Alternative Character Interpretation: Panda, of all characters, could be seen as a Jerkass Woobie if you think about it hard enough. While nowhere near as mean as Nom Nom, Panda is easily the most self-centered of the three bears and the most quick-tempered; plus, there were his actions in "Panda's Date" and "Brother Up", which pushed him into borderline jerkass territory. However, there's no denying that Panda is a woobie that could use a big hug. The episode "Cellie" especially makes Panda look like a Jerkass Woobie. As a matter of fact, in the subject of "Brother Up," did Panda go too far, or was Grizz such a Jerkass to him and got his Karma?
Charlie. Fans are split on whether his No Social Skills and overwrought attempts to befriend the bears as a lonely nomad who is constantly harassed by cryptozoologist paparazzi makes him The Woobie, or if his annoying and clingy personality (which makes him very hypocritical) and his constant distrust towards humans make him The Scrappy.
Nom Nom. Despite the show painting him as a Jerkass Woobie, fans are still split on whether he's a fun recurring troublemaker or just a fun-killing asshole with a recurring case of Aesop Amnesia.
The heavy usage of memes and current pop culture references in the show. Is it helping viewers connect with the show's universe, or is it crippling the show by dating it heavily?
Some fans are split on whether they enjoy the baby bear episodes or not. On one hand, they're a fun look into the bears' childhood before they settled down and it's nice to see them helping people around the world; on the other hand, they're easy to forget due to the lack of recurring characters that the present day episodes have, and the fact that Season 4 has much more of them than the previous seasons does not help (though this may be due to Executive Meddling).
Even more action-packed is "Captain Craboo", which features the bears running away with the title character (who had not been seen since his debut in "Emergency"), after Nom Nom tries to have him arrested for attacking him even though it was only because he was being such a jerkass to the Bears once again. And this episode was the first in the series to be twice the length of a regular episode.
"Icy Nights II" is probably the most action-packed episode by far, and the climax features a fight with a large Killer Robot.
"Braces" has Panda get the ability to control electronic devices (And later non-electronic objects) from a pair of braces, which is quite out-of-place compared to the other episodes listed here.
Designated Hero: Not in the show, where the protagonists actually are nice (most of the time), but in the original comics, they come across as violent, selfish brats.
Diagnosed by the Audience: Ice Bear is kind of distant and eccentric so he may have Autism or something similar. His upbringing was also extremely stressful before he met Grizzly and Panda, which is likely another factor: not from the way he was raised as a badass, but from being traumatized by poachers constantly hunting him down and losing his Parental Substitute, he has every right to be messed up in the head.
Draco in Leather Pants: Some fans portray Nom Nom as jealous of the bears or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. There is the fan pairingGrizznom, where Grizzly openly has a crush on Nom Nom, while Nom Nom secretly has a crush on Grizz and doesn't want to admit it publicly.
Fanon: When drawing the bears as humans, it is common◊ for Grizzly to be portrayed as African-American, Ice Bear as a Caucasian with pale hair and eyes, and Panda as East Asian. Considering the three are from America, Russia, and China respectively, it falls nicely into Phenotype Stereotype. This becomes Ascended Fanon when their human counterparts debut in "Panda's Friend".
Foe Yay Shipping: Lampshaded in "Icy Nights II", when Yana remarks that Barry's obsession with defeating Ice Bear makes it sound like he has a crush.
With the Steven Universe fandom, helped by the fact that the theme is sung by Estelle, who voices Garnet, and that Chloe is voiced by Charlene Yi, who voices Ruby. Numerous comparisons have been made between the three bears and the Crystal Gems as well. In fact, after seeing the ending to "Burrito", everyone jokingly accused Rebecca Sugar of writing the episode.
With the fandom of Shirokuma Cafe. See the Hilarious In Hindsight entry for why.
Genius Bonus: The albino alligator from "Chloe and Ice Bear" eating the jelly sandwich and enjoying it may seem odd for a carnivore, but in real life, crocodilians eat fruit for diet supplements.
If the official Japanese Twitter is anything to go by, there are tons of merchandise American fans wish were available in their own country.
The show is also popular in South Korea as there are tons of merchandise, too. The Baskin-Robbins over there has an ice cream cake made for them. This is probably thanks to the show's positive representation of Korean culture.
The show has tons of merchandise that are only available in China, even though the show didn't even air there! Apparently, the merchandise was so popular, they started airing the show in China, in May 2017.
Grizzly getting stuck in a tree in "Everyday Bears" becomes less funny after watching "Burrito." It turns out Grizzly once got stuck in a tall tree during a bad thunderstorm as a cub, and he still has nightmares about it well into adulthood.
