YMMV / Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?

• Awesome Music:
  • If you can find another show featuring an epic sweeping adventure score merged with a jazzy gospel-esque choir set to a slightly altered piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as its opening theme, bring it.
  • "Just Like Old Times" features a minor key Dark Reprise of Handel's "Messiah," which is just as awesome as it sounds.
• Can't Unhear It: For many kids who grew up with this show, Rita Moreno is the voice of Carmen Sandiego.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Pairings of Carmen and Waldo from Where's Waldo? are very common among their fandoms.
  • Pairing Carmen with Valerie Frizzle from The Magic School Bus isn't unknown.
  • Likewise with the Lupin III fandom.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Carmen dressing up as a "family friend" to get Zack out of situations his young age makes him more vulnerable to than Ivy, such as bullies at a training camp or the Department of Child Disservices taking him away because his job at ACME is too dangerous, pops up more than you might think.
• Fanon Discontinuity: In most fan-fiction, the Player and anything referring to the show's universe as a PC game are largely ignored.
  • A notable exception: Player Status:Offline by Gray Cardinal specifically explores what goes on "between capers" while the game isn't being played.
• Fan Nickname: "Psycho Sara" Bellum.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Pairing Carmen with either Ivy or Zack isn't uncommon. It helps that Carmen is rather popular and isn't too malicious besides her thievery (not to mention very protective of her rivals). It's even made somewhat mutual since Ivy seems to regard Carmen with more respect than she probably should considering their respective professions.
• Fridge Brilliance: When Lee Jordan is introduced, he is shown piloting a red plane. Red is normally heroic, but who is most commonly associated with the color red in this series? And who does he join sides with (and eventually backstab)?
• Genius Bonus: Some of the things Carmen tells the Player are either elaborations or paraphrases of quotes from fairly obscure philosophers.
• Growing the Beard: While the show does start off great, Season 2 would be when the quality would be raised as the puzzles became more interesting, the stakes would be higher, and Carmen and her backstory was featured much more. This is also the case with the more high tech computer interface used.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Anytime the Chief lists three things and then says "Oh my!" becomes this when we learn that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was Carmen's favorite childhood story. Just think about it a little.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In episode 1, The Chief calls Zack "The Boy Wonder". Fast forward a couple of years, and along comes another series Scott Menville stars in; a little project called Teen Titans (2003)...
  • The show shares several traits with Kim Possible.
  • The "Retribution" story arc involves Dr. Maelstrom attempting to steal the RMS Titanic and later, Noah's Ark. At the end of the first arc, The Chief mentions that Real Life underwater explorer Robert Ballard discovered the Titanic shortly after Maelstrom's capture. A few years after the episode aired, Ballard would go on several expeditions inspired by the story of Noah's Ark, and would later be very vocal in his opposition to removing artifacts from the Titanic. If the episode had aired ten years later, it might have seemed as though Maelstrom was intended to literally be Ballard's Evil Counterpart!
  • In the episode "The Remnants," Carmen steals a pair of Judy Garland's ruby slippers. In 2005, one of the original pairs of ruby slippers was actually stolen while on loan to the Judy Garland Museum. While they were finally found 13 years later thanks to a tip to the FBI, the identity of the thief was not publicly revealed at the time...
  • "The Remnants" also partners Zack and Ivy with a Canine Companion named "Stretch", years before Zack's VA would voice Stretch Armstrong.
  • Jennifer Hale's deeper voice as the Tigress is a dead ringer for Commander Shepard.
  • Ivy's Tigress alter ego is created as part of a ploy to dupe a villain. In Young Justice (2010) season 2, the hero Artemis Crock uses an alias also named Tigress to go undercover in the villain organization.
• Magnificent Bastard: Carmen Sandiego is a rogue ACME agent who became the world's most successful master thief just for the sake of the thrills. To this end, Carmen stole famous landmarks and objects across the world, leaving difficult-to-follow clues and patterns to challenge herself with cunning pursuers. Having a strict moral code, Carmen only steals her items for the thrill, later returning them, and despises violent measures. Treating her thievery hobby and escapades more like a mental game than anything else and remaining affable to her companions and her enemies alike, Carmen is one of the most worthy adversaries for the ACME agents and the players in the show.
• Memetic Badass: Carmen is known for being both incredibly cool and incredibly skilled. She's the world's greatest thief, after all.
• Moral Event Horizon: In "Can You Ever Go Home Again?", Lee Jordan goes far beyond the evil acts he's already committed by taking Malcolm Avalon, an old man and Carmen's potential father, hostage in order to force Carmen to steal things for him so that he can create his own criminal empire...and as he admits to a captive Malcolm, he fully intends on killing Carmen once she's served her purpose.
• Retroactive Recognition: Yep- the Chief is Squidward Tentacles and Professor Membrane. But mostly Squidward.
  • For that matter, Zack is Robin.
• Tear Jerker: "Follow My Footprints", in which Carmen is believed to have perished in an avalanche in the Himalayas. It hits most everyone at ACME and V.I.L.E. pretty hard, especially the Chief who falls into a Heroic BSoD that is heartbreaking to watch given how opposed it is to his regular vibrant personality.
  • At the end of the Grand Finale, Carmen's possible father, Malcolm Avalon, is badly injured to the point of losing his short-term memory...including his memory of Carmen herself, which actually drives her to tears. Afterwards, Carmen sadly decides to not re-enter his life and find out for sure whether or not he's her father, conceding it wouldn't make a difference since even if he was she's too far gone in her life of crime to change for his sake.

---