Martin Mystery



Martin Mystery (2003-2006) is a French/Canadian animated series based on the Italian comic book "Martin Mystere", animated by the studio that brought you Totally Spies.

The series revolves around typical teens Martin Mystery, his step-sister Diana Lombard and their pal Java the Caveman, as they're sent on various missions by a secret organization known as "The Center" to investigate paranormal activity around the world.

Tropes used on this show include:

 * Adult Child: Martin
 * Agent Scully: Diana.
 * All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Java.
 * All Webbed Up
 * Animated Series
 * Animesque
 * Arbitrary Skepticism: Diana
 * Artifact of Doom: One such example is the cursed medallion which results in a Brainwashed and Crazy stint for Martin, Java and the teacher in "Pirates Of Doom" not to mention the numerous other Artifacts of Doom throughout the series.
 * Attack of the Killer Whatever: Notably a killer teddy bear.
 * Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
 * Bald Women: In the episode "The Lost Tribe," Diana loses all her hair after a hair dye job goes wrong and is mistaken by a group of underground creatures as their long lost queen. She stays bald for the entire episode.
 * Baleful Polymorph: Occasionally, the main characters and/or a bunch of random characters will be transformed into an animal.. They all turn back at the end, obviously.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Before becoming the harmless alien we know, Billy was a ruthless gladiator that went about destroying planets after he annihilated them.
 * The Blank: One episode features a face-stealing doppelganger.
 * Body Snatcher / Grand Theft Me: Most of the heroes fall victim to this at some point but special mention goes to Martin himself who seems to get possessed more frequently.
 * Brainwashed and Crazy: Martin in "The Vampire Returns", due to getting his soul sucked out by the vampire, as well as (along with Java and the teacher) in "Pirates of Doom" as a result of the cursed medallion.
 * Brother-Sister Team
 * Coincidental Accidental Disguise: Diana resembled the queen of an ancient race called Alpha-Omega due to two things: One, she was trying out a hair dye that caused her hair to fall out and leave a stain on her balding head, and MOM just so happened to toss her a tooth necklace (she stated it was everyone would pay attention to it instead of her head.)
 * Combo-Platter Powers: Octavia Paine's super-monster is a synthesis of the world's most powerful monster, the end result is a creature that nearly destroyed The Center, which also resulted in the one-time use of the U-Watch's laser-firing function, which just bounced off its skin. Too bad it inherited all of those monster's weaknesses
 * Contemporary Caveman
 * Crossover: With Totally Spies. Only Martin and M.O.M appear.
 * Cute Monster Girl: In the season three finale, Diana gets mutated into a very cute lizard-girl. It helps that she is wearing a a black-red skin-tight suit which is shown to have underwater high-heel jet shoes and mask, so it is more of a high-tech suit. Those two combined make her look unusually cute in a strange way. Martin even jokingly compliments that she's only a mini-mutant because her eyes changed and she has a tail.
 * Christmas Episode: Featuring a wish-granting snow globe that created a pocket dimension containing a Christmas-themed village... whose inhabitants, including things like the trees, reindeer and snowmen, were actually monsters.
 * Da Chief: M.O.M.
 * Dark and Troubled Past: Billy used to be a Space Pirate Warlord called Ganthar, who makes the Metroid Space Pirates (sans Ridley) look like amateurs, conquering and strip-mining planets until they were completely barren, before moving on to another unfortunate planet. But all the violence became too much for him, and he fled to Earth as the Roswell Incident alien, and does a complete Heel Face Turn, and a complete personality 180, resulting in the Billy we know.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: Octavia Paine created the super-creature as revenge for M.O.M firing her for not measuring up to standards.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Several Monsters of the Week.
 * Evil Mentor: Octavia Paine.
 * Fish People
 * Flirty Stepsiblings: Martin and Diana.
 * Fun with Acronyms: As stated in the Totally Spies crossover, M.O.M. means 'Mystery Organization Manager".
 * Gentle Giant: Java
 * Impostor Exposing Test: Since one episode was a Whole-Plot Reference to The Thing, this was pretty much mandatory. In this case, the test consisted on scanning the DNA of hair and saliva.
 * In Name Only: The Mothman episode. The whole series in general is loosely based on a series of Italian comic books.
 * Invisible Parents: Martin and Diana's mother only receives a brief mention by Gerard in a Christmas Episode.
 * Jackass Genie: A Monster of the Week.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Martin is commonly one of these, nearly always putting aside his self-absorbed, childish self, in order to confront whatever monster is on the scene. As soon as the mission is over, he's back to his normal behaviour. Arguably, his annoying behaviour can become a fusion of a Keet and Jerkass, as shown with his antics in the season three finale, which pushed Diana to do a Face Heel Turn and join a rival organization. The betrayal is repaired by the end of the two-part episode, but Martin's lack of empathy seems to still remain at the end.
