Ugly Americans

A Comedy Central animated series that premiered March 17, 2010.

Take New York City, add every horrifying beast, sci-fi freak, and fantasy fairy you or anyone else can think of, shake thoroughly, and you've got Ugly Americans.

The show is set in an Alternate Universe version of New York City where all supernatural creatures exist and have integrated with humanity. Mark Lilly is a new employee at New York's Department of Integration (the "Token Bleeding Heart"), whose job is to help immigrants fit in with American society as well as help monsters fit in human society in general. Unfortunately for Mark, his co-worker Leonard is a drunk wizard, his demonic boss Twayne couldn't care less, and he is at odds with the head of the law enforcement division Frank, who would rather see them all deported. Rounding out the cast is Mark's other succubus boss Callie, who he is having a sorta relationship with, and Mark's lazy zombie roommate Randall.

Has nothing to do with the novel The Ugly American or the cultural stereotype described on the Eagle Land page.

Tropes used in Ugly Americans include:
  • Actor Allusion: Michael-Leon Wooley, the voice of Twayne, once provided the voice for Audrey II, the man-eating plant from Little Shop Of Horrors off-Broadway. In the episode Little Ship of Horrors there is a species of plant people resembling Audrey II running a flower shop. Wooley provided the voice of the shop owner.
  • Aerith and Bob: Great Brain's fiancée is named Dolores.
  • Exclusively Evil: Pointedly averted with demons, who are shown filling the entire spectrum of D&D Character Alignments with the exception of any variation on Good.
  • Alternate History: It seems there was a "zombie civil war" in the 60s instead of all that Vietnam business.
    • Bill the Butcher was a vampire, who currently runs a pizza parlor.
    • Abraham Lincoln came back as a zombie, afterwards he founded a couple charitable foundations and invented the sunroof. Also, he's dating Jessica Alba.
  • Anything That Moves: Randall, including Great Brain's fiancée, and a blob creature.
    • Except Callie. He wouldn't touch her with his dick, and it's dead.
      • Which seems to have done a 180, as Randall offers his assistance (complete with fanfare) as a "Rebound Artist" when Mark becomes enchanted for another woman.
    • Along with Bi the Way (drilling a hole in their shower to watch Callie and Mark have sex and then telling Mark he's got a nice piece, talking about how they could beat off together; all hetero-acceptable, but still...), most tropers didn't think those tropes could be combined.
      • However this could have simply been Hypocritical Humor. As he stated he didn't want things to get uncomfortable, only to say that after.
    • A single line from "Treegasm" solidified Randall's status - "...and that's how my crabs got chlamydia. Oh, and recently my dick fell off. I don't know how I forgot that little chestnut!" Cue the Treeture deciding he wants to be monogamous after all.
    • However, Randall has nothing on (the late) Councilman Sammy Fitzpatrick, who groped Twayne openly, and got a dolphin-woman pregnant with his love child.
  • The Antichrist/Anti-Anti-Christ: Callie is implied to be this, as her father is the (current) Devil and she is the catalyst for the end of days. However, she seems somewhat ambivalent and unsure about the whole thing.
    • Played with as it's later revealed while father is a powerful demon he in the not in charge nor was his family in charge. Currently hell is ruled by a group of Japanese businessmen.
  • Art Evolution: The first few episodes' art and animation are just that tiniest bit more similar to Superjail than later episodes.
  • Baby Talk: Callie did this when Mark had to take care of a demon baby.
  • Back-Alley Doctor: Croatian Man in "Any Given Workday".
  • Bastard Boyfriend: Inverted. Mark is a pretty decent guy while Callie is seriously abusive. Kinda inevitable given that she's literally the spawn of Satan. She's working on not being like that though.
