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The title character first appeared in a 1995 animated short, featured in World Premiere Toons. He received his own series in 1997 which went unrenewed after 13 episodes due to questionable ratings. In Season 2, Cartoon Network retooled the series without creator Van Partible's input to critical acclaim from most fans, but total hatred from those too at home with the original series. They also lost the writing contributions of both Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane, as they moved on to do their own TV shows. After sitting in limbo once again, the series reverted to its old style (with Partible reinstated as showrunner) for the fifth and final 13 episodes of the 65-episode run (which also had inconsistent ratings).

The show is notable for the major changes in the style of its humor experienced during the 65 overall episodes. In the pilot, and the first and final seasons, the humor was more mature and Johnny was portrayed as a loser and more socially lacking than stupid. The retooled series (in between), however, was aimed more at the show's younger audience. The amount of slapstick increased and Johnny's stupidity was greatly emphasized.

The other main characters are Johnny's mother, Bunny Bravo, and the neighbor girl, Suzy. Other characters include Carl Chryniszzswics, a nerd who insists he's Johnny's best friend, and Pops, mentor to Johnny and owner of a local diner and quite possibly a few other, sketchier business ventures. Visit the characters page here.

During the third quarter of the show's run, Johnny also had a spin-off program called JBVO. In it, Johnny was the host who accepted requests via mail, phone, or online for any Cartoon Network shorts that weren't too long to be played. It didn't last too long.

In 2009, as a co-production with Cartoon Network Asia, Johnny Bravo received a comeback in the form of a Hindi TV special called Johnny Goes to Bollywood^note The title would later be recycled for a made-for-TV movie.

The original pilot was animated by Van Partible himself. The show was animated by five different studios: Koko Enterprises, Saerom, Rough Draft Studios, Sunwoo & Company and Fil-Cartoons.

Hey, baby! Check out the tropes pertaining to my series:

• '50s Hair: Johnny's signature pomp.
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In an episode, Johnny is abducted by aliens after trying to fix his TV, and gets trapped in a game show where the loser gets their planet blown up. Johnny wins in the final round "suck my brain out", which his opponent finds he has none. The alien host then has to blow up his own planet and Johnny goes free.
• Adam Westing:
  • In addition to the Trope Namer himself there's Donny Osmond, Don Knotts, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and Shaq.
  • "Some Walk By Night" features Allyce Beasley and Curtis Armstrong playing themselves as parodies of their characters from Moonlighting — they're working as a film crew for a detective show, and Beasley introduces herself with a rhyming couplet, as her character Miss DiPesto always did.
• Advertised Extra:
  • Jungle Boy is featured in the first season's opening among the people doing The Monkey with Johnny Bravo in spite of only appearing in four episodes (only three of which give him a speaking role) and a between-segments short that spoofs the Tootsie Pop commercial.
  • Master Hamma appears in the opening sequence for the second and third seasons, but like Jungle Boy, the actual number of episodes featuring him can be counted on one hand.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • Of Mary Poppins, The Twilight Zone (1959) (specifically, "It's a Good Life", "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Living Doll"), Green Eggs and Ham, and plenty of other things.
  • Two that actually aired together were one of Schoolhouse Rock! (with Jack Sheldon) and one of Scooby-Doo (with the cast of characters, too).
• Afraid of Clowns: Johnny's fear of clowns is a major plot point in "The Man Who Cried 'Clown'", when he is freaked out by a clown who keeps showing up on the window of an airplane.
• Ageless Birthday Episode: The Valentines Day special doubles as a Birthday Episode, and Johnny claims he's officially "20-something-else, which is a whole lot different than being 20-something."
• Aliens Steal Cable: In one episode, Johnny becomes king of a planet of Green-Skinned Space Babes, and tells them to install cable. The women comply, only to see Mel Gibson on the screen and lose interest in him.
• All Cloth Unravels: "Blanky Hanky Panky" has the Mayor of Aron City's suit get unraveled, leaving him in an undershirt and tighty whities.
• All Elections Are Serious Business: There's an episode where Johnny and Carl run for litter commissioner - Johnny trying to pick up ladies with it, of course. Though the serious business includes wacky hijinks such the inclusion of a pie as a candidate after a man answers an opinion poll with "I like pie!". Johnny wins, however since he doesn't understand or care about his job in the least his first order of business is to have a huge parade in his honour that covers the city in confetti, which he's forced to clean up by those same girls he was trying to win.
• All There in the Manual: Cartoon Network's website said that Carl was Johnny's best friend back when he [Johnny] was a scrawny loser. After he grew up and became a macho man looking for ladies, he no longer wanted anything to do with Carl. This isn't really shown anywhere in the show and is in fact contradicted during a flashback that shows that Carl used to bully Johnny when they were younger and Johnny was smaller than him.
• All Women Are Prudes:
  • The whole premise of the show is that an attractive, outgoing person like Johnny Bravo won't interest a single girl.
  • It's implied in the first season that Suzy has a Precocious Crush on him (this element vanishes in later seasons, although the flash game My Dear Johnny has Suzy trying to attract Johnny). The zookeeper lady from the pilot looked like she was interested when Johnny showed off his martial arts skill. Velma was into him. He flirted with a nerd's mom and she actually seemed to be digging him. Sumi from the Bollywood special was into him too. He also seems to click better with non-human girls like Lois (vampire... at least he did before her ex sabotaged him), Fluffy (werewolf), Carol (antelope), or Becky (moose).
  • It's essentially a running theme in the show that Johnny's His Own Worst Enemy when it comes to romance, as women are generally far more receptive to him when he stops with the constant, obnoxious pick-up lines and acts like an ordinary person, but he never manages to internalize this lesson.
  • It was averted with the opposite during the Prison Episode. Johnny's sent by mistake to a women's prison and when Johnny's attractive cellmates realize that he's a man, they are so thirsty that they throw themselves at him almost literally. Before anything could happen, however, his mother and Little Suzy exonerate him and he's released.
• Amateur Sleuth: Lampshaded by Bunny Bravo in Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood, where she addresses that in America, mysteries are usually investigated by people who are unqualified.
• Amazon Brigade: The Tall Amazon Women in "Johnny Bravo and the Amazon Women."
• Amazon Chaser:
  • The whole "Vendela is a superheroine" thing certainly didn't make her less attractive to Johnny.
  • And there's Johnny's reactions to the Amazon Women, particularly his response to the titular Amazons' way of war crying to summon each other.
    Johnny: So you're one of them screamer-types, too, huh?
  • As well as his reaction to She-Hunk, interestingly enough.
• Ambiguously Gay: The plumbers' convention in "Back on Shaq".
  Plumber: "Hot chicks? Who has time for hot chicks when there's toilets to be plunged?"
• Ambiguously Human: The dentist in "Dental Hijinks" looks and acts human, but his green skin and Creepy Monotone voice suggest he may not be human, or indeed, a Half-Human Hybrid.
• American Gothic Couple:
  • "Bravo Dooby Doo" features Johnny and Shaggy hiding in a send-up of the American Gothic painting.
  • "The Johnny Bravo Affair" features a version of the painting where the farmer and his daughter are substituted with two sad dogs called Sad Puppy Gothic.
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba:
  • In "Little Talky Tabitha", Johnny tries to tell Little Suzy that her doll is alive. Little Suzy retorts that she's Tina Turner.
  • When Johnny tries to collect donations in "A Fool for Sister Sara", he responds to one man claiming that he already gave at the office by retorting that he's a Dallas cowgirl.
• And the Adventure Continues: The ending of Johnny Bravo Goes To Bollywood special looks like this. The villains are defeated, Jiggy signs on Pinky with Shinky as his agent and manager, Bunny tells Johnny it's time for the two of them to go home, and Johnny gets offered one last batch of the overpowered magical hair gel by Sumi only for him to reject it since he claims the "power of pure awesome" it had really came from him, not the gel. Then right before the animated, dance-filled, quick recap, credits Voodoo Guru (the man who brewed the gel) shows up for him to whisper at Johnny that indeed, the pure awesome came from the gel. Johnny tells the man that he'll need "a couple of thousand" batches of the gel, obviously suggesting he'll continue using it in future escapades.
• Angels Earn Their Wings: Johnny's Guardian Angel" is a comedic It's a Wonderful Plot, with a bumbling angel trying to help Johnny so he can earn his wings.
• Animal Chick Magnet: Johnny tries this with an emu. It doesn't go so well.
• Animesque: An episode has Johnny watching "Clam League 9000", a spoof of Pokémon with a hint of Dragon Ball Z.
• Anti-Villain: The dentist in "Dental Hijinks" isn't really a bad guy. Johnny just thinks he looks evil, but he's actually only trying to do his job. The ending proves this.
• Anuscape Plan: Carl is eaten by a giant gorilla, and then inexplicably shows up on the boat back home with Johnny and Pops. Pops, of course, asks Carl how he escaped, since he saw the beast swallow him. Carl outright refuses to discuss it.
• Apophenia Plot: In the episode "The Day the Earth Didn't Move Around Very Much", Johnny believes that time has frozen for everyone but him because his alarm clock had been stopped at 12:00 due to a power outage and every time he sees anybody, they have each decided to stay completely still for one reason or another like Little Suzy attempting to balance an egg on her nose or a construction worker falling in wet cement and thinking he'd sink in if he moved around. Johnny takes the opportunity to commit crimes thinking he wouldn't get caught.
• Appease the Volcano God: Attempted and failed in an episode. As they ask the Goddess to accept their offer of a virgin - Johnny simply asks "Virgin?" Then the volcano erupts.
• April Fools' Plot: In the episode "Fool For A Day", Johnny becomes the butt of everyone's jokes and pranks on April Fool's Day. The next day, he retaliates with his own highly effective pranks, only to be informed that since it's not April Fool's Day anymore, it's no longer appropriate. He gets in trouble and is beaten up.
• Are We There Yet?: The Season 2 episode "Ape is Enough" has the following exchange:
  [while on a boat traveling to the South Seas]
  Johnny: Are we there yet?
  Pops: [sounding annoyed] No.
  Johnny: Are we there yet?
  Pops: [more annoyed] No!
  Johnny: Are we there yet?
  Pops: SHUT UP!
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In "Pouch Potato", Johnny finds himself in a habitat for kangaroos and wonders whether he'll be done in first by hunger, loneliness, or the lack of clean linen.
• Art Evolution:
  • The art style, like Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, became cleaner and digitally colored as the series drew to a close.
  • When Van Partible returned for the fourth season, the series' general aesthetic reverted back to that of the first season (albeit cleaner). Suzy and Bunny reverted back to their first-season designs, and Carl (who wasn't in the first season) got completely redesigned to lose his Geek Physique and gain rounder, more normalized features.
• Artistic License – Animal Care: One episode has an emu being fed avocados, which are poisonous to birds. Quetzal birds are one of the only bird species that don't get poisoned by them. In fact, they can swallow avocado pits, and play a crucial role in dispersing them.
• Artistic License – Biology: Owls don't fly onto the hand of people standing, even though the owl that hooted (a sort of fantasy tawny owl) perched on Johnny; they have to be trained by humans to do that.
• Artistic License – Law:
  • You don't just get thrown straight into jail in the Yukon doing Prisoner's Work just for sexually harassing a Mountie in the Yukon unless it's really egregious; at best, this was Played for Laughs. Also, the RCMP do not wear their world-famous red uniform and campaign hat all the time (even in the Yukon), although this is done simply for making things easier to understand; showing the actual uniform of a Mountie could have been confusing for a foreign audience.
  • In a more general sense, there's no way that any of the women who attacked Johnny would get away with it.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: Carl Chrynizzwics has an ostensibly Polish or Slavic-sounding surname, but there is little evidence of such a surname existing in Real Life in Slavic languages and seems more like a case of Cypher Language with surnames.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: One episode has an emu being fed avocados, which are poisonous to birds.
• Arts and Crafts Episode: In the episode "Pop Art Johnny", Johnny becomes an artist after an art critic praises a painted butt print he accidentally created at an art museum.
• As Himself: Several celebrities have appeared on the show voicing animated versions of themselves, two of the most notable ones being Adam West and Donny Osmond.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: In "Yukon Yutz", Johnny attempts to woo a female RCMP officer by speaking French. Naturally, his "French" consists of gibberish that sounds vaguely like yodeling.
• Asshole Victim: Johnny. He does deserve some of the abuse he gets.
• Asymmetrically Jacked: In "That's Entertainment!" Bunny Bravo tells a story titled "The Arms That Wouldn't Quit", about a bodybuilder (played by Johnny) who fell asleep while doing dumbbell curls and ended up working out his arm to the point where it became five times the size of the other arm. In a panic, the bodybuilder tries to quickly work out the other arm to even things out, however he overdoes it and ends up with the same result. This results in the arms gaining sentience and separating from the bodybuilder to try and outdo the other arm, ultimately culminating in an arm wrestling contest that destroys the universe.
• At Least I Admit It: One first-season episode, "The Sensitive Male", parodies Schoolhouse Rock! by having a short, plain-looking man (voiced by Schoolhouse Rock creator Jack Sheldon) offer Johnny lessons on how to be, well, a sensitive male, with lessons on manners, listening to others, and being in touch with one's feminine side. At the end of the episode, the man admits that he doesn't believe a word of what he preaches and simply acts nice to get women to do what he wants. Johnny is thoroughly disgusted by his attitude—he may be a Casanova Wannabe, but he's 100% honest about it—and so creates an Engineered Public Confession to expose the guy in front of all the girls he's been trying to woo, who promptly carry him off for some well-deserved punishment.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the cartoon "Jumbo Johnny", an overdose of protein shakes made Johnny fat, and enough of them eventually made him grow to a gigantic height.
• Attractive Bent-Gender:
  • In "El Bravo Magnifico", Johnny is Disguised in Drag to fool the bandit, leading to this:
    Muy Caliente: [puckering up to kiss Johnny]
    Johnny: [giggles] But I'm too shy and sweaty!
    Muy Caliente: [perplexed] But surely a girl as pretty as you has kissed a man before.
    Johnny: [in shock] WHAT?! I WAS YOUNG! IT WAS NEW YEAR'S EVE! THE CHERRY COLA MADE ME GIDDY!!
  • When Johnny became a woman courtesy of a gypsy's curse, once he/she cleaned up and changed up his/her outfit, the new lady was rather appealing to men (a little too appealing actually...).
  • Subverted when Johnny asked a genie for a girl just like him, so the genie created a Johnny in drag. Johnny was less than enthusiastic about it.
• Baby Morph Episode: The episode "Look Who's Drooling" has Johnny turn into a baby after accidentally drinking Carl's youth tonic to soothe a really bad chili burn.
• Babysitting Episode: In "Johnny Real Good", Johnny takes up a babysitting job to look after a boy named Timmy so he can get the money he needs for a car he desires. Unfortunately for Johnny, the kid happens to be an Expy of Anthony Fremont, and Johnny's job of looking after a brat with reality-warping abilities goes about as well as you'd expect.
