History Literature / DiaryOfAWimpyKid

* {{Bowdlerise}}: In the webcomic, Bryan Little, artist of the school's newspaper comic ''Wacky Dawg,'' uses said comic to complain that "Barry Palmer, you still owe Bryan five dollars, you schmuck!" The print version changed it to "...you still owe Bryan five dollars, you bum!"

* ButtMonkey: Rodrick ''really'' gets it bad during his shift at the Old Timey Tobias ice cream parlor; he's initially stuck taking the trash out and getting embarrassed by Susan's attempts for the Heffleys to stick by him as long as possible when they visit him at work. The manager then "promotes" him to the position of the parlor's mascot, and poor Rodrick suffers ProducePelting and attacks left and right by angry kids. And on the night Greg is taken to the restaurant to celebrate his seemingly great academic process, Rodrick's attempt to take the carpool lane to go to work faster is a disaster and ends with the police having his trusty Löded Diper van towed away, leaving him an open target for passing kids while walking on the side of the road. Thankfully, he does not lose his job over this.

* FailedASpotCheck: While participating in a "Last to take their hand off a truck wins it" contest, Rodrick is apparently down to just one more competitor, who is in his band, and the two argue over who should get to keep the truck. They decide to both simultaneously release the truck in hopes that they would both win it, only to find that they had neglected to check if anyone was still holding onto the other side of the truck, resulting in them both losing to someone who was.

* AttackOfThePoliticalAd: Parodied. When Greg runs for treasurer, he makes posters claiming that his opponent had head lice in second grade, to which a teacher informs him that spreading "fabrications" of other candidates is not allowed. This gets him kicked out of the election.

* PlayingATree: Greg is a tree in his school's production of ''The Wizard of Oz''. Subverted in that he ''wanted'' this role (it meant he got to throw apples at Dorothy AKA Patty Farrel), in part because he didn't want to be in the show but was forced to audition by his mom. Another student gets the role of a shrub due to more students auditioning for the play than there are roles. He ends up delaying the start of the play due to stage fright. Greg even comments on how ridiculous the whole situation was. In the movie adaptation, Greg wanted a main role in the play to make Rowley jealous. He can sing extremely well, but he's a male soprano. The theatre director said the only soprano parts in the play were Dorothy (he quickly made her drop that idea) and the Trees.

* AmbiguousSyntax: When Greg is talking about his uncle Gary's previous marriages, an illustration is shown of Gary and his second wife Lydia discussing finances. Lydia says she has a few tens of thousands of dollars in her bank account, to which Gary says he "has forty-five". Lydia thinks he's talking about thousands of dollars like she is, but as Greg mentions in his narration, Uncle Gary only has forty-five dollars ''total''. This ambiguity leads directly to their getting divorced.

* ButtMonkey: Rodrick ''really'' gets it bad during his shift at the Old Timey Tobias ice cream parlor; he's initially stuck taking the trash out and getting embarrassed by Susan's attempts for the Heffleys to stick by him as long as possible. The manager then "promotes" him to the position of the parlor's mascot, and poor Rodrick suffers ProducePelting and attacks left and right by angry kids. And on the night Greg is taken to celebrate his seemingly great academic process, his attempt to take the carpool lane to go to work faster is a disaster and ends with the police having his trusty Löded Diper van towed away, leaving him an open target for passing kids. Thankfully, he does not lose his job over this.

* NoFullNameGiven: The books generally avert this trope but this is unexpectedly played straight with the kid named Frankie who saw Silas Scratch. [[spoiler:This is to hide the fact that Frankie's last name is Frank Heffley who is also the one who created the rumor of Silas Scratch in the first place when he went to the camp in his youth]].

* ForWantOfANail: Greg drops the toothpaste cap down the drain. His attempt to get it back starts a chain of DisasterDominoes that end in the family car rolling down a ditch.

* {{Catchphrase}}: Greg thinks that his life is a TV show and comes up with a catchphrase of "Well, bite my biscuits!" It just confuses people.

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: It's Rodrick, not Roderick.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: No health laws would allow Hardscrabble Farms to serve the stew to the campers, given that the "stew" is actually food scraps combined into one pot that has not been washed and contains leftover food from ''over thirty years ago''. The stew even gave a camper indigestion.
** Other aspects of the camp clearly violate health and hygiene code. The pancakes were hard enough to break someone's teeth. There was no running water to allow campers to properly wash themselves as water had to be transported via a bucket from a river and even if the campers were able to get a supply of water, the water was unsanitary and cold. The mattresses on the bed had weird stains on them while the floor inside the cabins was extremely filthy.

