YMMV / Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

• Accidental Innuendo: The episode "Monsters Are Real" has Ickis freak out because a human photographs him. What's odd is that he describes it as a human "flashing" him, which takes on rather risque implications when taken out of context.
• Cargo Ship: Ickis falls for a Judy doll in the episode "Blind Love, Monster Love".
• Cult Classic: Compared to the success of fellow Nicktoons Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is less successful, in part due to the average writing and the far less amount of episodes, making it an obscure show. Still, there are fans who do find it creepy and enjoyable.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • It makes some sense that human toenails have such immense value in the monster world over fingernails. Toenails take longer to grow out than fingernails.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Throughout the series, there are a few references to the "Era of Disbelief", a period sometime in the forties when humans stopped believing in monsters. If one tracks all the hints, one can work out that this period lasted from 1943-1945 — the period of World War II where the Allies managed to turn back the Axis Powers. Since the show later establishes that bad times for humans are good times for monsters, the implication is that the monsters gorged themselves during the Great Depression and the Holocaust, nearly disappeared as the world economy recovered and the Axis fell, and then recovered thanks to the Red Scare and the Cold War.
  • When the gang meet Krumm's uncle Grungy in "Monsters, Get Real", he's introduced stalking along behind them like a predator until he and Krumm recognize each other. Thing is, as the previous episode established and other episodes will hint at, Monstrous Cannibalism is perfectly alright in this world. When you put the two together, you realize Grungy might have been stalking Ickis and Oblina in hopes of eating them!
  • The first episode reveals that monsters find the idea of eating humans disgusting. This may seen comforting at first, until you remember that things that are disgusting to monsters are nice and pleasant to humans in this universe.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • People who've seen this cartoon along with Monsters, Inc. might get the idea that both this cartoon and the film have similar plot settings since both involve monsters who need to scare in order to collect energy for their society. Come Monsters University, the setting of Monsters Inc. is even more similar to this cartoon, as the film involves monsters going to school in order to learn how to scare. Mike and Sulley even fill out roles similar to two of the three main characters of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters; a super studious and hardworking student that relies heavily on books, and another student who is generally lazy but pressured with living up to the family legacy of being the best scarers.
  • Thanks to Cow and Chicken, this show is not the only one that has Charlie Adler voicing a red monster with mood swings... nor is it the first time he's voiced a rabbit-looking character who goes to school.
  • A bespectacled character on a Nickelodeon show, who is determined to prove that a supernatural race is real, despite other people thinking he's crazy. Will we ever see this again? Yes (twice, in fact).
  • In "Smile and Say Oblina", Oblina gets hooked up with a metal device wired to her jaws with corkscrews and a timer on it. Fast forward to 2004, and we have a movie featuring a torture device that looks similar to that.
  • Late in the series, Oblina gets more episodes that focus on her. Not too surprisingly, she would ultimately end up being the main character to get playable representation in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and the third Nickelodeon Kart Racers game.
• Tear Jerker: Ickis realizing the Judy doll he's fallen head over heels for is just a puppet. He takes her back to where he found her and gently props her up, and we get what might very well be one of the saddest moments in the series.
  Ickis: Well... nobody's perfect.
  (close up on the Judy puppet's grinning face)
  Ickis: (smiling sadly) ...But you were pretty close.
  (he walks off into the moonlight, and the episode ends)
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character & They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The premise of the show is that it is about a school for monsters who scare people for assignments, and for their own enjoyment. The issue is that too much focus is given to the four main characters (Ickis, Krumm, Oblina, and the Gromble), giving little screen time to many of the other monsters (Horrifica, Hairyette, Zimbo and the Snorch, Dizzle, Smeldra, etc.) leaving them as either background or one-time characters. Their own methods of scaring humans is mostly not shown to the viewers.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Ickis. Actually, most of the monsters had this tendency, but in Ickis' case his appearance made it more difficult for him to be taken seriously. At least until he gets bigger... Ickis seem to be this in universe, given Oblina's comment on a photo of him.
    Oblina: This really does not do him justice, he's much uglier.
  • Vlorana in "The Great Race" is adorably Moe, despite having three eyes, no nose, eight toes to each foot, and a slimy green tongue so big she can use it as a surfboard.

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