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A long-running series of heavily-illustrated novels by Jeff Kinney based on his webcomic of the same name hosted on FunBrain, aimed at preteens. They tell the story of Greg Heffley, a self-proclaimed "wimpy kid" attempting to navigate the pitfalls and perils of middle school life. The books are presented as Greg's own journals, filled with handwritten notes and stick drawings of his daily adventures.

Greg's family includes his mother, Susan; his father, Frank; and his two brothers, Rodrick and Manny. Rodrick is older and often picks on Greg, whilst Manny is the baby of the family who can get away with anything. Other kids in the neighborhood include Greg's friend Rowley, and the strange kid Fregley, who lives down the block.

One of the most popular and influential children's book series ever, spawning a massive movement of similar children's realistic fiction book series presented as diaries that combine text and drawings.

The books to date are:

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2007)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2008)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2009)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2009)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth (2010)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever (2011)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel (2012)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck (2013)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (2014)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School (2015)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down (2016)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway (2017)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown (2018)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball (2019)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End (2020)
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot (2021)

There is also a Do-It-Yourself Book (2008; expanded in 2011) and, tying in with the film adaptation of the first book, a making-of Movie Diary (2010; updated in '11 and '12 to include the sequels, and a separate one called The Next Chapter about the making of the Long Haul film in '17), as well as three Spin-Off books set in a Perspective Flip from Rowley; Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid (2019), Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure (2020), and Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Spooky Stories (2021).

The series got multiple film adaptations, the tropes for which can be found here.

See also Zombie Kid Diaries, a parody of this series which the author actually sued the creators over.

For tropes concerning the original webcomic, go here.

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This series provides examples of:

