History Literature / DiaryOfAWimpyKid

* ChildrenAreTenderHearted: Implied; an illustration shows a younger version of Tyler Post ([[WriteWhoYouKnow who Li'l Cutie is based on]]) asking his father Bob if a green bean's parents will be sad if he eats it.

* ExtremelyOverdueLibraryBook: Greg has a book, titled ''How to Make Sock Puppets'', that he checked out when he was eight. He is most likely 12-13, which means the book is 4-5 years ago. He is afraid he will get arrested if he returns to the library. He even gets nervous around librarians.

* 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 NormalFishInATinyPond, 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.]]

* PlayingSick: Greg tries acting sick to get out of going to school. It doesn't work and his parents catch him.

* UrbanLegends: The Goat Man is brought up. Greg thinks it's the top half of a goat and the bottom half of a man, but Rowley thinks it's split down the middle.

* {{Foreshadowing}}:

* GossipyHens: A variation. Albert Sandy has a lot of stories to share at lunch, such as how a guy practiced jumping out of a hole that he made slightly deeper everyday until he was able to jump several feet in the air. Whether or not they're actually true or if he's spicing it up or not is never revealed. Of course, the other kids believe him straight, though Greg has come to realize by ''The Meltdown'' that [[KnowNothingKnowItAll most of what he has to say is just complete nonsense]].

* CandlelitBath: Greg claims that he tries to recreate the time when he was in Susan's womb by taking a bath in the dark with lit candles and a washcloth over his eyes.

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: [[DownplayedTrope Dowplayed]] with Kenny Keith; he's still a JerkJock who frames Greg for scaring [[DrillSargeantNasty Mr. Litch]] with the car's horn, but most of his actions thereafter from the webcomic have been omitted.

** Rodrick. He always abuses his brother for no good reason (and it goes way beyond the normal siblings-pick-on-one-another thing), and [[KarmaHoudini he sometimes never gets in trouble for it]]. He also has never been nice to Greg ONCE in the books. Even when Greg does something really nice for him at the end of ''Rodrick Rules'', [[UngratefulBastard he doesn't ease up, even for a bit]].

* FiveSecondRule: Exploited by some characters in ''Hard Luck''. They decide that you can eat food off the floor within five seconds, even if it isn't yours. This leads to one of them getting sick after eating a piece of ham that had been on the floor for way more than five seconds.

* BrokenAesop: Greg's class watches a video called "It's Great To Be Me" about how you should [[BeYourself be happy about who you are.]] All the kids at Greg's school (most of which are bullies) [[ExactWords misinterpreted it as]] "it's fine to be a jerk if you're already one". The illustration emphasizes his point by showing a bully shoving a kid to the floor and saying, "It's great to be me!" and his friend laughing.

* DreamSequence: A small scene in the book is Greg recalling various strange dreams he has had: one about sneezing his teeth out, one where he's a turtle, one where he is made to walk the plank, and one where he grows a tail.

* DownerEnding: The Heffleys' vacation to Isla de Corales is ruined by [[ContrivedCoincidence Contrived Coincidences]] and bad luck; Rodrick is left with severe sunburns and finds out his new girlfriend is cheating on him, Manny loses all of the animals he tried to take home as pets, the resort is left in shambles, and the Heffleys have been banned from Isla de Corales, which is now trying to actively track them down, meaning Frank and Susan can't return to the place they had their honeymoon for some time. The only one who gets what they want, ironically, is [[CosmicPlaything Greg]], who briefly gets to swim with the dolphins, the thing he wanted to do the most, while fleeing from the local police and to add salt to the wound, ''The Meltdown'' reveals this led to the Pig running away.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: The Heffleys have to endure living in Gramma's basement for months, a bear encounter, being sprayed by a skunk, teenage hooligans, the sewage tank in their RV backing up, inconsiderate campers, being trapped at a campsite with no food, and nearly getting swept away in a flash flood, among ''many'' other mishaps, but after that, with all the other rude campers gone from the campsite, they are able to have a pretty good vacation.

** Also, eagle-eyed readers may recognizie [[spoiler:that the security guard at the SuckECheeses looks awfully similiar to Metallichihuahua's bassist. In fact, that's exactly who he is.]]
* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: InUniverse; Sebastian Sleeves claims that he's been living off on money from royalty checks he gets from the Metallichihuahua Pups cartoon still airing in Denmark.

* SymbolSwearing: Susan lets Manny sit up front in the RV. However, he starts blaring the horn and [[FromTheMouthOfBabes swearing at other drivers]], portrayed by an assortment of random symbols in his speech bubble.

* BlandNameProduct: One of the electronic devices locked in "The Vault" appears very similar to a UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch.

