While searching for a horror movie idea, Peter and the guys accidentally kill a man and they each try to pin the blame on someone else. Meanwhile, Brian starts acting like (even more of) a pretentious douche when wearing his new glasses, leading Stewie to try and destroy them.
Examples:
- Asshole Victim: In the end, it's revealed that the janitor that was killed was secretly a KKK leader and a possible grave robber. Peter and his friends consider that a load off, after being plagued with guilt for most of the episode.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: One of the horror movies ideas pitched by Quagmire is a possessed doll. Peter changes it to a bar of soap.
- Attention Whore: Brian getting glasses he doesn't even need just for attention is the focus of the B-plot.
- Bait-and-Switch: When the guys discuss turning themselves in for killing the old man, Joe says: "Do you know what they do to cops in prison?". The cutaway then shows Joe in prison eating, and the prisoner next to him annoying him with all kinds of questions about being a cop, such as if he could use the siren, or if he ever used his handcuffs during sex. Subverted in the end when he tells Joe a couple of them are going to kill him in the shower later.
- Blatant Lies: Quagmire eventually tries to weasel out of his part in the murder by faking evidence that he was in Boston at the time. Said evidence consists of a badly photoshopped picture of him in St. Louis, holding that days newspaper, the newspaper being an edition of the local Quahog Informer, which isn't sold in St. Louis.
- Cutting the Knot: Stewie attempts a subtle plan to destroy Brian's new glasses, but it fails horribly because he involved Chris. Stewie then simply gets a bat and hits Brian in the face.
- Debate and Switch: The last third of the episode focuses on the guilt Peter, Cleveland, Joe, and Quagmire feel for killing an elderly war hero, ultimately ending in their conspiring to frame one another for the murder. After discovering the man was a white supremacist, their moral conflict ends and Quagmire even says Quahog is a better place as a result.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Stewie destroys Brian's glasses with a bat while he was wearing them, resulting in the latter getting glass in his eyes, all because Brian was acting more pretentious while wearing them.
- The End... Or Is It?: Parodied when the janitor's hooked hand and a car's door burst out from the ground.
- Everyone Has Standards: Quagmire is the only one to suggest simply telling the truth about what happened. Considering he served in the Navy, it's understandable that he would have the most guilt over killing (who he thought was) a U.S. military veteran.
- Eye Scream:
- Stewie's destruction of Brian's glasses results in this trope.
Stewie: [readying his bat] Hey, Bri?
Brian: [looking up] Yeah? [WHAM!] AHH, DAMMIT! AHH, THERE'S GLASS IN MY EYE! [falls to the floor, writhing in pain] SON OF A BITCH!- Quagmire gets a broken stairway banister through the eye in the killer soap story pitched by Peter.
- God Is Evil: One of Peter's horror movie ideas is having God be a serial killer... by lowering the average human life span to 65, with many exceptions based on genetics and diet.Cleveland: That's stupid, I've never heard of anyone living to 65!
- Hide the Evidence: The guys bury the janitor to cover up what they did. Then they see his car and bury that, too.
- It's Personal: Stewie towards destroying Brian's glasses, as a result of seeing how obnoxious he's behaving.
- Let's See YOU Do Better!: After watching a disappointing horror movie, Peter and his friends decide that they could make a much better movie than that. When they finally make the movie, it flops. They then realize that making a movie isn't as easy as some people make it look.
- No Sympathy: After the pain he inflicted on Brian, Stewie simply tells him when dinner is and walks off.
- Pun:
- Joe's pitch for a movie idea; Cereal Killer, about a murderer who only eats cereal.
- Adam West's line about Chris, Brian and Stewie looking "pretty steamed" after escaping the sauna. Deliberately invoked since the gag is that the joke was suggested by a 9-year old fan.
- Sauna of Death: Chris' incompetence leads to him, Brian, and Stewie getting locked in a sauna. When they finally escape, Mayor West comments on how steamed they are.
- Sequelitis: In-Universe as the start of the plot happens because the sequel was terrible to a horror movie they guys loved.
- Shout-Out: Cleveland's idea for a horror movie is a parody of the first episode of The Walking Dead (2010).
- Sinister Minister: Maniac Pope, a horror movie where the Pope is a serial killer. Peter and the guys apparently loved the first one and hated the sequel, leading to them trying to come up with their own horror movie.
- Skewed Priorities: Cleveland's pitch, where he wakes up in an abandoned hospital, only to get distracted by changing a flickering light tube instead of investigating what's going on.
- Terror at Make-Out Point: Peter's pitch for a horror movie: a monster cat that attacks and kills teenagers in their cars at Makeout Point. Peter plays both the male teen and the cat.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Upon seeing Brian with his new glasses, Stewie remarks, "And the crisis continues."
- Too Dumb to Live: At the spa, Stewie tasked Chris with breaking the lock on Brian's locker. Somehow, Chris interpreted that as locking all three of them in a hot sauna for the weekend.
- With Friends Like These...: Fearing getting caught, each of the guys prepares to frame one of the others by planting evidence.
