S.A.R.A.H.: Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house - that is, all through me - not a creature was stirring, except Sheriff Carter and Dr. Blake.
It's Christmas in Eureka again, and everyone goes through several art styles.
Tropes
- Animated Episode: The episode sees the town transformed into several different animation styles.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Lampshaded by narrator SARAH, who admits the viewer has very little reason to believe this fantastic tale of a town becoming animated. But then, they did hear the story from a talking house. Soooooo...
- Art Shift: A rare live action example, as the episode switches between live action, computer-generated, cartoon, Stop Motion claymation, and anime.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Polar Bear!Taggart is easily distracted by food. He also seems completely unconcerned at having transformed into a polar bear.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Carl the Jeep agrees to help Allison, because she said "please."
- Blatant Lies: When Jo saves Carter and Andy from plummeting to their deaths by using her skirt as a parachute, she asks them if they're looking up her dress. They both say "Nooooo!" while clearly doing just that.
- Butt-Monkey: Carter gets clobbered by cymbals and a boxing glove from Andy's chest compartment.
- Call-Back: Carl the Jeep reminds Carter of all the ways his jeep has been destroyed.
- Camera Abuse: Vincent walks into the camera and asks who left that there.
- Christmas Episode: Obviously.
- Innocuously Important Episode: While being a funny Christmas episode involving characters becoming rendered as cartoons or anime characters, this episode also introduces the Photon Generator, which will play an important role in season 5.
- Motor Mouth: Cartoon Henry who's a toy that needs to be wound up to speak.
- Running Gag: Discussed and Averted. Carl the Jeep calls Carter out for the abuse he suffers working for him, but aside from a little antifreeze leakage he comes through the episode intact. Played With when the team need a power source, and Allison seems to be about to harvest his battery, but instead she retrieves the battery she found for one of Jenna's presents and uses that.
- Shout-Out:
- Andy asks Carter why he looks like Dudley Do-Right.
- Carter tells Andy he looks like the Tin Man. Later, Fargo gets slammed into the forcefield and says, "I'm melting! What a world."
- Andy resembles Bender at one point, and is tooled up like Inspector Gadget.
- Animated!Jo strongly resembles Snow White. She's followed around by bluebirds like the Disney version, and refers to herself as Jo White.
- When the control panel taunts Fargo by becoming one Big Red Button that spawns more, one catches his attention in particular.
Fargo: My precious. One button to rule them all.- Fargo calls Henry "Woody."
- When Fargo tries to short out the forcefield by throwing a snowball at it, he says, "We're gonna need a bigger snowball."
- When he has to go deal with the mega snow ninja, Carter says, "The Iceman Cometh."
- The mega snow ninja is a homage to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
- Animation styles are briefly used from The Simpsons, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
- During the anime section, Carl the Jeep resembles Kitt.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Carter's Jeep, who becomes a sentient cartoon car called Carl and tells Carter off for all the terrible things that happen to him.Carl the Jeep: I'm just an object to you, a tool to use and abuse, four wheels and a chassis! Look at me when I'm talkin' to you! Day in, day out... [To his repair crew] Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. [Back to Carter] I give you my all, and what do I get in return? Firebombed, flattened, melted, blown up, shot into space, and now this. Enough!
Carter: Okay. Hang on, uh... Jeepy.
Carl the Jeep: No, YOU hang on! You're not the boss of me anymore. You're on your own. And my name is Carl! - Title Drop: As well as the song appearing as background music, several characters ask each other of they're seeing the same thing.
- Took a Level in Badass: Everyone, when Kevin helps them defeat the mega snow ninja by using the anime setting.
- Toon Physics: When the world is in cartoon style.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: A few things coincide to turn the town of Eureka into a cartoon.
- Carter conspired with Andy and Vincent to make Allison's Christmas by using the Super Photon Generator to make it snow.
- While Carter and Allison are out, Kevin and Zoe keep Jenna entertained by opening one of her presents, a holo-storybook that crosses signals with the Super Photon Generator and makes whatever they do with the storybook happen outside. Including snow ninjas.
- What Does This Button Do?: Fargo's tendency to press buttons is mocked when a control panel is replaced with a single Big Red Button that calls to him to press it, then spawns others that all tell him to press them.
- X-Ray Sparks: Fargo gets this after crashing into the forcefield.
