YMMV / Goof Troop

• Accidental Innuendo: In "Wrecks, Lies & Videotape" Peg says her secret weapon against Pete is her mouth. While the context of the scene makes it clear she means she's going to yell at him, if you take away the context it sounds like she's going to... ahem, perform certain oral services on him to bring him over to her side.
• Adorkable:
  • Goofy, thanks to his ditzy, clumsy and awkward, but well meaning and good natured personality and love for his son, Max. Also, he loves everything from the 70s.
  • Max. He's unflappably positive, socially awkward around the girl he likes, and he is Goofy's son (even if he'd never admit it), but we love him for it.
  • PJ takes both the "dork" part and the "adorable" part pretty far, being a baby-faced fat kid with an extremely socially awkward personality that makes Max look like a smooth operator and a voice that never changed.
  • Peg may have a dry sense of humor and the Only Sane Woman, but that doesn’t make her less of an adorable dork.
  • An energetic chatterbox, Pistol’s mannerisms and playfulness really stand out.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Many, although most of them have some prevailing attitude.
  • Pete: Is he a horrible person who deserves everything he gets, or a Designated Monkey Jerkass Woobie? Which side you fall on seems to rely heavily on how much of a Woobie you think PJ is and on how blameless you find Goofy. Additionally, is his motivation for exploiting and abusing PJ purely for his own personal gain, or does he legitimately see himself as toughening his son up? Alternatively, is he afraid that PJ is too kind and trusting, and hopes that PJ will eventually become as hardened as his old man?
  • Max: Is he a somewhat flawed but overall good person, or is he an Easily Forgiven Jerkass?
  • PJ: How intelligent or unintelligent is he? Is he a generic stereotype of some sort or a very deep, nuanced character?
  • Peg: Is she reasonable with her anger about Pete, or does she treat him unfairly? This often relies on your particular interpretation of Pete as well.
• Awesome Music: The theme song is quite the banger, featuring a 90s hip-hop style, some feel-good lyrics, and a very catchy beat.
• Base-Breaking Character: Comments about Pete are common and pretty much evenly split between "I love him, he's so hilarious!" and "I hate him, he's so mean to Goofy/PJ/everyone!" And then there are the fans who don't think these are mutually exclusive. Overexposure might also prove to be a factor. Pete has more focus episodes than any other member of the gang, despite Goofy and Max being the designated protagonists, especially around the middle of the series. So whatever your feelings on Pete are (be they positive or negative), they will only grow stronger as the show progresses.
• Bizarro Episode: Even by Goofy standards, some episodes can feel out of place, since the show is meant to be more realistic and down-to-Earth than most versions of the character, Toon Physics aside.
  • The episodes in which Goofy reads to Max the history of various ancestors. Aside from the framing device, there is nothing to tie these into the series continuity and they play more like Classic Disney Shorts than Goof Troop episodes, up to and including putting Pete in the role of a traditional villain in four of them. Peg and Pistol are also used in the stories but multiple times are given roles counter to their canonical characterization, Pistol's character is never related to Pete's, and PJ is not seen once in any of these episodes, story or framing device.
  • "Come Fly with Me" and "Dr. Horatio's Magic Orchestra" are probably the most out there episodes of the series. The first has Pete being turned into a fly by his new computer and dragged by other flies into an all out war on his house. The latter involves Goofy and Pete buying a chest that contains a bunch of instruments with legs that play "When the Saints Go Marching In" non-stop, which drives Pete crazy. No one ever questions why the instruments are alive, or where they came from. We later find out the reason Pete hates the song is because he messed up a school band performance as a kid, so Goofy and his family convince him to face his fear and play the song with the instruments. Finally cured, Pete and the instruments keep playing all night long, and the whole story is then revealed to be a recurring nightmare that a sentient tuba is having.
• Cant Unhear It:
  • Fans of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius can't listen to PJ and not hear Rob Paulsen's proto-Carl Wheezer voice (Paulsen has admitted that Carl is basically PJ with less of a 90s drawl).