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    Multi-book tropes

• Adaptation Name Change: Some of the names got changed in the transition from the webcomic to the book. Ann Heffley became Susan Heffley, Uncle Freddie became Uncle Charlie, the Smedley family became the Snella family, Piper and Lori Matthews became Holly and Heather Hills, and Darnell Washington (the first kid who touched the Cheese) became Darren Walsh.
• Adults Are Useless: Most of the grownups in the books are idiots, to put it lightly. It's not only a genre trait of school-themed works, but also stories from the point of view of a teen. Averted with Vice Principal Roy, who is a Reasonable Authority Figure and punishes Greg when he deserves it.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Greg's mother shows up to school to bring Greg his lunch, while wearing her workout clothes.
• Ambiguous Disorder: A few "weird" characters qualify for this trope.
  • Manny refuses to eat his food unless it's prepared in an extremely specific way, like having the ketchup on his hot dog put on across the sausage in a straight line, and refuses to interact with any other kids his age.
  • Fregley exhibits a number of creepy or weird behaviors like flashing his chest hair, asking questions that consist of bizarre non-sequiturs (like "Does this scab smell funny to you?"), having his own made-up language and also having No Sense of Personal Space.
• Ambiguously Bi: Sometimes, Rowley's actions are a bit suspect, especially with Greg. You'd think that a 12-year-old boy would realize that sharing a "Best Friends" locket (in the shape of a heart) with another 12-year-old boy isn't something that looks like platonic friendship or realize that being a fan of a rather effeminate pop singer isn't exactly manly. It could be argued that he's just completely unaware of these things considering that he is a Cloudcuckoolander and is completely sheltered, however. Also supporting this is that he's the one who gets a girlfriend in The Third Wheel.
• Art Evolution: The art used in the novels is less sketchy than the one in the webcomic, and as the series has gone on, the illustrations have gotten much cleaner and more detailed.
• Back for the Dead: The plot of Wrecking Ball is kicked off by the death of Aunt Reba, a minor character who only appeared in The Last Straw.
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • Greg Heffley has plenty of enemies, mostly bullies or adults that look down on him. Namely Rodrick, Patty, Mr. Jefferson and in Cabin Fever, Manny.
  • The movies make the main villains more clear: Pete Hosey in the first, Bill Walter (the closest you're gonna get) in the second, and Heather Hills and Stan Warren in the third.
• Big Brother Bully: Greg details various mean things Rodrick has done to him, from punching him to pushing him off a diving board to stealing his food.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Heffleys are definitely not a stable family. Frank's a Jerkass and Bumbling Dad, Susan's absolutely oblivious to how teenagers are nowadays, Rodrick's a step away from dropping out of school, Manny is a spoiled brat who can't seem to stay in school and Greg is a slacker who could very well end up like Rodrick.
• Birthday Party Goes Wrong: In the book Dog Days, the trope is exaggerated for Greg's birthday. His presents are lame, his birthday money in confiscated, his uncle's dog eats the cake, and his 'make-up' present of a fish is eaten by Rodrick's fish.
• Black Bead Eyes: Most of the characters have these. Unless they're wearing glasses of course, but even with that Patty Farrell is an exception.
• Black Comedy Pet Death:
  • In "The Long Haul", the Heffleys try to lead some lost funeral people to the cemetery, only to find a pet cemetery instead.
  • In "Dog Days", Greg gets a fish, only for it to get eaten by Rodrick's fish.
  • In "Hard Luck", Greg remembers keeping an inchworm named Squirm as a pet two years ago, only for him to be stepped on by a baby Manny.
• Black Sheep: Several members of the extended family — especially Uncle Gary who is explained as having been married at least four times. It gets worse in The Third Wheel when he moves in with Greg and his family.
• Bland-Name Product: Several products throughout the series; these especially cropped up within the webcomic-to-book transition presumably to avoid copyright issues.
• Books vs. Screens:
  • Dog Days features two examples. First is when Greg and Rowley are traumatized after watching a horror movie and Mrs. Heffley thinks it's because twelve-year-olds aren't reading enough and so starts a reading club (which she then captions the photo of with "The Reading is Fun Club says, 'no' to video games"), then later when the boys stay at a hotel without computers and TV, the Jeffersons suggest Greg read instead, which he thinks is ridiculous.
  • In The Long Haul, Rodrick watches movie versions of books and does book reports on them, rather than reading the books. This causes him trouble when he's asked to read The Lord of the Rings but instead rents a wrestling movie called Lords of the Ring.
• Brainy Pig: The pig seems to be this in Double Down. He can walk on two legs, is seen holding a toothbrush at one point, and uses a "See and Talk" toy correctly to say "Pig eat ice cream". In Old School, Greg receives a letter from the pig while on a school camping trip, reading "OINK OINK OINK." He isn't sure if Frank wrote it as a joke or if the pig can actually write.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Taken Up to Eleven with Manny. He throws tantrums over things such as having mustard applied on his hot dog "wrongly" (he wants it vertically down the middle, not horizontally across) and not having his sandwich cut into slices.
• "Brave the Ride" Plot: Zigzagged in Dog Days. Greg wants to ride a ride called the Cranium Shaker, and he does but he gets nauseous. Rowley on the other hand is too scared to ride it but gets a shirt saying he survived the Cranium Shaker anyway.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: A lot of Greg's problems in school would be avoided if he weren't so lazy. It's shown in books like Hard Luck and Double Down that Greg can be creative...when he's not forced to be.
• Broken Aesop: Considering that Jeff Kinney thinks that electronics and devices are bad for children, it can be presumed that Susan is supposed to communicate these views to the reader. However, instead of actually being reasonable, Susan always wants things done her way, is unnecessarily restrictive with tech, restricting usage of them when the alternative is just sitting still and doing nothing (The Long Haul and The Deep End) and even going so far as to try and force the entire town to stop using devices for a time and comes across more as a mockery of overly protective parents.
• Bumbling Dad: Frank spends most of his time trying to force his sons (mainly Greg) to do activities he considers "manly", trying and failing to dismantle video games, and screaming about the "dagnab teenagers".
• Cast of Snowflakes: Background characters throughout the series are very rarely recycled.
• Character Development: Throughout the books, Rowley learns to stand up for himself and grow a spine instead of blindly following people. By the end of The Third Wheel, he's also learned how to talk and relate to girls via the student council, becoming a couple with Abigail. This continues into his side series, especially Awesome Friendly Adventure, where his Heroic Fantasy manuscript is sent off the rails thanks to Greg's meddling to make the book more commercial, only for Rowley to decide to end the story the way he wanted.
• Chekhov's Gun: Throughout the series, Susan constantly says that Manny is special and very smart for his age. This finally pays off at the end of The Long Haul , in which Manny being completely fluent in Spanish saves everyone.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Early on in The Last Straw, Greg talks about a teenage hellion named Lenwood Heath who was the bane of Frank Heffley's existence until his parents shipped him off to military school. Lenwood reappears later on as a ticket-taker at the movie theater, having done a complete 180 in terms of personality; it's this that convinces Frank to send Greg to military school, kicking off the major conflict of the book.
  • At one point in The Third Wheel, Greg presents an incomplete relationship chart regarding the kids at his school. Not only are Abigail and her boyfriend Michael on it, but the girl Michael ended up cheating on Abigail with is marked down as having a crush on Michael.
• The Chew Toy: Greg. Whenever he does something even mildly unethical karma goes into overdrive and screws him over, while whenever he does something good or productive he still gets screwed over anyway.
• Children Are a Waste: Greg says that when he grows up, he wants to spend his money on himself and not a bunch of ungrateful kids. He also makes sure to dispose of his gum and Popsicle sticks properly out of fear of being cloned when he's rich and famous and said clones come to his house asking for money.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Several.
  • Patty Farrell has not appeared in the books following The Last Straw and the movie adaption of Dog Days.
  • Chirag, one of Greg's friends who was at times a plot central character, later disappeared following a brief scene in Cabin Fever.
  • Trista, a girl from New Mexico was introduced and set up to be a major character at the end of The Last Straw. After a brief appearance in Dog Days, she's never heard from again. Justified since she ditched Rowley and Greg at the country club in the summer between the end of The Last Straw and the beginning of Dog Days.
  • Double subverted with Aunt Cakey — she made an early appearance in the webcomic, disappeared from it and never appeared in any of the other media...and then had a minor role in 2013's Hard Luck. As of The Meltdown, she hasn't reappeared.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Fregley is this, asking Greg "Wanna to see my secret freckle?" Furthermore, he's got his own weird slang, so when he needs to go to the bathroom he yells "Juice! Juice!"
• Clueless Chick Magnet: Rowley. He doesn't seem to be all that interested in girls, yet in Rodrick Rules he's managed to socialize with some of the most popular girls in his year. At the end of Book 7, he ends up in a relationship with Abigail. It doesn't last, but that he'd be used to make another boy jealous is impressive.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure:
  • In one of the books, Rodrick locks Greg out of his hotel room while the latter is in his underwear.
  • In another book, Greg climbs up a tree to save a blanket his little brother Manny threw up into it, only for his pants to fall down, exposing his embarrassing Wonder Woman underpants.
• Cool Big Bro: Rodrick can be this when he wants to in the films, serving as something of a mentor to Greg. The books, however, have him remain a Big Brother Bully.
• Cool Loser: Subverted. Greg wants to be seen as such by others (the reader included), but most will tell you that Greg is a dork.
• Copycat Mockery: When Rowley breaks his hand but Greg doesn't realise it's broken, he tries to cheer him up by saying, "Look, I'm your dad! Durr, durr, durr".
• Cosmic Plaything:
  • Greg.
    • In Old School, Grandpa chooses Greg's bed and Greg must sleep with Manny.
    • In The Ugly Truth, the Jeffersons hire someone to be Rowley's replacement friend.
  • The Heffleys as a whole seem to be this. For the crime of wanting to enjoy their vacation, renovate their house, and move to a nicer house, they get utterly screwed over because of pure bad luck.
• Crappy Holidays: Greg never gets anything he actually wants for Christmas, just clothes or practical things.
  • In Hard Luck, Easter starts out okay but ends in an old family feud being brought up and everyone except the Heffleys searching for a lost diamond ring. Greg accidentally finds it a few months later and hides it in his parents closet.
• Cut-and-Paste Comic: The artwork in the illustrations is reused constantly. (Explains why there is a Christmas Tree in the background when Greg is opening his Wonder Woman Underoos birthday present in June.)
• Darker and Edgier: Cabin Fever has a far more serious and realistic tone than the rest of the series, with Greg and his family facing the genuine threat of freezing to death in a blizzard.
• Deadpan Snarker: Greg, but his dad isn't really far behind him in levels of snarkiness.
• December–December Romance: Grandpa Heffley is still into dating, as shown in Hard Luck and Old School. Greg's surprised to see this.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • In the books, Fregley slowly becomes this, meriting only one mention in The Third Wheel. Though in Hard Luck Fregley does get a lot more attention. He becomes the most popular kid in school, because he can launch stuff from his belly button across the room. After disappearing completely for the next four books, he returns in The Meltdown for two jokes and has a cameo in Wrecking Ball.
  • Collin was a major character in the webcomic as Greg's second best friend but he only makes a brief appearance in the first book and most of the stuff he did in the webcomic is given to Rowley. He has a different design in the books as well.
• The Dreaded: The Mingos, a gang of possibly feral children who appear in Hard Luck and The Meltdown.
• Dysfunctional Family: The Heffleys, and as later books would show, this goes for almost everyone in their extended family as well.
• Early Personality Signs: Greg has been a Lazy Bum for a long time, as shown when he was four and would sing the clean-up song with his classmates but never do any actual cleaning.
• Easily Embarrassed Youngster: Greg is extremely easily-embarrassed, which is why he can be bossy (believing nonconformity is a no-go) and a lot of the comedy comes from him getting into embarrassing situations.
• Embarrassing Pyjamas: Rodrick once pranked Greg by telling him that the next day is "Pyjama Day" at school. Greg later redoes this prank on his friend Rowley.
• Emphasize EVERYTHING: Good luck finding a single page in any of the books that doesn't contain at least one word IN ALL CAPS.
• Entertainment Above Their Age:
  • "Old School" sees Manny, who is only three years old, requesting The Hobbit as a bedtime story (though it's implied that he mainly just wanted to stall going to bed).
  • In "The Ugly Truth", it's mentioned that Greg's younger cousin Benjy (who is either a toddler or a baby) is already reading chapter books.
• Everytown, America: Greg's town is called Plainview in the movies.
