Argosy Avenue/Tropes


 * Animated Actors: The Gussy and Fiona cartoons make use of this. Gussy eventually resorts to telling Fiona what she’s supposed to do, which Fiona refuses.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: The Dawson siblings (and other human characters) only survive the slapstick of the Funny Animals by sheer luck.
 * Genre Savvy: How Fiona outsmarts Gussy in every cartoon they’re teamed up in.
 * Identical Stranger: In several cartoons, Gandy goes to another country/continent/planet/region to escape Gussy Goat… only to be met by an “ethnic” version of Gussy.
 * Immune to Slapstick: The non-antagonistic human characters (such as the Dawsons) are immune to slapstick.
 * Improbable Weapon User: The Funny Animal characters can use anything as a weapon.
 * Inexplicably Identical Individuals: One of the main gags associated with this series. Several cartoons have Gussy facing off against hordes of Gandy Geese.
 * Killer Rabbit: Noit the Evil Spaceman may look like a cute little astronaut, but he's actually an alien invader hellbent on destruction.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: There are a LOT of characters. The Wikipedia page only mentions 3 characters, followed by the vague phrase "and several other cartoon characters". That's how many characters we're talking about. There's the ones everyone knows (Gussy Goat, Ginny Goat, Rocky Raccoon, Rinna Raccoon, Catnip Cat, Fiona Cat, Zara and Erika Dawson, Gandy Goose, Buzzy the Crow); the ones almost everyone knows (Trina Mouse, Sadie Skunk, Zach and Annabelle Dawson, Quackula, the Random Cowboy, Noit the Evil Spaceman, Rat and Mouse, Martha Goose); and the ones that some but not all know (Kaden Hardin, Clara, Duke Fox, Deputy Dawg, Penelope Polar Bear, Marvelous Molly and her friends Lexi and Olivia, Stephanie Gavin, Abbie and Bunit, E.O. Kango, Ren Tiger). This sheer number of characters is mainly due to the fact that Argosy had a sheer number of staff: "Aldo Boomer" was a pseudonym for up to 100 contracted animators hired by Argosy (Argosy did the same trick with "Erin Hunter" when they got into the YA novel business with an adaptation of their Warrior Cats toyline). This is even more remarkable when you remember that the only local competition to Argosy in the cartoon business in the old days (besides Johnson) was the AoFM, which relied exclusively on two characters.
 * Long Runner: The original series ran from 1930 to 1980 (50 years), and the current series has been running since 1990.
 * Pokémon Speak: Noit the Evil Spaceman can only say "NOIT!"
 * Rules Lawyer: When teamed up with Fiona, Gussy becomes this. ”You’re supposed to ask what TNT stands for.”
 * Shout Out: GoAnimate's "Comedy World" theme uses a QUITE similar style to some of the human characters in Argosy Avenue, to the point where Argosy's parent company MediaCorp considered suing Alvin Hung for copyright infringement, until realizing that you cannot copyright an art style.
 * The Smurfette Principle: Inverted: there are just as many female characters as there are male characters, and they're equally iconic.
 * Slice of Life: Most of Catnip and Fiona’s solo cartoons are like this: the difference is that Catnip’s cartoons are Denser and Wackier, while Fiona’s cartoons are Lighter and Softer. Both still have a lot of slapstick, though.
 * The non-antagonist human characters (the Dawsons, Marvelous Molly and her friends, Stephanie Gavin) also mostly appear in slice-of-life outings.
 * Token Human: The Dawsons (and the other characters created by David Doring) are these in the protagonists (there are several human antagonists).
 * Too Dumb to Live: One of the Trope Makers was Gandy Goose, who is constantly falling for all of Gussy Goat’s traps, even the bleedingly-obvious ones. As shown in many cartoons, Gussy could place a bear trap, with a giant sign saying “WARNING: BEAR TRAP!”, and Gandy would still get caught in it. Even in his solo cartoons, Gandy is Too Dumb to Live: he tries to get rid of a rat infestation in his house, by eating rat poison.
 * Voice Changeling: In the Gussy/Fiona cartoons, Gussy is annoyed at Fiona going “off-script”, and tells her in a normal-sounding, unaccented voice what he excepts her to do. This is a stark contrast with his normal Irish-accented voice.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: Gussy acts like everyone else is just as dumb as Gandy Goose, when Buzzy outsmarts him often, Catnip just ignores the elaborate traps and moves on, and Fiona is Genre Savvy herself.