Professor Spark lives in a Raygun Gothic Elaborate Underground Base built inside the mountain of the subtitle. His daughter Polly is a Spoiled Brat who may be best described as a Diabolical Mastermind version of Veruca Salt. One day, while the Professor is out, Polly fails a history quiz at school and decides the solution is to use Daddy's Time Machine to alter history, thus making her absurd quiz answers correct. With the help of Botley, a Robot Buddy who serves as Polly's Badly Battered Babysitter, you, the player, have to thwart Polly and Set Right What Once Went Wrong before the Delayed Ripple Effect will (supposedly) set in.
There are twenty-five robots Polly has sent back in time, one for each question on her botched history quiz. For each robot, you have to complete a Fetch Quest, collecting Plot Coupons from the various science-fiction-themed Mini Games inside Mystery Mountain. Once you have all four items and enough points, you're permitted to enter the time machine room. There, you're given a quiz which links the items, in a six degrees sort of way, to the place in history where the robot was sent. You then bring that robot back to the present and begin work on the next one, until all twenty-five have been rescued.
Unlike earlier JumpStart games, this one was never released in the United Kingdom as a Jump Ahead title. However, it did receive foreign releases in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Spain.
This game provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Some of Ms. Winkle's responses (after history is corrected) depict her chuckling at the Cool, but Stupid answers, but she still marks Polly incorrect.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication: The ending is actually set up by a line Polly spoke in the opening exposition, "There's still one more question, the extra credit question and it's super hard. That's why I've been looking for you, Knotley." This was cut in later releases, making Polly's demand at the end of the game that Botley still has to do the extra credit question come out of left field. You can find out more here
. - Adults Are Useless: Zigzagged; on the one hand, Polly has free reign of the mountain laboratories because her father went away on a business conference. When Professor Spark does return, however, he puts Polly in her place and saves Bottley's robot life before Polly compels him to use the time machine. He explains to them that he was actually trying to get home sooner, but due to the changes she caused, including pogo sticks used as a mode of transportation, he was unable to do so until Bottley and the player fixed all the problems.
- All Drummers Are Animals: The six-armed robot drummer, Bongobot.
- Alphabet Soup Cans: Mandatory in a JumpStart game, right? Somewhat justified since it is Polly, a third-grader herself, who is trying to outsmart you.
- Alpha Bitch: Subverted. Being rich, blonde, and snotty, Polly has all the usual indicators. However, a throwaway line from Botley indicates Polly is unpopular at her school.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Polly lives in Mystery Mountain with her father, Professor Spark. No mother is ever mentioned.
- Anachronism Stew: Several of Polly's alterations don't go unremarked by Botley. Even if he didn't know the answers beforehand, he knows enough that stone-age humans didn't have televisions, vending machines were invented after coins, the boomerang was invented long before the postal system, the first wheel obviously couldn't have been a car steering wheel if it supposedly wasn't for locomotion either, ancient writings weren't done on word processors, and certainly humans must have understood the Earth was round long before they invented space travel.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Click on enough wrong constellations in the observatory, and Botley will give away the correct answer.
- The Artifact: The Painting Gallery seemingly exists just because every previous JumpStart product included some kind of in-game painting application. However, this game is a lot more story-driven than its predecessors, and every time you visit the Painting Gallery, you're stuck throwing together the background and clip art that Polly wants. This means you never actually get to play around with the painting application that they bothered to create for you. Well, you can technically, but it results in Polly complaining that she's not getting her picture.
- Artistic License – History: The time-travel missions contain some errors:
- The ancient Olympians competed in the nude, but the game shows them clothed for obvious reasons.
- James Naismith was a college teacher when he invented basketball, but the game shows him introducing basketball to elementary-aged children rather than the college students he actually taught. Also, these kids are shown wearing modern clothes rather than clothing accurate to 1891.
- For the question about radium, Polly supposedly changed history so that people never realized that radium was poisonous. Except she sent the robot back to 1898, when radium was discovered, not to the 1920s when radium's toxicity became known. When history is put back on course, Marie Curie is shown wearing her two Nobel medals. Of course, she won them in 1903 and 1911, so she wouldn't have them yet in 1898. And as usual, there's no mention of poor Pierre Curie. Pierre and Marie Curie worked together to isolate radium, but Pierre is half-forgotten now due to Marie's status as the token female scientist.
