Chalkzone You Gotta Draw Something

Rudy's got the chalk!

ChalkZone (1999-2008) is a Nickelodeon cartoon that, like fellow Nicktoon The Fairly Oddparents, began as a series of shorts on Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Despite similarities with a former Pinwheel (now Nickelodeon) cartoon with the same premise, Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings, creator Bill Burnett has confirmed that ChalkZone is not an considerable spiritual successor.

The show centers on a shy, daydreaming kid by the name of Rudy Tabootie, who one day finds a piece of magic chalk and accidentally discovers a world hidden beyond his teacher's chalkboard as a result. In this world, ChalkZone, chalk drawings that have been erased from all chalkboards live together as now sentient beings; among them is an early creation of Rudy's, a small blue Chalkzoner named Snap.

The original Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts featured a fairly young Rudy, aged eight years old. The series takes place a few years later, aging Rudy to ten years old and introducing a new female Latina character in Rudy's girlfriend/love interest, Penny Sanchez, who is the only person he trusts with knowledge about ChalkZone. In addition to their usual adventures in the magical world, the trio of Rudy, Snap, and Penny occasionally fight the various threats within a chalk zone, in addition to keeping the place safe from being found out by anyone else.

This show contains examples of:

Aborted Arc: The ending of "Snap vs. Boorat" implied that this wasn't the last of Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Ratone's attempts at exposing Chalkzone, but this was in the show's final season before it was cancelled.
A God, I Am Not: Rudy doesn't go crazy with his magic chalk, he just uses it like how the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver. In fact, he even went so far as to swear to NOT make a living thing with the chalk unless in the most dire of situations (as mentioned in "Howdy Rudy").
Adults Are Useless: Every adult character is barely able to do anything without Rudy and/or Penny's help.
All Just a Dream: "The White Board" ends with the revelation that Rudy's journey to White Board Zone was just a dream.
All Part of the Show: In a moment bordering on Refuge in Audacity, Rudy and Snap foil Terry Bouffant's attempted live Chalkzone exposé on "Minnedakota: Down and Dirty!" in the episode "Indecent Exposure" by having Snap climb out of her chalkboard and perform for the audience, even slamming the chalk portal over her so that Rudy could sick a wiggie on her.
Snap: Helloooooooo, Minnedakota! Are you ready for some magic, there?! (starts swinging on the chalkboard) The Incredibleeeeeeeeeee Disappearing Newscaster! (slams the chalk portal down over Terry)
Always Night: The Nightzone is a portion of ChalkZone that's always at nighttime.
Ambiguous Syntax: Discussed whenever Rudy's idea for the Vampire Cannibals are brought up, most notably with Snap asking whether they're vampires that eat other vampires or if they're cannibals that happen to be vampires. This ends up becoming troublesome for Rudy in "Vampire Cannibals of New York", when Gore, the Vampire Cannibal King, attempts to eat Rudy and responds to the boy's protest that vampire cannibals only eat other vampires by pointing out that it wasn't made clear.
And I Must Scream: The final fate of the titular antagonist from "Snap vs. Boorat". The Boorat ends up sprayed with a substance that Rudy used earlier to keep a chalk drawing from smearing, causing him to become unable to move.
Art Attacker: While in Chalkzone Rudy can create anything he needs by drawing it with his magic chalk. Outside of Chalk Zone anything anyone draws with any chalk and erases becomes real inside Chalkzone.
Art Evolution:
- Everything's cleaned up from the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts to the actual show. Rudy's appearance changed, too, however this was because the original shorts take place two years before the show.
- And the fourth season makes everything seemed as if was from a crayon book.
Art Initiates Life: (Only in the titular Chalk Zone, however.)
Author Avatar: Self portraits are just one of the many kinds of things erased into Chalkzone.

Baleful Polymorph: According to an interview with Bill Burnett, any human who remains in ChalkZone for more than 24 hours becomes a zoner themselves, and lose their ability to use the magic chalk. Had the show continued, Rudy would have encountered a human villain who was a victim of this.
Bankruptcy Barrel: A flashback in the episode "Draw and Let Draw" shows a hairy ChalkZone inhabitant wearing a barrel after being shaved.
Berserk Button:
- Don't draw something in front of Mr. Wilter unless you want him to go on a tirade about how much he hates fictional....CARTOONS!!
- Just don't tell Snap that he's Plucky Comic Relief.
Big Bad: Skrawl who is probably the most important of the various antagonists Rudy, Penny, and Snap have encountered.

Black Bead Eyes: Rudy, Skrawl, chalk people and many human characters (with the exception of Mr. Wilter) have colored dot eyes.
Body Horror: In "Skrawl's Brain", Rudy's plan of saving the day involves giving said brain a body of it's own. However, to make it work, he has it's eyes, nose, ears, and mouth disconnected and, once the brain was inside, reconnected in the wrong spots. The end result is just as horrifying as you'd think.

