"We welcome these new beings of the land."
Anything happen while we were out?
After 20 years, Kif and Amy's children finally emerge from the alien swamp they were deposited in, and Amy now must deal with the challenges of motherhood.
Tropes in this episode:
- Adoption Angst: A variant focused on the adoptive parent's perspective. Due to the means of conception, the children's biological parents are Kif, Leela, and Scruffy — not Amy, their adoptive mother, despite her having initiated Kif's ability to conceive. Amy spends most of the episode worried that, due to her exhaustion while Kif is on duty, she isn't a good enough mother to her children. This gets worse when the kids get along with Leela, and Amy becomes jealous and worried they like their biological mother better. In light of this conflict, the Grand Midwife challenges Amy to prove her parental rights to her kids, but she easily passes by saying she loves them more than she thought she could ever love anything.
- And This Is for...: Kif declares "This one's for Axl, Mandy, and little What's-His-Name" as he's about to shoot some more of the Tardigrade Bears. He lets them off, however, when the Bears turn out to have children of their own.
- Asshole Victim: Kif uses the Biologist - a short tempered, judgemental and spiteful man who teases the animals he looks after - to lure the highly aggressive Tardigrade Bears away from himself.
- Back for the Dead: Amy's and Kif's children return in this episode, and all but three of them are killed off by swamp predators within less than a minute. Possibly also the whale/bear biologist, whose fate is left ambiguous.
- Bait-and-Switch: Bender adds some treacle to his Nutritional Nightmare, to remind him of his late Aunt Juanita... who drowned in treacle.
- Bears Are Bad News: Tardigrade Bears on an outpost planet attack Zapp and drag him away, requiring Kif to come and save him.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Despite being born at the same time, Amy and Kif's kids are in different stages of development with the eldest being a teen, the middle child a pre-teen and the youngest a toddler. Hermes calls attention to this fact, to which Kif explains their kids must have spend the last 20 years in different water temperatures, hence they developed at different rates.
- Black Comedy: Remember the dozens of tadpoles Kif birthed? It turns out they have to go through "the Winnowing", which resembles the early lives of frogs, turtles, or most R-selected species in general: they're eaten by various predators, one of whom is Zoidberg, until only four... no, wait, three and a half remain.Amy: The Winnowing? What does that mean?
Kif: It means don't start naming them yet. - Bullying a Dragon: The Biologist taunts the Tardigrade Bears on the balcony in the cave with different food items that he doesn't want to give them. This prompts Kif to shoot the balcony with him on it to divert the bears from him, resulting in the Biologist getting mauled.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Kif and Amy's children make a return 20 years after their birth in "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch", now being developed enough to emerge from the swamp. The parrot-dragonflies and poisonous froad from the same episode also return to prey on the kids.
- The Whale Biologist from "Three Hundred Big Boys" makes a return, now having shifted to studying bears because of his hatred of whales.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Bender doesn't remember the birth of Kif and Amy's children, and Leela doesn't remember that their kids have her DNA. Somewhat understandable considering this plotline hasn't been picked up again until this point 20 years later, both In-Universe and out.
- But Liquor Is Quicker: Discussed — when Leela misinterprets the reminder that she's the one who got Kif pregnant, she remarks, "I must have been super drunk."
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The giant tardigrades are referred to as bears due to "water bear" being one of the alternate names for them.
- The Cameo: A poisonous froad is among the predators in the swamp.
- Continuity Nod:
- Kif and Amy still have eyePhones from "Attack of the Killer App".
- Mandy reads a picture book featuring Ladybuggle called "Go, Ladybuggle Go!", which previously appeared in "Yo Leela Leela" (another episode Eric Horsted wrote).
- Custody Battle: An unintentional one; when Amy and Kif's kids start bonding with Leela, Amy suspects Leela is trying to take the kids away from her since, while Amy may have been the Smizmar, it was Leela who impregnated Kif. Things get worse when the Grand Midwife witnesses this, and decides Amy has to be put through a trial to see whether she or Leela will officially become the kids' mother. However, it's all a big misunderstanding since Leela never intended to take the kids from Amy, and the trial ultimately is nothing more than Amy admitting that she loves the kids, which is good enough for the Midwife to give her custody.
- Death of a Child: Despite the sheer amounts of tadpoles that Kif deposited in the swamp, many of them don't make it out thanks to the predators of the swamp (and Zoidberg) eating them. By the end, only three of them survive.
- Eats Babies: Most of the tadpoles get eaten by local wildlife and Zoidberg.
- Everybody Cries: Near the end of the episode, all of the characters that were there for Amy and Kif's trial cry in happiness for them, with Bender even pouring out treacle for them.
- Extra Parent Conception: Not only do Kif and Amy's children have Kif and Leela's DNA, they also somehow have Scruffy's.
- Forgot Flanders Could Do That: Lieutenant Kif Kroker is frequently seen as a Beleaguered Assistant, a Distressed Dude, or otherwise Pathetically Weak and In Touch with His Feminine Side. In this episode, he is Lieutenant Kif Kroker, and he pulls off several feats of badassery without hesitation.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Kif Kroker takes on the Tardigrade Bears in the nude so that his camouflage ability will be more effective.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Amy's calendar provides a couple of blink-and-you-will-miss-it entries, including "Hypnotoad Trivia Night", "Call Mom About Mom", and "Reassure Kif".
