boxleitner. Fair City isn't big enough for two villains named Steve! After this episode, there is, quite literally, only one Steve because McClean, while showing up for silent background cameos, is never mentioned again.
• Onion Tears: It's shown in one episode that Raul Demiglasse, a chef who challenged others' cooking skills on his TV show, used onion flakes to make his opponents cry.
• Opposing Sports Team: Dr. Two-Brains's soccer team "The Cheese-Eaters", who rival Becky's team "The Butterfly-Unicorn-Laser-Gorillas" in the episode "Bend It Like Becky".
• ...Or So I Heard: Becky pulls quite a few of these after accidentally saying something that she'd only know if she was WordGirl, nearly informing others of her secret.
• Out-of-Character Alert:
  • In "What A Tangled Knot You Tie, Amazing Rope Guy" when The Amazing Rope Guy is impersonating Chuck and accidentally says that he doesn't like sandwiches that much.
  • Glen Furlblam pretends to be Dr. Two-Brains, but he lacks Dr. Two-Brains's vocabulary knowledge and doesn't know that melted cheese is called "fondue".
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • The Butcher in "Ch-ch-ch-changes Day", wearing nothing but a fake mustache.
  • In "Oh What a Tangled Knot You Tie, Amazing Rope Guy", the titular villain uses these combined with his impressive skills to pretend to be his fellow villains and commit crimes. Being as stupid as the Populus is, they believe him to be said villain.
  • Subverted in "The Talented Mr. Birg", where WordGirl spends most of the episode harassing Mr. Birg, a man who sounds and looks exactly like Mr. Big but with a fake mustache. It's later revealed that this man happens to be his doppelganger.
• Parental Bonus: WordGirl's home planet is called "Lexicon", a linguistics term that means "vocabulary".
• Parental Obliviousness: Even aside from WordGirl's parents missing all the clues about her having superpowers, Tobey's mom barely seems to notice the clues that he's getting into trouble, and Eileen's mom has never even appeared (though she's been mentioned), despite her daughter frequently rampaging through the city and destroying things. Even Violet's mom, for another example, is never present when Violet gets involved with the crime or danger (as in "Becky And The Bard").
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": In the episode "Lunch Lady Chuck", Chuck threatens to demolish the whole school with a giant sandwich press, and the only way to stop it is with the password... that he forgot. WordGirl spends half the episode frantically scouring everywhere Chuck went during the day to try to figure out the password, to no avail... until Chuck remembers, just in time, the password was "password".
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: Both "unsmall" and "forgerific" have been used and they're both made-up words.
• Perplexing Plurals: Several characters struggle with the plural of the word "thesaurus" in "I Think I'm A Clone Now".
• Perpetual Frowner: Scoop's grandpa. Even when he's mind-controlled. And he's not even worried when the villains attack.
• Photo-Booth Montage: From the episode "Theme Park WHAM-page".
• Picky Eater: Chuck's boss in "Chuck the Nice Pencil-Selling Guy" hates all sandwiches except grilled cheese.
• Playing a Tree: Scoops gets cast as a wall in the school play. It's an interesting twist, considering he saves the play when the other characters are off dealing with villains by narrating it himself.
• Police Are Useless: Because if they were actually at all useful, then WordGirl wouldn't have nearly as much to do. Lampshaded pretty blatantly in "Ch-ch-ch-change Day". Becky and Bob are trapped by the Butcher in a bank vault surrounded by customers and are unable to transform into WordGirl and Captain Huggyface. Pressed for options, Becky suggests with a tone of hopelessness that maybe the police will solve the problem. Outside the bank, one of the police officers asks the chief for direction and he is forced to admit that he doesn't know what to do because normally WordGirl would have solved the problem by now.
• Poke the Poodle: The titular villain of "Chuck!" seems to think washing your face with hand soap (which he's done) is Beyond Redemption-worthy. Ditto with him going outside on a hot day shoeless and then briefly walking on the cement before jumping onto nearby grass.
• Power Incontinence: In “A Little Bigger WordGirl”, WordGirl is accidentally made bigger by Dr. Two-Brains’ Shrink Ray and ends up being unable to control her powers. She practices obtaining better control at her larger size, though she still tends to stumble about.