- Henri Becquerel was also not acknowledged despite sharing the 1903 award with the Curies. However, this actually has some controversy as to whether or not he deserved share that particular award - Becquerel is more known for observing the effect of radiation from Uranium.
- The game credits the Mayans for inventing chewing gum. It is true that the Mayans created chewing gum from tree sap, but they weren't the first to invent it. Chewing gum dates back much earlier, all the way to the Stone Age.
- The game credits Ferdinand Magellan for discovering that the Earth is round. That is marginally better than crediting Christopher Columbus, but it still repeats the 19th century myth that Medieval Morons thought the Earth was flat. The correct answer should be the Ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who in 240 BC compared shadows in two locations to calculate the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy.
- This becomes an internal inconsistency in the case on the invention of tools. The Pollywood Squares quiz gets you to select "tools" by asking you what humans invented first, with "clothes" offered as a wrong answer. Then you go back in time to see a cavewoman inventing tools... and she's wearing clothes. She's also white-skinned although, as the game notes, tools were invented in Africa.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Botley
- Banana Peel: Polly's little hovering shark thing leaves one in the generator room for Botley to slip on.
- Big Bad: Polly serves as the game's antagonist.
- Big Damn Heroes: Justified. Professor Spark was trying to get home earlier, but due to Polly changing the timeline, she inadvertently impeded his journey. Once the player and Botley fix things, he returns home in a matter of seconds to save Botley and chide his daughter for trying to kill her robot babysitter.
- Big Eater: Mort, the robot in the kitchen activity. You cook the food for him to eat.
- Blatant Lies: Polly tries to tell these to her father after the former is caught blabbing to Botley about her evil plan.
- Bowdlerise: The folk song "What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?" is one of the tunes you have to arrange in the Music Hall. However, the game avoids mentioning the song's title, identifying it only as "a little sea shanty from the days of sailors and pirates."
- Brainy Brunette: Professor Spark, Polly's father. If you look closely, his hair is brunette and he's a genius.
- Breaking Out: The Shrinking Machine Room has you playing a version of this after you shrink down Botley. Using a magnet as your paddle, you launch him into the molecules until he breaks through enough of them to reveal the item you're looking for.
- Brick Joke:
- As easy to miss as it is, you can witness this if you return to the front door. The rocket Botley had inside him will reappear and still be flying.
- Botley went into a summary of the Bad Future that Polly created, including that people are using pogo sticks to travel. Professor Spark at the end appears to stop Polly and apologizes to Botley because apparently due to Polly's meddling, it took a long time to get home thanks to the new form of transportation.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Polly does a French accent while giving this clue about frogs:Polly: Pardonne-moi, Monsieur Egburr, but zee moist and slimy specimen has jumped out of zee frying pan.
Egbert: Oh dear, she's cooking my specimens again! - Broken Bridge: This game goes out of its way to discuss why doors are inexplicably locked. The front door being opened by door chimes might be thought of as silly, but apparently, Professor Spark doesn't want unauthorized personnel unrestricted access to his time machine, he put a lock on his kitchen months ago because his robots are not only eating machines but are gluttonous, and the door to the music hall is guarded by a constantly reset password so less musical robots don't pound too hard on the piano. Botley lampshades this and rhetorically asks why no one keeps the doors unlocked.
- Butt-Monkey: Botley goes through a lot of Amusing Injuries throughout the game.
- The Cameo: Clicking on the frog in the fishbowl on the second floor of the mountain will have him stand up and put on a hat resembling CJ's from JumpStart 2nd Grade.
- Closed Circle: Mystery Mountain is self-sufficient, so there's no reason to leave.
- Constellations as Locations: The observatory Mini-Game has you figuring out which constellation Polly sent her father's spaceship to.
- Cool, but Stupid: Much like Anachronism Stew above, several of Polly's alterations work like this. Snowmen playing basketball, nurses serving dessert instead of medicine, using SCUBA gear on high-altitude diving boards, chewing gum made from super glue, recording an electric guitar on a phonograph, using the world's first paper for spitballs and paper airplanes, smoking dynamite, finding microorganisms bathing, placing jet engines on a bicycle in lieu of pedals, heating the whole cow to get safe milk from it, using boomerangs to deliver mail and toilets that explode after one use.
