Angry Birds X/Tropes

"Once Upon a Time, there were two islands, one with birds and one with pigs. For many years, the two islands are unaware to the existence of each other across the seas. That was, until the King Pig at the time wanted to expand his kingdom to the island of birds. He sent an expedition for his minions to seize the island. The birds were benevolent toward their strange new guests until the pigs discovered their eggs. Hungry, the pigs stole the eggs while the birds were distracted and sailed back home. Naturally, the king pig ate one, then two more until he ran out. From then on, the king pig demanded more eggs on the island of birds and seized it at once. The birds were defenseless and could not retaliate against the pigs, so they decided to simply offer their eggs to the pigs to limit the destruction of their home, deciding to prioritize peace and happiness, once and for all. Then that generation, however, one bird strongly disagreed. For many years, the pigs stole the birds' eggs and his species are worried for themselves rather than the future generation of birds. And so, in one fateful day, he fought back. Soon, other birds noticed his courage and the eggs he rescued. And so, the first ever team of heroes was born, known as the Angry Birds. They saw a giant slingshot washed up on the beach, so they used it to launch themselves against fortresses made by the pigs, which were formerly viewed as unbreakable. There's no stopping the rest of these birds as they even volunteered to take the fight to the island of pigs to stop the war once and for all. This lasted for many generations as the endless war between the Angry Birds and these egg stealing pigs were in an all-time high. Until one day, the previous group of Angry Birds had been murdered in a traumatic event in 2009, The Mudbeard Massacre. Some people believe that the original Angry Birds had gone missing, and that the war was unfortunately going to end. But I haven't given up hope. I know that, today, it was time for a new generation of Angry Birds."" – Mighty Eagle's opening narration in the series premiere's Cold Open, as it is the extended version

Cartoon Network's first original series based on a video game, Angry Birds X also known as Steven Spielberg Presents Angry Birds X is an animated television series by Cartoon Network, whom is teaming up with DHX Media, Amblin Entertainment, Sony Pictures Animation, in association with Rovio Entertainment, in the latter's first-ever hands-on role in a television series, based on their long-running Angry Birds franchise. The show is created by Genndy Tartakovsky, known for his work on Dexter's Laboratory, Sym-Bionic Titan, and Samurai Jack. It is the second official Adaptation Expansion of the game series, after Angry Birds Toons, and the first long-form series of the game series, with the second being Angry Birds Summer Madness that was released on 2022. It lasted seven seasons, from 2013 to 2020.

Even though it is about the misadventures of the Flock and the Pigs, as they stop the Bad Piggies' deviously mischievous plan to steal the birds' eggs, the plot starts off as an origin story of how the Angry Birds became the heroic defenders of their eggs and how the fight with the Bad Piggies started. Starting out as simple social pariahs on an island filled with optimistic, happy-go-lucky flightless technicolored birds, looking to earn some recognition, they met a small army of green pigs, led by Leonard and his son, Matthew, who sail over the seas to make peace with the birds after a traumatic event to all birds that happened a long time ago, the Mudbeard Massacre of 2009. But their budding truce with the pigs (with subtle hints of a friendship/rivalry) doesn't sit well with King Julian Smoothcheeks I, who seeks to conquering Piggy Island for its resources after being exiled to Boar Island ever since the first Great Egg War (set after the end of the Mudbeard Massacre of 2009) — and with his army of bad piggies in his arsenal, he will stop at nothing to have an omelet feast.

The series follows in the footsteps of the Golden Age of Animation, with its cartoon violence, slapstick, humor, and other aspects which are taken from such cartoons, like the Tex Avery shorts and Looney Tunes. It is also notable for using plot elements that came straight out of Angry Birds: The Motion Comic.

ABX started the Renaissance Age of animated series produced by Amblin Entertainment, resulting in similar shows that shared some of the same tropes and were produced in much the same way.

