History Recap / TheSimpsonsS12E18TrilogyOfError

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: What happened to Maggie in the episode?

* DecoyProtagonist: While the episode depicts the events of Homer, Bart and Lisa’s day it is actually a Marge episode as she is the one who holds everything together and makes everything happen. She kicks off everything with breakfast, cuts off Homer's thumb (by accident), starts up the 123 Fake Street which leads to Bart's undercover storyline, does all the driving for both Homer and Lisa, and it's her fault that Homer has to hitchhike and then walk. And it’s ultimately her who saves the day by tossing Linguo into the fire.

** The episode's title is one to ''Film/TrillogyOfTerror''.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The moment Dr. Hibbert offers to cut off Homer's other thumb for symmetry (because their health insurance, for some reason, [[ExactWords explicitly doesn't cover thumbs on their finger protection clause]]), we cut immediately to Marge driving off with Homer, saying that Hibbert's gone crazy and that they're driving to Shelbyville.

* SecretMessageWink: Attempted by Lisa:
-->''[Being grossed out by Marge's organic European breakfast food]''\\
'''Lisa:''' Yech! I'll get us out of this. Say, Dad. Wanna go see my project for the school science fair? ''[winks]''\\

* AcCENTUponTheWrongSylLABle: Linguo pronounces "error" as "err-OAR".

* AssholeVictim: The Flanders.

** Ned Flanders and his kids. While it is within his right to not like things, his apparent fundamentalist mentality and raising his kids to be just as intolerant into the future makes it cathartic for Homer to wreck his house after burning his copy of ''Harry Potter'' in the fireplace and "retelling" how all of Hogwarts went to hell for practicing "witchcraft".

* LaserGuidedKarma: Ned incinerates a copy of ''Harry Potter'' in his fireplace and retells a controversial depiction of the story to his kids, saying how Harry and Hogwarts go immediately to fire and brimstone eternal damnation for "witchcraft", in the same kind of spirit that Reverend Lovejoy would be all too happy to rekindle his camaraderie with Ned over. Soon after bookburning in his moral crusade, Homer barges into his house, upturns everything to halt Santa's Little Helper for his severed thumb, and ends with him destroying Rod's toy train set to get it back. Hey, if Ned is going to potentially ruin other childhoods by raising intolerant kids to bully others and scar young psyches into religious zealotry with, God and all of heaven just might have some fun destroying his own offspring's as well.
** Rainer Wolfcastle appropriately gets his car stolen when Marge and Homer get into an accident on the road with him, as instead of asking for insurance information or using his wealth to help, he roidrages and tries to destroy their car with a golf club.

* StartOfDarkness: Ned in this episode begins to display some more aggressive moral aggrandizing and religious zealotry that would be later seen in later episodes and seasons, going as far as book burning ''Harry Potter'' in his fireplace, apparently taking his kids out of public schooling, and rearing them in some potentially nasty beliefs of intolerance and myopia.

** Ned and Rod and Todd Flanders' display of religious intolerance over popular media and heaven itself deciding to have a field day by destiny of Homer Simpson destroying his children's childhoods would definitely count, for religious overzealous nutjobs, and the far right Christian Fundamentalist kind as well, for taking offense at children's media and popular culture for offending their pompous self entitled platitudes.

* {{Trainstopping}}: The well deserved {{Jerkass}} Homer way: when Homer is pursuing his severed thumb in the Flanders' house, it lands on the tracks for Rod Flanders's toy train set. Homer derails and smashes the model locomotive with his foot and retrieves his thumb. And because a train set is no good when the locomotive is destroyed, [[ShaggyDogStory Rod is left crying]].
* TruthInTelevision: As time goes on and tells all, good ol' American far right Christian fundamentalism continues on into the 2000s even after Y2K and Nostradamus intertwined End of Days conspiracies were revealed to be nothing but hoaxes. ''Harry Potter'' ''was'' the next target of their kind for merely being just as popular as Pokemon and "not" having Christian platitudes or rooted ideology to easily bend young minds with, and there ''were'' book burnings held by some of the more fervent nutjobs of the day.

* StartOfDarkness: Ned in this episode begins to display some more aggressive moral aggrandizing and religious zealotry that would be later seen in later episodes and seasons, going as far as book burning ''Harry Potter'' in his fireplace and rearing his kids in some potentially nasty beliefs of intolerance and myopia.

