The kids must stop Scrooge's unhealthy obsession with a few missing coins to keep him from becoming the next Glomgold.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Antagonist in Mourning: Subverted. Glomgold is stunned by the news of Scrooge's death, but that doesn't stop him from crashing the funeral to gloat about his victory.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: It didn't go both ways this episode, but despite how frustrated and put out Donald has been with Scrooge for years, during the funeral, he is sobbing his heart out and even runs out of the room. It's clear that Donald still loves his Uncle very much. The funeral may have been staged, but the fact that Donald was completely unaware of that and thought Scrooge really died solidifies his reaction as genuine.
- Barefoot Loon: Zig Zagged. One of the events that causes Scrooge's Sanity Slippage is his spats being stolen, but his solution—turning two tissue boxes into a pair of makeshift shoes—is even worse.
- Batman Gambit: To expose Glomgold's scheme, Scrooge and family fake his death with a news announcement, hold a funeral service, and delivery eulogies carefully worded to provoke Glomgold's ego.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Scrooge eventually concedes to Huey that he is sick and needs rest. Likewise after Huey discovers the fake page in the Junior Woodchuck Guide Book, he realizes that Scrooge's crazy ramblings may not be so crazy after all. Scrooge is also right to point out that his extremely secure Money Bin being compromised is a legitimate issue that should be treated seriously, regardless of how little money was actually stolen.
- The Cameo: Mrs. Quackfaster is seen coming into work when the world is frozen, and is later seen at the funeral.
- The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right: Scrooge temporarily becomes a Cloud Cuckoolander during this episode as he's driven insane, and Glomgold's confession proves that every claim Scrooge ever made, like licking everything in his office, actually did happen.
- Continuity Nod: Magica DeSpell hasn't been seen since her departure at the end of "The Shadow War Part II: Day of the Ducks!", and Gizmoduck is on double-duty trying to track her down.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Mrs. Beakley tells the kids to come to her the next time when Scrooge goes mad with suspicion since she would have had an easier time handling him.
- Criminal Convention: Ma Beagle's alibi for not being the culprit was that she was at Con-Com, a criminal convention where she was an invited guest.
- Engineered Public Confession: The whole funeral was a ploy to goad Glomgold into gloating about his supposed victory, with Manny pretending to be dead Scrooge and Scrooge disguised as an anonymous stranger at the funeral.
- Epic Fail: From Glomgold's perspective, it took him at least twelve months to figure out he stopped time. He initially assumed the baby he took candy from was able to stay still all that time.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Scrooge to everyone else who tell him he's just delirious from gold fever, accusing them of refusing to help him find the "thief". He even outright says this to Manny when he also starts agreeing with Huey.Scrooge: Et tu, Headless Man-Horse? Well, forget all of you! If you don't want to help me find the intruder, then I don't need ye, ye bunch of traitors!
- "Eureka!" Moment: After repeatedly failing to rob Scrooge blind, Glomgold came up with his plan to drive Scrooge insane when he noticed a handful of coins had gotten into his pocket.
- Even the Dog Is Ashamed: Manny sides with Huey and everyone else who believes that Scrooge has gold fever. He even also puts on a sickness mask over his statue face.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Money hungry as he is, not even Louie considers eighty-seven cents worth all the trouble that Scrooge is going through over it.
- Even Roxanne Featherly seems upset when she learns that Scrooge has died of gold fever, despite the fact that she spends every episode she’s in criticizing him and portraying him in a bad light. Earlier she's in disbelief that various investors have decided Glomgold is more trustworthy than Scrooge. She's also at the funeral and glares at Glomgold alongside everyone else.
- Even the Buzzards, Scrooge's board, who otherwise never really got along with him, look utterly pissed at Glomgold's posturing.
- Evil Gloating: Typical Glomgold can't keep it to himself that he masterminded Scrooge's Sanity Slippage using a time-stopping watch. To his credit, he does try to keep a lid on the plan, but Huey's insistent prodding proves too much. And he's so focused on showing up to gloat about winning at Scrooge's funeral that he doesn't realize Scrooge can't have died of an illness Glomgold himself made up.
- Fainting: Donald faints when he sees that Scrooge is actually alive.
- Faking the Dead: Scrooge fakes his death in order to get Glomgold to confess his scheme.
