Morphers

Morphers is a show by 1001 Spears about villages of humans, Morphers, aptly named after their power of creating fusions with each other.

Synopsis
The three Morpher tribes must band together or antagonize each other as the Norphers attempt to reign supreme over their planet.

Cast

 * Sophia Bush as Florence Ingrid, Tess Ernest
 * Jared Padalecki as Sebastian Christian
 * Brendan Trigger as Kristian Christian
 * Emily Alyn Lind as Vanessa Ingrid
 * Sabrina Carpenter as Zoe Ingrid
 * Joe Jonas as Sheldon Christian
 * Ben Hardy as Zak Ernest
 * Jamie Dornan as Vincent Ernest
 * Chris Lowell as Sid Frost
 * Tucker Albrizzi as Luke Frost
 * TBA Actor (needs to be born in 2006) as Fiona Frost
 * Jason Hervey as Chuck Ganish Farley
 * Logan Huffman as Gordon Ganish Farley
 * Darren Criss as Jake Ganish Farley
 * Michael Eric Reid as Krish
 * TBA as Ted
 * Mika Newton as Baylee
 * Alexis Blendel as Glender
 * Imani Hakim as Glenn
 * Jamie Renee Smith as Torsten
 * Justin Cook as Fritz
 * Tinashe as Scarlet
 * Shareeka Epps as Howard
 * Martin Starr as Mervyn
 * Nicholle Tom as Maggie
 * James Van Der Beek as Winston
 * Mark Salling as the Norphers
 * Erik von Detten as Major Norpher

Season One

 * 1) Fruit-Nut
 * 2) Maca-Ramen
 * 3) Hot Screaming Shower
 * 4) Ernest Stoners
 * 5) Norphers
 * 6) Marph
 * 7) Poophole
 * 8) Postman
 * 9) Another Norpher?
 * 10) Changing a Light
 * 11) Spear Ball

Trivia

 * A Morphers video game is coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 5 in May 2017.
 * It is animated with Adobe Animate.

A-M

 * Accidental Dance Craze: By the Christians and Ernest Village in Ernest Stoners.
 * Alien Lunch: Several of the Morpher foods border on the strange side, such as Fruitnuts (an apple with the bottom half of a sunflower seed), Macaron-Is (macaron cookies studded with macaroni and cheese noodles), and Pie-Tunias (flowers that grow full cream pies as vegetation).
 * Alliterative Name: The Season 2 Village surnames (Frosts, Farley Ganishes, Flemyngs).
 * All There In The Manual: The "Meet the Morpher" trailers shine more light on the personalities of the characters, which are never shown thanks to the situation-based aspect of the show. Examples include Kristian's Hair Trigger Temper and Tess's fear of heights (Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?).
 * All Your Powers Combined: The Morphs have the combined powers of both Morphers involved. Merphs, being tougher, have the powers of all 3 village members, plus a special elemental ability.
 * Ambiguous Robots: It is debatable whether or not the Morphers are electronic, as they have mechanical insides and a robot landscape, yet have organic food choices and otherwise appear human-like (Ambiguously Human).
 * Amusing Injuries: Over half of the humor in the series is this.
 * An Aesop: Team Spirit. And the more people working together, the faster the problem is solved.
 * Apple of Discord: In Macaron-I & Cheese, all Morphers introduced at the time are fighting over the last titular snack, right up until Zoe crushes it by accident. Then they see a Norpher with a crate of Macaron-Is (Here We Go Again).
 * Art Shift: In the Morph sequences, there is a simplified and crude design with thin line work used. Also, when characters get electrocuted by lightning, they will change to an exaggerated robotic skeleton.
 * Sweeping Ashes: Permanently during detonations. They get repaired by the next episode, though.
 * Awesome, But Impractical: The Sebastian/Zoe Morph looks epic and flies quickly, but it is uncontrollable by any means, giving it the powers of a Marph, rather than the Morph it is.
 * Badass Adorable: The Morphers have traits that makes them quite endearing, and they are still able to kick ass.
 * Badass Bookworm: The Morphers that are extremely smart can use their intelligence to their advantage, and it turns out okay.
 * Balloon Belly: Gordon gets one at the end of Grill Cubes.
 * Big Ball of Violence: Happens in Macaron-I & Cheese, where the Generation 1 Merphs start fighting over the titular snack. Bonus points that their elements were bursting out of said ball, as well as the exact amount of teeth each Merph has (Teeth Flying).
 * Big Damn Heroes: Fiona and Gordon to the falling Vincent and Sheldon in Incorrect Colors.
 * Built with LEGO: Subverted. While the series is completely Adobe Flash, LEGO has made stop-motion videos for the franchise using physical bricks.
 * Cast Herd: The benefit of the villages. Several times, an episode will focus on a couple villages at a time, with a quick peasant from an outside neighborhood thrown in.
 * Cast of Snowflakes: Even in the first commercial for the series, it is stated that "each Morpher is unique". And their designs certainly are! A single Morpher could easily be told apart from another one in silhouette form thanks to how unique their hairstyles are. In contrast, this is completely averted with the Norphers to further highlight their boring personalities.
 * However, Sheldon and Sid look a little like the same, though with enough differences to change them up (like Sid's jagged frosty gloves or Sheldon's muscular texture).


