Desmond finding the ant "kinda cool" is some subtle foreshadowing of his eventual career as a pest exterminator. Him finding the ant cool shows that he has an interest in creatures like ants, which live in colonies and are considered pests in the home. It shows that his eventual career was something he'd always had an enjoyment for deep down in his soul.
Mr. Frog's career is jeopardized from the backlash of his attempt to eat a man, but is completely restored when he succeeds to do so on television? Are his fans a bunch of hypocrites? Probably, but not about this. They wanted to see the TMZ reporter get eaten; that's Mr. Frog's tried and true routine. Everyone was upset that they watched seven minutes of struggle only for no payoff.
Alternatively, people were terrified of him trying to eat the TMZ reporter because he wasn’t actually doing the Mr. Frog act as part of the show, and the studio audience was just happy to see anyone get devoured after how boring the new version of the show turned out to be.
There's even the possibility that the audience believes it was some sort of publicity stunt.
When Mr. Frog eats Bug every time he does his show, Bug comes out unscathed. But when he eats a human, he either hurts or kills them. Why? Mr. Frog is smaller in size to a normal man. When Mr. Frog eats Rex, blood comes out as he’s shoved into Frog’s mouth; Mr. Frog is crushing him to death as he’s eating him. Bug is much smaller and can come out quite easily.
This is helped by the fact that the TMZ reporter that Mr Frog tries to eat survives: Mr Frog is shown struggling to swallow him, and probably spit him out when he realized he couldn't, or maybe didn't intend to kill him when he realized he was scaring people. When he later eats the executive, he does so quickly and with less remorse, which is why it happens so quickly.
Pim yelling when Mr. Frog pulls his hair and his refusal to allow it in the first place make more sense when the next episode reveals that it's actually an exposed nerve ending. While hair getting pulled can be painful it shouldn't be enough to make Pim yell the way he did and would more likely just pluck the hair out. Now a nerve ending on the other hand would be excruciating to have pulled. Also counts as Fridge Horror.
Why does Smormu win the Smiling Friend poll? Because it's weighted in his favor. Anyone who wants to vote for Smormu only has to text his name to the provided number; anyone against Smormu, on the other hand, needs to enter a long, specific phrase ("NO I REALLY REALLY REALLY DON'T WANT SMORMU") that not only makes the task feel like a chore, meaning that people who would otherwise vote might not find it worth the trouble, but it also makes it easier for someone to make a mistake. If a 'No' voter forgets to write the third "REALLY", or reflexively substitutes the word "want" for "like", then the algorithm tallying the votes is likely going to throw it out. Smormu winning is literally the result of voter suppression tactics deployed by the poll runners to make the result they want more likely.
Similarly, Smormu being announced as the winner by means of the popular vote (as a result of the above measures taken to ensure he wins that) despite the poll having an "electoral college"? Also a means of guaranteeing Smormu wins the poll: the producers have two sets of voting data, and whichever one Smormu has a majority in is taken as the deciding factor. Smormu was always going to become the sixth main cast member, the poll was just to give the audience the illusion of control over the process. The game was rigged from the start.
Why go to all this trouble and then just immediately kill Smormu off? Because they realized even with a rigged poll, he was still highly divisive. Despite making voting "No" as hard as possible, virtually half the participants still did. That's not even counting the people whose votes were discarded or didn't vote at all. They probably expected the poll to be a blowout victory, but when it was a close call they realized they couldn't keep up the charade and decided to quietly axe him.
Despite the poll being rigged, the results were still neck and neck. Most people were willing to go through the extra effort to get him shut down; that's how hated he was in-universe. If voting "no" in a way that counted was any easier, then one can easily assume it would have been practically unanimous.
When DJ Spit starts his Madness Mantra, he sounds like he's saying "Get out of me head!" He pronounces the word "my" normally only seconds before, so what gives? While it could just be Rule of Funny, DJ Spit speaks with a vaguely Spanish accent. Therefore, he isn't saying "Get out of me head!", but "Get out of mi head!" as "mi" is Spanish for "my."
