Book 12 received a lot of praise for revealing that Future Harold is gay without making a big deal about it. Future George meanwhile has a wife that is only ever referred to as "Mrs. Beard"note Dav later confirmed that said wife was actually named "Lisa". "The Beard" of course is a term referring to a woman that has married a gay man.Have fun with that, fanfic writers!
The fact that women do the opposite of the instructed by the ring would make a lot of sense if it was an intentional feature because the makers believed All Men Are Perverts, but when they realized that sort of behavior can't be tied down to one gender, and so they recalled it and didn't mention it, or if it did they called it a "mistake", because they realized that feature was a huge failure in design.
In the fourth book, when Harold tells Captain Underpants to change his name because Poopypants says so, the Waistband Warrior insists that he "doesn't take orders from anybody", but is immediately quick to take an order from George. This might be Hypocritical Humor, or a Moment of Awesome proving how loyal he is to his allies, but doesn't let his enemies push him around. However, keep in mind that when George and Harold first hypnotized Mr. Krupp, they told him to obey their every command.
Professor Poopypants in the books has no clear accent when speaking, but the movie adaptation gives him a heavy German accent. Given his country of birth is given as "New Swissland," depending on how close the country is to Switzerland (ridiculous names aside), it's likely that Poopypants would've grown up with some level of fluency in a Swiss German dialect.
Fridge Heartwarming: George isn't surprised to see that Harold ended up marrying a man in Book 12. Harold must have came out to him in the past.
For starters, it's a consumer-level Mind-Control Device. All you have to do is trick or force the poor victim into looking at it for a few seconds and snap. Just Think of the Potential!...
In Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman, it's revealed that the ring was recalled because for unknown reasons, it worked the opposite of its wielder's intentions on women. This might seem like jumping the gun to younger readers, but George and Harold used it on their already-Sadist Teacher and look what happened. Now, what about all the other kids who had one? Chances are, the first thing a lot of them would use it on is their parents, who they typically have a very low opinion of. All of a sudden, there'd be an outbreak of Abusive Mothers all across the country because the kids demand that their every whim be catered to. That wouldn't go unnoticed and would be a pretty damn good reason to recall them.
