We're not sure what was going on at Cartoon Network's Standards and Practices department,
but either someone was incredibly permissive or incredibly gullible, because The Powerpuff
Girls' writers managed to slip an unbelievable amount of stuff into the show that's highly
inappropriate for children. Here are things only adults notice in The Powerpuff Girls.
If you're a connoisseur of hidden vulgarity, you'll find that the dirtiest jokes in The
Powerpuff Girls tend to be hidden in plain sight, usually on signage during establishing shots.
One of the more obvious examples occurs in the season two episode "Down 'n' Dirty." At one point,
Buttercup fights a monster alongside a truck for a septic tank company called "Bob's Septic
World." This company has the somewhat obvious, yet nonetheless hilarious tagline, quote, "We're
Full of It!" But perhaps the most hidden and most indecent joke in all of The Powerpuff Girls occurs
in the season two episode "Something's a Ms." That's where we see Ms. Bellum's house for the
first time. Not only is her first name Sara and last name Bellum a funny pun, but according to the
address on her mailbox, she lives at "69 Yodelinda Valley Ln." The number is a pretty famous slang
and "Yodel in the valley" is a somewhat more obscure, yet no less suggestive, turn of phrase.
The Mayor of Townsville usually seems about as chaste as they come:
a cuddly and dopey little old man. But we occasionally get to see the Mayor's inner psyche,
and whenever we do, we find a sea of dirty thoughts hanging out just beneath the surface.
Our first hint comes in the season two episode "A Very Special Blossom," when
the girls are trying to raise money to buy a Father's Day gift for Professor Utonium.
Because they don't have an actual source of income, they ask the Mayor for money as back
payment for all their superheroism. The Mayor shuts them down with the provocative line:
"I'm no sugar daddy. Those days are over."
Things get even more obvious in the episode "Something's a Ms." The supervillain Sedusa
impersonates the Mayor's assistant, Miss Bellum,
and uses her feminine wiles to persuade the Mayor to help her commit crime.
After Sedusa is thrown in jail, the Mayor continues to flirt with the real Miss Bellum
until she explains that the woman flirting with him earlier was a supervillain and not
actually her. The Mayor promptly excuses himself after Ms Bellum asks where he's going and says:
"To the prison, visiting hours are almost over. Toodles."
Despite all the attempts to think of the Mayor as nothing but a teddy bear,
lines like this make it clear that he is still very much sugar, spice, and everything nice.
The first time the evil Rowdyruff Boys appear, they act like elementary school-aged boys,
down to their fart-based attack powers. The girls eventually learn that the boys' weakness
is anything feminine, so they defeat the gang by kissing them on the cheeks.
The second time they appear, the Rowdyruff Boys have new haircuts,
and they have grown up a little, acting more like middle schoolers. The girls
discover that their old enemies have now lost their previous weakness.
Now being kissed makes them grow larger and become more powerful. We don't need to hit
the metaphor too hard for you to get this, but there's symbolism in the boys growing up a bit
and having a kiss from a girl no longer destroy them but instead make them, well, larger.
But the girls later discover that emasculating the boys can reverse this process. By mocking
and belittling them, they shrink back to their normal size and shrink even further
until the girls can hold them in the palms of their hands. Blossom even states at one point:
" Did you see that? Whenever their masculinity is threatened, they shrink in size!"
Toxic masculinity does indeed ruin the party yet again.
Theatrical films often have difficulty showing blood without getting an R rating,
but somehow the Powerpuff Girls will regularly leave villains in a bloody heap on a Y7 rated
show. The gals also often inflict serious levels of collateral damage on Townsville,
and whether or not innocent citizens are hurt is rarely addressed. It's
sometimes even implied that the Powerpuffs enjoy inflicting violence on villains,
like in the season three episode "Candy is Dandy," when the girls, filled with rage,
take beating up Mojo Jojo a little too far after he steals some of their candy.
But physical violence isn't the only punishment the Powerpuff Girls attack with. In the season two
episode "Dream Scheme," we meet the Sandman, the mythological figure responsible for putting people
to sleep. But since he's always working, he's never able to stop and get some sleep himself.
The Sandman has a plan to put the entire world to sleep so that he can finally get some shut-eye.
After this works, and the Powerpuff Girls along with everyone else get trapped in dream land,
their solution is entering his dreams and scaring him so bad that, quote, "he'll never want to sleep
again." The poor overworked creature leaps out of bed and gets right back to work,
vowing to never sleep again, a hollow smile now plastered across his traumatized face.
Much of The Powerpuff Girls' inappropriate content occurs in small moments but the
season five episode "Shotgun Wedding" is raunchy throughout. Professor Utonium travels into the
woods to study Fuzzy Lumpkins, a recurring villain who is a sort of hillbilly Bigfoot,
a gun-wielding pink-furred monster. While tracking Lumpkins, the Professor falls into some mud,
getting a muddy lump on his face that resembles a big round nose. Lumpkins then spots Utonium and,
because of the mud, mistakes Utonium for a female from his own species.
After the Powerpuff Girls discover that Lumpkins has captured their dad, intending to marry him,
they interrupt the wedding and beat up Fuzzy. They also accidentally injure the professor a bit,
momentarily confusing him for a Lumpkin. The girls apologize profusely but the
professor remains grateful. He says rubbing his bruised butt:
"It's okay. I can think of much worse things that could have happened."