* LaserGuidedKarma: Ned incinerates a copy of ''Harry Potter'' in his fireplace and retells a controversial depiction of the story to his kids, saying how Harry and Hogwarts go immediately to fire and brimstone eternal damnation for "witchcraft", in the same kind of spirit that Reverend Lovejoy would be all too happy to rekindle his camaraderie with Ned over. Soon after bookburning in his moral crusade, Homer barges into his house, upturns everything to look for his severed thumb, and ends with him destroying Rod's toy train set to get it back. Hey, if Ned is going to potentially ruin other childhoods by raising intolerant kids to bully others and scar young psyches into religious zealotry with, God and all of heaven just might have some fun destroying his own offspring's as well.

* LaserGuidedKarma: Ned incinerates a copy of ''Harry Potter'' in his fireplace and retells a controversial depiction of the story to his kids, saying how Harry and Hogwarts go immediately to fire and brimstone eternal damnation for "witchcraft", in the same kind of spirit that Reverend Lovejoy would be all to happy to rekindle his camaraderie with Ned over. Soon after bookburning in his moral crusade, Homer barges into his house, upturns everything to look for his severed thumb, and ends with him destroying Rod's toy train set to get it back. Hey, if Ned is going to potentially ruin other childhoods by raising intolerant kids to bully others and scar young psyches into religious zealotry with, God and all of heaven just might have some fun destroying his own offspring's as well.

** Ned and Rod and Todd Flanders' display of religious intolerance over popular media and heaven itself deciding to have a field day by destiny of Homer Simpson destroying his children's childhoods would definitely count, for religious overzealous nutjobs, and the far right Christian Fundamentalist kind as well, for taking offense at children's media and popular culture for offending their pompous platitudes.

* TruthInTelevision: As time goes on and tells all, good ol' American far right Christian fundamentalism continues on into the 2000s even after Y2K and Nostradamus intertwined End of Days conspiracies were revealed to be nothing but hoaxes. ''Harry Potter'' ''was'' the next target of their kind for merely being just as popular as Anime/Pokemon and "not" having Christian platitudes or rooted ideology to easily bend young minds with, and there ''were'' book burnings held by some of the more fervent nutjobs of the day.

* TruthInTelevision: As time goes on and tells all, good ol' American far right Christian fundamentalism continues on into the 2000s even after Y2K and Nostradamus intertwined End of Days conspiracies were revealed to be nothing but hoaxes. ''Harry Potter'' ''was'' the next target of their kind for merely being just as popular as [[Anime/Pokemon]] and "not" having Christian platitudes or rooted ideology to easily bend young minds with, and there ''were'' book burnings held by some of the more fervent nutjobs of the day.

* {{Trainstopping}}: The {{Jerkass}} Homer way: when Homer is pursuing his severed thumb in the Flanders' house, it lands on the tracks for Rod Flanders's toy train set. Homer derails and smashes the model locomotive with his foot and retrieves his thumb. And because a train set is no good when the locomotive is destroyed, [[ShaggyDogStory Rod is left crying]].

* BrickJoke: When Marge calls 911 for help during the first shot, Chief Wiggum is more concerned about arresting Marge than helping Homer so she makes up a fake address named "123 Fake Street" to lure him away. The third shot reveals that the address really exists.

* GirlOfTheWeek: Gender-inverted example with the boy Lisa meets on the other Springfield school. They have a pretty heart-felt romance and Lisa has to leave him... all in about thirty (out-of-universe) seconds and one RoundaboutShot TimeSkip.

** The french teacher and his class who make fun of Lisa for being at the wrong school.

* RoundaboutShot: Exaggerated. Lisa's entire romance montage with her boy of the week is a five-second TimeSkip composed by this shot.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The moment Dr. Hibbert offers to cut off Homer's other thumb for symmetry (because their health insurance, for some reason, [[ExactWords explicitly doesn't covers thumbs on their finger protection clause]]), we cut immediately to Marge driving off with Homer, saying that Hibbert's gone crazy and that they're driving to Shelbyville.

** When Homer is pouring beer into Linguo's mouth, making him short-circuit, Homer explains "I thought he was a party robot.", which is how Bender has been described on ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''. Linguo even looks a bit like Bender.

* TakeThat: Chief Wiggum has Bart record the mobsters over a Music/HootieAndTheBlowfish album because "It's cheaper than blank tape."