The CIA offers the gang one final chance to prove themselves before terminating their contract for gross incompetence: shrink down and manually remove a blood clot from the brain of a top scientist.
This episode provides examples of:
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Agent Holly offers the gang a "Carrot/Stick" approach for the mission, in case any of them have ideas of walking out:
- Carrot: Success rewards each of the agents one million dollars.
- Stick: As they have failed almost all of the CIA's contracts up to this point, this is their last chance. Failure of this mission, or refusal to partake in it, means being blacklisted from the agency or anything relating to espionage.
- Berserk Button: Krieger is "heckled" by the real doctors trying to do things right, which later causes him to become hysterical and jeopardize the mission by accidentally making the Nereus enter through Dr. Kovac's foot instead of near his head.
- Call-Back:
- Archer is really thrilled to meet Michael Gray from Shazam!. In Fugue and Riffs Archer reveals that he is a huge fan of Shazam!.
- Archer recalls when they went to space and piloted a submarine to point out they're ready to be weightless, except Lana points out that no one will become weightless.
- Fanboy: Archer squees when Michael Gray appears.
- "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Exactly as per the trope and its namer.
- For the Evulz: Cheryl plans on using her million dollars to buy an orphanage and bulldoze it. When Pam asks why, she replies "Shits and grins...and screams."
- Limited Wardrobe: Lampshaded. Archer points out that Slater is always wearing the same shirt. Somewhat humorous, since most of the main characters also always wear the same outfit, with only the color changing, if anything.
- The Millstone: Thanks to Krieger's ill-timed Roaring Rampage of Revenge, the ship is injected into Dr. Kovac as far away from the clot as possible, leading to the events of the rest of the series.
- Shout-Out: Archer initially mistakes Michael Gray for Slim Goodbody due to wearing a unitard with the human body.
- Shrink Ray: Dr. Kovac's greatest invention, which the CIA and the U.S. military also try to use to save his life from a potentially fatal blood clot.
- Special Guest: Michael Gray from Shazam! (1974), which was his first acting role in 41 years.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Archer keeps trying to mention his prior experience with a space mission. He is seemingly unable to grasp that this is basically a submarine mission. In particular he is annoyed to discover that they are not weightless once they have been shrunk down to microscopic size.