- Generation Ship: Amy's babysitter says she'll get the next generation ship home from Kepler-10b.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Amy grows jealous as her children start bonding with Leela, which is not helped by the fact that Leela was the one who impregnated Kif.
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": Axl laughs at the word "bone", instead of "sex".
- Invisible Streaker: Kif makes use of his camouflage ability to rescue Zapp from the Tardigrade Bears, ensuring his invisibility is effective by removing his clothes before getting near the beasts.
- Jerkass Realization: Amy gets angry when her kids start bonding with Leela, suspecting she's trying to take them away due to being the one who impregnated Kif, and she goes as far as to accuse Leela of calling the Grand Midwife to officially become the kids' mother. She realizes it's all a misunderstanding, as the Grand Midwife is only there to test her on being the kids' true mother and Leela never intended to take them away from her, and apologizes for being jealous.
- Kick the Dog: The Biologist taunts the tardigrades with salmon while calling them stupid. This prompts Kif to use him as live bait for the tardigrades.
- Magical Security Cam: Amy's able to bring up footage from "Kif Gets Knocked Up A Notch" on her eyePhone.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The swamp predators preying on Kif and Amy's children include dragonflies with parrot beaks, crocodiles with neck spines like a bearded dragon, and placoderms with tailfins of ray-finned fish.
- Monster Is a Mommy: When attempting to save Zapp from Tardigrade Bears, Kif discovers that some of them are trying to protect their children. Whilst the episode initially suggests that they were killed anyway, it is later revealed that he spared them.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Played for laughs. When Kif tries to leave Zapp to the Tardigrade Bears, Zapp insists to Kif that they never leave a man behind."Not when I'm the man!"
- Nutritional Nightmare: The honey candies from Fry's time are no longer available because they were reclassified as industrial glue. Bender cooks up a new batch that has so much honey that it causes a diabetic seizure in Farnsworth, which prompts Fry to add in a bagful of sugar to lessen the sweetness, and so sticky that Amy loses two teeth from chewing on one. Zapp uses them as an alternative to hair wax.
- Once More, with Clarity: When Zapp flees from the cave of the Tardigrade Bears while Kif stays behind to fight them off, several gunshots are heard from inside the cave, implying Kif killed the bears. Later however a flashback shows the events from Kif's perspective, and it's revealed he instead shot down a ceiling mounted platform that the biologist was standing on.
- Pet the Dog: Zapp Brannigan offers to be "Captain Uncle" to Kif and Amy's kids, and he sheds Tears of Joy with everyone else when Kif and Amy reunite with their kids at the end of the episode.
- Pun-Based Creature: Since tardigrades are also known as "water bears", the Tardigrade Bears are as big as actual bears and behave like them.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Fry wears a frilly pink apron with hearts on it when he is seen making the clump o' honey candy with Bender.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Grand Midwife looks into the issue of Amy not being the biological parent because that's what she's supposed to do. When Amy assures her she loves the children with all her heart the Midwife grants her legal custody with no further questions.
- Retcon: The previous episode's Exploding Calendar implied the show had jumped from 3023 to 3024. However, this episode takes place exactly 20 years after "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch," which Amy's calendar shows was set in January of 3003 (the original episode aired in January of 2003).
- Running Gagged: After 20 years of badgering Amy to give them grandkids, the Wongs finally get them... only to become so disgusted by them that they pretend they don't exist from that point onwards.
- Secret Test of Character: The real purpose of the custody challenge is just the Grand Midwife making sure that Amy loves the kids, biological or not.
- Sequel Episode: To "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch", focusing on Kif and Amy's children born at the end of that episode emerging from the swamp they were deposited in.
- Shout-Out:
- The giant tardigrades might be a reference to Star Trek: Discovery, which had one.
- The Grand Midwife refers to Kif and Amy's children as "young creatures of the Black Lagoon".
- Fry's jacket having a spot of honey that's still fresh after a thousand years may be a reference to the Life After People episode "The Last Supper", which hypothesizes that preserved honey would last for millennia.
- Shown Their Work: Fry adding a bag of table sugar to the batch of honey candy to make it less sweet. Honey is actually sweeter than sugar.
- Status Quo Is God: Subverted and defied in this episode. With the whole challenge plotline, it looks as if Amy and Kif were going to somehow lose their children but as they both establish themselves to be legitimate parents to their children, it changes the show’s status quo in regard to both their family and their relationship.
- Stock Star Systems:
- The bear sanctuary is in Ursa Major, a reference to the fact that the constellation is known as the Great Bear.
- The babysitter Amy hires accidentally goes to Kepler-10b, the first extrasolar planet discovered.
- Take That!:
- To rum raisin ice cream when Mandy says it "tastes like caterpillars".
- To Bit-O-Honey, for which the way-too-sweet, tooth- (and chest hair) ripping "honey candy" is an Expy.
- Villain Ball: The Biologist suddenly starts to taunt the Tardigrade Bears with food he doesn't want to give them in while Kif was surrounded by the bears in the cave, when beforehand he was careful with how he handled food around them, just to give Kif the motivation to use him as bait for his escape.
- Vocal Evolution: Amy's voice becomes noticeably deeper once she starts taking care of the children, though that could be chalked up to her spending a majority of that time either exhausted or crying.
- Wanting Is Better Than Having: Amy's parents finally get the grandkids they've been hounding her for all show. Only to take one look at them, decide they didn't want them that bad, and promptly leave.
