Solar Opposites

Planet Shlorp was a perfect utopia, until the asteroid hit. One hundred adults and their replicants were issued a Pupa and escaped into the.... space, searching for new homes on uninhabited worlds, instructed to use their Pupa, an organic supercomputer, to terraform a planet into a mirror image of the late Shlorp.

Penned by Justin Roiland (Rick and Morty) and Mike McMahan, Solar Opposites is a Hulu original show that focuses on four Shlorpians having crashed landed on an overpopulated garbage planet (Earth), trying to repair their ship while deciding whether or not Earth is a nice place to live.

Tropes used in Solar Opposites include:

• 0% Approval Rating: The Shlorpians are hated by just about everybody in the neighbourhood.
• A Date with Rosie Palms: Yumyulack enters the Pretend-O-Deck in "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer" with a jar of peanut butter in one hand and tissues in the other, quite embarrassed.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear" focuses on the denizens of the Wall.
• Adult Fear: Terry and Korvo are often horrified whenever their children wander into danger. Korvo's face when Jesse is at risk in "The P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. Device" says it all.
• Aerith and Bob: Korvo and Yumyulack contrasting Terry and Jessie. Even their outfits reflect this.
• Alien Among Us: The four are slumming it in a typical American neighborhood.
• Alien Blood: Blue.
• Aliens Steal Cable: Because Terry has nothing better to do with his day.
• All Animals Are Dogs: The family alternate between treating the Pupa like a baby or a dog.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The Shlorpians come in green, blue, yellow and purple/pink.
• Ambiguous Situation: "99 Ships" ends with the family being in Schrödinger's cat situation. Maybe they're the only family of the 100 who survived or maybe someone else already succeeded. They have no way of knowing.
• Ambiguous Innocence: The Pupa. Acts like an infant or a dog most of the time but often shows signs of great intelligence and cruelty yet saved a group of animals from an illegal auction.
• Anything That Moves: The Solar Opposites have little standards when it comes to sexual intercourse.
• Apocalypse How/Class 5: The Pupa will cause one one day, wiping out Earth's biosphere to restructure the planet into New Shlorp.
• Armor-Piercing Question: As Terry asks Korvo, if they had a Time Machine, why did they wait a whole season to use it?
• The Artifact: The title sequence. The Pupa is purple in Season 2, later blue but still yellow in the titles.
• Author Appeal: It seems that the writers are big fans of the Play Station, given all the references to the PlayStation 4 , and the Harry Potter franchise.
• Awesome but Impractical:
  • The Hammerhead 2. It may be able to traverse any terrain (save tightly packed terrain) but it's slow AF, enough that, at full speed, it can be easily outpaced by a penny-farthing.
  • Aside from Korvo, who turns into the hottest human who ever lived, the family come to consider their being human this. While it allowed them to enjoy human society, it turns out humans don't have the Shlorpian Healing Factor and they lose anything that made them unique.
• Badass Adorable: The Pupa.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:
  • According to Korvo, Jesus Christ was an alien.
  • Burning Man is from another planet.
• Big Brother Bully: Yumyulack to Jessie in the first season (though Season 4 reveals he's the younger one). They're much closer afterwards.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Opposites' spaceship.
• Becoming the Mask: As Korvo and Terry laugh over in the first season finale, they've been pretending to be a family for so long that they've become one.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: On a Shlorpian's "Birth-a-Day", they're given the choice to have either infinite wisdom or infinite destruction for the day. No one has ever chosen the former option leading to their friends trying to distract them until the clock runs out.
• Big Brother Instinct: Yumyulack and Jessie bicker all day long but he makes sure that not one Neo-Nazi ever touches her as his suit systematically rips them apart. Though Season 4 reveals that he's actually her younger brother.
• Biting the Hand Humor: Averted. Terry praises Hulu whenever he can. But Jesse does take one jab where she compares Yumyulack's vulture like behaviour to how Hulu got started.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending of Season 3. By divesting themselves of all sci-fi gadgets and powers, the family has created an wholesome, emotionally healthy for the Pupa but doing so has made them soul-crushingly depressed. They decide it's ultimately worth it for the Pupa but it's clear they pine for their Glory Days of sci-fi madness.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Shlorpians have several plant-like characteristics and several outright bizarre ones.
