Recap / Community S3 E05: Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps

Magnum and his girls.

Britta is throwing a Halloween pre-party party before the study group goes to the actual party. Abed and Troy show up as the Inspector and the Constable and Jeff shows up as one of those Fast and Furious guys. When he goes to leave, however, Britta stops him and reveals the truth.

Remember those psychological evaluations Britta made everyone do? Well, she ran the numbers, and it turns out someone in the study group has homicidal tendencies. She claims that it's her directive as a psychology student to figure out this person and get them the treatment they need. The problem is that the tests were anonymous, so Britta devises a way to figure out the sociopath: tell scary stories, and see how everyone reacts.

One hour later, Britta has redone all the tests...and six of the seven reveal that the test taker is mentally disturbed. The group decides not to know which one is the sane one so they can all think it is them and leave for the party. Afterwards, it's revealed the sane test belonged to Abed.

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The Community episode "Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps" provides examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Abed tells a horror story that is consumed with being realistic and avoid clichés or implausible actions, and removes any trope which might result in this ... which results in his story being a boring description of two people standing in the middle of a room on full alert conspicuously not being murdered by a serial killer.
• Ace Pilot: Troy and Abed are mentioned to be these at the beginning of Troy's story.
• Always a Bigger Fish/Food Chain of Evil: Annie's story ends with Vampire Jeff being eaten alive by Werewolf Annie.
• And I Must Scream: In Annie's story, vampire!Jeff gets eaten and is alive to experience all of it. The entire group is horrified.
• Anthropic Principle: Demonstrated with Abed's story: sure, it is nice to see Genre Savvy characters taking proper steps to defend themselves from an escaped Serial Killer instead of being Too Dumb to Live, but if obstacles such as, say, the aforementioned serial killer just don't show up, then all the author gets is a teeth-grindingly annoyed audience.
• Anvilicious: In-universe examples. Shirley's story where the bad people are all hurt. Jeff's story has the lesson that killers are just misunderstood people who need a hug.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Being buried to the neck in scorpions is followed by a lava enema, which is followed by Pilates. Subverted when The Devil explains that Pilates is the name of the demon who will eat your genitals.
• Art Shift: Annie's story is shot in Victorian style.
• Audible Sharpness: The knife in Troy's story when being pulled out of the block.
• Author Tract: Shirley's story is an in-universe example.
  Devil-Dean: (swings around a chainsaw and cackles evilly) GAY MARRIAGE!!
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Britta and Abed in Abed's story. Deconstructed because Abed finishes the story right there and Annie gets angry because it implies nothing of any kind happens to the characters afterwards (she phrases it as them getting killed, but it's obvious she wanted to see the slasher do something).
• Beast and Beauty: This is what Annie's story appears to be going for until the twist.
• Big "NO!": In Troy's story.
• Blow You Away: In Shirley's story, she appears as an angel and blows away The Devil (the Dean).
• Body Horror: In Troy's dream, he and Abed got sewn together by Pierce. In retaliation, Troy and Abed sewed Pierce's butt to his chest, his hands to his legs, and his feet to his arms.
• Bow Chicka Wow Wow: Parodied in Pierce's story. It opens with a Suspiciously Similar Song to 70s porn flicks while all three female leads are in a Lingerie Scene.
• Brainy Specs: Britta wears some while reading Warren Piece.
• Brick Joke: Combined with Funny Background Event and Shout-Out. As Annie complains that there's nothing on Britta's playlist but Spooky Party, the Beetlejuice soundtrack, and NPR podcasts, a student dressed as Beetlejuice walks by the window. This is the third time someone has said "Beetlejuice" in the course of the entire series (previously Michelle Slater said it in "Communication Studies" and Britta in "Cooperative Calligraphy").
• Bridal Carry: Occurs in both Annie's and Troy's stories.
• Brown Bag Mask: The sack-masked killer in Britta's and Jeff's stories.
• Buffy Speak: Britta's story is filled with it, including the killer having a "hook thingy."