Captain Colorbeard: The episode "Tiny Pirate Problem" featured a pirate named Red Facial Hair as the main antagonist.
Catchphrase: Snap's "Oy Coloy!" whenever something goes wrong.
- Also: "RUDY! YOU GOTTA DRAW SOMETHING!" Usually Snap, sometimes Penny.
Chekhov's Gun:
- In "Gift Adrift", the safety pin bow tie for Rudy's birthday present for his dad (a vacuum) ended up preventing Chalkzone's destruction from said vacuum .
- In "Hole in the Wall", while in Chalkzone, Vinny goes around taking pictures with his digital camera; when Rudy is spying on him from a cliff, he's in the middle of taking one of a stick figure. At the end of the episode, when trying to prove to his friend about what he saw, he pulls up said picture... and Rudy can be seen from the cliff.
- In "The Quicksand Man", the knowledge that scraping a chalkboard in the real world sounds LOUDER AND WORSE in Chalkzone is used to defeat the title character.
- "Snap vs. Boorat" begins with Rudy using a spray to prevent a chalk drawing he made from smearing his chalkboard. Snap later uses the spray to immobilize and defeat Boorat.

Cloudcuckooland: ChalkZone itself can be a very nonsensical place, considering it's a realm of sentient erased chalkboard drawings.

Continuity Cavalcade: The music video segment "I Need a Song" at one point features a list of songs from previous episodes.
Continuity Nod:
- Some characters return for another episode after their debut, such as the Doofus clones of Rudy and Penny.
- "Disarmed Rudy" features a callback to "Pumpkin Love" when Jacko describes how Rudy "stole his pumpkin bride", which is even accompanied by clips from that episode.
Create Your Own Villain: Literally with Skrawl, who is a drawing that Rudy tried drawing for someone's birthday party only for it to be hijacked by a room full of kids and made into the mismatched creature he ultimately became.
- Also, Rudy's blunder where he fashioned a Craniac 4 to make Craniac 3 go into cryofreeze, only to have 4 prove to be an even nastier threat.

Creepy Jazz Music: The recurring villain Skrawl has a short jazz tune as his Villain Song. The song also doubles as a leitmotif for him, as he sings the tune in all of his appearances, but with different lyrics each time.

Cutting the Knot: Averted in "Lost In Chalk". When Rudy and Penny are lost in Chalkzone, looking for the portal they entered from, Rudy happens across the idea to draw a portal using his portable chalkboard as a means of seeing where they are... only that since they are already in Chalkzone, all it does is create a big hole in the chalkboard.
Cyclops: Biclops was one before Rudy drew him another eye.
Dark Reprise: A variation. In the beginning of "That Sinking Feeling," when Reggie swipes Rudy's chalk (not knowing it was magic), he taunts "Reggie's got the chalk!"
Darker and Edgier:
- "Double Trouble," which features a killer robot disguised as Rudy, two of his most dangerous enemies teaming up (see Villain Team-Up), and introduced fans to his first Disney Death.
- The two-part episode "The Big Blow Up" also counts, as it has Rudy accidentally release a race of flying creatures called Inflatermaus, which infect nearly everyone in ChalkZone with a fatal disease called Balloonemia, and all of ChalkZone's inhabitants were seconds away from getting killed before Rudy found out how to reseal the Inflatermaus swarm and cure everyone infected with Balloonemia.
Darkest Hour: In "Gift Adrift", Penny and Rudy were forced to attempt to leave the remains of Chalkzone as a vacuum was sucking up the last remaining strip they were on. Luckily, Rudy got the idea to puncture the bag.

Didn't Think This Through:
- In one episode, Rudy thought of hiding his father's birthday present, which was an automated vacuum cleaner in Chalk Zone. Considering how vacuum absorbs any type of dust, this idea goes as well as you would expect.
- In "Future Zone", Rudy sees that every time a new Craniac model comes along, it gets cryogenically frozen as an obsolete model on display, while the new guy takes charge of the old Craniac's facilities. To foil Craniac 3's plot to steal Rudy's magic chalk, he simply draws a Craniac 4. The new robot promptly freezes Craniac 3... then it wants to steal the chalk. Yeah, Rudy actually made a new villain even smarter than the previous one.