• Backing into Danger: In a Norse Mythology themed episode of the series, Johnny backs up into a Frost Giant while listing the reasons why he shouldn't be fighting said frost giant.
• Back to School:
  • "Prep School Johnny" sees Johnny being accepted to a prestigious prep school, because they only needed someone unintelligent.
  • In "Welcome Back, Bravo", Johnny goes back to school because he didn't finish the fourth grade.
• Band Episode: "Johnny B Badd" was a parody of this sort of trope, but also a pastiche of family groups like The Osmonds and The Jacksons of the 1970s. Unlike other examples of the trope, there wasn't egotism etc. but it was Lighter and Softer with more of a nod towards parody and humor.
• Bankruptcy Barrel: In the half-hour episode "Home Alone", one of the mishaps Johnny endures is his home being raided by the Clothes Horse Crook, whom Johnny catches wearing his mother's clothes. The Clothes Horse Crook then decides to instead take Johnny's clothes, leaving him wearing a barrel.
• Barely Missed Cushion: In the episode "A Star is Bruised", Johnny the stuntman falls right next to the big air cushion (after it seemed like this would be the end of his series of painful accidents).
• Beanstalk Parody: "Johnny and the Beanstalk" has Johnny tricked into trading the family cow for two bottles of hair tonic. After his mother pours the bottles out the window, this creates a giant stalk of hair that Johnny climbs to encounter a childlike giant who treats him like a plaything.
• Bears Are Bad News: In "Bearly Enough Time," Johnny has a run-in with a talking bear whom he has awoken from his winter hibernation and who refers to himself as "Chronos, master of all TIME!!"
• Be Careful What You Wish For: "I Dream of Johnny" revolves around Johnny finding a genie, and making poorly-thought-out wishes. One in particular involves him wishes for a girl as smart and pretty as him, with the same personality. The girl he gets is basically him in a dress, with a higher voice.
• Berserk Button: "I'm only gonna tell you once. Don't - touch - the glasses."
• "Better If Not Born" Plot: One episode has an angel show Johnny what life would be like without him, despite his protests he wasn't interested in seeing it, and everyone is better off: Pop's Diner is replaced with an extremely chic restaurant, Carl is a martial arts master and a software millionaire (Pop claims Carl is the reason Aaron City is on the map), Bunny Bravo is the head of a spy organization, and Little Suzy... apparently became a terrorist. Even his angel confesses that his boss warned him Johnny was just a "hunk of meat with a mouth". The only reason he came back was because he had put his face in cement that morning — he believed his friends' success didn't make up for not having his beauty around.
• Big Ball of Violence: "El Bravo Magnifico" has a ball of smoke with fists popping out show up when the villagers tie Muy Caliente to his horse before forcing him to leave.
• Big Eater: And how. Johnny has a huge appetite and typically eats in most episodes especially pizzas and anything his mother makes.
• Big Fun: The Round Pound, a trio of heavyset rappers who teach Johnny how to be hip hop to repay a favor. They're heavyset in the sense that they can't stand too close to each other onstage without crashing through it.
• Big Honking Traffic Jam: The episode "The Day The Earth Didn't Move Around Very Much" has two lanes of traffic at a standstill, honking fervently. Then one driver decides that mindless honking solves nothing, and the standstill would make a fine opportunity for a nap. All other drivers concur until the entire motorcade is dozing quietly. Johnny comes along, sees a mass of cars not moving, nor honking, and interprets this as further proof that time has stopped for everyone but himself.
• Big "NO!": Johnny every other episode yells "No" in response to things not going as he wanted them to.
• Big Red Button: In the episode "Bootman", Johnny ends up on the space station headquarters of the Astounding League of Super People, and is tempted by a big red button.
  Mr. Elastic: No! Don't press that button!
  Johnny: [pause] Aw, now I got to.
  [Johnny presses the button, causing all the other superheroes to be jettisoned into space]
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: "Rashomoron" has a part where Johnny and Suzy bicker by calling each other different variants of "stupid head".
• Bill... Bill... Junk... Bill...: In "The Clueless Kid", Johnny Bravo sorts through mail while throwing it into slots while yelling what they are: "Bills, bills, bills. Huh? Hey! Master hama, you may already be a winner."
• Boot Camp Episode: Johnny accidentally joins the Army instead of the Dodgeball Camp.
• Bottle Episode: "Buffoon Lagoon" is confined to an island and only features three characters; Johnny, an African-American woman, and Johnny's mom, but it's not a bottle episode for cost-lowering purposes other than reusing a character design (the African-American woman's design had been re-used from an earlier episode).
• Bowdlerise: The episode "Johnny Bravo Meets Farah Fawcett", when aired in UK, has the kid with the skateboard's lines "Man, you're spaz" and "Later, Captain Spaz!" changed to "Man, you're stupid" and "Later, Captain Stupid!"
• Box-and-Stick Trap: "Bungled in the Jungle" has King Raymond resort to using a box-and-stick-trap with a pinup calendar of Vendela Kirsebom as bait to trap Johnny Bravo after his other plans to catch him fail. Before the trap ends up working, King Raymond remarks that he isn't sure any human alive would be stupid enough to fall for such a trap and that he's only desperate enough to try it because he's running out of ideas.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: "A Page Right Out of History" ends with Fred Flintstone siccing Dino on Johnny all because he flirted with his daughter Pebbles (portrayed as a young woman).
• Brawn Hilda:
  • Johnny orders a mail-order girlfriend and gets a burly European woman who happens to have the same (lowbrow) interests as he does.
  • There's also the Lumberjack Queen, the burly mother of the gorgeous Lumberjack Princess (whom Johnny mistook for the Lumberjack Queen and entered a competition to get a victory kiss from). Johnny immediately runs for his life.
  • She-Hunk of the Astounding League of Super People would play this straight with the imposing physique, somewhat mannish features, and deep voice (provided by Frank Welker), but not only does Johnny recognize her on sight (suggesting he's a bit of a Fanboy despite not even knowing who the Super Boots he borrowed belonged to), he also finds her temper attractive.
  • Then one time he wished on a genie, for a woman who was just like him. And ended up with a wife who was nothing more than Johnny in drag.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the pilot, before the episode could Iris Out, Johnny, as he is holding a overweight mugger, looks at the audience...

• Brick Joke: The first Christmas special leads to Santa holding a grudge against Johnny which isn't resolved until the next Christmas special.
• British Royal Guards: Johnny once confused a mall security cop for one of these guys in "Llaw and Disorder", who as it turns out was just bored.
• Brown Bag Mask: In "Aunt Katie's Farm", Johnny has to take Little Suzy to a taping of a kid's show. Embarrassed about it, he wears a bag mask, but takes it off when Carl immediately recognizes him.
• Bully Turned Buddy: "Freudian Dip" heavily implies that Carl used to bully Johnny when they were younger (before Johnny got a major growth spurt).
• Butt Biter:
  • A poodle bites Johnny on the butt in "A Boy and His Bird".
  • Johnny gets yet another bite to the behind in "Jurassic Dork", this time from his pet dinosaur Mr. Wuggles.
• Butt-Monkey: Would be Johnny? If not, most of the characters that suffer as a result of his ineptitude.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: Parodied when Johnny's sunglasses glow white in the pitch dark.
• The Cameo:
  • At the end of the Scooby-Doo crossover, Johnny gets tied to a tree as Scooby and the gang drive away. Soon after, Speed Buggy shows up and offers to help.
  • In one episode, Johnny attempted to go on a blind date with Black Widow, a minor Space Ghost villain who also appeared on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
• Camp Straight: Richard Simmons appeared in one episode. Also, Carl seems to enjoy dressing up like a woman in a few episodes.
• Captain Ersatz: At a wrestling match, Johnny faces off against dead ringers for The Genius and Irwin R. Schyster.
• Captivity Harmonica: Happens in the episode "Hail to the Chump". When Johnny becomes mayor (due to a bizarre clause in the town charter that says that the village idiot become mayor if the mayor and the town council become incapacitated by bad tuna), he drafts a law saying that it's now illegal for nerdy dweebs to be seen in public, leading to Carl getting tossed in prison. Cue him playing a harmonica in a jail cell with a pissed-off cellmate looking on.
• Casanova Wannabe: Johnny. It should be noted though, that Johnny DID get the interest of at least a few beautiful women in the Van Partible episodes. One example is Lois from Going Batty, whose ex-boyfriend Woody has to sabotage her dates with Johnny and even imitate his mortal rival (complete with a wig just like Johnny's hairdo) to win her back. Mary from the pilot (she's the red-haired zookeeper) looks interested when Johnny's showing off his martial art skills and in the end, says she'd date Johnny but doesn't since, as she puts it, "it looks as though you [Johnny] already got a date" (the date being the obviously male mugger Johnny has in his arms).
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Happens in the episode "Bearly Enough Time!", this casual exchange happens while Johnny is being chased by Chronos the Bear and they individually pass by the former's mother Bunny, who isn't aware of what's going on:
  Bunny: Hi Johnny!
  Johnny: Hi Mama!
  Bunny: Hello Mr. Bear.
  Chronos: Good morning, Madame.
• The Cat Came Back: Johnny has trouble escaping a Talky Tabitha doll in "Little Talky Tabitha!"; all of his attempts to get away result in it forcing him to return, and his attempts to get rid of it just result in it returning to him via increasingly implausible escapes.
• Catchphrase: Johnny has several.
  • "Right. What did I say?" Johnny almost always says this when he mistakes one or more characters as someone/something they're not... in a typical Johnny fashion.
  • When bad things happen:
    Johnny: "This won't end well."
  • Also, "Whoa, mama!" and "Wiggy!"
  • In the first retool, usually whenever he sees food he likes he says "Ooooh Bacony" or "sandwichy" or just adds "y" to any food.
  • The retool also has him saying "Gimmee a dollar!" on a semi-regular basis.
• Caveman Courting:
  • In "Clan of the Cave Boob", caveman Johnny flirts with a cavewoman with a Terrible Pickup Line and she responds by clubbing him in the head and starts dragging him by the hair. Johnny assumes she's "one of those feminist cavewoman who likes to make the first move"; turns out she was just dragging him to drop him off a cliff.
  • In "Forest Chump", Johnny finds a beautiful forest dwelling woman and flirts with her. She reacts postively... by clubbing him in the head and dragging him by the hair back to her village to meet her father.
• Celebrity Star:
  • Several, including Adam West, Donny Osmond and Schoolhouse Rock! singer Jack Sheldon. Also Farrah Fawcett.
  • One of the most interesting things about the episode in which Adam West guest starred is that the two writers who wrote that episode, Seth MacFarlane, and Butch Hartman, have a huge interest in Adam West. In fact, when they split up to create their own shows, they still show that huge interest in him: Adam West plays himself as the Mayor in Family Guy and he makes guest appearances in some of the episodes of The Fairly OddParents!.
  • Mr. T and Richard Simmons.
  • Luke Perry?
  • The final episode of the series featured major appearances by Don Knotts, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Shaquille O'Neal, and Seth Green.
• Caught on Tape: An episode has the main character being sent to prison for littering, but Little Suzie and Mama Bravo were able to clear his name when the video taken from a security camera across the street showed that Johnny did throw the candy wrapper inside the trash can and that the wrapper on the ground was actually thrown by some random passer-by. However, Johnny, who was accidentally sent to a women's prison, didn't want to be released.
• Central Theme: Shallow thinking is not going to get you anywhere.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: Combined with a plot inspired by Soylent Green in "Panic in Jerky Town", where Johnny wins a tour of a jerky factory owned by a Willy Wonka pastiche named Jerky Jake, but contrived circumstances lead to him thinking that the secret ingredient for Jerky Jake's jerky is people.
• Check, Please!: A series of coincidences in "The Day The Earth Didn't Move Around Very Much" once misled Johnny Bravo into believing time stopped for everyone except for him and he decided to take advantage in every possible way. One was eating at a restaurant for free. Nobody paid attention to Johnny asking for the check because everyone was distracted.
• Cherubic Choir: Parodied in an episode when Johnny sees an ad for something he just happens to need at the moment. Cut to ad. choir starts singing, cut back to Johnny, with the choir standing behind him.
• Chivalrous Pervert:
  • Say what you will about Johnny, but even he is disgusted when the "Sensitive Male" says he's just faking being sensitive to manipulate women into dating him.
  • The pilot begins with a little girl asking Johnny if he knows what time it is. In response, Johnny (mistakenly thinking that the girl was trying to flirt with him) tells her that he's flattered but not interested, mostly because he feels too much of an age difference between them to make a compatible couple.
• Christmas Episode:
  • The first season had a seven-minute segment titled "Twas the Night", featuring Adam West narrating in the style of "The Night Before Christmas," in which Johnny accidentally knocks out Santa Claus and has to deliver gifts for him.
  • The half-hour special "A Johnny Bravo Christmas", where Johnny and Suzy try to do what they can to deliver Johnny and his mother's letters to Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Jungle Boy was a recurring character in the first season, but was dropped from the show when Kirk Tingblad became showrunner during the second and third seasons and didn't even resurface when Van Partible regained control of the show in season four.
  • Bobo, the Prospector and Master Hamma were all recurring characters during the Kirk Tingblad era that came after Van Partible was removed from the show following its first season, but none of them appear at all during Van Partible's return as showrunner in the fourth and final season.
  • Carl, Pops, and Suzy are nowhere to be seen in Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood.
• Circus Episode: Johnny goes to a circus led by the Femme Fatale ringmaster Vivian Vixen, who has captured the recurring character Jungle Boy, forcing him to perform circus tricks. Johnny falls for Vivian immediately, not realizing that she's evil. She takes advantage of him, manipulating him into helping her keep Jungle Boy under control.
• Clock Discrepancy: In the cartoon "Bearly Enough Time", a clock being even a millisecond off was Chronos the Bear's Berserk Button.
• Clocks of Control: One episode has Johnny enter the cave of a bear named Chronos, who is obsessed with clocks and calls himself the "master of all time", and does seem to have the extreme punctuality to back it up. Chronos is infuriated when Johnny stumbles into his cave, accidentally breaks most of his clocks, and wakes him up from hibernation.
• Clothing Damage: "Talk to Me, Baby" has the lady shilling her book on Vandela's talk show transform into a She-Hulk-style beast and attack Johnny. She rips off her clothes, exposing her underwear.
• Color Me Black: In "Witchy Woman," Johnny sexually harasses a woman with magical powers, who curses him to wake up the following day as a woman. Sure enough, it happens, and the new Johnny finds herself attracting a lot of unwanted attention from men and regrets what he's been doing his whole life, lifting the curse. Of course, Johnny being as dumb as he is, forgets all about it by the next episode and is back to his flirty self.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: Johnny Bravo comic stories were featured in Cartoon Network Starring, Cartoon Cartoons, and Cartoon Network Block Party.
