Happy Tree Friends - Show Characteristics

Show Characteristics

All the characters are anthropomorphic mammals, and all of them (except Lumpy, Buddhist Monkey, Evil Flippy and Sniffles) have two front buckteeth and pink heart-shaped noses. In early episodes, most characters played the roles of children doing childish games. However, as the series progressed the age concept was dropped, and now characters act variously like children, teenagers and adults in different episodes. The only characters who are unaffected by this concept are Pop and Cub, who always act like an adult and a child respectively, and characters whose roles usually are not affected by age, such as Splendid or Cro-Marmot.

At the beginning of each episode, the characters are typically found in everyday situations. However, much like Sam Peckinpah's "Salad Days" these situations always escalate into violence and the inevitable deaths of those involved and/or "innocent" bystanders, mostly because of very unfortunate, surprising accidents with otherwise harmless instruments, and some of them have mental illness, like Flippy, who has post traumatic stress disorder from a war and will become a killer in certain stimulus (such as popping balloons, which sounds like gunfire to him). The show's characters sometimes appear not to notice other characters' deaths/injuries, despite clear indications (such as blood coming out of the latters' mouths), or they seem to overcome their fellows' deaths (save "Happy Trails Pt. 2" where several funerals are held and the first few are taken seriously). Characters always reincarnate for the next episode, and without any care of what these characters have suffered in the previous one.

Each episode starts with introduction credits resembling a children's book, which portrays the show's logo, the episode title (which is usually a pun) and the cast. Internet episodes have a typical duration of a maximum of four minutes. Early YouTube episodes often have a still image inserted in the middle of the video, which then became the thumbnail for the video (at that time, YouTube automatically selected the center frame as the video's thumbnail). Usually only a few of the characters are used in a single episode, but occasionally larger episodes have been released where most of the characters appear (in one case, the entire cast except for the Buddist monkey & Lammy have appeared). TV episodes last about half an hour, having three segments of about seven minutes.