Danny Phantom/Headscratchers

The show premise.

How can someone be half-ghost? To be a ghost, you have to be dead. So the accident that gave him his powers scared him half to death? What?

• The accident caused his DNA to mix with ectoplasm which gave him the ability to transform into a ghost alterego with super powers, it all makes sense.

Ember.

Am i the only one, who feel sorry enough for Ember to consider a Draco in Leather Pants?

Why is/can there be a Rags to Riches episode that gives Danny a case of Acquired Situational Narcissism when Danny's family isn't even remotely close to poor?

Not only do they have a massive collection of advanced, expensive technology that puts the entire country of Japan to shame, but Maddie mentioned they were far from broke in the third episode.

• Possibility 1: Richness is relative.
• Possibility 2: Butch Hartman Mark Drop isn't a very good writer, according to The Internet Movie Database entry for said Danny Phantom Episode "Livin' Large"
• Possibility 3: They have the money, but different priorities. The Fentons may prefer to use the money left after paying the factures, filling the freezer and giving small allowances to their kids into building all of their awesome weaponery, instead of "building status" as, for example, the Mansons. Note that both parents, while loving their children, are often too absorbed by their ghost investigation to care about ordinary matters.
  • "Prisoner of Love":

Jack: "You'll get a raise in your allowance for this!"
Danny: "I get an allowance?"

• • Question: So Providing a roof, sufficient spending money, food, and love is being too absorbed to care for ordinary matters, while the families of all the jerks, who have raised these jerks, are more balanced? Wow. That's out there, even for a Hartman fan.
    • Perhaps 'ordinary' is a poor word for this situation. They care about their childrens' well-beings but can't relate to teenage issues, like wanting to have the lastest fashions. So they're relatively balanced but quirky.
  • Possibility 3 is illogical: The Fentons make money from their inventing, and taxes/food/allowances/school are ordinary matters. As an example, they've shown concern for Danny and his grades before.
    • I think it seems obvious that Danny just isn't spoiled (by teenager standards anyway) as much as any kid wants to be. Funny how that while rich kids are usually very unsympathetic in Fairly Oddparents, Sam is a likeable character despite being (secretly) ridiculously rich.
      • She's the main character, she has to be likable. Plus the series rely more on Character Development then FOP (I assume, I don't watch that show, so I judged based on what I know of the show, so correct me if I'm wrong).
• Who says the Fentons make money from their inventions (barring, of course, the singular Guys in White incident)? They seem to build them for their own use, and we haven't seen them selling any ghost weapons or otherwise profiting from paranormal science—though one assumes they make a living somehow... Perhaps the city pays them to keep ghosts at bay?
  • When Maddie is interviewed in one episode, she hints that they invent things other than paranormal gadgets, it's just that the paranormal is their main focus.
• This one is simple: It wasn't the change in how much money they had (though they did seem to have a lot more after the lab's sale than before). It was the change in where the money went; the Fentons went from living like a regular middle class family with a very unusual profession to living like multimillionaires.

How can most of the major plotholes in this show pass muster with any sort of story editor?

Ultimate Enemy has several writer's fiats, and the finale, Phantom Planet, was nothing but fiat after fiat.