    • Played straight with his first girlfriend, who he dumped in the hospital due to the fact she was allergic to his favorite food. And she was in the hospital simply because she forced herself to eat said egg for him.
  • Batman Gambit: In "Hell for the Holidays", Mark creates a clone of himself, and relies on a quick betrayal by Twayne in their fight to the death to avoid its discovery.
    • And in "Wail Street" Mark takes care of his organ-crushing soul problem, gets Callie's father to stop trying to steal his massive soul, gets a few thousand dollars richer and manages to keep his soul by buying stock in a competing demonic company, devaluing his soul through a night of debauchery, and selling his soul when it is so small that Callie's father just tosses it out
  • Bedsheet Ghost: Walking a bed sheet dog.
  • Berserk Button: "SHARK WEEK IS A NATIONAL TREASURE!"
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Doug the koala man's is proficient in knifing people. He was once an international assassin.
    • And apparently Croatian Man is a self-admitted sociopath.
    • Also? Do not startle Doug, even if it's for a surprise party.
  • Big Applesauce: New York as you've never seen.
  • Big No: The Brain uses one of these in "Kong of Queens" when social services gets shut down temporarily. Given what becomes of the group, it is entirely justified.
    • Used again in the same episode when Randall gets cut in half by a passing bus, the sudden traumatic injury wasn't what brought it on, it was the fact that the bus was headed to Jersey City.
    • When Mark tells the guys that Callie sleeps around, Croatian Man's response is "IS NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
  • Bilingual Bonus: Mark and Randall's apartment is next door to a restaurant named 魚男寿司 ("fish-man sushi").
  • Bleep, Dammit!: Played straight and subverted in the same line in "Trolling for Terror", where it's explained that good reality TV has the three Fs: "fighting, f[bleep]," and the mysterious "fi[bleep]". Another non-humorous example in the same episode is Leonard referring to h[bleep]jobs.
  • Blond Guys Are Evil: Mark's clone sure as hell was.
    • Twyane is also revealed to be a blonde when Leonard made an anti age cream from a Randall/plant hybrid, though his evilness is up for debate.
  • Body Horror - Randall on a regular basis, though being a zombie,it's not that big a deal.
    • Mark being drugged and given 'reverse liposuction' against his will. *shudder*
  • Bowling for Ratings
  • Brain Food: Randall repeatedly mentions eating his brain, and even has an incredibly elaborate plan to do so. For now he is subsisting on artificial flesh made out of tofu (and rat ovaries.) On top of that, whenever he goes out to eat, he carries a "zombie ziploc", just in case he can't get any good brains.
  • Breast Expansion: Also happens to Callie when she comes into contact with a demon baby.
  • Brick Joke: It's a bit hard to forget Twayne's "Mating Bone" from Season 1 (especially what happened at the end of that episode). Well, as shown in "Wet Hot Demonic Summer", the male demons can weaponize the thing.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Basically everyone except Mark. Callie seems relatively normal most of the time, but even outside of the occasional demonic outburst she still keeps odd traits about her. For example, her maternal impulses for the demon baby were less caused by a desire to have children than to raise future soldiers for Satan's army.
    • For example Leonard seems to be a useless drunk but is apparently the only one who knows how to work Power Point.
    • As of the latest episode, "Soul Suckers", Lilly has an obsession with eggs.
  • The Cameo: Mechagodzilla.
  • Canon Immigrant: Twayne, Callie, Leonard and Randall come straight from the creator's previous series, the online 5-On. In design and name only though.
  • Cannot Tell a Joke:
    • Croatian Man, inspired by a troll who speaks in riddles, gives us this, ahem, gem: "What taste like terrible food? Is my wife's cooking!" Doug (Koala Man) thought it was funny, though.
    • Twayne, as demonstrated in "Kong of Queens."