• Company Cross-References: In "I Dream of Johnny", Johnny tries to use his mind to return his "dream" girl back to her previous hot form. In one of his false tries, she becomes I. M. Weasel.
• Complexity Addiction: Derek, the demon lead of "Johnny's Inferno", subverts this. His Evil Plan involves getting Johnny to turn off a power switch at the local reservoir, which Carl points out that he can easily do himself. Derek notes that of course he's capable of it—the point is to get a mortal to do it, because otherwise it doesn't count as corrupting someone and therefore won't win him his horns.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Exaggerated and Played for Laughs in "The Day the Earth Didn't Move Around Very Much". Johnny mistakenly thinks that time has frozen for everyone except him, and everywhere he goes things happen that only reinforce that perception (like a restaurant where everyone abruptly decided to remain perfectly still and silent for several minutes).
  • In "Karma Krisis," Johnny receives a chain letter that threatens bad luck to anyone who doesn't make copies and forward them to others. He dismisses the letter as nonsense and tears it up, only to be immediately plagued with increasingly bizarre events, ranging from being banned from the local gym to getting trampled by a passing circus parade to his trusty motorbike being destroyed by a meteor. Johnny thinks he's been genuinely hexed until Dionne Warwick (who's playing herself) arrives and explains that people make their own fate; Johnny then notices that nothing bad is happening and realizes that the supposed curse was nothing but coincidence and superstition.
  • In "Johnny's Inferno," Johnny inadvertently summons an annoying demon named Derek who passes himself off as a personal trainer as part of a scheme to get Johnny to commit "unspeakable acts of EEEVIIIIIIIILLLLL". But every time Johnny does something nasty, it ends up being a net positive:
    • Derek's first command is to get Johnny to dance on a lawn with a sign reading "KEEP OFF THE GRASS." When he does, a giant mutant rabbit emerges from the ground, revealing a stockpile of illegally-dumped toxic waste; a local scientist praises Johnny for exposing the mess.
    • When Derek pushes Johnny to take 11 items in the ten-items-or-less lane at the supermarket, the cashier doesn't mind, so Derek instead tries to pay with a jarful of Canadian pennies—only for the cashier to immediately spot the final rare coin she needs for her collection.
    • Derek takes Johnny to a local amusement park and makes him repaint the height requirement for a ride, meaning that children can't get on. Derek and Johnny then board, and the ride immediately breaks down and sends the pair flying; one of the kids' mothers thanks Johnny for preventing the children from getting hurt.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In "The Man who Cried 'Clown'", Mr. Bravo sees an evil clown on the wing of the plane (In a style of The Twillight Zone) and he tries to warn the passengers, but nobody believes him. When he finally defeats the clown and flushes him down the toilet in the airplane's restroom, he is confronted by the angered pilots and nearby passengers who inform him that the supposedly-evil clown was actually a part of their "Duo Clowny Wing Balance Outta-Lotta" system—there's another clown on the second wing and the two are supposed to provide equilibrium. The final scene shows Johnny, now in a clown costume himself, stuck as the replacement for the entertainer he flushed.
• Costumes Change Your Size: In the episode "A League Of His Own", it turns out in the end that grown men were disguised as girls to play in the teams, and had magically shrunk when wearing their costumes.
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: In the episode "Yukon Yutz", the villain ties Johnny to a conveyor belt with a buzzsaw at the end. Johnny was saved by the ultra-hard gel in his hair, which broke the buzzsaw.
• Crashing Dreams: "A Gel For Johnny" involves Johnny searching the entire town for a replacement for his favorite brand of hair gel. The episode gets weirder and weirder, until he finally reaches an oasis with giant hair gel bottles and bikini girls. While he's having his hair treated, one of the girls suddenly starts rambling like a radio host, prompting Johnny to suddenly wake up and find out that the entire episode was just a dream. But the main problem still stands: He's out of hair gel.
• Creator Cameo:
  • At the end of the Scooby-Doo crossover, the ghost gets several masks pulled off her before her true identity is revealed. The masks include one-shot characters and monsters from the original Scooby-Doo cartoons, Don Knotts, and finally Joe Barbera.
    Johnny: "Who's that?"
  • The Filipino guy from the episode "Witch-ay Woman" who flirted with "Jenny" Bravo in Gratuitous Tagalong is a caricature of Partible himself.
• Crossover:
  • With Scooby-Doo, leading to severe lampshading of Scooby-Doo commonly questioned tropes (e.g., What does Freddie do when he goes off on his own with Daphne?) and much hitting on Daphne to no avail. Speed Buggy makes a cameo at the end of that episode.
  • The final season saw Johnny crossing paths with The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound and Blue Falcon.
  • One episode had Johnny going on a blind date with Black Widow, a member of Space Ghost's Rogues Gallery.
• Crossover Couple: The episode featured the (one-sided since Johnny wasn't interested in Velma) pairing of Johnny Bravo with Velma Dinkly. This pairing also was seen in a commercial bumper that saw Johnny and Velma as Star-Crossed Lovers, another bumper that had Dexter have a Precocious Crush on Velma only for her to already be with Johnny, this bumper where Velma keeps a photo of Johnny on her drawers, and in the ending of the special set in Bollywood where after the now defeated mastermind behind the plot on his and pop star Jiggy's life says he'd have gotten away with it if wasn't for those meddling kids Johnny gives one mention of Velma:
  Johnny: "Man, do all supervillains just sit around watching Scooby Doo?"
  Johnny: (leans into camera with a smile while seductively raising eyebrow) "Hi, Velma..."
• Cue the Flying Pigs:
  • When Susie says Farrah Fawcet is her cousin, Johnny notes "Yeah, and pigs fly." Then he looks up in the sky...
  • There used to be a commentary by Johnny in Cartoon Network's years of running the show, asking Porky Pig if he could wear a pair of wings as a girl he asked out said she'd go out with him if pigs fly.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: In "Full Metal Johnny", the drill sergeant at one point threatens that she'll rip Johnny's head off and plant posies in his neck.
• Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Nixon: In "'Twas The Night", Johnny mistakes Santa Claus for a burglar and injures his arm, so he has to deliver the presents himself. When he and the sleigh shoot off into the night, he doesn't get any of the reindeers' names right.
  Johnny: On Yeltzin, on Nixon, on Stinky, on Rose, on... hey, where's that freak with the big glowing nose?
• Dating Service Disaster: In the episode "Date With An Antelope", Johnny arranges a date with a woman he met online... who turns out to be a talking antelope named Carol. And, this being Johnny, they actually hit it off quite well. Too bad it turned out she was dating Johnny in an effort to make her ex (an ill-tempered talking crab) jealous.
• A Day in the Limelight: Lil' Suzy gets one in "The Great Bunny Book Ban." which is a parody/Whole-Plot Reference of Green Eggs and Ham, and Johnny only features in cameo roles during the episode.
• Deadpan Door Shut: In the second version of the opening sequence, Johnny opens the door to reveal the geeky Carl. Carl lifts his finger ready to say something, and Johnny quickly slams the door on him without changing the expression on his face.
• Demonic Possession: In the episode "Johnny's Inferno", Johnny ends up possessed by a demon who then tries to force Johnny into a rampage of evil. Thankfully, the "rampage of evil" ends up being quite underwhelming due to Johnny being The Ditz and the demon having a Poke the Poodle idea of evil.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Bobo, the head chef at Pops' diner, went from an occasionally appearing character in the second season to only appearing in one episode of the third season without any lines.
  • In the last season, Pops only had one appearance as a non-speaking cameo in "Johnny Makeover" which parodied Totally Radical show retools. Carl fared slightly better with actual dialogue, but he only got seven appearances, and the last two were non-speaking cameos.
• The Dentist Episode: "Dental Hijinks" features Johnny having a fear of going to the dentist and it's got a lesson about going to see the dentist, although the ending of this one is a Hard Truth Aesop on why oral care is really important.
• Depraved Dentist: The Dentist in "Dental Hijinks" is a parodied version. It seems like he enjoys inflicting pain, but it's just Kayfabe because it's in keeping with what he thinks people expect, but he's actually revealed to be a Nice Guy at the end with a Jerkass Façade.
• Desperate Nail Dragging: One episode sees Johnny get sent to an all women’s prison for loitering a chocolate wrapper. At the end of the episode, it’s revealed that when Johnny tossed the wrapper, it did in fact land in the trash can behind him, but a passerby just so conveniently tossed another wrapper to the can, which somehow missed, and it landed in front of the cop that arrested Johnny. Upon being found innocent, Johnny is released from the prison, but he tries to stay since many of the women in the prison actually like him, and the episode ends with Johnny dragging his fingernails on the ground as he’s hauled out.
  Johnny: No, please! I'm guilty! I'm guilty!
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: "Johnny Bravo Meets Farrah Fawcett" has a scene where a rude kid calls the bouncer at Little Suzy's party a spaz. While the term isn't considered that bad in America, it is a very offensive ableist slur in the UK.
• Dirty Old Woman:
  • The Scooby-Doo crossover "Bravo Dooby Doo" has Johnny's Aunt Jebidisa flirt with Shaggy at the end of the episode.
  • In "Johnny Bravo Meets Farrah Fawcett", an old woman invited to Little Suzy's birthday party seductively asks the bouncer if he isn't going to frisk her.
• Disproportionate Retribution: This is pretty standard for the series; every time Johnny flirts with a lady, they beat him up for it.
• Disrupting the Theater: At the beginning of "Chain Gang Johnny", Johnny and Carl get kicked out of a theater due to the former's antics.
  Carl: Johnny, you're not supposed to read the subtitles out loud in funny voices while making hand shadows on the screen!
  Johnny: Well, excuse me, but that movie really bit! That was the worst 7-hour black-and-white documentary on moody Danish people I've ever seen!
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Parodied in Johnny Bravo Goes To Bollywood, where it turns out the plot to murder Johnny's rival Jiggy and then Johnny himself was set up by the latter's own monkey butler Jeeves. Jeeves was all too willing to explain why he started this plot, but Johnny unfortunately isn't patient enough to hear him out.
• Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do: In the segment "Yukon Yutz", Johnny gets involved with tracking down a criminal named 'Slimey Pierre' who aims to 'dam up all of Canada's rivers and bring the great white north to its knees.' Once Johnny tracks Slimey Pierre down to his latest dam, Johnny spots a single twig at the base of the wooden dam to which Slimey Pierre responds with "I wouldn't touch that if I were you." Johnny being Johnny naturally removes the twig, causing the whole dam to fail and unleash a flood a second later, ultimately leading to Slimey Pierre's arrest, and Johnny also getting arrested for destroying a town, alongside trying to eat old growth forest, and planning to steal a colony of beavers.
• Don't Eat and Swim: "Adam West's Date-O-Rama" ends with Adam West giving advice while fighting Black Widow's henchmen. The first advice he gives is to wait 30 minutes to swim after eating.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: In "Bootman", the Astounding League of Super-People's leader Mr. Elastic pleads with Johnny not to push a button. This only makes Johnny push it anyway and results in the superheroes being Thrown Out the Airlock.
• Donut Mess with a Cop:
  • In "Super Duped", Johnny is encouraged by the children in Suzy's class to stop a bank robbery. Once they are told Johnny is a superhero who will take it from there, the cops at the bank decide to leave to get donuts.
  • "Substitute Teacher" has a gag where two police officers appear to be following Johnny and Jimmy the Hands after the latter has tricked the former into assisting in a bank robbery, but it turns out the cops were actually driving their way to the donut shop.
  • "Fugitive Johnny" at one point has a cop carrying boxes of donuts get knocked over, afterwards some of the cops chasing after Johnny stop to eat the donuts off the floor.
• Doorstop Baby: "Damien's Day Out" has Johnny having to look after a demonic baby named Damien after the infant's mother leaves him in a basket on Johnny's doorstep. Damien drives Johnny crazy for the rest of the short before Damien's mother eventually comes back to reclaim her child.
• Double Entendre: In "The Sensitive Male!", the Schoolhouse Rock! character singing the "Sensitivity" song literally "gives her the D" (that is, a giant letter D). As a bonus, it's in the context of the guy telling Johnny he has to show women he "gives a D[amn]" about their thoughts and feelings.
• Downer Ending: Almost every episode for Johnny, including the original series finale, ends with him not getting the girl or suffering some other misfortune. It would take until a Made-for-TV Movie that aired years after the main show ended where Johnny goes to Bollywood to get a proper happy ending with his success in India and Love Interest Sumi.
• Drive-In Theater: The credits of the series are "projected" onto a drive-in screen.
• Drop-In Character: Many supporting/recurring characters introduced in Season 2 (Carl, Pops, etc).
• Dropped Glasses: In the Scooby-Doo crossover, he accidentally collides with Velma:
  Velma: "My glasses! I can't see without my glasses!"
  Johnny: "My glasses! I can't be seen without my glasses!"
• Dumbass Has a Point: Every now and then Johnny would get it.
  • When Chronos tells him the sign near his lair says "Stay Out" in "Bearly Enough Time", Johnny corrects Chronos that it really reads "Do Not Enter Without Appointment".
  • In "Jumbo Johnny", Johnny asks the Uber Mass salesman if the product is government-approved.
  • Johnny reprimands Pops for asking what Ingredient X is in "Panic in Jerky Town", pointing out that if Jerky Jake revealed the secret ingredient, his competitors would be able to copy the recipe.
• Dumb Blonde: Johnny is one the first male variants in a cartoon. He was originally much smarter, but Flanderization settled in.
• Dunking the Bomb: Subverted in the episode "Johnny Meets Farrah Fawcett" where Farrah's bodyguard screens the guests at little Suzy's birthday party. One gift is heard ticking, which causes the bodyguard to cry, "It's a bomb!" and immerse the gift in a bucket of water. The gift is revealed to be a wall clock, ruined by being waterlogged.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first season featured less slapstick, and Johnny wasn't as dumb (to the point where he actually played the Only Sane Man on occasion) as later seasons would make him, the fourth season (also known as the last season) however is more in line with the first one.
• Easter Bunny: In "Tooth or Consequences", Little Suzy replies to Johnny telling her the Tooth Fairy isn't real by lamenting this revelation and stating how she already knew the Easter Bunny wasn't real. While Johnny feels remorseful for shattering Suzy's hopes and dreams, he yells a Big "NO!" when the Easter Bunny not being real clicks in. As a Brick Joke, when the Tooth Fairy turns out to be Real After All following Johnny's efforts to restore Suzy's belief, the Easter Bunny is also shown to actually exist and be friends with the Tooth Fairy.
• Easter Egg: In "It's Valentine's Day, Johnny Bravo!", if you look at the wall of Johnny's bedroom as he's opening the safe, you will see The Rock's Brahma Bull symbol, raised eyebrow and all. Fitting, since The Rock was once considered to play him in the (now abandoned) live-action movie.