• Umm...what's "fiat?" Do you mean "flat?" That stated, when it comes to "The Ultimate Enemy", the way I see it, it's filled with a number of plotholes because it didn't have more then an hour to squeeze it all in. They have to keep the relevance of the actual story going; the only one I can safely say that should or needed to be answered is on the why of Dark Danny's sudden desire to wreck havoc on the planet. The rest however (including the various aspect of time travel) is good fodder for theorizing (which I've done my share). Of course, I admit "TUE" is my favorite episode. As for "Phantom Planet", it's not so much the plothole I'm bugged at (which is really just Danny's unexplained hair streak plot device), but the incredible delusions of grandeur you have to take to even watch that episode, one I refuse to because there's just far too many for me to absorb. DP may not be a realistic show, but some of their methods in "Phantom Planet" lacked believability for me to accept—I'm still cringing from the Mayor Tuck thing.
  • Let me refresh your memory then. TUE sucks not only because it had major cases of plotholes, but because the whole concept utterly failed. If 'Dark Danny' was a future version of Danny, then there would've been a powerful message. But he wasn't. He was a fusion character of Vlad AND Danny(plus, once Danny knew about those specific events that would happen, then the events would fail to happen). Him being a fusion character takes away from whatever message about being 'careful' or what have you. Not to mention, the whole conversation that Jazz had with Mr. Lancer totally and completely lacked all concepts of logic. If one remembers, Mr. Lancer not only admits he has no proof Danny cheated, or took the answers, he admitted, to his own knowledge, it was IMPOSSIBLE for Danny to GET the answers. His only proof was a half heard conversation through a door. And with that, he was going to accuse Danny of cheating?
    • He did have proof though. He saw Danny (who was actually Dark Danny) looking at the answer sheet during the test. That's why he called everybody down to the Nasty Burger.
    • He didn't have proof at the time of the conversation though. More over he promised that if Danny didn't return the answers by the time of the test, he was failing him anyway. The point is, even IF Danny didn't have the answers, and someone else stole them or something, if they hadn't been replaced and then he "fessed up" to stealing them, he would have been failed, whether he did it or not. That's some kind of prejudice and non-logic man.
    • Not to mention that if Danny hadn't had the answers, or had destroyed or lost them, there would be no way for him to prove his innocence. Except, I guess, by Jazz telling him what Mr. Lancer had said (since, of course, Mr. Lancer couldn't be bothered to confront Danny himself) and then them somehow getting the answers and returning them. It's basically a witch trial; it sucks more to be innocent than to be guilty.
  • Mr. Lancer has never been the most logical or reasonable one; he's blamed/allowed Dash to blame Danny/Sam/Tucker for things they didn't do.
  • There exists a thing called "Suspension of disbelief". A character admitting he has no right to make an accusation, then continue on saying he will make it anyways breaks it faster than ever before recorded. Butch Hartman is just a hack.
    • It would be fairly easy to tell if Danny cheated after the fact. If Danny had the answers (which he did) his test would likely come back as having a ridiculously high score. Major red flag for any teacher like him. Any threats before that was reasonable doubt, but notice he didn't take any direct action, nor would he until after the test.
• The first one you mentioned in the case of Dark Danny isn't a plothole though. If anything, it still caters to Danny because it's a CHAIN reaction of events that started from Danny cheating to when he becomes evil. You have to realize also—that merge of Vlad or not—Danny is the dominate of the two; evident when Dark Danny refers to himself as past Danny instead of Vlad. As for Lancer? Well, considering he's shown favoritism towards the more popular group of kids, him bagging on Danny at this point should be common occurrence for him. If anything, Danny's the ONLY one whom he suspect because he's the ONLY who whom gave suspect (even if it's a small conversation). How he did get the rest in Lancer's eyes is an all together different matter.
  • It's not for sure that Danny was the dominant personality. All that means is he has Danny's memories. My theory is that Danny removed Vlad's ghost side in an attempt to be heroic (in Identity Crisis, his ghost side was the heroic one) and stop the ultimate evil as far as he was concerned (Vlad). However, he wasn't strong enough and Vlad's evil merged with him, forming a composite known as Dark Danny. Vlad was actually a decent guy without his ghost side so there may be something to this.
  • There's also the fact that even despite Dark Danny not really being Danny, Danny cheating on the test did lead to his family and friends (and his English teacher) dying.
    • The problem is that in the version we saw, Dark Danny did the cheating. It's possible that this is a Stable Time Loop and that Danny wouldn't have cheated and none of this would have happened if Dark Danny didn't go back in time. That's why Dark Danny still exists after Danny knows the whole story- he has to for any of this to have happened. Clockwork says time is like a parade- what's to say there aren't multiple parades going on at once? He could have taken Dark Danny from another timeline and put him in this one just to teach Danny a lesson. And yes, I know this should go in WMG.
    • Could also go into WMG, but there's the possibility that original events were similar to the movie so that Lancer heard Danny waffling about using the test answers or something. Or Lancer noticed Danny getting an unreasonably high test score and called everyone to the Nasty Burger. A better plot hole would be the fact that he got the test answers because of a fight with a future ghost wearing one of Clockwork's medallions if I recall correctly. So, Clockwork orchestrated the whole thing to prevent Dark Danny and give Danny an extra power.
• As for Phantom Planet... The biggest issue Phantom Planet had was when Vlad, as mayor, created that anti-ghost squad, the same anti-ghost squad that, after catching a ghost in a very public place(like a city park) then demand money from any nearby citizens that happen to be walking in the area. Oh, and Vlad gloating about this in television in a big pile of money. Butch Hartman, as subtle as a nuclear bomb.
  • I believe you mean 'flying mallet'.
  • Trust me, I can think of SEVERAL things wrong with "Phantom Planet". The only thing I was bugged in "Phantom Planet" regarding Vlad was how shallow he was. 500 million dollars attached with his world domination? Why the hell would he want more money? Season One/Two Vlad would never resort to this. Also, when the Ecto-meteor comically smacking him in the end, that was an insult to his character.
    • Actually, it was 500 billion, but the point still stands. What exactly does he need cash for, he's a billionare. Plus world domination seems out of character for him as well. Since when has he ever wanted to rule the world? And if that's the case, he could have come up with better than hold the world hostage over a meteor barrel without checking to see what it was made out of.(WHO in the heck doesn't check to see what a glowing green meteor is made out of?) Who are you and what have you done with my favorite character?
    • My biggest issue with it was actually the whole thing with the asteroid. I mean—the explosion knocks it out of its path, and that just happens to propel it directly at the Earth? The hell? It was clearly in orbit around a completely different planet—and therefore far enough away that the vectors that would put it on a collision course with the Earth would compose a tiny, tiny portion of all the possibilities. The sheer improbability boggles me. And then, at the end, Vlad somehow ends up directly in its path... despite the fact that Jack left him, without any apparent means of transportation, somewhere that the asteroid would have left behind long ago. How did he manage to get ahead of it again? Did it get into a stable orbit around the sun and it just completed a revolution? And if that's the case, isn't there a non-zero chance that it will threaten the Earth again?
    • And another issue: why, why, did Danny decide to get the other ghosts' help by capturing them and forcing them? They've all shown—more than once—that they're willing to set aside their differences and work together against a common threat. A little thought would have told him that if they were willing to help him against Ghost Writer, that king, and the Guys in White, they'd be willing to help him with this. Plus, capturing them one at a time is slow and difficult. It would have been much smarter, easier, and safer to just go around telling as many as he could, explaining the threat, and asking them to spread the word. Going around catching them is linear, while the "spread the word" plan would be exponential... especially considering that a lot of ghosts probably have more contacts and friends in the ghost zone than Danny does, and would know their way around it better by virtue of having lived there much longer.
  • The ghost squad thing is easy to explain, though. He obviously did it just to mess with Danny in the first place. So when Danny dropped out of the picture, it meant he'd won. But winning isn't enough for Vlad. He likes to rub his opponent's face in it. Having the anti-ghost squad charge for their services was a taunt ("Look what I can do, and you can't stop me!"), and the ad another one.
  • I think they explained why Danny had to capture the ghosts in the movie. They all ran and hid in the Ghost World and refused to help. All the other Enemy Mine situations were ghost problems. I think Skulker said that the comet was a Human World problem, and the ghosts believed they would be fine.
• "Fiat" is borrowed from the Latin "let it be done", and means an arbitrary decree. A "writer's fiat" is the fancy college term paper way ;-) of saying an Ass Pull.
  • Thanks. I knew it meant something, but couldn't be bothered to look it up.
• I've never seen Phantom Planet, so can't say much about that one, but as for The Ultimate Enemy, while the evil future Danny that we see gets his Start of Darkness from the Nasty Burger incident, it's not enough to nullify his existance when it's stopped. So yes, even though Danny knows how it happened *that time* it's not to say that he doesn't become evil on his own, or through some other events. Dan Phantom even said himself "Don't you get it? I still exist. That means you still turn into me." Since the series never went 20 (10?) years into the future we don't see exactly how this happens, but we do see when Danny gets his ghost half ripped out that it may be malevolent (Seeing as how the first thing it does is tear the ghost out of Vlad.) Nothing says that he couldn't just get taken over by his ghost half or separated some other way, and do the same thing.
  • To Phantom being malevolent, think back to Identity Crisis. What was Phantom like then? Super Danny. What was Super Danny's self-concept? "FULL-TIME SUPER HERO!!!" What was Vlad before Dark Dan? The epitome of Phantom's known evils. That scene was an unrestricted Super Danny trying to disarm the greatest perceived threat to humanity... and the merger was an accident when he (for whatever reason) tried to overshadow Plasmius. Perhaps Super Danny was trying to destroy Plasmius from within? Take his power as it was assumed, so as to be more effective at heroics? Case of sudden stupidity? At any rate, the exact Start of Darkness was at the instant the hair went firey.
    • Consider this, however: in Identity Crisis, when Danny split himself, he gave a new, literal meaning to the term "Split Personality" in that Phantom became became the embodiment of Danny's responsibility, which Fun Danny the "full-time party dude" lacked. A similar personality split could have occurred when Vlad used the ghost gauntlets on Danny. His older self even said, "No more painful human emotions to drag [Danny] down." Danny was grieving outwardly for his lost loved ones after the explosion, but under the surface, he could've been angry at himself for being unable to save them despite his powers. Splitting Phantom from Fenton could have polarized that hidden anger inside Phantom, and Vlad being Danny's archenemy beforehand naturally made him a target ("Hel-LO, misplaced aggression!" anyone?). Though Phantom may have also been seeking stability since he was no longer whole and overshadowing his human half wouldn't work.
  • I'd say that more of a plot hole is that Dark Danny is apparently the cause of the Nasty Burger incident. However he couldn't have come to the past to cause it if Clockwork hadn't had gone to stop him initially. In addition to the fact that Clockwork saves everyone at the end through total deus ex machina, the fact that the entire situation is his fault to begin with is very confusing.
  • Isn't Dark Danny being the cause of the Nasty Burger incident just a Stable Time Loop? He goes back in time to stop his existence from being stopped in the future, causing Clockwork to attempt to stop his existence in the past.
    • I might've accepted that theory... expect it gives us other plot holes that aren't easily explained. Why would Dark Danny be surprised over Danny Phantom learning the Ghostly Wail ten years too early? And why would Danny, knowing what the result would be, still go through with separating his human and ghost part?
      • I said it earlier, and I'll say it again: multiple timelines. In this timeline, Danny learns the wail ten years earlier and didn't go through with the split.
      • Maybe fate just likes to screw with 'em. Up until the Time Master did his thing, perhaps the results would have played the same no amount what. Chalk it up to the mysterious of the universe. Or plotholes. Or whatever.
        • So in other words, the Time Master did it? I can live with that.
    • shrugs* Why not? Clockwork is the closest we have to a god in that series and it's clear he has a neutral position when it comes to the concept of good and evil; if he wanted to ass us around, then all the more power to him. No one can stop him, he knows everything.
  • This is partly the reason I see TUE as a case of branching timelines where we only see the successful result (the other reason being a later time travel in the series working this way).
  • Was I the only one who heard the line from The Observants: "...now that he exists outside of time"? Dark Danny's timeline was destroyed, but he was out of that timeline at the time, therefore he still exists, and what Danny's future may or may not be no longer effects him. At least that's what that line sounded like to me...
    • No, I believe that is the canonical explanation, but others either took a different route or couldn't fully grasped what Clockwork said.
    • As I understand it, before Clockwork did his magical intercede, Danny was going to turn into Dark Danny. Then he disappeared into Clockwork's Realm with the Observants, and was outside of time. So it's both, it was inevitable, and he exists outside of time now, after Clockwork intervened.
  • Five little words: Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Ball. Does wonders for plotlines like this.
    • • • I could be wrong about this but didn't Dark Danny have one of Clockwork's time medallions phased inside of him? One would think that if he still had it, Dark Danny existence was grounded by that an in fact would not exist without the Nasty Burger explosion.
        • Dark Danny phased the time medallion into younger Danny. He (Dark Danny) used one of the medallions that Sam and Tucker had gotten rid of to go back in time. That's why younger Danny couldn't go back in time on his own; he couldn't get to the medallion lodged inside him.