Panda being forced to eat bamboo in "Bear Cleanse" also becomes this after seeing his flashback episode "Panda 2", where it is shown that until he ran away, that was all he ever had eaten.
While many episodes show that Ice Bear does not mind if his brothers think of him as a boring and uninteresting person, "Losing Ice" shows that he cares about how much Grizzly and Panda appreciate everything he does for them, feeling genuinely hurt when they ignore the meal he spent so hard making for them.
Furthermore, it seems that Ice Bear may actually be thinking of himself as nothing more than a Broken Ace, and secretly expects his brothers to think of him like that, for he is implied to be a Death Seeker shown in the cub episodes where he is seen accepting death with dignity twice, possibly over the shameful guilt of hurting others in the past, such as "Yuri and the Bear", where his Innocently Insensitive nature costs him his only parental figure.
Panda's sacrifice in Googs would be repeated, except this time, it's not a simulation.
Remember all that times the fandom asked about racism against the bears? Well, guess what happens in the movie...
To cap that moment, what are the bears' destined places? For Panda, a "reserve", for Ice, he is deported to Antarctica and Grizzly is abandoned in a park.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Whole Episode Flashback of "Yuri and the Bear" shows how Ice Bear acquired some of his present-day skills whilst working for the title character. Yuri also refers to himself in the third person, implying that Ice Bear talks like this as a remembrance of the man who raised him.
Panda, surprisingly. So far, he locked his brothers in a closet, buried their new phones out of envy, lied about his bamboo diet, yelled and kicked at a pigeon, and ruined his date by eating Lucy's salad, but he's just so fragile and insecure and cries so easily that he really deserves a hug despite his outbursts. When it all boils down to it, he just wants to be loved by someone, even if it does mean playing a few dirty tricks here and there. Most of the time he doesn't even realise how bad it is.
Nom Nom, since he says in "Nom Nom's Entourage" that he does not know how to make friends.
The episode "Kyle" makes it official. It's revealed that Nom Nom was separated from his family at a young age, and the long-lost brother he's happily reunited with turns out to be a lying con artist.
Dave from "The Island". He was selfish and was fine with letting young bears die just to get Karla all to himself, but he stayed on the island for a long time before Karla did, plus it's implied at the end that he'll never get off the island, since the bears and Karla took the supplies and escaped.
Yuri from "Yuri and the Bear" acted aloof and short-tempered at times, but he lost his wife and daughter, causing him to become abrasive and withdrawn. However, once he takes a level in kindness by raising Ice Bear and bonding with him, he becomes a straight-up woobie, especially when he is forced to send Ice Bear away to keep the hunters from pursuing him and go back to being all alone again, regretfully knowing it's his own fault for putting his newest family member in danger and he shouldn't have snapped at him for accidentally angering him and not even having a chance to reconcile with the cub.
"Googs": Ari Curd is the founder of the Googs headquarters. Designing the virtual reality goggles, she throws a contest with the offer being a tour around the facility. When the bears win, she tricks them into being her test subjects, and through her online avatar, she plays on Panda's frustration with his brothers to send him on a rocket to the moon and later, the sun while he's vulnerable. Ending the simulation Ari cheerfully greets the Bears and offers to give them the real tour, albeit oblivious to their trauma.
"Christmas Movies": Harry is a thief planning to steal the baby bears' video store by disguising himself as Santa Claus and asking for movie tapes he claims he'll give to kids around the world. When his facade is dropped, Harry chases the bears through the store for the door keys and traps them after fooling them with a cardboard cutout. After being talked to by the bears about what Christmas is about and reminiscing about his childhood, Harry realizes the wrongness of his actions and is given a role as a Mall Santa for the store by the bears.
You're not you when you're hungry. note The climax of "Primal" is similar to a Snickers commercial, with the celebrities being replaced with feral killing machines.
"The Island" features Dave, who is deplorable enough by depriving Karla of supplies in an attempt to manipulate her into loving him. But he certainly crosses it when he leaves the young Grizzly, Panda, and Ice Bear into quicksand to drown, when they almost ruin his demented scheme.
Ralph, in the episode of the same name, finds joy in scaring people and pulling pranks on them. But he crosses it when he attempts to drop a group of tourists off a rope bridge to their death just for laughs. Then, after Charlie steps in to save them, Ralph refuses to help and leaves him to die when he's in danger of slipping off the ledge.