Twayne: What's the difference between a demonic council and a room full of chickens with their heads cut off? The chickens have far superior mid- to upper-level management skills! HI-YO!

Callie: Oh Mark... so innocent. It just makes me want to *demonically* corrupt your soul and drag it through the bowels of Hell!

    • Though, if anything, Mark is the one influencing Callie to be a better person for his sake.
      • Season two ended the hints that Mark and Callie's relationship was caused by a higher power to play out that mark just might be more corrupt than Callie.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: Callie vs Randall. Too bad, really; it could've been so awesome...
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Subverted in that many of the more supernatural creature characters do some pretty despicable or creepy things, yet in the same breath the show allows you to sympathize with them as they sometimes are actually trying to do the right thing.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Usually Mark and Leonard, but most of the cast is pretty apathetic like that.
  • Deal with the Devil :How Callie's mom had her to begin with.

Mack: You rub my back, I'll impregnate yours!

Grimes: Again with the talking!

  • Disappeared Dad: Both Mark and Twayne suffered this. Mark's has been "stuck in traffic" since he was five, and Twayne's father left after seeing Twayne kill and eat his siblings in the crib. One of the few instances where this trope is actually justified, really.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?
    • Homosexuality: In "Blob Gets Job", Randall's dad is a gun nut with a hatred of zombies. Mark unwittingly "outs" Randall to his parents, but much fun is had by all when his dad realizes he can use him for target practice (and Randall doesn't mind as long as he doesn't get shot in the head).

Randall's Dad: I love having a gay zombie son.
Randall: Wait, who's gay!?

    • The Holocaust: "So, You Want to Be a Vampire?" draws parallels between Jews and vampires, who are more disliked for "controlling all the blood banks" than for sucking blood. The vamps are still recovering from a tragedy in the 40s when they were nearly wiped out by Van Helsing (who wrote an autobiography entitled "Mein Vampf"). Vampires even have Jewish-style weddings.
      • Also, a vampire street vendor shows up in several episodes selling knishes.
    • White Flight: Callie's father's plan to increase the creature-to-human ratio in New York.
    • Pregnancy: In "Wail Street", Randall panics about Mark's condition (who goes to the hospital due to mysterious abdominal pains and sudden weight gain) as if he's an expecting father.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: "Haha, nice one! He thought we were serious, but we were in jest! In jest!"
  • Downer Ending:
    • First season mid-finale: All of Mark's work has helped bring the apocalypse closer.
    • First season finale: Albert the Man Bird will be forever shunned by his species, lacking anyway to communicate with them, and his Fathers dying breath was used to disown him.
  • Down on the Farm: For some reason, in "Treegasm", Wichita, Kansas is depicted as a farm.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: The ultimate goal of all demons. Callie lists it as one of the only two pluses to marrying Twayne.

Mark: "The end of days" is a plus?
Callie: Well, not for you. Kind of a gray area for demons.

    • The End of Days is a religious belief for demons. Apparently they've tried many times in the past, and it's always turned out horribly (The portal to hell actually led to a Sandals resort), and every year they host a pre-enactment.
  • Driven to Suicide: Played for laughs with Randall after his penis goes missing.
  • Easy Sex Change: Callie in "Mark Loves Dick", s/he even changes back at the end.
    • Not all at once, notably in the last scene we have mostly female Callie with her penis still poking under the covers. Of course not everyone will react the same to how much squick or squee they experience.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Inverted in "The Ring of Powers". Mark commands Callie to be nicer, and among the changes is from her normal tight, revealing office outfit to a more modest one-piece dress.
  • Evil Plan: Callie's father has one, explained in "Kong of Queens," to increase the creature-to-human ratio in New York, thereby depleting the human population and bringing about the "End of Days."
    • Twayne apparently doesn't know or care about this plan, since in "Pilot" he lays off almost the entire Social Services division and gives their budget to the Law Enforcement division.
  • Exact Words: Before the second ordeal starts in "Soulsucker", Callie tells Mark that she'll make his dreams come true. The second ordeal is to live last night's dreams in reality.

Grimes while wearing a saddle, in his underwear, being ridden by Doug: You should be ashamed of yourself for dreaming this!
Mark: I've been under a lot of stress lately!

  • Exotic Equipment: In a city populated by wildly disparate creatures, finding someone with whom your "parts match up" can go a long way toward making a relationship work (three-hole notwithstanding).
  • Expy: In a show with fictional monsters running around, there are plenty.
    • There are two different Harry Potter send-ups--the first being a bratty prankster, the second being Leonard's son/apprentice.
    • As well as the wizard of copyright infringement: "YOU, SHALL, NOT, sue!" Who apparently doubles as front-desk security at the Wizard's Guild: "YOU, SHALL, NOT, PASS! Until you sign in. It's policy."
    • "Wail Street" features a Dustin Lieber.
  • Eye Scream: MAGGOT EYES!
    • And, in "Attack of Mark's Clone", Randall is shown brushing his eye (with Mark's toothbrush) and doing the same to his eye socket because it helps with the plaque buildup.
  • Fan Disservice: Many of the girls Randall sleeps with. Is it any wonder his penis ran away?

Randall: Karen, it's Randall. Did I happen to leave anything over there last night?
Karen: Nope, just a big sweaty pile of me.