  • Their equivalent of sweating is to spawn Gooblers, mindless little two inch creatures. It's designed to deter Shlorpians from stressing out.
    • Every 100,000th Goobler is a red one, about a foot tall, that seeks to kill its progenitor. Assuming that the Shlorpian doesn't kill it or is killed by it, the stress of the situation will turn their brain into a baby which will burst out of their head, killing them. Unlike their purple counterparts, the red ones are vomited out.
    • If another emotion begins to dominate their personality too much, they birth a Goobler that represents that emotion. They can get rid of the Goobler by confronting that emotion.
  • If they don't wash their hands, they'll grow flowers on their head.
  • When they get older, they turn into trees. If they're lucky, someone will use them to build a house.
  • They can choose their sexes.
  • They have no butt-holes. Though as if frequently pointed out, they can, somehow, receive anal sex.
  • When they die, they come back as trees.
  • If they spend a long enough time around another species, they'll metamorpihize into a member of that species. If they stay like that for six months, the change will become permanent.
  • They can't get high or addicted to drugs.
  • They can survive the crushing depths of the bottom of the ocean without protection.
• Blue and Orange Morality: Frequently used by Korvo and Yumyulack to wave off any responsibility for their actions. Even the Earth loving Terry and Jessie have no issue with the upcoming Hostile Terraforming.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In the Season 1 finale, the now purple Pupa turns to the audience and says that he'll see them next season.
  • From Season 2 onwards, the fourth wall clearly has a hole in it, the Shlorpians frequently breaking it whenever the plot calls for it.
• Brick Joke: The Pupa's subplot in Episode Two is devoted to explaining how he keeps getting candy. He cut a football player's leg so he could harvest the DNA to clone a copy which he used to operate a vending machine. In the process, he killed a crow and claimed its skull as a war trophy.
• Breather Episode: Inverted. Seven out of the eight episodes per season are light hearted comedies while the episodes focusing on the Wall are very much Darker and Edgier.
• Broken Aesop: Played for Laughs in "The Unstable Grey Hole". Sure it's nice to offer an olive branch to your enemies but it's kind of hollow if your sister implants microchips in their heads to make them forgive you.
• Cardboard Prison: The Pupa's cage in "The Booster Manifold". His slug like biology lets him slide right out.
• Charlie Brown Baldness: Yumyulack does in fact have hair.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Terry in "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer." Nothing is actually happening and they're on the Pretend-O-Deck.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Yumyulack's suit eviscerates the Neo-Nazis.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The Pupa's default state is yellow but he will change colours as the time for Hostile Terraforming nears. If he turns orange, it just means that he ate something orange. At the end of the first season, he turns purple. At the end of the second season, he turns blue and is green at the end of the third. "99 Ships" shows that when he's ready, he'll turn red/magenta.
• Comically Small Bribe: After helping an old woman remember the image of her long deceased mother, the Pupa requests her services to overcome a child safety lock in his kitchen to retrieve two Double A batteries and a Harry Potter whistle.
• Couch Gag: Every intro changes the reason why Korvo hates Earth so much.
• Could Have Avoided This Plot: Much of "The Solar Opposites Almost Get An Xbox" could have been avoided if the Shlorpians hadn't become convinced of the erroneous, for their species at least, notion that death was final.
• Crapsaccharine World: Shlorp looked beautiful, it was also a technocratic dystopia that stamped out individuality and encouraged uniformity. Korvo loved it while Terry loves the freedom of Earth. And there was a secret ruling elite of the ultra-wealthy.
• Crapsack World: According to Korvo, Earth doesn't have a single redeeming feature.
• Crazy Jealous Guy:
  • Terry and Korvo handle it poorly when Funbucket ditches them for the bros.
  • Korvo when he learns that Terry has a life partner back home, "Terri".
• Crystal Spires and Togas: Shlorp.
• Deal with the Devil: Jason Momoa's good looks are the result of him selling his soul to a witch.
• Deconstruction: Korvo massively deconstructs the Mad Scientist archetype. More often than not, his crazy inventions cause more trouble.