 * The Chase: All of Incorrect Colors.


 * Clipped Wing Angel: Marphs, and Morphs if it suffers either Power Incontinence or that the components are not getting along.
 * Color-Coded Elements: Each Morpher from a village wears a specific color that goes with their element. For instance, Vanessa is an Ingrid, so she wears scarlet, Fiona is a Frost, so she wears blue, Sheldon is a Christian, so he wears gray and gold, and Torsten is a Cortez, so he wears green.
 * Continuity Snarl: Thanks to being a game with backstories and a cartoon running concurrent with each other, there have been misses between the two. These include conflicting personalities, and, most controversially, whether Jake or Gordon is the chief of the Farley Ganishes (game says Jake, series says Gordon).
 * Curb-Stomp Battle: Anytime a single Norpher goes up against a Morpher.
 * Distant Reaction Shot: In Hot Screaming Shower, when the magma pipe clog is about to touch Kristian and Tess, it cuts to outside their habitats, and a loud scream is heard.
 * Eldritch Location:
 * Norpher Land. We do not know where it even is, other than the fact that a few Morphers have been to it twice, and nothing else is there other than Norphers.
 * Also, Morpher Mountain. It was a bright, happy place in Kristian's imagination, but in reality, it is a rocky mountain surrounded by moonlit, swirling skies, and small, jagged mountains. It is also where the Colorful Morpher Wheel is held.
 * Elemental Rivalry: Despite not being enemies in the slightest, the Generation 1 and Generation 2 Morphers' elemental themes are juxtaposed against each other, leaving interesting Morphs and embarrassing Marphs between them. This includes the Playing With Fire Ingrid Village vs. the An Ice Person Frosts, the Shock and Awe Ernest Village vs. the Rubber Man Flemyngs, and the Dishing Ou Dirt Christians vs. the Green Thumb Farley Ganishes.
 * Ensemble Cast: Morphers  lacks a protagonist with various Morphers getting their time as focus depending on the episodes. However, the Norphers are cemented as the antagonists.
 * Epic Fail: A Marph is the result of a Morph gone wrong.
 * Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Fruit-Nuts. The top half is a Granny Smith apple, the bottom half a brown sunflower seed. They grow on fruit trees with brown leaves and gray pipes for trunks. There are even crimson variants that are constantly burning! Another interesting plant of note are Pie-Tunias. They grow cream pies as buds.
 * Flintstone Theming:  In reference to the Fusion Dance aspect of the show, various objects, sports, and ideas are themed around combining two real-world items into one new unique one (such as Fruit-Nut trees or icy half pipes).
 * Flushing Toilet, Screaming Shower: Inverted in Hot Screaming Shower (Non-Indicative Title). Thank you, Ingrid Village clearing the pipes of the titular shower (which really is a stream of molten rock treated like water), the clog goes through the pipe system of Morpher Land, overheating both Kristian's urinal and Tess's drinking fountain, making  them  the ones to scream out from the heat instead.
 * Good Colors, Evil Colors: The Norphers are black and white - super boring colors, just like their personality. Even their base is a white backdrop. Meanwhile, the Morphers' world is as unique and colored as they are.
 * Groin Attack: A rather bizarre and graphic example befalls Kristian in Hot Screaming Shower, thank you, Ingrids Merph blowing heat through the water system as soon as he was about to piss in the urinal. It is seriously the only reason why the episode is rated TV-MA.
 * Impossibly Delicious Food
 * Macaron-Is. They are so addicting that the last one turns into an all-out Merph melee between three of the villages.


 * Instant Ice, Just Add Cold: The episode Snow Half Pipe plays with the idea. After Florence and Kristian fall into the frigid water of the icy half-pipe, they hover up entirely encased in ice, shown by their bodies colored entirely blue with stiff expressions. No extra ice cubes, though Florence's flame is also frostbitten as well.


 * Just Stomp Him: Sebastian in Norphers first opts to punch away (Punched Across the Room) the stray Norpher in the beginning. Then, at the end, just steps on the remaining Norpher.


