For all its gross-out gags that have made it a favorite for the kids, there's a whole
lot for grown-up viewers to enjoy in Teen Titans Go!
From the Filmation references to the 1980s power ballads, here are the things only adults
notice about this crazy DC show.
Teen Titans Go!
To the Movies focuses on everyone's favorite team of sidekicks, but it's a delight for
any fan who loves the larger universe of DC Comics.
That might come as a surprise, though, when you consider the cartoon's well-deserved reputation
for absurdity.
For the most part, that's a rep that the Titans have earned it's not exactly the intense drama
of Batman: The Animated Series but that doesn't mean a diehard fan won't love all the references,
in-jokes, and tributes crammed into their cinematic adventure's 90-minute running time.
In fact, one of the most charming pieces of the film is also the fulfillment of one particularly
dedicated DC fan's long-held desire.
That fan is Nicolas Cage, who finally got the chance to play Superman on the big screen.
Now, Cage isn't your garden-variety superhero fan.
He paid over two million dollars for a pristine copy of Action Comics #1, the Man of Steel's
historic first appearance.
Not only did he name his son after Superman, he skipped over "Clark" and went straight
to the deep-cut Kryptonian name of Kal-El.
He's about as devoted as any fan can be, which made the collapse of Superman Lives, the Tim
Burton film in which he was set to play the big blue boy scout, all the more devastating.
Twenty years later, however, he finally got to play the role in Teen Titans Go!
To the Movies.
"Hey, I guess you kids weren’t such goofsters after all."
Kids might not realize the behind-the scenes gag, but that's a union of fan and icon that
every adult who has obsessed over the idea of Nic Cage fighting a giant robot spider
could appreciate.
It might not be Superman Lives, and there's sadly no spider to be found, but it sure is
better than nothing.
Season 3's "Finally a Lesson" isn't quite like any other episode of Teen Titans Go!
For one thing, it's actually educational… maybe a little too educational.
Robin takes the Titans on a whirlwind journey through the world of property investment,
because it's time the team learned something practical, and what's more practical than
real estate?
Thus the teens, however reluctantly, learn about down payments, rent control, and most
importantly of all, building equity.
That last part in particular becomes a lot more exciting once they learn it's just a
fancy way of saying "money."
"Equity is the part of property you actually own.
It’s the difference between your loan balance and your properties market value.
If you sold your property and paid off the bank the value of your equity..."
The point of the episode that it's boring and adult-centric isn't lost on kids, who
get that Robin is a stuffy dweeb enforcing a hilariously inappropriate tone upon the
show.
But what they can't grasp is that Robin is actually giving out some pretty good advice.
"Finally a Lesson" is, in fact, a great introduction to the rental market, with solid tips on how
to improve your credit score and how to save for retirement.
Sure, the airhorns that blare when Robin celebrates all that equity finally funding "Old People
Medication!" are sarcastic, but darn it if watchers over 30 won't be nodding along.
Decades later, perhaps some of the show's youngest fans will look back and realize that
Robin's lessons are the reason they became realtors.
Or maybe they'll just feel weird when they remember that the Teen Titans once bought
an apartment building and immediately evicted everyone to make more money.
For a cartoon aimed at grade-schoolers, Teen Titans Go! spends quite a bit of time on romance.
Generally speaking, it keeps things fairly tame, but there were entire episodes are devoted
to Robin wanting to see Starfire in a bikini, Beast Boy drooling over Raven's legs, and
a whole lot Looney Toons-style wolf-whistling.
Adult eyebrows might raise at these PG-13-ish moments, but really, that sort of borderline-risque
content has a long history in kids cartoons.
But every so often, Teen Titans Go! steps over the line.
Witness the scene from the first season episode "Real Magic," in which Beast Boy waits on
Raven's bed, clad only in his underwear, having set the mood with candles and a scatter of
rose petals.
She's not interested, but the implications of the moment are clear and pretty adult.
Kids might not grasp the full meaning of the scene, but in the minds of many adults, it's
better not to test that theory.
In fact, UK fans have reported that the shot was cut from their broadcast.
Teen Titans Go! made its mission clear from the very first episode: silliness to the extreme,
with a generous dollop of outright bad taste.
Butt jokes, bad puns, extensive mocking of Batman it's all fair game.
Many viewers, especially kids, love it for exactly those reasons, but there have always
been a handful of folks who can't stand its goofy approach to one of DC's most beloved
superteams, especially the fans of the slightly darker 2003 series.
"You are a mockery of everything the world holds sacred about heroes"
"Come on, what is wrong with being a little silly from time to time?"
While younger viewers might not realize this, Teen Titans Go!
Itself has addressed those critics directly in what have informally become known as the
"hater episodes."
These episodes cast the ultra-nerd villain Control Freak as an aggrieved fan of the Titans'
previous TV incarnation, and serve as a direct response to the most vocally displeased viewers.
In "The Fourth Wall," Control Freak even plays clips from the 2003 cartoon to compare the
current team unfavorably against, only to have his fandom roundly rebuffed.
Still, he remains undaunted, appearing again and again to taunt the Titans with deleted
scenes, old-school Superfriends style sequences, and an endless supply of complaints, nitpicks,
and rants.
He is, in short, the sort of commentator who has been talking trash about the series from
day one.
And the show misses no opportunity to make it clear, through him, how they feel about
that segment of Titans fandom.
Slade, known in the comics by the over-the-top name of Deathstroke the Terminator, was a
long time coming to Teen Titans Go!