Am I the only one bothered on Valerie's martial arts status?

So sue me, I'm aware it's a cartoon and suspension of disbelief is a big must, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot, for the life of me accept the very notion that Valerie Gray—a 14-year-old is a ninth degree martial artist. That's just impossible. In similar cases, Maddie Fenton's is just as unrealistic, but at least a tad more believable given her age—or at least I can accept that one.

• So, she has the Charles Atlas Superpower. Or maybe she lied to impress Danny, and she's only really good.
• Two possibilities come to mind: Vlad has arranged the suit to give her subconscious lessons, or Tucker just said that, hyperbolically, because he was impressed of her abilities/jealous that it wasn't okay for him to date the girl who hates Danny Phantom, but it was okay for Danny to date her himself. For a genius, Tucker is really pretty clueless; he didn't even realize she was using him. Occam's razor makes it simple that he was sour-graping, given his next line was "He better not forget their anniversary."
  • Actually, Tucker is a genius with technology; but the series never implied he was intelligent in any other fields ("Fanning the Flames" and "Flirting with Disasters" shows he's not exactly a fan of schoolwork either). Also, Tucker didn't make note about her martial arts status first, that was Danny who relayed the information to him.
    • Well, in that case, maybe martial arts ranking works differently in the DP world.
• I always thought it was a case of someone exaggerating, as all humans do. Valerie might have been trying to impress Danny during their all-night chat, and just grossly exaggerated her skills (maybe she figured the son of an Action Mom would find it cool?). Or, maybe Valerie only slightly exaggerated but Danny thought it was so cool that he instead exaggerated, putting her words together with what he knows from fighting her. I count this as a case of Unreliable Narrator, whoever the narrator in this case may be.
• Every single one of you is wrong. TECHNUS said all that. He initiated the entire IM convo, so maybe they weren't even talking to each other... but to him! and then he relayed the message rewritten to invoke as much romance as possible. Dude hacked a satellite, I think he can crack the Paulina Fenton password for Danny and Phantom Must Die for Valerie... or whatever hers is.
  • Actually, he didn't initiate anything. (Completely Missing the Point right now, but whatever) He was watching over the conversation to make sure his plans were going smoothly. Case and point, Danny tells her over the IM that he has a high bowling average (Call Back from Lucky in Love) and that he wants to be an astronaut (Call Back from Mystery Meat, which was the first episode and a while before Technus had become a character anyways). Now, if Technus has ever had a legitimate conversation with Danny and asked about his college plans, I'll gladly let you smack me with a club, but back to the point: Maybe Valerie was exaggerating some, but we can at least tell from one side of the conversation that the IM was solely between Danny and Valerie, just with Technus eavesdropping.

