Gumball: I'm sorry, Mr. Robinson. You don't love us. You just love to hate us. And if you can't see the difference for yourself, then your heart is beyond saving.
Mr. Robinson tries and repeatedly fails to win back Gumball and Darwin's friendship.
Tropes:
- Art Shift: The episode's musical number is rendered in a simplistic, felt-themed style.
- Bittersweet Ending: While still bluntly admitting that he hates the boys, Mr. Robinson is genuinely moved when they come out to hug him, causing him to smile and shed a Single Tear, implying that their relationship has improved.
- Blank White Eyes: In reaction to watching an edited VHS in which the main character seemingly dies right before the ending, young Gumball and Darwin go pale in the face with empty eyes.
- Bookends: Mr. Robinson's first and last Day in the Limelight episode has his heart coming out thanks to Gumball.
- Character Development: Rocky and Mr. Robinson are on positive terms after the events of "The Boss".
- Continuity Nod: Gumball and Darwin falling backwards in black-and-white through the ground is reminiscent of them doing something very similar in "The Sale."
- Double-Meaning Title: The title either refers to Mr. Robinson's feelings towards the boys or his literal heart coming out of his body.
- Exact Eavesdropping: An odd example, since Mr. Robinson hasn't exactly been coy about his abhorrence of Gumball and Darwin, but it takes them overhearing his conversation with Mrs. Robinson to finally realize that he doesn't like them.
- Good-Times Montage: Parodied when Mr. Robinson reminisces about all the good times he's had with Gumball and Darwin - all of which involve playing mean pranks on them.
- Half-Baked Niceness: Rocky tells Mr. Robinson to make an effort to be positive, so the latter tries to compliment Gumball and Darwin. However, his compliments are very terrible; he starts by saying Gumball has massive hips which doesn't at all impress him, and his further attempts to compliment the boys similarly fail and end up offending them instead.
- Harsh Word Impact: A variant; When the boys hear Mr. Robinson criticizing them they imagine falling through the floor into an abyss. Every harsh word after that becomes another obstacle that mangles them on the way to the ground. At the end, when it seems like they hit a metaphorical rock bottom, Mr. Robinson salts the wounds by forgetting he was even criticizing them in the first place.
- Ironic Echo: In the flashback to when the Wattersons moved in, Mr. Robinson appears to be waving at baby Gumball, but he's just reaching for the string to close the blinds. Later, Gumball does the same move to Mr. Robinson, only his blinds don't work as well.
- Jerkass Realization: After going through an entire montage of his past with the Watterson brothers, Mr. Robinson comes to a realization of how much they meant to him, setting him up to regain their friendship.
- Literal Metaphor: Played with; after the fantasy sequence illustrating the boys' feelings as falling down a pit, it seems like they're actually talking to him from where they fell through after the hole sealed up. Then it turns out they're talking from their backyard. Then it's shown his words gave them an actual dark cloud above their heads.
- My Little Panzer: Mr. Robinson's old toys, which include among other things a "space gun" with actual gunpowder and a fully-functional atomic energy kit.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: When Rocky tells his dad, "Just speak to them and make an effort to be positive," Simon Lipkin's natural British accent noticably slips through when he says "effort".
- Organ Autonomy: Mr. Robinson's heart, who it turns out has been making him do mean things to keep him from having feelings to avoid the inevitable heartbreak they bring. Gumball removes him from Mr. Robinson's chest and procedes to smother him with love until he starts feeling.
- Safety in Indifference: Enforced by Mr. Robinson's heart by making him not feel any emotions besides disdain to protect itself.
- Shout-Out:
- When Mr. Robinson tries to get Gumball and Darwin more followers, the creepy clown from "The Procrastinators" can be seen behind a sewer grate, much like Pennywise.
- During the musical number, Gumball and Darwin pursue Mr. Robinson's heart ala Pac-Man.
- During Mr. Robinson's good-times montage of playing mean tricks on the kids when they were little, we see him give them a VHS tape of a movie called "White Snow", obviously a parody of Snow White... which he edited to end right as the Snow White character bites into a poison pear and seemingly dies.
- Single Tear: Mr. Robinson attempts to do this after Gumball outright admits that he just loves to hate them, but due to his heart trying to repress his feelings, it immediately retracts back into his eye multiple times. He actually succeeds in doing so at the very end after his heart finally lets it out.
- Slasher Smile: Mr. Robinson's second attempt to regain Gumball and Darwin's friendship is to stalk them down the street while giving them "followers", all with a psychopathic smile to go with it.
- Smart Ball: Normally, Rocky isn't particularly bright and his father tends to look down on him for this. In this episode, Rocky gets frustrated each of the three times he has to bail out his father from jail, because of his father's lack of common sense.
- Smash Cut: Three times in fact, Mr. Robinson tries to get Gumball and Darwin to like him again, only to get arrested and need bail by his son.
- Tempting Fate: "How to brainwash ch—" Smash Cut to Rocky bailing Mr. Robinson out of jail.