• Call-Back:
  • Abed and (maybe) Jeff are likely the only two sane people in the group, as noted in "The Science of Illusion."
  • "Competitive Ecology" ends with the group filling in psych profile tests for Britta. This episode focusses on the aftermath of Britta getting the results for those tests back.
• Cardboard Prison: Justified in Abed's story. Given the recent economic downturn, the nearby asylum cut corners and a patient escaped.
• The Casanova: Pierce in his story.
• Caught Up in the Rapture: Shirley's story.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Defied in Abed's story. He made sure his cell phone was fully charged before heading up to the mountain cabin and calls the police the very second he thinks the slasher is nearby, which is answered immediately.
• Chainsaw Good: The Dean in Shirley's story.
• Coincidental Broadcast: Played straight in Britta's story, lampshaded in Abed's story — much to the annoyance of everyone except Troy (who bops along with the Muzak Abed has playing until the broadcast proper).
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • When Britta, very concerned, discusses how borderline-sociopathic Annie's story came across, Troy takes it as Britta "pinning ribbons on her" and comes up with a story of his own in an attempt to top Annie's.
  • Pierce doesn't even try to tell a scary story and instead uses his story to glorify himself and lash out at Troy and Abed over his treatment in Troy's story. He also assumes the cool hedonist leader in Shirley's story (a stand-in for Jeff) to be his own stand-in character, and wonders why Jeff wasn't in the story.
  • Britta misunderstands the meaning of "Britta-ing" (it's something along the lines of "fucking up") as "making a tiny and understandable mistake."
• Competence Porn: Abed's story is an inversion: sure, the heroic characters are (by slasher victim standards) hyper-competent, but the (In-Universe) audience (other than Troy) hates this.
• Continuity Nod: Troy mentions that the Dean got taco meat from the army for the Halloween party.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The fate that befalls Mad Scientist!Pierce in Troy's story.
• Creator Breakdown: In-Universe, each narrator's story is more than a little informed by their personal issues and relationships to the rest of the group:
  • Britta's has her and Jeff's Friends with Benefits relationship from the previous season as a subtext, as well as her Straw Feminist tendencies, with her being "smart" and staying in the car and Jeff getting out and dying (after Britta badgered him), all while she screams that she was right.
  • Abed's demonstrates his difficulty connecting with people in general and the other members of the group specifically, as represented by Britta; he's more interested in the practical details of the story and shuts down any attempt her character makes to try and bond with him, romantically or otherwise. His story also fails to engage the other members of the group other than Troy.
  • Annie's reveals both her desire to change Jeff for the better coupled with a bit of insecurity over how reliable a potential partner he may be and a hint of jealousy over Britta and Jeff's hookups masked as disdain for Britta's character.
  • Troy's is about his and Abed's ability to overcome Pierce's attempts to drive a wedge between them out of jealousy in the previous episode, along with the suggestion that Troy might be more than a little codependent in his friendship with Abed.
  • Pierce is not-so-subtly lashing out at Troy and Abed over the previous story, complete with '70s-style racial stereotypes. This is coupled with his leching over the female members of the group.
  • Shirley is basically a polemic of her religious beliefs coupled with a bit of insecurity/vengeance over what she sees as the ways the other members of the group exclude her.
  • Jeff basically wants to resolve the conflicts that have arisen between the other members of the group without actually putting the work required in to resolve them.
• Deconstructed Trope: The Genre Savvy Rational Fic, as the characters point out how Abed's attempt to be logical and defy typical horror tropes in his story just ends up being boring and lacking suspense.
• Decoy Damsel: Annie in her story.
• Defied Trope: Abed's story is a step-by-step list of defiances of slasher cliches:
  • The characters were already hesitant to have sex even before they hear about the escaped Serial Killer,
  • The characters immediately pay attention to the news about the escaped serial killer and immediately assume the weird noises outside their cabin to be said serial killer,
  • The characters immediately call the police through their charged cell phones, the call immediately gets through and the cops (who don't dismiss the characters) tell them they will be there in a few minutes,
  • The characters stick together and immediately go to a defensible part of the cabin, arm themselves, and stand back to back keeping an eye on all entry points while they wait for the cops.