• Deus Ex Machina: After Cherie is nearly killed by a crow in "The Unlikely Demise of Terry's Favorite Shot Glass", the Pupa shows up to kill it.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • What Yumyulack's shrinking more or less amounts to. He shrank Cherie for bringing him shrimp that he didn't order. Can you imagine what might have happened if he'd been allergic to shrimp? He also shrunk the CEO of AT&T for blaming a fart on him.
  • Why do the Neo-Nazis try and kill Yumyulack and Jessie? Well because Yumyulack suggested a song about friendship.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The whole set-up is a thinly veiled pastiche of a refugee immigrant family.
  • Terry and Korvo's interactions in "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer" are clearly an analogue for a couple teetering on the brink of divorce before deciding to stay together based on their good times and realizing how much they love their children.
  • "The Fog of Pupa" ends with a great fear that all immigrant families have. That to adapt, they will have to lose their own culture and what makes them special.
• Doomed Hometown: Shlorp was destroyed a year before the show started. Not the original Shlorp, that was destroyed eons ago. Every time their planet gets destroyed by a space phenomena, the Shlorpians send out 100 ships to make a new planet.
• Everyone Has Standards: For how awful Yumyulack can be, even he hates the Neo-Nazis and doesn't like killing people if he can avoid it.
• Evil Cripple: One of the douchebag surfers has a prosthetic right leg.
• Expy: The SilverCops are a villainous version of the Green Lantern Corps.
• Extreme Omnivore: Given that he'll one day devour everything on Earth to remake it into New Shlorp, it's no surprise that the Pupa eats anything he can get his hands on.
• Fantastic Racism: Neither humans nor the Shlorpians have a high opinion of the other species.
• For Want of a Nail: After going back in time to save Korvo's wallet, Terry and Korvo return to the present to find a third Shlorpian, Vanbo, living with them. Their later attempts to get rid of Vanbo are all in vain. Ultimately subverted as it was all on the Pretend-O-Deck.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In "The Matter Transfer Array", Jessie promises Lydia that they'll bury her pieces in the backyard and she'll grow into a beautiful new human. Hinting that death for Shlorpians doesn't work the same as for humans.
  • The bulk of "Hululand" is Tim's Dying Dream. This is increasingly foreshadowed as everyone becomes more and more Out of Character such as Cherie's increasing submissiveness to Tim or the Solar Opposites becoming Paper Tigers.
• Forgot About His Powers: The Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer, time travelling shoes. Terry even flags this at the end of "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer" noting that they'd have used it before to try and save their planet. But they don't have it, it's all on the Pretend-O-Deck.
• Formerly Fit:
  • The Duke really let himself go after taking over the Wall. Though he slims down living in exile in Season 2.
  • According to Terry, Korvo has let himself go over the years.
• Freudian Excuse: Discussed in "The Unstable Grey Hole". Jessie believes any cruel person, like surfer jocks, has one while Yumyulack thinks that some people, such as Neo-Nazis, are just assholes for no good reason.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Cherie theorizes that the Duke was a nobody in the "Before-for" before taking control of the wall.
• Fun with Acronyms: In "The Rad Awesome Terrific Ray", conflict arises from Terry mixing up the R.A.T. ray (which makes someone Rad, Awesome and Terrific) and the Rat ray (which makes someone a rat).
• Funny Background Event: The Shlorpians in "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear", given the focus on the Wall's inhabitants. The Pupa even whips out his iPhone as Tim and Cherie are having sex.
• Good All Along: The first three seasons make frequent mention of a witch, Brigabalba, who trades PlayStation consoles. "The Fog of Pupa" has Terry and Korvo confront her (off-screen) and it turns out she's super nice, save for her being complicit in a pyramid scheme.
• Hand Wave: What caused the family to crash on Earth is never explained.
• Hate Plague: Yumyulack and Jesse's pollen mixing in "The Booster Manifold" causes a particularly vicious outbreak.
• He Who Fights Monsters: After the Duke is defeated, Tim becomes the Wall's new tyrant.
• Here We Go Again:
  • After Yumyulack expresses joy at the end of the gender plots in "The P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. Device", he's dismayed to learn that the next assignment is about racism.
  • Implied in "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear." After the bear is dealt with, Terry shows the family a pamphlet for a shark exhibit at the aquarium.