• Evil Versus Evil: While Greg is by no means a good guy, the people he faces are much, much worse.
• Fat Best Friend: Rowley is Greg's best friend, and is chubby both in the book's art and in the movies.
• Feeling the Baby Kick: In The Third Wheel, Greg recounts his life before he was born. He hated when his parents would kiss, so he would kick to try to get them to stop, but that only made them kiss more.
• Fictional Video Game: Various video games shown in the series include Twisted Wizard, Formula One Racing, Discovering the Alphabet, and Net Kritterz.
• Film of the Book: Actually, film of the book of the webcomic.
• First Day of School Episode: Throughout the series, Greg has flashbacks about his first days of preschool and kindergarten.
• First-Person Smartass: Greg frequently makes snarky comments about the events that befall him.
• Flanderization:
  • Rowley was simply gullible and slow on the uptake before becoming a kiddy kid. This Flanderization is countered by his Character Development, however; The Third Wheel even implies that he is maturing faster than Greg is.
  • Susan Heffley, in many ways.
    • At first she only showed concern if Greg did something she objected to, and was sometimes embarrassing and behind the times of what teenagers were into, such as trying to get Greg less interested in video gaming. Her stern attitude only showed if something severe had happened (such as Rowley's broken arm in the first book or the party that happened in Rodrick Rules). As of Hard Luck, however, Susan's character has essentially delved into a Think of the Children! type mother who shows extreme distaste to anything electronic to the point she gets the town as a whole to unplug (which she simply bribed her way through by getting elderly party-goers of Grandpa to sign the signatures she needed).
    • Susan has gotten more selfish over time. While initially Susan only forced her family into embarrassing activities out of cluelessness to their feelings in the matter, by The Long Haul Susan forces the entire family into going on a surprise road trip, well aware of their complaints and not caring because she desires a perfect family.
  • Greg has become more unsympathetic. In Cabin Fever, he and Rowley get in trouble and Rowley accidentally confesses with Greg's name. Greg is upset, but decides to accept his punishment without bringing Rowley into it. In Hard Luck, he's upset when people start abusing the school's system of rewarding people who are nice, and also fears that Meemaw's ring will break up the family and hides it where nobody will find it. In Double Down, he thinks about his deceased Nana and feels bad that he wasn't nice to her, saying that he hopes she's happy in Heaven and doesn't have to watch over "an ungrateful middle-schooler." But in Wrecking Ball, he tries to scam kids by selling them broken toys and celebrates his aunt's death!
    • Greg also seems to have gotten dumber and more gullible over the years. Granted, he was never anything close to a straight-A student, but by Double Down he thinks that his parents using the phrase "recharge our batteries" might mean they're robots. This seems more like something he'd make fun of Rowley for thinking in the earlier books.
  • Manny has had all his character traits exaggerated Up to Eleven. He started off as a Jerkass Spoiled Brat who played up how cuteness to get away with being a jerk to a borderline sociopath who leaves his family to die in a blizzard For the Evulz and blames it on not knowing how to tie his shoes. His mild Cloudcuckoolander traits were initially things you would expect a child to do, but nowadays he comes off as batshit insane and does things like hijack the family car and try to crawl down a toilet. His intelligence went from Susan claiming he's smart for his age to justify his oddness to him building a house out of spare construction materials for shits and giggles.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
  • Gary and Frank are this to a T: Gary is a Manchild who can't hold down a job or a marriage, but he's also a Cool Uncle. Frank is more mature and has a steady job and a family, but he's also stuffy and acts like he's far older than he really is. As expected, Frank doesn't really like Gary, although Gary is nicer to Frank.
  • Their brother Joe is a combination: He has a family and career and is mature, but is fun loving and comedic. While Frank is annoyed by him, he does seem to like him.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The Heffley Family
  • Susan: sanguine
  • Frank: choleric
  • Rodrick: melancholic
  • Greg: phlegmatic
  • Manny: eclectic
• Gag Nose: Many background characters are drawn with one.
• Games of the Elderly:
  • In the movie adaptation, Greg's grandmother isn't home because it's "Bingo Night".
  • In The Last Straw, Greg invites his grandma over to stay, in order to avoid his dad chewing him out. When she leaves to go to bingo, he comes too, and ends up playing with a bunch of seniors.
  • In Rodrick Rules, Greg's grandpa plays gin rummy with the Heffley boys while staying over with them.
• Gossipy Hens: A variation. Albert Sandy has a lot of stories to share at lunch, such as how a guy practiced jumping out of a hole that he made slightly deeper everyday until he was able to jump several feet in the air. Whether or not they're actually true or if he's spicing it up or not is never revealed. Of course, the other kids believe him straight, though Greg has come to realize by The Meltdown that most of what he has to say is just complete nonsense.
• Grossout Fakeout:
  • In "The Long Haul", a raw cinnamon roll explodes in the hot car, and when Rodrick gets some on his head, he thinks it's his brains. When Manny starts licking the dough off his fingers, Rodrick screams.
  • In "Rodrick Rules", Rodrick and his friends put fake throw-up on strangers' cars.
  • In "The Ugly Truth", during the school sleepover, some boys pretend to fart behind the curtain. One of them even uses a tuba.
• Group-Identifying Feature:
  • Discussed. When Rowley goes through a phase of copying Greg, the latter ends up rolling up one pants leg and and tying a bandanna to his ankle. The former copies, and their neighbour mistakes them for "thugs" sporting the "gang colours".
  • In "Old School", there are some teenagers in a reform camp, who all wear orange jumpsuits.
• Heavy Sleeper: Greg and Rodrick, but the latter especially—in fact, Greg claims that Rodrick ended up sleeping for 36 hours straight during one autumn (from Sunday night to Tuesday morning) and didn't realize that he missed an entire day of his life until he couldn't find Monday Night Football on Tuesday evening.
• Intentional Mess Making:
  • In "The Meltdown", the pig is mad at the Heffleys for having excluded him from their vacation in the previous book. Greg mentions that he had been taking his anger out on the family by destroying things, like knocking over a potted plant.
  • In "The Last Straw", Frank unknowingly throws Manny's Security Blanket Tingy in the trash. Manny gets back at him by wrecking his Civil War battlefield diorama.
• Jerkass:
  • Greg can be a hard guy to like sometimes. When he and Rowley often try to accomplish tasks together, he usually makes him do all of the work while he takes all the glory. Also, there's his treatment of Chirag Gupta and pelting Patty Farrell with apples. (The movie makes this a little more justified, by portraying Patty Farrell as a Jerkass who is stuck on an insult he did in kindergarten.)
  • Let's just say that Rodrick would drive anyone to commit fratricide. He always abuses his brother for no good reason (and it goes way beyond the normal siblings-pick-on-one-another thing), and he never gets in trouble for it. He also has never been nice to Greg ONCE in the book. Even when Greg does something really nice for him at the end of Rodrick Rules, he doesn't ease up, even for a bit.
  • Manny is a horribly spoiled and bratty Karma Houdini, to the extent that he did not get punished in Book 6 when he left his entire family for dead in a blizzard.
  • Greg's dad is a bit of an asshole to his sons, and frequently forces them to engage in activities they dislike (i.e. sports).
  • Aunt Cakey in the webcomic (and later the books). Even though it's Manny she's responding to, passing off his displays of affection as a sign that he needs speech therapy is pretty cold.
  • Patty Farrell in the movies is selfish and annoying, and she could nearly make Greg look like a saint in comparison.
  • The pig that Manny forces the Heffleys to keep is, despite being insanely intelligent and almost human-like, a total jerk who only causes problems for the Heffleys, particularly Greg, for no reason at all.
• Jerk Jock:
  • Kenny Keith seems to fit the description. However, Greg is a jerk to Kenny whenever he gets the chance and we don't see how Kenny acts around people he actually gets along with.
  • Subverted with Bryce Anderson. Greg tries his best to make him seem like one, but so far there's no real evidence that Bryce is one of these.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Rodrick. He never gets punished for bullying Greg.
  • The pig almost always gets away for being a constant source of problems for the Heffleys, until The Meltdown has it run away after being put in obedience camp.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Greg is an egotistical, smart-alecky Dirty Coward who often doesn't give a damn about others. He usually ends up paying for it whenever he steps out of line in any way, especially when he tries to hide what he's done. Although in some of the later books, bad things happen to him for no reason, even if it's not (directly) karmic.
• Kiddie Kid: Greg's best friend Rowley acts like a seven-year-old. It's justified by the fact that he's extremely sheltered because of his overprotective parents. Manny might be a "baby kid", being older than 5 (two years have passed after he mentions that he's only 3), but still acting like a toddler.
• Kids Are Cruel:
  • This is middle school, so kids mock, bully, and humiliate each other for kicks. Greg himself isn't above it; Chirag Gupta will tell you that firsthand.
  • Manny, especially in Cabin Fever, when he leaves the rest of the family to freeze to death.
• Later Installment Weirdness: Since The Long Haul, the books are usually single events rather than the usual random plot-relevant events. Double Down and The Meltdown avert this.
• Lighter and Softer: The books when compared to the webcomic. And the movies to the books, which gives some hints that Greg's cynical worldview taints his journals and distorts reality, even though Greg himself is obviously a nicer person in the first three movies, as are everyone around him.
• Market-Based Title: The series has gone through many name changes.
  • First, there's the book series as a whole, the title of which often is changed in translation.
    • The Swedish title translates to "Diary for all my fans." This is a reference to how Greg says that when he becomes rich and famous, he'll give reporters his old diary to read so that he won't have to waste time answering their questions.
    • The Dutch title means "The life of a loser."
    • In Vietnam, it's called "Diary of a shy boy."
    • The French translation is "Journal d'un dégonflé," meaning "Diary of a wimpy kid." The "dé" appears to be crossed out, making the title translate to "Diary of a courageous kid."
  • The first book is just called Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so translators have often made up their own titles for it.
    • In Sweden, it's called "The feats of Greg".
    • In the Netherlands, it's called "Bram Boterman's logbook".
    • The title in Brazil replaces "Wimpy Kid" with a slang for idiot, "Banana".
• Messy Pig: The pig that Manny and Susan accidentally win at the country fair and are stuck with, which they then leave at a petting zoo, then eventually come back for in The Long Haul. It becomes the family pet, though it's never named. By The Meltdown, it runs away over being excluded from the Heffleys' trip in the previous book The Getaway.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Greg. His older brother Rodrick frequently bullies him and gets away with it through intimidation and covering his tracks. Meanwhile, his younger brother Manny makes himself a pest, but Greg can't do anything to him without getting into trouble with his parents.
• The Millstone: The pig causes nothing but trouble for the Heffleys by eating food it shouldn't that belongs to them and making the most simple of tasks difficult. And that's when it's not actively trying to cause trouble. When it does, it usually results in a lot of property damage.
• Mistaken for Insane:
  • In the first book, Rodrick tricks Greg into thinking it's the first day of school. Frank yells at Greg for waking him up so early in the morning and Greg tells him what Rodrick did. They go to Rodrick's room, where he has fallen asleep so that he won't be suspected, and Greg comments in his narration that Frank probably thinks that Greg "has a screw loose or something".
  • In "The Long Haul", the Heffleys' car gets a flat tire. Two men stop their car and approach them, and since they only speak Spanish, the Heffleys try to non-verbally tell them what happened by pointing to the tire and blowing a raspberry to simulate a deflating sound. Greg notes that the guys probably think they're crazy, at least until Manny notifies them of their situation in Spanish.
• Moral Guardians: In-universe: Susan tries to be this as well with various rates of success.
• Myspeld Rökband: Rodrick's band is called Löded Diper (although Greg remarks that his brother probably doesn't know how to spell "Loaded Diaper" anyway).
• Never My Fault: You can probably count the number of times that Greg has (whether voluntarily or forced to) taken responsibility for something bad he's done or otherwise acknowledged that he made a mistake on one hand. Again, this book is probably (intentionally or not), an excellent exploration of the Protagonist-Centered Morality trope and the thought process of a borderline sociopath.
• Noodle People: Almost everyone. Subverted with Rowley, Mr. Beardo, and a few other minor characters.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Greg started middle school in the first book and stays there. Jeff Kinney is on record saying Greg will be in middle school forever.
  • This was the reason why everyone had to be recast for the film adaptation of The Long Haul, since a Floating Timeline doesn't translate well and age is an unstoppable factor.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Fregley is the master of squick without even trying.

