All That

The Golden era.

Fresh out the box,
 Stop, look, & watch,
 Ready yet? Get set,

It's Allllll That!
—Soup, the announcer

Nickelodeon's third ensemble skitcom (following You Can't Do That on Television and Roundhouse), bearing a strong resemblance to the format of Saturday Night Live or Mad TV (like its predecessors did to Laugh-In and In Living Color, respectively). Created by Brian Robbins and Mike Tollin and produced by Dan Schneider. Ran from April, 1994 to October, 2005. A little more than a decade, complete with a full cast exodus about halfway through, followed by four seasons, again like SNL... but without an Eddie Murphy to keep things afloat until Lorne came back, which in this case "he" (Mike Tollin & Brian Robbins) never did.

Launched the careers of: Amanda Bynes, Kenan Thompson (who actually managed to make the cast of Saturday Night Live in the mid-2000's), Kel Mitchell, Nick Cannon, & Jamie Lynn Spears.

Led to (chronologically): KaBlam!, Kenan and Kel, The Amanda Show, The Nick Cannon Show, Zoey 101, and Just Jordan. And further down the family tree came Drake and Josh and eventually iCarly and Victorious.

The 90s Are All That block on Teen Nick is named for it, and the show itself serves as the headliner.

Tropes used in All That include:
  • Actor Allusion: At the start of one episode, the cast takes questions from the audience. Dan Schneider appears and is referred to as "the guy from that old show Head of the Class."
  • Adults Are Useless - Subverted in Good Burger, played straight in everything else on the show.
  • Affectionate Parody - "What Do You Do?" Parody of fellow-Nick show Figure It Out, on which most of the All That cast appeared at least once...Bynes, Denberg, & Tamberelli were even regular panelists. The name itself sounds like an older Nickelodeon game show, "What Would You Do?"
  • Always Someone Better - Baggin' Saggin' Barry experience this when meeting his rival and later-girlfriend Baggin' Saggin' Mary. Old man Clavis even pointed this out while giving Barry some encouragement.
  • A Worldwide Punomenon - Cheeseburger Doyle, Private Eye. That is all.
  • Ax Crazy: Quite a few of the characters.
    • Repairman...man...man... who doesn't really care about property damage and is actively a danger to pretty much everything.
    • Mark Saul's most common character - a nameless Ax Crazy kid who ties up people and [takes over their jobs with insane gusto. It started with him as a nutso hall monitor and just grew more psychotic from there.
  • Bag of Holding - Baggin' Saggin' Barry had a baggy pair of pants that functioned like this. He had everything in his pants which could possibly fit, and several that couldn't (e.g., an airplane when he kept tripping the airport metal detector until the plane left without him.) In the last sketch featuring him, he found a rival, Baggin' Saggin' Mary, who had the same gimmick, and became his Love Interest. Surprisingly, there was rarely any Rummage Fail situation with either.
  • Bat Deduction / Insane Troll Logic - Anything involving Detective Dan, if he even decides to go that far before arresting people.
  • Berserk Button: Disrespecting, derogating, or deriding peas in front of Ms. Piddlin.
    • Don't ask Ashley a stupid question, and DO NOT ask her why she is so mean to everyone.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: "Ask Ashley!"
    • The lemonade stand girls (first Katrina, and then Amanda).
  • Blessed with Suck - Boring Man, Bucket Man, LAMOS
  • Borrowed Catchphrase: As the show went on, more and more characters and cast members started borrowing Ask Ashley's "Thaaaaat's me!" including Coach Kreeton and Danny.
  • Breakout Character - Cast-wise, Kenan, Kel, and Amanda were the breakouts of the cast. They eventually got their own spinoffs.
  • Burger Fool - Ed, of Good Burger. Inverted in that he loves his job.
  • Butt Monkey - Stage Manager Kevin, Danny Tamberelli (when playing himself), Coach Kreeton.
    • Just about anyone can be this depending on their role, but the above three especially fall into this trope. A lot of Josh Server's characters do as well.
    • Don't forget Fuzz of Have a Nice Day with Leroy and Fuzz.
  • The Cameo: Chris Farley making a few cameos in one episode.
  • The Cast Showoff -
    • Played straight: In seasons 1-5, Kel Mitchell, repeatedly. In the 10th-anniversary special, Chelsea Brummet, Lisa Foiles, & Kianna Underwood, all at once.
    • Subverted: Every time Lori Beth Denberg or one of her characters sang.
      • Or really anybody except the straight examples listed.
  • Catch Phrase - Like the number of stars in the sky.
    • If there is only one thing originating in this show that will endure in our popular culture for decades to come, it is: "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, may can I take your order?"
    • If not that one then this one: "Five minutes! Five minutes! The show starts in five minutes!"
    • "You're hurtin' me in ways I can't understand!"
    • "REPAIR MAN MAN Man man man...."
      • "REPAIR BOY BOY Boy boy boy...."
    • "Dear Ashley," That's ME!
    • "Jupiter!"
  • Cloudcuckooland -- Ishboo's "foreign land" has some seriously bizarre traditions.
  • Cloudcuckoolanders - Half of the recurring characters as well as the cast itself

Why are you throwing sponges at a wall?
Because I ran out of pork chops.