- Cool Shades: Referenced when sunglasses are a mission clue. Monty Monitor mentions that, "Sunglasses were not invented to make you look cool. They were invented to protect your eyes from the sun."
- Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: In educational games like this it's expected for the player to be able to take his/her time, but this game ups the counter-method to extremes. Since Botley is characterized as overreactive, he would chide you if you strayed from his mission path. And if you insisted on straying, then Polly herself would chime in and taunt you that you were looking in the wrong place. But the messages Botley gave for idling too long nearly turned this into Guilt-Based Gaming, ranging from "You're hesitating, is something wrong?" to "Of all the times to freeze on me! WE'RE SOOO CLOSE!" and "Pull yourself together, man! Are you having second thoughts about helping me save the world?" At its worst, he calmly informed you "Look, it's nothing personal, but if you're not up to this, I can always go back to the schoolhouse and find someone else". It comes as a real shocker when your robotic exposition fairy admits to the player he believes he or she is probably broken, but that likely would be the case if you idled so often, probably because the player was too busy listening to the background music to listen to him.
- The game actually has its own counter-measure against straying. It didn't hesitate to remind you that every time you activated an activity, it would use up some of the mountain's energy. Use up all the energy and the indicator light on the toolbar would turn red, and you wouldn't be allowed to play any of the games until you go down to the generator and power it back up. Straying meant more frequent trips to the generator.
- However, the player would sometimes have to play an extra game to get the 1000 invention points needed to open the time machine. However, Botley would still tell the player that there was no mission clue there, even though they had acquired all the mission clues and he would have told them to get more points on whichever floor they were on.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Two of Polly's missions turn out this way. The first involves switching out Kellogg's corn flakes with ice cream, cold fish and worms (which becomes
Hilarious in Hindsight for Invader Zim fans). The second one has Polly changing the world's first sausage by making the outer casing out of old socks. The Player can become this in the Kitchen minigame based on the way Mort chooses the toppings he wants. - Cultural Translation: The Swedish and Finnish versions remove some of the more U.S.-centric elements. For instance, both have Santa Claus becoming an orangutan instead of the President of the United States becoming an orangutan.
- Deadpan Snarker: Botley has his moments. Egbert admits a couple times that he has difficulty recognizing humor, so many of his deadpan remarks are actually sincere.
- Little Miss Snarker: Polly.
- Delayed Ripple Effect: The most obvious examples of this are the cereal and cave painting missions. Even if Polly made the world's first paintings sad clowns on black velvet, the Virtual Collection still features a traditional cave painting that's left unchanged. And when Polly replaces the first cereal with fish and worms, Mort can still ask for a bowl of cornflakes.
- Determinator: Botley.
- Deus Exit Machina: Polly's father is out and he's apparently the only one who can keep her under control. At the end of the game, he returns home and punishes her.
- Botley did mention how he was off to a time traveler's convention, which gives us a reason why Professor Spark came back as soon as he did.
- Developer's Foresight: Attempting to replay a completed question replaces Miss Winkle's affirmation with Polly's wrong answer with her correcting Polly with the actual answer.
- Difficulty Levels: Some of the mini-games come with three levels, which you can adjust with a button on the utility belt. If you're proficient, you'll eventually advance up the levels automatically. There are also some mini-games in which no leveling is available.
- Digital Bikini: In the game's Arabic localization, Polly's green socks are extended into green pant legs, covering up the bare legs that she was flaunting in the original version.
- Disembodied Eyebrows: Polly's eyebrows float above her head, which is just as well since you can't see her eyes. Botley's eyebrows also float.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: One of the robots Polly sent back in time is Russian robot Cosmobot. Botley remarks, "Cosmobot and I never used to get along, but now we're pals."
- Dreadful Musician: What the Maestro thinks about Polly's singing. She is not amused.
- Dub Name Change:
- In the Swedish version, Botley and Polly Spark are known as "Roybot" and "Klara Blixt" respectively. "Blixt" is the Swedish word for lightning and a real Swedish last name, so it's actually a very appropriate translation of "spark."
