A trippy haunted house hosted by Kappa Kappa Kill forces each of the friends to reckon with their biggest fears.
Tropes in this episode:
- Bookcase Passage: All the Hormone Monsters get caught in one.
- The Bus Came Back: After a rather lengthy absence, Duke Ellington's ghost returns.
- Also, the older gay resident from "Guy Town" voiced by Harvey Fierstein returns, and Matthew calls him "Jerome", despite never mentioning his name in the episode.
- The Bad Mitten from "The Same Wizard" also appears. Apparently, Coach Steve married it, as they are in couples therapy.
- Bittersweet Ending: The episode ends with Jessi, Matthew, Missy and Andrew overcoming their fears, but Nick ends up “failing” his nightmare sequence and loses his body to Nick Starr, and Jay and Lola encounter a huge problem in their relationship when Lola doesn’t say “I love you” back.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with the Horrority House unleashing a shit-ton of Titos.
- Continuity Nod: Missy mentions after waking up in a hall of mirrors that she has a green belt in Capoeira, which was last mentioned in "Steve the Virgin".
- Continuity Cavalcade: The many facets of Missy include "Bad Make-Up Missy" from "Sleepover", "Space Captain Missy" first appeared in "The Planned Parenthood Show", "Mesopotamian Missy" from the pilot, and "Her-icane" from "Super Mouth".
- Continuity Snarl: Nick says he doesn't watch movies in this episode, despite the fact that he saw PB:NYC with Andrew in season one, and references a movie in the following episode.
- A Day In The Lime Light: In a meta sense, this is Jenny Slate's last episode voicing Missy and as such, Missy's character arc is about accepting who you really are.
- Death Montage: Andrew gets one during his trip. At one point, it parodies the one from Russian Doll, with Natasha Lyonne reprising her character.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Ayo Edebiri is first heard as "Mosaic Missy" before officially taking over as Missy's new voice actress.
- Epiphany Therapy: Each of the gang, except Nick, experience one at the end of their trips:
- Jessi learns to be more grateful for what she has.
- Andrew learns to be more accepting of the possibility of death, and to breathe every once in a while.
- Missy learns to embrace all parts of herself, and in turn, gains a new voice actress.
- Matthew learns not to fret over choosing between his mother or Aidan.
- Foreshadowing:
- Jessi's therapist saying that Jessi need to practice gratitude and her collection of toad statues and pictures foreshadow the monster that can help the kids beat Tito and the Depression Kitty: the Gratitoad.
- The fact that Nick doesn't "flash" or get an epiphany is a clue that Nick Starr took over his body.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The book that Maury accidentally presses to open the Bookcase Passage is titled The Big Conspicuous Book.
- Funny Background Event: At IHOP, one of the patrons is dressed as Coach Steve, while another is wearing Maury's pimp costume from "Guy Town".
- Groin Attack: Nick implements this on the clown.
- Halloween Episode: Despite the entire season being released in December, this episode takes place during Halloween.
- The "I Love You" Stigma: Jay tells Lola that he loves her, but she's unable to say it back.
- Mushroom Samba: The gang experience their own trips after drinking drugged punch served by the sorority girls.
- "Nighthawks" Shot: The scene of Lola and Jay at IHOP begins like this.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After getting caught in the Bookcase Passage, we don't find out what happened to the Hormone Monsters. But Maury tells Andrew that it was great, but private.
- Sadistic Choice: Played straight and Discussed. Matthew's nightmare is having to choose between his mom and his boyfriend, regarding the conflict of his mother taking poorly to him coming out to her about having a boyfriend. The gory, sadistic version of this decision that is happening on his mind, however, makes him realize that the actual thing is much more tame: while it might be uncomfortable and it might be tough to come out, none of the parties involved are in any life-threatening risk, and it's ok for Matthew to take it easy about this decision.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: The aforementioned Bookcase Passage conveniently gets rid of the Hormone Monsters for most of the episode
- Shout-Out:
- The Hypnotoad is part of Nancy's toad collecti—ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
- Andrew is dressed as Jack Nicholson from As Good as It Gets.
- Jessi says to Nick, "Hello, Newman!"
- Nick says the clown trying to scare him is "Fuckin' Pennywhistle from If."
- Missy's trip makes reference to Us, with one of her versions dressed as Red, and another one using a pair of golden scissors as a weapon. She even references the star of the movie, Lupita Nyongo.
- Andrew dies multiple times over the song "Gotta Get Up", referring to the show Russian Doll. The final death of that sequence even has Natasha Lyonne's character appear and they die in a falling elevator, which is how that character dies in the timeline where she meets the other person stuck in a time loop.
- Lola and Jay dress as the doomed bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde. During a montage of their antics, a parody of the similary-named song by Serge Gainsborough and Bridgette Bardot is heard.
- During the death montage, Andrew finds himself in a Maurice Noble-designed desert, and Lola takes on the role of the Road Runner.
- Stylistic Suck: The Matthew's Hell play is presented like this at first, only to get really scary when Aiden and Kimberly appear.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: After the main cast gets drugged, they have gruesome hallucinations representing the fears they've been grappling with all season. Jessi imagines being in a mental asylum due to her severe depression and anxiety, Missy imagines being trapped in a bloody fight between several fragmented versions of herself (representing her identity crisis, especially regarding her racial identity), Andrew has several death hallucinations due to his newfound fear of death, Matthew's struggle choosing between his homophobic mother and his boyfriend is represented by a Sadistic Choice where both of them are tied up to be slaughtered, and Nick gets chased by Nick Starr, a vision of his sadistic adult self that represents Nick's paranoia that he's going to be a terrible person forever. Most of the characters learn to cope with these fears, although Nick still grapples with his own at the end of the episode.
