After Homer steals Comic Book Guy's car, he must either prove his innocence in court or reconcile with the jilted nerd.
Tropes:
- Berate and Switch:Homer: You see that, kids? It's the kind of car they don't make anymore. Windshield that breaks into a thousand glass razor blades. Your lap is the cupholder. Vinyl seats that can melt your ass. God, do I wanna drive it!
- Chekhov's Gun: Homer's Welcome Back, Kotter keychain.
- Comic-Book Time: Homer loved Welcome Back, Kotter when he was a child. The show premiered in 1975, a year after Homer first met Marge during their senior year of high school in the show's original timeline.
- Defeat Means Friendship: After destroying his keychain in order to make Homer feel the same pain he's caused him, Comic Book Guy declares that he's not only dropping his suit against Homer but that he now considers him his best friend, much to Homer's confusion.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Comic Book Guy's sole motivation for his actions. He feels like nobody respects him. His customers mock him and call him fat, his industry is dying due to children's distaste for reading, and Homer steals his fathers' car for a joyride and damages a priceless comic book of his. Even when Homer replaces the comic Comic Book Guy isn't satisfied because Homer still doesn't understand how important other people's property is to them. And it takes destroying a Welcome Back, Kotter keychain to finally get it through Homer's head.
- A Fool for a Client: Homer and Comic Book Guy both represent themselves in court—the latter far more successfully.Lisa: "Hire a lawyer," I said. "Waste of money," he said.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Marge is getting a massage and leaves before it's finished because she senses that Homer is doing something stupid.
- Not So Above It All: When Bart burps in response to the waiter at the Golden Truffle telling him that the air he's breathing in belongs to the restaurant, Lisa not only laughs but follows suit. She's also quickly swept up in how cool Comic Book Guy's car is to the point of quickly abandoning her attempts to object to Homer's joyride.
- Overly Long Gag: When Homer finds out that there's another issue of the Radioactive Man comic he destroyed available for purchase in Ogdenville, he asks, "How much could an old comic cost?" In response, Bart whispers in his ear for a very long time.Homer: Are you done?Bart: No. (keeps whispering)
- Pet the Dog: When Homer was a kid he enjoyed the show Welcome Back, Kotter, so Abe gave him a Welcome Back, Kotter keychain, which was apparently the only thing he ever gave him.
- Shout-Out:
- The "closed" sign at the comic book shop in Ogdeville is written in Wakandan.
- One of the pieces of merchandise Comic Book Guy shows Homer is of Bean, Elfo, and Lucy.
- Take That!: Milhouse buys hundreds of Little Lulu comics for no more than five dollars.
- Quote Mine: Marge gets a bunch of statements on Homer and attempts to edit them into a mitigation video. We see most of them in their unedited versions before she cuts them up (Skinner's "Homer Simpson has two children enrolled in our school—that's all I'm comfortable saying" becomes "Too cool, comfortable"), but it's not hard to tell what Patty was originally getting at:Patty: Homer is a grace to the family. He is an ape-ble father. I warned Marge: marry him.
