The Monarch and 21 tutor an inexperienced St. Cloud to become a better villain. Rusty and Brock prepare Billy and Pete for their impending arching.
- Berserk Button:
- Dr. Mrs. The Monarch is absolutely furious when Kimberly McManus asks her irritably who she is, to the point of wanting to beat the shit out of her right then and there (having to be pulled away by her husband).
- Rose pulls a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on St. Cloud offscreen when the latter reveals that he's arching Billy.
- Blood Knight: Colonel Gentleman is amused and eager to beat up St. Cloud when the latter breaks into Rose’s house. The only reason he doesn't beat St. Cloud up is because he lets Rose do the honors.
- The Bus Came Back: Augustus St. Cloud, who has not appeared since Billy and Pete moved to New York in early Season 6.
- Character Development: The Monarch, who was initially against the idea of going through the proper channels to get back to arching Doctor Venture, seems more content to do so here, happily accepting a "Big Villain" tutor assignment to earn some big kudos for his next level evaluation. It helps that the villain he is mentoring, Augustus St. Cloud, is arching Billy Quizboy and Pete White, known associates of Doctor Venture, making this an arch-by-proxy for him. (Hence the episode title.)
- Continuity Nod: After repeatedly catching him off-guard while preparing him for his first arching, Brock tells Billy to "trust nobody"; this was the first lesson Hunter Gathers had taught him upon being recruited into OSI.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: S-464 thinks "The Tub" is this, until Dr. Mrs. The Monarch goes into a disgusting realism-laced description of what will happen after spending an extended period of time imprisoned in a tub of milk. note
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Deconstructed. The Monarch and 21 are baffled as to how St. Cloud could be a mere level 1 villain when he's clearly filthy rich. Then they meet him and understand completely why he's only a level 1.
- Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: The Guild sniper who is secretly a member of the Peril Partnership gets convinced by Dr. Mrs. the Monarch, under threat of torture and with the additional incentive to win back his OSI girlfriend, to become a triple agent for the Guild against the Peril Partnership.
- Epic Fail: Much of St. Cloud's arching, especially near the end when he tries to use laughing gas on Billy and Pete, and accidentally gasses himself as well (which results in all three of them passing out in a pile).
- Even Evil Has Standards: Enforced officially. While planning equipment ideas, The Monarch outright rejects a level one arch having access to nerve gas, opting for harmless laughing gas instead.
- Evil Laugh: One of the things the Monarch and 21 try to help St. Cloud accomplish, since his evil laugh is rather pathetic and also creepy given St. Cloud's Verbal Tic of moaning at the end. 21 tells the Monarch to demonstrate a well-done version by giving his own trademark evil laugh, and credit where it's due, the difference is night and day.
- Facepalm: The Monarch and 21 several times while trying to tutor St. Cloud.
- Fun with Acronyms: While driving with St. Cloud, the Monarch and 21 help him get ready to pull his first P.E.N.I.S. (Preliminary Effective New Information Schooling), though it's clear they made that term up to mess around with St. Cloud, getting him to obliviously utter out "penis" over and over.
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": The Monarch and 21 start giggling when St. Cloud says P.E.N.I.S., an acronym they made up to sound official after all the other Guild acronyms they encountered earlier; they keep pretending they didn't hear him right and ask him to say it louder to get him to keep repeating it.
- It's Personal: Rusty when he realizes that the Monarch is working with St. Cloud.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: In all his previous appearances, St. Cloud usually won his confrontations with Billy Quizboy or escaped without any damage whatsoever. In this episode, he's teased mercilessly by Monarch and 21, gets threatened by Colonel Gentleman and beat up by Rose, and then knocks himself out, along with Billy and Pete, with laughing gas and ends up unconscious in a pile with his archnemeses. For all the people who hate St. Cloud, this is a pretty cathartic episode.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Rusty's reaction in The Stinger to the below-mentioned Mushroom Samba.
- Mama Bear: Rose Whalen didn't seem to mind that St. Cloud broke her window nor that Colonel Gentleman was about to beat him up. However, she gets angered and beats St. Cloud up offscreen once she learns that he's arching Billy. She even drops the trope name word-for-word.
- The Mole: The Guild has discovered that their sniper from the Peril Partnership is this, threatening to torture him unless he becomes a double agent for them.
- Mushroom Samba: When St. Cloud attempts to gas Billy and Pete (with laughing gas, no less), he accidentally gasses himself as well. Apparently, Billy and Pete hallucinated a really awesome and heroic fight that they had with St. Cloud as a result...when really, all three of them ended up passing out in a pile.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Rose completely beats up St. Cloud offscreen when he breaks into her home, after she learns he's Billy's arch. The Monarch and 21 are forced to cover up his bruised face with bronzer.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Parodied. Rusty and Brock tell Billy and Pete to just go out and make a "heroic speech" to St. Cloud about how he'll lose because "good triumphs over evil"; they actually do this, and it's exactly as cheesy as it sounds.
- Seen It All:
- Rusty and Brock have been through so much, so they aren't phased at all by the Level 1 Guild arching threat Billy and Pete receive.
- Likewise, Colonel Gentleman and Rose aren't remotely surprised to see a costumed supervillain bursting through their front window.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The training St. Cloud, Billy, and Pete White all endure was ultimately for naught due to all three of them passing out from the laughing gas.
- Villain Has a Point: Monarch doesn't doubt that his wife could've kicked O.S.I. Agent Kimberly McManus's ass, but doing so would've resulted in Dr. Mrs. The Monarch causing an inter-agency incident and end up getting booted off the Council of 13 as a result.
- Villain Team-Up: The Monarch, Rusty's de facto (if not legal) archenemy, and 21 sign up for the Guild's tutoring program, which leads to them serving as mentors to and working with Augustus St. Cloud, Billy's and Pete's arch.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: The Monarch's and 21's reactions when they realize that the "child" on St. Cloud's ship is actually St. Cloud himself.