  • Clumsy Copyright Censorship: The 90s Are All That airs this show without the musical guest performances. Since this necessitates the additional removal of sketches leading into the performances, and the cast saying goodbye after the song, several episodes end abruptly.
  • Companion Cube - The Big Ear of Corn predates the Cube by at least a decade.
  • Cousin Oliver - Kianna Underwood, Denzel Whitaker, & Lil' JJ, all new cast members for the final season of the show.
  • Crazy Cultural Comparison - The Ishboo sketches.
  • Crossover - Sometimes characters from certain sketches make appearances in sketches that otherwise have nothing to do with them (for example, Superdude once made a major appearance in a Good Burger sketch where a conspicuous criminal holds up the restaurant).
    • Taken to it's extreme during the 10th anniversary special in which Coach Kreeton, Abby Rhodes, Principal William Baines Pimpell, Jack Campbell, Detective Dan, Buzz, Caffy, and Randy Quench end up in the same skit. As Principal Pimpell puts it toward the end...

Pimpell: This sketch is clearly out of control!

    • In the Season 7 episode where Amanda Bynes guest stars, Penelope Taynt, her number one fan please from The Amanda Show breaks into the All That set to meet her.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass - Ms. Fingerly is a teacher who makes too many bad puns and sings songs clearly meant for preschoolers. She is also capable of matching Ishboo's father at Hookey-Doo (A type of duel from the Foreign Land), out-rocking a popular punk band, and teaching a class with an arrow in her gut.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: "I'm Detective Dan." Often inserted randomly in sentences despite him having introduced himself already.
  • Descended Creator: In the first six seasons, writer/producer Kevin Kopelow played the show's abused stage manager in the openings. Writer/producer Dan Schneider played the exasperated manager of Good Burger.
  • Destination Defenestration: A favorite gag across the entire run of the show. Be it hapless people being thrown out of windows, accident prone fools falling out of windows, or most often particularly off-kilter characters throwing themselves out of windows, the writers seemed to think that flying out of a window among the funniest ways you could write a character out of a scene. This occasionally carried over to Kenan and Kel and The Amanda Show as well.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything? - The Cheese Police skits are pretty much drug busts with the drugs replaced with cheese.
    • The translations for the various French phrases of Pierre Escargot may come off this way. For example:

May I jump up and down on your sausages?

Hypnopants: (After revealing his Hypnobot) Thats right, Boring Man. Stare into my bot. Get it? Because that's a robot and bot is short for "robot" and normally, I would say, "stare into..."
Boring Man: You know what, yes, I get it, I get it, I get it. Bot, butt, yes, yes. Who's the Boring Man around here?

  • Doom It Yourself - Repair Man-man-man-man-man's modus operandi.
  • Duck Season! Rabbit Season! - One of the Baby Chat sketches did this so Chester could trick Lulu into expressing disapproval of public funding of private schools.
  • Edutainment Show - Completely subverted: "Everyday French," "Vital Information," "Don't Do This @ Home/School," "Peter & Flem," "Leroy & Fuzz," and every classroom sketch.
      • Although "Everyday French" was peppered with real french words.
    • And to an extent, "Cooking with Randy & Mandy".
    • To be fair, every kid knew what "lactose intolerant" meant after every Super Dude sketch... thanks to Amanda Bynes (and before her, Katrina Johnson).
    • I bet a lot more kids knew who Ross Perot was after seeing the Earboy sketches.
  • Expository Theme Tune:The gist of the lyrics is "sit down and watch this show, because we are here to entertain you".
  • Funny Foreigner - Ishboo; Pierre Escargot
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar - Although most of the translations for Pierre Escargot were pretty innocent sounding, quite a number of them could seem a bit dirtier.
    • There was one USS Spaceship sketch where after Officer Ulcer failed to get the ship running, he says, "Piece o crap". So, they literally got crap past the radar.
    • One Baggin', Saggin' Barry skit includes this piece of wisdom.

"You gotta reach down deep in your pants and pull out things you never knew you had."

Buford: One time, a tick bit me in my butt.
Betty Jo: Quit! Bragging! Moron!
Buford: Oh, Pa, Betty Jo done called me a moron.
Clem: Betty Jo, don't call your brother a moron.
Buford: You tell her, Pa.
Clem: Shut up, moron.