The series premiered on the Angry Birds franchise's fourth anniversary, December 11, 2013, with a five-episode-long "pilot movie". ABX, despite being an Alternate Continuity, was created by Cartoon Network to ride the popularity of Angry Birds Toons and, as a result, borrows some aspects of the show.

Has a character page, give it a check out and some love where needed

Angry Birds X contains examples of:

 * Adaptational Expansion: The show not only add new plot elements that got carried over to either The Angry Birds Movies, Angry Birds Fantastic Adventures, or Angry Birds Summer Madness, but also fleshes out the members of the Flock and emphasizes their growth from unlikely misfit outcasts to a loyal, coopperative flock as they become friends with one another and later the pigs.
 * Wackyland / Cloudcuckooland: Like most Toon worlds, Piggy Island is colorful and cartoonish and it lacks almost any bit of sense!
 * Animation Bump: The show's opening was done by TMS Entertainment. The many episodes done by them, Snipple Animation, Flying Bark Productions, Yowza! Animation, and Jam Filled Entertainment are also light years above the others in terms of quality with better, smoother, bouncier, more fluid squash-and-stretch cartoony 2D animation.
 * Animation Evolution: The animation of first five episodes of Season 1 were done by Toon City Animation, similar to Angry Birds Toons. — Chuck's expressions have become especially zanier, wackier, sillier, and more exaggerated, while The Flock have more cartoony facial expressions and each of them has their own, unique walking animation cycle. The characters in this show never make the same face twice!
 * The TMS episodes fit this trope. Since season 2, they've acquired more detailed shots and smoother Toon Boom animation. Along with more use of Traditional animation methods.
 * Art Evolution: Downplayed. Bomb, Red, and Chuck are also given nice little changes with their features redesigned to resemble their classic designs.
 * The Flock's designs feature simpler color palettes bringing them closer to their appearances in the original Angry Birds game.
 * Most notably, several action scenes are animated on twos.
 * Art Shift: Each member of the Flock has an Imagine Spot with classic-styled art as an homage to Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Space, and Angry Birds Rio.
 * Toon Physics: The show has a lot of this.
 * Animated Adaptation: Angry Birds X is the second cartoon adapted from the video game, the first being Angry Birds Toons. It combined elements of the Tex Avery shorts and Looney Tunes while retaining a lot of elements to the video game.
 * Zany Cartoon
 * Alternate Continuity: Doesn't follow at all with Angry Birds Toons.
 * Slice of Life: Many of the episodes are like this, at least by bird and pig standards.
 * The Golden Age of Animation: 'Nuff said! It's inspired by the Looney Tunes shorts and the Tex Avery shorts.
 * Binomium ridiculus: Played straight a bit for Chuck and the Bad Piggies, but averted for the rest of the Flock and even the pigs.
 * Bomb - Melopyrrha violacea
 * Red and Terence - Cardinalis cardinalis
 * Chuck - Speedius cleverus picidae-spinus
 * The Blues - Sialia currucoides
 * Matilda - Gallus gallus domesticus
 * Hal - Aulacorhynchus prasinus
 * Bubbles - Icterus bullockii
 * Stella - Neopsephotus bourkii
 * Ruby - Piranga rubra
 * Eugene - Balaeniceps rex
 * Melody - Nyctibius griseus
 * Chet - Spizaetus ornatus
 * Bounci - Gavia immer
 * Breaking The Fourth Wall: This show's relationship with the fourth wall seems to be similar to Ed, Edd n Eddy.
 * The Renaissance Age of Animation: In the veins of Who Framed Roger Rabbit
 * Road Runner vs. Coyote: Similar to Angry Birds Toons, some of the episodes revolves around the Bad Piggy Rebellion attempting to steal the Angry Birds' eggs with the intent to eat them, and they're always thwarted. The show have a Slice of Life plot instead, applying to either the birds or the pigs 50% of the time.
 * Canon Welding: The show combines elements and events of Angry Birds Toons, the Angry Birds Stella cartoon, with the slingshot games.
 * Denser and Wackier: This series appears to be more cartoony and zany than Angry Birds Toons was when it comes to their episodic segments, as well as making use of a wide array of various cartoon sound effects (mainly from the Warner Bros., MGM, and Hanna-Barbera libraries). In fact, this series appears to have the same level of slapstick as that of other cartoons such as Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Tom and Jerry, and Tex Avery.
 * Humanity Ensues: The humanized episode "Oh, The Angry Humanity" involves Bomb and his Flock traveling to an alternate dimension where he and everyone else is human in a Equestria Girls-esque universe with the vast majority of the human characters still use the birds' wide array of color schemes and the pigs' green color schemes. A good chunk of the episode's humor stems from The Flock trying not to act like birds and some of them failing miserably at it.