- Foreshadowing:
- When Glomgold is woken by Owlson, he looks around in confusion and quietly says "wait..." to himself before he begins arguing with her.
- The fact Huey misplaced his JW Guidebook, something very out of character, and he just happens to find it open to a page on "Gold Fever" hints that something more than just Scrooge losing his marbles is going on.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- When Glomgold is wandering Duckburg after first stopping time, a devil costume can be seen in a store window. He wears the same costume while tormenting Scrooge.
- After the twelve month jump while Glomgold has a staring contest with a frozen baby, pizza boxes and soda cans are littered about the background, showing Glomgold did occasionally break the contest to eat.
- When Gizmoduck informs Scrooge that the Beagles were at a convicts convention, he displays a holographic image that shows Ma Beagle giving $75 autographs while Bigtime pickpockets one of the attendees.
- Freudian Slip: Happens twice with two different people, but the same type of slip.
- Owlson initially says "my reputation" before correcting it to "our reputation."
- Louie, after learning about the robbery, finally asks how much money was missing.Louie: How much did I, uh, we, uh, you lose?
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": Glomgold crashes Scrooge's funeral dancing to "All I Do is Win" by DJ Khaled in a white, sequinned suit and top-hat with dollar sign sunglasses. He would have danced on Scrooge's casket if Zan Owlson hadn't stopped him.
- Furry Confusion: Among the people frozen in time, there's a dog-woman walking a dog and a pigeon-woman feeding a flock of pigeons.
- Gaslighting: Glomgold's plan hinges on using a time stopping device Manny misplaced to torment Scrooge under the guise of an imp only he witnesses tampering with his stuff and letting his consequent manic paranoia drive everyone away.
- Great Big Book of Everything: Played with in the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook having an article on a disease called "gold fever", but subverted when it's actually just Glomgold taking advantage of the guidebook's reputation as such by planting the fake article in it.
- Hero Worship: Webby spends the majority of the episode supporting Scrooge's insane escapades, regardless of them nearly killing Dewey, driving McDuck Enterprises into the ground and she refuses to believe he has Gold Fever, all because of everything he's overcome in the past. It takes seeing how crazy he is, believing an Imp named Chester was behind the theft of his coins to face the fact that her idol is not perfect or mentally well.
- Innocently Insensitive: Holding a staged funeral and not telling Uncle Donald about it would certainly qualify. When you think about it, the fake funeral comes off as a sick joke to Donald, who just reconciled with his uncle is trying to work things out with him.
- It's the Principle of the Thing: All that was stolen from his Bin was 87 cents among the billions of coins and jewels in his bin. It isn't the fact that he is 87 cents less rich than he was the last time he swam in his treasure; it's the fact that someone stole from him at all and he takes it personally.
- Last Disrespects: Glomgold shows up to Scrooge's funeral, wearing a white suit and dancing, just to rub his victory in the mourning family's face.
- Lock Down: After learning that there has been a robbery, the Money Bin goes into an elaborate lockdown.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Louie failed to tell Donald that Scrooge was faking his death. Donald's mourning wasn't an act, and he faints in relief when Scrooge is revealed as alive.
- Manchild: Owlson settles Flintheart down at the funeral with a lollipop.
- Mythology Gag:
- In the opening arc of DuckTales (1987), "gold fever" was treated as an actual disease Scrooge at one point suffered, with symptoms that resemble the fake disease in this episode.
- One of the original DuckTales episodes also had the Beagle Boys use the Time Teaser in order to rob the Money Bin. Glomgold is just not competent enough to get all the money out of the bin.
- A Don Rosa comics story also centered on the Beagle Boys use of a "time-stop watch" stolen from Gyro to rob Scrooge's money bin.
- During the montage of Scrooge going over his security measures, Donald walks into a door force field in the exact same way Scrooge does in the opening of the 1987 series (which was from the episode titled "Armstrong"), complete with the same reverb effect and with Gyro standing to his left.
- Nap-Inducing Speak: Owlson was trying to explain to Glomgold how they can better make money for their company, only to find him asleep. Subverted when it turns out it wasn't she who put him to sleep, but rather it was due to Glomgold making time stand still, and getting tired from losing his mind after 12 months, which causes him to fall asleep and reactivate the device.
- Near-Villain Victory: Glomgold could very well have won had Scrooge not finally acknowledged he was sick and needed to rest.
