When Darwin is taken away from the family after somehow scoring a perfect score in an aptitude test, Gumball gives his reluctant brain an intellectual workout so he can join Darwin. Meanwhile, Nicole and Richard let Rocky live with them in a desperate attempt to fill the void that Darwin left.
Tropes
- Adopted to the House: Rocky can't pay his rent and doesn't want to move back in with his parents. Still upset over losing Darwin, Nicole and Richard invite Rocky to stay at their house so he'll be their Replacement Goldfish, even calling him "Rockwin" and telling him to call them "mom" and "dad".
- Blunt "Yes": Brown is alarmingly callous in telling the Wattersons that they can't even visit Darwin and aren't ever going to see him again.
- Bowdlerization: Versions of this episode shown in Cartoon Network Asia and Australia edit out Gumball referring to the library as "the place where nerds hang out."
- Brick Break: Part of the training Gumball's brain goes through involved breaking boards with live-action portraits of real life influential thinkers on them.
- Comically Missing the Point: Gumball tries to train his brain to be smarter, but instead gives it physical training that makes it better at hitting people.
- Chirping Crickets: Forgetting that Darwin is gone, Gumball turns to him for advice, only to see a tumbleweed passing by.
- Description Cut: Gumball reaffirms his goal to become smart "like Darwin" right before a cut to Darwin at the test facility with his face covered in marker.
- Department of Child Disservices: Darwin is taken away from his family by the government suddenly—not even for anything his parents did, but to be researched. Supposedly they could do this because Darwin is legally just a pet, but there's every indication the same would have happened to Anais if they knew she took the test.
- Doom as Test Prize: Getting a perfect score of an unspecified standardized test, which no one had done before, results in being abducted by the government for research purposes.
- Fantastic Legal Weirdness: Any complaints the Wattersons have for getting Darwin back is apparently shot down by the fact that, being a goldfish who grew legs, he's still legally considered a pet, not their child.
- Foreshadowing: As Principal Brown explains to the family why Darwin was taken away, Anais can be seen darting her eyes away several times.
- Gasp!: Everyone in the family gasps when, after Darwin is returned, the government officials demand that they owe them another genius.
- Given Name Reveal: During Gumball's experience with the internet, a Freeze-Frame Bonus of a Facebook knockoff reveals the cyclops kid who was playing with Molly and Alan at Rachel's party is named Rob. Remember him.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Parodied. As the Wattersons look on in worry and fear when the clipboard let Gumball's brain speak, this sound is heard until the scene cuts to Rocky guzzling on some soda, revealed to be the source of that sound.Rocky: Sorry.
- Heroic BSoD: Gumball starts taking in all the information on the internet at once, causing a literal Blue Screen of Death, which necessitated Bobert somehow "rebooting" him offscreen.
- Inept Aptitude Test: According to a standardized test Darwin took, he's a genius, when he clearly isn't. The test itself was accurate, but was filled out by someone else.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: Invoked by Principal Brown, who claims it's better that Darwin was taken away because he'd make the rest of the family feel stupid.
- It's All My Fault: Anais admits to filling in Darwin's aptitude test after everyone else keeps talking about how much they miss Darwin.Anais: I should be the one who gets taken away.
- Last-Second Word Swap: When Gumball's brain tells the government workers who actually filled out to test, he goes halfway through saying a drawn out "her" and pointing to a very shocked Anais, then switches to saying "him" and pointing at Rocky.
- Moving the Goalposts: The last scene of the episode shows Rocky happily abusing his "genius" status to keep making more demands before solving an equation.
- My Brain Is Big: Gumball tries to become smarter by making his head bigger, but all he does it inflate it with air. This briefly makes Colin and Felix mistake him for intelligent, but nothing else. When Anais sees his actual brain, she mentions thinking he'd be smaller.
- Organ Autonomy: Gumball's brain leaves his head when he tries reading a book.
- Out-of-Character Moment:
- Gumball suddenly becomes so dumb he can't operate a computer and suddenly forgets what the Internet is, despite being able to shoot a movie, edit it on the computer, and suggest pirating a feature length film in "The DVD".
- Principal Brown is usually shown as well-meaning, even if he's not very good at his job. In this episode, he acts horrendously callous toward his students and their families, not caring about them losing one of their kids and threatening to do the same to Anais when she complains.
- No one seems aware of Anais's intelligence, not Principal Brown or her family, even though she's a four year old in middle school.
- Nicole, a Mama Bear who has been known to take Unstoppable Rage to near-supernatural levels in a number of other episodes, here reacts to one of her children getting kidnapped by just sitting around and moping.
- Pep-Talk Song: “You Gotta Think Big”
- Questioning Title?: The Japanese title asks "Darwin is a Genius?". The answer is no.
- Training Montage: Gumball gives one to his brain, complete with upbeat training music.
- "YEAH!" Shot: Gumball and his brain jump in freeze frame at the end of their Training Montage and Idaho curiously walks by them at a normal pace.
