Ed Morris works at a company which produces synthetic humanoids called Jacks and Jills, and the QCs ("quantum consciousness") which give them intelligence and emotions. He is approached by a dying Jill, who wants him to help her steal ten QCs – one to extend her own lifespan, and the rest to sell, with a share going to Ed to start a new life with his wife, Sally.
- Adaptation Title Change: "Crazy Diamond" is based on the short story "Sales Pitch".
- Approval of God: Indirect version. Dick said of his original story "Sales Pitch" that he regretted never putting any twists into it and having it be a simple robot-vs-human plot with an on-the-nose Aesop about pushy salespeople, and asked readers to imagine a better ending for it where the robot and human somehow end up on the same side in the end without it seeming schmaltzy. Sure enough, this adaptation keeps it unclear through the entire story whose side Jill is on — or for that matter whose side Ed is on — and has the most ambiguous "moral" of any episode of this show.
- Artificial Human: Various "chimeras" of various stripes exist: human-sheep, human-pig, and the Jacks and Jills which are "empty shells" piloted by QCs.
- The Caper: With the main character's help Jill and her crew manage to steal 10 QCs.
- Crapsaccharine World: And how. Bears a strong resemblance to the Stepford Smiler suburbia sequences in the works of Tim Burton.
- Double-Meaning Title: The QCs in their glass capsules look a bit like surreal gemstones. However, if you listen to the lyrics of the song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" it's pretty clear they're describing someone like Ed struggling with the Despair Event Horizon (in Real Life, former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett).
- Femme Fatale: The Jill the main character falls for.
- Leitmotif: The Syd Barrett song "Octopus". A diegetic version, since Ed owns The Madcap Laughs on vinyl and listens to it whenever he fantasizes about sailing away from his humdrum life.
- Mole in Charge: It turns out the shadowy figure who hired Jill to rob the facility and pushed her to recruit Ed is, in fact, Ed's boss, the facility's director.
- Mythology Gag: This story is barely related to the original Philip K. Dick story it's based on ("Sales Pitch"), which is a very simple nightmare about a robot salesman that comes into a man's house and refuses to leave until he can sell himself to the man's family. When Jill shows up at Ed's house pretending to be there to sell life insurance to his wife Sally, she offhandedly mentions having a nightmare that resembles the original Dick story.
- Our Spirits Are Different: Quantum Consciousnesses (QCs) are artificially created spirits that provide the spark of individuality and self-awareness to Jacks and Jills. Interestingly, they have a shorter lifespan than the artificial bodies that hold them, and replacing them will not cause a Jack or Jill to reboot their personality.
- Rapid Aging: Although the shells that hold Jacks and Jills last just as long as a real human's and are seemingly indistinguishable from them, the "souls" or QCs have a short shelf-life. As they break down, the Jack or Jill starts to exhibit symptoms disturbingly reminiscent of dementia and degenerative neural disease.
- This is a wider theme of the episode — groceries are genetically engineered to rot within a few days if not eaten to prevent hoarding and keep the company in business, and saving seeds or cuttings to plant them yourself is outright illegal. Meanwhile Global Warming has accelerated sea level rise and coastal erosion so much that people casually talk about expecting to have to abandon their homes and move further inland every few years.
- Title Theme Tune: Played with. The song that opens the episode, "Octopus", is not the Pink Floyd song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", but is a song by the person "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was written as a tribute to, Syd Barrett. May intentionally parallel how Ed, like Syd, has a beautiful Tragic Dream that he never fully manages to realize.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The overall plot of this episode is a reference to the classic Film Noir Double Indemnity, where a Femme Fatale impulsively convinces a seemingly happily married man with a stable job into risking everything on a wild caper. Lampshaded when Jill puts special emphasis on telling Sally she sells "double indemnity" life insurance. Note that compared to the plot of Double Indemnity there's multiple twists and reversals — Jill is the one who comes to Ed's house to sell insurance, not vice versa, and the sale of the double indemnity policy is the cover for the caper rather than the caper itself. Until we find out that convincing Sally to help her murder Ed and collect the insurance money was, in fact, Jill's Plan B all along. (The means of death is even a similar plausible accident, falling off of a moving vehicle.) And then Ed ends the episode literally "all washed up".