The Professor cleans himself off leaving behind a muddy
pile on the ground. Fuzzy, clearly upset, screams:
"Hey! Leave my wifey alone! Can't you see we's in love?"
But Fuzzy just scoops up the mud, carries it into his shack and completely ignores
the Professor. The noises that then emanate from within cannot be interpreted as anything
other than Lumpkins consummating his marriage to a pile of wet dirt.
Not all of the mature references on the The Powerpuff Girls are about sex. Some are just jokes
about movies and music that are so adult-oriented that the kids have no idea what it is.
In the season two episode "Cootie Gras," there are multiple tributes to The Godfather,
including the phrase, quote, "make you an offer you can't refuse" and a recreation of the final
shot of the film. And in "Dream Scheme," an episode in which all of the dialogue rhymes,
the show recreates the "Does anybody want a peanut?" joke from The Princess Bride.
The Powerpuff Girls writers also show that they're fans of the Coen Brothers
on two occasions. There's the episode "Something's a Ms.," which features an
extended tribute to the fireplace scene from The Big Lebowski. The Mayor even quotes the line:
"Are you surprised by my tears? Strong men also cry."
There's also an episode of the show called "The
Headsucker's Moxy," a clear nod to The Hudsucker Proxy.
But the most extended joke in the entire series has to be the episode "Meet the
Beat-Alls." It's theoretically an episode in which many of the
Powerpuffs' most dangerous foes form an alliance to defeat them but it's just a
plot designed to deliver puns based around the titles of Beatles songs.
The creators must have had fun with the show's budget.
Generally speaking, most comedians realize that mocking people who have been abused is immoral
and not particularly funny. But for some reason, cartoons have found a loophole in this rule,
a subgroup of people who they are fine with making jokes about, and that's men who were victimized in
prison. Once you start to realize this trend, you see that jokes about prison assaults are
disturbingly common in entertainment of all ages, from Marvel films to Spongebob Squarepants.
But The Powerpuff Girls makes a prison joke in several episodes. In "Cootie Gras,"
Mojo Jojo is defeated yet again by the Powerpuff Girls, the episode ends with him
tossed into a prison cell alongside another villain, a stereotypically burly tough guy.
"Love is in the air! Can't you just smell it?"
There's even a callback to the joke in the episode "Monkey See,
Doggie Two." Mojo has been transformed into a dog and finds himself in the dog pound,
stuck next to the similarly large and imposing bulldog equivalent of his last
cellmate. Most of the hidden dirty jokes in The Powerpuff Girls still make us laugh.
But looking back at these specific jokes, it's hard to find them funny or acceptable.
Even though The Powerpuff Girls were made by mixing together some chemicals in a lab,
we get a sign in the very first episode "Mommy Fearest" that the Professor has indeed told
them about other forms of making babies and the importance of staying protected.
Professor Utonium has just met a woman he likes at the supermarket and even though he is too
stunned to speak to her, the girls prove that they're the ultimate wingmen when they ask the
woman out on The Professor's behalf. As he gets ready for his date, the girls continue to help
him out by applying hair gel, cologne, feeding him breath mints and attaching his cufflinks. But
Buttercup slips something into his jacket pocket that she refers to as, quote, "some of these."
It's an extremely quick shot and we don't actually see what she gave him
but what else could that be? The show seems to be heavily implying that Buttercup must
have slipped the Professor some protection. Just another way that
The Powerpuff Girls always make sure that the people of Townsville are staying safe.
It isn't often that an entire character is created solely as a vessel for dirty jokes,
but that's what we have in the case of the villain Mascumax from the episode
"Members Only". He's a hairy muscular robot from outer space here to
conquer the Earth and he communicates exclusively through double-entendres.
Mascumax first appears in a meeting of the Association of World Super Men and says:
"Men of Earth, witness the coming of Mascumax: breaker of men,
taker of worlds. Be there any true men amongst thee"
"Step forth and bring thy manhood against mine own,
so that we might see who has the upper hand on the measuring stick."
There are at least five risque jokes in that line alone,
but it's totally possible that some are missed.
Mascumax only sticks around for a few minutes of screen time but he crams in a shocking amount of
dirty jokes. Not long after he shows up, the girls are able to defeat him by putting their
powers together and transforming into a giant cat made of fire known as the Furious Flaming Feline.
In the season six episode "'Twas the Fight Before Christmas," the girls
end up at the North Pole. They learn that in addition to his naughty and nice list,
Santa also has a permanent naughty list with only four names. Three of them are references
to key members of the show's creative team, Craig McCracken, Lauren Faust, and Steve Fonti.
But the fourth name seems to be a reference to a far more naughty and far more real evildoer.
The fourth name on Santa's Permanent Naughty Plaque is Adolph Schicklgruber, a name which is
thought to be the birth name of Adolph Hitler. If Santa does indeed have a Permanent Naughty Plaque,
it would certainly make sense for this real life villain's name to be on it. But there's
no actual evidence that Hitler ever had the last name Schicklgruber. Schicklgruber was the surname
Hitler's father was given at birth, but he changed it to "Hitler" over a decade
before Adolph was born. It's possible that the writers of The Powerpuff Girls believed this
urban legend about the birth name, but it's far more likely that this bit of misdirection
is the only way the writers could slide a real world bad guy into a kids show.
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