- In the Spanish version, Botley is known as "Latoso" (also a pun due to the word also meaning "Annoying" in Spanish) and Polly Sparks becomes "Pilar Chiribitas" ("Chiribitas" would mean "Sparks" or "Parsnips").
- Eiffel Tower Effect: It turns out that the Australian Aborigine who invented the boomerang did so while standing in a place with Uluru nicely positioned in the background.
- Enemy Scan: Egbert's Analyzer serves as a Specimen Scanner.
- Entitled Bitch: Polly feels like she deserves a passing grade on her test, no matter what, and demonizes her teacher for not giving it to her.
- Exploding Cigar: Polly insists that dynamite was invented for this purpose.
- Extreme Omnivore:
- Not shown, but Polly jokes about making a sandwich out of earthworms, that a frog has jumped out of a frying pan, and that no one realizes broccoli is a flower when they eat it. Egbert says he spends half his time keeping his specimens off her dinner table.
- Mort, also, who doesn't have a problem asking for things like machine parts and green slime. But he's a Picky Eater and will reject anything that he didn't ask for or things he asked for in the wrong amounts.
- Fembot: Six. Starting with Mrs. Beasley the art expert, the ones that have to be rescued are Rhonda Robot, Amelia Earbot, Miss Battery Bot, Verna the Vending Machine and Brunwella the Bombshell.
- Fetch Quest: 4 items per robot to answer specific questions to where Polly sent a specific robot. Since there are 25 robots, you'll need 100 items.
- Friend to All Living Things: Egbert. Contrasted with Polly, who regularly cracks jokes that make her out to be an Enemy to All Living Things.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The game uses a power indicator that says how much energy is available to power the mountain, and when it gets dark orange or flashing red the games won't work unless the generator is recharged. However, if you have all four mission clues, you'll still be able to gain entry to and operate the time machine even with no power.
- HA HA HA—No: After you fix the answers on Polly's test, Ms. Winkle sometimes gives a brief chuckle before deeming Polly's answer incorrect.
- Hard Truth Aesop: As the backstory details, there is a time and place for jokes and fun; exams are not a place for them. Yes, Ms. Winkle loves Polly along with her creativity and genius, but she still gives Polly a 0 for having silly, but incorrect, answers. Sure, it's not a nice thing, but it was necessary. Polly, being Polly, decided the solution was to change the timeline so all the answers would be correct.
- Have I Mentioned I Am a Robot Today?: The android cast won't let you forget they're robots, even with the exaggerated Eating Machine trope in effect.
- Heel–Face Turn: Polly does this between this game and Jumpstart Typing, where she plays a more supportive role to the player.
- Heroic Willpower: Botley in the end refuses to obey Polly's order to jump in the time machine and commit suicide by going to the Big Bang. It's partly Lovable Coward and self-preservation, since he points out that a robot going to the Big Bang would be spelling their death. Nevertheless, it is awesome that Botley is the only robot that refused to obey her orders. He then stands his ground as Polly reminds him that Botley is programmed to do everything she says. Fortunately, Professor Spark walks in and saves him from his death.
- I Can Explain: Polly pulls one of these when Professor Spark walks in on her at the end of the game. However, unlike most examples of this trope, it actually is what it looks like and Polly's excuse is a Blatant Lie.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: The Shrinking Machine Room, obviously. Sloth-bot was also frozen for Polly's question on what was the first thing seen under a microscope.
- Insecurity System: The security procedure to open the front door of Mystery Mountain is... literally a game of "Simon". Yeah, brilliant move, Professor Spark — that'll keep out potential thieves and nosy reporters for sure. Okay, Gameplay and Story Segregation.
- It's All About Me: Polly's so self-centered, she declared herself the center of the solar system and everything revolved around her.
- It Tastes Like Feet: Polly's thought process on what sausages are made from. Her grandmother makes homemade sausages that her father claims taste like old socks. Therefore, Polly declares sausages must be made from old socks.
- Jabba Table Manners: Botley says all robots eat like this. Polly mocks Egbert for eating like this: it's not shown but Egbert shamefully admits it's true because his schedule is so tight he tries to eat as quickly as possible. Mort is shown eating aggressively by eating the bowl containing the food, but unlike this trope he doesn't actually spill anything.