    • Randall's Audition tape.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: A running joke is pairing up a type of fantastic creature with an ethnicity or subculture commonly found in Real Life Manhatten:
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Let's see here... zombies, demons, blobs, werewolves, robots, wizards, faceginas, land whales...
  • Fantastic Racism
    • Frank Grimes hates illegal immigrants, but he really hates non-human illegal immigrants...and vampires (aka "hemos")... and Armenians.
    • Callie is shown to have experienced some for being half-human in "Soulsucker", but she's mostly too fed up about it to care anymore.
  • Fantastic Slurs: An anti-zombie woman muttered "Dirty leg-dragger" to the zombie Randall. Randall insulted, replied "Hey that's OUR word!"
    • Frank's hatred for vampires is partly justified by the fact that his wife left him for a vampire.
  • Fiery Redhead: Callie. Helped by her red hair literally looking like fire.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: Possibly averted, as what we've seen of Hell seems to be another bustling city.
    • However, underneath it is "Old Hell", which plays this trope straight.
    • Apparently it's due to Yamaguchi enterprises buying Hell in the 2000s.
  • Flanderization: In the first appearance of a man bird, he says "Suck my balls!" after crapping on a guy. When an entire episode dedicated to man birds rolls around, their entire language is limited to different inflections of that phrase and their culture revolves around being an asshole.
    • Debatable. It could be that the man-bird was apologizing for crapping on the guy (when you gotta go, you gotta go) in his language, the only language any man-bird speaks. The guy, not being a man-bird interpreter, would have taken the phrase at face value and thought the man-bird really was telling him to suck his balls.
    • Also a Chekhov's Gun.
  • Fragile Flower: The koala.
  • Fun T-Shirt: Two-headed worm creature Martin has one that says "2 Legit"
  • Fun with Acronyms: Callie's Painful Mortal Shedding in "Treegasm".
  • The Game Never Stopped: The demons' end of the world pre-enactment.
  • Gender Swap: Mark tries to get Randall back from a zombie cult by magically impersonating Randall's ex/stalking victim. Unfortunately, the magic goes "a little" wrong...
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar
    • Somehow they've managed to show Randall's (admittedly not very detailed) zombie penis twice and still only get a TV-14 rating.
    • What about an entire episode dedicated to literal cock fighting? Granted they were just the sheathes, but still.
    • "Soulsucker" has a vagina on full display. Apparently it gets a pass by virtue of being built into a demonic puzzle box.
      • Similarly, Callie's third hole when she's in her soulless demon form where it looks a lot more like a vagina than her regular form where it's merely a slit with a beam of light on the inside.
      • And Mark sticks his entire arm in it. The show got away with something most mainstream porn movies aren't allowed to show!
    • In the cockfighting episode, when Callie is in the bathtub, you can see part of her nipples for a moment. Lampshaded by one of the demons a second later.
  • Godiva Hair: Callie temporarily gets this after her PMS in "Treegasm".
  • Gonna Need More Trope: Twayne, faced with having to have public sex with Lilith (Callie's sister), looks at her fully demonic form and utters "I think I'm gonna need a bigger Mating Bone" while said bone goes limp. Fluffers are promptly called in.
  • Gross-Out Show: Plenty of blood, guts, and other sources of Nausea Fuel to go around.
  • Head-Tiltingly Kinky - Callie's declaration that she has "at least five holes that need filling" in "Treegasm"... even counting her three-hole, that only adds up to four!
    • We know demon women give birth out the top of their skulls. So counting from the top, that's one, two, three-hole, four... and five.
    • Also, the aforementioned Destructo-Nookie.
  • Heroic BSOD: Mark has a minor one in "Kong of Queens" when he discovers that his very idealism could lead to The End of Days.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Natasha Leggero, the voice of Callie, was a 2010 Last Comic Standing judge, while Randall's VA Kurt Metzger was a contestant (and even won best joke of the season). Both also later ended up on Comedy Central's 2010 Hot List.
    • After her sex change in "Mark Loves Dick", Callie's voice changes into H. Jon Benjamin.
  • Hidden Depths
    • Frank Grimes occasionally displays traits that distinguish him from other Noble Bigots With Badges. For example, in the pilot, we learn that he has a deep and abiding respect for Prius drivers.
    • Despite being generally considered extremely naive, when pressed Mark has shown surprising manipulative skills.
    • Randall can read Latin.
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs:
    • "Demon up, Twayne!"
    • "Thank hell you're alive!"
  • Homage: Plenty, including The Wizard of Oz, Twilight, Harry Potter, and Zombieland (watch out for that yellow Hummer).
  • Homoerotic Dream: Mark has had a few involving Grimes and Twayne, as demonstrated in "Soulsucker."
  • Human Resources: Very benign example. New York gets most of its electricity from the energy of the annual gay pride parade.
  • Hypno Trinket: The ring of powers that Mark finds in Leonord's desk. Along with giving Mark Compelling Voice powers, it also causes Mark to begin to act like a stereotypical medieval ages knight, and fall in love with the Grotesque form of Leonard's arranged wife.
