Larry: Look, I'm sorry, but tearing apart the fabric of the universe is not a dismissible offence!
When Richard gets a job as a pizza delivery man, Nicole is actually frightened by it, sensing it as something quite wrong. When Darwin and Gumball help their father deliver some dropped pizzas, they see the reality-breaking signs that their mother was right to be worried...
Tropes:
- Ain't No Rule: The reason Larry is so hesitant to fire Richard is because breaking reality isn't a fireable offense.
- Big "NO!":
- Gumball, Darwin, Anais and Nicole give a massive one when it looks like Richard is about to succeed in delivering a pizza and thus, destroy reality.
- Shortly after that, Richard gives one when Larry fires him for eating bits of the pizza from the center.
- Black Comedy Burst:
- The infamous scene of Gumball and Darwin dropping and then slipping on a pizza in front of a pizza-headed couple who treated the delivery as if they were expecting their first child. The look of horror in their faces after the drop is dark, but priceless.
- Mr. Small, who starved himself for days on a diet of sunlight (which does explain why he's so hideously skinny), passing out after eating the disgusting ad hoc pizza. Gumball and Darwin worry that Mr. Small may be dead, but a bubble escapes his lips and they casually brush it off by asking him for payment on the pizza.
- Broken Record: The Banana family chant "pizza" when they get their delivery, but Richard's universe-wrecking ends up making them repeat ad nauseum.Gumball: That's one creepy bunch of bananas, man.
- Carnivore Confusion: Two pizzas order a pizza, and they talk about it as though they're having a baby, which makes the scene of the pizza dropping to the ground more shocking...
- Cassandra Truth: Anais doesn't believe Nicole when she says that her husband actually being employed is a bad thing. When things take a turn for the strange, the latter turns out to be right.
- Chekhov's Gun: Early on Richard mentions cutting strips out of the pizza, eating them, then sticking the rest of the pizza together. This is what gives Larry a reason to fire him, thus saving the universe.
- Cosmic Flaw: Played for Laughs. The very concept of Richard being employed is so unnatural that reality starts breaking apart all around him; normalcy is only restored once he gets fired.
- Fantastic Racism: When listing rules of the universe that should not be broken, Nicole says cats shouldn't get along with dogs. However, she might have been talking about "regular" cats and dogs, not "people" cats and dogs like herself.
- Failed a Spot Check: Richard remains completely oblivious to reality shattering all around him.
- Foreshadowing: When Darwin realizes they need to replace the vegetarian pizza, he and Gumball happen to be standing in front of a green house with a dreamcatcher hung by the door. Sure enough, the delivery is for vegetarian hippie Mr. Small.
- Hard Truth Aesop: The message of the episode is that some people just aren't cut out to be productive members of society and will only make things worse if they try.
- Here We Go Again!: After getting fired, Richard announces he'll get another job.
- I Ate WHAT?!: Mr. Small apparently didn't realize that his "pizza" was a glob of mud, grass, and chewed bubblegum until he wolfed down the whole thing in one go. Even then, he's not too bothered about it, since it was organic.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: After Richard gets a job, Nicole has a bad feeling about it and starts seeing things like water flowing upward into the ceiling. They always stop before Anais can see them, causing her (and possibly the viewers) to think this is all in her head at first, but then this strange phenomena is reported on the news and everyone can see it.
- Lampshade Hanging: Anais presents the fact that the family are wearing the exact same clothes they were wearing last year, Darwin only wearing shoes, and Gumball, Nicole, and Richard's lack of footwear as evidence that Richard really needs to hold down a job.
- Lawful Stupid: Larry's strict adherence to workplace rules means he won't fire Richard without proper cause. Even though Richard being employed is tearing apart the fabric of reality.
- Medium Awareness: When Anais asks "How wrong can it go?" about her father's job, there's a dark musical sting... which both her and Nicole hear, creeping them out.
- Medium-Shift Gag: Temporary universe fluctuations include Gumball, Nicole, Anais, Larry, and Darwin as animals and a rock in live-action, Larry in 2D with the Wattersons in vector 3D, and all five of them in claymation.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Barely averted; Richard nearly destroys all of reality, just by being a pizza delivery guy and making a successful delivery.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Larry makes firing Richard while reading from the employee handbook look like an exorcism.
- New Job Episode: The episode is about Richard getting a new job—his first one ever, in fact—as a pizza delivery man.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Chanting is heard all throughout the episode, but what's actually being chanted is a list of pizza toppings.BGM: Margarita, Mexicali, bean burrito, marinara, mozzarella, Gorgonzola!
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Such serious business that it breaks the universe.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Nicole has always known her husband to be an extremely Lazy Bum. So she is surprised, and increasingly scared, of the fact that not only does he have a job, but is actually working.
- Piss-Take Rap: Richard briefly raps while riding on his bike.Here I am, I got a J-O-B
Earnin' plenty o' dough for my family
Yeah, I'm Richard Watterson, employee
So have some R-E-S-P-C-K-T - Reality-Breaking Paradox: Richard having a job goes completely against the natural order of the universe, causing strange omens and as he works toward completing the run, it gets crazier with the laws of physics breaking down. Had he actually succeeded in delivering a pizza and completing a task in work, he would've destroyed the entire universe!
- Reality Is Out to Lunch: Elmore becomes a World of Chaos as a result of Richard getting a job.
- Reset Button: Once Richard is fired, reality stops breaking. All of the damage done over the course of the episode then immediately gets fixed.
- Running Gag: Over the course of the episode, the word "proud" is constantly mispronounced.
- Skewed Priorities: When the Wattersons drag Larry along to stop Richard from delivering the pizza, he explains that he can't fire Richard for trying to destroy the universe, but has no problem doing it after he finds out Richard ate part of the pizza and tried to hide it.
- Status Quo Is God: Lazy Richard getting a job alone is enough to threaten the end of the world.
- Stealth Pun: Gumball and Darwin were literally delivering the Pepperonis' baby.
- Wham Episode: A surprisingly stealthy one, given how it's really only notable in retrospect. This is the first episode to show that the world is sentient and is affected and deconstructed by common sitcom tropes. The idea of the Lazy Husband keeping and maintaining an actual job is a Reality-Breaking Paradox.
- World-Wrecking Wave: Some of Richard's actions — such as hitting the accelerator on his scooter — create realty-warping shockwaves that each do something to screw up the universe.