  • In a minor (and more comedic) example, Abed doesn't adds the news broadcast the very second the characters turn on the radio and plays music for a little while because he wishes to avoid such Contrived Coincidence.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In Britta's narration:
  Radio announcer: ... an escaped convict from the asylum has escaped...
• Digging Yourself Deeper: In attempting to persuade everyone that there could be a psychopathic individual in the study group, Britta's graphic description of what could happen if they were allowed to go unidentified and untreated only serves to freak everyone out and convince them — and herself — that she's the psychopath in question.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Mentioned in Annie's story where she is thrown off her horse and Jeff had to save her from the vile creatures of the woods.
• Dramatic Unmask: Britta removing her Brown Bag Mask.
• Dumbass Has a Point: When Britta is revealing her motives for the Halloween stories, Pierce points out that if one of them was a murderous psychopath, in over two years of friendship and hanging out they'd have probably picked up on something before now.
• Dying Alone: A complicated example in Britta's story. The killer in it murdered Britta alone while the other main characters were killed in pairs (Troy and Abed, Annie and Shirley, Jeff and Pierce), but turns out Britta (or at least her Evil Twin) is also the killer.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Deconstructed with Abed's story. From what he says afterwards, he seems to think that "earning" it would be the characters following a number of logical steps not to get killed by the book. Annie fires back disgust at not seeing the characters actually having any obstacles to fight off to go along with the logical decisions.
• Epic Fail:
  • The group refers to this as "Britta." It doesn't help that she graded the tests upside down, failed to notice even after double checking, and set the whole episode's plot in motion because of the misunderstanding.
  • Troy invokes this after Shirley's Author Tract story.
    "You ruined a Britta party. That's like letting poop spoil."
• Even Better Sequel: In-universe. Troy expresses this opinion for Super Monkey Ball 2 right before being attacked in Britta's story.
• Evil Gloating: Lampshaded in Jeff's story when Jeff asks Evil Chang to explain himself.
  Jeff: Wait. Before you do anything, tell us why you kill people.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Annie when she turns into a werewolf. She also gets Supernatural Gold Eyes.
• Evil Twin: Britta is the killer in her own story. The Reveal didn't happen until after she killed a version of Britta who wore glasses.
• Fate Worse than Death: In Shirley's story, the cool hedonists are chainsawed into pieces by Devil-Dean, only for him to put them back together and chainsaw them into pieces again, forever.
• Flaming Devil: The Dean in Shirley's story.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Troy and Abed reveal that they were already in their Inspector Spacetime and Constable Reggie costumes when Britta called to invite them to her Halloween Party. Chances are, they were dressed this way because they were playing in the Dreamatorium, which will be revealed in two episodes and which they spend a lot of time over the season rendering imaginated dreamscapes.
  • Annie's story involves her trying to change Jeff for the better (with the subtext of him becoming a more suitable romantic partner for her), only for it all to go south when he reverts to his old ways. In "Virtual Systems Analysis" later in the season, she ends up admitting to herself and Abed that she keeps trying to push Jeff into fitting various roles he's possibly not suited for because she's "in love with the idea of being loved" and afraid of being lonely.
  • The murderer in Jeff's story is played by Chang. "The First Chang Dynasty" has Chang trying to murder the study group.
  • All of the stories are varying degrees of horrific and violent... except for Abed's, who never puts either of his characters in any danger. This foreshadows that he's the one person in the group without psychopathic tendencies.
• Framing Device: The results for the tests Britta had the group fill out a couple episodes ago have come back, and someone is potentially homicidally insane. Britta feels the best way to detect who it could be is to tell scary stories and observe the results.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: If you look at the tests at the end you'll see that Pierce's test has all but two answers that indicate he's a psychopath. This is in keeping with him being the most villainous member of the group.