Courtney the Yowie Hunter crosses it in "Rescue Ranger" when he attempts to murder Ranger Tabes with a crossbow for attempting to rescue Charlie from him. Capturing and trapping innocent creatures was already one thing, but straight-up trying to murder a person is another.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: When the first season was airing, Charlie was a lot of people's least favorite character for his constant rude and pushy behavior, making the bears feel uncomfortable in many of his appearances. As the series progressed, Charlie's Hidden Depths, his good, loyal heart, and his somewhat tragic nature as the only one of his kind were revealed, causing the fandom's opinion of him to do a full 180. By seasons 3 and 4, Charlie had become a fan-favorite recurring character like Ranger Tabes, partly because of shippers pairing him with Panda.
In "Burrito", Grizzly carries the titular burrito around with him, even when it goes bad. At the end of the episode, the three bears splatter each other with the remains of the exploded burrito, which have gone black from the mold growing on it. Some of it probably ended up going in their mouths...
In "Charlie", the titular Bigfoot eats cheese puffs straight out of the jar, then realizes that it's rude to take them without permission... so he spits them out into his hand, then resumes digging in after asking. Then he wipes the dust off the bear's couch. THEN he makes the toilet overflow, uses Panda's pillow to sponge it up, and gives it back to him.
Stoic Woobie: Ice Bear in the episode Food Truck because no one even wanted to try a free sample of his delicious calzones. Although he does step out for a moment and walk away to throw a tantrum. He gets hit with this especially hard in "Nom Nom" when the titular koala steals his brothers' attention from him and eventually traps him in a hole where he cannot even call for help, thanks to his quiet nature. And then there's "Yuri and the Bear", where he has gone through hell in the Arctic continent as a cub before meeting Grizzly and Panda, implied to have lost his mother to poachers, being too young to hunt for food by himself, constantly going into hiding from the hunters, attacked by his soon to be Parental Substitute for trespassing on his property, severely damaged his growing relationship with him, and never seeing him again without having the chance to reconcile. The poor polar bear has been through a lot and uses his stoicism as a way of hiding the pain from the past and the present.
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Since around the time the show premiered, 8many people believed that the show was a ripoff or inspired by the manga and anime series Shirokuma Cafe. Daniel Chong admitted later that he was not aware of the series until after We Bare Bears premiered.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It's noted every now and then how the bears are able to interact with humans without them minding, while the show seems to imply that the bears (along with Nom Nom and Charlie) are the only non-humans capable of human language and cognition, something which is never brought up as a plot point.
It's hard for some fans to feel sorry for Charlie in his first appearance since he annoys the bears, wrecks their house, unsettles them, and it was shown that the bears wanted to get away from him. If anything, some fans feel more sorry for the bears. However, future episodes try to make him seem more sympathetic. Unfortunately, Charlie continually being hypocritical about his problems of being harassed by humans makes him more unsympathetic.
The other food truck owners as well as customers from "Food Truck". The latter wouldn't even try a single sample.
The bears themselves in the original comics, where their quest for adoption is undermined by their deliberate exclusion of people that don't meet their standards.
Panda is treading down this road. Most of the time, he seems to have a look of sadness or worry on his face. This especially applies in "Panda's Date", where his attempts to woo, impress, or otherwise have fun with Lucy end in humiliation, disappointment, and a near-death experience.
Grizzly qualifies too, at times. While he's usually upbeat and carefree, he's also desperate to fit in and make friends. It's revealed in "Burrito" he also suffered a traumatizing experience as a cub by getting stuck in a tree during a thunderstorm, and he still isn't completely over the experience as he still has nightmares about it and clings to a warm, wrapped up burrito because it reminds him of the fireman who saved him. (Coincidentally, Grizzly even resembles the bear that is featured in the trope image.)
Ice Bear has his moments, especially in "Yuri and the Bear". In that episode, it's implied he lost his mother to poachers, could not hunt on his own, ended up upsetting his Parental Substitute Yuri because of his unintentionally insensitive actions, and to top it all off had to get separated from Yuri to get to safety. Even worse, he never got to reconcile with him.
Most of the protagonists seem to count - all three bears grew up as orphans, with only each other as company, and Chloe has horrible social anxiety due to being a child prodigy going to school with people 10 years her senior ( though she gets over it). A major theme of the show ends up being outcasts trying to find a place where they belong.
The more the audience learns about Charlie's background, the more tragic his character starts to seem. Charlie is the mythical bigfoot, a redneck cryptid who's spent most of his life wandering from place to place, looking for a friend. Charlie can never stay in one place for too long, because if the humans discover his existence they usually try to hunt him down and profit off him, and they've only grown more dangerous to the Sasquatch over the years as their technology has advanced. Compounding that, Charlie apparently has a very long lifespan, longer than any other living creature on Earth, so even if he does make a friend, he always inevitably outlives them. Charlie gets on well with the woodland critters that live in San Fransico's forests, but the only sapient friends he has are the bear brothers.
. Justified, as it only lasted 9 pages.