  • I Have a Family: Spoofed when Randall joins a zombie cult, and the initiation requires him to kill a human. The intended victim begs for mercy, claiming to have a wife and mistress.
  • I'll Take Two Beers, Too!: In "Trolling for Terror", Leonard pours himself and a troll he's coaching one shot each but angrily snatches and drinks the troll's.
  • I Love the Dead: Inversion in Randall's squicktacular fantasies of eating Mark, as well as the fact that he is, technically speaking, a corpse who bangs Anything That Moves.
    • And judging from the bizarre masturbation implements he keeps taking to Mark's room when he's at work, many things that don't move as well.
  • Initiation Ceremony: The Man Club (whose members include basically every male cast member) gives Leonard a hell of a hazing. This is all kept secret from founding member Mark, who decreed there would be no hazing.
  • It Will Never Catch On: Grimes was kicked out of Earth, Wind and Fire because no one else in the group thought that his rapping would ever take off.
  • Jive Turkey: Twayne is super psyched about his new Palm Pilot.
  • Joisey: Randall's birthplace, which is full of "Townie" (ie Romero-style) Zombies.
  • Just for Pun: Manbirds engage in cockfighting in the most literal sense imaginable.
  • Kiss Kiss Slap/Slap Slap Kiss: Depending on whichever Callie's in the mood for. One scene shows Callie arguing with Mark after she catches him flirting with the girl she had shape-shifted into at a bar. She then proceeds to make out with him, bash his head against a table, and finally tell him to forget the whole thing.
  • Like Parent, Like Spouse: When Callie is temporarily enamored with Twayne in "Kong of Queens", Twayne rips off a chauffeur's arms in anger. Callie is visibly turned on and mentions that her dad ripped off limbs the same way. Callie makes her "daddy complex" explicit in "Soulsucker."
  • Looks Like Orlok: In "So, You Want to Be a Vampire?", Blake's father is obviously intended as an Expy of Orlok.
  • Love Martyr: Jaqueline to Mark.
  • The Magnificent: The head of Hell progressed from Satan to Boruta the Omnipotent to Obizoth the Adequate to Harold the Vaguely Intimidating.
  • Make Up or Break Up:Mark and Callie's relationship at first.
  • Man, I Feel Like a Woman: Randall has to take a "loaner" in the form of some lady legs when he loses his lower body in "Kong of Queens" and uses them to toy with Mark all he possibly can.
  • Manipulative Editing: Reality show Night Terrors.
  • The Masochism Tango: And again another example of Mark and Callie's relationship, although it is rather one-sided, as Mark is relatively indifferent and Callie is a succubus who flips between hot and cold in seconds.
  • Massive-Numbered Siblings: Grimes and his ex-wife have fifteen daughters.
  • Meaningful Name: Mark Lilly (lily-white, innocent and idealistic), Callie Maggotbone (a sound-alike to a war criminal mass-murderer), and Leonard Powers (a wizard, so he has 'em). And Grimes.
  • Mind Game Ship: Invoked, when Randall hooks up with a female brain-creature. But is it any surprise? Zombies love brains, after all.
  • Monsters Anonymous: The Department of Integration serves this purpose.
  • Monster of the Week: A standard plot is one of New York's non-human citizens joining Mark's group, only to cease being their problem by the end of the episode (through death, imprisonment, or occasionally even successful integration).
  • My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Mark's first few attempts at speaking manbird.
  • Name's the Same: Frank Grimes shares a name with a certain unfortunate one-shot everyman, though this could simply be because David M. Stern, one of this series' developers, used to write for The Simpsons.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Most of the demons. Callie Maggotbone. Twayne the Boneraper. Of the Connecticut Bonerapers. Such a proud family.
  • Naughty Tentacles: Given a brief visual gag reference in "Blob Gets A Job" when Mark is looking for blob-centric leaflets in the DOI office. One of the leaflets on the rack is labeled "Tentacle Harassment Facts".
    • Plus a bit of root-groping during the opening of "Treegasm".
  • Negative Continuity: Blown-off limbs reappearing five minutes later, Mark's Callie-inflicted wounds healing overnight, etc.
    • Given the setting, it's entirely possible A Wizard Did It.
      • Provided that wizard isn't Leonard - he's usually too drunk or lazy to do things correctly.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Hell for the Holidays", Mark discovers the clone of himself that Callie is making, and reveals it to her father, who promptly destroys it. It is a shame that that clone was meant to save him from a fight to the death with Twayne.
    • Thanks to Frank Grimes having absolutely no sense of how far is too far when it comes to pranks, the next time the serial killing actor gets out of jail he will try murdering everyone at the DOI for real just like he did in the prank on Mark.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: The inevitable Judge Judy clone for the courtroom scenes.
    • Also "Lady Hoo-Ha".
  • No Periods, Period: Averted. Not just by Callie's "painful mortal shedding", but also one scene in Randall and Mark's kitchen has a calendar with her actual period marked out on it. It runs for two weeks...
  • Noodle Incident: In the finale Leonard's hologram form visits Mark to notify him of his new jobs: Fish Gutter, Knife-Wielding Spray Paint Addict, and an overweight Vietnamese demigod, with no explanation to how he got into those positions.

