Fairy tales are coming to life in a small town. Not only are magical creatures coming from nowhere, but the people in the town are getting pulled into the stories and assigned roles. And real fairy tales don't have happy endings.
Tropes:
- And I Must Scream: Implied to be the fate of McGuire, and he gets sucked into the book.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: McGuire seems like such a nice man but that's just a facade for the selfish predator he is.
- Been There, Shaped History: Non-human example: The Artifact of Doom responsible for the fairy tales coming to life also caused The Black Death (by draining life from people to fuel its power).
- Blatant Lies: The Librarians are conducting a traffic flow study. During the course of which, they discover swamp gas. But no need to call the authorities, it's all been dealt with.
- Born Lucky: Ezekiel takes on this archetype for the episode.
- Comically Missing the Point: Ezekiel has trouble believing that the traffic accident was caused by a troll. Jenkins assumes it's because trolls aren't indigenous to the Pacific Northwest.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: The woman who Jacob saved from the wolf's stomach thanks Cassandra for saving her due to her becoming Prince Charming.
- Even the Girls Want Her: As Cassandra's part of the story is Prince Charming, she becomes attractive even to women (including Eve).
- Evil Old Folks: Getting old sucks. So says the Villain of the Week.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Invoked by the magic story book, which either summons characters from the stories (such as the troll from The Billy Goats Gruff) or turning people into various archetypes (the mayor into the titular emperor from The Emperor's New Clothes).
- It's All About Me: McGuire is willingly to destroy an entire town and drain the life of a child if it means restoring himself and stopping his aging. It's even mentioned how he believes that since he gave so much to the town, the town should give back to him.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The fairy tale takes a hard left turn in this direction after Ezekiel gives Jamie the book. The huntsman is a robot! The princess is a ninja! Prince Charming is actually Merlin!
- Noodle Incident: The chalkboard of artifacts.
- Also, Jenkins implies another one (although this one ultimately gets explained in one of the books):
Jenkins: (regarding which artifact could be behind this) And the genie's lamp can go.Cassandra: Why not the genie's lamp?Jenkins: ...it's never the genie's lamp. - Robo Cam: We get a brief shot like this from Jacob's perspective, after Jamie declares that he's a robot.Robo!Jacob: Yeah. This I can work with.
- Rousing Speech: Cassandra gets to give one at the climax of the episode.
- You Don't Want to Know: When Jacob sees that one of the Library's new books is an annotated copy of Paradise Lost, Jenkins warns that they don't want to know who annotated it. The implication presumably being...