- Lack of Empathy: Polly doesn't care as to whether or not her plans end up getting people back in time hurt or killed, just as long as she gets a good grade on her test.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Polly is given the chance to retake the test, but now the questions are in Latin, something that not even Polly seems to know well enough to ace in one go.
- Loophole Abuse:
- Professor Spark programmed the robots so that they can't technically do the main puzzles — aiming the laser blasters at asteroids and such — or uses simple Simon and arithmetic questions to keep the doors locked to the kitchen and music room. But if another human were to navigate the puzzles, using Botley for assistance, then they can give Botley the access he needs.
- Botley explains in the beginning that technically he's not supposed to be telling outsiders about Professor Spark's secret. Professor Spark, however, gave him an override in the case that Polly would go off-the-rails so he could get help from anyone in her school. Botley uses this to explain to the player, ostensibly a new student to the school, that he needs their assistance.
- Magic Floppy Disk: The TransQuizzer disks look like quasi-futuristic floppies and each contains all of five questions. The CD-ROM disk that this game originally came on was way more advanced than that!
- Malicious Misnaming: Polly's manner of addressing Botley.
- Meaningful Name: Brunwella the Bombshell can mean either that she's very beautiful (Botley expresses that he likes her, see below) or the fact that she's used in demolition work.
- Metapuzzle: The Music Hall door is a Jumble word puzzle, which you have to solve in order to get the password that will open the door.
- Missing Mom: The absence of Polly's mother is never explained.
- Money for Nothing: In the Wheel of Invention, you're given more invention points as a reward for getting questions right on the first try. However, the only purpose that invention points serve is to gain you access to the time machine room, and if you're playing the Wheel of Invention, you're already there. The invention points you earn from the Wheel of Invention don't even count towards your next mission, as your score is wiped after you use the time machine.
- Moving the Goalposts: Polly says she'll award a mission clue if Botley accesses the work of art she wants from the Virtual Collection. After finding the right artwork, Polly butts in saying that didn't count because she thinks you only got it right through a lucky guess and sends another puzzle to solve before giving up the clue.
- Mr Fix It: Hank the Robot Handyman, who is found during the invention of tools.
- Never My Fault: Polly never tries to blame herself for getting a failing grade on her test. She would rather blame Botley and say that he "made her do it" and for foiling her plans.
- The Nicknamer: Polly likes to call Botley names like "Snotley," "Potley" and "Dotley."
- No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: None of the innovators in the game takes special notice of a futuristic android visitor, but many respond with either consternation or surprise about what their unexpected visitors are doing. Subverted with the First Olympic Games: historically females weren't allowed to compete in or even watch them, but the clearly feminine beauty queen Rhonda Robot is not only present but awarding the prize.
- Noodle Incident:Polly: (about Ms. Winkle giving her a 0 for her test) I felt faint and short of breath! No one has ever given me a zero before!
Botley: Well, that's not quite true, Polly. I remember just two weeks ago...
Polly: Be quiet, Plotley, this is my story! - The Noseless: Polly tells Botley and Egbert on two separate occasions that they'd look better with mustaches under their noses, then backs up and says they don't have noses. Egbert adds he doesn't have hair, either.
- Oh, Crap!: Polly has this reaction at the end of the game when her father shows up.
- One-Wheeled Wonder: Maestro. He is the only android designed this way; Mrs. Beasley and Egbert hover and the rest are bipedal.
- Only Sane Man: Botley ends up as this, making comments about Polly's changes to the world.
- Ordered to Die: Polly attempts to get the last laugh once the other robots are retrieved by ordering Botley to travel back to the Big Bang. Botley manages to resist long enough for Polly's dad to arrive and put a stop to it.
- Plot Coupon: The 25 robots. To get them back, you need 4 items to answer the "Who, What, When and Where?" regarding Polly's test questions. In short, you'll need 100 items. Not only that, you'll also need 1,000 invention points (easily obtained by playing the games) before you can continue.
- Pop Up Video Games: Not as much as its predecessors, but you can still click around and make things happen.
- Programming Game: The Robot Maze is this sort of puzzle. You have to unscramble a series of commands that will enable a robot to navigate said maze and reach a box in the lower left-hand side of the screen.