Leonard: Yea... I found out that I really need structure.

    • In Treegasm, Leonard explains that the gay pride parade keeps the power grid running.
    • "It's '87 all over again!"
  • Oedipus Complex/Wife Husbandry/Parental Incest/Not Blood Siblings: In "Callie and Her Sister", Lilith was adopted by Mark and Callie when she was six (for 12 days, since she grew a year older every day). Come her wedding day with Twayne, Lilith reveals that she plans to kill both Twayne and Callie so she can consummate her marriage to Mark immediately after... in front of an arena full of demons. Though whether this is because she's just that evil or if she's genuinely attracted to Mark is unclear.
  • Off-Model: Episode 10 has a lot of this, due to this particular episode being outsourced to an outside Canadian studio.
  • One of Us: In a demonic manufacturing plant, there was a list of how evil a demon was. It included pure evil, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Neutral, True Neutral, and Lawful Neutral
  • One-Gender Race: Martin, and other two-headed worm creatures, are all direct descendants of Mitch, the first of his(their?) kind.
  • One-Winged Angel: All demons seem to have a bigger, more horrific form. However, Callie has to remove her human soul to access it, while Lilith, Callie's also half-human sister, simply rips her skin off. It may be that demons have different forms for different contexts.
  • Only Sane Employee: Following the layoffs in "Pilot", Mark is the only one left who actually cares about the department. Too bad he's a spineless wimp.
    • Which might be a good thing - after all, when Mark finally showed some backbone to Callie, he found out that the plan is to have the mythical creatures outnumber the humans, thereby ushering in the apocalypse. Something that can only be done through the Immigration department that Mark is a part of.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Red/pink skin with horns. Varying in degrees of evil, but are mostly just apathetic towards humans. They do practice barbaric traditions with their own kind, such as eating their young. They also have bizarre anatomy, such as lactating fire when in heat, giving birth through the top of their skull, being full of live snakes, and males that grow a giant barbed "mating bone" out of their sternum to correspond with the female "three-hole", a big suggestively-shaped glowing portal they can open on their abdomen.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: You have your regular monsters like vampires and werewolves, followed by minor variants like Cyclopses that shoot acid out ot their eyes, you have your more creative things like a sentient (Canadian) brain with one eye, and then you have land whales.
  • Our Souls Are Different: They're small, somewhat watery glowing balls that can be physically handled, even by Muggles. Human men and women are blue and pink, respectively while Callie the half-demon has a golden soul. There reside within the body between the navel and lower intestine in an organ called the pooch and can apparently grow with good deeds to the point of crushing other organs. Hell runs a stock market-esque "soul exchange".
  • Our Vampires Are Different: The show's Fantasy Kitchen Sink seems to lump several kinds of vampires together without much regard for consistency. Blake is a Twilight-style vampire who looks gorgeous (although he can transform into a large scary-looking bat), while Blake's father is a hideous Nosferatu-style vampire, and it's implied that sunlight is grievously harmful to some vampires, but Blake merely sparkles and Tristan's stepfather tans pretty well after applying a generous amount of sunblock.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: They retain their intelligence (but do gain a love of chasing cats), and the transformation can regenerate missing limbs. They also seem to remain permanently in wolf form instead of changing back and forth.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Apparently they retain full intelligence, but are still rotting and have cravings for flesh and brains. Mark's roommate Randall Skeffington is just one example.
  • Painful Transformation: The werewolf guy in "An American Werewolf in America". Not only is the change itself painful, but adding to that is the regrowth of an entire arm!
    • The demon baby in "Demon Baby". Though it shows no sign of being in pain, Randall's description of it sound very painful, as we humans could only imagine what a vagina eating itself feels like.
    • Callie's "painful mortal shedding".
  • Parental Abandonment: Played for laughs, and done with noble intentions, but ultimately subverted in "Demon Baby."
    • And revisited by Mark, when it's revealed that his father has been "stuck in traffic" since he was five years old.
  • Pitying Perversion: Most of Mark's kindheartedness.
  • Platonic Life Partners: Mark and Randall.
  • Poke the Poodle: Callie deliberately incites this while in a competition for who can be the most evil in order the become the ruler of hell, a job she doesn't want. She makes it seem that her idea of evil is taking a soda can from the "recycled" bin to the regular trash bin.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: Abraham Lincoln + Jessica Alba - Albaham
  • Product Placement: Pinkberry is touted as the healthy, low-fat dessert of every girl's dreams in "Lilly and the Beast". Of course, Mark also points out the darker side of the product.
  • Pyromaniac: Jerry the ant-man.
  • Rapid Aging:
    • Callie's sister Lilith aged one year every day. Surprisingly it had more to do with the hormones her mom took than her demonic nature.
    • When Leonard's fiancée thaws out in "The Ring of Powers", she instantly becomes a gray, pimply, drooling ancient mess. However, this may be due to Leonard's freezing spell being terrible.
  • Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Twayne's speech as General of the pre-enactment army.

