On a Friday night, not wanting to join an extremely competitive game night with Kevin and Gretel, Fred instead has to help Hiromi with an interview for the school paper, as the two overhear Principal Funderberk talking with a suspicious-looking scientist about some evil scheme, stored inside a crate left in the gym. Hiromi and Fred go investigate and discover animatronics based around their school's mascot, the Eastside Plumber. The robots get accidentally activated and terrorize the school.
Tropes:
- A Day in the Limelight: For Hiromi and Fred.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The camera flash of Hiromi's phone turns the robots hostile. This was a bug in the system.
- Fictional Board Game: The board game that Kevin and Gretel play is made by the Grant-Gomezes themselves. The board itself has a big Cloneopoly vibe to it.
- Fun with Acronyms: The term "evil scheme" that Principal Funderberk was talking about and that was printed on the crate turns out to be an acronym: Eastern Valley Intramural League Sparring Contest of High School Electronic Mascots. It would be downright Shoehorned Acronym territory for not including the S from School on top of the E being a typo that was included in the acronym anyway, if it weren't an unfortunate coincidence.
- Game Night Fight: Not quite there, but the Grant-Gomezes get extremely competitive during Game Night, and arguments tend to happen.
- Hostile Animatronics: The mascot robots become this with the flash of a camera.
- Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: Hiromi and Fred overhear Funderberk conversing with an evil-looking scientist about an evil scheme, and discover robots that go hostile. Turns out the "evil scheme" was the acronym for a robotic battle competition that the school's engineering club qualified for, the scientist guy is a new physics teacher that was troubleshooting since they discovered a glitch, which also explains why the robots went hostile.
