YMMV / Static Shock

• Adaptation Displacement: Most people are probably more familiar with this series than the comic book series it was based on. The creators themselves admitted that there were more people who watched the first episode than who read all 45 issues of the original run.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Richie's father, Sean, appears in "Frozen Out" is shown driving his son to a Kwanzaa party and is sitting next to Virgil's family at the church. Did he fully move on from his racist views or are they still there but he tones it down for his son's sake?
• Anvilicious:
  • "Jimmy" drives home the fact that bullying is a very serious issue that actually has to be dealt with before anything worse happens as even after Jimmy breaks and accidentally shoots Richie. The students that bullied Jimmy are reprimanded, but bullying still continues at the school.
  • "Frozen Out" is not subtle about the message that homeless people are people who need help too, even citing specific statistics and noting that it affects children (read: the target audience) in high numbers.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Anansi's power-set and being the avatar of the trickster spider god was very popular to the point that he'd eventually make his way into the comics, even calling him "the fan-favorite African superhero". Not bad for someone who only appeared in two episodes.
  • Soul Power, being the Captain Ersatz of Black Lightning, was a fun take on an older superhero figure with a unique set of moves that contrasted Static's own.
  • She-Bang, being the only recurring female superhero who acted as the muscle to Static's electricity powers and Gear's tech and intellect, was embraced by the fandom as being the third member of Team Static.
  • Out of all of the villains, Permafrost is one of the most popular for her tragic backstory and being one of the most sympathetic of the Bang Babies.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • What are the backstories for most of the members of the Metabreed? At most, we only get Ebon, Hotstreak and Talon's pasts. Everything else is up to fanfic writers to decide.
  • What further adventures do Virgil and Richie get up to? Does Sharon figure out her little brother's secret?
  • In "Nails", Batman tells Static that Robin has joined the Teen Titans and that they'll meet again one day. Teen Titans and Static Shock crossovers when?
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Virgil/Richie is by far the most popular pairing in the fandom and is easily more popular than Virgil's canon one with Daisy. The majority of romance fics feature this as the main ship. It helps that Richie's comics counterpart is canonically gay and that Word of God stated that Richie himself is also gay.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series has a massive fanbase in Brazil. If that weren't enough, most the comments on this American fan made trailer are written in Brazilian Portuguese.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In one episode, Adam Evans insists on using fireworks for his concert despite the warnings from his crew about using them on a small stage. When the fireworks goes off, they end up setting the place on fire. This became a whole lot harsher when the Rhode Island nightclub "The Station" got set on fire in February 2003 during a Great White concert, and killed at least 100 people, due to a combination of polyurethane insulation and the band's use of pyrotechnics on a smaller than normal stage.
  • In "A League of Their Own", Hawkgirl knocks out a brainwashed Green Lantern by striking his head with her mace while he is distracted. The scene becomes much harder to watch after the events of "Starcrossed", where her status as The Mole is revealed by her sucker punching him in a similar fashion.
  • In the first Batman crossover, Static defeats The Joker by absorbing his joy buzzer's electrical charge and sending it right back at The Joker. In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker this version of The Joker is Killed Off for Real via Batman electrocuting the small chip allowing him to possess Tim Drake, and in the censored version, his original self died to electrocution too.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In an early Season 1 episode, Static does research on Replay from the "TV Trivia" website. Fast forward to today...
  • In addition, Replay, the washed up Former Child Star, was played by Neil Patrick Harris, who was himself a former child star. Unlike Replay, Harris went on to succeed in establishing an acting career as an adult, getting back into the limelight through projects like How I Met Your Mother. And all without framing superheroes or committing robberies! (Doubles as Heartwarming in Hindsight.)
  • In an episode where Static worked with Batman, he noticed Robin was absent and asked where he was. Batman answers, "With the Titans. You might meet them someday". While the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon was never part of the DCAU continuity, they were at least right that Static would join them several years later, both in the comics and in Young Justice.