• Eat the Camera: The episode The Hansel & Gretel Project ends with a famished Johnny eating the camera, much to Little Suzy's dismay.
• Elongating Arm Gag: In "Bearly Enough Time", Johnny attempts to escape from Kronos by distracting him with a VCR clock, then running out of his cave. Kronos, instead of running after him, stretches out an arm, which grabs Johnny right after he exits the cave mouth.
• Embarrassed by a Child: In "Johnny's Inferno", Johnny peruses a fitness magazine in a grocery store:
  Little Girl: LOOK, MOMMY, THAT GUY'S LOOKING AT PICTURES OF ALMOST NAKED MEN!
  Everyone in the store stares at Johnny in disgust
  Johnny: This is a men's fitness magazine! I wanna look like this, not at this! I've got nothin' to be ashamed of! (walks up to the counter, dropping off change in shame) TV Guide.
• Ethical Slut: Johnny sometimes falls into this trope, especially in the first season. Despite being a Casanova Wannabe who never gets anywhere with women because of his brutish, moronic personality, he's always himself in these situations, and would never consider trying to trick a woman into liking him. In one episode that parodies Schoolhouse Rock!, a Kavorka Man uses sensitivity and politeness to pick up girls, and offers to teach Johnny his ways—but at the end of the episode, the guy explains that he's been lying the whole time, and would say or do anything to get a date, figuring it's OK as long as he asks politely. Johnny is thoroughly disgusted with the man and even helps to make sure that the jerk's former flames are in earshot of his confession.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Downplayed. Johnny isn't really "bad" as much as he is an obnoxious and uncouth (though ultimately good-hearted) lout. He is, though, utterly devoted to Mama Bunny Bravo and does everything he can to make her proud and happy.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As much of a Casanova Wannabe as Johnny is, he never lies about who he is or tricks women into liking him. This puts him at odds with a few antagonists that are more sleazy than he is, such as a Kavorka Man who tricks women into going on dates by faking being polite; when Johnny hears this, he's outright disgusted.
  • Johnny has a tendency to cause problems or make already existing problems worse because of his stubborn idiocy, but when he's on an intergalactic game show in "Third Dork from the Sun" that he manages to luck his way through in the first couple of rounds, he is disturbed upon learning that the gameshow punishes losing contestants by destroying their homeworlds.
• Everyone Hates Mimes: "I Used to Be Funny" features a mime who is oddly more talkative than most and at the end of the episode suffers getting beaten up by Johnny after the latter is enraged that the woman he's hitting on has rejected him for the two clowns.
• Express Lane Limit: In "Johnny's Inferno," one of the evil deeds that a demon makes Johnny do is going (slightly) over the checkout lane limit. The cashier doesn't have a problem with this, though, much to his disappointment.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Johnny, with a few rare exceptions, never gets the girl.
  • He did in the Valentine's Day episode, but she was a secret agent and she decided it might not work out due to her job... so she erased all his memory of her.
  • In one episode, Johnny meets a short, balding, chubby guy—the aforementioned Jack Sheldon—who has no trouble getting girls. Johnny asks him how he does it, and the guy sings songs about being sensitive and getting in touch with your feminine side... but at the end, he finally tells Johnny that you can just fake it and get girls just as easily, which is what Sheldon is doing. "I'd tell a woman I could turn lead into gold if it would get her to date me!" Of course, some of the girls overhear this and they are not amused.
  • Technically, he did get the girl in that one episode with the werewolf chick. Unfortunately, before anything could happen, it was revealed that it just happened to be the same day that she changes into a bald, nerdy fat guy who loves collecting stamps and showing them off.
  • In one episode, Johnny was thrown into a volcano as a virgin sacrifice. Seeing as the volcano spat him out with so much disgust that it blew up the island, we can assume he's... the opposite of a virgin. So, therefore, he never gets the girl onscreen. Also, it should be noted that Johnny was surprised to hear the word virgin and try to tell the Amazon woman something, implying he would say to them that he is not a virgin.
  • He very nearly came close in the Prison Episode, with all the women throwing themselves at him, but sadly, Bunny and Little Suzy clear his name and he's carted away in the end.
  • The episode where he and a moose named Becky go into witness protection and pretend to be elephants married to each other might be the one case he does get the girl. Not only is Becky obviously into him but when it turns out the mess started from Becky committing a massive misinterpretation, we don't actually see them break up, making it possible they might stay together.
• Fairy Tale Free-for-All: "Home Alone" has several fairy tale characters deciding to throw a party at Johnny's house, including Little Red Riding Hood, Humpty Dumpty, the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
• False Teeth Tomfoolery:
  • "Substitute Teacher" has a joke involving Johnny turning out to wear dentures when he annoys Jimmy the Hands by using his teeth to turn the steering wheel and Jimmy responds by dope slapping Johnny, causing his false teeth to come out still biting into the steering wheel.
  • "Gray Matters" has Johnny thinking he's become old after discovering his first gray hair. At one point, he is handed a pair of dentures and puts them in his mouth over his still-intact teeth. The beginning of the episode also has Johnny suffer a nightmare where he becomes elderly and loses his false teeth.
• Fan Disservice: Lampshaded in-universe in "I Dream of Johnny". When Carl and Johnny are in an Arabian bazaar, Carl mentions an exotic belly dancer act, which gets Johnny excited. It turns out that said dancer is a male with an enormous gut. This is used as a Brick Joke at the end; after Johnny is turned into a genie, Carl wishes for them to dance alongside the dancer.
• Fat Bastard:
  • The pilot features an aptly named thug called Big Fat Roy (though his name is only given in the credits).
  • In "Super Duped", Johnny fights a chubby supervillain dressed as a clown called Sweet Cheeks, who tries to steal all the candy in Aron City and turn Little Suzy into candy before he is defeated by Johnny accidentally exposing him to water and causing him to melt.
  • The title character of "The Sensitive Male" is a bit portly and admits near the end of the episode that he's faking sensitivity to make it easier for women to like him. After learning this, Johnny proceeds to reveal the man's true nature to the women he seduced and they respond by hogtying the Sensitive Male and preparing to get their revenge for being manipulated by him.
  • The appropriately named titular character of "Moby Jerk" is a stocky merman who likes to insult Captain Spleen.
  • In "Hunted!", an obese aristocrat known as Colonel Beauregard Fatman tries to hunt Johnny.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: Johnny is a huge fan of Farrah Fawcett, because "she's the only person in the world whose hair is prettier than mine." When the Ink-Suit Actor Farrah visits Johnny's neighbor, Suzie, he goes to absurd lengths to get a chance to meet her.
• Firehouse Dalmatian: In "Backdraft", while Carl recites a poem about the responsibilities of a fireman, Johnny decides to have some fun by ringing the bell on the fire truck, going on the second floor, and sliding down the fireman's pole to repeat the process. Eventually, he then decides to press a button on the side of the truck, which causes the ladder to extend and break part of the wall. This catches the attention of Carl, so Johnny blames it on the firehouse Dalmatian, who then whimpers.
• Flanderization:
  • A major example. In the earlier episodes and the pilot, Johnny was just incredibly cocky, socially inept, and reckless, but he still had some intelligence and was actually somewhat competent in martial arts. Seasons after, however, made him stupid, immature, misogynistic, and buff without any benefit. And how. To elaborate, in the later seasons, Johnny, for all his bulk, is repeatedly humiliated by 6-year-old boys and girls and beaten up by women half his size, whereas in the pilot, he effortlessly mauled a CROCODILE. There was even an episode specifically about how Johnny was so out of shape that he made a world record for the least healthy person. Apparently, his flab just happens to grow in the exact shape of a buff physique.
  • Oddly, in the last season, Johnny's Flanderization was reversed completely, but Suzie's annoying tendencies were turned up.
• Flapping Cheeks: This happens to Johnny as he looks out the window of a hi-tech bullet train in the episode "Runaway Train".
• Flipping the Bird: In one episode where a villain and his cat steal yarn, including Johnny's blanket, there is one point where said villain flips the bird (even though he had Four-Fingered Hands, it still looked as if he was).
• Fly in the Soup: In "I, Fly", a customer at Pops' diner complains about having a fly in his soup after Johnny falls in trying to get to Carl so he can help him switch back his body with that of the fly he got mixed up with. Pops merely replies to the customer's complaint with "Welcome to Pops'."
• Forced Transformation:
  • One episode has Johnny agreeing to take care of a witch's son (because she was hot, obviously) and going through some serious danger because of the toddler's magical skills. Because of that Johnny insults the Witch's son when giving him back to her, who obviously doesn't take it kindly and throws a spell at Johnny. The end of the episode reveals that Johnny was turned into a lizard, who somehow can talk and still has his hair and sunglasses.
  • In "The Island of Mrs. Morceau," Johnny heads to the titular island, where a scientist is changing people into animal-human hybrids. While some of them are shown loathing their transfigured states, others decide to make the most of it and perform a musical about their situation. ("Let's all do the HIDEOUS ANIMAL RAG!")
• Forgotten State of Undress: One of the shorts features Johnny walking out of his house, convinced that it's going to be a great day. His mother then calls to him, saying that he forgot to put on his pants.
  Johnny: Huh... thought it felt a bit drafty...
• Formerly Fat: Inverted. Johnny's muscles didn't come from nowhere. He mentioned how in one episode, he asked the prettiest girl in school to prom and he wanted to improve himself; so he did routinely from the scrawny kid to the muscle machismo today.
• French Jerk: The teacher of Johnny and his mother's French class in "Non, Oui, Oui Pour Johnny" is an irate Frenchman obsessed with stinky cheese who ends up setting Johnny's mom off by messing up Johnny's hair after he destroyed Johnny's passport and tickets to France in response to Johnny correctly answering the final quiz question.
• From Bad to Worse: After Johnny's favorite shampoo goes out of production due to a strike, Pops reveals the same hair gel is the secret ingredient in his five-alarm chili. As soon as Johnny steps outside, his hair is immediately surrounded by flies... which soon attract birds... which soon attract cats... which soon attract dogs... which somehow attracts a giant ant emerging from the Earth's crust.
• Full-Body Disguise: In the episode "As I Lay Hiccupping", an attractive female doctor pulls on her head to reveal a fat male doctor.
• Gender Bender: Johnny is transformed into a woman by a curse in the Season 5 episode "Witch-ay Woman."
• Genre Savvy: During the Prince and Pauper episode, Johnny realizes what's going on as soon as he sees his double.
  "Oh, dear. Am I really that transparent?"
  "Nah, I just watch a lot of TV."
• Girl Scouts Are Evil:
  • Not exactly evil, but in one episode, Little Suzy pressured Johnny into buying cookies a'la Sam-I-Am. At the end he ends up buying a trainload of cookies for $2 (there was a special that day).
    Johnny: A million and two cookies... Got milk?
  • In another, much later episode, Johnny watches a Squint Ringo show where the titular action hero fights against an army of robot assassins dressed up as girl scouts. When he busts them and stands next to a smoking pile of scrap metal, he's asked how he knew they were robots. His reaction: "Robots?"
  • The later seasons loved this, making Suzy the regular member of an entire army of girl scouts. In one episode, they wage a water-balloon war on Carl and the geeks, who in turn, recruit Johnny to train them. In another one, Johnny is assigned to watch over the Girl Scouts. He takes them on a trip near a building scheduled for demolition. When he loses track of them and goes into the building to look for them, the scene shifts to the girl scouts chatting with the workers ready to demolish the building. They let Suzy push the button. Kaboom.
• Global Ignorance: In "Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood", Johnny mistakes India for Indiana and, under the belief the place is full of Indians (i.e. Native Americans), wears a cowboy outfit when he goes there.
• Gypsy Curse: Johnny is cursed to shrink in size by a gypsy he angered. In another episode, Johnny's attempts to flirt with a gypsy fortune teller get him cursed to spend a day as a woman.
• Haggis Is Horrible: "Loch Ness Johnny" has Johnny liking haggis before learning what it's made of.
• HA HA HA—No: In "Charm School Johnny", Johnny asks Pops if the former is a gentleman, causing the latter to laugh for a long time before simply replying "No."
• Hairstyle Inertia: A flashback showed Johnny's trademark hair even as a baby.
• Handsome Lech: There's no denying that Johnny is attractive, but his personality and sadly unenlightened attitude towards women tends to cause roughly 90% of the women he meets to instantly reject him. The remaining 10% either reject him by the end of the episode or have revealed some flaw that makes them undesirable.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue":
  • In "Rashomoron," his version of the story starts with him defeating a ninja warlord and gets worse from there.
  • When he holds a puppet show at Suzy's school in "Welcome Back, Bravo", he makes her hot teacher fall in love with him.
• "Here's Johnny!" Homage:
  • In one episode, the titular character quotes the line verbatim when entering a bar.
  • In another, a talking bear emerges from the bushes while shouting "Here's Johnny". This confuses Johnny, who points out that his name is Johnny.
• Hero Stole My Bike: In "Virtual Johnny", Johnny is playing with the new Biff Proton VR game and is running around town acting out all the action in the virtual world. At one point, Johnny picks up a hoverbike from a robot attendant in the game, but in the real world, he actually stole the wagon from a little kid, who promptly sics the police after him.
• He's Back!:
  • According to Van Partible, when he was originally producing the series, he wanted to make the old aesthetic HB-animation style as authentic as possible for his series so he tried to hire as many veteran Hanna Barbera artists as possible, specifically ones that been with the studio since the '50s. One particular alumnus he got out of retirement was Ed Benedict. Although Benedict still did one-off work for the studio, he retired during the '70s due to politics, deadlines, and how the animation structure for the studio was changing. After visiting Benedict numerous times and learning from him, he agreed to work as a background layout artist and background consultant for the show provided if there were no deadlines for him to follow. Benedict subsequently worked on the entire first season and both holiday specials.
  • Van Partible also managed to get Joe Barbera as a writer and consultant for a few episodes until he was let go as Partible found out that he had to pay Barbera for his time and his involvement was putting the series over budget.
• Hibernation/Migration Situation: Johnny accidentally awakens a giant bear named Chronos (MASTER OF TIME!) from hibernation. Chronos then threatens to eat Johnny on the grounds that "If I'm not sleeping, I'm eating," but Johnny is able to successfully get the bear back to sleep to avoid this fate.
• Hiccup Hijinks: In the episode "As I Lay Hiccupping". Johnny gets the hiccups after eating his cereal too fast, which his mama warned him not to. He then goes to the doctor's office, and the doctor he sees is a hot lady. Johnny spends the entire episode losing the hiccups and getting them back. Once he does get them back, he sees the doctor, only for her to actually be a male doctor wearing a costume, which scared Johnny pretty good.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Played for laughs in a short where Johnny is tasked with finding a rhinoceros in a living room. The rhino is literally sitting in a chair out in the open, but Johnny fails to find him (even picking up the chair to look underneath it.) When he fails and the rhino jumps up and down on top of him making fun of him for failing to find him, Johnny just asks if he's seen a rhino.