Downer Beginning: "That Sinking Feeling" is a variation if you think about it. See Fridge Horror.
Dual Wielding: In "Skrawl's Brain", Rudy invokes this in his battle with Skrawl (and his giant (robot) brain) by snapping his piece of magic chalk in two.
Easily Forgiven: Rudy and Snap forgive Penny a little too quickly for her Chalk Queen antics, especially considering that her plan nearly resulted in Snap dying .
Embarrassing First Name: According to a collectible e-card on Nick.com, Rudy's first name is short for Rudolph.
- It has been noted that some people think Rudolph is significantly less embarrassing than Rudy, to say nothing of rhyming with your last name.. or the last name itself.
- BEANIE BOYS, BEANIE BOYS, WE'RE THE BOYS THAT SKRAWL EMPLOYS. HA HA HA HA HEE HEE HEE HEE HO HO HO HO HA.
Embarrassing Middle Name: Reggie Bullnerd's full name is long and embarrassing. Rudy had to find a chalk creation of Reggie's in one episode that Reggie had created to frame Rudy, finding out Bullnerd's full name from it and using it to blackmail Reggie into admitting his guilt.

End-of-Series Awareness: Two of the music video segments in the last season appear to allude to how the show was coming to an end.
- "Let's Go Wandering" has Rudy, Snap, and Penny prepare to go on a journey while exchanging tearful goodbyes with all the other Zoners. Even the recurring villain Skrawl is shown to be upset about the trio leaving.
- "It's Time to Go Home" has Rudy, Snap, and Penny sing to an audience of forlorn Zoners about how they've had their fun and it's time to move on.
Evil Counterpart: "Reggie the Red" had Reggie Bullnerd temporarily become an antithesis to Rudy Tabootie when he found a piece of red chalk and ended up in ChalkZone, using the red chalk to make the inhabitants of ChalkZone miserable.
Evolving Credits: The original opening credits of the show featured clips from the original Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, but those clips were eventually replaced with clips from the actual series.
Falling into Jail: In "Rudy's Date", after Rudy, Penny, and Snap recover the missing parts of Penny's perpetual motion formula from Butch Biceps, Penny disposes of Butch by using a tree to catapult him into a correctional facility.
Family-Unfriendly Death: When fighting villains in ChalkZone, Rudy usually defeats them in nonviolent/comical manners, sometimes reforming them in the process. Except for one. In The Quicksand Man, Rudy remembers that scraping a blackboard sounds much worse in ChalkZone than in the real world (see Chekhov's Gun), and, in order to wake up the Zoners, does exactly that. This also hurts the Quicksand Man's ears so badly that it disintegrates him into sand. Or maybe he somehow disintegrated himself into sand to escape the unbearable noise? The other Zoners CHEERING for Rudy after he did the dark deed doesn't help too much. The Quicksand Man was lucky that this didn't make his ears BLEED!
Felony Misdemeanor:
- In "Skrawl's Brain", Skrawl attempts to hypnotize everyone in ChalkZone and force them to eat rice pudding. Rudy questions how eating rice pudding is a bad thing and Skrawl elaborates that the rice pudding is gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free, string bean-flavored, and contains raisins. This revelation causes Rudy to act as if it was the worst thing Skrawl ever did.
- Snap sympathizes with most of his fellow Label Prison inmates in "The Label Police", but he informs the baker, who is incarcerated for drinking milk a day after the expiration date, that he deserves to be in jail for his actions.

Flying Brick: Generic Man, so named because he's the superhero kids draw most often.
Friend Versus Lover: A Downplayed Trope. Snap and Penny are amiable enough to each other but there is some tension between the two once Penny starts joining him and Rudy in ChalkZone. He sometimes treats her like a third wheel hanging around where she's not wanted and Penny in turn isn't above taking the occasional potshot at Snap.

From Nobody to Nightmare: Terry Bouffant started off as a generic reporter who sometimes got caught in the ChalkZone-related messes that would occur in the real world, such as the invasion of the wiggies. But in Indescent Exposure, she not only has figured out ChalkZone existed without having actually to see it, which was the case with Vinnie Ratone, but she kidnapped Snap, dragged him to a news station to be used to prove ChalkZone existed, discovered the magic chalk, trapped Snap back into ChalkZone before he could stop her, and nearly exposed ChalkZone. In her next episode, she teams up with Vinnie and they create Boorat, who succeeds in stealing the magic chalk and the only reason he was unable to complete his mission because Snap managed to constantly prevent him from going outside where Terry and Vinnie were waiting for him.

Gigantic Gulp: Snap's jinglebelly soda. Maybe it's used to illustrate how small Snap is, maybe just played off for laughs. He's never been seen with a jinglebelly soda that he can fit in one hand.
Gory Discretion Shot: Used in "The Big Blow Up" when Biclops shows Rudy, Penny, and Snap what happens when Balloonemia takes its toll.