Why couldn't Vlad just possess the Packers?

• This doesn't really bug me as much, but Vlad noted he couldn't buy the Packers because Green Bay refused to sell them to him. Considering this man has absolutely no problem possessing businessmen to hand over their companies to him, why he can't just simply overshadow the owners of the football team to hand them over? Bearing in mind the possible legal issues outside of the series, that is. Maybe Vlad just has that much respect for the team?
  • Actually, this is Truth in Television—the Green Bay Packers are collectively owned by over 112,000 shareholders (note: the Green Bay greater metropolitan area has a total population of only 200,000 people) and no single owner holds (or can ever hold, given the team's by-laws) more than 5 percent of the voting stock. The purpose of this set-up is specifically to ensure that the Packers can never possibly leave Green Bay. When Vlad said that 'Green Bay refused to sell them', he meant the entire town refused.
    • Indeed, its doubly impossible to sell the team—the team charter states that the only way the Packers can change their existing ownership setup is to formally dissolve the team. At which point, the shareholders receive back only the original purchase price of their shares. Calculate the odds of any shareholder ever voting to dump the Packers franchise if they can't even make a dime off doing so.
  • Couldn't he just have moved to Green Bay. He could be a partial owner then.
    • Vlad is a perfectionist who will strive to get what he wants. It's all or nothing and Vlad wants the "all".
• Interesting. Thanks, been very curious to know since it's been nagging me for a while. Naturally, I don't know a durn thing about football.
  • Even knowing about football wouldn't have helped much, given that the Packers' ownership setup is unique in the NFL. So de nada.
    • And is only still allowed to exist as such due to Grandfather Clausing. Some sportswriter suggested the Green Bay setup as a way to keep the Bills from leaving Buffalo only to find out that the current league laws prohibit this.
      • Man, this is one heck of a Shown Their Work moment.
        • Main story write Steve Marmel is a HUGE Packers nut.
  • I always theorized that as scheming and amoral as Vlad is, willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants, he has a bit of a soft spot for the Packers, and feels it wouldn't be fair to use his wealth, power, and abilities to get a hold of them. He wants to own the team legitimately. But the above explanation is far better.

How does Casper High only have 259 girls?

• Danny mentions this in Shades Of Gray. Unless he was talking about only Freshmen, which would be more realistic.
  • It could just be a small High School. Some can hold as small as 400 while others can reach nearly a thousand. I come from a relatively small high school that had as much as the former, so the amount of female students stated in the series never bothered me.
    • This is entirely possible. Various episodes have shown that Amity Park probably isn't a big town. They seem to be within biking distance of the Nasty Burger, the movie theater, and city hall.
    • Makes me wonder, though. This is coming from someone who's gone to a high school with about 5,000 people (No lie, 4-5,000), it seems a bit off that there are that few girls in the school.
      • There are sixty-five students in my high school. That's less people then there are girls at Danny's high school. Admittedly, my school is private and our public school holds much more, but I still doubt there are even 259 students in public school. Not all schools are flippin' huge.
        • 259 girls. Not 259 students.
  • My school only has 400 students, and that's with the junior high.
  • This is how.

Am I the ONLY one who has ever noticed that Vlad has an English/British accent-SERIOUSLY???Nobody Talks about this, why?

• Because he sounds hot.
• For serious, I don't think it sounds very British. Maybe British-like (possibly to enhance his elegant mannerisms), but I don't really hear it, so to speak.
• I have heard that accent from people from certain parts of America as well. Usually from the extremely well educated, particularly those classically trained in drama.
• That accent is extremely American. It has an English-like touch to it, I guess, so maybe it sounds English to some Americans, but to me (I've never been to England or America) there's a lot more American in it.
• Vlad's accent is not at all British.
• Vlad's accent is very much American; I have never met anyone in England with his accent.
• He possibly could have a trans-atlantic accent.

The lack of examining the moral implications of destroying the "perfect clone" Danny

Come on, Dani is accepted as "human" by other characters on the show, including Danny. The clone was apparently capable of fear and motion, and even if it hadn't "woken up" yet, it clearly had at least the potential to be every bit a "person." So why isn't anyone bothered by his death? Especially our resident "hero," who killed him? I know it's a kid's show, but the clone melting is just disturbing and kids are capable of putting two and two together.

• shrugs* They ran out of time to input proper emotions? Honestly, I think a lot more emotional reactions (not that the episode lacked any) would have made this awesome episode even better if they had just got rid of the useless Tucker/Sam subplot.
  • They also would have saved some time if they had gotten rid of the Sailor Moon style transformation sequence with Danny and Dani. Seriously, did we really need two minutes for that?
    • Yes. Yes we did.
  • Though it was a very cool transformation sequence, I do agree it really was an unnecessary element that could have done wonders filling it with the necessary emotions; at least the part where Vlad turns angry on Danielle. That, I felt, was too quick of a mood swing change that I felt lacked proper pacing.
• They couldn't draw too much attention to that scene, or it wouldn't get past the radar.

