Future Tense: When Mom and Dad meet a new accomplished family, they worry that their kids aren’t doing enough activities to ensure a successful future.
Lynn-er Takes All: Tired of Lynn's poor sportsmanship during board games, the siblings decide to team up to take her down.
"Future Tense"
- The Ace:
- The Yates family are practically a poster family for this trope. It is because the parents (Bumper Sr. and Jancey) want to raise their children to be "well-rounded and realize their full potential world in a competitive world". As Lola puts it they look "so perfect".
- After Rita and Lynn Sr. meet the Yateses, they want to raise their kids to become this as well.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Out of concern for their kids' well-being, Lynn Sr. and Rita make their kids do certain activities in the hopes of making them more "well-rounded." While they succeed in doing so, Lincoln and the girls end up becoming so "well-rounded" that, when their parents suggest doing something just for fun (like going out for ice cream or going to the movies), they have zero interest in doing so (being too focused on "preparing for their futures").
- Casting Gag: Barry Williams (Bumper Sr.) and Maureen McCormick (Jancey) played step-siblings in The Brady Bunch.
- Continuity Nod: While the Louds are At the Opera Tonight, Lisa is the only sibling actually enjoying it. As shown in "For Bros About to Rock", she's been at the opera before.
- Covered in Mud: Happens to Leni when a car drives through a mud puddle next to her while the Louds are cleaning up garbage along the highway. Lana is jealous.
- A Day in the Limelight: This episodes focuses mostly on the Loud parents rather than Lincoln and/or any of his sisters.
- Eyes Always Shut: The Yates kids only open their eyes briefly in the end of the episode.
- New Neighbors As The Plot Demands: The Yateses become the Louds' new neighbors in this episode (after moving into a house that had previously belonged to a family with the last name "Crowley"), and it’s their presence that kicks off the plot.
- Not So Above It All: Bumper Sr. and Jancey enjoy the same show as the Loud parents. Their kids are shown enjoying having fun with the Louds at the end of the episode.
- Perpetual Smiler: The Yateses. All of them are always seen with big grins on their faces.
- Pun: Lynn Sr. opens the episode with one in regards to Rita complaining she’s covered in dandelions. Later he refers to his lasagna as "Lynn-sagna."
- Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: The Yates family gives off a very strong Stepford Smiler-vibe at first (as well as Bumper Sr. and Jancey being potential Stage Parents), but in the end, they're proven to be just as nice as they appear to be, with the parents allowing their kids join in the Loud kids' fun and getting ecstatic at watching videos old people falling out of boats with the Loud parents.
- Trophy Room: The Yateses have one, and it’s filled with the trophies their kids won.
- Twinkle Smile: The Yateses, combined with all of them being perpetual smilers. Lana even lampshades it when she first sees them.
- Waxing Lyrical: When Lori, Leni, and Luna are forced to go to community college, Luna quotes Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)", yelling, "WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION!" Since that line is a double negative, it also shows that yes, they do need education.
"Lynn-er Takes All"
- Bloody Smile: A deleted scene has Lynn use four toothbrushes to brush her teeth extra fast, resulting in her gums bleeding as she smiles. In the actual episode, all that happens is she loses a tooth.
- Bowdlerise: An early storyboard of the teethbrushing "contest" scene
◊ showed that Lynn was originally going to have her gums bleed out of her teeth from brushing too fast, instead of losing a tooth like what's shown in the actual episode. - Brick Joke: Early in the episode, Lynn holds a one-girl celebration for her 300th win, and then her siblings try and fail to break her streak with three unfamiliar games. Later, when her siblings tell her what they think of her gloating:Luna: Well, after you win 300 times...Lynn: Actually, 303. But who's counting?
- Competition Freak: Lynn, well-known for her competitive personality, becomes an even bigger freak when she loses.
- Face Doodling: Lynn once doodled the word "LOSER" on her siblings' heads while they were asleep. Lincoln says he got out of that one, but then turns around to reveal that she shaved the word in the back of his hair.
- Foreshadowing: When she is on the verge of losing a game, Lynn steps outside to vent her rage and insult herself. It is later shown just how broken she gets when she actually loses.
- Faint in Shock: Lola passes out after Lynn wins a game of "Pretty, Pretty Pageant Queen".
- Game Night Fight: Lincoln and his sisters have a "game night" every week—Lincoln and the rest of the sisters honestly don't care that Lynn wins every time, their problem with it is how she always gloats about it so much. After winning for the 300th-time in a row, they decide to try to beat her. When they do, however, she fears she's losing her touch and turns everything into a competition, annoying her siblings further. Once the truth comes out, she agrees to try to be a better winner — and while she still gloats, she doesn't do it in front of them anymore.
- Gasshole: After drinking a whole carton of milk fast, Lynn burps in Lincoln's face.
- Human Notepad: Lincoln tells the viewer how, after her victory last week, Lynn wrote “loser” on all her sisters' foreheads while they slept. Lincoln himself apparently escaped this fate, but the viewer gets to see she wrote it on the back of his head instead.
- Hurricane of Puns: Luan has a field day with puns on the word "gloat".
- Jerkass Realization: Lynn does this when she discovers that her siblings see her as a bad winner and a sore loser when she gloats every time she wins and rubs it in their faces, and then turns everything into a competition when she loses in order to make up for said loss.
- Literal-Minded: Leni exposes her siblings' ruse to throw the game of by throwing it away (literally). Earlier, her response to Lynn's "Lynner, Lynner, chicken-dinner!" was "I thought we were having salmon."Leni: What? The plan was to throw the game and no one else was doing it.
- Loophole Abuse: At the end, Lynn keeps her promise to stop rubbing her victories in her siblings' faces. Instead, she saves her excitement for when they're not around, which they believe is good enough. At least it's not in their faces.
- Million to One Chance: When the Loud siblings play Pretty, Pretty Pageant Queen, Lynn discovers that she can automatically win the game if she rolls three 10s in one throw. Lisa then comments that the odds of her doing so is "one in 1,720." But contrary to what one would expect, Lynn manages to roll three 10s at once and win the game.
- Primal Chest-Pound:
- Sanity Slippage: After losing for the first time, Lynn starts to lose it and tries to beat her siblings at everything:Lynn: FIRST TO GO TO SLEEP! I CAN ALSO SNORE THE LOUDEST!
- Shaking the Rump: Lynn does this as part of her Victory Dance.
- Shout-Out: The game that Lynn loses at is called Settlers of Catland.
- Sore Loser: Lynn does not take losing well at all. She is also a sore winner gloating when she wins.
- Springtime for Hitler: The kids try to make Lynn lose by having her play games she's never played before, but she manages to win them all on the first go.
- Stock Scream: Lincoln does the Wilhelm scream when Lynn slams his room's door on him.
- Tempting Fate: While Lisa is mixing chemicals, Lynn does the same and creates an explosion, thus claiming another victory. In response, Lisa states she wasn’t even trying to create an explosion. Guess what happens next.
- Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Lynn LOVES winning and wants to make sure her siblings know it—but when she realizes how it makes them feel, she promises to be a better sport in the future.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: Slightly subverted in that Lynn's siblings think that she's a jerk win or lose. They just think she's less of a destructive jerk when she wins. She eventually takes a third option and promises to be a better sport.