• Frying Pan of Doom: In Troy's story, he and Abed use one to whack Pierce via telekinesis.
• Funny Background Event: This episode takes it to a whole different level. After two previous episodes had characters saying Beetlejuice Annie said it a third time here. Sure enough, Beetlejuice himself walks by in the background right after.
• Fur Against Fang: Annie's story — after her Author Avatar fails to reform Jeff's vampire character, she reveals she's a werewolf and eats him alive.
• Gag Penis: Pierce has one in his story. There are two hits when he unzips his pants, one is when it hits the floor, the other is when he uses it to knock Troy's character to the ground.
• Gangsta Style: Abed and Troy hold their guns this way in Pierce's story.
• Genre Savvy: Parodied and deconstructed; Abed objects to the Genre Blindness displayed by the characters in Britta's story, explaining that character's making decisions the audience never would makes us lose sympathy for them. His innate Genre Savviness leads him to construct a perfectly logical horror story where the protagonists avoid every single cliché, mistake and convention present in the genre ... even the ones necessary for telling a story (up to and including not even bothering to show the killer). This almost completely robs his story of suspense, tension and horror and just serves to bore and irritate his audience.
  Annie: Ugh! Do these people ever die or what?!
  Abed: ["Spooky" voice] Eventually ... once it had been ... earrrrrrrrned!!
• Genre Roulette: The study group's stories all parody slightly different subgenres of horror fiction. Abed's story is a Slasher Movie (with a streak of meta-commentary in the vein of Scream), Annie's story is a Paranormal Romance story in the vein of Anne Rice or Stephenie Meyer, Troy's story is a Cronenbergian sci-fi horror story, and Shirley's story is a Religious Horror story with the same premise as Left Behind.
• Glurge: Invoked in-universe; Shirley's tale is a perfect, Jack Chick-like mix of treacly moralizing and horrendous damnation, and most find it annoying rather than scary or uplifting.
• Gorn: Annie doesn't spare any details about Vampire!Jeff's rather gruesome fate.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Shirley's Improvised Weapon.
• Group Hug: Jeff's story ends with one, even including hook-handed killer Chang.
• Halloween Episode: With all of the standards, including disguises, special titles, and being a Formula-Breaking Episode.
• The Hedonist: In Shirley's story, she depicts the other six members of the group as such.
• Held Gaze: The vampire and the schoolteacher is Annie's horror story when he enters carrying her and they're both staring at each other, referencing the "googly eyes" phenomenon between Jeff and Annie in real life.
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue: All of the stories play with this to some degree:
  • Pierce makes himself an irresistible sex-stud with a full head of hair capable of beating up gangbangers with his Gag Penis.
  • Shirley makes herself a angelic messiah-figure who nobly forgives her friends their sins before being raptured into Heaven) really go to town with it. Her story contains a particularly lame attempt to pretend this isn't the case:
  Britta: Thank you for saving us, Shirley! I mean, your name's not Shirley, this is a story about strangers!
  • Britta isn't as aggressive about this, but her Author Avatar is much more sensible than Jeff and takes the opportunity to gloat about her survival.
  • Abed makes himself hyper-competent and rational to the point that it ruins his story. Though he also does this to Britta's stand-in.
  • Annie makes herself a sweetheart who teaches Vampire Jeff to read and reforms him but can also brutally murder him when he betrays her.
  • Troy's stand-in outsmarts a Mad Scientist, gains superpowers, and plays out an involved revenge fantasy against Pierce that he shares with his best friend Abed.
  • Jeff's stand-in stops a murderous Chang and saves all his friends with a powerful speech.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Pierce in Troy's story. His Mad Scientist self sews Troy and Abed together, but ends up being experimented on himself. But it's subverted in that he actually enjoys what they've done to him...
