Gumball and Darwin take karate lessons, but Nicole worries the two are being made fun of in school for wearing their karate outfits and practicing their amateur moves.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: Always Be Yourself, but don't be surprised if people make fun of you.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Darwin does block a spoon full of cereal with his hands as if it were a blade.
- Be Yourself: Double Subverted as Gumball and Darwin seem to just fail and get mocked for their behavior, but still keep up with it anyway—something Penny admires. The point is seemingly that if "yourself" is a loser, you can at least be a happy loser that way.
- Becoming Part of the Image: In Nicole's flashback, Richard puts his head through a door and it comes out in the place of the head on a poster of a chimpanzee.
- Continuity Nod: Gumball's failed skateboard stunt in "The Pressure" can be seen on Elmore Stream-It.
- Dressed in Layers: Darwin and Gumball go to school in their outfits after promising their mom they wouldn't and hide it by putting other, baggy clothes on top.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Nicole sees Gumball and Darwin watching an online video posted of them "practicing" (for lack of a better term) their karate. When she asks who posted it, Gumball replies "Some kids at school did". When a close up of the screen appears, the user account is "SomeKidsAtSchool".
- Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: When Nicole tells her kids they'd better not quit their karate lesson and Gumball asks when they've ever quit anything before, we get a montage of the two quitting various hobbies with the building cost shown in the corner.
- The Freelance Shame Squad: Basically everyone at school but Penny callously laugh at Darwin and Gumball for their failed attempts at martial arts.
- Growing Up Sucks: Nicole attempts to get Gumball and Darwin to stop wearing their gis, which inspires a short musical number where they conclude maturity means giving up everything you ever wanted.Gumball: Life's about abandoning, dream after dream.
Darwin: Hopes and expectations, float away downstream. - History Repeats: Gumball wears a gi to school and ends up making a fool of himself as he thinks it makes him powerful, just like a young Richard did with a cape.
- Insane Troll Logic: Gumball and Darwin believe that since the gis Nicole bought them came with black belts, that they 'are' black belts and thus don't need to go to lessons.
- Late to the Punchline: It takes Gumball most of the episode to understand that people calling him a "Karate Wiener" don't mean that he "wiens" a lot at karate.
- Meaningful Echo: When Nicole tells Gumball and Darwin about the time their father pretended to be the Cottontail Cavalier in his school days and was called a costumed geek, her younger self defends him as she says, "At least he's brave enough to be himself." At the end of the episode, Penny says the exact same line when she defended Gumball after he failed to break a wooden board and was ridiculed as a karate 'wiener.'
- Metal Scream: The song Gumball and Darwin listen to, often referred to as "Inner Warrior", has the scream at the end.
- Pink Means Feminine: In a flashback, 12 year old Nicole is wearing a pink skirt and bow.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Simiarly, the flashback depicts a young Mr. Small in a pink shirt.
- Turn Out Like His Father: The entire thought process with Nicole was the possibilities of Gumball and Darwin turning out like Richard; she was afraid that they would suffer the same or even worse teasing and humiliation because of how they were like Richard when he and Nicole were children.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: Darwin does several rolls in a row on his way to the bus stop.