• Hide Your Shapeshifting: In "Witch-Ay Woman", a witch curses Johnny to teach him a lesson about his flirty behavior. After being turned into a woman the next morning, Johnny (now Jenny) sneaks out of the house, trying to mimic her old masculine voice, to avoid being seen by her mother.
• Hollywood Genetics: Bunny Bravo appears to be a redhead under her hair scarf according to Fanon (although it's not confirmed in canon), yet Johnny is blonde.
• Honest John's Dealership: Pops, on occasion — his stuff is generally legal, but often of dubious quality.
• Hope Spot: In "Biosphere", Johnny destroys all the resources and equipment for survival meaning survival hopes are very low. Then by a miracle a pizza delivery man somehow manages to unlock the very complex front door, meaning the crew is saved. However, Johnny accidentally closes the door after receiving his pizza, causing everyone including himself to be trapped in the biosphere all over again. With no hope of freedom and the implication that they are now trapped for eternity as the door opening presumably stopped the year project, the gang was right to beat up Johnny.
• Hotter and Sexier: A downplayed version of this trope since it was made for a children's network, but Johnny's constant womanizing was still pretty risqué for a kid's cartoon in the 90s. If the show was made today, airing the show on [adult swim] would be a more logical conclusion.
• Hunk: Johnny himself, though women generally don't find him attractive because he's full of himself and kind of a bore.
• Hypno Pendulum: In the episode "Bearly Enough Time", Johnny tries this to hypnotize a bear into sleeping, but ends up following the swinging pendulum with his own eyes and falling asleep himself.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • In "Doomates", Johnny objects to his mom putting a V-chip into the TV to block out the shows he wants to watch by insisting that he is an adult and that his mother should therefore treat him like one. Right after mom declines to comply with his demands, Johnny then cries and throws a tantrum like a child.
  • In "Welcome Back, Bravo", Johnny learns that he has to repeat the fourth grade and throws a fit while childishly complaining that he doesn't want to be stuck in a room full of whiny, immature brats.
  • After Johnny has been de-aged into an infant in "Look Who's Drooling", Pops begins to babble in front of Johnny as if he were a regular baby. Carl scolds Pops and tells him not to patronize Johnny, but then starts treating Johnny like an ordinary baby as well.
• I Don't Like You And You Don't Like Me: Subverted in an episode where Johnny is dealing with a ghost.
  Johnny: All right ghost. I don't like you, and you don't like me. So let's settle this once and for all.
  Ghost: RRRRWWWWHHHH!
  Johnny: Of course, I could learn to like you.
• "I Have a Boyfriend" Excuse: Johnny finds himself on the receiving end of this trope more times than you can count.
  Girl: How many times do I have to tell you? I have a boyfriend!
  Johnny: Well, you look like the kind of girl that could use two.
• Impossible Pickle Jar: In "Bikini Space Planet", Johnny finds himself captured by a race of alien women. They test him to prove if he's worthy enough to be their man, and the final part of the test is to open a jar of pickles, which he is successful at.
• Indestructible Edible: An episode features Johnny going on an experimental bullet train to visit a relative. It would have crashed at high speeds if Johnny didn't have a souvenir cake... to use as an anchor.
• Inept Aptitude Test: In the episode "Johnny Get Your Tutu", Johnny fills out an aptitude test, but accidentally sends Susie's abstract picture instead and gets the result of "ballerina". At the end of the episode, it turns out that his actual result was "cracking rocks with his head".
• I Never Told You My Name: In the episode "The Sensitive Male", Sheldon addresses Johnny by name shortly after they first meet. Johnny asks him how he knows, but Sheldon says that is not important and then gives a musical number about how "Everyone Has Got a Name". Johnny mutters, "How do these people know my name?"
• Inkblot Test: Even Johnny got in on this. To the first four images he just calls them a "blob", and the final image reminds him of "Timmy, the little guy who lives in my mouth".
• Insufferable Imbecile: Johnny is often depicted as being as inconsiderate and brash as he is stupid, with the show in fact owing a lot of its humor to Johnny getting himself in trouble for being a pompous dumbass or making bad situations worse because he is hopelessly unable to understand what's going on and always refuses to listen to those who know better.
• Insult Backfire: In "Bikini Space Planet", Carl brings up that Johnny once called him the Mayor of Doofus Town, which he takes as a compliment due to focusing on the "mayor" part.
• Insult Friendly Fire: In "Under the Big Flop", Jungle Boy calls Vivian Vixen a cold-hearted snake, unintentionally upsetting his snake friend in doing so.
• Interspecies Romance: A Running Gag in the show seems to be that despite being awful with human women, Johnny has a pretty good track record with animals and monsters.
  • "Date with an Antelope" is a twofer: not only it starts off as a Dating Service Disaster that sets Johnny up with a hoofed creature, but Carol's previous boyfriend was a crab. One that somehow got served on Johnny's plate in a restaurant where they were dating. What are the odds of that happening?
  • And while not technically interspecies, there was also the time he dated a werewolf, one of the few women (besides Suzy) that DID find Johnny attractive.
  • There was a female moose named Becky that was placed into Johnny's home by the Wilderness Protection Agency under the guise of them being a married elephant couple. Becky was TOTALLY into him, pouncing upon him and gazing into his eyes, picking him up, doing a lust-take, complete with clasped hooves, wagging tail, and ga-ga eyes, then slurping his face from chin to pompadour with her tongue, afterward gazing at him adoringly. Pretty forward girl. Then again, they had just had an on-the-spot marriage to complete Becky's cover story. Funny enough, she might be the first case of Johnny actually getting the girl since she never gets tired of him and they never actually break up in the episode.
  • And in the episode "The Island of Mrs. Morceau", he made a pass at a humanoid female fox.
  • When Johnny tries to win a car named "El Toro Guapo," he enters the wrong contest and is now competing to win a bull of the same name. Said bull gets rather intimate towards Johnny and makes sure every other contestant loses so he can have him all for himself. By the end of the episode, there's only a female contestant and Johnny left, and once she tries to make advances on the bull, he declares he prefers Johnny. Then her boyfriend (another bull) shows up and asks why is she "touching" El Toro Guapo. Then, we have this exchange:
    Female Contestant: Now that we're alone, Johnny, why don't we know each other better?
    El Toro Guapo: Mmmmmm... this is getting interesting.
    Female Contestant: Well, let me get comfortable.
  • After they finally put to rest their feud in "Loch Ness Johnny", Nessie seems pretty smitten with Johnny. After some initial repulsion, Johnny gives in and tries to convince his mother to let him take Nessie back home to America on a leash, all the while she bats her eyes at him with love hearts around her head.
  • "Ape is Enough" has Johnny as the blonde beauty in a King Kong scenario when a giant female ape on an island becomes infatuated with him. She takes him back to her cave and tries to seduce him with a dance wearing a bikini.
• I Resemble That Remark!: In "Doomates", Johnny's mom installs a V-chip into the TV in order to block out the shows she deems mindless garbage that is rotting her son's brain. Johnny protests "Mindless garbage not rot brain."
• Isolation-Induced Infatuation: Defied in "Buffoon Lagoon", where Johnny and a nameless woman are stranded on an island due his perverted antics. The woman makes it known under no uncertain terms that she is not interested in him simply because he's the only guy around and is absolutely having none of his nonsense as she just wants to get off the island and away from him. Johnny repeatedly tests her patience throughout the entire episode, from being forced to rescue him from quicksand that he mistook for pudding to Johnny destroying her makeshift radio in his attempts to impress her, and by the end of the episode, she literally swims off the island and takes her chances in the sea just to get away from him.
• Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?: In "A Johnny Bravo Christmas", Johnny asks a man if he can fly him and Suzy to the North Pole and the man answers "Do birds go poo on cars?"
• The Jailbait Wait: Played for laughs in a throwaway line in "Johnny Bravo Meets Farrah Fawcett", where Little Suzy tries to invite Johnny to her birthday party and Johnny tries to get her off his back by telling her not to call him again until 15 years later after she's a co-ed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Johnny may be crass to Suzy, Carl, and a host of women, but the boy is devoted to his mama.
  • He will also fight tooth and nail to keep Pops in business.
  • Most of the time his brainless antics are well-intended, such as "saving" the "Queen of Atlantis" from sharks or "rescuing" an oppressed pinata.
  • He has also shown occasional kindness to Suzy and Carl, even though they annoy the bejeezus out of him.
  • Mentioned by his foster family, a family of Inuit Eskimos, during Johnny's brief period in the foster care system. (It Makes Sense in Context.) When Johnny returns home, the father points out what a nice boy he is, even if he is incredibly stupid.
• Joke of the Butt: "Pop Art Johnny" revolves around Johnny becoming a successful artist by simply pressing his butt on the canvas after dipping his rear in paint.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Every woman that Johnny flirts with tend to get off scot-free for hitting him in response.
  • While he usually gets comeuppance for using Johnny for rich quick schemes, Pops faces no repercussions for serving inedible and unsanitary food to his customers, and manages to stay in business by bribing health inspectors to stay away.
  • Played for Laughs in ""The Day the Earth Didn't Move Around Very Much"'. after Johnny pleads his case, a sympathetic judge exonerates him for all the crimes he committed in the episode.
• Kavorka Man: In one episode Johnny meets his polar opposite: a short, chubby, and bald man that is very successful with the ladies by being sensitive and in touch with his feminine side. This is subverted when the girls he is with find out that it's all just an act, though...
• "Keep Off the Grass" Trespass: In "Johnny's Inferno," among the various so-called evil acts that Derek the Demon tells Johnny to do is dancing on some grass in a park despite a sign warning against it. It backfires spectacularly when Johnny inadvertenly reveals a huge pile of illegally-dumped toxic waste hidden under the ground, earning him praise from the townsfolk (and irritation from Derek).
• "Kick Me" Prank:
  • In "I Used to Be Funny", Johnny found himself at the mercy of two clowns who used their own variations of this prank: The older clown used the regular version while the younger clown stuck an "I Hate Rhinos" sign on his back, which caused a talking rhino to beat him up.
  • "Get Stinky" has Johnny attempt to get a Kick Me sign on the back of Stinky Brownstein in retribution for when she picked on him when they were kids. He instead gets the sign on his own back.
• Kill Sat: In an episode, Johnny is fried by one when he starts hitting on a random nerd girl.
• Kiss of Life: There's an example where Johnny attempts to save a drowning person at the beach to impress girls. His rescue attempt fails miserably and he ends up needing to be rescued. Seeing no other option, Johnny's annoying, nerdy "friend," Carl, administers the kiss of life. Johnny regains consciousness, freaks out, and rushes to the ocean to wash out his mouth with salt water, knocking the person he initially tried to save out of his way and back into the ocean. Also Carl gets the girls.
• "Kiss the Cook" Apron: In the pilot episode (part of the What A Cartoon! Show), Johnny Bravo dons a green apron reading "Kiss the Cook" as he flirtatiously prepares Mary the Zookeeper a deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.
• Klaatu Barada Nikto: Carl used this (amongst other sci-fi catchphrases) to greet an alien.
• Ladykiller in Love:
  • Very rarely, but Johnny did, in a Cartoon Network bumper, fall hard for Velma—it was very sweet. Unfortunately, the relationship didn't seem to work out—Velma was forced to end it because, as she told Johnny, "My career comes first."
  • This had a Continuity Nod of sorts in another bumper where Dexter develops a crush on Velma and later tries asking her out on a date, but discovers that she and Johnny are already dating. And the actual Scooby-Doo crossover episode had Velma hitting on Johnny.
• Laugh Track: Inverted in "Cartoon Makeover", where one of the attempts to give Johnny Bravo a new style was to add a laugh track that goes off whether you say something funny or not.
• Left the Background Music On:
  • In an early episode, whenever the villain's plot was described an ominous tune would cause the characters to look around in surprise and confusion until finally, one of them wonders aloud "Who keeps doing that?"
  • In an episode, Johnny sees a big shining sign advertising just the thing he needed at the moment. Cue the sound of a choir chanting. After a zoom-out, there's an actual boy choir standing right next to the sign.
  • In "Hail to the Chump" Johnny summons some sexy women into his office and them entering is accompanied by a drumbeat; Johnny turns to the woman on drums next to him and says:
    Johnny: Y'know, you don't have to do that every time they walk in.
• Lethally Stupid: Johnny often puts people's lives in danger because of his idiocy, with the episode "Bootman" even having his antics causing the apparent deaths of the Green Swoosh and the rest of the Astounding League of Super-People.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: An episode is presented as a Scooby-Doo parody, which plays on the old joke that Freddy always said "Let's split up!" just so he and Daphne could make out while Scooby, Shaggy and Velma get chased by the monster-of-the-day. Even Johnny of all people points out how stupid this is:
  Johnny: There's a monster out there and you want us to split up?
  Freddy: Well... yeah.
• Line-of-Sight Alias: Johnny disguises himself as a woman and enters a beauty pageant to evade a mafioso, and signs up as "Mitch Checkouttimeisat2".
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: In the Van Partible seasons, anthropomorphic animals of the Talking Animal and Civilized Animal varieties live in Aron City alongside humans. This mostly is not the case with the Kirk Tingblad seasons, which mostly feature humans.
• Lonely at the Top: Johnny runs for sanitation commissioner in "Candidate Johnny". He mentions the trope when he has to clean up the streets by himself for spending the budget on the party held to celebrate his victory.
• Longer-Than-Life Sentence: In "Johnny Jailbird", a misunderstanding results in Johnny having to serve 86 life sentences in a women's prison, requiring his mother and Little Suzy to exonerate him.
• Look Behind You:
  • In "Johnny Bravo and the Amazon Women", Johnny distracts Christopher the Elephant by claiming to see Don Knotts.
  • In "Little Talky Tabitha", Johnny tries to distract Little Suzy's evil doll by claiming to see Pinocchio.
  • Johnny distracts Little Suzy in "Welcome Back, Bravo" so he can cut in line at the cafeteria by claiming to see Leonardo DiCaprio.
  • "Some Like It Stupid" has Johnny distract Fish Lips Malone by telling him there's a sale on icepicks.
  • "Pouch Potato" begins with Johnny flirting with an Australian tour guide, who distracts him by claiming to see a dingo tap-dancing with Olivia Newton-John.
  • In "The Great Bunny Book Ban", Mr. Blowhard distracts Little Suzy by claiming to see Matt Damon.
• Lost in the Maize: The episode "Johnny, Real Good" (a parody of It's A Good Life) has this as one of the torments that the Reality Warper boy inflicts upon Johnny: teleportation to an actual cornfield (not really that horrible, but still a minor annoyance for Johnny who has to walk back home), which becomes a Running Gag. At the end of the episode, he teleports sleeping Johnny in his bed onto a lonely island — covered with maize.