• Hollywood Psych: While sociopathy is certainly not a condition to take lightly, it doesn't automatically mean that one is predisposed to homicidal behavior, as there are multiple factors that affect one's propensity for violence. Then again, it is Britta interpreting the results, which, as it turns out, she didn't process correctly in the first place.
• Hook Thing Where His Hand Should Be: The killer in Britta and Jeff's stories features one.
• Hourglass Plot: Troy's story has Pierce swap power positions with Troy/Abed.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • During the stand-off at the end, Annie can be heard yelling, "Stay back, psychos, or I'll slit your throats and bathe in your blood!"
  • Jeff doesn't know which of The Fast and the Furious guys he's dressed as because "I don't watch that shallow crap. I just pick a costume girls'll like."
  • As Jeff explains that he isn't a sociopath, he actually displays several traits of sociopathy such as remorselessness, egocentricity and amorality. See the Fridge Brilliance page for more details.
  • Shirley's self-description of herself (via her perfecter-than-perfect Author Avatar) as a human embodiment of forgiveness, compassion and mercy is undercut when she blissfully abandons her friends to get horribly tortured for all eternity, thus hinting at the vindictive streak lurking underneath her self-righteousness.
  • Although Abed calls Britta out for the lack of realism and logic in her story, his own ended up being even worse in that regard.
  • After Pierce tells his story, Annie worries that the stories were getting personal. However, she used her story to vent her frustrations regarding her relationship with Jeff and even includes a jab at Britta.
• I Am a Monster: Jeff in Annie's story.
• Idiot Ball: Abed's story is devoted to defying this completely.
• Improvised Weapon: Despite being in a college library, most of the study group can come up with a weapon at a moments notice. Shirley wields a broken bottle, Pierce a fire extinguisher, Annie a pair of scissors, Troy uses pencils for Wolverine Claws and Abed becomes the Chairman of the Brawl. Averted by Britta, who wields a Sinister Switchblade.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure:
  • Shirley seems to think that you can snort marijuana and that NPR is a music station on which partying kids would be listening to Death Metal.
  • Also, Britta seems to think that War and Peace is actually called Warren Piece.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: in Shirley's story.
  Hedonist leader (Jeff): Oh man! End of days! Could anything suck harder than this!
  Devil!Dean appears
• Instant Sedation: Spoofed in Troy's story when Troy and Abed go out in no time.
• I Told You So: In Britta's story, "Britta" feels the need to point this out to "Jeff". While he's being stabbed to death by a serial killer.
• Jaw Drop: Britta's response to Pierce's story is slack-jawed, horrified astonishment.
  Jeff: What ... in the hell ... was that.
• Jive Turkey: Troy and Abed in Pierce's story.
• Kavorka Man: Pierce hooks up with all three female leads in his story.
• The Killer in Me: The ending to Britta's story. Even the real Britta didn't see it coming.
• Kubrick Stare: Jeff in Annie's story after declaring I Am a Monster.
• Lingerie Scene: The female characters in Pierce's story (see page image).
• Little "No": Abed in his own story, when Britta asks him if he would like to kiss her again.
• Mad Scientist: Pierce in Troy's story.
• Messianic Archetype: Parodied by Shirley's story, in which Shirley — "I mean, your name's not Shirley, this is a story about strangers." — shows up in a heavenly cloud to defeat Satan!Dean Pelton with a single breath before nobly forgiving her friends for "making fun of her Christianity." And then she gets raptured ... conveniently leaving her friends there to get tortured by Satan.
• Mind over Matter: In Troy's story, getting sewn together gives you this power.
• Mood Whiplash: In-universe, Annie instantly switches from dramatically describing the death of a vampire in horrifically precise gory detail to innocently chirping "See? There was a twist!"
• More Deadly Than the Male: Both of Britta's stories, as well as Annie's and Shirley's have fatalities. Troy's and Pierce's stories have mutilations and beatings, respectively, but nobody gets flat-out killed. Abed's and Jeff's stories lack any violence. This ends up carrying to the real-life confrontation in the study room; the men (sans Jeff) have impractical, improvised weapons while the women are armed with deadlier ones.
