Wanting to leave his mark on Earth, Sprig decides to become a superhero called Frog-Man. Unfortunately, when his actions overshadow a safety officer's job, he finds himself having his own arch-enemy, who is armed with a memento from an old foe...
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Full Recap
TBA...
Tropes:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: While not as concerning as most examples, Sprig does start to get cocky thanks to his ongoing popularity as Frog-Man. This is best, or worst, shown when he expresses eagerness in fighting his own supervillain and goes along with the fight without realizing the consequences of his actions.
- Affectionate Parody: Of Spider-Man, with Sprig having abilities similar to the wallcrawler, a strong female character who's based on Mary-Jane, and a villain with a name, costume, and power reminiscent of Doctor Octopus.
- Alliterative Title: Spider-Sprig.
- Breather Episode: A fun episode about Sprig becoming a superhero right before things really go downhill back at Amphibia...
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Broken Aesop: A variation - near the end of the episode Molly Jo calls both Sprig and Otto out for trashing the city with their superhero/supervillain battle, as well as the fact that both of them are just doing it for the attention, and that makes Sprig just as bad as Otto. While she's not wrong regarding the attention part, the battle she was critisizing mainly involved Sprig running away from Otto, Sprig himself causing little to no property damage in the process, making her "Not So Different" Remark come off rather unfair. On the otherhand, as a superhero, it was Sprig's responsibility to keep the public safe from ongoing danger. Rather then dragging out the fight for the sake of fun and publicity, Sprig should have prioritized stopping Robert Otto as soon as possible in order to keep property damages to a minimum. To be fair though, she was only witness to the end portion of the fight, and did not see how the majority of their fight played out. - Call-Back: Robert finds Cloak-Bot's severed arm in the junkyard.
- Captain Ersatz: The pizzeria owner who admires Sprig is essentially a palette-swapped version of Super Mario Bros., right down to the mustache, overalls, and trademark cap (with a T instead of an M).
- Chekhov's Gun: The Cloak-Bot's discarded right arm that was torn off when Anne punted its torso into space is still there, found by Robert and wielded against Sprig in his 'superhero costume'.
- Civvie Spandex: When all you have are the clothes in Anne's closet, you're gonna need to improvise.
- Conversational Troping: While Sprig and Mr. Boonchuy were moved to tears, finding the superhero movie they watched to be So Cool, It's Awesome, Polly by contrast is not so Easily Impressed and is quick to point out how she deems the movie to be a Cliché Storm of Superhero Tropes that aren't practical with reality. Funny enough, this in turn gets called out by Hop Pop who feels she's spending too much time online.Polly: I still can't believe you guys liked that movie! It was stuffed with predictable tropes and lazy writing.Hop Pop: We have got to cut back on your Internet use.Polly: I am just saying you'd have to be pretty dense to think any of that would be possible.
- Create Your Own Villain: Robert Otto, the safety officer whom Sprig got in conflict with, is jealous of all the attention he’s getting saving the city, and becomes a supervillain bent on killing him. His granddaughter has to call them both out for Robert to have a Jerkass Realization.
- A Day in the Limelight: The episode focuses almost completely on Sprig, with the other main characters only having bit parts.
- Deconstruction: Of superhero battles in public. While media won't shy away from showing destruction of public property in superhero battles, more often than not they'll happen in the Conveniently Empty Building district, or hand wave it away as the civilians being completely unharmed and out of danger. Sprig's battle with Otto however sees tons of civilians running in terror of both of them and the destruction they're causing, and Molly Jo nearly gets hit by a car thrown aside, and then nearly crushed by the lamp post it hit after she dodged, not to mention the crashed cars caused by drivers swerving to avoid the two of them, with people still in the cars when they start cleaning up.
- Destructive Savior: Robert and Sprig's battle causes massive property damage, partly because Sprig isn't treating the situation as seriously as he should be.
- Distant Reaction Shot: The final shot is of Anne's house when she does her second Say My Name to Sprig.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Robert's motivation in destroying Sprig is because he spent 20 years serving as a neighborhood safety supervisor and has never received the same level of adoration as "Frog-Man".
