After a near-death experience, Stan decides to secure his legacy by finding treasure that had been buried by former Marine Corps officer Oliver North. Meanwhile, Roger tries to make some money by being sexually harassed at a company.
Tropes:
- Acting for Two: In-Universe. With no one harassing him at the office, Roger ends up playing another employee who harasses his female persona.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Greg and Terry decide to film Stan's decent into madness, er, his search for the treasure.Terry: We are a lock for an Oscar if there isn't a documentary about penguins or genocide this year.Greg: Or penguin genocide.Greg & Terry: Ooooooooooooooooooh.
- Cassandra Truth: No one believes Stan's claim that Oliver North's gold is buried underneath their house. They give up digging moments before he actually finds it; he is upset they didn't record the discovery.
- Continuity Nod: Stan reminds Francine about her muffin business in "Finances With Wolves", though Francine reminds him that he never once supported her.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Stan's sanity is clearly slipping as he fails to find anything...but then he walks into the kitchen with the gold.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: Hayley's middle name is "Dreamsmasher," because her birth ruined Stan's dreams.
- Flipping the Bird: Stan does this to everyone once he emerges from the pit with the buried gold.
- Immoral Journalist: Defied and played straight. Because Greg and Terry weren't there for the moment where he dug up the gold, Stan tells them to come and help him stage it. Terry replies that it's not ethical for a journalist to stage events. That didn't stop them earlier from secretly recording a Smith Family conversation after stating they would turn the camera off.
- Insane Troll Logic: Stan uses comments from North's testimony to believe that the gold is buried under the living room and says that a discarded ice creamsicle wrapper means he's getting close. Bizarrely, he turns out to be right, and there's a note in the gold from North congratulating the finder on following his clues.
- Karma Houdini: Stan mentions how Oliver North got off scot-free after selling weapons to Iran and giving the profits to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.
- Legacy Seeker: A near-death experience inspires Stan to restart his plans for a legacy that he had to abandon when his kids were born. There are rumors that, during the Iran-Contra affair in the '80s, Oliver North buried a cache of gold bars under what is now Stan's house, the discovery of which Stan believes will be the archeological find of the century. After he finds the gold, Stan gets caught in a cave-in and has to choose whether he or the gold can go to the surface. He seriously considers the latter, but he changes his mind when he realizes that growing up without him will turn his children into huge disappointments who will completely overshadow his discovery, so he decides to be rescued and focus on the kids as his true legacy.
- Never Lend to a Friend: Why Roger refuses to lend Klaus money from his settlement.
- Noodle Incident: Stan yells at the family for not believing in him, like that time he tried to open his own dance studio.Francine: Just for the record, I believed in the dance studio. But two days before we opened, it wasn't your father's fault, a woman got raped in the locker room.
- Offing the Offspring: Stan threatens to kill his kids unless Steve's robot and Hayley's piercings are gone by tomorrow.
- "Schoolhouse Rock!" Lesson: Stan explains the history of the Iran-Contra scandal
in the style of a Schoolhouse Rock! educational song.Roger: Crap, that's the end. - Sex Bot: Steve tries to build one from a vacuum cleaner, which gets increasingly elaborate as the episode goes on.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: The Langley Falls town geologist arrives wearing a tuxedo.
- Shout-Out: "Me So Horny" by 2 Live Crew plays out as Roger walks through the office dressed up as his female persona complete with Male Gaze.
- Stating the Simple Solution: One of the firemen decides to wait until the Smiths go to bed and then dig up the gold himself, since it's still at the bottom of the now-filled pit.
- Supermodel Strut: Parodied. When Roger dresses up as Sexy Secretary "Laura Vanderbooben", he tries to seduce the guys at the office by doing a confident strut through the room, even shaking his hips while a sexy song plays in the background. Nobody cares.Roger: Huh. Probably shouldn't have farted before I started that walk.
