This episode provides examples of:
- Age-Inappropriate Dress: Helen in one scene is clad in a black miniskirt and a blue baby tee, Quinn picked them out.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Daria's piercing closes up and heals far faster than the time it would normally take. Even if the piercing had closed up, she would still have a notable scar above her navel.
- Assurance Backfire: Daria is told that her piercing won't hurt any more than squeezing a pimple. She yelps in pain at the mere thought of it, citing how much it hurts when she pops a pimple.
- Beehive Hairdo: Helen wears her hair in this style for the show.
- Coordinated Clothes: Most of the mother/daughter pairs do this. Brittany and Ashley Amber, Quinn and Helen, Tiffany and the model.
- Crying Wolf: Quinn is flabbergasted when Daria shows her clearly non-pierced navel, begging her parents to believe her that she'd seen it pierced the other day. Considering Quinn only snitched on Daria for personal amusement, it's satisfying to watch her beg Helen and Jake to believe her.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Daria's fantasy about Trent.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Quinn rats out Daria's piercing to feel better after the fashion show is a debacle. Since the piercing healed, Helen and Jake instead get pissed off at Quinn for seemingly lying to get Daria in trouble.
- Hypocritical Humor: As Brittany and her stepmother are on stage, Stacy comments that stepmothers shouldn't count...while her friend Tiffany has hired a model that clearly looks nothing like her to replace her mother in the fashion show.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: Quinn's left confused and outraged when Daria shows her belly button's not pierced, exclaiming she'd seen it yesterday and pissing off Jake and Helen even further for supposedly lying.
- Lady in Red: Tiffany and the model she hires to be her mother wear slinky red evening gowns.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Trying to lift her own spirits after the fashion show debacle, Quinn snitches on Daria to their parents. Too bad Daria's piercing had healed over by then.
- Little Black Dress: Stacy wears this for the fashion show.
- Love Makes You Stupid: Daria gets her navel pierced on a whim because Trent says she'd look hot.Jane: Don't you get it, Daria? You did something stupid for a guy. You may join the human race after all.
- Mythology Gag: Trent points out a go-go outfit in a store window and suggests Daria would look good in it. It's one of her outfits from the fantasy credits mashups.
- Noodle Incident: Trent can't set foot in a bookstore. Don't ask him why.
- Pink Is Feminine: Brittany and her stepmother wear baby blanket pink evening gowns with plunging necklines.
- True Blue Femininity: Both Helen and Quinn wear matching evening gowns in a midnight blue shade for the fashion show.
