Lately, Dan hasn’t been able to get any sleep due to the cries and wails across the street from a new animal shelter, so Dan, somewhat aided by Chris, sets out to destroy the building and finally get some rest.
This episode provides examples of the following Tropes:
- Black-and-White Morality: This is the first episode where the target of Dan's revenge isn't evil.
- Black Comedy: The entire episode. Dead black. Or, rather, nearly dead black.
- Brick Joke: When two doctors pull a patient out of an ambulance, they say how he's going to see a real doctor rather than an "actor in a lab coat that most people see". At the end of the episode, Dan encounters an actor who's pretending to be a doctor.
- Comically Inept Healing: two hospital orderlies mention offhand that only the patients with really good insurance get examined by a real doctor—everyone else just sees an actor dressed as a doctor.
- Continuity Nod: The animal shelter appeared before, and Chris even reminds Dan that he mentioned it before (in "Dan Vs. The Wolf-Man").
- Delayed Reaction: In "The Animal Shelter", Chris eats a meatloaf that Dan made as Dan explains his need for revenge on the animal shelter. When Dan says his plan involves a poisoned meatloaf, Chris continues to eat for several beats until he realizes he's been poisoned.
- Fake Static: Dan does this to get out of a phone call with Elise, and she becomes angered that he's just saying "crackle" and "buzz".
- Foreshadowing: Dan adds Burger Phile after accidentally drinking Chris' milkshake there. Later in the season, a whole episode revolves around Dan's vendetta against the fast food restaurant.
- Formally-Named Pet: Mr. Mumbles, who makes her debut in this episode.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Dan isn't technically wrong when he tells Elise that it wasn't really his fault that Chris got poisoned since the latter stupidly decided to eat the poisoned meatloaf without asking if he could eat it, even after Dan told him it was poisoned.
Dan: Listen, if you walk into somebody's house and you see a meatloaf on the counter do you just dig right in? He didn't even ask.
- Love at First Sight: Dan and Mr Mumbles.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Crunchy, the guy who runs the shelter.
- Non-Fatal Explosions: Crunchy survives being at ground zero of a large explosion, and he only loses his dreadlocks.
- Of Corpse He's Alive: Indeed, Chris is alive, but catatonic while Dan hauls him around like a marionette (using his credit card, speaking for him, et cetera).
- Pet the Dog: Dan "adopts" a kitten and released all the animals before blowing up the shelter.
- Pounds Are Animal Prisons: "I didn't ask you to build an animal jail across the street. Shut your prisoners up, warden!"
- Stuff Blowing Up
- Wingding Eyes: When Mr Mumbles and Dan meet, their eyes turn the shape of the other.
