The Doctor steps out of the TARDIS to investigate where they've landed this time, only to be shot in the chest almost immediately by an anthropomorphic pig with a blunderbuss. Welcome to the Crooked World.
The Crooked World contains examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Both played straight with the inhabitants of the Crooked World, and horribly subverted with the Doctor, Fitz and Anji.
- Antagonist in Mourning: Jasper, when he accidentally kills Squeak.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Streaky and all of the rest of the animals on the Crooked World. And Angel as well, much to Fitz's chagrin.
- Bizarrchitecture: All of the buildings on the Crooked World are, well, crooked.
- Cartoon Bomb: A rather clingy one that gets passed like a hot potato all over Zanytown before finally exploding in the Masked Weasel's face.
- Deconstruction: The Crooked World is a deconstruction of Looney Tunes-esque cartoons as the Doctor lands in a cartoon world and begins to influence its inhabitants' behaviors towards naturalism.
- Delivery Stork: A fixture on the Crooked World.
- Expy: Almost every inhabitant of the Crooked World is an expy of some cartoon character.
- Friendly Enemy: Most of the supposed enemies on the Crooked World actually enjoy each other's company.
- Harmless Villain: They all start out this way, and most like Dirty Duck and Repugna end up giving up evil for good after the free will revolution gets them thinking about their life choices.
- Magical Security Cam: The Doctor and Fitz are somehow filmed exiting the TARDIS, and even in their hotel room, which is broadcast on the news. Just another law of Toon Physics The Crooked World adopts
- Raised by Wolves: The narrative assures us that although the Delivery Stork dropped the baby she was trying to deliver to Fitz in the jungle, it would of course be raised by friendly wolves.
- This Is Reality: When the citizens of Zanytown stop believing that all the cartoon violence is harmless, and actually start thinking about the consequences of their actions, this becomes inevitable.
- Real Men Get Shot: The Doctor. Of course.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: The cover suggests that the normal characters have been cartoonified, but they never remark on any such thing, suggesting they haven't been, suggesting that they're wandering around the cartoon landscape looking realistic and three-dimensional.
- Shout-Out: Possibly one to the TVM when the Eighth Doctor steps out of the TARDIS and is immediately shot.
- The Television Talks Back:
- Newsreader: The two men were taken away in the ambulance, and were last seen heading towards Zanytown. In a statement issued just now, Boss Dog urged all citizens not to approach them. The uglier of the two men - the thin-faced, mean-looking one - has already punched a pig and is considered to be dangerous.
Fitz: Uglier? Mean looking?
Newsreader: That’s right, buster, I’m talking about you!
- Town with a Dark Secret: Scary Manor holds the secret of the Crooked World, and why it's been trapped in the same patterns for so long. An escape pod holding a young human child crash-landed on the planet untold years ago, and the little girl's garbled descriptions of Saturday morning cartoons affected the planet's low-level Hive Mind, forcing everyone on it into the unvaried routines of the fictional archetypes in question and actually changing the laws of physics.
- Trapped in TV Land: The TARDIS crew are trapped on a cartoon planet populated by thinly-veiled parodies of Scooby-Doo, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Wacky Races, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, and others. The Doctor's interference means that for the behavior of those parodies, the realistic outcome happens.
- Villain Protagonist: The Masked Weasel. He is the alter-ego of Angel Falls' caretaker Mr. Weasley (No, not that one) and is conflicted throughout the novel over his role in the rapidly changing society that he once simply accepted.
- Wacky Racing: In fact, Angel Falls is a transparent Penelope Pitstop expy.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: Averted. The Doctor gets shot with a blunderbuss, and, seeing that the bleeding has already stopped, Fitz decides there's nothing to do except clean him up a bit. However, the Doctor does later attribute his speedy recovery to the fact the buckshot mysteriously dissolved.
- Wife Husbandry: Angel Falls and Mr. Weasley. Incidentally, it does seem a bit strange that he still actively takes the role of her "guardian" even though she's apparently twenty-one, which you would think is old enough to get by fine without an anthropomorphic weasel taking care of her, but what do I know?