 * Theme Tune Cameo: In Ready, Aim, Fire!!, it shows that the traditional Angry Birds theme was written by the minion pigs while congratulating them for saving their city. The traditional Angry Birds theme is heard often on this show, mostly as background music, although characters have hummed or whistling it is on occasion.
 * Invisible Anatomy: The characters have no visible wings or legs, yet they frequently brandish devices or perform tasks that would require some form of manual dexterity to operate — some examples are driving, wearing, eating, and wear boxing gloves.
 * Origin Story: Different continuity wise, the first five episodes serve as a prequel and a pilot of a sort, showcasing how the infamous feud between the Flock and Bad Piggies began as The Flock are shown visiting Piggy Island for the very first time. Heck, one episode shows how Bomb, Red, Terence, Hal, Stella, and Chuck first met as teenagers, how they met Bubbles, The Blues, and Matilda, and how they did their first egg rescue, forming the Flock.
 * The Movie: See the movie and its tropes here
 * Couch Gag: A message to the viewers, a la The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, usually from each of the Flock, at the end of the theme song.
 * Crossover: Angry Birds X and Steven Universe crossed over three times in the Gems and Birds Unite Trilogy.
 * Retraux: The show's episodic segments have simple comedic plots and elements similar to the Tex Avery cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Angry Birds Toons, the Spümcø era of The Ren and Stimpy Show, Catscratch, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, the Looney Tunes shorts (especially the ones directed by Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, and Chuck Jones), Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Looney Tunes, and Animaniacs with episodes like "Poached Eggs", "Mighty Hoax", "Danger Above", "The Big Setup", "Ham 'Em High", and "Mine and Dine" as examples.
 * The animation is designed to imitate the style of the Tex Avery cartoons, the classic slingshot-style Angry Birds games, Angry Birds Toons, and especially, the Steven Speilberg animated shows, (including Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs). Despite being animated digitally, it has some imperfections such as smudges and blurs, as if the characters were painted on cels.
 * Story Arc: While the show is mostly episodic, each season has one:
 * In the show as a whole, this arc involves the Flock trying to end the Great Egg War by making peace with the pigs, but Edgar (later King Smoothcheeks I) or the rest of the Bad Piggies steal the eggs to prevent them from doing so.
 * The first season focused on the Flock thwarting Edgar's egg-stealing schemes, while trying to figuring out who King Smoothcheeks I is and fit in with the Cartoon Network Universe while trying to find their purpose in the CN City.
 * The second season focused on The Flock getting prepared for the 22nd Annual Great Egg War, while wondering what the origin story of the Mighty Eagle is.
 * The third season focused on Bomb, Red, and Chuck teaching Silver to learn how to be an angry bird and trying their best to make her be one of the vital members of the Flock.
 * The fourth season and the movie focused on The Flock and the Pigs throwing a festival for all toons.
 * The fifth season focused on the Flock trying to wonder how they got their powers while looking into their origins.
 * The sixth season focused on a Crisis Crossover where the Flock meet their counterparts in other dimensions, such as the classic games, Angry Birds Toons, and the Angry Birds movies, including some fanmade shows like Angry Birds Fantastic Adventures, through a disturbance of the time holes. All flocks of angry birds must team up to fix their dimensions.
 * Genre Throwback: The show is a Zany Cartoon akin to the Steven Spielberg/Tom Ruegger Warner Bros. animated series from the '90s and the Golden Age of Animation. When mentioning the show's key influences, Genndy said that the major inspirations for the show was Animaniacs, Looney Tunes, the Tex Avery shorts, Tom and Jerry, Freakazoid, and Tiny Toon Adventures.
 * Continuity Nod: This show has a number of them over the course of it, despite coming across as having No Continuity.
 * Made of Indestructium: The Slingshot itself.
 * Mythology Gag: Being a show based on the Angry Birds games, this show is one big mythology gag in of itself, despite being a new continuity. But it’s still fun to list the nods, homages, nods, easter eggs, and references to the colossal cavalcade of content from prior Angry Birds incarnations, including the games and Angry Birds Toons, with a few notable one in the show:
 * After the Flock rescues the eggs, Bomb rates their rescue missions on a scale of one to three stars, as in the games' famous three-star scoring system.
 * As one of the Flock is launched from the slingshot, each of them makes the sound one of the birds would when launched in the original games.