Happily Married: Rudy's parents. In one episodes, he finds a drawing of them they did when they were young and just about to be engaged, and helps them get to a party together.
Heart Beats out of Chest: Happens in the episode "Rapunzel" as part of the play.
Hoax Hogan: While the name may speak of someone else, Thor Throat had all the mannerisms and personality quirks of Hulk Hogan's heel persona. His Chalk Zoner doppleganger turned the bombastic personality up even more so, but embodied the more heroic aspects of the Hogan character as a face. Two for the price of one!
Hypnotic Eyes: The weapon of choice of Skrawl's giant robotic brain. Not only does it brainwash all citizens of ChalkZone so they could go to a quarry to be covered in sugar free rice pudding (with raisins), but in order to get Rudy to draw it a body, it makes the citizens think they are chickens.

Interspecies Romance: The episode My Big Fat Chalk Wedding gives us Bobby Sue, a zoner created by a little girl who developed a crush on Rudy after he helped her with her project. Bobby Sue shares this crush and constantly pursued Rudy in the episode, trying to get him to marry her.

Justice by Other Legal Means: Reggie is a bully who often gets away with it, but gets blamed for things Rudy and Penny do in the Chalk Zone that wind up affecting the normal world.
Kick the Son of a Bitch: At the end of "Snap Builds His Dream House". Rudy spent the entire episode trying to make Snap a house that fit all of his (and the others) suggestions... only for Snap to be disappointed at the resulting "hodgepodge". Rudy, at this point completely fed up, decides to send it out to sea... in a barge he drew holes in.
- However, Snap actually likes it after it gets sunk (since it's now an island home ^note The birdhouse part is the only part that's still sticking out above the ocean.). But, when Snap tries to ask Rudy to draw him a bridge so he can get to it, Rudy just draws some bandages over Snap's mouth.
Kid Hero: Snap, who's supposed to look like a tough superhero... and ended up looking like Hello Kitty. Rudy also counts seeing as he's in 5th grade.

Kill It with Water: Though not necessarily water, anything chalk related can be erased by something liquid.
- A horrifying example comes from "Howdy Rudy": the titular character (a sentient chalk dummy) was licked to death by a dog .
  - Not really to death as the end reveals this sent him back to Chalkzone.
- A really close example was "Purple Haze", when Penny and Snap (while at a comic book convention) wandered into a water gun fight.
- Played with in "Snap Builds a Dream Home", which takes place entirely in Chalkzone. Rudy decides to send the house he drew for Snap (who rejected it) out into the Wait n' Sea. The only part that remains above the water is the birdhouse portion.
  - Done in a similar way in "RV Having Fun Yet?", which sees said RV driving to the bottom of the Wait n' Sea in response to Snap's (intentional) request to go deep sea diving. A whale blows back above the surface.

Laser-Guided Karma: At the end of "RV Having Fun Yet?", the titular RV winds up crashing onto a cruise ship. The very same cruise ship that the car dealer that "sold" it to Snap was on, in exchange for Snap's cruise ticket. It's worth pointing out that the RV sings nonstop.

Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Rudy asks on his first trip into Chalkzone if it's a cartoon leading Snap to explain what Chalkzone is as they walk by two tombstones in the foreground respectively marked "expo" and "sition".
Let's Meet the Meat: In one episode Snap comes across a talking burger than begs to be eaten. Snap is understandably freaked out about it. Especially when it has lines like this:
- Throughout the episode Snap runs into a lot of other foods that also really want him to eat them.
Snap: "Doesn't anyone ever draw regular, non-talking food anymore?"
Line-of-Sight Name: How Snap receives his "last name": after Penny quickly notices a box of "White Lightning Chalk" in the school, she gives Snap's full name as "Snap White".
Living Drawing: The premise of the series is that every chalk drawing lives in a dimension made of chalk, brought to existence as soon as it's drawn. The chalk-drawn characters, then, are all sentient beings within the ChalkZone.

Manchild: All the adults in Water Water, Everywhere. Justified in that Rudy accidentally drew a portal into the Wait N' See and the water somehow made the adults child-like.
Meaningful Name: Skrawl's name comes from the fact that he was "scrawled" onto a chalkboard.
Mind Screw: Ms. Tweezer, when Rudy releases the inhabitants of Chalkzone against her, experiences one.
- "The White Board", which can be considered to be Chalkzone's answer to "One Plus One Equals Ed".

