Based on "Awesome Ants", the sixth story in Still More Tales to Give You Goosebumps (the fourth short-story collection from the Tales to Give You Goosebumps anthology series).
Dave Warren gets an ant farm, only to find that the special food pellets they came with are making them grow into giants.
The episode provides examples of:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The ending is mostly the same, with the protagonist waking up from his "nightmare" about supersized ants to find that giant ants keep humans in town-sized vivaria. However, in the book this is explicitly meant to be karmic since it resulted from the food pellets that the boy gave them, and the ants kept growing until they took over. In the episode, it's more of a Tomato Surprise since it's indicated that ants have always been the dominant species on Earth, and he was really just dreaming about a role reversal.
- Adaptational Job Change: In the short story, Mr. Lantz is a science teacher. In the episode, he's an exterminator.
- All Just a Dream: Zigzagged. The protagonist's experience turns suspiciously nightmarish as the town is suddenly abandoned, there is a storm outside, and the ants are growing to ever-bigger proportions. Just before he gets killed by one, he wakes up at home and all seems fine. Then he gradually remembers the reality of the situation: in the real world ants are actually mountain-sized, and keep humans secluded in the human equivalent of ant farms and force them to survive on small pellets of blue food. In the book the ants just grew that big rather than always having been so.
- And You Were There: Mr. Lantz is not an ant exterminator in the real world, just a middle-aged neighborhood man who is friendly with Dave. He probably imagined him in that role because Dave looks up to him.
- Eccentric Exterminator: Mr. Lantz is way too into his work, hunting bugs with steely determination and gleeful enjoyment, admiring the ants for their craftiness. He calls the protagonist a liar for claiming the ants from his ant farm grew to 3 inches, larger than any real life ants. Subverted at the end when everything turns out to be a dream, and giant ants rule the Earth. Mr. Lantz reflects how things might have been different for humans, and warns the protagonist not to let the ants know that he dreamed that it was Mr. Lantz's job to kill them.
- Nobody Here but Us Statues: Dave runs to Mr. Lantz's warehouse for help. As soon as he's out of sight, the ant-shaped model atop Mr. Lantz's truck suddenly starts to turn menacingly in Dave's direction as if it's about to attack him as well.
- Tomato Surprise: The episode ends with an All Just a Dream reveal, but then twists it further. Dave's nightmare about giant ants wasn't just a random phobia of Big Creepy-Crawlies, he really does live in a world where ants treat humans like insects.
- Tragic Dream: The entire episode, bar the ending, is Dave imagining a world where humans aren't dominated and herded by giant ants.