  • "The Unwanted Personification of Terry" ends with the family landing on a new planet. Korvo immediately, like he did with the humans, labels the natives as "weird and confusing". Jessie's tired sigh indicates that nothing will really change.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • Most of the Pupa's subplots.
  • Yumyulack wants nothing to do with all the gender-based plots in "The P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. Device", instead using a didgeridoo to return some koalas to the zoo.
  • "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear" focuses on the denizens of the Wall and their rebellion against the Duke. The Shlorpians' adventure with the bear is nothing more than a Funny Background Event.
• Higher-Tech Species: The Shlorpians.
• Hollywood Acid: The mutant Funbucket and P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. both spew it.
• Hostile Terraforming: The Pupa will terraform Earth into New Shlorp, making use of whatever is on the planet's surface. It's why Korvo is so eager to repair their ship, so they're not part of the recycled matter. Though going by the opening, it wasn't meant to be this as the Shlorpians were instructed to seek out uninhabited planets. Terry and Korvo had plans to go find a rogue moon.
• Humans Are Bastards: Quite so. There's not one unambiguously good regular human character with most of the town being violent racists. The only good human was the old woman who helped Pupa get his whistle. Mind you, Aliens Are Bastards as well.
• Humans Are Special: Brutally averted in "Terry and Korvo Get in a Big Screaming Fight in the Taco Bell Parking Lot". Humans have no special instinct or powers. Glen was just a convenient patsy for the Dirty Cops.
• Humanity Ensues: In "The Unwanted Personification of Terry", the family has been on Earth for so long that they start turning human. The only way to avert it is to leave Earth.
• Hypocrite: After first meeting, Terry and Korvo talked smack about the other to their colleagues. Both are offended when they discover that the other did the same.
• I Did What I Had to Do: How Tim justifies his every action.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: 7/8 episodes in Season 1 are named after whatever bizarre invention drives the plot.
• In Medias Res: The pilot opens with the family having been stranded for a year and already an accepted part of everyday life.
• Individuality Is Illegal: On Shlorp, "Conformity is cool" and any sign of individuality is stamped out. Even a loose collar is an offense.
• Ink Suit Actor: Terry and Yumyulack's human forms in "The Unwanted Personification of Terry".
• Irony: "The Unwanted Personification of Terry" sees Korvo finally grow to enjoy Earth just as the other three are convinced that humans suck and Earth is a Crapsack World. Though Korvo takes the win.
• Karma Houdini: Yumyulack never faces any consequences for shrinking people. Some of whom he shrunk in public places.
• Killer Robot: P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. She didn't have to be one but her weapon systems are load bearing and it's harder to build a robot without rocket launchers.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Up to Eleven in "The P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. Device" where Jesse's teacher admits that she had no idea that what Jesse's gender was. In her defence, when someone's mouth is longer than their face, it's hard to be sure.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Released in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, the Duke notes that, even if they weren't shrunk, it would be hard living so close to other people for so long.
• Lighter and Softer: Justin Roiland describes the show as such compared to Rick and Morty.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Terry and Korvo. They sleep in the same bed and Terry once called Korvo "My Korvi."
• Like Father, Like Son: As Replicants, Yumyulack and Jessie take heavily after Korvo and Terry.
• The Load: Terry more often than not. He can't even be bothered to do his job.
• Loads and Loads of Races
• Long Lived: 80 is still young for a Shlorpian.
• Lower Deck Episode: "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear" focuses on the Wall and its revolution.
• Mad Scientist: Korvo and Yumyulack.
• Magic From Technology: Korvo uses his advanced technology to become the world's greatest magician in "The Quantum Ring."
• Monumental Damage: When Korvo drills to the centre of the Earth to steal some nickel alloy, the resulting quakes topple Big Ben and break part of the Great Wall of China.
• Mood Whiplash: The cuts between the Wall and the main storyline.
• Moral Myopia: For all that the Shlorpians take offence that no one likes them, they're fully prepared to enact Hostile Terraforming.
• Mundane Made Awesome: All of the Wall. When you're one inch tall, a nail makes a powerful weapon.
• Mysterious Past: None of the Duke's past is ever touched on. All we got is that his first name was "Ringo" and that he loved Benihana to the point that he got "tons and tons" of diarrhea.