  Fregley: Wanna see my "secret freckle"?

• Not Where They Thought:
  • In "Rodrick Rules", Greg remembers accidentally walking into the women's bathroom at a retirement centre thinking it to be the men's bathroom, and being mistaken for a Dirty Kid.
  • In "Wrecking Ball", the Heffleys go to what they think is their Aunt Reba's funeral. Greg is wondering why no one looks familiar. When they all go to the gravesite, they see that the grave belongs to someone named Robert Law, meaning that they had been at the wrong funeral all along.
  • In "The Long Haul", Greg tries to catch his family's car right before it goes through the tollbooth. He bursts into what appears to be their car, but he fails to notice that there's no boat attached to it and quickly finds out that there's a woman and her daughters in there. Cue screaming from both daughters.
• Only Sane Man: Greg sees himself as this. Even if he often does stupid things, he can be the snarky narrator to his clueless parents, his Dumbass Teenage Son of an older brother, and his odd and spoiled little brother. Greg's dad can also play this role, both in the books and the movies.
• Pac Man Fever:
  • Arcades are shown to be still culturally relevant in Dog Days and Cabin Fever where Greg tries to get the high score in an arcade game and Greg trying to make an arcade game for a holiday festival respectively.
  • Greg is shown to own what resembles a Nintendo 64 in most books
  • Additionally, video games are depicited to be 80s style Shmups most of the time.
• Parental Favoritism: Greg's parents clearly favor Manny, to the point where he's becoming a Spoiled Brat. Manny is allowed to get his way, such as throwing tantrums over minor things like how his sandwich wasn't cut the right way. And his parents let him do it.
  • Manny is also Gramma's favorite (all you need to do is look on her fridge for proof), to the point where everyone in the family (yes, even Susan) is aware of it.
  • Grandpa, however, will tell you straight up who his favorite is.

  Grandpa: Gregory is my favorite!