He was one of the major menaces of the team's adventures in comics back in the '80s, the
most prominent villain in the 2003 cartoon, and an increasingly major part of the DC universe
as a whole.
Finally, he returned to face his animated arch-enemies in Teen Titans Go!
To the Movies ... only to be mistaken for Deadpool.
"Deadpool?
What?
I’m not Deadpool.”
“I thought Deadpool was a good guy.”
“Why does everybody think I'm Deadpool?"
Since Deadpool's movie carried a hard R rating, this gag was already meant more for adults
in the audience.
But there's a whole other level of reference to this joke only the most seasoned of Titans
fans grasped: Deadpool and Deathstroke bear some pretty striking similarities, but it's
actually Marvel's version that's ripping off Slade.
In fact, after seeing Rob Liefeld's designs, Deadpool's co-creator, Fabian Nicieza, gave their new character the name Wade Wilson, an overt joke to Deathstroke's
name, Slade Wilson.
None of that matters to the Titans or their younger fans, of course, but to the savvy
adults in the audience, it's a joke decades in the making.
The episode "40%, 40%, 20%" unleashed an awesome force upon the Teen Titans Go! universe.
That's right, we're talking about Cyborg's ultimate pump-up jam, "The Night Begins to
Shine."
A smooth, synthy ode to, uh, whatever "the night beginning to shine" means, its effect
upon Cyborg is so potent as to have become a bit of a crutch.
But who could blame him?
When exposed to its sheer '80s-inspired power, the Titans transform into radical versions
of themselves, with gravity-defying hair, artfully ripped costumes, and sweet motorcycles.
Transported to a neon desert, they cruise, lost in the sweet riffs that Cyborg's treasured
cassette tape brings them.
So powerful is this sequence that it not only transformed Cyborg into a not-so-subtle tribute
to Optimus Prime, it spawned an epic four-episode arc.
It was called "The Day the Night Stopped Beginning to Shine and Became Dark Even Though It Was
the Day."
It's exactly as righteous as you're imagining.
To a kid, this is all extremely cool you don't have to be born in the '80s to understand
that heavy metal dragons are awesome, after all.
For the adults in the audience, though, there's another layer in the form of the show's spot-on
parody of 1980s sci-fi, down to the smallest, most radical detail.
The Titans' 80s transformations are straight out of Mad Max and Voltron, their world like
a fever dream from the pages of Heavy Metal, with all of it sprinkled with glitter straight
out of Jem and the Holograms.
What makes it even more hilarious for older viewers is that the song isn't actually from
the '80s.
Instead, it was written and recorded in 2005 as an intentional throwback for Warner Brothers'
in-house music library.
When an episode in Season 2 came up a little short, the show's director threw in a ten-second
clip of Cyborg singing along to the epic jams.
Fans wound up loving it, and the rest was history and a surprise appearance for "The
Night Begins To Shine" on the Billboard charts, 12 years after it was recorded.
With this irresistible groove, Teen Titans Go! doesn't just poke fun at the decade that
Cyborg seems to love so much.
It celebrates it by bringing its best ideas to the fore and wrapping them up in an absolute
banger of a song.
Batman isn't exactly a fearsome force of justice in Teen Titans Go!.
He spends most of his time giggling with Commissioner Gordon, serving as a celebrity judge on talent
search TV shows, and rocking out on electric guitar.
Not quite the Dark Knight of legend, but that's how Teen Titans Go! rolls, right?
No one is as sleek, cool, and powerful within its cartoon confines as they are in other
DC media.
Batman might be the world's greatest detective and the hero Gotham needs elsewhere, but in
Teen Titans Go!, he's Robin's weirdo, manchild pseudo-dad.
Except when it comes to background gags.
In these, Batman's corner of the universe is just as brutal and ruthless as it ever
has been, but only the sharp-eyed grown up is likely to catch it.
Consider "Sidekick," an episode that sends the Titans to Gotham City.
The scenes in the Batcave contain a massive number of references to more serious Batman
stories lurking in the background, but nothing comes close to what's on the middle shelf
of Batman's display case.
Next to a photo of Batman and Robin, there stands a crowbar and an urn ... labeled "ROBIN
II."
This is a reference to the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, in the infamous 1988 storyline
"A Death in the Family."
It's a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but boy does it add a little darkness to the fun,
bright world of Teen Titans Go! for those who manage to catch it.
Teen Titans Go! might have started out life as a TV cartoon, but it still takes a few
shots at DC's cinematic ventures.
In fact, there might be no greater source of teasing for the DC films, especially since
the show made it into theaters in Teen Titans Go!
To the Movies.
To begin with, there's the very premise of the film itself.
In the age of the omnipresent superhero movie, Robin wants one to call his own.
Everyone else has one, so why can't he?
Superman has had plenty.
Wonder Woman admits hers took a while, but it's been made.
Green Lantern even gets to join in, although he acknowledges that his team's cinematic
outing wasn't quite as successful as the others.
"There was a Green Lantern movie, but we, we don’t talk about that."
Parodies of cinematic Batman branding over the years fill the screen, from the bright
yellow of the Tim Burton era to the brushed-steel aesthetic of the Dark Knight trilogy.
But nothing comes close to topping the Batman v Superman joke that sees Batman and Superman
growling at each other about their "mommy's name."
Teen Titans Go! might love the DC universe, but that doesn't mean it won't roast its movies.
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