"Talk about puke-chop, am I right?"
Tina's fears of being haunted by a fetal pig threaten to ruin her plans for a romantic night with Jimmy Jr. at a haunted hayride. Meanwhile, Linda gets a little too into helping Bob with his earwax problems.Tropes:
- Afraid of Blood: Blood appears to make Louise squeamish, as she seems to have trouble pricking Tina’s finger for the ritual to banish the pig ghost.
- Almost Kiss: Tina is about to kiss Jimmy Jr. on the hayride but she ends up falling asleep. She does end up kissing him at the end though.
- Asleep in Class: Tina nods off during her anatomy exam due to sleep deprivation, leading to another encounter with the pig ghost.
- Banishing Ritual: The ritual to get rid of the seishin dobutsu requires the person being haunted to ensure the whole animal is intact, put a drop of their blood inside it, and then bind it with strong twine and bury it in the woods. Unfortunately for Tina, it doesn’t work.
- Blatant Lies: Tammy tries to blame Tina for farting during the hayride. Nobody is convinced.
- Captain Obvious: Oh, Jocelyn...Jocelyn: I heard skeletons are inside our bodies every day.
- Catapult Nightmare: Tina wakes up screaming in class after her second encounter with the pig.
- Comical Nap Drool: Tina immediately starts drooling when she falls asleep on the couch at the end of the night.Bob: Oof. A lot of drool. Like, immediately.
- Continuity Nod:
- Melted Kuchi Kopi can be seen in Louise's room.
- Gene walks into Tina and Louise's conversation with a late night cheese platter.
- Mr. Ambrose’s experiences with the supernatural are referenced again.
- Dream Reality Check: To prove to Tina that she isn't dreaming, Louise slaps her. In Tina's final nightmare, Louise's slaps don't even wake her up, proving that she's just dreaming her siblings being with her.Louise: Yup, you’re on a snooze cruise.
- Dumb Blonde: Jocelyn thinks the dead fetal pig is just sleeping.
- Dumpster Dive: In order to perform a banishment ritual against the pig ghost, Tina has to go into the school dumpster to retrieve the pig and its organs.
- Ear Cleaning: Played for laughs, as Bob is a little weirded out that Linda tries to make cleaning out his ears into a sexy couple's bonding thing. He even asks if he needs a safe word... and Linda acknowledges that he might.
- Extreme Omnivore: After Bob finally manages to dislodge the remaining ball of earwax by sneezing, it lands on Gene's pile of Halloween candy, and his first reaction is thinking it's a new type of candy he hasn't seen before and wanting to taste it, even though all the other candy in the pile is still in their wrappers. When Bob panics and tells Gene to stop, he backs away while still holding onto the ball of earwax.
- Face Doodling: Discussed. When Tina falls asleep on the hayride, Tammy suggests that they write “Dingle booby poopy butt” on her forehead but no one has a pen.
- Fetish Retardant: In-universe; Bob notes that ear cleaning is not the sexy couples' bonding activity that Linda thinks it is.
- Freudian Slip: Tina has one while fantasizing about Jimmy Jr. wearing overalls with no shirt on underneath.Jimmy Jr.: Tina, what is it?Tina: Oh, nipple - I mean, nothing.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: After Tina makes fun of the pig she has to dissect in order to impress the other 8th graders, she keeps having nightmares due to the guilt she feels over it. The fetal pig ghost even explains this to her when Tina asks him why he’s haunting her.Fetal Pig: You think I’m doing this to you? No, no, no. You’re doing this to you.
- I Can't Hear You: Bob's earwax problem gets so bad it starts to affect his hearing.
- I Taste Delicious: Dream!Gene turns himself into applesauce, and then tastes himself.
- The Insomniac: Tina starts to lose sleep from her constant nightmares.
- Match Cut: A scene of Tina screaming after being pulled into a coffin with the ghost pig cuts right into a scene of Bob screaming with Linda on top of him trying to get the glob of earwax out of his ear.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: During Tina's final nightmare, Dream Louise gives herself nine extra arms, as well as arms for legs, solely because it's a dream and nobody can stop her.
- Nightmare Sequence: Tina has a series of nightmares about being haunted by the ghost of a pig.
- Noodle Incident: Mr. Ambrose claims that he spent most of his twenties being haunted by a pig-demon.
- Opening Shout-Out: Instead of the normal opening, the episode begins with an in-universe shot of the restaurant from an identical angle with the store next drop visible and the exterminator van driving past the restaurant without stopping.
- Outfit Decoy: Tina plans to trap the fetal pig by disguising a pop-up skeleton as her so that the pig gets trapped inside the skeleton's coffin when he tries to haunt her. It works, except that the pig then drags the real Tina in with him.
- Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: The ghost pig eventually admits he's just a figment of Tina's imagination, brought on by Tina feeling guilty about bowing to peer pressure and making fun of a dead pig.
- Rivers of Blood: A variation: when Tina dreams about the pig ghost the following day at school, various organs first fall out of his incision one by one, followed by a flood of organs and guts, which is then repeated in the end credits.
- Rough Overalls: Tina has one of these fantasies regarding Jimmy Jr. due to going on a hay ride at a farm, evoking the rural connotations (and her fantasies).
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Bob (jokingly) says he's moving out after Linda makes it clear she's not letting the earwax matter drop.
- Serious Business: Linda becomes almost obsessed with cleaning out a bit of wax stuck in Bob's ear.
- Giving in to peer pressure is this for Tina, to the point that she has nightmares over something many wouldn't give a second thought.
- Shipper on Deck: Zeke shouts out a "Hell yeah!" upon seeing Tina and Jimmy Jr. kiss at the end.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode's title is a nod to Big Trouble in Little China, and the episode ends with a parody of the movie's theme song.
- The plot of Tina being haunted in her dreams by a ghost who makes bad puns is a nod to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), especially the scene where the pig haunts Tina in the bathroom and says "I'm your toilet now, Tina!" The hayride tractor driver also wears a fedora and green-and-red striped sweater like Freddy Krueger's Iconic Outfit.
- Louise and Gene's costumes are based on The Bourne Identity and Fiona Apple, respectively.
- Too Much Information: While Linda, Mort and Teddy are busy looking at Bob's remaining ball of earwax stuck in his other ear with Mort's otoscope that he keeps around in case there are "things" stuck in the corpses he deals with and Linda is getting carried away at wanting to remove it right now, a patron is eating a burger offscreen, finally making his presence known when he sarcastically repeats that yes, they should be doing and discussing all of the above in private.
- Visual Pun: As usual, the kids put on pun-based costumes for trick-or-treating; Louise dresses as Jason Bourne wearing a Baby Bjorn ("The Bjorn Identity"), while Gene goes as Fiona Applesauce.
- Yōkai: The pig ghost is said to be a fictional yokainote known as a seishin dobutsunote .