- Prolonged Prologue: Mostly, it's Botley and Polly going on and on with exposition, with some points needlessly repeated and little to no user interaction. It was edited down in later releases, though this resulted in the Adaptation Explanation Extrication mentioned above. Also, some Back Story information was cut, for anyone who cares about that.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Judging by the songs she wants you to play for her in the Music Hall, Polly's favorite genre of music is "public domain."
- Pungeon Master: Botley is the host of many an Incredibly Lame Pun. Monty Monitor practically speaks "pun".
- Raygun Gothic: The whole aesthetic of the game's universe. This includes Polly's school, which for some reason is an Art Deco version of an old-fashioned, one-room schoolhouse.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Professor Spark is this, compared to his daughter, and he's a calming influence on her. He figured out that she rewrote the timeline but couldn't get back home to fix things due to the changes she made, like transportation on pogo sticks. When Botley and the player fix the timeline, he makes it home in record time and nullifies Polly's orders to Botley to travel back to the Big Bang. Professor Spark gives her a moment to explain herself; when she lies, Professor Spark reveals that he already contacted her teacher and found out the whole story. Ms. Winkle and he agreed that a fair punishment to Polly would be she could retake her test, but since she failed the first one out of boredom, this one will be in Latin to challenge her. Polly goes Anything but That! while Professor Spark commends Botley for finding a loophole to recruit the player.
- Recurring Riff: About half the songs composed for the game have some thematic variant of the main theme worked into them, either as a base or as a short phrase.
- Refuge in Audacity: Averted - Polly gets the questions wrong on purpose and makes up such ridiculous answers that she wanted Ms. Winkle to laugh. Ms. Winkle chuckles at a few, but tells Polly not to be so silly and marks her incorrect.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: For some reason, Monty Monitor has this, but Ms. Winkle does not.
- Robot Antennae: Botley has one that always points to the side. He uses it to sense where clues are hidden.
- Robot Buddy: Botley's self-awareness of his role got very close to deconstructing the trope.Botley: The Professor created me as a Prototype Companion Device. You see, he was having such trouble finding sitters for Polly, 'cause she scares them all away, so he invented me. I'm also programmed to be her friend, and believe me, that's tougher than it sounds.
- This line was cut in all post-1996 re-releases to reduce the Prolonged Prologue. However, the following line "I'm not getting to the point, am I?" remains intact as a relic of it.
- Robot Kid: Botley.
- Robot Master: There are about 30 robots in this game, and they all belong to Professor Spark (with the exception of Noshi Origami, who is said to be on exchange from Japan). One could imagine how crowded Mystery Mountain is when 25 of them aren't lost in time or in storage.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Educational focus: Playing in the kitchen on higher levels leads to the units being used to measure not only get slightly less round but bigger also. It's apparently not odd that Mort would ask for seven and a half cups of strawberries or six liters of prune juice to top one meal. Meanwhile, the molecular unit never goes higher than one million, which is far too few of anything to be noticeable.
- Professor Spark's rockets can go to constellations in seconds. In reality, stars are light years apart, and constellations only exist from the perspective of Earth. But this won't stop you from learning about their positions and the myths behind them.
- Self-Proclaimed Love Interest: Botley has shades of this when he claims that Brunwella the Bombshell robot is his girlfriend, then admits that she doesn't even know he exists, hastily adding that she'll notice him after he rescues her from the past.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Basically the entire plot is to retrieve all 25 robots stuck in time reprogrammed so that history aligns with all of Polly's answers.
- Shout-Out:
- A front door that can only be opened by playing Simon? Do you think Dr. Brain is at that convention Dr. Spark is attending?
- Also, a professor who builds robots that fall into the wrong hands? Nah, probably just a coincidence.
- Polly turns the quiz segment into a quiz show called "Pollywood Squares".
- The "television" mission clue appears to be displaying the final scene from Casablanca.
- When returning to the present, Botley will sometimes say, "Now, back to the future!"note
- Sickly Green Glow: Not shown, but Botley worries this may be the case after Polly declares that radium's glow is battery-operated and
is complimented as correct even though people who handle it still get radiation sickness. - "Simon Says" Mini-Game: To enter the Mountain, you have to play "Simon" with the door panels.
