Beavis comes face to face with Fire, who has unexpected plans for him.
Tropes:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Beavis has the store worker extinguish Fire in the end, Fire pleads for mercy as he fades away, even offering to shorten the book report requirement to three paragraphs. But Beavis is having none of it.
- Bait-and-Switch: Fire keeps ominously assigning Beavis to do tasks... including running a mile around a track and cleaning up litter. The straw that breaks the camel's back is having to read "Call of the Wild" and doing a book report.
- Broken Pedestal: Beavis is initially eager to obey Fire's every command, but (as noted above) becomes disillusioned when Fire only orders him to do good things.
- The Conscience: Fire tries to be this to Beavis, but Beavis doesn't think it's "very cool" and has him extinguished.
- The Chosen One: Fire sees Beavis up as this, addressing him as "special one" and implying that he's been preparing Beavis for this role since the latter was three years old. Sadly for Fire, The Paragon Always Rebels.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Much to Beavis's dismay, Fire turns out to be benevolent, and wants Beavis to improve himself rather than burn everything.
- Denser and Wackier: Really, what else can you describe an episode with talking fire in an otherwise grounded show? It might as well be an episode from the show's early days. The fact that the episode leaves the fire's true sentience ambiguous doesn't help.
- Evil Living Flames: Subverted. Fire has the appearance and mannerisms of one, but only ever assigns Beavis to do good things or improve himself.
- The Faceless: Shirley Beavis's arm appears in the flashback.
- Literal-Minded: Beavis thinks "fire wings" are made of fire and is disappointed to discover this isn't the truth.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The episode leaves it ambiguous if Fire is a true supernatural entity, or if Beavis is imagining it. There's evidence to support both sides.
- Out of Focus: First episode of the whole franchise not to feature Butt-Head, if one doesn't count the music video segments.
- Outside-Context Problem: Fire is a sentient flame that comes out of nowhere and claims to be all of fire itself, including taking responsibility for killing Smokey the Bear's parents. While he's not exactly an antagonist, a lot of past antagonists and problems to the duo tended to come from other people. Fire, on the other hand, has the appearance and mannerisms of Evil Living Flames but really only orders Beavis to do relatively mundane and constructive tasks like jogging and picking up litter. To date, Fire is certainly the strangest and oddest problem Beavis, sans Butt-head, has ever encountered in life.
- Pyromaniac: According to this episode, Beavis's obsession with fire started on his third birthday when he saw Fire beckoning to him to look at his "fearful glory."
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Young Beavis when he witnesses Fire during his birthday party.