Twayne: My brother died as he lived: angry, bitter and full of hate. He's gone now, and we must carry on as he would have wanted. Release crow in parenthesis.

  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Wizards age very slowly. Leonard is at least 500 years old but looks to be in his 60s, while his apprentice Lionel is 50 but looks 11.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Animation by Augenblick Studios, creators of Superjail and the veritable masters of this trope.
  • Retcon: Twayne's Mating Bone grew back just in time for his marriage to Lilith.
  • Retired Badass Doug. No, seriously, he was formerly a highly skilled killer.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: Quoggle the troll in "Trolling for Terror".
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Doug (Koala Man). Possibly Ugly Cute depending on how you feel about koalas.
  • Rousseau Was Right: Many, but not all, of the monsters Mark helps generally find themselves in better humor afterwards.
    • Averted in "The Manbirds", where, although Mark succeeds in raising up the baby Manbird in a more nurturing environment, it causes him to be utterly rejected by his father...on his deathbed, no less.
  • Satan: Historically was the original ruler of Hell. The current head of his clan (in this case, Mr. Maggotbone) is referred to as the Devil.
  • Serious Business:
    • For Mark, eggs. Very serious.
    • Birthdays, for the entire Department of Integration staff. If the birthday department's budget is cut below 67% the Integration Treaty falls to pieces.
  • Shout-Out
  • Shown Their Work: Admiral Maggotbone's first name is Aldramach, a play on Adramelech, a pagan god co-opted as a demon by Judeo-Christian mythology.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Of the six main characters, Callie is the only female.
  • Single Tear: Doug (Koala Man) is prone to these. Beware single demon tears...they set things on fire.
    • In "Hell for the Holidays", Mark sheds one of these over the death of the clone he raised. It turned what could have been perceived as a very callous act by Mark (even with his survival on the line) into a reminder of how much he really does care.
      • Though that might be more of "I'm proud that he managed to learn to say 'Wait, what?'" rather than mourning his demise.
  • Social Services Does Not Exist: Inverted. Not only does it exist, it's being played sympathetically for once.
  • Spanner in the Works: What Mark pulls off in Wail Street after being extorted into selling his soul, the largest one in the Western Hemisphere. After agreeing to the deal, he sinned his ass off in order to screw over Callie's dad and retain his Soul.
  • Spiritual Successor: As a Work Com featuring a normal guy living in a version of New York City inhabited by Fantasy Kitchen Sink and Our Monsters Are Different fellow citizens, Ugly Americans has a lot of the same tone as Futurama, only skewed slightly more to fantasy than sci-fi.
  • Stealth Pun: Man Birds cock fight with their genitalia.
  • Take That: "So, You Want to Be a Vampire?" was pretty much a mild jab at Twilight the entire time. Though, to be fair, Mark's opening monologue calls out people who judge books based on their covers.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: Demons seem to consider Mark's completely pure good intentions nauseating.
  • Tears of Blood: Twayne leaks them whenever he gets... competitive.
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Apparently the only noticeable difference between male and female dragons is eye shadow.
  • Theme Naming: Twayne and his siblings all have normal human names that begin with 'W', then with a 'T' added to it.
  • There Can Be Only One: How Leonard resurrects after Mark accidentally kills him. Not originally how it was supposed to work, but it still gets the desired result. Well, aside from the Vicodin addiction.
  • They Walk Among Us: The show is all about this trope.
  • This Is Going to Suck: Randall quotes the trope when he finds out Mark accidentally outed him as a zombie to his parents.

