When Eddy finds out that someone wrote "Eddy is a no-neck chump," he goes into disguise to find out who wrote it, but becomes popular in the process.
This episode contains the following tropes:
- Anger Born of Worry: Being the ditz he is, Ed thinks Eddy has disappeared when he's in disguise, and frets over trying to find him. Once Eddy finally ditches the disguises at the end of the episode, Ed is at first elated to finally find him, but then scolds him for vanishing on him, and sternly refuses to let Eddy leave his side.
- Blank Slate: Eddy is completely caught off guard by just how friendly the Cul-de-Sac kids are to him as Carl, due to the fact that Carl doesn't have the four seasons worth of baggage Eddy has. Unfortunately, he quickly becomes drunk on this new persona due to Carl actually being popular with the other kids.
- Fair-Weather Foe: Eddy's willing to act pally with Kevin and Sarah for popularity.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Eddy has no problem abandoning Ed and Edd for popularity.
- Foreshadowing:
- Eddy mistakes a fist bump from Kevin a sign that he’s going to get beat up. A hint to Eddy’s life of abuse from his brother.
- This episode makes it clear that most of the kids problems with Eddy are because of how Eddy acts most of the time and not him himself. When he finally admits that his brother is a irredeemable jerk and that trying to be like he was dumb, he is at long last accepted by the Cul-de-Sac kids.
- Just how easily Eddy is able to put up multiple personas and personalities that completely fool the kids with little effort gives a subtle hint on how used to it Eddy is, considering he's been putting up an act for the majority of the series.
- Hidden Depths: As it turns out, when Eddy isn't acting like a greedy narcissist, he can actually be quite popular with the kids, as his Carl persona almost immediately became the most popular kid in school. This ends up being Foreshadowing to the movie, where Eddy reveals that the greedy narcissist persona is largely an act in an attempt to emulate his brother, who is a grade A Jerkass who is even more hated than Eddy by all the Cul-de-Sac kids.
- Innocuously Important Episode: Despite largely feeling like a standard EEnE episode, this episode contains a surprising amount of hints towards revelations that would be revealed in the movie, espacially in regards to Eddy himself.
- No-Neck Chump: This episode is the Trope Namer.
- Master of Disguise: Eddy's disguises are surprisingly effective against the kids. It isn't until he tries to rapid fire them in order to find out who keeps rewriting his name to his aliases does it all start to fall apart.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Eddy finally gets respect from the kids after always being treated badly by them.
- The Unreveal: We never find out who actually wrote "Eddy is a no-neck chump." Double-D's revealed to have written "Carl" and "Hugo" (both of which wash right off since he had used water-soluble markers), but when the original statement doesn't wash off, even Double-D's shown to be wondering who could've written the original statement.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Even though Rolf was at the football field greeting "Carl", he doesn't appear with the Cul-de-sac kids afterwards and is absent for the rest of the episode.
- With Friends Like These...: When Eddy finally feels respected while disguised as "Carl", he becomes fully willing to abandon his old identity and leave Edd and Ed out to dry for what Edd calls the "shallow allure of the in-crowd". In return, Edd rewrites the graffiti that started the incident to undermine Eddy's attempts to enjoy his newfound respect.