Technically speaking, the partygoers committed a hate-crime by attacking the forest demon because they were violently offended solely by his appearance.
God saying that Charlie confronted his own demons by making the evil devil smile is obviously Played for Laughs. However, the line starts making actual sense once you take into account that depressed Satan was acting exactly like Charlie usually did prior to his trial. What he really needed to realize the errors of his behavior is to self-reflect.
When we first meet the Frowning Friends, they do an obviously-fake, exaggerated Evil Laugh, which Charlie even lampshades by saying "that's not even a real laugh." Of course it isn't, because the Frowning Friends aren't capable of being happy or laughing for real because they're explicitly stated to be mentally ill.
Salty died from a heart attack after eating one of his burgers. So I guess you could say that it WAS Grease that did it!
Smormu's corpse has bruises all over his body. The only scene we see him, he's being an annoyance. It's likely that he was beaten to death, either by a mob, or an individual he annoyed with his little tune.
Mr. Boss doing the dance from Peanuts at the end of "Frowning Friends" is a subtle Brick Joke. Earlier on, his hallucination of Mr. Peanut had told him that he needed to find a "peanut jig" of his own. He had also dressed up as Charlie Brown in "A Silly Halloween Special."
After 3D Squelton said he wanted to end it all, Charlie and Pim immediately find something he likes and suggest he get a job centered around it, which is what worked for Desmond.
South Park noted in one episode that even the most horrific topic becomes funny after 22.3 years. Charlie makes a hilariously dark joke about the Columbine High School massacre. The time difference between Columbine and the episode's air date is 22 years and 9 months - about 22.75 years.note Although Shrimp's new attire is reminiscent of Harris and Klebold's, the "don't come to school tomorrow" phrase originates from a warning posted to 4chan ostensibly by Chris Harper-Mercer, the perpetrator of the Umpqua Community College shooting, which was only 6 years and 3 month prior to the air date.
When the Smiling Friends and the audience meet Shrimp, he's hunched over his keyboard playing a video game. There is actually a common expression for the type of terrible posture these activities cause...it's called shrimp sitting.
Charlie tries to console Shrimp so the latter can get over Shrimpina by saying that there's plenty more fish in the sea. While this is a common phrase, considering how he knew from the start that Shrimpina is a shrimp, there's a good chance he meant this literally (Assuming he meant shellfish since shrimp technically aren't fish).
Satan ordering a burger and a drink from Salty's isn't just a neat little Call-Back, it's likely since that he was shown to be an all around horrible person who doesn't care at all that he indirectly killed 15 different people over the course of 4 months through the extremely unhealthy menu items of his restaurant, making it pretty obvious that he'd get sent to hell for that, especially since his half-hearted ideas for healthier menu items shows that he only changed it because he was scared of the legal threats and losing profit, and since there's now no FDA to get in his way in hell, he was free to set up his restaurant yet again, now with it's iconic delicious, yet extremely unhealthy menu back in action, as well as no murderous mascots to kill him either.
Although Grim's and Gnarly's dull color palettes might be chalked up to them being parodies of edgy Evil Counterparts to protagonists, the fact that Pim gains a somewhat similar appearance to Grim both when he's extremely depressed by the end of Desmond's Big Day Out and overwhelmed with anger and jealousy in Enchanted Forest might mean that mild changes in appearance according to how a critter (the species that Charlie, Pim, Grim, and Gnarly all belong to) feels is a universal trait shared by all members of their species. This is also supported by the fact that Grim also repeatedly changes to a more menacing version of his usual appearance where he gains bloodshot red eyes and red irises, as well as rotten and gnarly teeth, making him look like Pim did when he was resentful towards and jealous of Charlie in Enchanted Forest for getting to go on a magical adventure like he wanted to since he was a kid.
When Charlie is in hell and gets tortured, his torture is carried out by a bunch of red Bliblies (with Jeremy’s assistance). All of the Bliblies are likely there because of Desmond’s extermination business killing them en masse since episode 1. Given how awful they were in life, it’s no wonder they went to hell in such large numbers.