• Parental Obliviousness: Susan seems to be completely unaware of modern teenage behavior. One notable example in Rodrick Rules is that she thinks that the other students at Greg's school would agree that walking into the ladies bathroom at the retirement home by accident was an honest mistake and they'll let him off easy.
• Periphery Demographic: An in-universe example: Rowley's favorite musician is a European singer named "Joshie", but Greg looks at the album cover and immediately tells Rowley that Joshie's music is more than likely targeted at eight-year old girls. More or less confirmed in The Ugly Truth, when Rowley talks about the time when he went to a Joshie concert and is the only boy at the concert. (And the only one over 10, to boot.)
• Perpetual Frowner: The default state of most characters sans notable exceptions like Susan.
• Perspective Flip: The spin-off Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid is set from Rowley's point of view.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Zig-Zagged. Greg's mom doesn't appear to have a job, but he mentions that she runs an article in the newspaper, and it's implied she might have been a therapist (but one for younger kids if anything) but is implied to go to school. Otherwise... she's not really doing anything. Greg's dad escapes this because The Third Wheel shows a flashback of him bringing Greg to his office for Bring Your Kid to Work Day, boring Greg because he just works on his computer (although what he's doing on it is unknown). This is a justified example. The story's told from Greg's point of view. What would he know about what his parents do on a day-by-day basis?
• Poor Communication Kills: Several things could have been avoided if Greg just told people what was going on.
• Pretty Boy: Rowley's favorite singer, Joshie, is more or less described as being one of the sort. Emphasized in The Ugly Truth when Rowley goes to a Joshie concert and notices that he is the only boy in the audience.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Greg suffers from this big time. For example, in the second book, he mistreats Chirag Gupta by pretending he doesn't exist. If the same thing happened to him, he'd almost certainly complain about it and call the kid(s) doing it to him bulllies. The book series might actually be one of the best explorations of this trope, especially if one treats it as a look into the worldview, life and perceptions of a borderline amoral Middle School student.
• The Quiet One: Manny. Averted at the end of The Long Haul where he has a conversation with two mechanics in fluent Spanish for almost an hour.
• Really Fond of Sleeping: This applies to all three Heffley brothers:
  • Greg dislikes waking up early and often takes naps in the afternoon to feel rested.
  • Rodrick likes napping even more than Greg and once accidentally napped for a day and a half.
  • Manny hates being woken up from his naps.
• Sadist Show: The books rely heavily on misfortune and the misery of everyone, but since it's Greg's diary, we see most of his misfortune and misery - he also could be an Unreliable Narrator for all we know.
• Santa Ambiguity: While the webcomic clearly states that Santa isn't real, the books leave it ambiguous. The first book strongly indicates that Greg no longer believes in Santa, but in Cabin Fever he does and seems to act like he always has. The book also has a doll named Santa's Scout who behaves as an Elf on the Shelf expy and supposedly reports to Santa at night. He changes his position every day but Greg never sees him move and wonders if it's really Rodrick who moves him, though he still avoids acting badly when within the doll's sight, just in case.
• Series Fauxnale: Wrecking Ball has the feel of a Grand Finale, having Continuity Nods and Call Backs to previous books, the amount of misfortunes the Heffleys can experience apparently reach their peak, a far more somber tone than the rest of the series, and focusing on an event (the Heffleys moving away) that could end the series. But in the end the Heffleys are forced to stay in the neighborhood and nothing really changes, except for the Heffleys' house being destroyed. The next main series book, The Deep End, is a Vacation Episode that takes place while it's being repaired.
• Slice of Life: The entire series is written around the perspective of an average teenager.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Extremely cynical for a children's book series (however, this might just be Greg's view on the world, as he's displayed some sociopathic styled tendencies, and thus this leaks into his journals). The main character, Greg, is a lazy, selfish, self-absorbed Jerkass with almost no redeeming qualities. Almost all the other child characters are Jerkasses & bullies as well. All authority figures are incompetent, and the school itself is a Sucky School. The only truly nice character in the main cast, Rowley, is coddled by his parents and abused by Greg (who doesn't seem to like him despite calling him his best friend). Greg's family is quite dysfunctional, and his father and older brother seem to actively hate him. Almost everyone not named Greg who does something bad is a Karma Houdini.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Greg thinks everyone is an idiot except him. In The Last Straw, he's talking about his family's New Year's resolutions and about finding ways to improve himself...but it's not easy for him to improve himself because, in his own words, "I'm pretty much one of the best people I know". So he starts thinking of ways to "improve other people" and telling them what he doesn't like about them. In Wrecking Ball, he wants to have a holiday named after him. In Double Down, he outright says that he thinks the world revolves around him and that he believes his life is being broadcast on TV.
• Spell My Name with an "S": It's Rodrick, not Roderick.
• Spoiled Brat: Manny. Though one could argue he's not to blame; his parents are the ones who spoil him rotten and never tell him the difference between right and wrong.
• Status Quo Is God: No matter what happens by the end of a book (ex. Greg meets a pretty girl neighbour wanting to be friends with him and Rowley), it's always negated by the events of the next book (ex. she doesn't have any romantic interest in him at all and he immediately forgets about her).
• Strong Family Resemblance: Rodrick in the book is Greg with thicker eyebrows and hair, so it's hinted Greg sees the resemblance between him and Rodrick, but considers Rodrick a nastier version of him.
• Stylistic Suck: The Do-It-Yourself book features comic strips by some of the characters. Most of them fall under this. In Rowley's strip Action Fighterz, the only action was one character hitting the other with a Frying Pan of Doom. The rest of the page is just them discussing what's about to happen.
• Symbol Swearing: When done in the series, characters have a speech bubble filled with random symbols.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Greg may not like his siblings very much, but he does feel sorry for them when they get the short end of the stick. He thinks Rodrick is grumpy because he's The Unfavorite in the family and he feels bad for Manny for being too afraid of other kids to make friends.
• Teens Are Monsters: Besides the bullies at school, a lot of teenagers outside of Greg's school are portrayed as juvenile delinquents. Also, Rodrick, as an older teen, often acts aggressive and reckless. Frank believes this Up to Eleven and is noticeably more upfront with Greg after he turns 13 in the webcomic.
• This Loser Is You: The readers are meant to identify with Greg, who is not only a self-proclaimed "wimpy kid", but who regularly gets tormented from the bigger kids around him and hangs out with the likes of Rowley and Fregley. Probably not the best example of this trope though if he's meant to represent the average Middle School reader since Greg is just really lacking in places where most of his age would be decent at or even excel.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Holly is taller than Greg in the movie adaptation of Rodrick Rules. They are almost the same height in Dog Days though.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Greg. He's not a consistently nice person, but throughout the first six books, has brief What You Are in the Dark moments. This is best shown in Cabin Fever, where despite Rowley getting him in trouble for something they both did, he decides not to get Rowley involved and accepts the punishment himself. Wrecking Ball severely increases Greg's regular bad behavior, featuring him celebrating a relative's death and selling broken toys to children. Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid seems dedicated to showing him as an awful person, abandoning Rowley alone in the woods at night, preventing him from using the bathroom during a sleepover, and then flushing his toys down the toilet.
• Took a Level in Dumbass:
  • Greg, again. While he's never been a great student, he had small victories such as coming up with ideas for what he'd want a robot to do for him (which his study group approved of) and excelling in Home Economics. When faced with uncomfortable assignments, such as singing in The Wizard of Oz, being forced into a school dance, and egg-sitting, he comes up with a way to do the bare minimum to still pass and avoid embarrassment. His comics are also quite good, although his teachers don't approve. In Old School, Greg becomes completely incompetent, unable to open microwave burritos without help and putting his shoes over his socks. In Double Down, he assumes that his parents saying they need to "charge their batteries" means they're robots and sprays them with a garden hose.
  • While books like Rodrick Rules establish Rodrick as dumber than Greg, he does have moments like tricking Frank into writing his assignments for him, and showing Greg how to avoid Fregley by going through the sewers. In The Long Haul, he locks a pizza in a safe that he confuses for a microwave oven and somehow believes that his brains have been blown out and eaten. Double Down has him applying to dog colleges. Greg notes that he doesn't know if Rodrick doesn't realize they're for dogs, or if they're the only ones he thinks he can get into.
• The Un Favourite: Rodrick and Greg always get the short end of the stick, while Manny is pampered and spoiled. Especially Rodrick, more so than Greg (not by much though).
• Themed Stock Board Game: Scrabble of all things. There's also one for Hot Potato.
• Token Good Teammate: Susan. She's the only one who isn't a total Jerkass in the family. However, she is also the epitome of Stupid Good and can still be rather selfish at times.
• Too Unhappy to Be Hungry:
  • In one of the movies, Greg feels guilty about not owning up when Rowley gets punished for something he (Greg) did because Greg was wearing Rowley's coat. His mother Susan observes that he hasn't "badgered [her] for any snacks" and asks if he's OK.
  • In "Dog Days", Greg's fish dies, leaving him "bummed out", so he picks at his food over brunch.
• Unexpected Kindness:
  • In "Hard Luck", the family has been bickering about who gets to keep Meemaw's ring once it's found. Greg fears that they're going to fight again when they have another gathering, but they're actually quite happy to see each other. A few family members are even shown going over to hug each other.
  • In "Dog Days", Greg overhears Frank talking about giving someone away and wonders if he's talking about him. Later, he looks in Frank's schedule and finds that it has "Sell Greg" written in it (it's implied Rodrick wrote that). When Frank tells him to get in the car because he has a surprise for him, Greg panics and calls the cops on him. Then it's revealed that Frank was actually planning to take Greg to a baseball game and he even got front-row seats. However, Frank no longer has the energy to attend the game and gives their tickets to the cops. Also, Frank was going to give their dog Sweetie away.
• Unreliable Narrator: The books are a downright Sadist Show filled with incompetent characters whereas Greg seems to view himself as the Only Sane Man, but even his journal entries leave hints to the reader that all is not what it seems in his world. An example where it's Played for Laughs is during The Ugly Truth, Greg says that they got a good thing going whereas Rowley is shown pulling Greg up the hill.
• Unsuccessful Pet Adoption: The Heffleys adopt a pig in The Long Haul. It seems as though the pig will stick around, but he escapes in The Meltdown.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Greg. The movies downplay this a bit and make him a more fleshed out Jerk with a Heart of Gold, so if we take the movies as to what really happens behind the scenes, then Greg really needs to work on writing himself better in his journals.
• Wearing It All Wrong:
  • In "Hard Luck", Fregley has a hard time putting on a shirt and ends up with his head sticking out of an arm hole.
  • "Old School" has Greg put his socks on over his shoes because he can't remember which order they go in.
• Web First: This series started a webcomic. Then it adapted into a successful book series, which in turn was made into a series of films.
• What, Exactly, Is His Job?: Because this is told in Greg's point of view, we never find out what Frank's job is. The Third Wheel reveals that he works in an office, though.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The series is loosely implied to take place in the United States, but as the Movie Diary puts it, "you don't know if they live along the West Coast, or the East Coast, or somewhere in the middle."
• Women Are Wiser: Girls are portrayed as well-behaved and sensible, barely breaking any rules; meanwhile, the boys (except for Greg, Rowley, and Fregley) are portrayed as mischievous and complete troublemakers. The Meltdown Subverts this by introducing some girls who are just as bad as the boys.
• Written Roar: A character's screaming or shrieking is written as "SCREAM!!!" or "SHRIIIIIEK!"
• Youngest Child Wins: Only in that Manny winds up getting treated much better than his siblings.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (first book)

