"First of all, it's neither dinner nor theater. It's, like, the imitation cheese of theater."
—Bob
Linda convinces the whole family to create their own Dinner Theater in the restaurant.
Hamburger Dinner Tropes:
- 20% More Awesome: When the Belchers are asked to tone down on the gore, the banner for their second show advertises 20% less of it.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Linda turns a "No" into a singing high-note and flops onto the bed. Bob, an avid hater of dinner-theater, can't help but smile and chuckle.
- Affably Evil: The robber, who enchants Linda and the viewers when singing together with Linda.
- All Part of the Show: Initially averted then played straight. The over-the-top murder scene the first night caused someone to call the police, while the real robbery on the second night gave them a popularity boost.Customer: Can you break a five?
Bob: No! I can't break a five, lady! I was just robbed! Did you not just see that? You were standing right there, idiot!
Customer: Oh, you people commit. - Analogy Backfire: When Bob calls dinner theater the imitation cheese of dinner, Gene finds it nice because he likes imitation cheese.
- Ass Pull: In-universe; Linda being the killer was not foreshadowed whatsoever (it'd be one thing if she simply went Beneath Suspicion, but Linda herself stated while out-of-character that it wasn't her). The audience had zero reason to suspect her, and they angrily call her out for lying when she reveals the twist.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: The robber, posing as an ordinary customer, compliments the robber's singing skills.
- Caught Up in a Robbery: Linda decides to host a dinner theater event at the restaurant. After the first night centered around a murder mystery bombs, the second night is interrupted by a guy who robs the place at gun point. Everyone besides the Belchers think it's All Part of the Show, which only gets worse when the robber insists on exiting by performing a musical number with Linda.
- Character Development: Tina gets over her stage fright by the end of the episode, and this seems to stick for future episodes (barring a few relapses here and there).
- Department of Redundancy Department: "I've been murdered... to death!"
- Early Personality Signs: Tina's shown to have had social anxiety since she was a baby, where she couldn't even say her first word (instead emitting her trademark groan) with Bob and Linda watching her.
- Gorn: Mort's death scene on the show's first night ends up sending several patrons into shock, thanks to all the blood and gore. What's worse? It's heavily implied in dialogue that the blood and organs that Mort used were not actually fake, and instead the real deal retrieved from the morgue.
- Hypocritical Humor: Teddy tells a story about a guy whose phone went off during a movie, causing a very loud disturbance. He continues to tell it, very loudly, as Linda's show is about to start. Bob repeatedly tells him to quiet down.
- Imagine the Audience Naked: Gene tells Tina to do this to overcome her stage fright. Tina says she already does this to everyone. After confirming that she truly does mean everyone, Gene moves his keyboard to cover his crotch area.
- Insult Backfire: One online reviewer scathingly remarks that the show's set "looked like children made it". Linda is both proud and thrilled by this feedback, since her kids did actually make the set.
- It's All About Me: After Bob gets the robber arrested for robbing the restaurant twice, Linda gets mad at Bob for supposedly ruining her dreams.
- Lame Comeback: The robber calls Bob "greaseball" and his comeback is "mask face".
- Mood-Swinger: While warming up for the show's first night, Louise rapidly swings between angrily yelling at Tina, and soothing her with gentle apologies, using the excuse of pre-show jitters.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The cops pretty much brutalize the robber. Not that he didn't have it coming.
- Noodle Incident: For some unexplained reason, Louise hates Canada.
- Overly Long Gag: Gene takes quite a long time to enact his death scene.
- Playing a Tree: Tina actually requests to play a tree. Oddly, said tree plays a role in the plot, including getting murdered (which Louise has to point out doesn't make any sense), and even being listed as one of the suspects at the end (despite being dead). She later requests to have a line in the show, attempting to get over her stage fright but, ultimately, fails to deliver the line until well after the show's conclusion. She's still proud of herself, however.
- Police Are Useless: Officers Julia and Cliffany are unable to stop the robbery and don't even realize they missed the thief after going right past him. They do though catch him in the end, after Bob attempts to tell them where the robber went. Then they start beating the crap out of him.
- Refuge in Audacity: The robber has the balls to come back to the restaurant as a customer. And then he has the balls to outright confess to Linda. Bob immediately calls the cops.
- Shout-Out: The Exterminator Van on the opening has written "Rat's All Folks".
- Skewed Priorities: Linda is desperate enough to pull off a successful dinner theater show that she's willing to go through an armed robbery more than once because of the positive audience reception.
- Stage Fright: Though she doesn't really realize it until Linda points it out, Tina is shown in flashbacks to have suffered from this her entire life, right back to failing to say her first word as a baby with Bob and Linda watching her. In the episode proper, she's given a single line in Linda's play but is too shy to say it until long after the play is over.
- Stylistic Suck: Linda's "Dreamatorium" is awful in every sense of the word. The title and the plot make no sense, the acting is terrible (Gene outright starts playing the keyboard while he's supposed to be dead, and Tina can't even say her one line), and Linda starts it off by lying about her character not being the killer, only to reveal at the end she was. It's telling the only thing anyone liked about it was a robbery at the end, even though it had absolutely no connection with any of the plot beforehand.
- Title Drop: Bob says the title incredulously after Linda gets the idea to hold a dinner theater at the restaurant.
- Unreliable Narrator: Linda is shown to be this, stating at the beginning of the show, however unconvincingly, that she is not the killer...only to turn around and reveal in the end that she was, indeed, the culprit. This, however, infuriates the audience who call that a lie instead of a twist.
- The Un Twist: In-universe, Linda reveals the "twist" at the end was that her character is the murderer. Even though she told the audience at the beginning she wasn't. The audience points out this isn't a twist, it's a lie. Linda fails to get what they mean.
- Whodunit: The original, intended direction of "Dreamatorium" which fails spectacularly in its execution.