Jazz' Ghost Envy

It gets a nice lead in in Reality Trip, offers an interesting layer to her character and a likewise interesting new way to look at her actions, and even gives her a Not So Different moment with the villain. So, naturally, it is never mentioned or hinted at again. What the hell?

Why does everyone hates ghosts so much?

Yeah, I get it they think they're Exclusively Evil blah, blah, blah. But Danny saved their lives on occasion and I think they did notice. So why are they hating ghosts so much and refusing to accept not all of them are evil. (This question can be ignored for a while, I might have to watch a few episodes to be sure, but I still remember me complaining about it)

• They accept Danny as their hero because of the good he does. They don't accept other ghosts because all the ones they've seen are antagonistic towards them. None of these humans have seen, gone inside, or is fully aware of the Ghost Zones. They have not seen any good ghosts as a result and the decent ones who have arrived on Earth were kept mostly out of public's eyes. Valerie herself may have seen Danny Phantom's do-gooding status, but it's purely because she has a vendetta with him. And the Fentons? They just hate ghosts, period - good or evil.
  • Long answer Trope: Fantastic Racism

Lack of closure for Danielle.

I know I'm biased (re: her biggest fan), but hear me out. Before PP, there was nothing Danny could do. Secret Identity and such. That's fine. BUT. In Phantom Planet, while they were phasing the earth, she's right there. And Danny is about to reveal his identity. And he LETS HER FLY OFF? It's not even a length thing, she could have been given nice implied closure just by drawing her in with the Fentons at the statue ceremony. They Just Didn't Care.

• The same rule applies to Valerie. True, she did help out, but not only was she in a thankless cameo (she didn't get any lines!), but her reaction to Danny's secret was the same as everyone else's--she accepted it with no complications or clause. Considering she once had romantic feelings for Danny and hates his ghost counterpart, the drama that would have ensured would have logically taken place then simply praising/accepting him as a super powered ghost. Like the Danielle example above, it's a case of sudden cancellation and it being the Grand Finale. It can be justified that the writers had very little time due to said cancellation. Though frankly, I never really did liked Hartman's closer involvement with Season Three. He's...not that great a writer to me. *shrugs*
  • The episode just before Phantom Planet, D-Stabilized, has a resolution of Valerie discovering Vlad's secret identity, and that Danny Phantom had been telling her the truth the entire time. She then decides to stop hunting Phantom and get back at Vlad instead. It's implied that she forgave Danny for her false accusations. She undoubtedly needed more closure, but hey, it fits.

Valerie: Vlad Masters is Vlad Plasmius? Phantom was right all along... And all this time I've been doing his [Vlad's] dirty work! Well, not anymore. Better watch out, Vlad, because the ghost I'm hunting now is you!

• • See, I'm more bugged by Danielle because they can't even say it was a running time issue. They could have just pasted her human form in with the Fentons in the statue unveiling scene at the end, that'd do it, because there's a presumed time-lapse there anyways. But they leave her out, which in my mind makes Danny seem like either an idiot or a Jerkass who left a 12 year old girl on the streets.
    • Well, you do have to realize the animators are drawing a heck of a lot of people in the series finale in under such a short time. Getting within the show itself, keep in mind Danielle in "D-Stabilized" willingly left Danny out of her own free will; as she herself stated, "This phantom has places to be". Meaning she wants to explore the world within the boundaries of her own freedom and experience and not under Danny. Danny simply respected that. Danielle wanted independence, so I see nothing Jerkass about Danny's decision when it came to her, she made her choice and she certainly does not need to be under Danny's shadow—she can be her own person now and she can certainly take care of herself. If she had any problems, she can simply just return to Danny who is more then willing to help her when the situation requires it (much like "D-Stabilized"). Perhaps it can be Hand Wave in that she felt the same during the ending. She did her part, then she left.

The Ultimate Enemy's bad future could have easily been averted, and it's all Clockwork's fault for causing it.

OK, this may take a while, and I'm terrible at explaining things but bear with me. It was because of the fight between Danny and Box Lunch that the Nasty Burger exploded, right? Danny blowing up that pack of sauce caused that boiler of highly explosive sauce to leak, which lead to it's explosion, which lead to hilarity ensuing. And, the explosion caused Danny to obtain those test answers, which caused Lancer to suspect him of cheating, which caused him, Danny's family, Tucker and Sam to be at the Nasty Burger when it blew up. But, Box Lunch was only fighting Danny because Clockwork sent her to the present to eliminate him! If Clockwork didn't send her back, that fight wouldn't have happened, Danny wouldn't have gotten that answer sheet and the Nasty Burger wouldn't have exploded. Clockwork could've easily averted the bad future by not sending anybody back to kill Danny.

• Clockwork's aim didn't seem to be to prevent the particular string of incidents that led to that particular future, but rather to prevent any incidents which could lead to a similar future. He did this by deliberately setting up that future (which was probably one of the worst of a multitude of possibilities) and then shoving Danny's nose in it so that he would be more aware that he needed to make good choices. Showing someone the results of their choices/mistakes has a much more powerful and lasting effect than telling them or, worse, not telling them and just trying to prevent those choices/mistakes from happening. Think of it as replacing a leaky old pipe with a new stretch of shiny pvc pipe rather than patching a leak and hoping a new one doesn't spring up.
• "You knew all of this was going to happen. All of it -- even this part!" "Everything's the way it's supposed to be." The bad future was averted, and whatever secret agenda Clockwork also had taken care of as well.
• To be more clear: We didn't get to see the original sequence of events that led to the bad future. Presumably, Danny fought a different ghost at the Nasty Burger, and either Danny phased through the briefcase during that encounter too, or there was another reason everybody was at the Nasty Burger that night when the condiment container exploded. (We may assume that, in the absence of Dark Danny's reveal to her, Jazz tagged along because it was a family affair.) When Clockwork sent Box Lunch through, it superseded the original fight and created a second timeline that happened to have the same upshot: Danny turning into Dark Danny.

Why did Lancer immediately suspect Danny in The Ultimate Enemy?