• Punny Name:
  • Ms. Libri and Ms. Dewey, who own a book store and manage a library respectively, among many others, like Hunter Throbheart, Hal Hardbargain, Sonny Days, Guy Rich...
  • The Butcher's the "Butcher" because a butcher deals with meat, and he can summon any meat with his bare hands, and the "Butcher" because butchering something is spoiling it by dealing with very badly, and he is a criminal who spoils the days of people. And as WordGirl points out, he also butchers the English language with his frequent Buffy Speak.
• Put on a Prison Bus: Many episodes end with one or more police officers walking into the scene and leading off the villain of the day after their latest scheme is foiled.
• "Rashomon"-Style: "A Hero, a Thief, a Store, and its Owner" has the events of a robbery told from the perspectives of Reginald, Chuck, and WordGirl, with each story being wildly different. The narrator confirms that WordGirl's account was the closest to the truth.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: In "Wham Up":
  The Mayor: All by assisting the city's favorite superhero, Smile and put hands up... Uh, what? (Aside) You should have put it in parentheses.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Miss Power's speech to WordGirl, and, to a lesser extent, how she talks to everyone. Gal loves to Break Them by Talking.
• Recap Episode: "A Better Mousetrap" is spent showing various clips from many of the previous episodes, mostly centering around WordGirl's dealings with Dr. Two-Brains.
• Rejection Affection: It appears that, regardless of what Tobey does, WordGirl will never love him back.
• Ret-Gone: After missing much of her birthday party due to having to stop crime as WordGirl, Becky wishes that WordGirl never existed. She finds herself in an alternate reality where Chuck the Evil Sandwich-Making Guy rules the city due to there being no superhero to stop him. Becky also loses the ability to transform into WordGirl, because WordGirl technically doesn't exist anymore. In the end, she undoes her wish and restores the original reality.
• Revenge of the Sequel: Parodied. Lady Redundant Woman's second focus episode is called "Return of the Reprise of Lady Redundant Woman", a joke about how said character is themed around being redundant.
• The Rivals: The Ming family are rivals to the Botsford's.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Used in this interview with WordGirl.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Causes Becky's frustration in "A World without WordGirl". It doesn't help that Bob and the narrator are there to railroad her into saving the day.
• Saying Too Much: In "By Jove, You've Wrecked My Robot!", Tobey catches himself a bit too late when his list of reasons why Becky is similar to WordGirl starts heading into romantic territory.
• Secret Identity: Becky has to keep her identity as WordGirl a secret from everyone; even her adoptive family doesn't know her true heritage.
• Sampling: In one episode, a BGM track samples the drums from Daft Punk's Da Funk.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  • One episode features a villain inducing this in people to sell dictionaries.
  • The Walk And Talk WordGirl doll also uses this, when she's not outright using made-up words or using them incorrectly.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  Beatrice Bixby: He's just lucky that my thirty-minute lunch break is only a half-hour long.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Despite how painfully obvious it is that he's lying, Tobey will adamantly deny having a crush on WordGirl whenever someone points it out.
• Ship Tease:
  • Violet has some with Scoops.
  • Scoops gets some with Becky once he learns of her Secret Identity because sharing the secret brings them closer together.
• Shoehorned First Letter: In "Art in the Park", Violet states that the "three P's" needed for her and Becky's performance are paintings, poetry, and... "music".
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Show Within a Show:
  • A variation: The WordGirl episodes are followed by a segment featuring a Game Show that stars its characters (and Captain Huggyface). Like the main segment, they're intended to teach the meaning of words to the audience.
  • There's also the Pretty Princess and Magic Pony Power Hour. The special "The Rise of Miss Power" lets viewers watch an episode of it during the interstitials.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: During her final encounter with WordGirl, Miss Power tries to Break Her By Talking several times, but to no avail.
  Miss Power: You're too small.
  WordGirl: I'll grow.
  Miss Power: You're too weak.
  WordGirl: I'll get stronger.
  Miss Power: You don't have the guts!
  WordGirl: I'm here, aren't I?
  Miss Power: [...] Well I think you're a loser! I think you're a failure.
