After watching a safety video ripe with Nightmare Fuel in health class, Darwin becomes obsessed with keeping his family safe, but his overprotective ways spread throughout Elmore and turn the town into a safety-based dictatorship.
Tropes:
- Animation Bump: Mr. Small shrieking in fear at the Little Teddy video is animated much more fluidly than his normal movements.
- Art Shift: The Watch Out Little Teddy video is hand-drawn by guest animator Jérémie Périn (known for his work on The Flairs' music video for "Trucker's Delight")
- Blunt "Yes":
- Bowdlerization:
- Cartoon Network's Middle East/North Africa channel cuts the entire part where Richard dresses in drag to distract the guard, only for the guard to get hit with a fire hydrant.
- In-Universe: this trope is the target of satire for this episode.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Darwin gets most of the populace to agree to his terms while giving a glassy-eyed chant of "It is for our own good."
- Censored for Comedy: Darwin somehow censoring actually words, even Gumball's "mom-sanctioned" non-profanity.Gumball: It's like there's some kind of — device censoring every gosh—- word I say.
- Comically Missing the Point: While tied up, Gumball misreads his family's nonverbal directions to grab the key on the counter, thinking they want him to grab a cactus with his mouth and gnaw it into a key. It works, so they don't bother to correct him.
- Control Freak: Darwin starts trying to control Gumball's life, his family's lives, and then everyone's lives to make them safer.
- Cute Is Evil: Darwin is able to conquer most of the town because he's so adorable everyone does what he says.
- Cuteness Proximity: Darwin blatantly tells Nicole, Richard, and Anais his plans to take over the world and they simply let him be on his merry way because they think he's cute. Gumball even accepts this as a reasonable explanation after thinking about it.Nicole: He's at the town hall. We have to get there, and stop him!Gumball: Before what?Anais: He plans to invade the rest of the world to make it safe!Gumball: How do you know about all this?Nicole: He told us.Gumball: Why didn't you stop him?Richard: Because, it's Darwin. He's really cute.
- Destination Defenestration: When Betty surprises Darwin, he throws her through a store window. She's not really bothered by this.
- Disguised in Drag: Richard disguises himself as a woman before distracting Tony The clothes weren't part of the distraction (the guard was simply confused before Richard hit him with a fire hydrant), Richard just wanted to twirl around.
- Fake Defector: Anais, Nicole, and Richard appear to be brainwashed by Darwin when Gumball regains consciousness, but they were just faking it for the cameras.
- Food Pills: Darwin insists the only safe food is base molecules, including bowls full of hydrocarbon models and scraps of iron. Later, he switches to feeding them food paste, shot directly into their mouths out of a sprinkler (Richard's idea).Nicole: I'm sorry, but your brother is right. Vegetables are full of pesticides, meat is full of hormones, fish is full of mercury, milk is not meant to be digested, sugar makes you fat—
Darwin: And grain is full of gluten! The only solution is to eat pure proteins, carbohydrates, fat, minerals, and vitamins. - For Your Own Good: How Darwin justifies everything he does. Repeated verbatim.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: In-universe, Darwin phones in to a cartoon, apparently live, and convinces them to cut out everything he objects to as unsafe. Then he condescendingly tells Gumball that the people on TV can't hear him.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: At the end of the Watch Out Little Teddy video, the films starts warping and briefly flashes a static-covered image that viewers were able to identify
as an aerial view of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. - Goblin Face: The overly-scrunched up◊ look of abject horror on the students faces after watching the safety video.
- Harmless Electrocution: Darwin hooks Gumball up to a car battery, because the muscle spasms is causes are "the best way to exercise safely".
- Heel Realization: Gumball eventually convinces Darwin that he is the bad guy, mostly by pointing out how insanely evil-looking and oppressive his surroundings are.Gumball: OK, man. Let me ask you one question: Would a hero sit on a throne? Would a hero carry a riding crop? Would a hero hang out in a lair, surrounded with plans to take over the world?
Darwin: That's three questions. - Helping Granny Cross the Street: Teddy tries to help an old lady across the street, but she turns out to be evil and beats on his head with a crowbar, causing him to get run over."BE CAREFUL AROUND STRANGERS... AND CARS"
- Hollywood Hacking: Parodied; Anais describes what she's doing aloud as just typing "hack" and pressing enter. When asked by Gumball if it was really that easy her explanation is long and in-depth and he sneaks away while she's talking.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Gumball insists that he would never imitate what he says on TV right before biting his own tail (like the cartoon wolf said he would), jumping into the ceiling, and being surrounded by Circling Birdies.