• Loves Me Not: In "Blarney Buddies", Johnny visits Ireland, where he takes part in a tour of a farm that grows four-leaf clovers, and decides to use the plants for this trope, not catching on to the fact that because of the even number of leaves, he's always going to end up with a "Loves Me Not". He's managed to ruin a small hill of clovers before the guide catches on and kicks him out.
• Loving Bully: In the Season 3 finale "Get Stinky", Johnny's childhood bully Samantha "Stinky" Brownstein moves back into town and is now romantically interested in him. Johnny is extremely suspicious, with him having to deal with years of pain and humiliation to the point of greatly despising Stinky even though she is a 10/10 babe. Johnny is proven to be right at the end of the episode, but it is heavily implied that Stinky does have a genuine and major crush on Johnny.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Played with:
  Virtual Reality Hallucination: I did not destroy your second cousin, Biff. I am your second cousin!
  Johnny: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Lying Finger Cross: "Mama's New Boyfriend" ends with Johnny asking his mom not to let anyone come between them again. Johnny's mom promises this won't be the case while crossing her fingers.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Johnny would often interact with Hanna-Barbera characters and even real-life celebrities during the show's first season and the last season when Van Partible returned to work on it. The other three seasons mostly lacked this. They did, however, have guest appearances by Dionne Warwick and Luke Perry.
• Meaningful Name: Johnny Bravo is named after his creator, Ephraim Giovanni Bravo "Van" Partible.
• Meat-O-Vision:
  • "Over the Hump" has Johnny get so thirsty that he hallucinates Lawrence the Camel as a giant canteen.
  • In "Hip Hop Flop", Round Pound member Heavy C gets so hungry that he eats Main Flavor's turntable after hallucinating that it is a sandwich.
• "Meet the Celebrity" Contest: The episode "Berry the Butler" has Bunny win a contest to have famous singer Berry Vanderbolten be her butler for a day. However, Bunny faints from the excitement and Barry tries to use this to leave early, using the whole thing as a publicity stunt until Johnny stops him. Originally this episode was written for Barry Manilow but the crew never got a response back from him. They also tried to get John Tesh instead but he bailed out on them at the last moment; leading to the Captain Ersatz we have now.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Johnny gets this from people he angers, and Jungle Boy did this to the evil ape advisor once.
• Microwave Misuse: In "Carnival of the Darned", Johnny takes a device that Carl made tapes his food to it, and starts to put it in the microwave, which Carl points out is not something you can do with metal. Johnny ignores him and does anyway, resulting in the microwave exploding and making a mess of the kitchen.
• Minimalist Cast: "Buffoon Lagoon" has the shortest cast list of any episode; Johnny, Girl of the Week Melinda who is a Reused Character Design, and Bunny Bravo, Johnny's mom. It's a parody of Cast Away with Tom Hanks.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: In an episode, Johnny meets Squint Ringo, the swaggering, macho Steven Seagal expy he idolizes. Johnny accidentally, lightly brushes the side of Squint's face... and Squint instantly collapses, holds his "injury" and bawls like a child.
• Miserable Massage: Happened during "Spa Spaz". An Inexplicably Identical Individual of tough-guy navy veteran threatens to crush Johnny using massage, and leads to a bizarre ending where the masseuse is pigging herself out on nachos with cheese and dissatisfied spa customers walking out.
• Mistaken Confession: In "The Hansel and Gretel Witch Project", Suzy and Carl show up to Johnny's house to ask him to help them with a documentary they're making. Johnny sees Carl recording him and believes that the cops are on his tail.
  Johnny: It not my fault! The neighbor's dog told me to steal cable!
• Mistaken for Apocalypse: In the episode "The Day the Earth Didn't Move Around Too Much", a series of bizarre coincidences that make people decide to stand perfectly still lead to Johnny assuming that he's the only person unaffected by a time stop and goes on to do whatever he wants, which then leads to him being pursued by a bunch of pissed-off people.
• Mistaken for Cheating: In "Twas the Night", Johnny accidentally delivers his mother's present of a fur coat to the house of the Mayor of Aron City when he's taking Santa's place. The result is the mayor's wife angry at her husband because she thinks he cheated on her with a woman named Bunny.
• Mistaken for Dying: "Carl Be Not Proud begins with Carl being upset about a medical report informing him that his Venus flytrap is on its last legs. Johnny hears about the medical report but thinks that it is referring to Carl, which leads to Carl seizing the opportunity to pretend that he's dying and to use Johnny's guilt over treating him poorly to manipulate him into doing whatever he wants him to.
• Mistaken for Gay: One infamous moment in "Johnny's Inferno" has Johnny being accused of this in a grocery store as he's reading an ad for a muscle-development book club (although it's carefully coded to never actually use the word gay):
  Little Girl: LOOK, MOMMY! HE'S LOOKIN' AT PICTURES OF ALMOST NAKED MEN!
  (The crowd gasps in shock)
  Johnny: This is a men's fitness magazine! I wanna look LIKE this, not AT this!
• Mona Lisa Smile: "The Johnny Bravo Affair" begins with Johnny's mother observing a pair of pastiches of famous paintings, one of which is a send-up of the Mona Lisa called the Rover Lisa. The painting depicts a dog and Bunny comments that only the artist knows whether the subject is frowning or smiling.
• Morally Superior Copy: "Send in the Clones" has a Mad Scientist create dozens of Johnny clones. Since Johnny is a Brainless Beauty, Casanova Wannabe, and Jerk Jock, the scientist decides to increase the clones' empathy and intelligence. Everyone in Johnny's life prefers the clones—even after discovering that they're fake—and decide to let the scientist keep up his work; it's ultimately Johnny who screws things up by messing with the machinery, which instantly disintegrates all of the copies.
• Move in the Frozen Time: Spoofed in the episode "The Day The Earth Didn't Move Around Too Much", where a series of coincidences falsely convinces Johnny that time has frozen for everyone but him. The best part of that episode is that after committing a few crimes because "no time means no rules", the judge of his case lets Johnny off the hook because he also experienced a time where the thought he was in the middle of a time freeze as well.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Johnny, despite having such a broad chest and big muscles, is repeatedly beaten in fights, even with those much smaller than him. It is explained in the episode where Johnny visits a spa; he has so many toxins in his body that even the spa's director is surprised he can even stand. He barely can for that matter, he asks if she has a couch nearby because he gets dizzy from standing up too long.
  "Hey, I forgot I had chocolate cake in my pocket!"
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: The female secret agent Johnny meets in "Bravo, Johnny Bravo" introduces herself to Johnny as "Bonded, Jane Bonded".
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: In an episode, Johnny chases a leprechaun, who turns into a sheep and hides in a herd of them. In a rare moment of intelligence, Johnny finds him by shouting, "Scotland Rules!" The leprechaun got so offended that he stood up and yelled at him.
• Never Split the Party: Invoked by Johnny himself during a crossover with Scooby-Doo.
  Johnny: (to Freddy) There's a monster out there and you want us to split up?!
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: We have Suzy (nice), Johnny (mean), and Bunny (in-between). In Seasons 2 and 3, Carl and Pops would often be the nice and in-between to Johnny's mean respectively.
• Niche Network:
  • Johnny once caught a glimpse of the "Fish" Network. The channel's content consisted entirely of video recordings of fish swimming. "All fish, 24/7."
  • Johnny also once had a bear named "Chronos, the Master of All Time" watch the "Tree Channel" in the hope of curing his insomnia.
• Night-Vision Goggles: A part of an episode begins with Little Suzie asking, "do you really need those night-vision goggles?" Johnny claims "they work exceptionally well in the day time," them turns on the lights and immediately screams that he's gone blind.
• Nixon Mask: Worn by a shark in the first season, in an overcomplicated plot to eat a contest's worth of surfers. It didn't work.
• No Animals Were Harmed: An episode where the climax involves Johnny preventing the Army from attacking his rampaging pet dinosaur, ends with the general trying to inform the viewers that "no Army personnel were harmed" in the making of the cartoon, only to get interrupted by the aforementioned dinosaur eating him.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: In the episode "Beach Blanket Bravo", a boy gets jealous when his girlfriend latches onto Johnny, so he angrily challenges Johnny to a surfing contest. Johnny refuses, not wanting to get his hair wet, but the boy calls him chicken. In response, Johnny goes, "That does it, kid! You've earned yourself a serious butt whooping!" and accepts the challenge.
• Nobody Touches the Hair: Johnny has this attitude. Or his sunglasses either for that matter.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • While Johnny's voice was rather blatantly alluding to Elvis, the show had this all over the place in varying amounts. One notable case was the mayor of Aron City (prior to the retool), who was created just so the writers could make fun of Bill Clinton's mannerisms and personality.
  • The gorilla's voice in the pilot episode is based on Sammy Davis Jr..
• No Longer with Us: "Schnook of the North" starts with Johnny and his mom shopping for clothes, Bunny Bravo later leaving to go to "the better place". Due to Johnny's idiocy, he ends up telling other people of his mom being in a better place, which they misinterpret as meaning that he is an orphan, resulting in Johnny being taken in by a foster family of Inuits while Bunny is still searching for her missing son.
• No Mouth:
  • Johnny's mouth appears only whenever he talks or makes certain facial expressions.
  • Carl likewise only has his mouth visible when he's using it, at least prior to his redesign in the fourth and final season.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Jeeves (who's a monkey) from the Bollywood Special.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: "To Helga and Back" has Johnny receive a mail-order girlfriend who turns out to be a burly foreign woman named Helga. At the end of the episode, she says in her own words that she is from an indeterminate country.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In "Johnny-O and Juliet", Johnny responds to Little Suzy teasing him over his crush on the new neighbor's daughter by threatening to bury the rest of her doll collection, which implies that Johnny had previously buried at least one of Suzy's dolls as retribution for some unknown slight.
  • In "A Johnny Bravo Christmas", Suzy agrees to help Johnny mail his letters to the North Pole if he does a favor for her. Johnny replies by asking if he's going to have to eat larvae again.
• Nubile Savage: Just like with all the women in the show that Johnny hits on, there are some beautiful savage ones too, such as a cavewoman in "Clan of the Cave Boob" or a woman living in a disconnected Treetop Town in "Forest Chump".
• Oddball Doppelgänger: In "Double Vision", Johnny mistakenly follows a woman home because she looks like a younger and more attractive version of his mother.
• The Odd-pliment: Casanova Wannabe that Johnny is, in "Buffoon Lagoon" he once tried to court a young woman by telling her "You stink pretty."
• Officer O'Hara: "Date with an Antelope" ends with Johnny and Carol's crab ex-boyfriend Ned getting arrested by a pair of Irish cops.
• Onion Tears: Alluded to by the purple gorilla in the original pilot, where one of his insults towards Big Fat Roy is to say that his face is ugly enough to make an onion cry.
• Only Sane Man: Sometimes when the episode plot calls for it, Johnny finds himself in this situation. When truly bizarre and inexplicable events are happening all around him. This often prompts him to face the audience and comment on how things just keep getting weirder and weirder.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • Played for laughs in "Johnny's Inferno". Johnny inadvertently summons a demon named Derek who tries to get him to perform "unspeakable acts of EEEEEVIL!" When that doesn't work, and in most cases leads to inadvertent good deeds, he possesses Johnny and goes to Pops's restaurant for lunch. Pops immediately realizes something is wrong:
    Carl: Hey, Pops. Hey, Johnny.
    Pops: Johnny's acting weird, Carl. I suspect he's been possessed by an evil entity.
    Carl: What makes you say that?
    Pops: He tried to pay for his meal!
  • He also ordered a burger with a side of entrails and used a credit card that read "Masters of the Abyss" to pay, which probably didn't help.
• Open-Fly Gag: "Did You See a Bull Run By Here?" has a bit where Johnny makes a matador cry after informing him that his fly is undone.
• Orphaned Punchline: Occurs in "Johnny on Ice", where Dr. Richard Leaking talks to a research granter he's invited to see his thawed-out caveman (actually Johnny).
  Research Granter: So Farnsworth says to me "If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need an aesthetical tarsal bone!"
• Outgrowing the Building: In the episode "Jumbo Johnny", Johnny starts abusing some gain shakes that make him gain weight overnight, causing him to get fat. At one point, he drinks a bunch at the same time and he starts to grow taller until he completely destroys his house. It is only then that he decides that maybe the shakes are not working as intended.
• Out of Focus: Carl Chrynizzwics was severely underused in the last season, and when he did appear, his nerdy personality seemed to have been neutered; his few appearances were simply as a cameo or the Butt-Monkey. He only really got two major appearances: "The Hunk at the End of this Cartoon", where he was used for a one-note joke, and "Run Johnny Run", as a Captain Crash driving a Fauxrrari that seemed suspiciously similar to a Mercury Capri.
• Overly Long Gag: The "CHRONOS, MASTER OF ALL TIME!!" gag was used for about a minute and a half in the only episode Chronos appeared in.
• Overly Long Scream: This happens when Johnny and Carl go over a waterfall, and at one point, stop screaming to take a breath.
• Padding the Paper: The episode "Panic in Jerky Town" has Johnny winning the Jerky Jake's Jerky essay contest, where the prize is a trip to Jerky Jake's factory, by writing a 750-page long essay that went "I like Jerky Jake's Jerky very very very very very very very very-"
• Pants-Pulling Prank: The slide show shown at the beginning of "Get Stinky" shows that one of the pranks Stinky Brownstein played on Johnny when they were children consisted of pulling Johnny's pants down to reveal his underwear. Stinky later does it to Johnny again at the end of the episode after she reveals she was pretending to be in love with Johnny as yet another prank.
• Paper Tiger: Johnny Bravo is a pretty muscular-looking guy, but he's always getting beaten up by the women with whom he flirts.
• Parental Bonus:
  • From the episode where Farrah Fawcett comes to Suzie's birthday party.
    Farrah Fawcett: "I can't remember the last time I was blindfolded... [sly grin] Oh, wait... yes I can... hee hee! Oops!"
  • There's also an episode where Johnny gets a job at a troubled teen hotline and thinks it's a phone sex job. He even asks one of the callers what she's wearing, which in Real Life, would have him treated as a sex offender.
  • At the beginning of the episode "To Helga and Back", Johnny's mom was headed off to a foxy boxing class.
  • "Momma warned me about women like you! ... I was hoping she was right!" [while chained to a table]
  • In the Scooby-Doo crossover episode "Bravo Dooby Doo", Fred and Daphne have this highly suggestive exchange:
    Daphne: Scooby, you and Fred check upstairs. Velma and I will look in the basement.
    Fred: Daphne... [sax music plays]
    Daphne: I mean, Scooby, you and Velma check upstairs. Fred and I will look in the basement.
    Fred: Right!
  • Also in "Bravo Dooby Doo", there's this:
    Velma: Don't worry, I don't bite.