Mineral MacGuffin: An entire mine of it. Guarded by a 'biclops'.
- In fact, a plot point in "Double Trouble" had Skrawl and Craniac 4 attempt to destroy it.
Multilingual Song: "Escucha Mi Corazón" is mainly in Spanish but has an English section, on top of the "Escucha Mi Corazón in Chalk Zone" lyrics.
Mythology Gag: It may be unintentional, but Snap's color scheme in darker environments (as seen in "The Quicksand Man") is identical to his color scheme in the original Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts.
The Name Is Bond, James Bond: In the episode "2:40", James Band introduces himself to Snap and Queen Rapsheeba in this manner.
James Band: The name is Band. James Band.
Never Trust a Trailer: To a degree. The promos for Chalk Queen included a brief shot of Skrawl waving the magic chalk in front of Penny's face as she follows it, almost as if it were a Hypno Pendulum, leading some to wonder if Skrawl was pulling a Hypnotize the Princess to make Penny join his side. That's...not what they're going for here. Penny joined Skrawl of her own volition....or did she?
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: You know those examples under Sugar Apocalypse? Rudy caused them (by accident, but still).
- Not to mention "Draw and Let Draw", where Rudy upsets a LOT of chalk drawings by "fixing" them before they were erased. Too be fair, he states that he had lots of experience where chalk drawings were erased that caused problems—unfortunately his claim of a 'sixth sense' wasn't that accurate in this case.
- "Madcap Snap"'s plot has Rudy doing this unintentionally: the popularity of his titular comic strip led to many fans to create their own Snaps (referred to as Snips in the episode)... which get drawn into Chalkzone and run rampant.
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Rudy submits the idea of vampire cannibals to a comic, and doesn't understand why it got rejected because it's edgy. Penny says that vampire cannibals might be a little too edgy.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Queen Rapsheeba. Possibly a reference to Queen Latifah.
- The "Haha" Men. (Their appearance is crowned by them actually singing one of their models' songs).
Nobody Poops: Averted in "The Big Loo", which had a scene where Snap expresses relief at finding the forest of toilets and goes offscreen. A toilet flush is heard before he returns.

Our Dragons Are Different: One of the original Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, Chalk Rain, deals with a giant sidewalk chalk Chinese Long dragon washed away by the rain before its artist back in China could finish giving him wings. He's exceptionally irate because of this and only calms down when Rudy draws him giant butterfly wings to fly away on, trailing a rainbow.
Our Ghosts Are Different: There are multiple chalk ghosts of different art styles in Chalkzone, most of them out in public in Nightzone, and even then mostly on Halloween. Outside of that if a chalk drawing isn't erased completely, it only manifests incompletely as a type of ghost in Chalkzone haunting the area it was erased at. These are known as Smudges. They're capable of warping reality and shapeshifting as a part of their hauntings and when they're finally erased entirely another half is manifested before the two physically rejoin, becoming a complete and regular zoner.
Our Werebeasts Are Different: "Curse of the Werefrog" mixes this with Bewitched Amphibians, in which a witch turns a man into a frog, which bites Snap, turning Snap into the titular werefrog.
Phlebotinum-Handling Requirements: Magic chalk can only be used by a human artist. While this clearly keeps zoners from using it at all it's a little more ambiguous over whether just being human is enough to use it or if they specifically have to qualify as an artist. Rudy was surprised that Penny was able to use it in "Power Play" but worried Dr. Von Doctor could use it to access ChalkZone and Reggie accidentally opened a small portal in "That Sinking Feeling". Reggie was able to enter ChalkZone and cause mayhem with the red chalk but that functions so differently from normal chalk that it's hard to say which rules do and don't apply with it.
Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity: The Smart Bomb that Craniac 3 attempts to send after Rudy in "Future Zone" refuses to let itself be blown up, so the robot opts for a Dumb Dart instead.
- "YOU COULD PUT A LOTTA CEREAL IN THIS BOWL!"
- "Am I crazy, or is Rudy getting stupider?"
Parental Bonus: It's safe to say that this show can use this trope to a T. Such examples include:
- During the battle between Rudy and the chalk robot in "Double Trouble", Rudy spawns a mirror to redirect a laser beam, while declaring "Here's looking at you, kid."
- "Thor Throat" from "The Heist" is a Hulk Hogan expy.
- Rudy makes a "This Is Your Brain On Drugs"-type reference (specifically "This is your brainwave on chalk.") in "Skrawl's Brain". For added measure, he's holding up frying pans while saying it.
- A brief sequence in the opening credits looks a lot like a famous bit from the a-ha video Take on Me.
- The fireman that appears from time to time speaks like/acts like a particular cowboy.
- "Howdy Rudy", anyone?
  - A rather disturbing instance of this came during said episode: "I'm melting, melting..."
- "Power Play" manages to work in a Robert Palmer reference with this line (directed to one Dr. Von Dockter):

Portal Picture: Thanks to the magic chalk, Rudy can just draw portals to the ChalkZone and jump right on in. These portals also risk being erased as well.
Prison Episode: "The Label Police" has Snap and other denizens of ChalkZone get incarcerated by the Label Police for violating labels such as "Do not remove under penalty of law" and "Dry clean only".
Pumpkin Person: Jacko, a Jack-O' Lantern singer who falls in love with Rudy's Jill-O' Lantern, a non-living example of this trope.
Punny Name: Most are combined with Visual Pun, but one other example is Queen Rapsheeba, whose name is a pun on the Biblical figure the Queen of Sheba.
Puppy Love: Rudy and Penny, though this is actually a Justified Trope because Rudy has a rather obvious crush on Penny and Penny herself has blushed to some of Rudy's compliments.
Real Fake Door: one of Rudy's attempts to get into the impenetrable forest is to use his magic chalk to draw a door. Doors created this way usually work, but this door opens up straight into a wall of more tree trunks.

