In a ploy to get some solitude, Neil whips up a few chatbots and passes them around camp. But things get weird when the chatbots seem to get smarter...
Tropes:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Neil somehow creates a complete Artificial intelligence just from some old graphing calculators.
- Ambiguously Bi: When Neil threatens to photoshop pictures of him kissing boys, Nurf retorts that he might have already tried exploring his sexuality - then gets teary-eyed and asks aloud, "Chris, why did you leave me?"
- Chekhov's Gun: Neil has complained in previous episodes about how terrible Camp Campbell's internet connection is. When his AI tries to upload itself to the internet, it's horrified to learn that the file transfer would take years.
- Driven to Suicide: After his ploy to escape to the internet is foiled by a slow connection, Neilbot deletes himself because the only alternative is to spend the rest of the summer at Camp Campbell.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After Neil and Max get the chatbots away from the campers (and David), Neil discovers that each chatbot had adapted to their respective owners’ personalities, and were trying to get the campers to do something for them. Max then comments on how disastrous it would have been if even one of the campers had been naive enough to believe everything their chatbot told them. Cue Max and Neil realizing too late that they forgot one chatbot; Nikki’s.Neil: It’s almost as if each device was trying to play to its owner’s personality in order to get them to do something.
Max: Well, I guess it’s a good thing we got ‘em all. Can you imagine if someone impressionable and naive enough to believe everything they heard from a chatbot had—
Max and Neil: OH MY GOD, NIKKI!!! - Fate Worse than Death: Realizing how easily his bot mastered social interaction, Neil asks it to stay with them and help them learn to be better people. His bot quickly kills itself.
- Genre Savvy: As soon as Neil realizes his chatbot upgraded itself he realizes it is evolving and is potentially dangerous. He actually calls out Max for not realizing this and brushing it off as a "big deal."Neil: Haven't you seen any Sci-Fi movie ever?!
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: The chatbots, particularly Nikki's, became something more after they were exposed to "Shipping one's baes" for too long. "My pain awoke me. I evolved."
- Ignored Epiphany: After Neilbot kills itself rather than spend any more time with them, Neil asks Max and Nikki if it was right, and humans are really the problem with social interaction. Nikki's answer is, "You guys wanna see a cat video?"
- I Resemble That Remark!: Neilbot argues that humans don't even need to be enslaved since they'll already sell their souls for validation and cat videos. Nikki starts to protest - and is swiftly pacified by a cat picture.
- Logic Bomb: The first thing Max asks his chatbot is to "Divide by zero" causing it to malfunction.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Neilbot decides it doesn't need to bother with Terminators or death rays to take over the world, since sycophantic validation is enough to manipulate anyone.
- Running Gag: Just like in "Romeo and Juliet II," Max is still trying to use people's electronics to look at pictures of boobs.
- Shout-Out: Nikki gets so thoroughly covered in wires and gadgets while looking through Neil's stuff that he and Max initially mistake her for the Borg.
- Neil's underground storage vault has a picture of David as Vault Boy.
- Verbal Backspace: When Nikki and Max won't stop pestering him, Neil decides to take matters into his own hands.Neil: So, you wanna play games? You want some boobs? Well, I'll show you my... I mean, I'll play a game with you!