• Adaptation Species Change: Frank's childhood pet Nutty is a cat in the webcomic, but a dog in the books.
• Adapted Out: Ben, Greg's former best friend who moved away never appears in the books.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: In the first book, Greg wants to be elected treasurer so he can use his power to do favors for the cheerleaders.
• Asian and Nerdy: One girl in Rodrick's middle school, Kathy Nguyen, was voted onto the "Most Likely To Succeed" page in the school yearbook.
• Attack of the Political Ad: Parodied. When Greg runs for treasurer, he makes posters that use fabricated stories to smear his opponent. This gets him kicked out of the election.
• Author Tract: In-universe: The school paper's Wacky Dawg comic is cancelled because the author has been using his comic as a mouthpiece to talk to other students.
• Balloon Belly: Rodrick's fish gets one after he eats Greg's fish.
• Be Yourself: This stock aesop is discussed and mocked in the first book, where one chapter has Greg complain about his class watching a movie titled It's Great to Be Me and how the message of being fine just the way you are and not needing to change anything about yourself is a terrible lesson to tell the kids in his school. His point is proven by an illustration of two bullies declaring "It's great to be me" while beating up another kid.
• Bookshelf of Authority: Rodrick Photoshops himself to make it look like he's sitting in front of a bookshelf while wearing glasses and reading an encyclopedia, in hopes that he'll come off as smart.
• Bowdlerise: In the webcomic, Bryan Little, artist of the school's newspaper comic Wacky Dawg, uses said comic to complain that "Barry Palmer, you still owe Bryan five dollars, you schmuck!" The print version changed it to "...you still owe Bryan five dollars, you bum!"
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Rodrick's Christmas list is for new drums, a new van, and a shrunken head.
• Broken Aesop: Greg's class watches a video called "It's Great To Be Me" about how you should be happy about who you are. All the kids at Greg's school (most of which are bullies) misinterpreted it as "it's fine to be a jerk if you're already one". The illustration emphasizes his point by showing a bully shoving a kid to the floor and saying, "It's great to be me!" and his friend laughing.
• Chekhov's Gun: At the start of the book, Greg talks about a moldy piece of cheese and how it started a "Cheese Touch" craze, which thankfully ended when the last recipient moved away. He hopes he doesn't have to deal with it again, but at the end of the book, Rowley is bullied into eating it.
• Christmas Episode: Greg's Christmas doesn't go as he hopes when he ends up getting a Big Wheel and an 8x10 photo of his uncle.
• Copycat Mockery: When Rowley breaks his hand but Greg doesn't realise it's broken, he tries to cheer him up by saying, "Look, I'm your dad! Durr, durr, durr".
• Creator Breakdown: An In-Universe example. In the first book, the school newspaper needs a new cartoonist after the kid who drew Wacky Dawg starts using it to handle his "personal business."
• Comically Missing the Point: The mean kids at Greg's school mistake the message of the "It's Great To Be Me" video to say that it's alright to be a bully if you are already one.

  Bully 1: (shoving a kid) It's great to be me!
  Bully 2: Ha ha ha!

• Didn't Think This Through: Greg protects Rowley's reputation by saying he threw the Cheese away. He doesn't realize until it's too late that, in order to toss the Cheese in the trash, he would have had to touch it, ergo giving himself the Cheese Touch.
• The Ditz: Greg's character, Creighton the Cretin, is this in spades. He's tricked into thinking his name is "Stewart Pid" (and then says his name is "Stew Pid"), mistakes a brick for a box, and asks a doctor to give him a new butt because his old one has a crack in it.
• The Dreaded Thank You Letter: Greg doesn't want to write his Christmas thank-you notes due to wanting to spend time on his snowman-building project instead. He hurriedly writes fill-in-the-blank letters with the format, "Dear A. Thank you very much for the awesome B. I love the way the B looks on my C. All the other boys will be jealous that I have my very own B. Sincerely, Greg Heffley", which comes out looking awkward when he thanks his aunt for a pair of pants.
• Executive Meddling: In-universe, Greg's school newspaper comic is edited by a teacher to replace the punchline with a bland advertisement for math tutoring. The title Creighton the Cretin is also changed to Creighton the Curious Student.
• Faint in Shock: Greg passes out when he realizes he accidentally put his thumb on snot that Fregley left on a letter for him.
• Faked Rip Van Winkle: Rodrick's "you slept through summer vacation" prank on Greg. In the movie he doesn't explain why the summer has ended, he just counts on Greg being too sleepy to know.
• Hood Ornament Hottie: Referenced. Manny gets ahold of one of Rodrick's magazines, which Greg mentions has a picture of a woman in a bikini spread out on the hood of a car on the cover. Manny brings it to show-and-tell Although Greg said it was "nothing to get worked up over", their mother is not pleased.
• Hypocritical Humor: Greg says that at his school there was a "No Smoking" poster contest. Ironically, though, the guy who won actually smokes a lot himself.
• Losing Your Head: In the Xtreme Sk8ters comic strip, one of the stick figures gets decapitated by a telephone wire. His head still manages to talk.
• Loud of War: When Rodrick's garage band attracts loitering teenagers, Greg's dad fights back by playing classical music from a boom box in the window.
• Memetic Mutation: In-universe: "Zoo-Wee Mama!" from the comic that Greg and Rowley created, and which Rowley later used in his own comic, becomes a meme at school, much to Greg's dismay.
• Misleading Package Size: Greg recalls opening a video-game sized gift-box only to find a memory card. When he opens his gift, he's sure it's a video game he wants... but it's actually a framed picture of his uncle.
• Moral Guardians: In-universe example when a teacher yells at Greg and Rowley for listening to rock and roll because it's "evil" and is going to "ruin [their] brains".
• Multiple Choice Form Letter: Greg types out his Christmas cards on the computer with parts missing so he can just fill in the necessary adjustments to it later. (It doesn't work completely well though, such as when he fills out a thank you card for a new pair of pants and he has to say that all his friends would be jealous of it or that he likes how it looks on his legs).
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Pete Hosey and his goons forced Rowley to eat the cheese and attempted to force Greg to do the same. The aftermath ultimately led to Greg and Rowley becoming friends again.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Greg can't even bring himself to write that Rowley ate the Cheese. The only thing we see of the act is a speech bubble of Rowley gagging as Greg looks upon sickened.
• Injured Limb Episode: Rowley breaks his left hand falling off a tricycle. This happens in the first movie, too.
• One-Joke Fake Show: In the first book, Rowley creates a comic strip called "Zoo-Wee Mama!", where the punchline of every strip is a character shouting out the title phrase. Despite its repetitive premise, the strip becomes a major success at school and even gets published in the school paper.
• Playing a Tree: Greg is a tree in his school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Subverted in that he wanted this role (it meant he got to throw apples at Dorothy AKA Patty Farrel), in part because he didn't want to be in the show but was forced to audition by his mom. Another student ends up with the role of a shrub due to too many students applying which outweighed the actual number of characters. He ends up delaying the start of the play due to stage fright. Greg even comments on how ridiculous the whole situation was. In the movie adaptation, Greg wanted a main role in the play to make Rowley jealous. He can sing extremely well, but he's a male soprano. The theatre director said the only soprano parts in the play were Dorothy (he quickly made her drop that idea) and the Trees.