Reality Warper:
- Variation: "The Amazin' River" ^note and susequently "French Fry Falls", due to reusing the short sees Rudy create a giant river in Chalkzone merely by drawing on Snap's map, connecting a group of separate waterways together.
- The conflict of "Taffy" is ultimately resolved when Penny, back in the real world, draws out the outline of a cove by Chalkzone City and erases it, causing said cove to then appear in the area of the taffy.
Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: Rudy is just a step short of being near omnipotent in ChalkZone and also recognizes how dangerous that kind of power could be if he went overboard. He keeps himself limited to creations that are either harmless or useful for avoiding trouble, won't create any living creations unless it's absolutely necessary, and the times he does try to use ChalkZone for personal gain are typically born of hasty panic or innocent lack of foresight. He still sometimes need to be reminded how big a responsibility it is to use the magic chalk.
Recycled Soundtrack: Seasons 1, 2, and the first half of 3 tended to reuse their songs over and over again. Not only that, some background tracks were reused from The Fairly Oddparents. This is no longer the case starting with "Double Trouble".

Running Gag: Every time someone asked where a citizen of Chalkzone came from? The answer was from Greenland.
Sadist Teacher: Mr. Wilter, who hates..."CARTOONS!!".
- A season three episode shows that he apparently got it from his father.
- And Ms. Tweezer, who hates anything "unreal".
Save the Villain: Rudy has had to bail out Reggie Bullnerd several times when he got the blame for something Rudy did.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The Inflatermaus swarm in "The Big Blow Up", which infect inhabitants of ChalkZone with the disease Balloonemia. They were imprisoned by King Mumbo Jumbo inside his secret temple until Rudy made the mistake of entering the temple, allowing them to be set free to infect once more.