• Nanomachines:
  • Korvo and Terry use a swarm of them in "The Unstable Grey Hole" to collect information on the neighbors which they will then use to become popular, run for the Presidency of the Home Owners' Association and change the rules so that they don't have to pay a $50 fine. The Nanobots later become sentient in their own right and make their own bid for the presidency.
  • In "The Booster Manifold", after unleashing alien pheromones that turns people into raging animals, the family attack the victims with healing nanite goo laced weapons.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Obvious panaches of Penn and Teller are killed in "The Quantum Ring."
• Noodle Incident:
  • At one point, Yumyulack had night terrors and slept in Terry and Korvo's bed. Terry later had night terrors and slept in one of the replicants' beds.
  • The family really bonded after first seeing Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol.
  • Yumyulack tried to trade Jesse to a witch for a PlayStation 4 at one point. Terry later mentions that he got the PS4 from the witch.
  • As Korvo and Terry reflect on the good times the family has had, they mention a Musical Episode and a Crossover with The Simpsons where they played against the Monstars from Space Jam.
• Obliviously Evil: Maybe not quite evil, but Yumyulack is shocked to find that Jesse considers him a Big Brother Bully.
• Oh Crap: Jesse when Yumyulack decides to make peace with the Neo-Nazis, whom she didn't implant microchips in.
• One Steve Limit: Averted. All three of the Alpha Bitches are named "Stacy."
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • Korvo's full name is "Korvotron".
  • Subverted for Jessie. Her name really is Jessie, not "Jessica".
  • Terry's full name is "Terrald".
• Organic Technology: The Pupa looks like a squashed banana but is in fact an advanced supercomputer that contains the history of Shlorp and carries the instructions to recreate the whole planet in its DNA.
• Offing the Offspring: Terry and Korvo frequently discuss this in Season 2. It's fine though, the Replicants were considering becoming Self-Made Orphans.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Pedro is killed by the Duke's forces, leaving Enrique to mourn his son. Eventually, Enrique joins the Duke, convinced that Tim's heroic crusade was what killed Pedro.
  • Korvo outlives Yumyulack in "The Solar Opposites Almost Get An Xbox". Though the death wasn't permanent.
• Pink Means Feminine: Jessie's dress and bow.
• Pregnant Badass: Being pregnant does not slow Cherie down at all.
• Reality Ensues:
  • Learning a new language is easy. Understanding all its idioms, slang and expressions, far less so. Terry and Korvo assumes that "a cold one" (a beer) is literally a piece of ice in the shape of "1".
  • Jessie only gives the denizens of the Wall candy. As Tim lampshades, eating only candy creates a lot of health problems and creates a lot of critical resources shortages, such as insulin shortages for the diabetics.
  • As Terry is dismayed to learn, after he makes Korvo dumb, repairing a space ship is a hard task.
  • Korvo left his wallet back on Shlorp. Who carries around a type of currency that they don't need?
• Sarcasm Blind: Both Terry and Yumyulack love that everyone says "Oh great" when they enter a room.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Upon finding out that the A and B plots of "The P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. Device" relate to gender roles and stereotypes, Yumyulack heads off to be the Hero of Another Story.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Bryce priming the bomb cost him his eyes. As everyone says, he had lots of time to run away.
• Sequel Episode: "The Booster Manifold" ended with the Red Goobler still at large and still plotting Korvo's demise. He returns in "The Rad Awesome Terrific Ray" which largely amounts to a Heel Face Door Slam, setting things back to normal.
• Shout-Out:
  • Upon learning that television shows aren't all documentaries, Terry wonders if Friends and Frasier are real.
  • When the Pupa is put up for auction, the auctioneer calls him SpongeBob SquarePants. When the Pupa breaks free and opens the other cages, the inmates are realistic versions of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Paddington Bear and the 101 Dalmatians (though only about five of them).
  • As is acknowledged, much of the Wall's set-up is a direct homage to Escape from New York.
  • The lower levels of the wall are comprised of miniature Seinfeld sets that Yumyulack bought online. Tim even mentions the controversial finale.
  • Terry wears a Harry Potter t-shirt in "The Unstable Grey Hole" with the Pupa getting a whistle that plays the theme song in "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer."
  • As part of the joke that Korvo has gotten fat, Vanbo compares him to a "blue Shrek".