  • Infomercial - parodied in the Toby Braun products
  • Inherently Funny Words - Lampshaded in a sketch celebrating the show's millionth use of "cheese" (& 30 seconds after that ceremony ended, the millionth use of "pants")
  • Insistent Terminology - Lester Oaks, Construction Worker insists on being called by both his name and his occupation.

Ed: Goodbye, Lester Oaks.
Lester Oaks, Construction Worker: Construction Worker!

"CAN'T YOU READ! THIS IS A LIBRARY!"

    • In the later years, SUGAR AND COFFEE!! So much shouting.
  • Nostalgia Filter: While remembered fondly by people who grew up in the 90s...during rewatching...you could see a lot of the jokes are either Dude, Not Funny, Unfortunate Implications, or just...they don't work.
  • Not So Different: Ed and the Complaint Dept lady.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Somewhat implied with Ishboo in the early episodes. Whenever he gets someone to do some of the more ridiculous customs, he will look at the camera and give the audience a "Just As Planned" smile.
  • One of Us - Lisa Foiles, believe it or not, recently started her own game review site and was a guest columnist on Kotaku. She's also a part of the new Angry Joe Show.
  • The Other Darrin - A season 9 "Good Burger" sketch cast the new (& tiny) performer Ryan Coleman as Ed. The fans did not react well.
    • Possibly lampshaded in the 10th anniversary reunion. Kel reprises Ed, who (among other things) inadvertently and horribly injures a co-worker. Said co-worker is played by Coleman.
    • Also, in the Superdude sketches, Penny Lane was originally played by Angelique Bates. However, after she left the show, Alisa Reyes filled in the role. Also counts as a Race Lift, as Bates was black, and Reyes was latino. Later African-American cast member Christy Knowings played Penny Lane.
    • Also in the Superdude sketches, Katrina Johnson played the little Ms. Exposition and Amanda Bynes took this role after she left.
  • Police Are Useless - Detective Dan, Jack Campbell, "Cheese Police"
  • Potty Emergency - One Good Burger sketch did this joke.
  • Psycho for Hire - "Repairman-man-man-man-man-man!"
  • Reunion Show - Two of them, both still during the show's run:
    • During season 5, the "100th episode" was a live broadcast with Lori Beth Denberg reprising Vital Information one last time, plus interviews with ex-cast Angelique Bates, Alisa Reyes, & Katrina Johnson.
    • Just before season 10. Server, Thompson, Mitchell, & Tamberelli performed with the current cast. Cannon made a videophone cameo, & several other ex-cast appeared in backstage party segments.
  • Right Way, Wrong Way Pair: The “Life With Peter & Flem” sketches.
  • Rule of Cool: The Big Ear of Corn, as Lampshaded in an intro sketch.
  • Rule of Funny: The green room sketches have this a lot. An example from Season 4 is the scarecrow:

Kenan: Aw, man. That scarecrow wasn't supposed to protect the Big Ear of Corn from crows, it was supposed to protect the Big Ear of Corn from Elvis and professional wrestlers!
Lori Beth: Elvis and professional wrestlers?
Everyone except Kenan: Huh?
(An Elvis impersonator and two professional wresters storm into the room and steal the Big Ear of Corn)

    • And an example from Season 10, Truth or Bear?:

Christina: Kianna. Do you have... a hamster in your pocket?
Kianna: Hah, no.
Christina: You have to tell the truth.
Kianna: Ok... (fishes a hamster out of her pocket)
...
Kyle: I'll take dare.
Kianna: Sorry Kyle, we're not playing Truth or Dare.
Christina: Yeah, we're playing Truth or Bear.
Kyle: Ok... then I guess I'll take bear!
(he gets mauled by a bear)