Sequel Episode: Many episodes are sequels to previous episodes.
- "Follow the Bouncing Bag" has Vinnie Raton from "Hole in the Wall" return to continue his attempts at finding ChalkZone so he can make a profit by exploiting ChalkZone and its inhabitants.
- "Disarmed Rudy" is a continuation of "Pumpkin Love" and features Jacko trying to force Rudy to draw him a new bride as restitution for taking the woman he fell in love with (not knowing that the pumpkin-headed woman he fell for was really an entry Rudy made for the school's jack-o-lantern contest).
- There were several episodes involving Snap hosting a show where he had another Zoner shoot footage of ChalkZone wildlife or snoop on another Zoner. The episodes were "Beanie Boys to Men" (where Spy Fly was sent to observe Skrawl's minions undergo their training), "Wild ChalkZone" (where Snap tried to get Push to shoot footage of the blechy bugs), and "Journey to the Center of the Yeti" (where Spy Fly was sent to find proof of other life forms hiding in the fur of the Yadda Yadda Yeti from "That Thing You Drew".
- "The Doofi", which introduced Rudy and Penny's Oddball Doppelgangers Doofus Rudy and Doofus Penny, received two sequel episodes in "Killer Breath" and "Doofus Penny's Grand Opening". The former had Doofus Penny try to help Doofus Rudy's search for the perfect art model by using an invention to merge baby's breath with the killer bush Doofus Rudy was trying to paint, inadvertently creating the monster Killer Breath. The latter had Doofus Rudy open a Scientastical Hall of Wondoors and force Snap to follow her tour.
- "Reggie the Red" is a continuation of "Battle of the Hands" and involves Reggie Bullnerd finding the piece of red chalk from the latter episode under Mr. Wilter's desk and using it to terrorize everyone in ChalkZone.
- "The Further Adventures of Super Hero Snap" continues "Super Hero Snap" by having Generic Man ask for Snap's help again when Major Brand escapes from prison.
- "Snap vs. BooRat" revolves around a Villain Team-Up with Vinnie Raton and Terry Bouffant, making it a sequel episode to "Hole in the Wall" and "Follow the Bouncing Bag" as well as "Indecent Exposure".
Series Continuity Error: A major factor of the plot for "Disarmed Rudy" (a season 4 episode) was that the arm Rudy draws with is broken, so he has to use his non-dominant arm (which draws poorly). However, a brief scene in "Skrawl's Brain" (a season 3 episode) showed that Rudy was ambidextrous (see Dual Wielding). Though that could be justified due to a combination of Rudy having trained himself to be ambidextrous (a common trait among real life artists) and the circumstances in "Skrawl's Brain" necessitating quick enough action that Rudy went on instinct.
- The rate chalk creations dissolve in water varies WILDLY, ranging from instantaneous (Snap's hand in "Snap Out Of Water") to moderate (the bobble head machine in "Power Play") to very slow (the chalk version of Odin's helmet in "the Heist").
  - To drive the point home, both Snap's hand and the helmet were erased under the same conditions: rain.
- In the episode "From Beanie Boys To Men", Snap attempts to talk about Bathtub Granny and whether or not she has legs. But in earlier seasons, she is shown to have legs. In her very first appearance, she actually gets out of her bathtub and runs away, and later chases the shark Rudy drew.
- Rudy and Penny are shown eating the chalk taffy in "Taffy" in spite of "Snap's Nightmare" establishing that humans could not (or at least, wouldn't find any use to) eat chalk food when Penny and Rudy tried to eat the cookies from the cookie tree only to spit them out because they taste like chalk.
- In "French Fry Falls", when Biclops tells the story of how he and Rudy met, after defeating the giant, eight year old Rudy and Snap notice the sun setting, indicating a day/night cycle. This concept is retconned in later episodes where it's established that ChalkZone has no day/night cycle and instead is divided into areas of permanent day and permanent night.
Shaped Like Itself: In the (ultimately non-canon) Oh Yeah! Cartoons short "Chalk Rain", the rain in Chalkzone is formed by sidewalk drawings being washed away... by the rain.
Stalker Without a Crush - The episode entitled "Snap VS Boorat" reveals that Terry has been stalking Rudy and Penny for months. When Vinnie finds out, though it's brief, he's clearly unsettled by it.
Stumbled Into the Plot: How Rudy ended up being protector of Chalkzone was because he found a piece of magic chalk during detention at school one day.
Sudden Name Change: Dr. Von Docktor from "Power Play" was originally named Dr. Lawrence Vonfurstenburg in his Early-Bird Cameo in "The Wiggies."
Sugar Apocalypse: Invoked in "Gift Adrift": Chalkzone plus a chalk dust targeting vacuum from the real world.
- It got so bad that by the time Rudy got the idea to puncture the bag open (releasing Chalkzone), all that remained was a green strip and a blank, endless void .
- Also kinda invoked in "Waste Mountain": Magic Chalk Mine plus 3 (ripped) real world garbage bags filled with cheezeburger smoothies.
- This is always averted when concerning the secret of Chalkzone being threatened. The best example concerns "Hole In The Wall", where Rudy must get a construction manager, Vinnie Ritone out of Chalkzone before he turns it into a amusement park.
  - This turns into a 3 season arc of sorts because even though he got sent out, Ritone wants back in.
- A rare non-Rudy involved example: In "Let's Twister Again", a little kid called Sonny keeps drawing and erasing tornados into Chalkzone (and then later thunder storms) due to being inspired by his mom's job as a weather reporter. However, by the end, he switches to rainbows after seeing Penny's prism. Guess how much better things got.

Summon Bigger Fish: When being kidnapped and harassed by Craniac 3, Rudy draws Craniac 4, making #3 obsolete and put into frozen suspension along with Craniacs 1 and 2. It seems to work well... until Craniac 4 starts chasing Rudy intending to get Rudy's "instant matter materializer".
Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the episode "Snap out of Water," Snap is forced to stay in the real world and pretend to be an exchange student since Rudy is nowhere in sight. When he steps outside and it starts to rain, one raindrop makes his hand vanish (since he's made from chalk dust).
- In the episode "Howdy Rudy" the titular chalk puppet is licked to death by Reggies dog Dumpster, and subsequently gets erased. Subverted that since he was made IN Chalkzone he's never been erased before giving him essential an extra life back home.
- "The Skrawl" shows that just because you want to help the villain by making something up to them it doesn't mean they're going to not want to kill you. Rudy tires to fix Skrawl's appearance, and he still decides to drop everyone into the ocean because... well... he's evil. He had no intention of letting anyone escape and Rudy doing him a favor meant nothing.
The Tape Knew You Would Say That: In "Snap out of the Water," Penny writes a message to Rudy on the school blackboard to notify him that Snap is in a fight with Reggie. Rudy wonders where, and when he continues reading the message, it says "At school, silly," despite him not technically interacting with her during all of this.
Temporary Bulk Change: Goes hand in hand with chalkzone being a cartoon. The amount of times Snap has stuffed himself and become rotund has even landed Chalkzone a page on The Big Cartoon Wiki.

Three Shorts: Most episodes consist of this format: an 11-minute short, a 7-minute short, a 3-minute short starring Snap, and a 1-minute music video.
- And sometimes, that Snap segment is ALSO a music video, so sometimes episodes are half plot, half song.
- And in one case in season four, the music video was replaced with another short.
Time Skip: Played with: when ChalkZone went to series, the first two Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts ^note "Chalkzone" and "The Amazin' River" were stated to have occured when Rudy was 8, with the TV series itself starting up when Rudy is 10.