  • The title device of "The Lake House Device" is very much acknowledged to just be based on The Lake House.
  • In their quest to be fulfilled, the Solar Opposites reenact several movies such as Top Gun, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Free Willy.
  • Jessie's traps are inspired by Home Alone.
• Shrink Ray:
  • Any human that pisses off Yumyulack gets shrunken down and placed in a terrarium called "the Wall" (the wall of his bedroom to be precise).
  • Korvo uses the ray to shrink down the mutated Funbucket in the pilot.
• Sliding Scale of Cynicism Versus Idealism: Not quite as cynical as Rick and Morty, it certainly has more idealistic moments than its sister show, but still very much a very cynical cartoon. Though per Word of God, it's cynical because they're chasing the light.
• The Smurfette Principle: Jessie is the family's only female.
• Spiritual Successor: Think "3rd Rock from the Sun made on acid" and you've summarized the show.
• Squishy Wizard: For all of the Shlorpians' technological might, they go down as easily as any human.
• Sucky School: Ticks off all the usual requirements for this trope with American schools, adding in perverted teachers who do it in the cafeteria.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Terry and Korvo are ensuring that Vanbo will die on Shlorp because it's the right thing to do for the timeline. Not because they hate him or anything else.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Terry lampshades how violently the Children's Hospital explodes, asking if they're holding some kind of explosive material in it.
• Take That:
  • How do Yumyulack and Jessie erase Linda's memory? Diet Coke. Only humans would create a drink that makes them dumber. If they had Mountain Dew, it would be going even faster.
  • Terry strikes a science textbook with the Dumb Ray. It turns into a copy of the Bible.
  • Korvo didn't set out to make his weak-willed cuck-bot look like Ted Cruz. They just naturally come out like that.
  • To emphasize what a douchebag Vanbo is, Terry bets that he has a True Crime podcast. Listening would be cool, but Vanbo clearly records one.
  • In his quest to become fulfilled, Yumyulack zaps a cop with a ray that gives him the ability to read. The cop now fears that he will be able to develop empathy for others which will cause him to reevaluate his conservative beliefs.
• Telepathy: Through touch, the Pupa can link to a human's mind.
• Teleporters and Transporters: After his drill cabin gives and starts flooding with lava, Korvo teleports back to the backyard.
• Time Travel Episode:
  • "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer." Though on the holodeck.
  • "The Lake House Device" is based around Korvo sending messages back in time to micromanage Terry's life.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The nanobots leave Terry and Korvo shortly after they gain sentience.
• Too Dumb to Live: After Yumyulack and Jessie shrink her down, Linda demands that they grow her back, promising to only heavily bruise them before throwing them in jail. All it does in convince them to kill her, later deciding to opt for Laser-Guided Amnesia, to save their skins.
• Took a Level In Dumbass: Korvo thanks to being hit by the "Dumb Ray". It eventually wore off.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Terry's shirt changes every episode, contrasting everyone else's Limited Wardrobe.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The citizens of Everytown, America don't even blink at the literal aliens and just treat them like annoying neighbors (which, to be fair, they are).
• Villain Exit Stage Left: The Duke in "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear".
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Tim paints himself as such, noting that the outside world is no place for inch tall people and they can make a better world in the Wall.
• Wham! Episode:
  • At the end of "Terry and Korvo Steal A Bear",the Resistance takes control of the Wall only to discover that the Duke carved a hole out. He escapes whereupon Tim kills Cherie to become the new ruler.
  • "Retrace-Your-Step-Alizer" is a massive one. It's so massive that Terry realizes that everything happening so rapidly means that it logically can't actually be happening. And it's not. It's all happening in their holodeck. Though the end features the Pupa turning purple.
  • "The Unwanted Personification of Terry" sees the Shlorpians turn human and leave Earth as a result so they can revert to their natural bodies.
• Wham! Line: At the end of "The Matter Transfer Array", Yumyulack casually reveals that the Pupa's Hostile Terraforming mission.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Diamonds are not evidently not valuable on Shlorp.
• You Are Number Six: On Shlorp, Terry was #31827.
• You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!: What place stress Korvo out the most? Forever 31, a Halloween themed store that stays open all year. He can't figure out how they're financially viable, despite selling only Halloween decorations and marked up PlayStation 4s.