• Ms. Fanservice: The female characters all provided Fanservice this episode. In Pierce's story they're all in a Lingerie Scene, while in Annie's own story both she and Britta are wearing corsets with Annie also sporting an Impossibly-Low Neckline.
• Mugging the Monster: Vampire!Jeff in Annie's story.
• Mundane Utility: Troy and Abed use their kinetic powers to fix themselves a sandwich.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Subtly done in the final confrontation, when everyone is paranoid that everyone else could be a serial killing sociopath and arms themselves. It also subverts Women Are Wiser; the boys chose weapons which are clearly either just the first things at hand, defensive in nature (a chair for Abed) or less-than-lethal (a fire-extinguisher for Pierce and a bunch of sharp pencils held like Wolverine's adamantium claws for Troy) suggesting that they're not aiming to kill, while Jeff himself doesn't go for a weapon and tries to talk the situation down. The girls, however, appear to have either brought with them and look frighteningly adept at using a variety of lethally-sharp stabbing implements; Shirley smashes a bottle, Annie threateningly brandishes a pair of sharp-looking scissors, while Britta is armed with what appears to be a Bowie knife, implying that they're ready to go straight to lethal force if necessary. This also counts as More Deadly Than the Male.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Annie is quite happy in describing her gory ending, to the entire group's shock. Annie having the most psychopathic tendencies of anyone actually tracks with the rest of the series, if you consider that she's likely the Ass-Crack Bandit.
• Noodle Incident: Judging from Jeff's reaction when Britta comes to him with her problem, apparently Britta dropped her psych tests in a puddle at one point, and presumably called on Jeff to help her fix them up.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Abed tries to invoke this in his story, which ends with himself and Britta standing back-to-back in the middle of a room with knives, waiting for either a serial killer or the cops. Instead, everyone is disappointed, with Annie asking of the serial killer ever actually appears.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Annie and Britta in the former's story.
• Only Sane Man:
  • When Britta runs the test sheets again, apparently only one member of the group isn't violently insane, and it's Abed.
  • Jeff might be sane, as he randomly filled out the test. But then again, considering the rest of the season as a whole is largely devoted to how screwed up he is, it's unlikely.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Annie is a vampire eating one in her story.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Of a sort; Britta is trying to psychoanalyze her friends secretly to determine which one of them may be a psychopath, but almost everything she says on the subject sounds like she's quoting it verbatim from a psychology textbook chapter on how to analyse your friends secretly. Probably the only reason they don't suspect what's up is that she tends to overanalyse them anyway.
• Person as Verb: Becomes a Running Gag that's taken up to eleven at the end.
  • "You Britta'd."
    Jeff: You probably just Britta'd it.
    Britta: Are people using my name to mean "make a small mistake"?
    Long pause
    Jeff: Yes.
  • "Pulling an Abed" (to be meta)
    Jeff: Wow, you Britta'd Britta'd.
    Abed: Yeah, way to pull an Abed.
  • "To Pierce" (for cases of Comically Missing the Point)
    Shirley: I don't get it.
    Jeff: Shirley, don't Pierce.
    Pierce: I don't get it!
  • "To Shirley" (to protest/to lecture at): After the gang leaves the study room, Jeff and Shirley start arguing. Most of it is hard to hear, but Jeff distinctly says "Well, now you're Shirleying" at the end.
• Police Are Useless: Defied in Abed's story. The moment Story!Abed calls with his cell phone, the call is picked up and officers are sent immediately. He ends his story with the "victims" waiting for the cops while armed and standing back-to-back in a defensible part of the cabin, just in case.
• Psychic Powers: Abed and Troy obtain Mind over Matter powers from being stitched together on Troy's story.
• Psycho Psychologist: Discussed; when beginning to worry that Britta might be the potential serial killer, Abed notes that manipulating a group of people to tell horror stories in order to secretly analyse them is the kind of thing that a Psycho Psychologist would do.