    Johnny: [pointing to Daphne] Does she?
• Parodies for Dummies: "Cover Boy" has Johnny consult a book titled Modeling for Dummies.
• Parody: The episode "Johnny Makeover" is a parody of the home makeover shows during the 2000s but is focused on series retools, and has Hanna-Barbera stars as the experts.
• Parody Episode: The show has "The Zone Where Normal Things Don't Happen Very Often" (not an episode title but the setting for "Little Talky Tabitha!," "The Man Who Cried Clown" and "Johnny Very Good" - respectively parodying the episodes "Living Doll," "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" and "It's A Good Life"). "The Unsinkable Johnny Bravo" parodied Titanic (1997).
• Perceived Time Anomaly: In the short "The Day The Earth Didn’t Move Around Very Much", Johnny believes that the world has frozen in time after seeing his VCR blinking 12:00 over and over, not knowing that the power was knocked out during the night. When Johnny goes to investigate, he runs into people who, coincidentally, are standing in place for one reason or another and start moving when he leaves, as well as a Big Honking Traffic Jam both ways where every driver coincidentally decided to stop honking and take a nap. After a while, he decides to start committing some minor crimes since "no time means no rules", and once he's caught, the judge lets him off the hook because he, too, had a day where he thought time had stopped.
• Political Overcorrectness: "Bravo, James Bravo" features a Mad Scientist named Professor Pencilneck who intends to use a ray gun that will transform everyone in the world into an exact clone of himself, claiming that this will end all appearance-based prejudice by forcing everyone to be equal. Agent Jane laments that the plan is absolutely horrible, yet "so politically correct."
• Precocious Crush: Suzy to Johnny. At least in the first season. Is shown in the flash game My Dear Johnny too.
• Prince and Pauper: "The Prince and the Pinhead." Johnny a.k.a. the Pinhead saw this trope being used so often on TV, his royal Identical Stranger didn't need to explain anything. It also turned out to be a case of Be Careful What You Wish For; the Prince wanted his lookalike to be too stupid to become The Usurper and got someone too stupid to keep the peace. Things eventually end with Johnny and his regal lookalike sharing a cell with Mark Twain himself, who showed up to complain about how often his story has been adapted.
• Proper Pinky: In "Charm School Johnny", Pops tries to teach Johnny how to act like a proper gentleman, which naturally includes sticking out his pinkie while drinking tea. Pops also insists on Johnny doing the same thing when Johnny throws Carl out of the room.
• Prophecy Twist: In the episode titled "The Hunk at the End of this Cartoon", the title turns out to refer to, not a hunk muscling in on Bravo's territory (not that he has any), but a hunk of cheese.
• Quicksand Sucks: Played for laughs in the episode "Buffoon Lagoon"; Johnny is sent to search for food in the jungles on an island and he stumbles into quicksand, thinking it's pudding. Even as he's sinking, it still doesn't click with him that it's quicksand.
  Johnny: *sinking* Needs more butterscotch.
• Real After All: "Tooth or Consequences" has Johnny tell Little Suzy that the Tooth Fairy isn't real. After feeling bad for upsetting her, Johnny then decides to impersonate the Tooth Fairy to try and restore Suzy's belief but gets more than he bargained for when Suzy demands he proves he's the Tooth Fairy by granting wishes. After Johnny gets arrested following having to order a gigantic sundae for Suzy as well as take her to the petting zoo and accidentally setting the animals free, the real Tooth Fairy shows up. As a Brick Joke, the real Tooth Fairy is also accompanied by the Easter Bunny, when Suzy had earlier stated how she knew the Easter Bunny wasn't real and Johnny reacted to the realization by yelling a Big "NO!".
• Reality Warper: "Johnny Real Good" has Johnny babysitting a kid named Timmy who turns out to be a psychotic brat with the ability to make impossible things happen, the episode being a Whole-Plot Reference to The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "It's a Good Life" and Timmy himself being a parody of the episode's central character Anthony Fremont.
• The Real Spoofbusters: In "Hold That Schmoe", Johnny is kicked out of his own attic when he tries taking a rare comic in there by a ghost haunting it. When he gets Carl's help, they dress in uniforms Carl made from his mom's dress that he claims are designed for most hunting, being equipped with strap-on particle beams. Johnny comments how they don't exactly look like the same guys in the movie.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Happens twice. Once when Johnny is given to a foster family in Antarctica, and again when he joins the army and ends up accidentally blowing up the training camp by cleaning the latrines with nitroglycerin.
• "Rediscovering Roots" Trip: In Loch Ness Johnny, Johnny and his mother Bunny takes a trip to Scotland with the latter saying that they are here because of their roots in being of Scottish descent. Although Johnny points out that his mother claimed they were Polish, only for Bunny to admit that she said that just to attend Blitnz night at the VFW hall.
• Remember the New Guy?: Carl and Pops, who were randomly introduced as regulars in the second season. They became reduced to background/cameo characters during the final season.
• Repeated Rehearsal Failure: In "Super Duped", Johnny was reciting a list of groceries while walking to the store. "A quart of milk, a loaf of bread, a stick of butter." But Suzy's interruptions get him mixed up. "A quart of bread, a stick of milk, a loaf of butter."
• Repulsive Ringmaster: A rare female example: One-shot villain Vivian Vixen, who not only kidnaps Jungle Boy and forces him to perform in her circus, but also seduces Johnny into helping her.
• Reused Character Design: Two of the Amish male characters, one young, and one old, bearded man,(from the episode "Witless", a Satire/Parody/Pastiche of 1985 movie ''Witness') are re-used for background cameos, but the woman who is the mountie in "Yukon Yutz" was frequently re-used for this purpose as a background character.
• Reverse Psychology: Johnny falls for this twice in an episode in which Suzie begs him to take her to the toy store. He catches on, saying that her Reverse Psychology will not work on him. She agrees, which angers Johnny so much that he forcibly takes her just to prove her wrong.
• Robinsonade: The entire episode "Buffoon Lagoon" was a semi-parody of this trope, although it came out a year before Cast Away. It was a Minimalist Cast episode with only three characters and one setting, making it a Bottle Episode as well.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: "Beach Blanket Bravo" features Johnny and Andy surfing on a live-action tidal wave.
• Roll in the Hay: In one episode, Johnny asks a farm girl whether she will go roll around in the hay with him; at that point, she slaps him.
• Running Gag:
  • Johnny and various versions of him have noted that they once kept a live animal in their mouth for x number of weeks.
  • "Johnny Real Good" has Timmy repeatedly teleporting Johnny into a cornfield.
• Saving Christmas:
  • One episode has Santa force Johnny to take his place after Johnny mistook him for a burglar and broke his arm.
  • Another episode features Johnny rushing to the North Pole after forgetting to mail off his and his mother's letters to Santa. There's a Continuity Nod when Johnny tells him how he accidentally hit him last Christmas. Santa claims that he doesn't remember, but he gives him a punch in the face anyway since it sounded like he deserved it.
• Scantron Picture: "Johnny, Get Your Tutu" is centered around Johnny's aptitude test being switched for Suzy's drawing. The result is as the episode name says.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: The episode "Rashomoron'' involves a swarm of bees attacking Johnny, Little Suzy and Carl during a disastrous day at the park. Suzy's story sees Johnny bumping into a tree containing the beehive after emerging from a lake covered in algae, causing it to roll down onto her picnic blanket, then a Unicorn shows up to save her, though not before Johnny tries to steal its horn to sell it on the black market, where he is promptly trampled as a result. Carl's story sees his robot, Sparkly, firing his laser beams at the hive by mistake while attempting to attack Johnny after mistaking him for an algae monster after the latter falls into the lake, then the bees warn a mounted police officer about the supposed algae monster, and the officer and his steed trample Johnny. Johnny's story sees him trying to seduce a woman, as usual, then when Sparkly attacks her, Johnny grabs a beehive to attack the robot, sending it running.
• Schrödinger's Canon: Seasons 2 and 3 appear to be in their own continuity according to the show's wiki and fanon, but it's not confirmed if they're canon to the rest of the series (Season 1 and Season 4) due to the major Art Shift, humor change and things that cause Continuity Snarl, with Aron City seemingly replaced by a City with No Name, and Johnny becoming an Adaptational Dumbass and other inconsistencies. However, there is no official word on its canonicity, so it's considered canon; then again, the show has Negative Continuity.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: Parodied, naturally, in the episode that was a crossover with Scooby-Doo.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Johnny is obviously the manly one, and Carl is the sensitive (but mainly wimpy and dorky) man. Although later seasons did
• Shout-Out:
  • There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shout-out to Back to the Future in the very intro—when the title shows up in three different styles, one of them is clearly drawn to resemble the title cards for the movies.
  • Aside from being based on creator Van Partible, the main character's name itself is one to an episode of The Brady Bunch where a manager signs Greg Brady to a recording contract and makes Greg over into a singer named "Johnny Bravo".
  • In the bullfighting episode, Johnny, the Girl of the Week, and the bull drive off into the sunset and become famous Hollywood stars, featuring in such titles like Raging Bull and The Bulls Brothers.
  • "The Man Who Cried 'Clown!'", "Johnny, Real Good", and "Little Talky Tabitha!" are parodies of The Twilight Zone (1959) ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "It's a Good Life", and "Living Doll", respectively). The former even has Johnny enter "The Zone Where Normal Things Don't Happen Very Often."
  • The intro music to "Frankenbravo" is shockingly similar to the opening theme of The Munsters.
  • After saving Jungle Boy from Vivian Vixen, Little Suzy asks what he's going to do next. He responds that he'll "find a little corner of Montana, settle down, and stay out of history's way."
  • There are a few Star Wars references throughout "Virtual Johnny", as well as a moment where Johnny yells "To space, and then some!"
  • The plot of "Hunted!" is an obvious parody of The Most Dangerous Game.
  • There's a very blatant example in one episode where Johnny and Carl dress up like the Ghostbusters to get rid of a ghost in Johnny's attic. Johnny outright says that he doesn't remember the costumes in the movie being so colorful.
  • In the Valentine's Day special, Johnny almost does the Risky Business slide into the room move like Tom Cruise, complete with the opening notes of "Old Time Rock and Roll"... except he slides into the door.
  • Said special ("It's Valentine's Day, Johnny Bravo!") also invokes the naming conventions of the various Peanuts TV specials.
  • Fittingly, in the episode featuring Adam West, when he was surrounded by villains, Mr. West fought off the villains accompanied by "POW!" "CRASH!" "MISS!" "KICK!" "FLIP!" in the style of the Batman show starring him.
  • "Toy Boy Johnny" has Johnny taking a chance to order those in the meeting to "Set the controls to the heart of the sun".
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In "The Sensitive Male!", Jack Sheldon takes advantage of this trope by pretending to be the women's perfect guy to get dates with them. When the women find out, they are not happy.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Johnny thinks he's stronger, bigger, and more awesome than he really is, but he's not that big a name, especially in Aron City, where there are more famous people than him.
• Smart Ball: Once in a while Johnny would get it, but after doing so he would toss the ball away for Rule of Funny.
• Smooch of Victory: In "Bravo, James Bravo" Johnny asks Jane's superior, W, if he can receive one from her as a reward for helping to save the day. W is about to tell him no, when Jane reveals she is all too happy to give Johnny one, and does so.
• Social Media Is Bad: "Date with An Antelope" was a parody of the media portraying how dangerous it was to meet strangers online, and this was in 1997 before broadband and dating apps were common. It was an over-the-top parodic response to things at the time.
• Spaghetti Kiss: "The Unsinkable Johnny Bravo" features a variant where Johnny's mom and the ship's captain end up kissing after eating the same string of sausage.
• Spin-Off: The short-lived series JBVO, which was basically Johnny Bravo playing old cartoon shorts that kids called in to request.
• Split Hair: There's a joke when Johnny enters a lumber-cutting competition. After a lumberjack splits a hair with his axe, Johnny splits an axe with his hair—which was still on his head.
  Johnny: My hair is ready.
• Statuesque Stunner: An entire island of women in "Johnny Bravo and the Amazon Women", although it's implied they care little for men.
• Status Quo Is God: It happens quite a lot in this series.
  • Johnny will never get the woman, and on the one occasion he (unambiguously) did, his memories of it were erased.
  • Carl Chrynizzwics will sometimes improve his social skills, going from a geek who has No Social Skills to gaining Character Development. Then by the next episode, he'll be back to how he normally is, essentially making him a Static Character.
  • Pops may get a moment or two of clarity but by the next episode, goes back to being a Con Man running a restaurant version of the Honest John's Dealership. About the only change that did stick was his restaurant going from being "Pops' Moon Palace", a Retraux 50s-style diner with a huge logo, to "Pops'Diner" in Season 4 based in a trailer.
  • Johnny can suffer Body Horror as seen in "Frankenbravo" and "Dental Hijinks" but is back to normal by the next episode.
• Stopped Clock: Subverted. A jet cutting a power line stops Johnny's clock at 12:00, and after seeing similar events, he's convinced that time has stopped for everyone but him.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In "Mini-B.", Johnny wanted to go to the beach to pick girls up, but was thwarted by Mama Bravo's bringing a child home from the daycare she worked at. So, he improvised by laying a beach towel and umbrella on the grass of the park they were at, lying down, and started applying sunscreen on the basis that girls would be attracted to him if they saw a sunbather like him. In five seconds flat, a Cloudcuckoolander with a particularly stoned tone of voice walks by and sees Johnny sunbathing. Automatically assuming that there was a beach in the park, the beach bum pulls a surfboard out of Hammerspace and proceeds to surf joyously, as though he were actually at the beach.
• Struggling Shop: In "Johnny's Telethon", Johnny and his friends hold a telethon to save the three dollar store that sells his favorite jerky, which is losing business due to a two dollar store setting up shop nearby.
• Subbing for Santa: In "Twas the Night", Johnny has to do Santa's job after accidentally breaking his arm due to mistaking him for a prowler.
• Suddenly Speaking: Johnny's monkey butler Jeeves in Johnny Bravo Goes to Bollywood initially only makes normal monkey sounds, but turns out to be able to talk at the end of the film.
• Sunglasses at Night: The only times in the entire series run when we actually see Johnny's eyes are in Bravo Dooby Doo when he puts on Velma's glasses by mistake, and Endless Bummer when he is hit by a volleyball at the beach.
• Take That!: "Twas the Night" has Johnny's mother Bunny fall asleep watching It's a Wonderful Life, with the narrator remarking that after ten times a day, Jimmy Stewart gets bored. A glimpse at Santa's list when Johnny fills in for him also shows that several senators are to receive coal for Christmas.
• Tar and Feathers: At the end of "Blanky Hanky Panky", Felinius is punished for his theft of Aron City's yarn, in spite of seeing the error of his ways, by being tarred and feathered by Bunny Bravo and some other women.