  WordGirl: Really? Because from where I'm standing, [she clicks her tongue] it looks like I'm winning.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Before her final "fight" with her, WordGirl gives Miss Power some heroic speech, and the latter responds by saying it was garbage.
• Sick Episode: "Chuck E. Sneeze" has WordGirl come down with a cold, but still goes out to try and fight Chuck. He tries to steer clear of her but catches her cold when she sneezes on him. Bitter that he can't taste sandwiches, he buys a giant nose to blow people away from the deli so they can't have sandwiches either. He and WordGirl try to fight, but they're way too sick to concentrate. Fittingly, the episode's featured words are "avoid" and "contagious" (i.e., Chuck tries and fails to avoid WordGirl's contagious cold).
• A Simple Plan: The plot of the appropriately titled "A Simple Plan" is Dr. Two-Brains trying to pull one off, only for his Complexity Addiction to get in the way.
• Skyward Scream: The Butcher provides a prime example of this in "The Young and the Meatless".
• Solid Clouds: In "The Rise of Miss Power, Part 3", the episode starts with WordGirl discussing her frustrations to Miss Power while they are both sitting on clouds.
• Something Only They Would Say:
  • Becky frequently says things that only WordGirl would say and vice-versa, nearly revealing her identity.
  • From "Mobot Knows Best":
    Becky: Why did you write "Robots forever"?
    Tobey: You wouldn't understand.
• Spelling for Emphasis: While referring to herself and discussing how she's gonna take down WordGirl, Victoria spells out the word "best" in "Don't Mess with the Best".
• Spinoff: WordGirl started as a series of shorts that appeared after Maya & Miguel.
• Spit Take: Becky and Violet do this in "Mount Rush here" after trying coffee for the first time and hating it.
• Spiteful Spoiler: In the episode "Princess Triana and the Ogre of Castlebum," Tobey steals the titular book on the night of its release and threatens to reveal the ending to WordGirl, a big fan of the series, if she tries to stop him.
• Spoiler Title: At the beginning of "Two-Brains Forgets", Dr. Two-Brains discovers WordGirl's secret identity as Becky Botsford. Guess what happens at the end of the episode...
• Spoonerism: In "WordGirl Makes a Mistake", the Lexonite meteor that lands in the city cause WordGirl to become weak and keep messing up her vocabulary. One such instance is her mixing up the letters in "My knees are a little weak", which comes out as "My wheels are a little sneak" instead.
• Status Quo Is God: Averted in "Invasion of The Bunny Lovers". Scoops learns WordGirl's secret identity and promises to keep it a secret, defying both his own reporter's instincts and the long-running tendency of wiping the memories of anyone who learns WordGirl's identity. Followed up in "News Girl", where the school paper's new Intrepid Reporter Rose captures Becky's transformation on tape and presents it to Scoops, but he convinces her to keep it a secret.
• Stealth Pun:
  • In "Answer All My Questions and Win Stuff", Captain Huggyface tries to grab Seymour Orlando Smooth but keeps sliding down his body, as if he were unusually smooth.
  • The Butcher's the "Butcher" because a butcher deals with meat, and he can summon any meat with his bare hands, and the "Butcher" because butchering something is spoiling it by dealing with very badly, and he is a criminal who spoils the days of people.
• Sucks at Dancing: Becky's idea of dancing is pumping her arms up and down while awkwardly shimmying◊. She also dances like this as WordGirl, but it still doesn't compromise her secret identity.
  WordGirl: Let's face the music and dance!
  [WordGirl dances]
  Narrator: Oh, my...
  [Huggyface cringes]
  Narrator: [softly] Stop.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • "Hi! I'm NOT The Butcher!"
  • Also commonly employed during Becky's Blatant Lies.
• Sweet Tooth: Many of the characters are shown loving dessert, often eating too much at once (e.g. Mr. Botsford, The Whammer, etc.).
• Take a Third Option: In "Change Day", Becky and Bob are trapped in a bank vault and faced with either letting The Butcher get away with bank robbery or revealing their secret identities as WordGirl and Huggyface to everyone. They take the third option by tricking The Butcher into opening the vault.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Dr. Two-Brains is guilty of this in the episode "Showdown at the Super Secret Spaceship Hideout".
