Darwin: I still don't understand how you can be so direct with people?
The One With… the Street Fighter insult battle.
Darwin learns to be more direct, but he goes too far and begins to hurt the feelings of fellow classmates.
Tropes:
- A Lesson Learned Too Well: Gumball tries to get Darwin to be a little more assertive, and he goes right through it and out the other side.
- Adoption Diss: Gumball's ultimate proof to Darwin that words can hurt people is telling him "You, are not my brother. YOU ARE JUST A PET! WHO GREW LEGS!" He takes it back after he makes his point.
- An Aesop: You need to find a good balance of being honest without being Brutally Honest to the point of hurting someone’s feelings.
- Auto-Tune: Darwin's first song uses auto tune.
- Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: During the put-down contest, Darwin’s strategy is to say Gumball has a “big head” then turn it into a Spam Attack, which Gumball can’t counter until he uses a Limit Break (reminding Darwin that they aren’t actually siblings and that he was originally a pet fish who grew legs).
- Brick Joke: The episode starts on the bus as Darwin is forced to listen to Sussie and tells Gumball to grab the emergency hammer. He says he's not breaking a window, but Darwin clarifies that he wants Gumball to knock him out. At the end of the episode, they're both stuck on the bus with Sussie and they do break a window this time to get out.
- Brutal Honesty: Played with. When Gumball advises Darwin to tell Sussie she's being annoying, you'd expect him to rudely tell Sussie to stop. He instead calmly explains to Sussie why her behavior is bothering him, and she casually accepts his complaint and tells him she'd be happy to stop.
- Crowd Song: Parodied when a bunch of students spontaneously join Darwin in song, but disperse just as quickly once they realized the whole song is just Darwin insulting them.
- Cutting Back to Reality: The Sudden Video-Game Moment of the insult fight is briefly shown as just them yelling at each other as the background characters make the same repetitive arm pumping motions as they get bored and walk off.
- Freeze-Frame Ending: The episode ends with Gumball and Darwin using the emergency hammer to jump out of the bus, immediately ending on a freeze-frame of them mid-jump.
- Homage: Gumball and Darwin's fight is done in the style of an early Street Fighter game. The background music during the fight is a copy-right safe version of Guile's Theme. Gumball's victory poses are homages to Chun Li's ("yatta" included) and Akuma's, respectively. After the fight, a Game Over countdown with Gumball taunting Darwin with on-screen text is shown.
- I Am Not Weasel: Sussie repeatedly points at a dog (loosely speaking) that she keeps calling a bird.
- It Amused Me: As a condition for teaching him to be more assertive, Gumball insists that Darwin drag his butt around everywhere like a dog. Darwin thinks this was a way to break him of his inhibitions by humiliating him, but it was actually just because Gumball thought it would be funny.
- Mouth Taped Shut: While trying to curb Darwin's obsessive Brutal Honesty, Mr. Small shows him an ink blot sheet and asks him to describe it. Darwin says it looks like a very sad middle-aged man wearing sandals (which it does
). Mr. Small, assuming Darwin's talking about him, gives up and just tapes Darwin's mouth shut. - Pre-emptive Declaration: Darwin gives one when he gets tired of Teri's mysophobia.Darwin: Oh my gosh, your hand! It's covered in germs.
Teri: What, where?
Darwin: (grabs her hand and licks it) There. - Stylistic Self-Parody: Darwin tells Sussie "How about you learn to breathe through your nostrils. Oh, I'm sorry, you don't have any!"
- Sudden Video-Game Moment: Gumball and Darwin end up having a Street Fighter-style insult match.
- Title Theme Drop: Darwin's insult song in has a section that sounds suspiciously like the theme song.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Thanks to being taught to be more direct, Darwin becomes significantly meaner and this gets him and Gumball in trouble.
- Villain Song: Parodied with the song "No More Mr Nice Guy!" by Darwin, which gets cut off by Gumball slapping him in the face for all the terrible things he's saying.
- Singing Voice Dissonance: During "No More Mr Nice Guy!", Darwin's voice becomes much deeper and sinister, fitting for how cruel he's become.
