"What if we just kick back and remember some of the good old days?"
—Mac
The gang decides to reminisce about the good old days while waiting for their phones to update, but end up altering reality through their misremembering of past events.
This episode provides example of the following tropes:
- The Alcoholic: When Charlie imagines having a baby with the Waitress, she dumps it on him in order to go and get drunk.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: The gang are distracted from Dennis's Inception spinning top test when their phones finish updating, meaning they never find out for sure whether they're back in reality or still in someone's head.
- *Bleep*-dammit!: The flashback to the Christmas Episode censors the word "retarded" but not Charlie's subsequent Cluster F-Bomb. Justified as the former word is a slur and the cast has expressed regret over its casual use in earlier seasons of the show.
- Call-Back:
- Dee starts doing some of her "characters".
- The doctor from Dennis's fantasy in "The Gang Saves the Day" shows up.
- Clip Show: Starts out as a straight example, with clips from previous episodes being shown as the gang reminisce about the good old days, but takes a turn for the truly bizarre around the halfway point.
- Close-Enough Timeline: Discussed at one point when the gang are unsure if they're back in reality due to the cut on Dee's head disappearing; Mac asks whether it would matter if such a small detail was the only difference.
- Cock Fight: Charlie gets into one with himself while stuck in his fantasy about having a baby with the waitress.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Clips from several previous episodes are played during the gang's flashbacks, including "A Very Sunny Christmas", "Who Pooped the Bed?", "The Gang Spies Like U.S.", "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire", "The Gang Gives Back", "The Gang Goes on Family Fight", "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis", "Frank's Pretty Woman", "The Gang Buys a Boat", "Hundred Dollar Baby", "The Gang Wrestles For the Troops", "Who Got Dee Pregnant?", "The Gang Sells Out", "The Gang Runs for Office", "Mac and Charlie Die", "The High School Reunion", Dennis' Double Life", "The Nighman Cometh", "Mac and Dennis Buy a Timeshare", "Flowers for Charlie", "Dee Made a Smut Film", "Charlie Kelly: King of the Rats" and "Sweet Dee Gets Audited".
- Continuity Nod:
- Charlie imagines himself speaking Mandarin in one memory due to the time he took a "magic pill".
- Charlie pictures how life might have been if he'd actually had a baby with the Waitress.
- Dennis mentions Mac's dildo bike.
- Everyone Has Standards: The rest of the gang are quick to call Dee out on her racist "characters".
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Charlie calls Mac "the most annoying person in the world", a statement with which the rest of the gang seem to agree.
- Hypocritical Humor: Charlie gets into an argument with his double over which one of them has the high-pitched voice.
- Impostor-Exposing Test: Dennis uses this in order to figure out whose memory they're currently in, asking each member of the gang some basic questions to gauge how well their replies fit with reality.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Used after Charlie tries to change reality by "remembering" himself having a baby with the Waitress.Mac: It's not like he can change reality, right?Waitress: (entering with a baby) Charlie, give me a hand with this kid, would you?! Its diaper smells like a homeless man took a dump in it.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall
- When Mac suggests the gang reminisce about old times while they wait for their phone to update, Dennis says people only do that when they're getting old and running out of ideas.
- When Dee tries to bring back her racist caricatures, Dennis states that they don't find such things funny anymore; the show's creators have recently expressed regret over some of the offensive material used in their earlier episodes (indeed, this episode bleeps out the word "retarded" in one of the clips from "A Very Sunny Christmas", whereas it was uncensored in the original).
- Mac suggests that the gang remember some of their "classic" moments, right before a montage of some of the series' most iconic scenes plays.
- Noodle Incident: Dennis mentions that the gang once tried to do their own spin on the infamous "contest" from Seinfeld, with the twist being that the winner was whoever could masturbate for the longest. Only the aftermath of this is shown, with the entire gang hospitalized.
- Only Sane Man: Dennis repeatedly calls out the others for misremembering past events and warns them of the dangers of changing their realities.
- Pet the Dog: Dennis's fantasy might not have Mac as a roommate, but it disappears the cut on Dee's head.
- Real Time: It's mentioned at the start of the episode that it'll take about thirty minutes for the gang's phones to update, which is roughly the length of a Sunny episode with ad breaks featured in.
- Sarcasm Mode: After Mac asks Dennis why he doesn't want to be roommates, Dennis responds that he just loves having a roommate who spends three hours a day on a dildo bike.
- Self-Serving Memory: Used liberally, with the gang all misremembering certain events in order to better suit their own agendas. For instance, Frank pictures himself with long legs and a full head of hair, while Mac is convinced he moved to North Dakota with Dennis.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the "flashbacks" is just the gang picturing themselves recreating "The Contest" episode of Seinfeld, with Dee as Elaine, Charlie as Kramer, Frank as George and Mac and Dennis sharing the role of Jerry.
- Dennis uses the spinning top test from Inception at the end of the episode in order to determine whether they're back in the real world. And just like in the movie, we never see if it falls before the episode ends.
- Spotting the Thread: Dennis is able to determine that they're all in Frank's memory due to him suddenly having a full head of hair. He falls victim to this himself later on, when the others realize they must be in Dennis's mind due to Mac not being his roommate. note
- Values Dissonance: Invoked by the Gang, who lambast Dee for trying to remember Taiwan Tammy, an offensive Asian Speekee Engrish character she invented way back in season three.Dennis: We decided that isn't funny anymore as a society.
