After watching a scary shark movie, Molly, Darryl, and Scratch face a ghost shark that Scratch accidentally summons.
Tropes:
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Parodied towards the end of the episode, when Molly directly addresses the viewer (which Scratch is confused about) to tell them that sharks are not as frightening as media makes them out to be.
- Babysitting Episode: Molly offers to babysit Darryl while Pete and Sharon go out. They are suspicious, as Molly and Darryl getting together usually leads to "shenanigans", but Molly manages to convince them. Then it turns out that it was all a ploy to watch a scary movie.
- Bottle Episode: The entire episode takes place in the McGee house.
- Crazy-Prepared:
- Pete and Sharon had made sure that Molly and Darryl had eaten dinner and that they had some extra food in case they got hungry while they were out, as well as making sure the Chens were available for the kids to call if they needed help.
- Molly and Darryl had been planning to watch a shark movie without their parents finding out. They had a DVD and a DVD player hidden because they were worried that if they used a streaming service, anyone could look at their history or use it to track them.
- Horrifying the Horror: Even Scratch, a ghost who knows how to be scary, is terrified of the ghost shark. This causes him to inadvertantly create an actual ghost shark from his fear.
- Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: Watching Fins of Fear makes Molly, Darryl, and Scratch scared that a ghost shark could get them, and it becomes reality when Scratch's imagination summons an actual ghost shark.
- Shout-Out: One of Molly’s stuffed animals is Mr. Whiskers.
- Tempting Fate: Scratch keeps on mentioning that the ghost shark probably can't do things like swim upstairs or climb ladders, only for it to immediately do so. It's eventually revealed that Scratch created the ghost shark rather than summoned it, and so it does anything that he believes it can do.
- Threatening Shark: The movie Molly and Darryl watch is about a ghost shark. Scratch tries to prove that there's no such thing by summoning a ghost shark, and when nothing happens, it appears that he was right... until a Shark Fin of Doom appears on the floor. It eventually gets subverted when the shark turns out to obey Scratch's commands, and he ends up making it cute and nonthreatening.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: As it turns out, Scratch didn't summon a ghost shark, but inadvertently created one as a manifestation of his fear. Once they realize this, Scratch turns the shark cute and friendly.