While previous characters who died during the series were shown or referenced in Hell (namely, the Bliblies and Simon S. Salty), there are two notable no-shows: Grim and Gnarly. They aren't in Hell at all, because they repented in their last moments.
Why is Lt. Damien Xavier Cowap memorialized despite his dates saying that he'll be still alive for another three years from the episode's air date? Because that particular Couch Gag appears in an episode with a Framing Device set in the future, where Glep is elderly (and, it's implied, a former President).
As pointed out on the main page under Artistic License – Chemistry, the helium thing in "Frowning Friends" is only half-true. However, taking a real life truth (helium reserves are running out and helium will become harder to obtain in the future) and exaggerating it to sound worse than it actually is (all of Earth's helium will be gone soon) completely fits Grim and Gnarly's nihilistic agenda. It's not an outright lie (as Grim pointed out, they only tell the truth, even when it hurts), but it is misleading and requires cherrypicking to leave important facts out. After all, they don't want to give 3D Squelton even the slightest shred of hope or optimism that he can succeed in his balloon-making dream.
Much like how many studios end up screwing themselves over by getting too greedy and not properly playtesting games before releasing them, Gwimby's former boss dies because he didn't bother properly testing Troglore's functions before trying to use him to defend himself.
We'll probably never know exactly how the Smiling Friends charity works, but can people like James just walk in and do whatever they want? If James is the same guy who was getting the Gwimbly cameo at the beginning, then it was his birthday. Being sad on your birthday is a pretty legit reason to try and get help for the day.
Alan kicking the receptionist unconscious seems pretty mean. Considering, however, the last time he encountered something small and unassuming (the Bliblies), and it's reasonable why he'd react so violently.
It's indicated that the Boss, while completely 'oogily-doo', is extremely competent when it comes to running Smiling Friends. This extends to the assigning of roles among its staff. The idealistic Pim and realistic Charlie perfectly complement each other; each would have been completely terrible at being a Smiling Friend without at least spending time around the other. And the office team, Glep and Allan, are less well-suited for 'away missions' - Glep because he's incomprehensible, and Allan because he's... well, Allan.
Charlie not wanting to be seen as racist while wearing a halloween costume makes a lot more sense after "The Enchanted Forest", which shows that the Smiling Friends universe is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, meaning that a lot of common real-world halloween costumes would be considered racist In-Universe.
How exactly did Pim wind up with an exposed nerve ending sticking out of the top of his head?
Mr. Frog pulled on Pim's one hair, making him scream bloody murder. The next episode revealed that said hair is actually a nerve ending. Mr. Frog basically aggravated a severe injury for his own amusement.
This also explains why Pim refused to let him pull it—he knows how much it's going to hurt if it gets pulled. And Mr. Frog still went ahead and did it.
When Mr. Frog impulsively slices off the old lady's hands with a check, even he seems horrified, and this is him off of his medication in the withdrawal phase. Which implies that his violent Ax-Crazy impulses are the equivalent of a schizophrenic with his medication encouraging him to do horrible, horrible things, and he can't stop himself from doing it while his show indulges that insanity. Throw on some hard drugs thanks to the celebrity life style and he's an unwitting psychopath that the world cheers on for his behavior so long as he eats something.
The way the Forest Demon died was disturbing enough, being pulled apart, set on fire, his head stomped in, and eaten while still raw. But it's the reason he was killed that can generate some paranoia. The party-goers mistook his natural wood-like skin for blackface. What if those same people met a black person from Africa (which often can have very dark skin almost the same tone as anyone else wearing blackface) or someone else with a similarly dark complexion? Would they be able to tell the difference or could they mistake another person's natural appearance for black face and also kill them in a similarly gruesome fashion?