• Talking Is a Free Action: Once an Episode, WordGirl has to define the word of the day, and often the opportunity comes up during the climax. Even when she's in the middle of a battle, she'll have enough time to eloquently explain what the word means without the villain taking a hit.
• Talking to Themself: This has happened many times, like in the short "Mouse Trap" when Dr. Two-Brains argues with his former self, Steven Boxleitner, or when he rebukes TJ in "The Homerun King".
• Tangled Family Tree: Three instances show in the kids' family trees for a school project in one episode.
  • Todd's parents are brother and sister.
  • Violet's dad is also her mother's brother.
  • A "Botsford" ancestor (on Tim's side of the family) looking like Sally.
• The Teaser: Normally not used, but seen before the title theme in "The Rise of Miss Power" to introduce Miss Power.
• Techno Babble: Occasionally used by Tobey and Dr. Two-Brains, like this example from "Summertime":
  Tobey: Like I have the time to explain the intricacies of alarm-block-based quantum mechanics to an aggravating nuisance like you.
• Tempting Fate: At the end of "By Jove, You've Wrecked My Robot!", when Mrs. Botsford tells Tobey he's in big trouble, he scoffs at her and tells her she isn't his mother. Cue the sudden arrival of Mrs. McCallister, complete with ominous lightning flashes.
• Thanksgiving Episode: "Guess Who's Coming To Thanksgiving Dinner".
• That Cloud Looks Like...: Done at the end of "Living in the Granny's Paradise".
• Thick-Line Animation: It's the page image. What do you expect? All the characters are animated with rather thick and bold lines.
• Thinker Pose: "Seeds of Doubt" features a famous statue called The Ponderer.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Prof. Boxleitner's reaction when Squeaky is about to push the "Holy Cow! Don't Press This Button!" button.
  Prof. Boxleitner: Oh boy. This is gonna sting.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: WordGirl doesn't kill or even harm any villain she's up against (save for Tobey's robots and Lady Redundant Woman's copies). No surprise considering it's a family show.
• Tooth Strip: Every character has undivided strips of teeth. Briefly averted in "Of Two Minds" when WordGirl gives a toothy fake smile when she visits Dr. Two-Brains.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Snappy Snaps for the Botsfords and the city in general (it seems to be their default cereal).
• Training Montage: Quite a few episodes have some type of this, usually lampshaded. Examples include "Monkey-Robot Showdown", "I Think I'm a Clone Now", and "Earth Day Girl".
• Treehouse of Fun: TJ and Becky have one, usually used to hold the WordGirl Fan Club meetings.
• Underestimating Badassery: Unsurprisingly for someone as arrogant as Tobey, he dismisses Miss Power (who's a powerful fighter) as a mere "helper" for WordGirl. That didn't end well...
• Undesirable Prize: The prizes on the "May I Have a Word?" game show segments are almost inevitably some form of this.
• Unishment: In "House Arrest", Chuck the Evil Sandwich-Making Guy is placed under house arrest at the Botsfords' residence while his jail cell is being repainted. He enjoys the way Mrs. Botsford treats him as a guest enough that when he's free to go, he deliberately commits crimes in an attempt to get arrested and go back to the house.
• Valentine's Day Episode: "Cherish is the Word".
• Verbal Tic: Mrs. Botsford typically can't speak a sentence without bursting into laughter at some point midway.
• Verbing Nouny: The episode "Judging Butcher" uses this naming convention.
• Villains Out Shopping: In "Department Store Tobey", Becky runs into Tobey when they're both shopping with their parents. Who is taking forever, incidentally!
• Villain Team-Up:
  • Featured in, "Mousezilla". Tobey and Dr. Two Brains build a giant robotic mouse. Although it starts well, the team-up breaks down when they argue about what they should do with the trapped WordGirl.
  • "Too Loud Crew".
  • In "The Fill-In", The Butcher shows up as a temporary fill-in for Dr. Two-Brains's henchman, Charlie. Dr. Two-Brains tells him that he's too good to be just a temporary fill-in and tries to insist on one of these instead, but The Butcher turns him down flat because "they never work" and even tells him "It's Not You, It's Me". He later jets in the middle of a robbery when Charlie returns.