  • Jim Cummings voices Pete in this series and still does to this very day.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: The Green Aesop from "A Goof of the People" isn't so much "protect the environment" or even "don't pollute" as it is "don't pollute on purpose for no reason." This is Played for Laughs, and the characters very much know how obvious this is; the only characters in favor of it are the Corrupt Corporate Executive Muck Monster doing it and (ostensibly) Pete, who was only taking a bribe.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In practically every episode, Pete treats his neighbors and his family badly, but in hilarious and cartoony ways. It is both wrong and funny at the same time and also makes his comeuppance just as fitting.
• Draco in Leather Pants: A group of fans whitewash Pete's actions by blowing his rare moments of clarity out of proportion and downplaying or ignoring his routine mistreatment of other characters.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Max's cousin Debbie is extremely popular considering she was only in the episode Leader of the Pack, as is the one-shot principal Ms. Pennypacker from the episode Date with Destiny. Several fanartists will draw the two of them along with Peg.
  • Peg is by all means a main character, but she only has a couple of limelight episodes and is absent in the movies. Still, she has much more fan art than all the characters combined, to the points where you’d think she’s the star.
• Fanfic Fuel: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck never make an appearance in Goof Troop or its two movies, A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie, outside of one cameo in person, and it's entirely possible that Goofy doesn’t know them in this show's universe. So it's anyone's guess what their relationship with Max would have been like as two friends of his father ^note Max does co-exist with the rest of Goofy's friend group in stories set in alternate continuities, like House Of Mouse (which also had Roxanne showing up) and Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas, where some interactions happen., or how they would have felt about Goofy's relationship with Pete, or what they would say about Pete's relationship with his own family.
• Fanon:
  • Peg often defends Goofy against Pete, and in "Goofin' Up the Social Ladder", Peg actually kisses Goofy on the lips. It is never revealed why Peg has such a loyalty towards Goofy (even favoring him well enough over Pete), but a theory is that Peg and Goofy used to have a thing in the high school (indeed when Goofy briefly left Spoonerville, Peg married Pete). Alternately, Peg is having an affair with Goofy. This one would be strictly denied by Disney, of course. A third scenario is that Peg, being disappointed with Pete's Jerkassery and drawn to Goofy's kind nature, has grown an attraction towards her old schoolmate that manifests in the moments like the aforementioned kiss.
  • Another popular fanon is that Pete is more abusive towards his family than the show is allowed to demonstrate, mostly revolving around how PJ often shows much stronger fear of repercussions from Pete, while Max seems more concerned about Goofy's disappointment.
  • One theory as to why Peg and Pistol are absent in A Goofy Movie is that Peg finally got fed up with Pete and left him, taking Pistol with her. Some even combine the two and say that Pete finding out about Peg's attraction to Goofy was The Last Straw between them.
  • The popular theory about the fate of Max's mom, is that she died by illness. Her dying when giving birth to Max is also a good option amongside fans.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: There is a lot of Fan Art around the internet shipping Goofy with Peg - the wife of his neighbor and friend. Some people feel like Goofy and Peg have a great chemistry that sometimes is seen as flirty on Peg's side. They also point out how poorly Pete treats Peg, making the Nice Guy Goofy a better fit for her. There is a popular fan theory of Goofy and Peg having an affair - which of course doesn't fit into a kid-friendly produced by Disney.
• Franchise Original Sin: While it was the first show of The Disney Afternoon to steer it away from its beloved fantasy/adventure roots and do a Slice of Life sitcom unambiguously set in contemporary times, and not entirely innocent of Totally Radical trappings, it wasn't with the intention of capitalizing on trend of the time: most classic Goofy shorts are set in suburbia to begin with, and Goofy himself is often depicted as an innocent "everyman," so the Bumbling Dad role isn't too far-fetched. It just so happened that the reality of the time it was created was the 1990s (if anything, the far-more-beloved spinoff movie is significantly guiltier of misusing 90s slang). Compare this to Quack Pack, which was trying to capitalize on 90s youth culture and starred a classic Disney character whose personality is a lot more one-note (and whose voice is a lot less tolerable in a series rather than in shorts).
