Mac and Dennis come up with a new business venture to combat high inflation, which Frank invests in to the dismay of Charlie. Meanwhile, Dee gets evicted after her rent goes up.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Body Horror: Mac has an allergic reaction to the economy sized “fancy” nuts he’s eating throughout the episode that turns him into this. At first his lips become swollen, and at the end of the episode the entire right side of his face is horrendously swollen and he is incomprehensible. He keeps insisting it is from the plastic furniture he is blowing up, when it is clear to everyone else it's a nut allergy.
- Comically Small Bribe: Charlie manages to convince Frank to return everything to the status quo (including sealing up the previously hidden rooms in their apartment), by giving him TMNT pies that are over thirty years old and are clearly no longer edible.
- Double-Meaning Title: "The Gang Inflates", as in they deal with the economic concept of inflation; but Mac and Dennis also inflate and try to sell inflatable furniture, and Mac's face gets swollen due to a peanut allergy. Charlie's apartment is also revealed to have extra rooms, thus becoming more spacious, like inflation.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even Frank, who actively enjoys living in squalor with Charlie, finds it bizarre that Charlie has known there was a working toilet in his apartment the whole time but deliberately avoided using it.Frank: We piss in cans Charlie!
- Failed a Spot Check: It's taken this long for the Gang to realize that Charlie has an entire second room to his apartment and never needed to be stuck in the same one as Frank. Likewise, it's only now Frank realizes the "closet" has a toilet.
- Forgot Flanders Could Do That: Frank gives a perfectly accurate summary of inflation, its causes in the classical economic model, and why the United States's current monetary policy is to raise the interest rate. He may currently live in filth, hang out under bridges, and be more crooked than a corkscrew, but Frank made his millions through actual business acumen.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: None of the Gang, except possibly Charlie, care that Dee is getting evicted and hang up on her when she calls for help.
- I Reject Your Reality: Mac refuses to accept he has a nut allergy even as his face puffs up majorly.
- Indestructible Edible: Subverted. The promotional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) snack pies that Charlie buys have long-since gone stale. Charlie takes a bite out of one during his negotiation with Frank and almost immediately begins fighting to not vomit it up.
- Insane Troll Logic: Charlie kept the actual bedroom because he likes the current arrangement of his apartment, believing that it takes a mile just to simply walk to the front door from the bedroom and suggests getting a butler or intercom at one point, and refusing to use the actual toilet because it makes "weird" noises from flushing it, despite the fact that it is the way it functions.
- Insult Backfire: Charlie calls Frank a predator for taking advantage of Mac and Dennis. Frank agrees with this appraisal.Charlie: It wasn't meant to be a compliment, Frank!
- Lazy Bum: One of the reasons why Charlie isn’t big on Frank staying in the bedroom behind him is because of the additional walking distance, which he equates to a mile when the rest of gang visit separately when it’s really just ten steps.
- Money Dumb: The episode starts with the reveal that, in their effort to save money, Mac and Dennis basically spent $19,500 on a couch they didn't even own, it taking Frank pointing it out to them that they were basically being suckered. He then has to explain to them what inflation is before he scams them by claiming that 50-cents is somehow worth more than a dollar.
- Pet the Dog: In contrast to the last two or so seasons where Dennis appeared to be repulsed by Mac and has even stated that he hates him, in this episode he’s openly concerned about Mac's nut allergy and keeps nagging him to stop eating the nuts and go to the hospital, which he says he’s going to do at the end of the episode once it’s gotten so bad Mac's face is half swollen and he’s incomprehensible. He is even show sleeping in the same inflatable sofa bed as Mac and checks his pulse while he’s sleeping and is actually relieved he’s alive.
- Precision F-Strike: Frank after discovering Charlie was hiding a second bedroom in his apartment, less than a minute after finding out Charlie also had a working bathroom.
- Protest by Obstruction: Dee spends most of the episode trying to prevent people from kicking her out of whatever apartment she's currently living in, starting with her own when Frank evicts her after having bought her entire apartment building and raising the rent too much for her to be able to afford it, by supergluing one of her hands onto a door or a wall, claiming it's the latest method of protest.
- The Reveal: The blocked doors in Charlie and Frank's apartment actually lead to a bathroom and an entire separate room. Charlie has known this the entire time and kept it secret from Frank because he prefers their current arrangement.
- Status Quo Is God: Invoked by Charlie, who agrees to exchange his pies to Frank in return for Frank restoring everything to the status quo.
- Tempting Fate: Frank tells Dee to relax because tenants never shoot. The tenant immediately shoots at them.
- Too Dumb to Live: After having inflation explained to him by Frank and being told "a dollar isn't worth a dollar anymore", Mac jumps at the chance to buy a $1 bill from him for five dollars. (Dennis meanwhile observes the exchange and presumably sees nothing amiss.)
