When Elmore starts losing its color, Gumball and Darwin try to find the source behind it...and stumble upon a depressed Alan, who has lost his faith in humanitynote and stopped doing his charity work.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: The world sucks and things may not ever get better, but it's important to always have faith. Faith for a better tomorrow keeps everyone going.
- Barrier Maiden: Because Alan stopped caring, people who looked up to him also stopped caring, causing society to break down.
- Black Comedy: One of the officers (a can of soda) is sliced in half by a duck, drained of his life juice and dragged into a bush for feeding. Although he comes back.
- Bowdlerization: Versions of this episode shown in UK reruns, Russia, Bulgaria, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Ireland alter the scene of Jeff (the corn guy) getting popped by the intense sunlight so that way his bulging red eye is white.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Gumball is apparently incapable of even calling Alan his friend, looking like he'd physically throw up.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Color is slowly draining out of Elmore due to Alan's loss of faith. This leads to several problems, like Rocky being unable to tell which woman at the mall is his date because she told him she would be dressed in gray, or Nicole buying kitty litter because she confused it for cereal.
- Faceless Masses: In distance shots, the stadium audience is depicted as blue rectangles only.
- Groin Attack: Subverted when the whole world turns grey and Gumball and Darwin can't tell any textures apart. Darwin ends up walking right into a rock and grabbing himself in pain.Darwin: Arrrhhh! Right in the... neck.
- Missing the Good Stuff: The episode begins with a TV report about the discovery of a new color. Unfortunately, the Wattersons' set goes black and white just as the color is shown.
- Not Hyperbole: Alan says that no matter what he does, Gumball still won't look him in the eye. As it turns out, Gumball quite literally refuses to look Alan in the eye, as the top of his head has twisted itself to face away from him.
- Personal Rain Cloud: A rainstorm appears around the spot Alan is sitting on at the park.
- Pet the Dog: At the end, Gumball finally accepts Alan as his friend.
- Smash Cut: Rocky is told his blind date at a mall is wearing gray, but the color disappearing means every woman is. He decides to go out without asking more, deploys an Anticipatory Breath Spray, and the scene cuts to him being beaten by every woman in the vicinity.
- A World Half Full: Darwin and Gumball's song is less "everything is awesome" and more "the world can suck, but you can help make it better" (which is a more realistic lesson to learn).