* YankTheDogsChain: [[spoiler:The school is forced to shut down due to repeated bad test scores and all the remaining students are transferred to two nearby schools. While many students get to go to a much better, more luxurious, and better funded school, Greg is forced to go to an even worse school, but is able to make the best of it because he's turned into a NormalFishInASmallPond, becoming popular, smart, and even gaining a girlfriend and the respect of her rich dad. Then, Larry Mack's son finds the bags of money his dad hid in the walls of the school, uses the funds to reopen the school, and everyone is forced to come back. Consequently, the kids who liked their new schools are mad at Greg,[[note]] since his rapid popularity at his new school is a large part of what motivated Larry Mack Jr. to reopen the old school[[/note]], Greg's girlfriend dumps him, and the cafeteria isn't even allowed to make fudgedogs anymore because Greg told his new school how to make them and they [[StealingTheCredit stole the credit]] and patented it. All of this happens in the last ''fifth'' of the book to boot.]]

* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain: Greg hears that humans only use 90% of their brains. He hopes that people don't figure out how to get the last 10%, imagining it being complete chaos.

** Greg learning about humans only using [[NinetyPercentOfYourBrain ninety percent of their brain]] and discussing chaos if people got to use the other 10 percent of their brain may be a reference to ''Film/{{Lucy}}'' (except it is flipped there where this movie uses the premise of people only using 10 percent of their brains), while the depiction of characters using telekinesis and floating with chaos ensuing may be a reference to ''Film/{{Chronicle}}''.

* MoreHypnotizableThanHeThinks: After a school assembly featuring a hypnotist, a kid who thinks he was a fake tries hypnotizing two other kids into thinking they're superglued together. It works a little too well, and they have to track down the hypnotist at his job to unstick them.

* ShoutOut: The theme of the dance is ''Film/MidnightInParis'', which unfortunately doesn't last throughout the dance. A different event by seniors happens at the same time, and they request that the lights be turned on for their event.
* SmallNameBigEgo: Implied with Krisstina, the local pop singer who calls herself an "international pop sensation" despite never travelling out of the state.

** Back in fourth grade, Susan took away his TV priviledges for a whole month for faking a bullying case and getting an innocent kid in trouble (something he admits he deserved).

* JumpingTheShark: The later published books have much more outlandish and unrealistic plots than the original ones. Most agree that this shift started with ''The Long Haul''.
** Rodrick. At times, he never gets punished for bullying Greg.
** The pig almost always gets away for being a constant source of problems for the Heffleys, until ''The Meltdown'' has it [[PutOnABus run away after being put in obedience camp.]]

* KarmaHoudini:

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Greg caricatures the children who Grandpa and Darlene could possibly conceive, as if they would not be attractive and/or problematic. However, giving Darlene's age, she would be infertile. This could be {{Handwaved}} by Greg not knowing about menopause, however.

* EveryoneHasStandards:
** In ''Rodrick Rules'', he refuses to buy a paper off of Rodrick, noting that even though he's copied off of other people during quizzes, buying a paper from someone is too far, even for him. Even though he makes a meaningful effort to try to complete the paper on his own, he caves in to doing this when he loses his progress due to the power going out.
** In ''Cabin Fever'', Greg takes the blame for inadvertently defacing the school walls rather than name Rowley for doing this. Even though Greg could have blamed Rowley for this while evading punishment himself out of spite for being thrown under the bus, Greg takes the blame as he had dragged Rowley into doing this.
** In ''Hard Luck'', Greg refuses to cheat on a science project using one that had been made by another student, after he notices his brother's science project (the school dumped tons of old projects and papers in a storage room, and some bullies were using it as a money-making venture). He knows it's going to land him in huge trouble, and thinks it's stealing. (He thanks his instincts as he later notes [[LaserGuidedKarma the teachers staged a raid after a tip-off from another student, and the bullies landed in summer school.]]) He also hides a precious diamond ring near the end, so Mom's family won't kill each other over it. Finally, he does not like the fact that a nice kid got put in detention for earning his hero points (which the same school bullies as above counterfeited, which caused the teachers to get suspicious) legitimately and that the removal of hero points removes the incentive for people to help others in need, such as someone with a broken leg and crutches carry lunch to the table.
** In ''Double Down'', he thinks about his deceased Nana and regrets not being nice to her when he was young, hoping that she is happy in heaven and not watching an "ungrateful middle schooler."
* GoodBehaviorPoints: To prove his point that his mom’s plan to be nice at school to be popular does not work out today as did for when Mom was his age, Greg talks about how his school once implemented a system called "Hero Points" in an attempt to stop bullying. The idea was that if a student was seen being kind to someone else, they would earn a single Hero Point, and if a student got enough Hero Points, they could trade them in for prizes. The system quickly went [[GoneHorriblyWrong horribly wrong]], however, starting with people faking good deeds in front of teachers, followed by counterfeit Hero Points being produced and sold. The school tried making changes to the system to try to deter the illegitimate earning of Hero Points, but these attempts either failed or had negative consequences. After a janitor discovered a Hero Point-copying operation, the school decided to abandon the system.

* UrbanLegends: An urban legend occurs at Hardscrabble Farms, that a deranged and maniac farmer with long, sharp claws, known as Silas Scratch, roams the farms and will kill anyone who goes near his shed. [[spoiler:It is revealed that it was a hoax created by Frank, so he could use the high-quality maintenance shed he found as a child. Greg decides to keep the legend going, since he wants to use the maintenance shed himself when he grows up.]]