• Punny Name: Warren Piece.
• Purple Prose: Annie's story is dripping with it.
  "Stifle your slackened maw, you drained and tainted bitch dog!"
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Dean Pelton is portrayed as the devil incarnate in Shirley's story. He's wearing a Little Black Dress with red accents.
• Rescue Equipment Attack: After it's revealed that there's a closeted sociopath in the study group, the lights flicker off, allowing all of them to quickly improvise a weapon to defend themselves. Pierce ends up with a fire extinguisher, and when the lights come back on, he points the nozzle at the others menacingly and bellows "You don't want to be Barium Sulfated!".
• Revenge via Storytelling: Many of the stories had jabs directed towards other members of the group. Britta's story portrays Jeff as a bastard boyfriend. Annie's story outright calls Britta (her romantic rival) a slut. Pierce believes Troy's story about a Mad Scientist who kidnaps two fighter pilots is about him. In response, he tells a story where heavily stereotyped versions of Troy and Abed try to rob him and get handily defeated. Shirley's story has the rest of the gang getting left behind during the end of days in retaliation for them making fun of her Christian beliefs.
• Rotten Rock & Roll: In Shirley's story, the group dances to rock music. One more nail in their coffins.
• Rule of Cool: In Troy's story, he and Abed gain multiple Psychic Powers after being sewn together. Why? Probably because of this.
• Running Gag: Yet another appearance of the show's own Affectionate Parody of a certain wildly popular British sci-fi franchise occurs in this episode when Abed and Troy show up to the pre-party dressed as Inspector Spacetime and Constable Wigglesworth.
  Britta: I told you guys, you didn't have to dress up.
  Troy: We know. We were wearing this anyway.
  Abed: Yeah, when we're dressed up, you'll know.
• Screaming Woman: Annie in Jeff's story when Evil Chang appears.
• Sex Signals Death: Defied in Abed's story. He shuts down Britta's attempt to kindle romance to avoid dropping their guard.
• Ship Tease: Britta/Jeff in Britta's story, Abed/Britta in Abed's story, Annie/Jeff in Annie's story.
• Shout-Out:
  • Annie and Shirley's stories appear to have been a little influenced by The Twilight Saga and Left Behind respectively. Britta's story is a version of the popular "hookman" urban legend. Troy's story is reminiscent of The Human Centipede.
  • The final story about how the sack-masked anonymous killer would slay the study group references Triangle, especially with The Reveal.
  • When the group turns on each other after the lights go out, Troy has Wolverine claws made out of pencils.
  • In Shirley's story, Annie is dressed like Velma from Scooby-Doo.
  • Jeff is dressed as "one of the Fast and Furious guys", not answering which when Abed asks because he hasn't seen the movies and only did it because it's "cool". Indeed, his costume is a nonspecific mix of Brian and Dom's outfits.
• Special Edition Title: The Halloween version used last season is back, now accompanying Jim Rash (Dean Pelton)'s credit with a drawing of a man in an electric chair.
• Stylistic Suck: Each story is deliberately and humorously subpar in a different way depending on who's telling it:
  • Britta's first story jumbles details and is told in a rushed, awkward fashion as would be told by someone who isn't really that good at telling stories half-remembering something — additionally, the scant characterization is influenced by her Straw Feminist-esque views on intergender relationships (the man is horny and idiotic, while the woman is sensible and proven ultimately correct);
  • Abed's story is overly logical and lacks emotional resonance, more concerned with filling plot-holes and avoiding clichés, tropes, unrealistic actions, Genre Blindness and Contrived Coincidences than actually trying to engage the audience;
  • Annie's story is melodramatic and filled with overblown dialogue and Purple Prose;
  • Troy's story over-relies on Rule of Cool at the expense of making sense and all the characters — no matter who they are — talk like he (and Abed) would;
  • Pierce's story is sexist, racist, filled with Totally Radical attempts to remain relevant and portrays himself as an overpowered sex-god, while also completely missing the point of what a scary Halloween story is supposed to be in the first place;
  • Shirley's story is a poorly researched bad Christian P.S.A. version of a horror story which turns Shirley herself into a self-righteous but still perfect and angelic Messiah figure who saves the day with a Deus ex Machina before delivering a poorly-disguised sermon to her friends.
