Based on The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, book #28 of the original Goosebumps series.
Michael Webster's father brings home a strange cuckoo clock, which Michael discovers has the ability to reverse time.
The episode provides examples of:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Michael states in the book that he has short brown hair. Here, he has dirty blonde hair that is pretty long in the present day.
- Adaptation Personality Change: Michael's dad is a little more temperamental, since he gets angry at Tara and later Michael for touching the clock, and Michael again when he ran to the antique store.
- Adaptational Nice Guy:
- Very downplayed with Tara. While she still isn't a good kid at all here, most of her more disturbing sociopathic behavior from the book (such as tormenting the family cat and getting her brother beat up), are not shown or mentioned, with the worst thing she does in the episode being humiliating Michael at his birthday party, and the implication that she was the way she is since birth is not present either. This makes her come off more as a typical bratty younger sibling than the Enfant Terrible she was in the book.
- The parents, while still not ideal, are far nicer to Michael compared to the book.
- Anger Born of Worry: When Mr. Webster finds his son all alone in front of the antique store in the present day, he is much angrier than in the book. He chews Michael out for going out all by himself at six years old, and furiously takes him back home.
- Catapult Nightmare: On his returning night to his twelfth birthday, Michael has a dream right before midnight. He is being chased by something through a dark hallway in his house, only to end up in a corner. He whips around to see that what is chasing him is the Cuckoo clock floating towards him. And when the doors to the bird open up, instead of the Cuckoo, it's Tara's head, laughing at Michael with a Slasher Smile. This causes Michael to wake upright screaming in horror.
- Compressed Adaptation: Michael's multiple regressions into his younger years, such as third grade, second grade, kindergarten, etc, are reduced to reliving his sixth birthday, which amalgamates multiple elements from the other regressions, such as discovering Tara's been unborn, finding the antique store is closed for vacation, etc.
- Company Cross References: When Michael is six years old, his father reads him Clifford the Big Red Dog as a bedtime story. Both Clifford and Goosebumps are properties of Scholastic Inc.
- Facepalm: Baby Michael is crawling towards the clock in the antique shop when he accidentally knocks over a glass vase, but it lands on a pile of pillows, thus not shattering and drawing attention to himself. This causes Michael to do this trope for his near blunder.Michael: (thinking as he facepalms) Clumsy fool.
- Foreshadowing: On his birthday, Michael says he made a wish but Tara is still here, implying he wished she would vanish. He gets his wish in the end.
- If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: At 6 years old, Michael tells his friends soon, he'll be nothing. One of them says "When you're nothing, can I have your presents?".
- Platonic Declaration of Love: When Michael returns to the present day, he is excited at being told that he is twelve years old. He kisses his father on the forehead and shouts that he loves him, much to Mr. Webster's confusion.
- Shout-Out: When Michael wakes up and is told that he is six years old, he rushes over to the mirror in fear. When he sees himself, he looks near the camera and screams with his hands on his cheeks, looking very similar to Kevin from Home Alone. The fact that he's a young boy with short blonde hair certainly helps.