  • The show's Christmas Episode features Permafrost, a female Anti-Villain with ice powers that she can't control and who, thanks to emotional abuse and general fear, has become isolated from society and uses her cryokinesis to cause trouble for those around her. Wait a second...
    • She's also voiced by Hynden Walch, who would go on to voice Ace, another female Anti-Villain in the DC Animated Universe who, like Permafrost, had become isolated from society as a result of emotional abuse^note Although the isolation was due to her being raised as a lab rat by the Cadmus Project and is generally feared as a result of her Reality Warper Psychic Powers.
  • Donald Todd is a dead ringer for Algernop Krieger, another scientist.
  • Phil LaMarr would later voice the villain in Infamous 2, a video game whose main character also gained electromagnetic powers in a Mass Super-Empowering Event. Said hero even has a Gadgeteer Genius best friend who was initially jealous of the hero's powers to the point of making a Deal with the Devil.
  • Richie at one point gives Virgil a tongue-in-cheek speech about the responsibilities of a superhero having to be on the clock at all times, culminating in his running off because he's done with his job for the day. He'd become a superhero himself about a season later.
• I Am Not Shazam: He's just "Static", not "Static Shock". It's gotten so bad, even the comics have made this mistake. It probably doesn't help that the theme song keeps repeating "Superhero, Static Shock!".
• Jerkass Woobie: Many of the show's more sympathetic antagonists are this to some degree.
• Magnificent Bitch: Dr. Karen Roberts or "Omnara", the Big Bad of "Kidnapped", is living proof that one does not have to be a Bang Baby to be a Worthy Opponent to Static. Short of funding, she becomes a loyal employee to Edwin Alva, building the largest data gathering network in the world to discover Static's Secret Identity. After being fired and getting Static's true identity on tape, she hires a pair of criminals to kidnap Virgil's father knowing he'd come to rescue him, and blackmails him into stealing Project Omni, which was still stored at Alva Industries. She becomes the link between humans and computers, gaining infinite knowledge and power, as well as control over every electronic device on Earth and comes dangerously close to finishing the heroes, only failing due to Gear uploading a counter-virus that immobilizes her.
• Minority Show Ghetto: While it was one of the highest rated cartoons on Kids' WB! ^note  By the final season, only Pokémon was able to consistently beat the show in ratings and reruns on Cartoon Network were only outperformed by Family Guy when it aired, it could not secure enough merchandising deals to keep it alive (though it did run a respectable four seasons, a standard run for a lot of cartoon shows). It comes into this because the show's contemporaries (X-Men: Evolution, Batman Beyond) didn't suffer the same problems.
• Narm:
  • At the climax of "Jimmy", Richie is accidentally shot in the leg, but his reaction is hilarious due to the voice actor's awkward delivery of a particularly silly line: "Oh, it hurts! It's not like on TV!"
  • While "Sons of the Fathers", the Very Special Episode about prejudice, generally does a good job exploring the issue, Richie's Calling the Old Man Out speech veers from serious to silly because of its And That's Terrible nature.
    Richie: My best friend is gone because of you and your STUPID racism! I hate you!
• One-Scene Wonder: Richie's father appears in one episode and cameos in another, but everyone remembers him for being racist.
• Ron the Death Eater: Sean Foley, who canonically displays some racism but seems to be working on it, often is flanderized into a hardcore racist and sometimes homophobe in fanfiction based on the show. For much Richie-centered fic, he's a convenient villain.
• Signature Scene:
  • Richie snapping at his racist father in "Sons of the Fathers".
  • The climax of "Jimmy", in which the titular character is about to shoot his bully but ends up accidentally shooting Richie in the leg is one of the most remembered scenes of the show.
  • Permafrost's flashback to the day her father disappeared and her mother died, for how tragic it is.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: In "Linked", when showing the highlight reel of football star Dule Jones, they play a song that sounds very much like the theme for NFL on Fox.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The first episode featured Wade, a gang leader who took a liking to Virgil and defended him from F-Stop until trying to recruit him into his gang, being the reason Virgil became Static. However, he never appears again and we never see what kind of metahuman he turned into. If nothing was going to be done with him, then Ebon could have filled his role. Like Ebon, Wade acted as The Corruptor to Virgil, and it would have made their hero / villain relationship more personal.
