- Adults Are Useless: The principal believes Caruso’s obviously BS story simply because Caruso is white and Chris is black. He gets convinced later once Chris confronts him alone, and finally puts Caruso and his cronies into detention once he finally sees their bullying for himself, but still.
- Call-Back: Chris and Caruso's fight from the pilot is an important plot point here.
- Cassandra Truth: Chris did not beat up Caruso, nor call him a “cracker”. None of the students nor the principal believe this, though.
- The Dog Bites Back: Chris gets revenge on Caruso by allowing the principal to bear witness to Caruso and his goons pelting batteries at him, landing them in detention.
- Gossip Evolution: Chris and Caruso has a fight back in the first episode. Chris threw the first punch, while Caruso proceeded to beat him up for twenty minutes. Somehow, that turned into Chris beating Caruso up, knocking out his teeth, and telling him “I better not see you trying to smile, cracker!”
- Hypocritical Humor: Caruso accuses Chris of calling him a “cracker”, which he obviously didn’t. When Chris hears this accusation..
Adult Chris: "Can you believe this cracker?"
- Jerkass: Mrs. Milone, the monitor of detention. She hands out ten more minutes of detention like it’s candy. She doesn’t even cut Chris slack when he was right outside the door when the bell rung.
- Kick the Dog: Mrs. Milone giving Chris ten more minutes of detention for being right outside the door once the bell rung instead of inside, and ten more when he rightfully complains.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Caruso landing Chris in detention and deliberately sabotaging his passage to the detention hall which makes him serve more time finally comes back to bite him in the ass once the principal catches Caruso in the act.
- Pet the Dog: Once Chris speaks to him alone, the principal believes his true retelling of the events of the fight and gives him a dollar. He also puts Caruso and his goons in detention once he sees them pelt Chris with batteries.
- Trapped at the Dinner Table: The titular B-Plot involves Julius buying a huge crate of sausage and both him and Rochelle forcing the rest of the family to eat sausage on all meals, a thing that leads to Tonya rebelling. Among other methods to force her to eat sausage, Rochelle makes Tonya stay at the table — and the scene does a Time Skip to three in the morning, Tonya still sitting there and everybody else is asleep, but Rochelle is enough of a light sleeper that when Tonya tries to move away she yells, "You are going to eat that sausage if you wish to sleep, young lady!" from her room.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Thanks to the help of some overblown, heavily-fabricated gossip, Caruso is able to spin his brutal beating of Chris into Chris beating him up, and calling him racial slurs instead.