 * Lava is Boiling Kool-Aid: The Ingrid Kingdom. The stuff is treated like water to them (from titanic slides to a Jacuzzi and showers). However, the molten rock can dangerously burn the others (as shown in Hot Screaming Shower).
 * Mad Eye: The design quirk for the characters: a lot of times, one pupil will be drastically small or have a ring around it to make it larger than the other one. Noticeable on the Norphers.


 * Megaton Punch: Vanessa does this to Sheldon in Macaron-I & Cheese.

N-Z

 * Oh, Crap!:
 * The lone Norpher in Macaron-I & Cheese, when the Morphers all chase him for his container of the titular snack.
 * Florence and Sebastian when the Norpher Sebastian punched calls an entire army to his aid, in Norphers.
 * Vincent and Sheldon, as they fall off the cliff in Incorrect Colors, though were already a lot like that by the start of the show, thank you, Norpher Army chasing them!
 * The painted Norphers (Paper Thin Disguise) when Major Norpher calls for the rest to attack.
 * Orphaned Punchline: Starts up the episode "Pothole". Zak: So then, he says "Do not take any wood Norphers!"
 * The last act in "Hamilton" is capped off by one as well. Krish/Gordon Morph: That is no Norpher, that is my brother-in-law!


 * Orphaned Punchline:  Starts up the episode "Poophole".
 * Zak: So then, he says "Don't take any wood Norphers!"
 * The last act in "Vaudeville" is capped off by one as well.
 * Krish/Gordon Morph: That is not a Norpher, that is my brotherinlaw!


 * Orphaned Setup: Ends the episode Poophole.
 * Zak: So, two Morphers and a Norpher walk in an illegal pharmacy...


 * Paper-Thin Disguise: In "Norpher Morphoff" Major Norpher paints two Norphers as a Frost and a Flemyng so they can steal a Morpher Wheel. The disguise works not only on the Morphers, but Major Norpher himself falls for it despite him disguising them in the first place, leading to the other Norphers killing the two of them.
 * Pokémon Speak:
 * All a Marph can do in terms of speech is laugh and say 'marph'.
 * Norphers, meanwhile, only use "Norpher" for their vocabulary, with only varying uses of English, while Major Norpher fully averts this.


 * Required Secondary Powers:
 * Fruit-Nut shows right off the bat that Morphs are unknowing of their new abilities are, or how they work, when Sebastian crisps his head with his Zoe-morphed feet, before flying off uncontrollably. Also, Marphs lack the ability to control their abilities. Hell, the Season 2 Morphers themselves suffer from this;
 * Fiona is the only member of the Frost village that is not lethargic or slow from the temperature, with Sid actually being able to freeze himself in his own iced tunnels.
 * Bailee's face is strong enough to use as a rubber mallet, but that does not translate to the inside of her head, so now she has gone insane from cranial injuries.
 * Chuck, a living garbage compactor, does not have the teeth to masticate everything he eats, and had to replace two of them with gold teeth as a result of chipping.


 * Running Gag: Hamanossi BLTs and Kristian's stone arm misplacement error:
 * The origin of the gag is in  Changing a Light, when Zak finds a Hamanossi BLT instead of a Morpher Wheel.
 * In Incorrect Colors, Sheldon pulls out a Hamanossi BLT in place of a Morpher Wheel, then mentions Zak.
 * Kristian's rock arm misplacement error appears on  six  episodes.


 * Seven Deadly Sins: Do not be fooled by the Morphers' innocence, even these characters are flawful:
 * Envy: The Morphers are speedily jealousy if one Morpher has a Macaron-I that they don't, and  will  kill each other for it.
 * Gluttony: The Farley Ganishes are prone to eating a lot to satisfy their hunger.
 * Greed: All the Morphers (and Norphers) love Macaron-Is so much that they will go to great lengths to have the last piece for themselves (even if it would kill other people onto doing so), and Zak has a deep obsession over Hamanossi BLTs that can blind him from the feelings of the other Morphers.
 * Lust: Besides a sh*t ton of sexual pleasure, the Morphers seek pleasure in the fun in their lives. The exception are Scarlet, Fritz, and Howard, who really want pleasure to the point that they are unaware of their spikiness.
 * Pride: Zoe seems to hold a high opinion about herself and would rub it in to other Morphers, such as in Stoneball, where she thought that the titular game was for "f****ts", and when she harasses Luke in Lift for the latter's sluggishness. Also, Krish believes that he is the smartest Morpher ever, and he boasts about it.
 * Sloth: The extreme cold in the Frost climate worsens Sid and Luke's tired nature, and they can be prone to sleeping at the most inopportune times.
 * Wrath: Sebastian and Sheldon have some kind of loathing towards Zoe in "Fruit-Nut" and "Letter Carrier", respectively. Though this is justified since Zoe loves to torture Morphers. Also, Chuck obviously has fury issues when he gets even with Sid and Florence by marping them into a log-Marph that he and Jake use in "Farley Ganish Log Tossing".