  • Subverted with Britta's final attempt at a story, which — from what we see — is actually good ... a little too good, since the fact that Britta is capable of effectively creating a violent, murderous narrative on the spot utterly freaks out her friends and makes them suspect that she might be the potential serial killer.
  • Downplayed with Jeff's story since it's rather short, but he still doesn't bother to construct a proper narrative and just skips to the end where everything easily resolves itself.
• Super Sex Organs: In Pierce's story, his penis is capable of giving people uppercuts.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Abed's story is full of this about a couple ending up facing a potential serial killer on vacation:
  • A radio wouldn't have a Coincidental Broadcast. In fact, music would likely be playing first. Pierce stops Abed from singing the whole song and asks him to cut ahead.
  • The serial killer was able to escape from an asylum due to budget cuts hitting the security detail.
  • The police do respond to a potential emergency but need time to arrive at a remote cabin. Abed advises Britta to grab a knife, and they stand in the middle of the room, waiting.
• Terror at Make-Out Point:
  • The setting of Britta's story.
  • Averted in Abed's story. He explains that it's no longer The '50s, so it makes sense to rent a cabin rather than park at a make-out point.
• Too Dumb to Live: Jeff in Britta's story. Abed calls Britta out on it while telling his own story.
• Totally Radical: The characters in Shirley's story have a bit of this going on:
  "Annie": Yo, Jango! Check it out!
• Twist Ending: Annie is particularly proud that her story has one.
• Uncertain Doom: Lampshaded in Abed's story where the couple is left waiting for either the serial killer or the police to find them first. No one is impressed in the real world.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: How Jeff is portrayed in Annie's story.
• Vignette Episode: Consisting of six short stories.
• Villainous Gold Tooth: The story Pierce tells involves a racist reimagining of Troy and Abed as gangbanging home invaders. This version of Troy has a gold tooth.
• Voluntary Vampire Victim: In Annie's story Britta is Vampire Jeff's casual blood donor. He keeps her in a closet for when his Horror Hunger comes. She looks all pale and covered in bite wounds. But she claims she is fine with that treatment.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After making heavy importance of the fact there is an escaped serial killer in his story (to the point that the characters immediately go to high alert, call the police, arm themselves, and maintain said readiness until the cops arrive), Abed finishes his story without having his protagonists encountering him. Immediately pointed out by Annie ("do these people ever die or what?").
• Wild Teen Party: In Shirley's story.
• Wolverine Claws: Troy's Improvised Weapon, wooden pencils held between his fingers.
• Women Are Wiser:
  • Parodied; in her story, Britta's Author Avatar feels the need to point out that she was right about the situation to Jeff while he's being stabbed to death by a psycho with a hook for a hand.
  • Subverted in the final confrontation; as noted in Murder Is the Best Solution, the boys all pick weapons which are defensive, less-than-lethal and clearly the first things at hand (while Jeff himself tries to talk the situation down), whereas the girls are all either already heavily armed to begin with or pick weapons that are clearly lethal in intent, suggesting they're ready to go straight to lethal force.
• Write Who You Know: In-universe, perpetrated by everyone for increasingly petty reasons.
• You Do NOT Want To Know:
  • When it's revealed that all but one member of the study group is, according to their psych profiles, completely insane, they collectively decide it's better that they can keep ahold of the comforting delusion that any one of them may be sane rather than knowing who is or isn't. Turns out it's Abed.
  • To be fair, it's technically possible that Jeff is also sane — he states that he filled in his evaluation randomly, so the results of it are presumably inaccurate. Most of the rest of the series, however, would seem to suggest that even with this considered, he's still probably not as sane as he would like to think...

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