Paranormal Fakeouts - Nickelodeon Trope

I identified a trope in old NickToons some time ago. A lot of episodes are structured as follows:

1: A character believes there is something paranormal or ominous going on.
2: The majority of the episode is dedicated to debunking the ominous or paranormal thing's existance, or is presented as a dream sequence.
3: The last shot shows that it either WAS real, or wasn't a dream sequence. It is also never mentioned again.

This formatting either scared me when I was younger, or set me up to really like "dreamlike" storytelling in adulthood. This is such a common trope that was used in these shows that I don't see people talking about very often, so I decided to watch a bunch of classic NickToons and document and summarize every instance I find of this.

Rugrats

Rugrats S2 E 12 - The Inside Story
-TODO

Rugrats S2 E 15 - Visitors from Outer Space
-TODO

Rugrats S2 E 20 - My Friend Barney
-TODO

Rugrats S3 E 11 - The Mysterious Mr. Friend
-TODO

Rugrats S3 E 13 - Destination: Moon
-TODO

Rugrats S3 E 17 - Chuckie's Wonderful Life
-based off the popular christmas story. Chuckie says he's going to run away because people are better off without him and an angel shows him a world without him where everything is miserable. Most upsetting, Tommy is homeless and visibly starving. Played for jokes but is honestly pretty weird. Chuckie gets fed up of the world without him and asks to be taken back home, which he is. It's revealed that he was just having a dream. Chuckie looks out the window to see the angel from "his dream" is real, and drives a motorcycle into the sun, making physical contact with it. He's never seen again.

Rugrats S3 E20 - The Alien
-Chuckie's dad builds a mini house for the babies to play in, but Angelica can't fit inside it. Out of spite, she tells the babies not to go in because it's Chuckie's "mothership" and he's an alien. She knows because she broke in to the Finster property at night to see that his dad is also an alien and is giving a press conference to another alien. Chuckie's alien design has a huge zipper on his back to reveal he is a bipedal reptillian. The majority of the episode is about Chuckie trying to prove he isn't an alien using different tests, and interestingly, he fails almost all of them. Tommy says he doesn't care if Chuckie is an alien or not. Chuckie says you can't be too sure who's an alien and who's not. The closing shot shows the playhouse rocketing into space with all the babies inside.

Hey Arnold

Hey Arnold S1 E 8 - The Haunted Train
-TODO


Hey Arnold S2 E 3 - Four Eyed Jack
-TODO

CatDog

CatDog S2 E 19 - The End
-TODO

The Wild Thornberries

Season 1 Episode 8 - Only Child
The Thornberry's are at the amazon river. Eliza sees a river dolphin and tries to talk to it, but it leaves. A few moments later, a girl named Jao finds the Thornberry camp and immediately makes friends with Debbie. Eliza wanders off and comes across a fisherman who warns her to stay away from the water because the Botu is coming out tonight due to the full moon. He explains that a Botu is a river dolphin who takes the form of a girl and walks on land, he mentions you can tell a Botu from a normal girl because they will only eat fish and always wear a hat to cover their blowhole. Eliza begins to believe that Jao is a Botu due to her not knowing anyone from the local village, always wearing a hat, and even crocodiles she talks to can provide more evidence. She becomes obsessed with proving that she is a Botu, and tries to snatch her hat away while everyone is eating together. She obviously gets in trouble for being so rude and she leaves. She encounters the fisherman again and she explains what happened, and he says the Botu will try to take other girls back into the water and turn them into dolphins. Eliza starts going back to camp to try to convince everyone again, but heavy rains begin and the camp quickly begins to flood. Eliza makes it back in time, but Debbie doesn't. A river dolphin, implied to be Jao saves Debbie as Eliza is apologizing profusely over the sound of the rain. Debbie is able to make it back to the comvee and Eliza thanks the dolphin and quickly after, a second dolphin jumps out of the water. The episode closes with Eliza saying "Good. she's got a friend."

Wild Thornberrys S1 E 11 - Blood Sisters
-The Thornberrys travel to Cusco to meet up with Dr. Spinoza - who is studying vampire bats in the area, which the family wants to do as well. They go to where he is supposed to live, only to see that a weird man dressed like dracula lives there and constantly speaks about being a member of the undead and acting really strange. They go through some hijinks where the kids are convinced that Dr. Spinoza is a vampire but the truth is more troubling than their hypothesis.


It's revealed that the strange man is a local from a nearby village and is named "El Gordito", and he believes everything he sees on TV. He watched a Dracula movie, believed he is Dracula - so he kidnapped the real Dr. Spinoza, tied him up in a cave, and left him for dead so he could take over his house with vampire bat paraphernalia in it. They all laugh about it like it's not a big deal and send him home. The end shot shows him watching one of Nigel's documentaries as he starts to mimic his speech as the camera pans out and eerie music plays.



Wild Thornberrys Naimina Enkiyio
The Thornberrys are hanging out with some folks from the Masaai tribe, and Eliza gets close to the edge of the forest, but the Maasai kids warn her not to get too close because there's a ghost girl that lives there

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