- Graceful Loser: Robert takes it in stride when the police officer casually says he's under arrest.Otto: Fair enough.
- Meta Guy: Polly has picked up on internet dialogue and uses it to criticize the Tarantu-Lad movie and Sprig's desire of being a superhero.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Sprig says this when he realizes how his carelessness led to the city's destruction. Otto has a similar reaction after seeing Molly Jo nearly get crushed due to his actions, and doesn't object when an LAPD officer arrests him over what he did.
- Punch Parry: Sprig and Robert do this with kicks, then immediately clutch their legs in pain.
- Say My Name: Anne calls out Sprig's name twice. First when she learns about his heroic antics and in the end when Sprig reveals that he cut up some of her clothes to make his costume.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode's title is an obvious reference to Spider-Man, and the episode itself contains numerous references to the character.
- The scene where Sprig looks down at his hand to see mucus oozing out of his fingers and then starts climbing a wall is a reference to Spider-Man, where Peter looks down at his hand to see tiny barbs coming out of his fingers, and starts climbing a wall. The scene of Sprig sketching and discarding several costume concepts is also a nod to a similar scene from the movie.
- Sprig having to stop a speeding, out-of-control, school bus before it crashes is very similar to the iconic scene from Spider-Man 2 where Spider-Man has to stop a speeding, out-of-control train before it crashes.
- Molly Jo's name is a spoof of Spider-Man's love-interest Mary Jane Watson.
- Robert fights using one of Cloak-Bot's severed arms as a clawed tentacle, a nod to Doctor Octopus. His last name is even Otto, which is Doc Ock's first name. Likewise, One of Otto's tactics towards the end of the fight is to chuck a car at Sprig.
- And of course the "Sprig" part of the episode's title rhymes with "pig" as in Spider-Pig.
- One of the rejected costume designs resembles Piccolo's outfit.
- Sprig uses Superman's "Up, up, and away!" catchphrase when setting out to become a superhero.
- Frog-Man appears as a guest on Conan.
- A Frog-Man meme parodies the "Distracted Boyfriend" meme and is featured on a site called "Dimgur" (a reference to the image-hosting site Imgur).
- A pizzeria owner who admires Sprig is seen mustachioed, with a large, bulbous nose, and dressed in green overalls and a hat with the letter T on it.
- One storeowner offers Sprig a free game console resembling a Nintendo GameCube, except that it's a GamePyramid.
- Tarantu-Lad, the movie that plays at the beginning of the episode, is an obvious parody of Kamen Rider.
- The episode's title is an obvious reference to Spider-Man, and the episode itself contains numerous references to the character.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Robert thinks that he can write up some of the neighbor kids for running a lemonade stand citing his neighborhood safety position.
- Spider-Man Send-Up: Frog Man is meant as an obvious Expy to Spider-Man; a plucky (pre-)teen, wisecracking Animal Themed Super Being that swings around, can cling to walls, tends to cause a lot of property damage (both directly and indirectly), has a blonde-haired female associate and a green, goggle-wearing, middle-aged man with a robot arm as a villain.
- Spit Take: Anne does this when she sees Sprig as a superhero on a laptop. Her spray hits Polly in the back of the head.
- Superhero Episode: The episode's theme involves Sprig deciding to become the Sunny Day Hero: Frog-Man who helps others. He even gets to fight his own supervillain.
- Take That!: Polly makes several points about how superheroes and vigilantes don't actually solve the societal problems that cause the crime they fight.
- Too Dumb to Live: Robert's attempt at stopping the runaway bus is to stand in front of it in the middle of the road. It's a very good thing he did this in a Disney cartoon.
- The Unmasking: Defied. Molly Jo asks to see Sprig's true face but the young frog denies her request claiming that she would get nightmares if she were to see his true self.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Sprig and Robert are chewed out for caring more about their own egos than the people, as their battle has caused destruction all through town.
- Why Won't You Die?: As Sprig constantly dodges his attacks, Robert yells, "Why won't you just sit still?!"
- "You!" Exclamation: Anne says this to Sprig when she catches him trying to sneak back into the house.