There were dozens of people present, Lancer didn't even have the slightest clue about Danny's powers, and how did he think someone broke into his locked-and-handcuffed briefcase, anyway?

• Lancer doesn't like Danny. He just let that dislike affect his judgment and cause him to harp on Danny despite the lack of evidence.
• Adding in, if I remember (I have to rewatch the episode), Danny and his pals were talking about the stolen test subjects, walking past Lancer's office. He sticks his head out, indicating he may have overheard at least some portion of their conversations, leading to his suspicion.
  • I think that part comes later. If I remember correctly, his first reaction to finding the test was stolen was just to talk to Danny's sister.
    • I'm pretty sure that Lancer overhears the conversation, then goes to check to make sure the CAT is still safe and sound—which, of course, it isn't.
• The answer is simple: he knew about Danny's powers! It's implied in Phantom Planet he had figured out the secret before the others. That's why he say they instead to Tucker.
  • ...When was that ever implied? I'm not criticizing or anything, I just never noticed. Can you give a specific scene?

The so-called Ghosts from season 3

Granted, this is due to Seasonal Rot and wanting to make the series more like a superhero show, but really? Around season 3 the enemies became more inhuman—strange considering they're supposed to be GHOSTS. I can buy the idea that some spectral aura surrounding Myths turned around and manifested as actual ghosts of Pandora and Pegasus etc, but where the heck do the others come in? Nocturne? Undergrowth? Vortex? At least the others had an implied background and post-humanity...

• The entire premise of DP is a superhero show, no matter what season they were in. That said, I never had a specific problem with how powerful Nocturn, Undergrowth, and Vortex were because the idea of them being God-like entities gave excuse that Danny had developed to the point that he can take even these guys on. The problem I had with them (and most Season 3 cast) was that they lacked a personality, so maybe that's why they felt "less like ghosts." No motivation or obsession on what they wanna do. We get the idea they want to rule the world, but never the why.
  • Undergrowth was just sick and tired of humans destroying their ecosystems. Vortex considered his climate changes to be a form of art, as noted by his comparison to the Mona Lisa.
    • That's what I meant by the whole "we get the idea of why they wanna rule the world". I guess I should have been a bit more clear (sorry); what I meant was despite their motivation, there isn't much of a personality to push and justify it. Vortex claims his weather is his art, but he doesn't do anything to convince me it is. All the animation shows is him creating wanton amounts of generic destruction—heck, he only states that once and never does so again. Undergrowth is angry at humans for what they did to his greens, but there's barely a personality behind said anger. I think it's just tiresome for me when you have three new villains whose goals and personality are usually the same with very little to interchange as oppose to the other ghouls who each have a different character and goals—often more personal (which I find much more engaging). Not that there is anything wrong with baddies who wanna rule the world.
    • Oh, well in that case it's probably just that they each only ever had one episode in the last season of the show with no prior establishment or foreshadowing, and were all written after Steve Marmel got axed.
• See Sorting Algorithm of Evil.
• Supposedly, Butch Hartman couldn't find a way to reconcile his Christian beliefs with the idea of really for-real ghosts. That's the rumor, anyway.

Fan Characters

This is more about the fanbase, but how come whenever someone makes a DP fan character who is the child of Danny, how come they're half ghost or fully human instead of quarter ghost? (Danny's bride is almost always Sam.) Doesn't it make more sense that way?

• Because Lamarck Was Right, and from what we guess, ghost genes don't breed in fractions like other magical species from this dimension. Though while I've never officially invented any offspring characters that made it out of my brain, I once had a concept where Danny had two daughters aged a few years apart, one fully human and one fully ghost, both with the same mother. And one was a redhead for the sake recessive genes and not making them Generation Xerox.
  • Considering that Sam's black hair almost certainly isn't natural (her father's a blond, her mom's a redhead)...
    • Or her mom/dad could be dying their hair from 'gloomy black' to 'bright blond' or 'cheery redhead'. I get the feeling that Sam's parents are suppose to be superficial, and Sam's grandmom had black hair as well.
  • OP: In fact, they probably shouldn't even get a ghost half unless they went through the portal as well! Then again, I'm talking about a series that uses Lego Genetics...
  • Well, to borrow from Fantasy and AD&D, when was the last time you heard of a character being called a Quarter Elf? It may be important to people in real life to know that they're half Spanish, quarter Indonesian, third Italian, or whatever, but in fiction it just sounds pretentious to be that precise. Its also quite possible that the fans making the characters realize genetically that one half-blood parent having a kid with a pure-blood parent should have a kid that's quarter-blood, but despite that they linguistically interpret the word "halfa" to mean something completely different than "half-a-ghost".
    • But you can't be a third Italian...
    • One parent is Italian/Dutch, the other is full Dutch.
    • That would make the person one quarter Italian, three quarters Dutch...
• Apparently ghost vs human is a single codominant trait/allele in those stories. Basically how this works is a ghost would have GG a human would have HH and a half ghost would have GH. Nature flips a coin for each parent so if one parent is human heads H tails H. If the other is half ghost heads heads/ tails heads HH human heads tails/tails tails HG half ghost.

Dark Danny's paradox.

So you, a ghost of pure evil who's turned Earth and the Ghost Zone into a Crapsack World because you can, meet your younger, good self. Do you A: Use your Ghost Powers to knock your younger self and his friends unconscious and erase their memories of the future, then send them back to the past and be on your merry way? Or B: Send said friends back to their time with knowledge of your time period,then force your younger self to be trapped in the Ghost Zone so you can go back in time, then fake being the you of that time,and instigate your Start of Darkness? If you picked A, well done. If you picked B, HOW THE HELL DOES THAT EVEN WORK?! You aren't avoiding a temporal paradox, you're creating one!

