Tired of Dave's cowardly behavior, the family makes Dave wear the Red Sweater of Courage, which makes anyone who wears totally brave and fearless. Unfortunately, Dave becomes so brave/fearless that he insults the three biggest villains of the show (Malsquando, Quosmir and the Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy), who ultimately team up together to get back at Dave (and destroy Udrogoth in the process).
This episode contains examples of:
- Department of Redundancy Department: According to Candy, everyone calls Dave "Coward the cowardly coward boy".
- Villain Team-Up: Dave antagonizes Malsquando, Quosmir, and Chuckles, so they all show up to attack Udrogoth at the same time.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: An inversion, actually. As Oswidge explains to his nieces, "The normal-Dave always saved the day because he did something smart—but this new, brave Dave will just keep fighting until he gets pounded into a mushy paste."
- What lead to that quote was that Dave's Red Sweater of Courage eventually made him go from "incredibly brave" to "just plain stupid," as he ends up pissing off the three main villains of the show (Chuckles, Malsquando and Quosmir) without prior provocation—when the three villains arrive in Udrogoth, they team up together to get back at Dave.
- After Dave's returned to his original wimpy self, Dave realizes that the only way they could defeat all three villains is by turning them against each other—Dave makes a series of papier-mâché masks so the gang can disguise themselves and trick the villains into thinking that the others said mean things about them and focus on fighting on each other (which ultimately succeeds).
- In the end, after defeating the three villains, the rest of the gang acknowledges that, for as annoying/frustrating as Dave's wimpiness can be, everyone's ultimately better off with Dave as a wimp than a "brave guy," especially since Dave's a lot smarter as a wimp.
- What the Hell, Hero?: At the beginning of the episode, Chuckles is attacking Udrogoth with a "Chuckle-Bot" (a giant robot version of himself), and at one point during his rampage, Dave tries hiding behind a puppy in the hopes that the Dark Lord wouldn't bring himself to attack a puppy—while Candy and Fang manage to defeat Chuckles, they call out their brother not only for not even trying to fight back against Chuckles, but how hiding behind a puppy, of all things, was "wimpy even for [Dave himself]."
