Bart and Lisa fear that they might have killed Martin while Marge thinks Homer is cheating — on his diet.
Tropes:
- The B Grade: Lisa believes telling the truth would be worse that one million "A minuses".
- Bait-and-Switch Suicide: After Bart and Lisa believe they have killed Martin, Bart leaves Lisa a note saying he can't take the guilt anymore and that he's going to Martin's house to "end it all". She goes there and sees a shadow of him getting ready to hang himself in the greenhouse, but it turns out he is actually just hanging a lightbulb so he can complete Martin's butterfly project.
- Brain Bleach: Homer "making out" with the food (a slab of grilled kebab meat still on it's metal pole) he snuck while in a motel shower.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Nelson ends the episode by telling the audience to have a good night.
- Crazy-Prepared: Martin survived falling off a cliff because of a preference to wear a special anti-wedgie set of briefs with extra-extendable elastics (which got caught on a branch as he fell).
- Diet Episode: Yet another one for Homer, who doesn't even try this time, and cheats on his diet pretty much from day one.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Nelson gets pummeled by the other bullies of Springfield Elementary because he wants to add something. Nelson is too tough to notice, though.
- Lisa immediately shoots down the idea of confessing they killed Martin because she believes Bart and her both would be seen to have reasons to kill him. Bart being one of his regular bullies makes sense, but Lisa is assuming that the cops will say she pulled this off because of their academic rivalry.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Easily Forgiven: When Homer is exposed, Marge is angrier at the "Sneakers" host for trying to ruin their marriage for entertainment than the fact that Homers been lying to her about his diet for weeks. While this would normally be understandable, Marge seems to forget that she put Homer on the diet because his weight was seriously starting to endanger his health and he doesn't seem to care.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Though Nelson often bullies Martin a lot, when he hears that Martin was dead, he begins investigating. After Lisa confesses to killing Martin, she offers to get back together with Nelson, and let him cherry bomb her Malibu Stacies if he let them go, Nelson tells her to "save it for the warden". Although when Martin shows up alive, Nelson punches him, but comments that "it's good to have you alive."
- The host of "Sneakers" is the kind of man who has no problem looking at footage of people having sex all day and ruining their lives, but even he gets sickened after a few minutes of seeing Homer pretty much having sex with a literal piece of meat.
- Fan Disservice: Homer's motel interlude with the junk food is deliberately portrayed as a disgusting affair. Even the Sneakers host is disgusted.
- Girly Skirt Twirl: Martin does one when he's showcasing the modesty skirt he sewed by hand with leaves (and took him most of the week he was gone — it took him one hour to make a raft to get out of the island he was in). Nelson gives him a Dope Slap as a result.
- Hypocrite: Lisa has always preached and harped on about telling the truth because it's the right thing to do always, no matter who gets negatively impacted. Here, she desperately tries to cover up the possible murder of Martin (even goading Bart into following suit), all because of how the truth getting out would affect her.
- It's All About Me: Both Lisa and Bart are concerned about being nailed for Martin's "murder" but Lisa is the one that constantly acts like being on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she can't stop thinking of her possibly shattered future (and her Imagine Spot where she's in prison shows a newspaper cut-out that headlines "Bart killed Martin" and "Lisa helped", the latter of which has the bigger font). See Hypocrite above.
- Kid Detective: Nelson, in full-blown Columbo homage mode.
- Lampshade Hanging: At the Kwik-E-Mart, Lisa tells Bart they can't be seen together. Bart reminds her they're siblings, so it wouldn't be considered unusual. Lisa in turn says exactly and tells him to get her an Indian burn to keep up appearances.
- MacGyvering: Martin, as a result of the events that made people believe he died, landed on a small island in the middle of a lake. It took him just one hour to make a raft to get out... and the week it took for the whole mess to occur for him to sew a skirt out of leaves.
- Made of Iron: Musing about the details of Martin's death, Nelson comments things didn't add up. Hearing that, Jimbo, Kearney and Dolph try to beat him up for wanting to add. However, he's so much tougher than their other victims, he not only doesn't show any pain but also doesn't show any sign he is aware of people hitting him.
- Mood Whiplash: Going from a cop talking about a child's death to a children's cartoon.
- Not Quite Dead: Martin survived. It took him a week to get back to civilization because of his Skewed Priorities.
- No-Sell: Nelson completely ignoring Jimbo, Kearny and Dolph trying to assault him.
- No Warrant? No Problem!: As befits a Columbo homage, Nelson's plan to try to catch Lisa and Bart is to constantly pester them in an attempt to trigger a Paranoia Gambit.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After seeing the news report about Martin, Bart feels so guilty that he immediately wants to confess. Conversely, Lisa is so scared of getting in trouble that she keeps him quiet.
- Plagiarism in Fiction:
Bart: I didn't know there was a national park here.
Lisa: You wrote a report on it last week.
Bart: The internet wrote it. I just handed it in.
- Properly Paranoid: Nelson notices Bart and Lisa's nervous behavior and recalls how Martin was so afraid of heights that he would be too afraid to go near the rail.
- Really Dead Montage: Martin gets one. Subverted when it turns out that he's not really dead, or even hurt bad.
- Shout-Out:
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Bart paraphrases the "The play's the thing" line from Hamlet when planning to use Sideshow Mel's hair bone for a prank.
Bart: The bone's the very thing, methinks / to prank my sister and the dink.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Marge slaps the host of Sneakers for goading her into breaking up with Homer.
- Skewed Priorities:
- Lisa's Imagine Spot of herself in prison for helping with Martin's death has the newspaper headlines "Bart killed Martin" and "Lisa helped". The one about Lisa has a bigger font.
- The thing Lisa is worried about if she went to prison was having to read Danielle Steel novels instead of Joyce Carol Oates.
- Martin is believed dead for a whole week because he decided it was more important to finish sewing a modesty skirt (by hand, made of leaves) than immediately use the raft he made in one hour to escape the island he was trapped in. And he is a bit too proud of showing it off.
- Smarter Than You Look: Nelson spends half of the episode trying to get Lisa and Bart to confess that they were involved in Martin's disappearance, complete with him inspecting the scene of the "crime" and playing off their paranoia (or at least Lisa's paranoia).
- Softer and Slower Cover: Invoked In-Universe with the Springfield Elementary band playing a mournful version of the theme from Rocky while remembering Martin.
- Take That!:
- Danielle Steel novels are the only books available in prison. It makes Lisa (who is daydreaming of becoming a lifer as a result of Martin's accidental death) bellow out a Big "NO!".
- "Sneakers" is a regular Fox Network reality show, more concerned about ratings-raising family-destroying schadenfreude than actually helping people. When Marge points it out and acts like a sweetheart with Homer, the host says that it's nice... and if she'll excuse him, he's going to go to the editing room to do some Manipulative Editing that will make her look like a psychotic Woman Scorned.
- What You Are in the Dark: Lisa says in the episode's denouement that she didn't expect to find such a criminal streak deep inside her when confronted with the dilemma of owning up to Martin's apparent death. Conversely, Bart demonstrates unexpected goodness when his first impulse is to turn himself in and confess.
