Comic Book Guy and his wife Kumiko debate having a baby; Comic Book Guy's origin story is revealed.
This episode contains examples of:
- Babies Ever After: The episode ends with Comic Book Guy and Kumiko, both in cosplay, getting ready to have a baby.
- Babies Make Everything Better: Kumiko wholeheartedly believes this after spending a few hours with Maggie, and she tries to convince Comic Book Guy of it. While he puts up a major front, he changes his tune by the end.
- Baby Fever Trigger: After spending a few minutes with Maggie, Kumiko immediately decides she wants to have children, but her husband, Comic Book Guy is reluctant.
- The Benchwarmer: As a kid, Comic Book Guy was a talented pitcher, but the rest of his baseball team never gave him a chance. He finally got that chance when all the other pitchers were injured in a canoe pile-up following the sighting of an unusually large lake sturgeon.
- Big Game: A young Comic Book Guy got his first-ever chance to pitch at the big game. He messed it up because his father wasn't there to see him.
- Bland-Name Product: The feature at the cemetery film night is Forward to the Past, featuring a snowboard-toting protagonist named Mickey and a time-traveling paddle steamer.
- Celebrity Paradox:
- Dan Aykroyd (Postage Stamp Fellow) was said to resemble Homer in "Mother Simpson".
- Bob Balaban (Narrator) had been referenced on the show as a husband of Sara Sloane in "A Star is Born Again".
- Children Are a Waste: Comic Book Guy, having spent his entire career around children, is of this mindset. Kumiko manages to convince him otherwise.
- Continuity Nod: The pictures of the Simpsons during the credits have items referencing previous episodes.
- Cry into Chest: A variation: when Bart and Lisa find out their parents are missing, they cry into Comic Book Guy's shirt, but because of the drastic height difference, they end up just grabbing the bottom hem and using it as a handkerchief.
- Daddy Didn't Show: The boy who would become Comic Book Guy had perfected a Sandy Koufax-style pitch but was a benchwarmer on his Little League team. On the fateful day that multiple members of the team were out of commission, allowing him to finally show off his skill, his father broke his heart by not showing up.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Postage Stamp Fellow missed his son’s game due to a mix of not knowing how to comfort him if he lost and buying an autographed baseball for said son.
- Epiphany Therapy: Comic Book Guy warms to the idea of having a child with Kumiko, but balks when a shaken-up Bart and Lisa need his emotional support, not only bailing on them but moving back into his childhood home rather than go through with Kumiko's plan. As it turns out, his own father was emotionally unavailable to him his whole life, and upon finding out that he not only cared about him but supported his childhood interest in baseball by managing to get him a ball autographed by his hero Sandy Koufax (which he was then ashamed to give him after missing the only Little League game in which he had the opportunity to pitch), Comic Book Guy goes back to Kumiko with his nerves quelled, ready to become a father.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": As previously established in both the series and the comics, it runs in Comic Book Guy's family; his father is only referred to as Postage Stamp Fellow.
- Exact Words: Forward to the Past ends with the professor delivering the almost-iconic line, "Rivers? Where we're going, we don't need rivers!" followed by the paddle boat extending wheels and proceeding to drive on the road.
- Formerly Fit: Comic Book Guy was skinny as a kid. Albeit he's a Big Eater now, his father is also fat, meaning there's probably genetics involved as well.
- Freudian Excuse: Perennially snarky pop cultural obsessive Comic Book Guy grew up as the only child in a household full of adults who never expressed themselves emotionally and preferred to be deeply immersed in their separate hobbies than to interact with each other. He particularly felt the absence of a real relationship with his father, which makes the idea of having children of his own alarming to him.
- I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: Bart and Lisa begin watching Forward to the Past with nothing but apathy, but end up adoring it by the runtime's end. This makes Comic Book Guy realize that maybe having kids isn't so bad.
- Interrogation by Vandalism: Marge convinces Postage Stamp Fellow to make up with his son by threatening to lick one of his most prized stamps.
- It Runs in the Family: All of Comic Book Guy’s paternal families are a Collector of the Strange.
- Jabba Table Manners: The Albertsons and the Simpsons both have a meal at a ramen restaurant where Homer and Comic Book Guy's messy slurping flings food and broth all over their wives. Marge gives Kumiko a tip of wearing a smock for such occasions.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Homer and Marge in perhaps their most questionable location yet—an expensive crypt.
- Negative Continuity: This episode reverts to implying that Lisa, like her siblings, was a Surprise Pregnancy, ignoring "3 Scenes Plus a Tag From a Marriage"'s Retcon that she was the only planned child.
- Parental Neglect: Growing up in a big extended family of avid collectors, Comic Book Guy never got any attention from his family. To cope, he first turned to baseball, then to comics.
- Perverse Sexual Lust: Comic Book Guy is secretly into Greta the female gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Kumiko dresses as her to seduce him into having a child. At the end of the episode, he dresses as her fictional crush; Mr. Beaver from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for her and she puts the Greta wig and ears back on as they embrace.
- Playing Catch with the Old Man: After Comic Book Guy makes up with his father, they play catch with a baseball autographed by Sandy Koufax that his father bought many years ago. Because it's still in its display case, they grunt from pain with every catch.
- Shaped Like Itself: When the narrator of the flashback refers to Postage Stamp Fellow as a philatelist (a stamp collector), an on screen description of "philatelist" appears, defining it as "an expert in philately."
- Shout-Out:
- Many to Wes Anderson:
- The episode's title references The Darjeeling Limited.
- The ending references the ending to Rushmore. Both scenes even use the same song, "Oh La La" by The Faces.
- The segment recounting Comic Book Guy's backstory, narrated by Bob Balaban, also references his style.
- Bart watches Deadpool on his phone during the movie night, telling Comic Book Guy he "only likes movies where Deadpool talks to the camera."
- Many to Wes Anderson:
- Soundtrack Dissonance: When Marge and Homer realize they're locked inside the crypt and pound on the door panicking, smooth jazz music plays on the surround system inside.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Homer and Marge bond with Comic Book Guy and Kumiko over being two couples like this.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Comic Book Guy's father never showed him the love and approval he craved. The whole family is terrible at emotional expression, and when Marge forces his father to communicate with him it's clear that he really did care for him.
