Shiro: Wow, this game is so amazing. It requires problem-solving, teamwork, creativity, all the skills you'd want to imbue when doing team-building exercises.
Lance: Stop trying to ruin our fun with learning!
Lance: Stop trying to ruin our fun with learning!
During a lull in the conflict, the team sits down for an Altean Tabletop RPG. Hilarity doesn't follow too far behind.
Tropes featured in this episode:
- Alliteration & Adventurers: "Monsters & Mana" is an obvious D&D clone.
- Art Shift:
- Shiro's backstory is shown in black-and-white manga panels.
- At one point, Pidge and Hunk are shown walking in a pixel style more reminiscent of old RPG's.
- Asian Fox Spirit: One of the types of monster shown living in Carthian's Lair is a dark humanoid fox with multiple tails for hair. One of the monsters the team is shown fighting is a nine-tailed humanoid fox with the ability to cast illusions.
- Backup Twin: Parodied. When Shiro's character died, he immediately created a new character with the exact same backstory, only as his twin brother, Jiro.
- Big "NO!": Shiro's backstory where his master is killed and tells him to go and fight the leviathan. Most of this is played for laughs.
- Breather Episode: The team is taking a break while they can to sit down and have some fun. Fittingly, this is sandwiched between two rather plot-heavy episodes.
- Call-Back:
- Lance says (in reference to the trapped door), "Why don't you just knock?" the same thing he said when he knocked on the Blue lion's force field in Episode 1.
- The group falling down a tunnel after the floor breaks seems to also be a reference to the first episode when the group is lead towards the Blue Lion.
- Lance thinking that a twenty-sided die would be the size of a Yallexian pearl, a call back to the Voltron comics where the group had to get a Yallexian pearl to save Coran from debt.
- Calling Your Attack: Hunk does this with his spells and Allura with her arrows.
- Cartoon Meat: The Health Plate that Pidge orders for hunk is depicted as a brown tube with two cartoony bones poking out the sides.
- Cat Boy: Lance's character has cat ears and a tail, which are presumably part of his race.
- Combat Medic: Allura's archer character fires healing arrows in addition to normal combat ones.
- The Chew Toy: Shiro's character keeps dying.
- Deep-Immersion Gaming: Most of the episode shows the team as their characters in the fantasy world of the game.
- Eldritch Abomination: One of the playable classes, the Klazgool, is a mass of pink and purple tentacles, eyes, and fanged mouths.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Pidge and Hunk realize what they needed to do to fix their out-of-game problem because of something Pidge and Hunk's characters did in game.
- Fantasy Character Classes:
- Pidge is a dwarf.
- Hunk is a mage.
- Shiro is a paladin.
- Allura is a mystical archer.
- Lance is a thief.
- Evil All Along: Coran's character who plays an innkeeper giving people quests, only to later reveal he was the mastermind behind all of the evil happening.
- Face Fault: Coran and Lance at the end of the episode when Shiro says that he wants to be a paladin again.
- Fall Damage: Allura's character suffers this when she jumps from a tree.
- Flaming Sword: Shiro's character picks one up in the treasure room before he's offed.
- Foreshadowing: Shiro's character dies and is replaced by an identical duplicate. This will be important next episode.
- Invisibility Cloak: Lance's character picks one up in the treasure room and uses it in the battle against Dragon Coran.
- Killer GM: Downplayed, but Coran definitely gives off an adversarial vibe and ticks a few "warning boxes" about "Lore Keepers" you don't want to play with. Examples including counting Shiro's miniature being gnawed on by one of Alurra's mice as an in-game death, nuking Shiro as soon as he picks up a piece of treasure, giggling gleefully when he informs Lance that if he fails to disarm a trap he activates it, and trying to listen in when the group are plotting their strategy against him.
- Large Ham: Shiro's character when he comes back as his twin brother, Jiro.
- Lover, Not a Fighter: Pidge asks why Hunk's spells are so bad and he claims to be a healer, not a fighter.
- Magic Staff: Hunk's weapon. He can use it to fly as well as cast spells.
- Mythology Gag:
- In GoLion, Takashi Shirogane had an identical twin brother named Ryou who served as a Backup Twin after Takashi died. Here, Shiro's character is named Takashi Shirogane — his full name — and he creates a Backup Twin named Jiro for his character after he dies in the game.
- The sword that Shiro claims as loot is called a "Blazing Sword" and looks exactly like the sword from the original show.
- Ninja Log: Lance's character, Pike, uses this power to save Hunk's character from being incinerated by Dakin.
- "Oh, Crap!" Smile: When Hunk's spell doesn't do any damage to the ogre, he and Pidge nervously smile before it cuts to them screaming and running for their lives.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Pidge's dwarf character is short, hairy(Has long hair, though beardless), heavily-armored, wields an axe, and mentioned being a miner prior to becoming an adventurer.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Coran's character pulls an Evil Costume Switch into a shadowy dark creature in a red cloak who fires red and black lighting.
- Rewarding Vandalism: Pidge when she looks for money by breaking the innkeeper's pots. She finds a broom, a Blade of Marmora dagger, and a coin with King Alfor's face on it.
- RPG Episode: The episode centers around the team playing a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Tabletop RPG called Monsters and Mana.
- Running Gag: Shiro insists on always being a paladin.
- Scaled Up: Coran's character, Dakin, turns into the giant "Coranic Dragon" after he is seemingly defeated by a giant Pidge.
- Sequential Boss: Coran transforms from the innkeeper, to a wizard, and finally the Coranic Dragon.
- Serial Numbers Filed Off: Monsters and Mana is clearly supposed to be the Altean equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons.
- Shout-Out: The entire episode is one for RPG gamers and D&D players.
- The Rulebook for Mages and Mana looks like the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rulebook.
- The dungeon around which most of the in-game plot centers is referred to, several times, as a "Tomb of Horrors."
- The spell that turns Pidge giant is apparently called "Embiggen!"
- During one battle, the party recreates
◊ a certain legendary video game's box art. - The designs for Hunk and Allura were inspired by Etoh and Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War.
- The first shot of Shiro is framed like Aragorn's introduction in The Fellowship of the Ring, and his backstory is pretty much that of Ryu from Street Fighter.
- The hidden door is outlined in runes, just like the western entrence to Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring.
- To avoid falling into a spike pit, Hunk casts a spell that summons small chicken-like creatures that the team uses to glide to safety, much like the Cuccos from the The Legend of Zelda series.
- Hunk takes an arrow to the knee.
- Skewed Priorities: After Shiro gets killed, his headpiece falls to the floor and Pidge delightedly leans down saying he'd dropped a rare item.
- Smoke Out: How Lance appears as his character and disappears.
- Stealth Pun: Lance's character class is a thief and he's part cat, so he's a cat burglar.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Just as Shiro picks up the blazing sword, he's killed off by Coran.
- Swallowed Whole: Shiro's character is Eaten Alive by a kaiju-sized mouse... actually one of Allura's mice gnawing on the figurine.
- Taken for Granite: Hunk's character's village all got turned to stone, and he hopes to defeat the villain in order to reverse it.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Parodied. Hunk casts "Secret", which allows the rest of the party to scheme away from Coran (who can't eavesdrop, so the audience doesn't hear the plan). Naturally, they manage to defeat the villain shortly after.
- With Catlike Tread: Lance as Pike, an actual cat-person and master thief, cannot stop announcing loudly how stealthy he is when the party first meet.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When Shiro returns as his "twin brother 'Jiro'", Pidge just gives an annoyed Aside Glance and asks "A paladin again?".