- Once More, with Clarity: Glomgold's confession takes place during various scenes in the episode, showing things from his perspective, which mostly includes large periods of frozen time.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Worrying about stolen money, no matter how small, is perfectly in-character for Scrooge. However, offering a significantly larger sum of money as reward for the capture of the thief is a clear sign that he's losing it.
- How can you tell Roxanne Featherley's upset about Scrooge's death? She was at the funeral without a camera crew.
- Pet the Dog: Scrooge has always had a tense at best relationship with his board of directors but even they are in mourning and find Glomgold's antics at Scrooge's funeral in poor taste and are enraged over the way he's acting.
- Poke the Poodle: During his Time Stands Still montage, Glomgold takes candynote from a baby, literally.
- Properly Paranoid: Scrooge believes someone has broken into the Money Bin and is messing with him, which the boys believe that he's just delirious from sickness. It turns out he was right when Glomgold confesses his deed at Scrooge's "funeral".
- Rewatch Bonus: When Scrooge strikes Manny's cart of junk with his cane, the sound of something falling to the floor and rolling away is amidst the metallic rattling. As the flashback reveals, that hidden sound was the Time Teaser watch falling into Glomgold's clutches.
- Sanity Slippage: Scrooge becomes increasingly erratic in his nonstop search for the coins missing from the Money Bin. It helps that he wasn't in the best shape to begin with because of a cold, and Glomgold fuels his paranoia by making him itchy, stretching out his clothes, stealing his spats, appearing dressed as an imp, etc.
- Shaking the Rump: Glomgold bursts uninvited into Scrooge’s funeral and starts twerking at his rival’s corpse as his Last Disrespects.
- Shout-Out:
- Scrooge treating the missing money as a kidnapping for ransom and offering 2 million dollars as a reward bounty on the kidnapper(s) parodies the plot of the film Ransom.
- Scrooge's theory that a mischievous interdimensional imp is to blame for his lost money calls Superfamily foe Mister Mxyzptlk to mind.
- The title is a reference to the Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.
- Scrooge's eccentric use of tissue boxes is inspired by Howard Hughes having eccentricities with tissues and the boxes.
- When Gizmoduck is going over how some other villains couldn't be responsible for the crime, he mentions that Mark Beaks was live-tweeting "Crowchella", an obvious take on the concert Coachella.
- Smart Ball: Yeah, it took Glomgold an absurdly long time to notice that time had become frozen and his initial plan to rob Scrooge failed miserably, but he still came up with a plan to drive Scrooge insane and carried it out rather effectively. It's pretty impressive for someone who (as this episode alone acknowledges) often comes up with zany, impractical schemes that he rarely thinks through.
- Soup Is Medicine: Huey tries to offer chicken soup to Scrooge for his cold, only to be brushed off.Huey: Restorative nutrients.
- String Theory: At the height of his madness, Scrooge draws a giant map of all the little inconsistencies and hangs it up inside the money bin. While explaining it to the others, he swings around on the string while cackling like a loon.
- Tempting Fate: Huey is sure there's no way Scrooge could know 87 cents are missing from the bin. The only way to know would be for them to count every coin and that would be crazy. Cut to the kids all counting coins in the bin:Dewey: Ugh, Huey and his stupid nerd brain.
- Time Stands Still: The stopwatch that Glomgold finds in Scrooge's office is capable of pausing time. Glomgold uses it for gaslighting Scrooge.
- Troll: After getting the hang of freezing time, Glomgold starts wearing a devil costume while messing with everyone to make them think Scrooge is going crazy.
- Unreliable Narrator: Glomgold describes his discovery of the time teaser's power as him "mastering space and time." The flashback prior shows him accidentally freezing time, and failing to realize it wasn't some grand scale prank even after a year, until he turned the watch off and on again.
- Villain in a White Suit: Glomgold wears a glittery white tux and top-hat to Scrooge’s funeral.
- Visual Pun: The device Glomgold uses to stop time is a stopwatch.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Dying Detective.
- Xanatos Speed Chess:
- As a result of his Smart Ball, Glomgold manages to devise on-the-fly Gaslighting that earns him a Near-Villain Victory.
- Likewise, when Scrooge finally gets better, he becomes clear-minded enough to catch on to Glomgold and retaliate with a Faking the Dead Engineered Public Confession.