Charlie's mundane reaction to witnessing the partygoers violently kill the Forest Demon is also this, considering that his girlfriend, Pim, Alan, Glep, and Glep's girlfriend all realistically act in silent horror at this, yet Charlie casually treats it as if it's an everyday thing, and given that he has a realistic reaction of fear to other scary things like the TV Alien bursting out of the screen and Mr. Frog's behaviour, plus that this is the reason he doesn't dress up for Halloween, it's possible that Charlie has witnessed people getting killed for accidentally coming across as a racist so many times that he's become desensitized to it completely.
Charlie casually mentions that his grandmother passed away from eating a peanut, which is a tragic circumstance in and of itself, but seemingly mundane enough; either allergies or just choking on a nut is a reasonable way to go out. But then Mr. Boss's hallucination of Mr. Peanut remarks that he was caught filling his peanuts with toxic pesticides, which begs the question if that was the batch Charlie's grandma ate.
The Frowning Friends wanting to kill all Puerto Ricans initially seems like it’s just a setup for the joke about a character voiced by a Puerto Rican agreeing with them, but it puts their business in a whole different light: the Frowning Friends go around making everyone miserable and angry, then presumably once they’re radicalized enough the Puerto Ricans would be made into their customers’ scapegoat.
The witch flees from Mip once he comes to her cave. Given the dark truth about who Mip is, was she really afraid of his crude crucifix? Or was she terrified by a deceptive shapeshifter and known stalker?
While flirting with Charlie, Mip refers to himself in the first-person when he says "Well, maybe I like that", briefly letting his charming Third-Person Person façade drop.
Also, in the same episode, when Mip is dying, he gives the gift to Pim, and tells him to take credit for it when he gives it to the Princess. Pim, being the Nice Guy that he is, doesn’t do that and tells the Princess it’s from Mip. If he had taken credit, than it’s possible that, if the bomb had killed the Princess, Pim would be suspect in the murder, if the explosion didn’t kill him and Charlie as well. And there's no real reason Mip should do this, except that he just wants to mess up Pim's life, possibly as revenge for killing him.
Mip appeared to be showing romantic attraction to Charlie as well. Would he have done something equally extreme to Charlie had Mip not been killed? The fact that the potion he gave Charlie made him extremely sick in The Stinger supports this.
Continuing from this, notice how the potion made Charlie green and lumpy in appearance. Just like the witch. Almost like the witch was one of Mip's previous victims he cursed, which is what caused her to freak out and flee when he appeared.
When the Bliblies start pouring out, they also pour out from the same hole Alan came in, where he met the Squatter. HypocriticalJerkass he may be, there’s a possibility that he was also attacked by them, and given that only Alan was brought outside the walls to be crucified, there’s a chance that the Squatter didn’t make it.
Mr. Boss is clearly mentally unwell despite his relatively friendly (if strange) demeanor. One day of another company taking over his business is enough to have him talking to himself in a mirror and being radicalized enough to get a gun and try to assassinate the company's competition. What exactly happened to him in the past to cause such a violent and deranged side to develop?
Even worse, Mr Boss seems quite reluctant to actually murder anyone at first, but another version of himself in the mirror begins berating him and insisting that he must do it, and both Mr Bosses are shaking their heads in stress. Is the violent side of Mr Boss some kind of split personality? Is it some kind of symbolic way of showing Mr Boss's attempt to rationalize his violent impulses? Or is it some kind of unchecked PTSD?
In "Mr. Frog", look at the way Rex treats Glep. Whenever Glep steps out of line even slightly, Rex not only cruelly shouts at him, but at one point physically slaps Glep with a rolled-up piece of paper. Now, put yourself in Mr. Frog's shoes, and imagine being forced to do the exact same thing over and over, over the course of 47 seasons, and constantly having to face the same kind of verbal and physical abuse Glep went through. No wonder Mr. Frog developed so many drug and mental health problems.
Fridge Sadness:
Considering how Gwimbly didn't know that Mr. Millipede died from a fentanyl overdose until he found his grave, chances are nobody didn't even bother inviting him to Mr. Millipede's funeral.