  • Rule of Three: TONS of examples.
    • The Okrah sketches usually had three guests per sketch.
    • The Good Burger sketches had three customers per sketch.
    • Repair Man (MAN MAN MAN) usually tried to repair three things.
    • Lori Beth/Danny usually gave three pieces of Vital Information.
    • Ashley would usually answer three questions.
    • Pierre Escargot would give three French phrases.
    • "Life with Peter and Flem" gave three contrasting examples of what Peter and Flem would do.
    • In the "Complaint Department" sketches, three customers would complain about what they bought.
    • "Know Your Stars" gave three "facts" about the star.
    • "Vocabulary With Lisa and Oswald" from the later seasons had three vocabulary words.
  • Sadist Show: The appropriately named gameshow "You Can't Win!" (which actually was the title of a game show parody done on Saturday Night Live during the 1979-1980 season [season five])
    • Another game show had the loser (Danny) punished in various ways, such as being covered in honey and "tickled" by a bear, or being strapped to a rocket and shot into space.
    • The Channel 6 1/2 News sketches tended to see Josh Server playing an on-location reporter being consistently abused by whatever surroundings he happened to be in. (For example, nearly freezing to death in the North Pole and being attacked by a polar bear.)
  • Scary Librarian - Well, not really scary. Just really loud enough to startle everyone.
  • Serious Business: Peas for Miss Piddlin.
  • Severely Specialized Store - A variation appears in a skit with a retail store that sells only a single pair of pants.
  • Shout-Out - In addition to the countless pop culture references: Amanda Bynes' father is a dentist; at least 2 green room sketches featured Amanda performing oral surgery, plus 1 "Ask Ashley" has her screaming at the audience to brush their teeth, & a one-off sketch features Josh Server as a crazy dentist called "Dr. Bynes."
    • One sketch featured Ishboo going to the doctor's. When taking a look in his ears, the doctor briefly saw none other than Ren and Stimpy.
      • A later sketch shows doctor checking Ishboo's nostrils and again seeing the cartoon duo.
    • One Coach Kreeton sketch was filmed on a set for Gullah Gullah Island. Coach Kreeton acknowledges this after several failed attempts to rescue a cat from a tree.

"Crazy Gullah Gullah tree!"

  • Special Guest - Only season 7 had them weekly (including return episodes with Bynes & Thompson). In the other 9 seasons, though, Chris Farley, Sinbad, Sherman Hemsley, Dr. Joyce Brothers, & post-Amanda Show Drake Bell all appeared, amongst numerous others. And every single episode had a musical guest.
  • Spin-Off - Though several shows (listed above) exist because of All That, the only true spinoffs are Kablam! (via Action League NOW) & The Nick Cannon Show (via the LaTanya character).
    • The Amanda Show is also a spinoff of All That, due to the combined facts that it was created by Dan Schneider (who produced All That), stared Amanda Bynes, and had frequent crossovers with All That when both shows were on the air.
  • Spiritual Successor - So Random
  • Spot the Imposter - Stuart
    • Parodied in one Superdude sketch, where a tiny white girl attempted to impersonate him and demonstrated her super-strength by tearing a piece of paper in two.
  • Stunt Casting - Danny Tamberelli was already a Nickelodeon icon (mostly from The Adventures of Pete and Pete) before joining All That in its 4th season. Also, in season 8, Jamie Spears was added; solely due to sister's fame. Although Danny actually deserved to be on the show.
  • Superman - Superdude, complete with Clark Kenting form "Mark Cant" (and even Parental Bonus girlfriend "Penny Lane")
    • Speaking of Parental Bonus - Penny Lane, Abby Rhodes, "Heeeere's Johnny!" after Superdude chops a hole through a door,....Nickelodeon has always been chock full of this trope.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song - "Island Girls" for the Gilligan's Island theme.
    • The sketch when Kel fell in love with a goat featured a rather cheap version of "Close to You".
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial - In every Stuart sketch when Stuart was confronted by law enforcement, he would deny kidnapping the real employee, tying them up and hiding them somewhere.

Police Officer: (after all the customers complain about the crazy things he did) Is all of this true?
Stuart: Of course not. I wouldn't dream of kidnapping the real checkout guy, tying him up, stealing his uniform, and hiding him underneath that counter.

  • That's All Folks
  • Those Two Guys - The two old guys Mavis and Clavis.
  • Trademark Favorite Food - Chocolate (Randy & Mandy), Peas (Miss Piddlin), Sugar & Coffee (Buzz & Caffy), Bacon (Thelma Stump), Everything (Fat Cop), Good Burger (Ed), Pork on a stick (Earboy), Pizza (Ross Perot)
  • Useless Spleen - Averted in sketch where a character shows and tells about his friend's recently removed spleen. He ends his presentation with something along the lines of "Humans are incapable of surviving without their spleen," at which point his friend gets worried and then collapses.
  • Weaksauce Weakness - Superdude is lactose-intolerant. Naturally, his foes include Cow-Boy, Butter Boy, Yo-Girl, the Dairy Godfather, & Arch Enemy Milkman (the former 3 all played by Kel Mitchell & the latter 2 both being Josh Server).
  • Word Salad Humor - In "Everyday French with Pierre Escargot," most of the "educational" French phrases are word salads, such as "Please remove your banjo from my belly button."
  • You Look Familiar - Superdude's equivalent of "It's a bird! It's a plane!" features variations like "It's Ishboo! It's Miss Piddlin! It's Pierre Escargot!" and once, even "It's Kenan!"


Mavis: Hey Clavis! Wake up, the wiki page is over.
Clavis: Oh yeah, kick it!
 

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