• Long answer short-Dan's batshit insane.
• It actually makes sense if you think about it. If it hadn't been for Jazz, then Dark Danny could have simply caused the Nasty Burger accident and then forced Danny back into his original timeline. Danny, not knowing what events cause him to turn evil, asks Vlad to help him destroy his ghost half. When this goes wrong, you get the chain of events leading to Dark Danny. It was only because of Jazz's interference (and Clockwork's) that Danny was able to avoid the Bad Future.
• When does Dark Danny show any ability to wipe memories? Besides, he knew that Clockwork was meddling with his past; he probably feared that he'd continue to do so if he just sent them back sans memories. Going back himself would allow him to have more control.

So is Valerie stupid or what?

She gets a suit upgrade from straight the heck out of nowhere, never questions it, despite having fought a technology themed ghost. What? What?! WHAT?!

• No just single minded
  • You'd think her dad would say something about it, though. He didn't exactly stay quiet about her first suit.
• Considering how willing she was to take the first suit, which only had a stalker-y message with a first name attached to it, I'm not that shocked.

How can a 'ghost' Have a Breathing problem?

Really, Vortex. You just sound stupid.

• It might be a side-effect of being more used to manipulating the air around him for his weather-control than the air inside his throat to speak properly. He's suffering for his art.
• Or he just died with asthma and must now suffer with it FOREVER!...ever...ever.
• For some odd reason, ghosts can function just as living humans do, including basic bodily functions. They can get hurt, reproduce and even grow old (and possibly...pass on? Again? I don't know). So...asthmatic ghost? Yes?

Secret Weapons situation

Vlad finds Jazz in his lab and says he has no reason to believe she would betray him. Then Skulker walks in and Vlad says "And now I do". Ummm... why would Skulker's presence make Jazz turn on Vlad, if he believed she was sincere about her running away from home.

• Skulker brought Danny. Vlad, knowing who Danny is, commented before any explanation could be made—he probably assumed that Danny and Jasmine were working together, and Skulker had found and defeated Danny while he was spying or something.

Eyes

Why does no one have "typical" eye colors like brown? They either have the rare or the unnatural. Seriously, every non-White character has blue or green eyes.

• And to be honest, I've never seen someone with brown eyes in that whole show. Probably because it looks prettier if it's bright colors like blue or green or something.
• If you look at hair colors the only people with brown hair here or on Fairy OddParents are Maddie (which you could argue is a reddish-brown), Timmy, and his Mom. Timmy was supposed to have red hair originally but it was changed so he wouldn't look like Vicky and his mom was given brown hair to match. I saw somewhere that Butch Hartman doesn't like using the color brown, which kind of explains it, but it seriously annoys the hell out of troper who's going into a career where character design is very important. You can't get rid of the most common eye color and the second most common eye color because you don't like it.
• What I personally don't get is why every single ghost has either red or green eyes. Did this mean they had only green or red eyes when they were living? The only ones that didn't have either color were the ghosts that were placed under Freakshow's spell (they had blue). And I actually did not notice the significance in the eye colors until someone pointed out. And I've been making characters with all sorts of colored eyes for years.

Dude, where's my respect?

In Pirate Radio, Danny had single-handedly rallied the teenagers, geared them for battle and went to attack Youngblood's pirate ship, WHILE IN HUMAN FORM. Later after he goes ghost to win, he is being belittled because he 'bailed out' or whatever and his leadership for the last few hours is never mentioned again. Him 'bailing out' was being forced to walk the plank. DUDE. Status Quo is God and all but seriously? I liked the episode until that part, it showed Danny doesn't rely on his powers all the time and that he's competent without them.

• Perhaps because Phantom came back when the shield disappeared and claimed to have saved Fenton. The other teens probably assumed he'd "bailed" because Fenton never came back to help fight while Phantom was there, little suspecting that they are one and the same, of course. The other option is that Dash is just a huge jerk (which he is).

The Ghosts

Ok, so are the ghosts in this series supposed to be actual dead people or what? And if they are dead people, where do the powers come from? Do they vary depending on how they died? Cause if they did that would make some sense, I can think up something for basically all of them, but there are a few that I can't think of anything specific that would work (Ember, the Box Ghost, Spectra's assistant, etc.), so where did their powers come from? Does eveyone that dies in the same way as them get the same powers? It also adds some major Fridge Horror if they got powers depending on how they died, mainly the ghost with ice powers who keeps saying he wants friends.

• What can be assumed is that there are 3 main types of ghosts. Type 1 is ghosts that used to be human and died (Ex. Ember, Poindexter). Type 2 is random paranormal entities that appear to have been created out of nowhere (Ex. Skulker, who without his suit is more or less a green blob). Type three is beings that were probably never alive and instead exist to control nature, much like gods in spirit form (Clockwork, Vortex, Undergrowth, and Nocturne come to mind). As for their powers, they most likely depend on what they enjoyed doing before they died, as opposed to how. Ember was into music and getting known, hence her rockstar appearance and need for people to shout her name. The Box Ghost might have been a mover who helped people carry boxes into their new houses, his death perhaps involving being crushed under one. As for Bertrand and Klemper, use your imagination. There must be dozens of theories.

Danny's Skin Tone

Is there a reason Danny's ghost form has a considerably darker skin tone color than his human form? Seriously, if you compare the two there's a major difference. It doesn't make sense because ghosts are usually pale and he's referred to as a pale ghost kid a few times. What, did the ghost portal give him a tan?

• The accident in the Ghost Portal probably involved some electricity passing through air. This causes a large amount of ultraviolet light to be produced. This could account for the darker skin. Why people refer to his a "pale ghost kid" could be explained because people tend to think of all ghosts as pale.
• It could be because most of the times that Danny appears as a ghost, mood lighting is in effect and makes everything darker. This makes it appear that his skin is darker, but it's really just the lighting. For all we know, he actually could have pale skin as a ghost, you just wouldn't be able to tell due to atmosphere lighting.
  • No, it's not. We've seen other members of the cast in this "mood lighting", but they look the same as they look with normal lighting. If this was true, Sam's skin would've also turned darker anytime Danny goes ghost.
• It's in the superhero rulebook. When in human form, all superheros must take on the appearance of a skinny white nerd. Only when they don their jumpsuits and colored undies can they become tan and sexy.
• Actually, it doesn't change all that much—they just do a quick swap of the shadows/highlights of his skin. I always felt like it was kinda a neat trick, since it gives a very slight emphasis to the fact that he's actually glowing in ghost form. But that might just be me making stuff up.

