The Choices

"The Choices" is the sixth episode of Season 5 of The Amazing World of Gumball. It is the 162nd episode overall.

Synopsis
Nicole reminisces about how she met Richard during a disastrous family dinner, and how things could have turned out for her if she had not.

Plot
The episode begins on a rather chaotic night in the the Watterson household as Nicole struggles to provide dinner for her family. However, her family only shows impatience and irresponsibility which eventually leads to a disaster. Nicole finally loses her temper and is about to lash out on her family. However, she suddenly wonders how it all came to this situation before quickly realizing where it all started: the day she met Richard. Shortly after this realization, Nicole recalls back to her childhood, specifically the day that the two met.

It is the day of a karate tournament, but Nicole and her parents are on stuck in traffic. Her mother is chastising her for her grades (despite the fact that they are all 'A's) and planning her entire life for her while her father is experiencing road rage, causing the family car to break down; left with only five minutes, Nicole has no other choice but to run to her tournament.

As she runs through the park, she passes by a younger Gary and child or teenage versions of Banana Bob, Harold, Steve, and Sal Left Thumb. Somehow, Nicole deters from her intended course and gets lost; once she realizes this, Richard appears from a tree stump. Modern-day Nicole then wonders what would have happened had she taken a different path. She first imagines a future where she passes through Gary's cement work, arriving at her tournament on time. This leads to her winning first place, graduating, becoming rich, getting elected as President, becoming a futuristic overlord, and eventually becoming dethroned by revolutionaries in a post-apocalyptic future.

Nicole decides to avoid such a heinous scenario by taking her normal route, but this time, she takes up Banana Bob as a potential suitor. The banana manages to win her over romantically via a song, and the two eventually get married. Despite his good intentions, Banana Bob's constant singing of the word "banana" causes Nicole to snap and become insane.

Concerned about her sanity, she ignores Banana Bob and instead stops by Harold, who proceeds to negg her (i.e. "that creepy thing where guys criticize girls to lower their confidence so they'll go out with them"). He continues to be verbally abusive throughout the marriage. Feeling degraded, future Nicole becomes very submissive and tries anything to win Harold's respect, with her appearance being greatly modified with plastic surgery to impress him. Regardless, her inability to appease his whims causes her to finally break down and burn their mansion down, resulting in her arrest.

Nicole tries again to redeem her future, this time stopping by Steve Small, who is advocating the use of hugging as an alternative to modern medicine. Nicole tries to imagine a future following his path, but she realizes that his beliefs would end up killing her. She then considers how the tiniest changes can have the grandest consequences, and wonders what would have happened if she had missed hopping onto the butterfly while leaping over the hippie protest. The butterfly ends up flying into her mouth and getting lodged in her throat, after which Mr. Small comes to her aid with a hug to cure her. It does not.

Desperate, Nicole visualizes a potential future where she takes a young Sal's and his crew's offer for a moped ride without a helmet; once again, this scenario only results in her death. She finally realizes there are no viable ways to prevent her encounter with Richard, and accepts her fate.

The young Nicole stops and greets a young Richard, and noticing that he is stuck in a log following a poor attempt to observe squirrels. As Nicole is about to leave for her tournament, Richard questions its importance. Nicole explains that she wants to be successful so people will like her. However, Richard claims that people already do like her, himself included. Suddenly, the clock strikes 2:00 and Nicole laments on how she has failed everyone and wonders what she should do with her life. Richard suggests that she should live her own life instead of trying to please others.

These words trigger a filmstrip montage of the happy memories shared by Nicole and Richard, accompanied by a piano piece. She remembers them playing in the park together the same day they met to the times of their awkward teenage years. We then see a teenage Nicole leaving her parents' home and become estranged with them after a huge argument, and how Richard (whose mother also kicked out of the house) was there to walk with her into the journey of life. The feeling of pride returns when she remembers the time she learned she was pregnant with Gumball, only for the feeling of shock to come when she and Richard realized they weren't actually married. The memory of her wedding then returns, and although the feeling of sadness comes when her parents don't arrive, Richard is more than enough to make her happy.

Gumball's birth is the next event to hit Nicole, and she remembers how content she and her husband were when they had their first son. She then recalls the time when they bought their home (trashed at the time) and how the new family built it up. Suddenly, the memories of Gumball's first steps, Darwin's reunion with Gumball, and Anais' birth; she finally ends her trip down memory lane with a family photograph taken recently.

After such an emotional experience, Nicole realizes that she is truly happy with her family and that she wouldn't trade her current situation for the world. She then un-pauses from her flashback and begins to have a food fight with her family. The episode ends with the five laughing and throwing food together.