  Greg: You'd think that someone whose job it was to sit on the stage and do nothing could just suck it up for one performance.

• Potty Dance: Fregley does this while screaming "JUUUIIICE!"
• Potty Emergency: Happens several times.
  • When Fregley has the urge to go in the first book, he says "Juice! Juice!"
  • Rowley has to use Grandma's bathroom during Halloween.
• School Play: Greg's school does a play of The Wizard of Oz. Greg's role is a tree and he only has one word. He's satisfied with how the play goes when he and the other trees start throwing apples at someone, although his parents don't approve.
• Seasonal Rot: An in-universe example in the form of a school comic called Wacky Dawg. Greg states that the strip was pretty funny until it became a vehicle for the author to handle his personal business.
• Shrunken Head: While one doesn't physically appear, Rodrick asks for one on his Christmas list. This is normal for him.
• Stealth Pun: On page 52, there's a picture of a guy with a hockey mask and a chainsaw chasing Greg and Rowley with the written sound effect "RRRRRRRRRRRRR!" (with exactly thirteen "R"s).
• Stick-Figure Comic: The Xtreme Sk8ters comic strip has characters without faces and very simple bodies.
• Stylistic Suck: The various comics that Greg looks through as submissions for the newspaper are all drawn in different, cruder styles than Greg's usual drawings.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Discussed by Greg, mentioning that Frank often tries to dismantle Greg's video game system, but fails, due to his ignorance of technology and the fact that the manufacturers deliberately proofed it against this scenario.
• Toilet Humor: Greg is disgusted when he has to scrape cereal out of Manny's plastic potty.
• Totally Radical: Greg receives a book for Christmas called Math is Rad.
• Unusual Euphemism: Fregley's cries of "JUUUIIICE!" when he has to use the bathroom.
• Viewers Are Morons: In-universe, one of the prospective cartoonists for the school newspaper seems to believe this, despite (according to Greg) being one himself. The text of his comic helpfully clarifies that the stink lines he drew are, in fact, stink lines, and they are, in fact, emanating from the poop in a teacher's soiled pants.
• What You Are in the Dark: Greg lies and says he threw away the Cheese in the first book (in the movie he says he ate it) to cover for Rowley being forced to eat it. Only he, Rowley, the teen bullies and, in the movie, Angie know the truth.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The comic Xtreme Sk8ters, which is made by some kid at Greg's school.

The Last Straw

• Abandon the Disabled: Greg is nearsighted and wears contacts. He mentions that he is glad that he isn't a caveman, because then his family might abandon him because he wouldn't be able to hunt.
• Blind Without 'Em: Greg can't see without his contacts.
• Brick Joke: Greg turns in a biology report 4 pages long (cover included), with the last page saying "Well, it looks like I'm out of paper, so I guess this is THE END." The book ends the same way, with a similarly-sized "THE END" and Greg writing that it's "corny" to end on a happy ending.
• Detention Episode: A scene in this book deals with Greg in detention. He is annoyed by the students sitting next to him, but manages to get out early when he tricks the teacher into thinking one of the students punched him.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Manny comes up with the nickname "Ploopy" for Greg.
• First Day of School Episode: Manny gets scared by his classmates' Halloween costumes on his first day of preschool.
• Heel–Face Turn: Lenwood Heath was the biggest troublemaker in the Heffley's neighborhood, and Frank's biggest enemy. His enrollment at Spag Union changed him for the better, leading Frank to consider sending Greg there.
• High-School Dance: Greg attends one to meet Holly Hills... only for her to not recognize him anyways.
• Horrible Camping Trip: The father-son Boy Scout trip does not go as Greg expects, when he has to bring Rodrick along and their campsite gets rained out.
• Hot Drink Cure: When Greg is sick and talks about how his parents usually fuss over him when he gets sick, he draws Susan offering him a steaming mug and saying, "Are you strong enough to hold this cup?"
• Ignoring by Singing: When Greg and Rowley are being driven to a roller skating rink to impress Holly Hills and Susan overhears the conversation:

  Susan: Holly Hills? Holly Hills was the only four-year-old at preschool who wasn't potty trained.

  Greg: LA LA LA...I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

• Illness Blanket: While Greg likes being wrapped in a blanket anyway, he plays this trope straight when he's sick and is seen sitting on the couch in a blanket with a thermometer in his mouth.
• Karma Houdini: Greg wrote very rude anonymous Valentine's Day cards to everyone in his class (case in point: "Dear James, you smell.") He was savvy enough to write a card for himself so the teacher wouldn't suspect him. It worked.
• Loophole Abuse: Rodrick finds a way around mom's ban of the word "ploopy" as an insult in "The Last Straw". He calls Greg "ploopy" over the course of three days, beginning with "pl" on the first day, moving onto "oo" the second, and finishing with "py" on the third.
• Mistaken for Thief: Mrs. Craig, a teacher, notices that her dictionary is gone. The bullies accuse Peter Lynn and Corey Lamb as both use big words a lot. Actually, it wasn't stolen. Alex Aruda had simply been using it to study. Unfortunately, Corey gets put in detention because Mrs. Craig saw him put it back.
• Nightmare Fuel: In-universe. A younger Greg is afraid of Shel Silverstein after seeing his picture on the back cover of The Giving Tree. His father uses this to his advantage by telling him if he gets out of bed late at night, he will run into Silverstein in the hallway. Greg still doesn't leave his bed at night.
• Nobody Likes a Tattletale:
  • When Greg and Rodrick were little kids, they used to tattle on each other so often that their mom gave them a toy turtle called the Tattle Turtle that they could tell their problems to instead of her. It worked in Rodrick's favor, because he could do things like steal all the money from Greg's piggy bank and Greg couldn't tell their mom.
  • Greg is not happy with the fact that Manny's constantly ratting him out. He notes that he used to be a tattletale until the day he was cured of the habit; he overheard Rodrick swearing, so he spelled it out and Susan gave him the Soap Punishment and didn't punish Rodrick for saying it first.
• Platonic Valentine: Zigzagged. Greg is made to write Valentines for his whole class, which does include Holly, his crush, but it also includes his friends, and his rivals. He decides to just say what he thinks of everyone, which ends up offending the rivals. He also wrote a Valentine for himself, saying, "Dear Greg, I hate your guts", to cover his tracks after offending the rivals.
• Potty Emergency: Discussed when Greg dreads the bathroom situation at Spag Union and says he highly doubts he can hold it in all summer.
• Reluctant Gift: Greg is supposed to put a twenty-dollar bill into the church collection basket but is trying to hold on to it. His mom Susan does it for him.
• Series Fauxnale: This book wraps up all the content from the webcomic, but since the series became more popular in book form, Greg's misadventures continue to this day.
• Serious Business: Toilet paper for the students at Greg's school. One candidate for student council president didn't bother campaigning at all and his entire speech was him promising to make the school replace the regular toilet paper with the quilted kind. He won the election by a landslide. It's decided that, since the school doesn't have enough money to replace the toilet paper, kids can bring in their own from home. The kids bring in so much of it, they have to carry bags of the stuff to class with them because it wouldn't fit in their lockers.
• Sick Episode: Greg gets sick with the flu before a camping trip, and is forced to skip it.
• Silly Prayer: Twice.
  • When Greg's grandmother can't find something, she prays to find it, and apparently it works every time.
  • When Greg owes his friend's dad money, he prays for him to be hit on the head so he forgets about the money, and also to be able to beat a video game. He then ends his prayer with "Amen, and thank you in advance."
• Small Name, Big Ego: Greg is talking about his family's New Year's resolutions and about finding ways to improve himself...but it's not easy for him to improve himself because, in his own words, "I'm pretty much one of the best people I know". So he starts thinking of ways to "improve other people" and telling them what he doesn't like about them.
• The Swear Jar: Susan sets one up because Manny is learning too many bad words from Rodrick and Greg. And Manny gets the money.
• Soap Punishment: Greg ends up with this as a result of a failed attempt to tell on Rodrick for saying a bad word. Rodrick gets off scot-free.
• Symbol Swearing: Rodrick does this when he drops a glass on the floor and it breaks. Manny imitates him.
• Trip Trap: Greg does this prank on Rowley's dad, tripping him with a wire while he's walking home. He doesn't understand why Rowley's dad doesn't find it funny.
• Uncool Undies: Greg is given a pair of Wonder Woman-themed underpants that he is too ashamed to ever wear. However, after running out of clean clothes to wear, he is forced to wear them to a birthday party where his pants end up slipping down and revealing the underpants to everyone.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • Manny invents "ploopy." The meaning of the word is never explained, but he seems to use it as an insult.
  • Greg and Rodrick have their own special language that allows them to swear at each other without getting in trouble (e.g. "Spooky stork!" "Raspberry plastic tickle bear!").
• Vacation Episode: This book has a scene with Greg, Rodrick, and Frank on a camping trip. It doesn't go very well when they have to stay in a hotel due to rain.
• Warm Water Whiz: Greg is at a sleepover with Rowley and a bunch of younger (around six to eight years old) boys. Some of the boys sneak up on Greg with a bowl of warm water, clearly intending to invoke this trope, but Greg is still awake and scares the kids off.