The Fenton's Security Systems

Frightmare shows that the Fentons have security cameras installed around their house that Danny uses to check and see if the family was forced to fall asleep. This brings up an important question... How is it that the Fenton family didn't figure out Danny's secret until Phantom Planet? Danny's changed forms in the house a number of times so we can assume he's been caught on tape at least once. Did the Fentons never check the footage? If this is the case than why bother?

• Considering he knew exactly where the security camera screens were in the Op Center and how to work them, he probably deletes any footage of himself from the camera's memory after a fight.

What the heck's up with this show's timeline?

When the series starts out, we can probably make an assumption Danny's been at high school for a few months-ish. Prisoners Of Love takes place in May, and then we follow up with a Halloween episode shortly after that. Then around 15 episodes later we're at Christmas! It gets even worse when 7 episodes later it's once again summer, but heavily implied to be Danny simply going from 9th to 10th grade. And around 13 episodes later it's summer again! I know a lot of shows do this, but DP's always been pretty good about keeping things in the continuity, and this flies in the face of that.

• I imagine it's a bit of a mix-and-match situation regarding the episodes. They wanted the show to have the right continuity, but had to make episodes in order to match up with holidays and junk in real life. Then again, if you were to put everything in order by date, you'd end up messing with the storyline continuity...I'm with you. It's pretty confusing.

The accident that gave him his powers...

If I'm remembering incorrectly, I apologize. But I recall either Danny's parents or sister mentioning his "accident," which means they know it happened/saw it happen, right? But the opening shows that at the moment of said accident, he transformed and looked like he does in his "ghost" form. Surely seeing your child/little brother turned into something like would be an image that stuck in your mind. So if someone in his family saw that, and then saw him doing ghost stuff and looking exactly the same as he did then, why did no one make the connection?

• Jazz mentioned the accident in My Brother's Keeper. It's fairly vague what she's referring to, though, and it's implied Danny was home alone when it happened. He could have turned back human by the time anybody was home and simply told them that the portal accidentally flicked on while he was in it, and neglected to tell them it gave him powers. I mean, it's not like Jack's experiment in college gave Vlad ghost powers, right?
  • Well, "Memory Blank" shows us that he wasn't home alone when it happened. Sam and Tucker were there too, Sam being the one to convince him to check out the portal in the first place. But yeah, Danny's family had to have found out about it somehow. Probably something along the lines of them rushing in when they heard the explosion and finding Danny out cold.
    • I meant he was home alone in terms of his family being gone. They were out doing something, Sam and Tucker watch Danny go into the portal, Danny comes out a ghost, and by the time his parents roll into the drive way he somehow forces himself back into his human form.
      • ...Like the previous troper said, I think most of the answers are in Memory Blank, where he turns back into his human self just before his dad walks into the lab. Maybe his disbelief of being dead is what caused him to turn back to normal, or something. Even without the concept of Memory Blank, when his parents walked in, they would've noticed how shaken up he and his friends were, and that the Portal was suddenly working. They had to tell Jack and Maddie about the accident, as there was no other explanation. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they had to mention the whole "Oh my god, what the hell happened to Danny" thing. They had no idea what had just happened, much less how to put it into words. I can easily see the conversation as something like "Oh, we were curious about the portal, Danny went inside and started screwing around, it exploded, sorry", especially coming from a few 14 year olds. Oops, didn't mean for this entry to get so long. But yeah.
      • I don't think we know whether his parents were home. His dad walking into the lab and seeing Danny and Sam happened in the alternate reality that Desiree created due to Sam's wish; that portal accident happened months later than in the original reality. In the flashback shown at the beginning of the episode, the only reference to his parents is when Danny says, "My parents could be back here any minute." That's pretty vague, as they could have run upstairs momentarily or left the house for a while and were expected back soon.

how come they never made this wish "Desiree I wish you weren't evil" ?

• I mean she grants every wish she hears. in fact after she's done being upset over being forced into the site a good is really a win-win scenario for everyone.
  • The same reason Timmy Turner doesn't wish that Mr. Crocker was a pink unicorn.
• Technically, she's not evil. She's been around for centuries and did nothing except grant people's wishes. The only reason why she's considered a villain is because Danny always tries to stop her from what fate is basically forcing her to do. Who wouldn't be angry and a bit vengeful for that?

Is Danny's ghost half...Bipolar?

• I have to be missing something here. Danny's ghost self is shy and a bit freaked out when unexpectedly separated from his human part in "What You Want". Makes sense. In "Identity Crisis" his human half is the exact opposite of his ghost one, which now has a dedicated and Large Ham -y superhero personality. Character Development, alrighty then. In "The Ultimate Enemy", when (once again) separated from his human half, Danny's ghost half suddenly goes rogue and rips the ghost persona out of Vlad in a fit of rage. Oka-wait, what? I'm confused. Angst, maybe? Even if that were so, Vlad specifically said that ghosts don't have emotions. So...what happened?
  • I think the explanation is that it split Danny's emotions as well (Fun!Danny was not like the original either). Also, The second time Danny's emotions were again forcefully split apart, and he was not is a good stat of mind. All the good went into the human half, the bad into the ghost half. Most ghosts in the show are show extreme negative emotion (Anger, sadness (when dora first appeared) and obsession).

Why was Tucker made Mayor at the end?

• Seriously why was he chosen to be mayor. Why not Jazz? She's probably the most intelligent and reasonable in town it'sd make more sense it she got the job in my opinion.
  • If I remember correctly, Tucker was the head of operations to make sure the whole plan (turning the Earth intangible) went smoothly. Jazz was busy distracting her parents, and therefore wasn't much help in the way of saving the world. Danny did the most work, of course, but Tucker was back on Earth telling him exactly what to do and when to do it. Danny was honored for his duties by putting up massive statues of him everywhere (it was his idea), and Tucker was rewarded with mayorship.