 * When the Bad Piggies get knocked out by the birds' attacks, their eyes somehow receive bruises. This is a nod to original Angry Birds game where the pigs get their eyes blackened each time they damaged.
 * Matilda's older fraternal twin brother, Mathias, looks exactly like her original Classic design as a white rooster
 * Chuck yells out one of his catchphrases, "Chuck Time!" This was the title of the first Angry Birds Toons segment.
 * When each of the members of the Flock has an Imagine Spot, their designs in the classic-styled games are used.
 * Shared Universe: This show had characters from Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Tiny Toons, Looney Tunes, and every single Cartoon Network show and every Hanna-Barbera show (even if some shows are not made by Cartoon Network Studios or Hanna-Barbera Productions) appear as supporting characters and/or cameos.
 * Storybook Opening: Unsurprisingly accompanied by an Art Shift, using animations based on the original Angry Birds game in the book that Bomb is reading and narrated by the Mighty Eagle.
 * Instrumental Theme Tune: The show uses a wackier Animaniacs-esque rendition of the iconic Angry Birds theme that emphasizes the comedic action and adventures of the show, aside from one lyric from BShap's Angry Birds Rap.
 * Peace Conference: The main point of the show, as the Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies must end their endless feud that has started years ago.
 * Shown Their Work: The game physics figure quite a lot in this show, such as Bomb and Silver being able to bash through stone, Chuck, Hal, and Bubbles bashing through wood exceptionally well, Red and Stella can't bash through stone, wood, and glass well, Terence and Tony bashing through a lot of materials exceptionally well, the Blues bashing through glass well, and Matilda can destroy materials well, but not stone.
 * Silly Animal Sound: In a similar nature to Ed, Edd n Eddy. Whenever there's some heavy slapstick going on in this series, rest assured that there will be random bird and pig sound effects edited in.
 * Super-Deformed: Like the games themselves, the art style is done in a deliberately cartoony manner. Both the pigs and the birds are basically limbless.
 * Status Quo is God: Thankfully averted, so much that even Hal lampshades it in Ready, Aim, FIRE! Hal: As you can see, Chuck. As long as the Bird/Pig truce stands, nothing will fortunately stay the same anymore.
 * Stock Sound Effects: This show LOVES using these, and always at the most appropriate times.
 * Slapstick: Abundant, in a similar nature to Tex Avery, Looney Tunes, and Tom and Jerry.
 * Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: The whole show has a good balance between being silly and serious. 50% of the episodes are action-packed, adventurous and lore-driven a la Avatar: The Last Airbender and TransFormers: Animated, while having slapstick of the latter, and 50% of the episodes are comedic, character-driven, and zany a la Looney Tunes and Animaniacs, while still having continuity of the former.
 * Suddenly Speaking: In the games and cartoons, none of the characters really spoke. Mostly they just grunted, growled, laughed and uttered gibberish. In the show, the birds and the pig can speak. This got carried over to the IDW comics and The Angry Birds Movie franchise.
 * Suddenly Voiced: Terence, the most silent out of the Flock that can communicate in grunts, finally can speak now.
 * Strictly Formula: While most episodes follow some of the same elements as Angry Birds Toons in an eleven minute format, the main formula of the Angry Birds games has hardly ever changed in this show, no matter the time period or location - Birds protect eggs, green pigs steal eggs to cook some omelets, birds get angry and launch themselves at said pigs with a slingshot. Often, episodes would throw in an extra element to switch the formula up.
 * Take That!: Specifically, today's rendition of the ill-tempered flock since 2019.
 * Truer to the Text: Despite taking creative liberties, deviating from it a bit in some areas, being a tribute to The Golden Age of Animation, out of the adaptations made for the Flock, it's a lot more faithful to the source material of the video game franchise of the same name (especially the slingshot-style games) and is a much closer visual adaptation of the Angry Birds games, as its tone and character traits are ripped directly from what you see from the Angry Birds games for the most part. Red, Chuck, Bomb, Bubbles, the Blues, and the rest of the characters look almost exactly like their classic game counterparts save for some relatively minor Art Evolution (outside of Hal, Terence, the Pigs, and Matilda, who retain their Toons-esque designs) and is largely on-model for what the cast looked like at the time of Angry Birds Toons' release, and settings from the games (such as Piggy Island) appearing in the show. Many more mechanics, leitmotifs, and features from the games also appear, and far more frequently and faithfully.

