Gary has bad ideas, Matt makes a bad pun (what else is new?), and somewhere in the episode they actually talk about the CIA's plan to make a cyberkitty.
Article of Discussion: Acoustic Kitty
.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Biology: Discussed when Matt asks whether, as a result of the US' incendiary bat bomb experiment from World War II, there were now bats flying around that could spontaneously combust and start fires. Tom just states flatly that that's not how evolution works.
- Double Agent: Played for Laughs. Gary imagines a scenario where Acoustic Kitty defects to the USSR.Gary: It goes through the gate, on the other side there's a Russian Blue. (In Russian Accent) "Welcome Agent Tiddles."
- Hoist by His Own Petard: When discussion turned to the Soviets' anti-tank dog (strap an anti-tank mine to a dog, train the dog to run and lie down in front of enemy tanks), it was noted that the project failed because the dogs were trained on Soviet T-34s rather than German Panzers and ran towards the wrong tanks.
- Shout-Out: Tom at one point says "the twenty million dollar cat", in reference to The Six Million Dollar Man.
- Take That!: To both the US and Russian Intelligence services, with Gary pointing out how Project Acoustic Kitty managed to make the US "outweird Russia".
- We Can Rebuild Him: Parodied. After hearing that Acoustic Kitty was hit by a car almost immediately, Chris quotes the trope namer, and then goes back on it after "realising" there's not much left to rebuild.