- Knuckle Cracking: Before fighting some guards, Nicole cracks both knuckles, cracks her neck and rotates it 180 degrees, then her ears crack as they pop up.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The cartoon characters Darwin forces to censor themselves are an ostrich and wolf obviously based on Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
- Literal-Minded: Gumball tries to explain his plan by pointing his fingers around an imaginary diagram. Richard thinks moving his fingers is the plan, and complains when it doesn't work.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Darwin turns on a child-lock, causing scenes to be censored in-universe. Even the non-swears are censored and fight scenes are cut with Unsound Effect boards. When breaking into the City Hall on an Improvised Zipline Nicole and the kids crash into a Do Not Try This at Home warning.
- Moral Guardians: Darwin starts editing TV and real life to remove anything that could be offensive or harmful.Darwin: Hi. I'd like to complain about your cartoon. I disapprove of the use of dynamite. It is imitable and could endanger the life of a child.
Cartoon Wolf: Where would a child be able to buy dynamite? - Narrative Shapeshifting: After Anais, Nicole, and Richard explain that everyone does what Darwin tells them to because he's so cute, each one imitates him and grows a tailfin like his on the back of their head.
- Nightmare Fuel: In-universe, the safety video leaves Mr. Small cowering in the corner with a trash bucket on his head and the students moving stiffly with a traumatized look. If it wasn't for the video, the plot of this episode wouldn't have happened.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Poor Little Teddy doesn't catch a break no matter what he does. Even a good deed like Helping Granny Cross the Street results in him getting bonked on the head by the old lady and then run over.
- Police State: Darwin turns the whole town into a safety-based police state with plans to turn it into a dictatorship. Unfortunately, the officers are so beholden to their own rules (they aren't allowed to run, drive, or use weapons that aren't made of balloons) that they can't actually enforce anything.
- Present Company Excluded:Gumball: Aw, mom, Darwin is being a complete mom—no offense to you. (points to Darwin) Offense to you!
- Putting on the Reich: Darwin not only wears a Commissar Cap with a triangle exclamation point sign, his flags look similar to the Parteiadler which is a Nazi emblem only with the swastika replaced with the aforementioned triangle. Even Gumball points out how all the paraphernalia makes him look like a bad guy.
- Pretentious Latin Motto: Darwin's new regime uses "pro salute omnium" ("for the safety of all").
- Rake Take: One of the many misfortunes Teddy faces is running after a butterfly and eventually stepping on a rake."BE CAREFUL AROUND GARDEN TOOLS"
- Relax-o-Vision: After noticing that his dialogue is being censored, Gumball asks what would happen when they really have to vent. To test it out, he stomps on Darwin's foot, and as Darwin starts to swear, calming live-action images appear on the screen to soothing music.
- Refuge in Audacity: Darwin was able to turn all of Elmore into a safety-based police state because people couldn't say no to how cute he was.
- The Rest Shall Pass: Gumball, Richard, Nicole and Anais all raid Town Hall to stop Darwin but only Gumball makes it to the final confrontation. The other three are held up by something pretty insignificant while the others go on ahead. Gumball finishing the mission solo isn't a problem since Darwin's regime, by its very design, doesn't pose a threat to anyone.
- Safety Freak: Darwin becomes so obsessed with safety measures that he successfully sets up a totalitarian dictatorship to control Elmore.
- Safety Worst: But of course.
- Scare 'Em Straight: Watch Out Little Teddy mostly consists of Teddy getting terribly injured by unlikely things while a harsh voice yells to beware of them. The real scary part is the end, which gets very distorted (given how dated the video is). Most viewers are simply creeped out.
- Stealth Pun: There are a total of four images during the Relax-o-Vision cut: A mother cuddling her baby, a farmer in a hay field with a pitchfork, a donkey, and a Non-Ironic Clown. Therefore, Darwin called Gumball a mother-forking ass-clown. (or "bucking," since the farmer is shown "bucking hay").
- Stylistic Suck: The safety video, which along with being badly-animated (a lady has six fingers in one scene and you can even see the animator's hand in a couple of shots) is on a severely warped VHS video.Ben Bocquelet: There's almost no way to animate something worse.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The formula is averted. Gumball briefly explains each part of the plan to take down Darwin, and none of it goes wrong.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Gumball’s plan is to go up to Darwin and give him a very stern talking to, explaining what he did was various levels of wrong.
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