• Harsher in Hindsight: It's depressing to see Goofy and/or Pete enjoying their time with their respective families when you realize that each Canon Foreigner character from the series got Put on a Bus in the years following and have been mostly absent from any new Disney media since 2004's Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas (Max was last seen in photos carried by Goofy in a 2020 DuckTales episode). Even though it's obviously because Disney was simply retiring the characters due to their waining popularity at the time, the fact that Max and PJ technically grew up in real time over the course of all of the spin-off material can read as a depressingly realistic depiction of a family slowly growing apart as the children outgrow their parents.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "Max-Imum Insecurity", Pete briefly mistakes PJ for Peg and grumbles about how his voice should hurry up and change already. While this is funny without hindsight since PJ isn't even a teenager yet, it's even funnier after the release of An Extremely Goofy Movie, where he is an adult and his voice still hasn't changed.
  • Max's Rhetorical Question Blunder in "Slightly Dinghy" is funny to begin with because PJ's relationship with his father leaves much to be desired. After A Goofy Movie, it's funnier because Max also compares going on a fishing trip with his dad negatively to unpleasant things.
  • Despite all the mean things Pete does to him, Goofy still considers Pete to be a close friend. In Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, this becomes a reality between the two, in which Pete was portrayed as a lovable trickster, rather than an abusive jerk.
• Jerkass Woobie: Pete sometimes fits this trope depending on the writer. Sometimes his karmic punishment can tread into Karmic Overkill, and occasionally he won't have done anything wrong in the episode itself, which can make him appear to be a Designated Monkey depending on what parts of the show you've seen. But most fans will agree that he deserves at least some of his punishment because he's, well, a Jerkass.
• Karmic Overkill: In certain episodes, Pete's punishment can outweigh his misdeeds, such as "Inspector Goofy", or his misdeeds will be hard to pinpoint to begin with, such as "Cabana Fever." Whether his cruelty in other episodes is bad enough to justify it depends on who you ask.
• Love to Hate: Like in the classic shorts, Pete has a sizable fanbase of people who love watching him get his comeuppance. He is loved for being an antagonist with depth, realistic motivations, a number of relateable flaws, always chewing the scenery, and a Laughably Evil personality. He is hated for selfishly and dishonestly mistreating the two most sympathetic characters on the show on a habitual basis (and others on occasion).
• Mandela Effect: People frequently misremember that it had been said that Max's unseen mother had passed away from unknown causes. They think Goofy once said something along the lines of "She's up there amongst the stars" in regards to her, but no such line was ever uttered and Max's mother has never been mentioned once.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The video game. It's the boopinest!
  • "Yeah." ^Note(the voice byte heard twice in the intro song, and once during the end credits instrumental)
• Moe:
  • Max. He’s a mischievous ball of fun and looks like a miniature version of Goofy. The six-year-old version of him in Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas is especially adorable. It helps that he’s voiced by an actual kid in that film.
  • PJ is the polar opposite of his father and the most oppressed, so it's hard not to gush when he’s around.
  • Pistol is a playful little ball of energy and the youngest of the main cast.
  • Peg can count, too, considering her Adorkable Genki Girl nature.