* LaserGuidedKarma: At the start of the book, the teachers either barely teach about what they're supposed to (Mrs. Lackey only teaches about countries she's planning on visiting with her husband after she retires as it's her last year) or not at all (Ms. Pritchard uses her smart board for things like helping her pick out which breed of puppy to get). Needless to say, when the school has to take a standardized test, the student's scores tank so badly (Greg mentions there wasn't a single question about farts or burps which is what Mr. Rask was near exclusively teaching everyone due to apathetic students) and the middle school makes the news as a result.

* LaserGuidedKarma: At the start of the book, the teachers either barely teach about what they're supposed to (Mrs. Lackey only teaches about countries she's planning on visiting with her husband after she retires as it's her last year) or not at all (Ms. Pritchard abuses her smart board for things like helping her pick out which breed of puppy to get). Needless to say, when the school has to take a standardized test, the student's scores tank so badly (Greg mentions there wasn't a single question about farts or burps which is what Mr. Rask was near exclusively teaching everyone due to apathetic students) and the middle school makes the news as a result.

* StealingTheCredit: [[spoiler:Greg's Schools' lunch lady created a new food called Fudgedogs, tofu dogs dipped in fudge. They become a hit and are beloved be the students so much that [[SeriousBusiness when the new Principle tried to stop their production, the students protested and succeed in getting them back]]. After the school is shut down and Greg is sent to Slacksville Middle School, he introduces the recipe to the school and they love it just as much as the Plainview students do. When the school opens back up, they can no longer make Fudgedogs, because Slacksville decide to take the claim for making them, patented the recipe, and even made it so that production of Fudgedogs outside of Slacksville against the law.]]

* SymbolSwearing: Susan lets Manny sit up front in the RV and handle the horn. However, he [[StraightFromTheMouthOfBabes begins swearing at other drivers]], portrayed by an assortment of random symbols in his speech bubble.

* EasilyForgiven: Greg changes his mind about attending the Hardscrabble Farms camp after being involved in accidentally messing up Frank's car bumper, reasoning that him being absent will give Frank time to cool down at least a little. However, at camp, his cabin loses its chaperone and that night and the occupants later end up earning the ire of Mrs. Graziano, who insists on calling an emergency replacement chaperone... who turns out to be Frank. Despite the aformentioned bumper accident, the fact that Frank was already hacked off at Greg for an earlier incident and the fact that Greg caused Frank to have to drive all the way over to camp in the middle of the night due to his group misbehaving, Frank never acts coldly to Greg once, or it at least isn't described, which means Greg didn't think it was bad enough to write about it in his diary. He civilly explains how a spooky rumor came to be after Greg encounters him using an maintenance shed connected to said rumor, sneaks Greg and his roommates back into their cabin so they can sleep properly instead of in a shelter outside, and offers him a ride home with him as opposed to taking the bus at the end, with not one mention of the trouble he caused.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: The rule at Corny's where you're not allowed to have a tie, and that they cut it and put it on the Wall of Shame would not be allowed in real life over laws relating to damage and theft of personal property. Given that it is already illegal in certain jurisdictions to confiscate or tamper with fake ID (over these same laws relating to personal property), there's no way that doing this with ties (which aren't breaking any laws) would be legal.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Greg caricatures the children who Grandpa and Darlene could possibly conceive, assuming they'd have elderly-looking children. However, given Darlene's age, she would be infertile. This could be {{Handwaved}} by Greg not knowing about menopause.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: No health laws would allow Hardscrabble Farms to serve the stew to the campers, given that the "stew" is actually leftovers combined into one pot, and they use the same pot 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, which could contain leeches and other things you wouldn't want pouring over you in the shower. The mattresses on the bed had weird stains on them while the floor inside the cabins was extremely filthy.

* ArtisticLicenseAnimalCare: A monkey is regularly served at a swim-up bar. This is frowned upon in real life.
* BigBrotherInstinct: In a rare case of Rodrick actually having a heart in the books, he willingly tried to help Greg to safety when he saw him in serious danger of getting beaten up by an angry mob.

* ArtisticLicenseSports: The lunch ladies win at tug-of-war because one of them was sitting down and had the rope tied around her waist. This is illegal in real life tug-of-war competitions.

** Then later InUniverse. Greg creates a comic called 'Creighton the Cretin', which focuses on the titular idiot. When he gets published, the published comic (where [[ItMakesSenseInContext Creighton eats his maths test) is turned into a blatant ad for the local school library. He promptly quits, and when Rowley takes his place, the published Zoo-Wee Mama comic is published without edits. Greg is understandably pissed.

* * DisasterDominoes: Greg drops the toothpaste cap down the drain. His attempt to get it back starts a chain of events that ends with the family car rolling down a ''ditch''.