Randall: (sees his father in the living room loading a shotgun, dressed in army fatigues) Yeah, that's dad shootin' gun. This is going to SUCK!

  • Toilet Humor: From zombies eating brains and demons eating zombies, to bird-headed people shitting on your shoulder and telling you that you can suck their balls.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Sorta. When Callie has Mark's clone take over his life, one scene opens up with her tied to a rack and him holding a bullwhip, and she literally states "The other Mark never offered to torture me!" Then it just gets subverted in that she's too mentally distracted to enjoy it, giving out the most monotone, forced moans ever heard even as he's stripping her with the whip.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Mark's love of eggs is actually mentioned very rarely, but it's pretty extreme. He even subscribes to a magazine that's just about eggs.
    • It was also revealed that Mark coldly dumped a girl who was more or less perfect because she was deathly allergic to eggs. And he did it while she was in the hospital after she tried the eggs for him!
    • Randal's craving for human flesh could be seen as a form of this, many of his jokes revolve around eating and/or dismembering people. Apart from his sexual escapades, the deisre to eat people is his most noted characteristic.
  • Tsundere: Callie, who flips back and forth, as she's half-human. Unfortunately, she's also half-demon.

Callie: You're lucky I don't turn your dick into a bag of marshmallows right now!
Fishman: I would like to see that, actually.

  • The Virus: "Mad Larry Disease" converts the infected into Larry King, and is caused by a King taking a combination of Plavix, Adderall, and Viagra.
  • Urban Fantasy: If one were to take The World of Darkness and make it the setting for a sit-com, this is pretty much what you'd get.
  • Van Helsing Hate Crime: Van Helsing is referred to as a "psycho" by a vampire, and Grimes is a fan (even has the lunchbox).
    • Apparently, Van Helsing wrote a book entitled "Mein Vampf", an obvious reference to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf".
  • Vetinari Job Security: As useless and extraneous as Twayne may appear to be at the DOI, his absence from his post causes Mark to bring the whole of New York to the brink of nuclear annihilation on top of a full-scale interspecies civil war. Twayne fixes the whole mess in five minutes with a birthday cake.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: In "Wet Hot Demonic Summer", we see that many wizards have normal jobs and powers relating to them. For example, the Wizard of Air is an air-traffic controller but also gets to fly around on broomsticks. Leonard is the Wizard of Social Services, and his power is... being a lazy alcoholic bureaucrat. His apprentice Lionel is not keen on this.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Mark.
  • Work Com: Technically it is, but it's a really weird one.
  • Worthless Foreign Degree: Grimes's Hispanic maid went to medical school.
    • As did the Croatian man, though he actually is terrible at surgery.
      • On the plus side, he'll perform any surgery for 16 dollars.
  • You Shall Not Pass: The Wizard's Guild main building. Until you sign in.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: More of a quagmire, really. In this universe, it stands in for the Vietnam War.
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