• More Popular Replacement: Max is far more popular than his obscure predecessor from the Classic Disney Shorts, Goofy Junior/George, to the point that most aren't aware that Goofy even had a son prior to Goof Troop.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Talent To The Max" heads into some pretty creepy territory for the show. A sentient magician's hat calls out to Max when the boy is all alone and his self-esteem has just hit a low point, promising to make him a star. From there, the hat inflates Max's ego, tries to convince him that he doesn't need anyone else, that everyone around him will only hold him back out of jealousy, and that Max should only trust him. Anyone who's familiar with emotional manipulation will immediately recognize the red flags: the hat is trying to isolate Max from everyone else who cares about him and make the boy entirely dependent on him. In particular, he does his best to turn Max against PJ, because PJ is the biggest threat to him. The whole time, Max has his doubts and suspicions that something isn't right, but it's not until the hat tries to turn him against Goofy, his own father, that it finally clicks to Max what he's doing. Once Max tries to reject him, the hat reveals that he doesn't really need him, only his body, which he seizes total control over, making Max into his puppet. From there, the hat unleashes magical chaos, and tries to kill Goofy and Peg in equally gruesome ways. If the hat's old owner hadn't arrived when he did, an eleven year old boy would have been forced to watch his father and his best friend's mother get horribly murdered.
  • "Come Fly With Me" ends with the three flies having been grown to person-sized and on Pete's doorstep, still wanting to execute him.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The game is considered to be an underrated classic, points going especially to the co-op.
• Older Than They Think
  • PJ was actually created in 1942 in the Donald Duck cartoon "Bellboy Donald".
  • This is also not the first time Goofy had been depicted with a son. Several early color cartoons such as Aquamaina and Father's Day Off (most of which are from the era where Goofy was more of an "everyman" character named George Geef) depicted him having a "Goofy Jr." and even a wife. There is even a joke about this in the class reunion episode.
• Popular with Furries: Peg, along with the movie characters Roxanne, Beret Girl, and Sylvia have a lot of furry fans (not helped by the fact Roxanne barely looks like a dog). Max's cousin Debbie and Ms. Pennypacker also have fans. PJ and Pete have their fans too, especially when the LGBT Fanbase is taken into account.
• Presumed Flop: Often seen as the beginning of the end of The Disney Afternoon, with its competition with Batman: The Animated Series typically seen as a Curb-Stomp Battle that the Dark Knight won with ease. However, ratings data showed that Goof Troop easily held its own, and occasionally even beat Batman from time to time. Its cancellation wasn't because of any ratings issues, but rather due to a combination of its high production costs, the brief dissolution of Disney's partnership with ABC (which aired the show on its Saturday morning lineup), and an overall drop in ratings among kids' demographics that year.
• Self-Fanservice: Peg is already beautiful in canon, but she's a sexy goddess in fanart.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite being major characters, we never explore Peg and Pistol’s relationship, aside from some very brief interactions.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: In the series, whenever Goofy and Pete are shown shirtless their chests are skin-coloured rather than with black fur as in any other production (though it varies between animation studios). This makes them look uncannily like regular humans who happen to have the heads of cartoon animals. The movies do give them their fur back, however.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Max and PJ, when not portrayed as outright losers, are portrayed as not having a lot of friends. Due to their relatable personalities, Max's adorkability, and PJ's woobie status, both are quite well-liked in the fandom. Max especially, as he is easily the most popular second generation character in both the series and movies.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Max. He’s a typical mischievous 90’s Totally Radical kid character who doesn’t stand out much compared to his father Goofy, Pete and his family. His post Goof Troop appearances do rectify this by giving him more layers and some of his father's signature quirks.
• Vindicated by History: Thought popular when it aired, the show also gained a bit of backlash from older fans of The Disney Afternoon for steering the block away from its more timeless fantasy and adventure shows and towards more ones with unambiguously contemporary settings, a byproduct of which being some distracting contemporary culture shoehorned in. Those who grew up with it not knowing of its greater context have argued that it's no less timeless than the other shows in the block, while those with nostalgia for the 90s enjoy it for its datedness, earning it a kinder reputation, especially since it began Goofy's Character Development from a simple idiot to a loving father figure.
• The Woobie: Poor PJ, having to live with a narcissistic bully of a father, repeatedly getting ignored or outright falsely accused even by his best and only friend, having bad things happen to him out of his control in most episodes where he appears, clearly being affected both immediately and in the long-term by his problems, and never doing a single thing to deserve any of it. Thankfully, he gets a happy ending in the second movie.

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