  • Despite being The Dragon to Ebon and the show's third most prominent villain behind Ebon and Hotstreak, Talon doesn't get an episode where she's the primary villain. She doesn't get any real development until the final episode, where it's revealed that she always wanted to be cured of her metahuman powers. While it was somewhat hinted in her first appearance with her sensitivity over her appearance, this would have made for an interesting subplot if it were addressed more frequently. Other members of the Meta-Breed also don't get backstories, Kangoor and Shiv, for example.
  • Soul Power only appeared for one episode, but fans wished he returned to become The Mentor to Static.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Despite being Ebon's brother, nothing comes of the relationship between Rubberband Man and him except for a single episode. Instead, Ebon is Static's Archenemy, and the two brothers never even appear in the same episode together again. Particularly glaring because Adam expresses hope for Ebon's reform at the end of the episode, but never seems to consider it again.
  • Robert Hawkins learning that his son is Static (and Richie being Gear) happens in "Kidnapped", but since it happens at such a late stage in the series (just before the series finale, "Power Outage"), it sadly isn't explored that much aside from Robert letting Virgil continue to be Static, and comforting his son about the fact he might never be a superhero again. It also means that Sharon also misses out on her brother being Static again. And on the subject of fathers, how would Richie's father feel about his son being a hero?
  • While many fans love Richie being a Gadgeteer Genius, some fans wished that he also had his powers as Push and combined them as one.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The fashion, especially in the first two seasons, dates the show. Despite Y2K fashion being popular among some young people, you wouldn't see a kid rock Virgil's everyday outfit.
  • Then you got celebrity stars like Lil' Romeo (still a kid at the time), The Hoop Squad (Tracy McGrady, Karl Malone, Yao Ming, and Steven Nash. All still playing in the NBA at the time) Blackstreet and B2K (who had broken up by the time the series had ended), whom were prominent during those times. Ironically the ep that features Joey Fatone of N Sync was made after the band had broke up.
• Values Resonance:
  • Though never made explicit, the creators intended for Richie to be gay, which was quite progressive for the time.
    • In light of current queer-baiting controversies it stands out that A) There was no way it could ever make it into a kid's show in the early aughts B) Richie was based off Rick Stone, a gay character from the old Static comics C) Richie's characterization does not contradict this statement at all.
  • The show often discussed topics that were considered too mature for cartoons at the time, but did so with respect to the viewers. Many of these topics included bullying and its harmful effects, racism, troubled youth, and gun violence.
  • While they may have gotten some information about dyslexia wrong, the fact that a superhero had a mental handicap was rare and the way the show handled it was positive.
  • In most cartoons during the early to mid 2000s, the parents are either missing, comically abusive, and/or comically inept. In this show's case, the hero's father is a present and caring father who is always there for his children.
  • The showing of Virgil's grief over his mother's murder was a positive portrayal of grief and that it's okay to still feel sad and that crying is not a sign of weakness.
  • When Static meets Anansi in "Static in Africa", the former admits that he's happy to see another black superhero because he felt like he was the only one and seeing someone else with his skin tone makes him feel represented. Given the importance of representation for underrepresented minorities, this scene is important, regardless of generation.^note It's a bit confusing though, as Green Lantern, Steel, Vixen, and Mister Terrific had already made names for themselves as heroes, and Static is a well-established superhero fan. Still, it's possible that Static was referring to having met Anansi in person, which he had yet to do for any of the four above-mentioned heroes.
    • Anansi's response that Static himself is a powerful black role model is even better, reminding Static and others that even if they can't find representation for themselves, they can still stand proud and be the representation and change they want to see in the world.
• The Woobie: Permafrost. Her mother died when she was young, her stepfather left her only moments before, she's been homeless for several years, she seems to be in rather poor health, and the Big Bang left her with powers that she can't control very well that make everyone around her afraid of her. It's hard to not want to give her a big hug.

---