"You" and your friends have been invited to clean the garage of an inventor. One room holds two inventions — a strange robot, and a pinball machine. Choosing either one will send you on an adventure where you must either save the world from a robot revolution, or escape from a strange mirror world.
The eponymous Professor Shock is one of many Goosebumps characters with a cameo in Goosebumps, as well as reappearing in Goosebumps HorrorTown as a minor character.
This book provides examples of:
- Acme Products: "Acme Cleanup" is mentioned.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: One of the possible scenarios in this adventure have robots created by Professor Shock starting a revolt against humans, and they actually succeed in a few bad endings.
- And I Must Scream: The Mirror World scenario has plenty of situations where you're trapped in said world, with no way to return. One in particular sees you chasing after your fleeing reflection forever.
- Big Red Button: If you take the remote, you'll press the big red button on it (you don't get a choice). Depending on your choices after that, the button does different things. It can be as harmless as a homing beacon, or ending your life by activating an unknown weapon.
- Bland-Name Product: A brand of batteries is called Supergizers, a reference to Energizer.
- Body Horror: Stepping through the wrong mirror in the funhouse? You risk becoming as distorted as your reflection, and on the other side you see several of the mirrors' past victims, all of them contorted into abominations.
- Combining Mecha: A junkyard in the robot world has a scenario that wouldn't look out of place in a Transformers cartoon, where various machinery in the yard suddenly comes to life to form a gigantic mechanical monster, with steamrollers in place of feet, cranes for arms, two backhoes as hands and a giant TV for a head.
- Hall of Mirrors: Features in the story if you choose the "mirror world" storyline.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: You suffer this fate in one of the bad endings, after going through the wrong mirror in the funhouse. To make things worse, you're then caught in a pinball machine and crushed by the balls.
- Mad Scientist: The titular character, Professor Shock, whose inventions includes robots with sentience of their own, interdimensional portal generators, and assorted gizmos whatnot. His name kind of gives it away though.
- Mirror Monster: In one particularly nasty ending, you wait for a portal in a mirror to open up for your escape, only for a gigantic, monstrous human hand to emerge from behind the mirror and grab you.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: One of your possible encounters is the Loreo, a lion-like beast with a crocodile's head, and said monster attacks you multiple times throughout the mirror path.
- Mythology Gag: One to the main series, but there's a bad ending where reflections of yourself, and your friends Jason and Stacy, escapes the mirror-verse and leaves you trapped inside, much like the Goosebumps book Let's Get Invisible!
- Pungeon Master: The book's Lemony Narrator has quite a habit of dropping the worst puns in several bad endings. It gets old rather quickly.Don't feel too crushed about it! note
Oh well. That's the breaks. note
Hang in there! note
You always wanted to fill your room with music... note
Hope you like Heavy Metal! note
Don't let it give you a swell head! note - Robotic Reveal: In one ending its reveal that your best friends Stacey, Jason and their uncle Jack are Cyborgs.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: When you use the Universal Remote's REWIND function on Professor Shock."Etomer eht pu evig! On!" note
- Taken for Granite: A classic bad ending in GYG, this one sees your friends turning into tiny carvings on a pendant. You noticed there's a pendant shaped like your friend Stacy, and then it happens to you. Another implies you'll turn into a pendant in about five minutes, but the story stops right there. This can be avoided if you took a detour where Professor Shock warns you not to touch anything in the Queen's room. You still can't stop your friends from doing it, but if you tell the book you got that advice, you have a chance to save them.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: A non video-game example; when you manage to get the Universal Remote and cornered by the Professor, you're given a chance to use the remote, either by pressing "FORWARD" or "BACKWARD". The former leads to a bad ending, while the latter causes time to reverse and you get sent back to page 1.
- Universal Remote Control: One of the first gadgets you can find in Professor Shock's garage, which can activate anything. Unfortunately you're not in control of it — one of the first things you test it on is a model plane, who takes flight and immediately dive-bombs you. It's even called the "Universal Remote" in the book.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: What Professor Shock secretly intends to do to the world. One bad ending where you hit a wrong switch labelled "FAST-FORWARD" has this happening to you, which you find out after realizing your skin's metal.
- Threatening Shark: One of the most random and unexpected endings in the book — death via flying sharks!