Main Characters

 * Nicole
 * Richard

Supporting Characters

 * Mrs. Senicourt (debut)
 * Mr. Senicourt (debut)
 * Gumball
 * Darwin
 * Anais
 * Banana Bob
 * Harold

Minor Characters

 * Butterknife
 * Clown
 * Pantsbully
 * Mike
 * Cupcake Man
 * Carmen's Mother
 * Teapot
 * Cupcake Woman
 * Gary
 * Mr. Small
 * Steve
 * Marvin
 * Pink Gummy Bear
 * Sphere Citizens
 * Felicity
 * Mrs. Fitzgerald
 * Melted Cheese Guy
 * French Fry
 * Yellow Construction Man
 * Sailor
 * Hamburger Cop
 * Sal Left Thumb
 * Dolphin Man
 * Spray-Paint Bottle
 * Librarian
 * Jackie
 * Milk Guy
 * Jeff
 * Construction Men
 * Orange Guard
 * The Mayor (mentioned)
 * Mr. Pepperoni
 * Martin
 * Hexagon Lady
 * Siciliana
 * Principal Brown
 * Carmen's father
 * Tobias
 * Doughnut Sheriff
 * Granny Jojo
 * Cowboy
 * Bandage Doctor
 * Karen
 * Mr. Robinson
 * Pigeon

Trivia

 * This episode reveals Nicole's maiden name is Senicourt. Nicole Bocquelet, Ben Bocquelet's real-life mother, shares the same maiden name.
 * Nicole's parents make their first appearance.
 * This is the first time Anais is seen as a baby.
 * If given a closer look at Nicole's report card, it says she is in 7th grade, the same grade Gumball and Darwin are in. This means that she and Richard are around twelve in the flashbacks.
 * Liza Ross provided the voice for Mrs. Senicourt, making her the eighth guest star in the series.
 * Ben Bocquelet, Jon Foster, and James Lamont originally came up with the premise of this episode back when the latter two were still working on the show.

Continuity

 * This is the ninth episode in which Gumball and Darwin are not main characters. The first eight were "The World," "The Extras," "The Butterfly," "The Return," and "The Routine," "The Uploads," "The Night," and "The Compilation."
 * Footage from "The Origins" and "The Origins: Part Two" is reused.
 * Principal Brown, Mr. Small, Jackie, Tobias and Carmen's father can be seen in their post-apocalyptic outfits from "The Pizza."
 * This is the seventh time that two characters kiss on the lips. The first time was in "The Kiss," the second time was in "Halloween," the third was in "The Boombox," the fourth was in "The Extras," the fifth was in "The Shell," and the sixth was in the "The Man."
 * The butterfly effect is mentioned again. The first time was in "The Butterfly."
 * This is the fourth time we see Gumball as a baby, the other times were in "The Treasure," "The Hero" and "The Origins" (in pictures).
 * This is the second time we see Darwin as a baby. The first was in "The Origins."
 * This is the fourth time Nicole has been shown arrested, albeit this time only hypothetically. The other three were in "The Spoon," "The Flakers" and "The Finale."
 * The background from "The Photo" can be seen in the Wattersons' family photo at the end of the montage.

Cultural References

 * Mr. Senicourt's facial expression, coat pattern and small size are reminiscent of Grumpy Cat (aka Tardar Sauce.)
 * Banana Bob's song is a rendition of "It's Now or Never" by Elvis Presley.
 * The scene where Banana Bob approaches Nicole in the basement is a reference to an iconic scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho where Lila Crane approaches Norma Bates' corpse before turning it around.
 * The music that plays in the background during Nicole's affair with Harold is Frédéric Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude" to the point at which she is arrested.
 * The music that plays in the background when Nicole imagines her tombstone is "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach.
 * Nicole pondering the butterfly's potential impact on her life refers to the idea of the Butterfly effect.
 * The phenomenon was previously explored in "The Butterfly."
 * Similarly to Carl and Ellie Fredrickson from Pixar's Up, a filmstrip-like montage of young Nicole and Richard's relationship between when they first met and the present day plays, completely instrumental with no dialogue, from when they were kids, to when they got married, to when they purchased a rundown house which they then fixed up together, to when they gave birth to a child.
 * Nicole's hair as a teenager has a slight resemblance to Ramona Flowers' many hairstyles from the Scott Pilgrim series.
 * She was first seen with this hairstyle in "The Rerun," when she and Richard were aging backwards, except her hair clips were grey instead of pink.
 * The shirt Richard wore when Granny Jojo kicked him out of her house resembles the Snaggletooth logo from the popular metal band Motörhead.
 * Gumball makes a reference to Stop, drop and roll, a technique used when someone is on fire.
 * In the scene where Nicole is shown as a futuristic ruler, the sculpture in the background bears strong resemblance to the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, a symbol of the dictatorship.

Goofs/Errors

 * This episode has many contradictions to past episodes:
 * Nicole and Richard are married in a park, instead of the church like shown in "The Wand" and "The Ape." Nicole also wears a different wedding dress than the one from "The Dress" and those other two episodes.
 * Richard was not screaming during the wedding like in "The Wand."
 * In "The Treasure," Gumball was deformed as a baby, but in this episode he appears to be quite healthy as a baby.
 * In "The Hero," Gumball learns to walk in the backyard of the house but in this episode he learns in front yard of the house, and without Richard supervising (which was basically the base story for "The Hero").
 * In "The Man," Nicole is still with her parents when she was a young adult.
 * During the food fight at the end of the episode, Nicole disappears for a frame. Likewise, Anais disappears in a different frame.
 * In "The Signature" Richard was living in their current house as a child, but in this episode it was shown to be abandoned.
 * Apart from contradictions, Nicole's mom says that Nicole will graduate in 54,321 minutes (equivalent to 37 days), get her diploma from law school in 374,582 minutes (260 days), and get married in 754,471 minutes (1.4 years).
 * At the wedding, Karen is sitting in a chair at first, but when Nicole and Richard are shown, she is behind them.