• Tempting Fate: From the episode "Karma Krisis." Johnny believes that he has broken a curse by swinging a bag of salamis in a cornfield while yodeling. He exclaims, "With these deli meats as my witness, I will never be unlucky again!" Cue tornado.
• Termite Trouble: In "The Prince and The Pinhead", Carl tries to show Prince Hondo (Johnny's exact double) his ant farm filled with Peruvian fire termites. When Carl drops the ant farm, the termites break loose and devour Carl's House and every house and tree on his block.
• That Poor Plant: Used a couple of times
  • Subverted in "Johnny Bravo Meets Adam West!. Johnny and West are at a restaurant looking for clues as to Bunny's wheareabouts and are served drinks. West suspects the drinks may be poisoned and orders Johnny to drop his drink into a nearby plant. The plant is completely fine.
  • In "The Prince and the Pinhead", Bunny serves Prince Hondo government meat for lunch. Hondo compliments the meal, but spits it into a potted plant that immediately wilts upon contact.
• This Is Gonna Suck: One of the running gags. "This won't end well."
• This Is My Side: When Johnny and Carl become roommates in Pops' trailer in "Doomates", their inability to stand each other leads to them dividing their sides of the room with tape.
• Thought-Aversion Failure: "In Your Dreams" has Johnny trapped in a dream and having no desire to wake up due to spending time with his ideal girl. His thoughts affect the dreamscape and he at one point accidentally turns the woman into a cycloptic octopus when she randomly tells him not to think of her as a one-eyed, tentacled sea monster.
• Throw-Away Country: From the It's a Wonderful Life parody, where Lil' Suzy is exactly the same except that she has somehow become on par with a James Bond villain.
  Alt. Lil' Suzy: So, will you give in to my demands? [raises detonator] Or must I destroy Cleveland?
• Thrown Out the Airlock: The fate of the Astounding League of Super-People in "Bootman", who get shot into space from their headquarters because Johnny was too stupid to heed Mr. Elastic's pleas that he not push a certain button.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Every now and then Johnny would get a happy ending. Or at least get the last laugh over his enemies (such as when he saw Jack Sheldon get carried off by the women the latter accidentally admitted that all his talk of being a sensitive man was just an act to get women, or when he gets ditched by a team working on a crime solver reality show only for him to hog their spotlight thanks to a police chase crashing in his house).
  • One episode ("It's Valentine's Day, Johnny Bravo!") had a woman genuinely falling for Johnny, but unfortunately she also happened to be a secret agent and had to erase his memories of her in the end.
• Tickertape Parade: When Johnny becomes the sanitation commissioner, he throws a ticker-tape parade to celebrate and then has to clean up after it by himself because he spent the sanitation budget on the parade.
• Time Stands Still: Spoofed in "The Day the Earth Didn't Move Around Too Much", where Johnny only thinks this is the case due to his clock being stuck at 12:00 and seeing various things that reinforce his belief, such as the plumbing not working (due to a squirrel being stuck in the pipes) and everyone in Aron City deciding to not move or speak for whatever reason the moment Johnny is near them.
• Title Drop: "I Used to Be Funny" features the older clown saying the episode's title while bickering with his younger rival.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: A slide seen at the beginning of "Get Stinky" shows that when Stinky Brownstein and Johnny Bravo were kids, Stinky pranked Johnny by telling him a flagpole was made of candy, resulting in young Johnny getting his tongue frozen to it.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Johnny obviously wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer when he first appeared, but you can tell later episodes played up his idiocy and immaturity more and more. The final season, which was made after Van Partible returned to the helm, returned Johnny to his Season 1 characterization.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Donny Osmond in "A Johnny Bravo Christmas".
• Tooth Fairy: "Tooth or Consequences" revolves around Johnny telling Suzy that the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist and subsequently pretending to be the Tooth Fairy after feeling bad about disillusioning her. After his efforts to grant the wishes she demands to prove he's the real Tooth Fairy end in Johnny getting arrested, the Tooth Fairy turns out to be Real After All.
• Top-Heavy Guy: Justified. We only see him training his upper body, so it would make sense that Johnny's chest and arms are far bigger than his legs.
• Torches and Pitchforks: The episode "Frankenbravo", being a parody of Bride of Frankenstein, has Johnny chasing after a Cute Monster Girl after accidentally picking up a torch. Carl sees him and happily cheers "HEY, EVERYBODY! Johnny's formed an angry mob! Let's join in!" All of the townspeople grab the typical accoutrements and follow.
• Transplant: Jungle Boy originated from a What A Cartoon! Show pilot that had nothing to do with Johnny Bravo (but also created by Partible). The first season incorporates Jungle Boy and the cast of his pilot into Johnny's world.
• Tribal Carry: In the episode "The Sensitive Male", Johnny gets the last laugh by telling Sheldon's three girlfriends how he has been cheating on them with each other. They beat Sheldon up, put him in a Tribal Carry, and take him away.
• Turned Off by the Dumbass: The episode "Red Faced in the White House" has Bonnie, the President's daughter, wanting to date a real guy instead of the robots her father always tries to set her up with. Unfortunately, the guy she finds turns out to be Johnny, whose uncouth ways and ignorance of his American heritage frustrates her and sends her running back to the robot.
  Bonnie: Please tell me you know something about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier!
  Johnny: Well, if they don't know who he is, why don't they just open up the tomb and take a look?
• Twister Game Hijinks: In "The Man Who Cried Clown", at one point Johnny finds that the pilots are playing Twister instead of flying the plane.
• Two Words: I Can't Count:
  • In "Beach Blanket Bravo", Johnny says this to a poorly-disguised shark.
    Johnny: I've only got two words for you, mister: Nope!
  • Another example occurs when Johnny becomes mayor in "Hail to the Chump".
    Johnny: My administration can be summed up in three words: Mandatory bikinis!
• Umbrellas Are Lightning Rods: In the episode "Johnny meets Donny Osmond", Donny ends the episode by trying to float away with an umbrella, Mary Poppins style. But the umbrella gets hit by lightning and he crashes to the ground.
• Unimpressive Progress Reveal: In, "Hip Hop Flop," a hip-hop group named The Round Pound goes out in search of a new turntable to purchase after one of them eats their old one, thinking it was a giant sandwich; as they press on, they collapse in exhaustion, but then we see they're only inches away from their tour bus.
• Uninvited to the Party: At the end of A League of His Own, Bunny despite Johnny having her and Little Suzy's softball team disqualified for posing as a 'woman' a la Mulan invites everyone to have chili dogs with her treating except for the lady who was coach of her opponents for being a hussy much to her dismay.
• Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: For as much of a macho, chauvinistic meathead as he is, Johnny is surprisingly good at handling rejection, usually just offering a disappointed "Aw, man!" and turning his attentions elsewhere. Which is pretty restrained on his part, because the women he hits on rarely ever let him down gently, instead turning down his advances by at least being unnecessarily hostile about it, and more often than not by beating the crap out of him (although he has earned the treatment on occasion, such as one moment in the pilot where he forcefully kisses a woman and gets rightfully zapped with a stun gun).
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: In the episode "As I Lay Hiccuping," Johnny goes to a very shapely female doctor to do something about his really bad case of the hiccups. When he returns to her for her "special treatment," the female doctor pulls off her rubber woman suit to reveal a male, bald and heavy doctor with a beard. Johnny's shocked reaction cures his hiccups, and the doctor reveals this trick works every time.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Johnny tends to have a lot of bad things happen to him, but he's so self-centered that you don't really feel sorry for him.
• Unwanted Rescue:
  • Subverted in the episode "Bikini Space Planet", where a bunch of beautiful alien girls abducted Johnny and he was rather enjoying it. Pops and Carl spent most of the episode developing a device to bring him back. All of their effort was for naught, since the girls ended up sending him back anyway but Pops and Carl were under the impression Johnny's return was their doing.
  • In another episode, Johnny is sent to a women's prison by mistake, and it's full of women so desperate for a guy that they're even willing to date him. When Bunny and Susie prove his innocence, he's literally dragged from the prison kicking and screaming.
  • In another episode, Johnny travels to the jungle, and gives a bouquet of flowers to a random woman. As it turns out, in her culture, that is considered a marriage proposal. Johnny decides he's ok with this. But as the wedding ceremony is about to take place Carl interferes, trying to rescue Johnny, which gets them both in a lot of trouble.
    Carl: Sorry, Johnny. How was I supposed to know you liked her?
    Johnny: A beautiful babe with a treehouse? What's not to like?
• Vague Age: Since it has never been officially confirmed in-show, it is debated as to exactly how old Johnny Bravo actually is. The most viewers have to work off of is Johnny saying that he's a "20-something" in the Valentine's Day special, which also reveals his birthday is on Valentine's Day. As such, some believe he's early 20s at minimum. (Though it must be noted that he'd have to be old enough that living with his mother is as embarrassing as it is in the show.)
• Vampires Hate Garlic: In "Going Batty", the vampire Lois at one point runs to escape Johnny's garlic breath after he ate some pasta.
• Violent Romantic Rejection: A regular occurrence. An episode will almost always begin with or involve Johnny hitting on women with terrible pick-up lines and pet names, only to be aggressively turned away. Usually with pepper spray, a stun gun, or in one case, a scooter.
• Virgin Sacrifice: Johnny is offered as one by the Amazons, who decide to get rid of him by offering him as a virgin sacrifice to Athena. It doesn't work, though whether it's because he isn't one or if he wasn't a good enough sacrifice is debatable. It leads to this laden-with-heavy-implication exchange:
  Amazon: O great Athena, we give you this virgin as a sacrifice, to your beauty and womanhood.
  Johnny: [while cocking an eyebrow] Did she say virgin?
  Amazon: And I ask that you bless our plentiful land with great fortune and mirth.
  Johnny: Excuse me ma'am, but...
• Walk Into Camera Obstruction:
  • "Date with an Antelope" with Johnny, after he freshens up and hears the doorbell
  • "It's Valentine's Day, Johnny Bravo!", with Johnny on his way to the library along with Little Suzy.
  • Done by Bunny in "A Walk on the Stupid Side".
• Wallet Moths: "The Perfect Gift" uses this joke when Johnny opens his wallet and a moth flies out while joyously declaring its freedom.
• Water Guns and Balloons: In the episode "Balloon Buffoon" has Johnny and his friends trying to defend against youngsters armed with water balloons, which is treated by Johnny as a military campaign.
• Wax On, Wax Off: Subverted back and forth in an episode where Johnny is pitted off against the best student of a rival dojo. Master Hama has him doing actual chores, and it's clear he's not interested in teaching him. Nevertheless, everything he does comes in handy later, during the fight. Too bad Master Hama gave up and decided to bet against him.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • Moonlighting as a superhero in "Super Duped", Johnny Bravo accidentally blasts a (dangerous) candy-themed supervillain called Sweet Cheeks with a hose. This causes the villain to melt away into a soapy puddle, made stranger by the fact that this villain was quite clearly a man in a candy-themed suit.
  • In "Thunder God Johnny", Johnny eats some spicy food as a last meal before the Ice Giant swallows him. Smoke comes out of the giant's mouth. The next moment, Johnny is drowning in a pool of hot water, screaming that he's about to be digested. Some Ice Giant. Can't even handle a guy with a higher-than-average temperature.
• Wham Line: The end of the Christmas episode, in which Johnny accidentally knocks out Santa. He gets boxing gloves and a mouthguard as a present. With a note as the narrator says "Reading the note, filled Johnny with fear. It said, 'Merry Christmas you pinhead, round two is next year!'" In the next Christmas special, Santa hits Johnny with a boxing glove.
• What Does This Button Do?: Said by a woman Johnny is trying to pick up with a robot sidekick in "Cartoon Makeover". She starts pushing buttons on the robot, which blows it up. She blames it on Johnny, of course.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: In "Carnival of the Darned," Johnny joins a freak show and learns that the current star attraction is the Bearded... Man. As in, an average-looking guy with a beard.
• Where No Parody Has Gone Before: The episode "Galaxy Boy" parodies the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Savage Curtain", with the plot involving Johnny being mistakenly beamed up due to the crew confusing him with the Captain Kirk expy and later having to fight an alien warlord who resembles, sounds like and is implied to be an ancestor of Carl.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • One episode was one to Some Like It Hot, complete with Marilyn Monroe stand-in.
  • Another was of The Most Dangerous Game.
  • There was a futuristic episode that has among his references, of all things, Big Brother.
  • The episode based on The Prince and the Pauper actually ends with Mark Twain coming in and begging cartoon makers to "let this tired old story die!"
  • "Johnny, Real Good" is one of "It's a Good Life," a classic episode from The Twilight Zone (1959). Complete with a Bill Mumy lookalike.
  • Another episode parodied "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", complete with a Shatner Parody. ** Another The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, "Living Doll", was parodied in an episode titled "Little Talky Tabitha!"
  • One episode was a reference to Bio-Dome, which unsurprisingly was written better than the actual movie.
  • Another Pauly Shore film, Jury Duty, was referenced in "One Angry Bravo".
  • "The Clueless Kid" was quite obviously a parody of The Karate Kid.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: The many times Carl dresses as a woman, and the couple of times Johnny does it.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Johnny hates clowns.
• Wingding Eyes: Lampshaded in the King Kong episode. "I have huge dollar signs in my eyes!"
• X-Ray Sparks: Every time Johnny (or someone else) gets shocked by something, you can be 100% sure that his skeleton being made visible will be the result.
• You Do NOT Want to Know: In Ape is Enough, Carl who was thought to have been eaten alive by the giant female ape is alive and well much to Pop's shock who asked him how he escaped. Carl says he would rather not discuss it strongly implying he exited via the ape's digestive system.
• You Must Be This Tall to Ride: In one episode, a devil persuades into raising the minimum required height just to make children suffer. But the ride turns out to be really dangerous, so they actually end up saving the kids from harm.
• You Won't Like How I Taste:
  • In "Ape is Enough", Johnny thinks the giant female ape in love with him wants to eat him (which, to be fair, is because she just swallowed Carl whole). To try and convince her not to eat him, Johnny tells her he is high in cholesterol.
  • In "20,000 Leagues Over My Head", Johnny tries to deter a pair of giant crabs from eating him by claiming he tastes terrible. He licks his elbow to demonstrate, only to find that he tastes great after all.
• Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: In the episode "Third Dork from the Sun", a brain-sucking alien attempts to absorb Johnny's intelligence only to realize that there's nothing to absorb, resulting in his brain overloading.
• Your Mom:
  • In the original pilot, the gorilla Johnny hangs with (unaware that he's the gorilla the female zookeeper asked him to track down) makes an insult toward Big Fat Roy's mother.
  Gorilla: Your mother's so big when she wore high heels, she struck oil!
  • "A Johnny Bravo Christmas" has a cargo inspector taunted by caged animals respond by saying "You're mom's so stupid, she tried to alphabetize M and M's."