After a day of being discriminated against based on age and gender, the Wattersons decide to live life in each others' shoes to see if men, women, adults, or children have the tougher life (Gumball and Darwin pose as women, Anais poses as an adult, Richard poses as a kid, and Nicole poses as a man).
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch Comment:Richard: (to Anais) You should try being a grown-up. Responsibility, fatherhood, full-time employment—avoiding all those things is so hard for an adult.
- Condescending Compassion: Two male security guards attempt to be chivalrous by insisting on doing inane tasks for women, including handing over a piece of paper because "it looks heavy".
- Death Glare: On their way home at the beginning of the episode, Gumball and Darwin give out angry glares that wither out whoever crosses their path. Flowers die, Idaho ages, and the milk carton man turns into sour cream.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: While dressed as a woman, Gumball insists he can push an elevator button for himself, but is Instantly Proven Wrong when he realizes he's too short to reach it.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: As everyone is relieved after ending their day In Another Man's Shoes, Anais realizes she got the short end of the stick.Nicole: I'm so glad I'll never be a man.
Gumball: And I'm so glad we'll never be women.
Richard: I'm so glad I'll never be a child again.
Anais: And I'm so glad I'll never be a grown-up...
(Anais' expression changes from relieved to an annoyed realization, and she smacks herself in the face) - Growing Up Sucks: Richard thinks being an adult means he's not allowed to have fun anymore. Anais feels the opposite—that being a kid just means no one cares about what you say or think. Spending time as the other makes them reverse their opinions... which Anais realizes is worse for her, because Richard won't be a kid again, but she's growing up whether she wants to or not.
- Ignored Epiphany: Gumball concludes that women's lives aren't easier than men's... but just ignores the possibility that they're harder, and assumes everything works out to being even. Just to rub salt in the wound, he cuts Nicole off when she tries to say otherwise.
- Implacable Man: At the beginning, Anais angrily marches home, trampling bystanders and cutting through school buses along the way, and plows through her home's front door without bothering to open it.
- In Another Man's Shoes: The Wattersons spend time in each other's positions in life: Nicole as a man, Gumball and Darwin as women, Richard as a child, and Anais as an adult. Inexplicably, not only does everyone else goes along with them, so does reality itself—to the point of Richard developing acne and Anais getting horrible back pain. It gives them all some appreciation for the others' problems, though the shortcoming of such an experience are pointed out: Gumball hastily declares that everyone has things equally bad, regardless of gender or age, which Nicole points out is a terrible oversimplification.
- Interrupted by the End: The end credits cut off Nicole as she's talking about how men always interrupt women.
- Laser-Guided Karma: At the beginning of the episode, Banana Joe is plowed through by Anais, and later in the episode, we find out he made fun of Gumball and Darwin along with Tobias and Ocho.
- Literal Metaphor: While spending the day as women, Gumball and Darwin try to take an elevator up to a building's top floor for a job interview, but get blocked by a literal glass ceiling.
- Literal-Minded: Banana Joe thinks "bench press" means "pushing down on a bench".
- Men Are Tough: Men are expected to ignore pain to avoid being seen as weak. When Nicole spends a day as a man, she cannot make herself ask for help even when she gets her legs crushed under an I-beam. Same goes for trying to ask for directions to the hospital.Banana Joe: What next? Going to see a doctor instead of suffering in silence until it's too late?
- Men Don't Cry: Darwin and Gumball say they had to hold in their tears while being mocked all day at school, then release a torrent of Ocular Gushers from their eyes, nose, and ears.
- Not Hyperbole: Anais eats a donut and gains a fatty chin, then states that being middle-aged means "anything that enters my body now makes me fat". She then grows a third chin when she inhales.Anais: WHAT?! Air as well?!
- Saying Too Much: Tobias accidentally mentions he uses makeup to cover up his blemishes while in the middle of calling Darwin and Gumball unmanly for using floral-scented body wash.
- Stylistic Self-Parody: Gumball can't reach an elevator call button, parodying how short most of the children are. It could also be considered a more subtle parody of how many of the show's characters that short shouldn't be able to easily reach doorknobs and such, and so the animators resort to tricks like keeping their use offscreen or having the character suddenly get larger.
- The Unreveal: Anais complains of being condescended to because she's Just a Kid, but we don't see what specifically happened to her today—it would be a bit redundant given Richard responds by smugly claiming "condescending" isn't a word (while mispronouncing it).