 * Keet: Martin.
 * Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Stephen King, here called "Evan Prince".
 * Leprechaun: One appeared as a Monster of the Week
 * Kraken and Leviathan
 * Little Green Men: Billy.
 * Living Shadow: Borack the Faceless One is the ruler of a realm composed completely of shadow, and is one of three characters in the entire show that got a two-part episode. Also an Eldritch Abomination, as he pulled the entire population into the shadow world, and if he had succeeded in claiming Earth, they would have all turned into shadows themselves.
 * Lost in the Maize
 * Mad Scientist: Lots of them.
 * Made of Iron: Martin and Java have survived situations of where a normal person could of been sent to a hospital.
 * Magic Skirt: An upper body variant. In the episode where Martin and Diana hang out with their dad they're hung upside down, and Diana's t-shirt slides down but only enough to show off her navel.
 * Million-to-One Chance: As seen in The Vampire Returns, Martin shares a very rare gene with Simone's original lover, and shares his looks also.
 * Monster of the Week: Every other monster is also an "Eldritch Abomination of the week".
 * Name's the Same: Java the Caveman is also the name of a character in Metamorpho's comics.
 * Neat Freak: Lampshaded by Martin when it comes to Diana in You Do Voodoo.
 * Nerds Are Sexy: Diana. Not exactly a nerd, but Martin certainly thinks she is.
 * Never Sleep Again: The Sandman, a Monster of the Week, can trap people in their dreams.
 * NGO: The Center also an MIB agency.
 * No Ontological Inertia: Pretty much every Monster of the Week has perfectly temporary effects.
 * "Return Of The Beasts" . A mad paleontologist (yes, really) uses a huge geode to create dinosaurs and send them to rampage through the city for no apparent reason. At the end, Martin tricks one to melt the geode with its acid spit (really, dinosaurs do that), which causes every dinosaur to spontaneously melt into sludge. And is when you consider that the same paleontologist created Java through the same process, yet he remains intact and joins the gang permanently. (It's a flashback episode.)
 * Not Blood Siblings: Martin and Diana. It doesn't make their (albeit, rare) Ship Tease moments any less Squicky. It should be noted that in the comics Diana and Martin were lovers, not siblings.
 * Once an Episode:
 * Every episode, they will go to the Center to have a briefing with MOM. MOM will be working on something. And Martin will be curious. And it will be destroyed.
 * At some point, the Monster of the Week will have done something to the Power Trio, and it's effects will be all gone when the monster is dead. (See No Ontological Inertia above.)
 * Only Sane Man: Diana and M.O.M.
 * Our Monsters Are Different
 * Parental Favoritism: Gerard tries, but it always comes off as him liking Diana more than Martin, though he's arguably a science person, compared to Martin's enthusiasm with the paranormal, (and tendency not to do well at school), which actually matches perfectly with Diana's rational views, and high marks. But he's not above accepting the paranormal with sufficient proof, since before he finds out about The Center, he's practically hit in the face by it twice, each time Martin saves him, earning his father's respect.
 * Reassigned to Antarctica: Marvin was sent here so we could rip off the plot from The Thing.
 * Sibling Switch Squick: In the original Martin Mystere comics, Diana was Martin's love interest, and eventually wife.
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: In most situations, Martin and Diana are embodiments of this trope.
 * Talking To Herself: Teryl Rothery voices M.O.M. and voiced M.O.M.'s evil former pupil Octavia Paine in the season three finale.
 * Samuel Vincent also voices both Martin Mystery and Billy.
 * Team Mom: The adequately named M.O.M.
 * Teenage Wasteland: A type 2 in "Mystery of The Teen Town"; adults are sent to the Cyberspace by the teenagers.
 * Things That Go Bump in the Night
 * Trickster Archetype: Martin
 * Tsundere: Diana, oh so much.
 * The Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer: Java.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: The fungus monsters weakness is salt. One has to wonder what he's doing in Utah if that's the case.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Even if she wasn't called out on it (Martin was more upset about her snagging yet another monster from him), she was quite sadistic in detonating what looked like a nitro-glycerin explosive in a cave. Underwater. In catacombs. Which collapsed the catacombs right on top of Martin and Billy. Probably because they were underwater in the first place, they survived.
 * Whole-Plot Reference: To The Thing and Evil Dead, at least.
 * Who's Laughing Now?: Diana Lombard goes through this process in season three finale, but winds up being betrayed by the Evil Mentor.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: Martin finds a girl who is pretty much a perfect match for him in the two-parter with the shadow people. She leaves him one episode later under pretty flimsy circumstances.