 * Shout-Out:
 * When the Christians have their digging contest in Ernest Stoners, they turn into Pac-Man Captain Ersatzes.
 * Zoe bounces on the Christians in Letter Carrier by a game of Whack-A-Mole.
 * Vincent references Dat Boi (note: "Oh sh*t whattup!") in "Stoneball".
 * We learn who really created Pop Rocks in Grill Cubes.
 * Luke and Ted reference I Love Lucy when they work in a Hamanossi BLT factory in "Hamlogna Conveyer Belt Madness".
 * Some of the level names in  Calling All Mixels  include titles such as Cartridge Family and I Love Lamp.
 * The Morph sequences in the "Marph Romp" section of the Special reference Galaxian and Monty Python's Flying Circus.


 * Squashed Flat: Graphically happens to the Norpher that bothers Sebastian and Florence at the end of Norphers, after Sebastian stomps on it before going to the magma slide alongside Florence. Said Norpher was stuck onto Sebastian's foot and kept saying "Norph" a couple of times every step Sebastian took.
 * Sugar Bowl: The bright colored setting of Morpher Land the series mainly takes place in. In contrast, Norpher Land completely averts this trope with only a black and white backdrop and nothing else, which makes the location seem strange and bleak.
 * Tempting Fate: The Norpher that bothers Florence and Sebastian in Norphers, after the entire army was killed, at the end.
 * Vincent gets into this twice; first, in Stoneball, when he is sunbathing as the sudden heatwave starts heading his way... Volectro: I will ll never get a tan! *Gets his metallic skin melted off* Oh sh*t waddup!
 * ...and when he asks Tess in Changing a Light. Volectro: Why would anyone need to know that? *Light in the room bursts* Teslo: You just needed to say it!


 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Morphers love to use Morphing as a means of solving everything. As a result:
 * Ingrids Merph fixing the pipe system by blowing flames through it, burning Kristian and Tess who were also using the water system at the time, in Hot Screaming Shower.
 * The Zak/Vanessa Morph to completely destroy the scenery, in an effort to cure a single asshole, in "Poop-Hole".
 * Ernests Merph blowing out the main light to the city by feeding too much lightning through the plug outlet in "Changing a Light".
 * In Stoneball, the Ingrids and Christians created "Morpherball", then launched three burning boulders into each other, creating a scorching heatwave through the air. And also giving Vincent a tan.
 * Rule of Three: Three Generations, three villages Generation, three Morphers in a village, and three different Norphers that act as Major Norphers lackeys in  Another Norpher.


 * Thick-Line Animation: Given the traditional black borders. However, parts of the Morpherls, such as electrical or frosty motifs, are given colorful thick outlines instead. Backgrounds are always full color outlines, too.
 * Tipis And Totempoles: The general aesthetic of the F. Ganish's land. It contains totems that Gordon carves with his teeth and large tents, all in bright technicolor.


 * Too Fast to Stop: Sebastian in Fruit-Nut, when he fuses with Zoe.
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Sebastian with Fruit-Nuts, and Zak and Jake with Hamanossi BLTS, the latter of which is referenced in Incorrect Colors when Sheldon pulls out a Morpher Wheel only to find that Zak replaced it with a sandwich. And all the Morphers (and even Norphers) love Macaron-Is.
 * Traveling Pipe Bulge: The magma clog in Hot Screaming Shower, once unclogged, travels throughout the pipe system as a scarlet hot phallic (Freud was Right) lump in the pipes. When it makes its stops on Kristian's urinal and Tess's water fountain, it causes the items to have the same crimson color.


 * Your Head Asplode: Florence in Fruit-Nut when she is squeezed tight in the molten rock spa with the Sebastian/Zoe Morph. It is repaired by the later episodes.
 * True Companions: Despite the fact that Morphers do not get along well, they really see each other as friends and will help out if one of them is in trouble. Notable examples include "Fruit-Nut", when Zoe helps Sebastian with the eponymous food problem via Morphing, "Stoneball", when Florence agrees to play the titular game with the other Christians and creates Morpherball, and "Ultimate Funny Mission", when the Generation 1 and 2 chiefs and chieftains (sans Jake, Gordon went in his place) went to save their friends by going to Morpher Mountain to hit the huge Multicolored Wheel and restore color.


 * You Should Know This Already: Incorrect Colors, which introduces the generation 2 Morphers, acts as if they have been there the whole time, and that we never saw them because we were focusing on generation one, this whole time (Always in Class One). To be fair, though, they were never hidden, anyways (Early Bird Cameo).