  • Chuck teams up with Nocan in "Nocan the Ingredient Finding Guy", and it works out about as well as his team-ups with the Whammer.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Steve McClean has swarms of fans in his episode, despite being a known criminal.
• The Voiceless:
  • Scoops's grandpa hasn't said a single word. If he did, it probably wouldn't be anything nice judging by the look of his perpetual frown.
  • Violet's mother has never said anything on-screen. Presumably if she did she would sound a lot like Violet.
• The War Room: Fair City has one, as shown in "Scary with a Side of Butter". Among them are the Mayor, the Police Commissioner, and Brent the Handsome Successful Everybody-Loves-Him Sandwich-Making Guy.
• We Can Rule Together: In "The Rise of Miss Power", Miss Power tries this with WordGirl until she gets wise.
• We Interrupt This Program/This Just In!: Virtually every time Becky sits down to watch TV. It's used as a plot device for her to find out when and where villains are causing trouble.
• We Used to Be Friends: WordGirl and Dr. Boxleitner used to be friends until he transformed into the evil Dr. Two-Brains.
• We'll See About That:
  • Mrs. Botsford says this to Dr. Two-Brains when he says that he and his henchmen will win the soccer game in "Bend it Like Becky".
  • Chuck also uses it on WordGirl in "Chuck With a Side of Brent" when she tells him "It's over!"
  • TJ uses it in "Dinner or Consequences" when Becky wants to use a family trial to prove her innocence and get out of being "mega-grounded".
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Literally in "Mouse Army". When Dr. Two-Brains creates an army of super-intelligent mice, they are all reverted to normal in the end... except for one, but we never hear of it again. In the episode "Birthday Town", Mr. Botsford is watching TV and the mouse is seen in the news. It seems to have furthered its career in science and fused a cat and dog's minds.
  • Mouse-Zilla is shown to have survived WordGirl throwing it into a lake, but it never returns as well.
  • In "The Rise of Miss Power" Miss Power steals the SparkleToes toy Chuck bought and gives it to WordGirl. By the end of the special this is completely forgotten about and it's not shown whether WordGirl kept it or gave it back.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Tobey's robots are the only enemies WordGirl is ever seen punching and kicking. Every other villain usually just finds some way to subdue or tie up. She's even hurled them into the sun as they cry, "Noooooooooooooo...!"
  • Lady Redundant Woman's copies get destroyed right and left, yet in "The Young And The Meatless" and even "Lady Redundant Woman Gets The Blues", it's implied that the copies have separate personalities and even feelings. Dupey doesn't get turned back into paper in "The Young And The Meatless", most likely because she is shown to experience love.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: More like, "Where The Hell Is Fair City?".
• White Flag: When WordGirl has been falsely jailed, it's up to Captain HuggyFace to stop every single villain WordGirl's ever faced going on a rampage all at once. While a capable crime-fighter, this proves to be too much for the good captain and he soon gives in by waving a white flag.
• Would Rather Suffer: More precisely, Tobey would rather face his mother's wrath (despite being scared of it) than get his cavity filled in in "WordGirl vs. Tobey vs. The Dentist".
• You Are Grounded!: In "Super-Grounded" and the two-parter "Dinner or Consequences", Becky (a child) experiences this. Special note, however, goes to the latter in which she gets "mega-grounded" after missing two of her father's special dinners. This means that not only does she get sent to her room, but her room has been cleared of all her favorite things and she's not allowed to go anywhere or do anything fun.
• You, Get Me Coffee: In "Chuck With a Side of Brent", Chuck's brother Brent resurfaces and apologizes for having been such a bad sidekick to Chuck and begging for another chance. Chuck reluctantly agrees and asks him if he promises to do every evil and villainous thing he tells him. Brent agrees and Chuck tells him "You can start by picking up my dry-cleaning. Oh, and I have some ironing I need to be done too."
• Your Costume Needs Work: TJ consistently tells his sister that her WordGirl impersonation isn't very good.
• You're Just Jealous:
  • A couple of times Victoria claims the titular heroine is just being jelly of her. In her debut, for instance, she claims Becky was being jealous when she called her out on the fact she didn't win all the awards she has.
  • At least in Tobey's mind, Becky was just being jelly when she told him he shouldn't be sending a robot in his mommy's place for a parent-teacher conference.