Took a Level in Badass: Drawing wise, Rudy's first ever drawing was Blocky in 1st grade. 2nd grade? He made an old woman in a bathtub and by fifth grade, his mom stated that it took him only four weeks for the newspaper to get his comics published whereas the mom took four years for a single article.
Too Dumb to Live: Reggie Bullnerd gets F's all the time and spells "cow" with a "K."
- Now honestly... who thought creating Craniac 4 would solve Rudy's problems?
Totem Pole Trench: "Teacher's Lounge" had Rudy and Snap try to infiltrate a meeting of chalk drawings of teachers by having Rudy stand on Snap's shoulders and wear glasses, a fake nose and mustache, and a graduation cap and gown.

Up to Eleven: In the song "All Day Jam", Snap has guitar amps that go up to twelve, as the lyrics point out.
Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Despite the frequent criticism of the show being sugary, it does have some genuinely threatening villains. Most episodes with Skrawl are not Played for Laughs, Terry Bouffant, despite being an Ascended Extra, in her episodes had gotten very close to revealing ChalkZone to the world, and the Quicksand Man from the episodes of the same name was an utterly terrifying demon who trapped people in a sand-filled dimension where they are plagued by their worst nightmares. There was also the intended introduction of Skrawl teaming up with a human who had become a chalk drawing from spending too long in ChalkZone for a possible movie or story arc.
Villain Song:
- Skrawl sings "Skrawl's Song" in his debut episode "The Skrawl", which later gets reprised with different lyrics in "Chalk Queen" and "Double Trouble", the last one having it become a duet with Craniac 4.
- Zibble, the female smudge from "The Smudges", gets a brief one where she possesses Snap, makes him play the piano, and sings a couple verses about wanting Snap, Penny, Rudy, and Queen Rapsheeba to go away.
- "The Day ChalkZone Stood Still" has Old Man This Year sing "I'm Out of Time" after he has made ChalkZone freeze in time so that he doesn't have to give his crown to Baby New Year.
Villain Team-Up: Skrawl and Craniac 4 in "Double Trouble", Terry Bouffant and Vinnie Ritone in "Snap vs. Boorat".
Visual Pun: Considering this was Scribblenauts: The TV Show, it was rife with this. For example, to contact Biclops in one episode, Rudy draws up some "homing bacon". As in a piece of flying bacon with a robot voice.
Vocal Evolution: The Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts gave Rudy a higher pitched voice (justified, he was younger than he was in the actual show), and Snap's accent got heavier (he also had a higher voice in early episodes).
Voibal Tic: Right, bucko?
Weapon Wields You: The red chalk is a dangerous chalk that draws only destructive and evil drawings that attack anyone in sight, including their own creator. It's able to force its wielder to do whatever it wants, even drag them to where it wants to go, and once grabbed, the wielder cannot let go of it unless they exit ChalkZone. It's hinted that the red chalk sees creators as just mere tools for it to control. Both Rudy and Reggie have fallen victim to the red chalk.
We Can Rule Together: In "Chalk Queen," after Rudy breaks his promise to help Penny with her Biology report, Skrawl captures her and tries to convince her that she can rule ChalkZone with him as his titular Chalk Queen. Emphasis on "tries."
Wham Shot: At first, it seems like "Hole in the Wall" is going to end with Vinnie Ratone being nothing more than a one-off antagonist, with his only proof of Chalkzone being a digital camera filled with pictures that can easily be mistaken for simple drawings... and then he pulls up the one he took of the stick figure.
What Happened to the Mouse?: In "Future Zone", Craniacs 1 and 2 are seen sitting motionless in cryofreeze, with both of them being rendered obsolete offscreen. It's unclear how the successors took over or even got to ChalkZone. From what can be indicated in the episode, Craniac 2 was more gullible than 3, and 1 was likely a nincompoop.
What the Hell, Hero?: Penny calls Rudy out when he uses Chalk Zone to get a passing grade in science fair, and in turn making it seem like he achieved perpetual motion (since he forgot to draw a power source).
When It Rains, It Pours: In "Chalk Rain" we see the titular phenomenon, which happens whenever a sidewalk drawing in the real world gets erased by rain, reforming once it gets totally erased... only problem is that that particular rain was much larger and longer than any they had seen before. Cue gigantic Chinese dragon. He was incredibly angry because he got erased before he was actually completed, as he was meant to have wings; Rudy helps out with that.

You Mean "Xmas": The Christmas Episode contains a song where the characters mash the names of all the winter holidays into one big name.
- "Merry Chris-hanukkah-mas and a Happy Rama-Kwanzaa-dan."