Time Trap!
The Loud kids travel back in time to their parents' wedding day to prevent them from receiving a vase.
- Baby Fever Trigger: When resetting the timeline, two-year-old Lily invokes this trope by deliberately acting cute to ensure the parents will want kids.
- Bad Present: After ruining Rita and Lynn Sr.'s wedding, the kids end up in an alternate reality in which they were never born, Rita and Lynn Sr. are Child Haters with a sleeker car and go on vacations more frequently, Mr. Grouse is more cheerful, Chunk works at a junkyard, Chandler has befriended Lincoln's friend group and corrupted them, Flip sells health food and goes by his real name, and Mr. and Mrs. Gurdle are convinced aliens exist.
- "Better if Not Born" Plot: Zigzagged. While Rita and Lynn Sr. are now happy in their new lives, they’re also a pair of stuck up, child hating jerks, Lincoln’s friends have befriended Chandler and are now a group of rude bullies, and while Chunk and Flip are now worse off and better off, respectively, those had nothing to do directly with the Louds not being born and more to do with the time traveling Louds' antics at the wedding affecting their careers. The only person who seems to be truly better off without the siblings is Mr. Grouse, as without having to put up with their craziness, he’s more laid back and relaxed.
- Butterfly of Doom: Due to the trouble the kids caused at the wedding, their parents swear off ever having children. It takes Lily acting cute to consider the possibility.
- Child Hater: After the present Loud siblings mess things up at their wedding, Rita and Lynn Sr. swear off ever having kids. They were certainly quick to kick the siblings out of their (much cleaner) house when they meet in the new present.
- Close-Enough Timeline: At the end, just as it seems as though the timeline is back to normal, Lisa notices that Lily is visible in one of Lynn Sr. and Rita's wedding photos. Suffice to say, she cringes when she realizes this.
- Continuity Nod:
- Lisa mentions that she once cracked time travel, as depicted in "The Mad Scientist".
- The sleeker car that Rita and Lynn Sr. have in the alternate reality bears a striking resemblance to "Lydia" the car Lori originally wanted to purchase in "Coupe Dreams".
- Back in "Study Muffin", Clyde feared that without Lincoln he would fall in with the wrong crowd and become a bully. This is exactly what happens to him in the alternate timeline the Loud kids create.
- Cuteness Proximity: The reason why Rita and Lynn Sr. consider having kids in the restored timeline is because Lily goes up to the cake and dabs their noses with the frosting.
- Darker and Edgier: The stakes are much higher than your typical episode on this show, as the siblings are all in danger of getting erased out of existence forever.
- Dwindling Party: The Louds slowly begin to fade out of existence in birth order. Eventually, Lisa and Lily are the only Louds left, although the others are restored along with the normal timeline.
- Fight for the Last Bite: Lynn and Lincoln do this in the first flashback, destroying the vase in the process.
- Gasshole: Lynn, as usual.
- In the second flashback, when her parents' vase is stuck to her butt, Lynn farts hard enough to make it shoot like a rocket and break.
- In the altered future of the Loud House, Lori comments that it doesn't smell like Cliff or Lynn's farts (but never says anything about her own, as she always denies doing it when she does it around others). Lynn states she can make that happen. She only raises her leg to do so before she's cut off.
- Heroic Sacrifice: While she's fading out of existence, Lucy stays behind to distract Mr. and Mrs. Gurdle so that the remaining sisters can go back in time to fix the wedding.
Lisa: Her sacrifice will not be in vain.
- Hidden Depths: Lynn, of all people, points out that removing the vase from the wedding would impact the space-time continuum.
Lisa: That is a highly perceptive question, and I am stunned, quite frankly, it came out of your mouth.
- Hope Spot: When the girls are kidnapped by the Gurdles, Lisa reassures them that Lincoln hasn't been captured and he will rescue them. Cue him being erased from existence.
Lisa: OK, we're definitely doomed.
- If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: When Lori disappears from existence, Lynn calls dibs on her mattress.
- Oh, Crap!: Lisa at the end, noticing that Lily is visible in Rita and Lynn Sr.'s wedding photo.
- Outgrowing the Childish Name: In the alternate reality, Flip goes by his real name, Phillip, and explicitly notes how being called Flip is a blast to the past. As established in episodes focusing on his youth, he's gone by Flip since that time.
- Race Against the Clock: The second half of the episode becomes this as the Louds have to get back to the future to stop their alternate selves from ruining the wedding, or they'll vanish out of existence forever.
- Recycled Premise: Back to the Future references aside, the episode borrows heavily from The Fairly Oddparents' episode "Father Time". In both episodes:
- The main characters destroy a valuable object of their parents during their shenanigans (the vase from their wedding here, the father's trophy in FOP).
- Their idea of a solution is to travel back in time, to prevent them from getting that object in the first place.
- They mess up with the timeline so badly that they cause a bleak Bad Present where they are not born:
- The Louds remain married, but they chose to remain childless and became spoiled jerkasses at it.
- Whereas in "Father Time", for losing the race, Mr. Turner was separated from his crush and future wife and became a dictator.
- They must go back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong before they're erased from existencenote Curiously, this plot line wasn't addressed in Fairly Oddparents, but it was pointed out with Timmy acknowledging his non-existence and losing his original fairies, relying instead on their 1970s counterparts, even if that means they'll restore the doomed object and face punishment. It always results in a Close-Enough Timeline.
- Ret-Gone: After the Loud kids change the past, they start to vanish out of existence.
- Serial Escalation: The flashbacks reveal that the kids have been grounded for breaking the vase for increasingly longer periods of time: one night, then a week, then a month. The kids worry that means when they break it again, they'll be grounded for a year... except they're just grounded for two months instead.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Loud siblings' goal once they realize that they're absent from the new timeline they ended up creating from the trouble they caused at their parents wedding.
- Shout-Out: Lisa converts Vanzilla into a time machine to take the Louds back in time. Hmm...a time-traveling car? Where have we seen that before...?
- Time Travel Episode: The first episode in the series that explicitly uses time travel as the running plot device, after past episodes like "The Mad Scientist" only used it on occasion.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: It's brief, but with Lincoln gone from the timeline, Clyde and the rest of his friends became Chandler's gang, making them much ruder and meaner than they are in the normal timeline.
- While it is true that Lynn has not been the nicest of the Loud siblings, in this episode, she really takes the cake. In a flashback, she aggressively hits Lincoln with a pizza box just because the latter wanted the last slice of pizza. In the present, she spends the rest of the episode acting aggressive and caring for herself. She wrecks the wedding presents in the past with no remorse and whenever one of the Loud siblings disappear out of existence in the alternate universe, she calls dibs on their stuff.
- Worst Wedding Ever: While trying to get rid of the vase, the siblings accidentally cause trouble at the wedding, which culminates in them accidentally launching the wedding cake onto the parents. When they leave, the wedding is left in ruins, and Rita is left a sobbing mess as Lynn Sr. tries to comfort her. This is what leads to the alternate reality without the siblings seen in the episode.