Inter-flock-als
"They are... the Angry Birds. And they’re coming to Cartoon Network next/this winter/on their fourth anniversary/Wednesday, December 11." Numerous promos released in the months before the show had one of the flock unintentionally invading scenes of the numerous Cartoon Network shows—from Dexter's Laboratory to Steven Universe—before heading into scenes from the actual show with Michael Jackson's "Bad" playing in the background.


 * Adaptational Nice Guy: Most Cartoon Network characters are more pleasant to have the Flock around...
 * Adaptational Angst Upgrade: ...While some Cartoon Network characters are reasonably and understandably more annoyed once they see the Flock.
 * Animated Actors: Implied to be this. Both Finn, Lu, The Eds, and Bloo tell the Flock to "get [their] own show", Dexter is annoyed at The Flock for unintentionally ruining his laboratory, Uncle Grandpa knew that Terence is not Mr. Gus, and many, many others.
 * Black Sheep: Invoked; This was how the show was promoted before it came out. The Flock were such unusual characters for Cartoon Network at the time that the marketing campaign decided to played up the Flock as a Black Sheep-type among Cartoon Network's plethora of animated characters as much as possible, leading to these promos and the show's poster that shows a bunch of Cartoon Network characters most reacting with confusion, intrigue, or disdain towards Bomb, The Blues, Red, Chuck, Matilda, Hal, Terence, Bubbles, and Stella.
 * Captain Obvious: Uncle Grandpa points out that Terence is not Mr. Gus
 * Commercial Switcheroo: These promos would start with an scene from a Cartoon Network show, and then have The Flock interrupt the moment.
 * Kick The Dog: While a lot of Cartoon Network characters are annoyed at the Flock for ruining their scenes, they are understandable and some of them told them to get their own show, Lu (from Mike, Lu & Og), of all people, yelled at Red, Chuck, and Bomb ferociously to get their own show, before kicking them, in a similar way Garfield kicks Odie.
 * Trailer Spoof: Nearly all the promo appeared to be a promo for some other Cartoon Network show at first, only to be interrupted by the Flock, partly to make it clear it was a lighter, wackier show than the company's usual output. The show's tagline was even "There's one in every team."
 * Weird Crossover: Between this show and many Cartoon Network shows
 * White Sheep: Look above Black Sheep.
 * Wolf Whistle: Chuck does the two note whistle once he sees Cartoon Network beauties Amethyst, Margaret from Regular Show, and Frankie Foster. Frankie Foster and Margaret wern't charmed by him, but Amethyst apparently was.