---

The Comic-Book Adaptation provides examples of:

• Argument of Contradictions: Tobey and Becky get into one about whether or not WordGirl supports Tobey's latest venture in "The Incredible Shrinking Allowance".
• Art Shift: Most of the stories are drawn by Steve Young and Andy Price, whose art styles differ greatly from those of the show.
• Balloon Belly: Captain HuggyFace gets one in "Fondue, Fondon't" after eating all of Dr. Two-Brains' cheese.
• Big "NO!":
  • Chuck does one in "Think Big" when he realizes that his brother Brent is selling the world's biggest sandwich.
  • Tobey does one at the end of "The Incredible Shrinking Allowance" after his mother tells him that he's grounded for a year.
• Enemy Mine: In one comic, WordGirl teams up with Tobey against the Coalition of Malice.
• Here We Go Again!: After WordGirl stops the Butcher from stealing the Spiral Ham Van in "The Ham Van Makes the Man", the comic ends with Mr. Botsford reading in the newspaper that the Baked Potato Buggy is going to pass through town and Becky seeing Kid Potato approaching the buggy.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: In "The Ham Van Makes the Man", Becky excuses herself so she and Bob can transform and stop the Butcher by saying that they need to "go do a thing".
• Instant Fan Club: "Super Fans" has TJ arranging a WordGirl convention, with the fans showing up acting like this and hindering WordGirl in her attempts to fight Lady Redundant Woman. When WordGirl finally gets used to them and decides to incorporate them into her plan to stop the villainess, their attentions are instantly diverted to a teenage heartthrob.
• I Resemble That Remark!: When Brent says that Chuck always feels the need to compete with him, Chuck responds by getting into an Argument of Contradictions with him over how he's not competitive.
  Chuck: No, I don't... times a million. Ha! I win!
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: In "Fashion Disaster", Mr. Big is apparently in possession of so much lexonite that he can put a piece of it in every one of his mass-produced fashion clothes.
• Laser-Guided Broadcast: Right when Chuck and Dr. Two-Brains are talking about how much they feel like failures in "Think Big", a TV ad comes on about the book about how to be more successful than Mr. Big is selling.
• Loophole Abuse: In "The Coalition of Malice", the villain's code of conduct prevents Tobey from getting directly involved in WordGirl's plan to stop the Coalition. It does not, however, prevent him from being involved in preparations for the plan or having his robot hold the rope she uses to tie up the villains.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: WordGirl's plan to stop the Coalition of Malice involves her, Tobey, Captain HuggyFace, and Tobey's robots putting on fake mustaches and dressing as postmen to deliver letters to the villains. Naturally, none of the five villains involved see through this ruse.
• Rain of Something Unusual: In "Fondue, Fondon't", Dr. Two-Brains' latest invention makes it rain cheese.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: In "Super Fans", the WordGirl Fanclub build a satellite which they use to find WordGirl wherever she is. It is later revealed that they built in one of these (complete with a red button), which WordGirl uses to destroy the satellite. TJ lampshades that it wasn't a good idea.
• Take That!: At Lady Gaga, in "Fashion Disaster":
  Fashion Judge 1: Clothes made of meat? Uch! Who would wear something like that?
  Fashion Judge 2: Only someone desperate for attention. Next!
• Villain Team-Up:
  • In the first issue, five of Wordgirl's villains form "The Coalition of Malice".
  • In "Think Big", Dr. Two-Brains, Chuck the Evil Sandwich-Making Guy, and Mr. Big team up to make a grilled cheese sandwich the size of a city.
• Wingding Eyes:
  • Tobey gets heart eyes at one point while talking to his darling WordGirl in "The Coalition of Malice".
  • Becky has the same reaction when Scoops asks to interview her in "The Ham Van Makes the Man", plus a bunch of other hearts appearing in the background.
  • Dr. Two-Brains gets cheese eyes when he sees that his cheese ray turned various items around his lab into cheese while he and Wordgirl were fighting over it in "Fondue, Fondon't".
• You Are Grounded!: At the end of "The Incredible Shrinking Allowance", Mrs. McCallister grounds Tobey (a ten-year-old) for a year as punishment for his latest scheme.

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