- Sinister Surveillance: Polly spends all of the game lounging in a room with monitors which display every room in Mystery Mountain. She communicates with you and Botley through various monitors around the Mountain, never meeting you personally — kind of like Khan.
- The Sleepless: Egbert insists that robot scientists do not sleep.
- Spill Stain Sabotage: What Polly declares happened to Leonardo da Vinci so he could not build the helicopter he designed; she says someone spilled spaghetti sauce all over it.
- Spoiled Brat: Polly. However, her father does punish her in the end.
- The Smurfette Principle: Of the six robots who preside over a mini-game, only one (Mrs. Beasley of the Art Gallery) is female. Of the twenty-five robots Polly sent back in time, only five are female: Rhonda Robot, Amelia Ear-bot, Miss Battery-bot, Verna, and Brunwella the Bombshell.
- Sudden Name Change: It's clearly "Spark" in this game, but Polly and her father's last name becomes "Sparks" as of JumpStart Typing.
- Take Your Time: Throughout the game, Botley urges you to hurry and fix history before Polly's changes reach the present. Of course, you can take as long as you like and nothing will happen.
- Toilet Paper Trail: When you go back to the invention of the toilet, which the game attributes to the Minoans in 2000 BC, you see a Minoan guy walking out of a privy with toilet paper attached to his foot.
- Tyrant Takes the Helm: Polly's running of Mystery Mountain in her father's absence.
- Underground Level: The Biosphere, before you actually enter. (And technically, the whole game takes place underground inside a mountain.)
- Updated Re-release: Later releases of this game don't come with quite as many changes as the 4th Grade re-release, but they do feature some. Most of these changes involve paring down the amount of exposition. Also, in the original release, the number of invention points needed to access the time machine room increased by 500 for each quiz disk, but in later releases, the required number of invention points is permanently fixed at 1,000.
- The 'Verse: This game and JumpStart Typing take place in the same continuity. After the Continuity Reboot in 2000, this 'verse apparently ceased to exist, it's only relic being an In Name Only version of Botley living in the same universe as the other JumpStart characters. (Well, almost. Polly is in the JumpStart PowerPrep series.)
- Victory Is Boring: Polly's justification for deliberately completing her test incorrectly despite knowing all the correct answers.
- Villain Ball:
- The whole conflict starts because Polly trolled her teacher by putting the wrong answers on a big test covering inventions. Polly is surprised that her teacher gave her a 0 instead of laughing. Rather than asking for a makeup or accepting the loss, she sends the robots back in time to incorporate the troll answers.
- Polly hides clues throughout the mansion that you need in order to stop her and even sometimes explains what you need to do to find them. Justified in that it's no fun if you can't combat her, she's a kid, and she's probably having more fun screwing with Botley than anything else.
- Warp Whistle: The report card in the inventory will take the user to any game in the mountain. You can use it to bypass the doors to the kitchen and music hall.
- Wham Line: After you get all 25 robots back, Polly brings up the extra credit question that talks about the Big Bang. But instead, her answer goes:Polly: I think the universe started with a robot named...Botley!
- Wide-Open Sandbox: With the exception of the time machine room, which is only accessible at the end of a mission, you can go anywhere you want in Mystery Mountain at any time and play any mini-game that you choose. Granted, Botley will very much nag you for ignoring the mission, but the game will not actually do anything to stop you from straying. And even if you are playing a mission, you can still choose what order to play the mini-games that will get you mission clues. If you have all the mission clues but still need more invention points, Botley will recommend certain mini-games that you should play for more points, but you're free to totally ignore his suggestions and get the needed invention points from a different mini-game.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Subverted. Botley says that Professor Spark landed a rocket on the moon before Neil Armstrong set foot on it, and quickly adds that he was kidding. The moon landing happened 27 years before this game's release, and if Professor Spark is estimated to be in his forties, that would mean he would have been only a teenager when it happened. The line is preserved in later releases, making this joke even more ridiculous as time passes.
- You Answered Your Own Question: "The postage stamp was first invented by an Englishman named Rowland Hill. What country did the English inventor of the postage stamp come from?" Okay, it's probably not obvious to a third-grader, especially since "Great Britain" was given as a choice rather than "England". It's still funny.
