User:TheUnGhost/Happy Tree Friends (franchise)

Here's a sandbox for a potential Happy Tree Friends (franchise) page in the near future. The purpose behind this page is to document the franchise as a whole and how it was created, alongside describing it in general. The page can be freely edited by an autoconfirmed user.

For a good comparison for what a good franchise page can look like, the Super Mario Wiki has two pages: Super Mario (franchise) and Donkey Kong (franchise), both of which are featured articles on that exact wiki.

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The Happy Tree Friends franchise (occasionally in intials as HTF) is a media franchise comprising a series of animations produced at MondoMedia. It consists of colorful animal characters known as the "Happy Tree Friends", ranging from different animals. While intially appearing to be a harmless and family-friendly animated series, it is, in fact, a black comedy series that depicts the characters going through gruesome deaths and injuries, with blood and gore usually appearing in every episode. Its first installment is "Spin Fun Knowin' Ya!", an episode of the Happy Tree Friends web series, released on December 24, 1999. The web series would eventually kickstart the franchise by releasing a television series, video games, merchandise, and a webcomic. The Happy Tree Friends franchise has garnered a cult following online, gaining thousands of fan art and even fan-made characters. The fandom of the Happy Tree Friends franchise would even be the subject of a contest that allowed fans to submit their characters to make a cameo appearance in the web series. A lot of the videos on MondoMedia's YouTube channel regarding Happy Tree Friends have garnered over one hundred million views, with their highest-viewed video being Friday the 13th, a collection of the television episodes "Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow", "Double Whammy", and its sequel, "Double Whammy Part 2". Happy Tree Friends is MondoMedia's most popular series, with Dick Figures being a close second, with the latter even being referenced in the short "New Season Teaser", which shows the characters from Happy Tree Friends with the Dick Figures style, released on April Fools as a joke.

Common elements

Characters

Main article: Category:Characters

The Happy Tree Friends franchise consists of many colorful, anthropomorphic animals, typically mammals, known as the Happy Tree Friends. There is no titular protagonist, and it has a relatively large cast, currently consisting of twenty-three characters (twenty-two of Flippy and his flipped-out counterpart are to count as one character). Four characters debut in "Spin Fun Knowin' Ya!". The first one is Cuddles, a mischievous, energetic rabbit who is occasionally reckless and accidentally hurts others or himself, sometimes resulting in death. Giggles is a pink chipmunk who occasionally serves as Cuddles' love interest, though she has been the love interest of many other characters and has stereotypical feminine traits. Toothy is a purple beaver known for his long teeth. He is commonly portrayed as Cuddles' best friend, usually interacting with him in the same activities. Otherwise, Toothy is a somewhat lowly developed character. Lumpy is a blue moose with mismatched antlers, known for his dim-witted personality. Lumpy is known for having the highest kill count in the internet and television series combined, usually due to his low intelligence. Lumpy is the most versatile character in the series, sometimes being portrayed as either an ally or even an antagonist in some episodes, such as "Dunce Upon a Time", which portrays him as a giant who attempts to eat the characters and "We're Scrooged!", an episode where Lumpy kills Toothy so he can sell the latter's organs to make money. However, many other episodes show Lumpy's more friendly side, such as in "All Flocked Up", where he attempts to return a baby bird to its nest. Many episodes occasionally show Lumpy's more intelligent side, such as "In Over Your Hedge" where he combines his shears with a weed whacker to create a motor-powered trimmer.

Two characters debut in "House Warming". Petunia is a blue skunk, initially introduced as a similar character to Giggles, though since "Wishy Washy" her character trait is of a character who suffers from obsessive–compulsive disorder, typically getting upset when she sees something dirty. Her occasional love interest is Handy, an orange construction-working beaver with amputated arms, despite his name. Despite this, he is somehow capable of performing handed actions offscreen. However, he cannot perform the action once he is onscreen, shrugging towards the screen. "Helping Helps" would introduce Splendid, a flying squirrel superhero who is a parody of the DC Comics character, Superman. His traits include his super strength, ability to shoot lasers from his eyes, and ability to fly. Like Lumpy, most of his kills are by complete accident, and he has also caused tons of destruction, even once destroying Earth. In many instances, Splendid hesitates to be a hero, as shown in "Better Off Bread" where after reversing the Earth, he intentionally turns the audio up on his radio once he hears Giggles falling off a cliff again. As shown in "Mirror, Mirror", he is part of the SSSSSuper Squad, a group of other superheroes. Also in that episode is a Splendid lookalike known as Splendont, a rival of Splendid who exhibits the same traits.

"Crazy Antics" debuts Sniffles, an intelligent anteater known for his many inventions, with many of them backfiring, sometimes resulting in his death. His main enemies are a family of ants who exhibit similarly anthropomorphic features. The family consists of a mother, a son, a daughter, and an infant. Despite their small size, the ant family can maim and kill Sniffles, having not lost to him on every occasion. "Havin' A Ball" introduces the father and son duo, Pop and Cub, both bears. Pop is similar to Lumpy in terms of intelligence, being a rather clumsy parent who accidentally causes his son's death. Cub is a curious infant who usually dies due to his father's negligence.