Dog Days

• 555: The number on the VIP Lawn Service poster starts with 555.
• Absent Animal Companion: Rodrick and Greg get a fish each. Greg's fish dies, but Rodrick's fish survives, yet still is never seen again. On the other hand, the Web comic clarifies that the fish was killed as it had immobilized itself after becoming too big from eating the other fish (including Manny's fish).
• Ageless Birthday Episode: Greg celebrates his birthday, although his age is never stated.
• Apathetic Pet: Sweetie. When Frank adopts him, he doesn't get along much with the other members of the family. The only one he shows much affection to is Susan, and she doesn't pay him a lot of attention either. He is afraid of Frank and can be a nuisance to Greg. This ends up being the reason why the Heffleys give him to Gramma.
• Asinine Alternate Activity: Greg wants a cell phone for his birthday, but Susan believes that it's too much responsibility and she's concerned he'll rack up a huge phone bill like his older brother Rodrick tends to do. Her solution is to give him a "ladybug phone", which can only call the house phone and 911.
• Author Avatar: In-universe, Greg's "Hey, People!" comic features a main character that resembles him.
• Bile Fascination: In-Universe - Greg and his dad can't resist reading the dreadful newspaper comic Li'l Cutie (a parody of The Family Circus) just to see how bad it is. (One of the captions for a Li'l Cutie comic was, "Daddy, is rain just God sweating?")
• Car Ride Games: Manny tries to entertain his family in the car by telling nonsensical jokes.
• Chatty Hairdresser: Greg befriends some at his mom's beauty salon.
• Children Are Tender-Hearted: Implied; an illustration shows a younger version of Tyler Post (who Li'l Cutie is based on) asking his father Bob if a green bean's parents will be sad if he eats it.
• Christmas Creep: A "Back to School" variant. Greg, in his newspaper, discovers a Back to School ad, two months before school actually starts. He thinks that whoever advertised that doesn't like children.
• Chekhov's Gift: Greg gets a "Ladybug" phone that can only call home and 911 as a birthday present. At the end, he calls 911 with it because he thought Frank was going to sell him. (It Makes Sense in Context)
• Chekhov's Gun: Greg and Rowley watch a horror film about a muddy hand and become paranoid about it. Later in the book, Greg pranks Rowley into thinking his hand is the muddy hand, and Rowley whacks his hand with a mallet. Due to the injury, Greg is unable to play well in a video game tournament that day.
• Contemptible Cover: Greg's comment on the cover of the fantasy novel Shadowdoom, a cover that features a female barbarian warrior in a Chainmail Bikini:

  Greg: I've read Shadowdoom, and from what I can remember there aren't even any women in the story. In fact, I kind of wonder if the person who designed the cover even READ the book.

• Death by Newbery Medal: Greg is aware of this trope. When his mom tries to organize a summer reading club in Dog Days and assigns him Charlotte's Web, he predicts that either the girl or the pig pictured on the cover won't live to the end of the book. He never learns he's wrong — it's Charlotte the spider who dies — because he only gets three chapters into it.
• A Dog Named "Cat": Discussed when the family gets a new dog. Manny wants to name it after other animals, like "Zebra" ("Zeeb for short!"). Rodrick wants to name it "Turtle", though that's mostly because he wants to shorten it to "Turd". However, the dog's actual name ends up being "Sweetie".
• Dog Got Sent to a Farm: Greg's father tells him that he used to have a dog named Nutty who ran away to a butterfly farm. Greg's grandfather speaks up and says the truth that he accidentally ran over the dog while backing out of the driveway.
• Double-Meaning Title: Dog Days refers to the summer setting, but also the Heffley's adopting a dog.
• Downer Ending: The book ends with Greg and Rowley's friendship temporarily in shambles and Greg's vacation being absolutely atrocious.
• Dramatic Irony: When Greg looks at the cover of Charlotte's Web he predicts neither the girl nor the pig will make it to the end of the book. They both do. It is the spider that dies.
• Duck!: Greg and his dad in this scene in Dog Days.

  Greg: (Dad is standing up in the canoe and about to hit his head on a tree branch) Duck! Duck!
  Dad: (looking through binoculars) Where? Where?

• Embarrassing Ad Gig: Greg says that he was on the cover of a book a few years ago... but unfortunately, the book was titled Your Child and Constipation.
• Extremely Overdue Library Book: In Dog Days, Greg has a book, titled How to Make Sock Puppets, that he checked out when he was eight. He is most likely 12-13, which means the book is 4-5 years ago. He is afraid he will get arrested if he returns to the library. He even gets nervous around librarians.
• Genre Savvy: Greg knows that most classics his mom will force him to read will have the Death by Newbery Medal trope. He does mess up on one prediction, though. He says that because Charlotte's Web is a "Classic", either the girl or the pig won't make it to the end of the book. He doesn't finish it, so he doesn't realize that it's Charlotte the spider who dies.
• Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: In Dog Days, Greg and Rowley watch a B-Movie called Hello, You're Dead that they found in Rodrick's room, featuring a muddy hand. Rowley has his eyes covered the whole movie. Greg doesn't find the movie all that scary... until the end, when the "muddy hand" crawls straight to the screen, meaning the "hand" is coming for the viewer next.
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: Greg does not look forward to attending a beauty salon instead of his normal barbershop, but ends up enjoying it due to the gossip he hears.
• Ludicrous Gift Request: Greg wants a dog and a leather recliner for his birthday. He gets neither, although he does get a dog later, but never a recliner.
• Nightmare Fuel: In-universe. Greg watches an old B-Movie about a muddy hand who kills the person who sees it right after it kills someone else. The last shot of the movie implies that the hand will go after the viewer next, causing Greg throughout the rest of the book to try to prevent a muddy hand attack.
• Serious Business: Senior citizens are obsessed with a newspaper comic called Precious Poochie. The series is over fifty years old and the creator died a long time ago, but the newspaper keeps recycling it despite the jokes and references being extremely outdated and not understood by younger viewers (the shown comic was made during the time phonograph devices were recently invented). The reason for this is because if removing it was ever attempted, large mobs of seniors would protest outside the building and not leave until it was put back in. Greg theorizes that this is likely because the seniors think of Poochie as their own dog. It's also the reason why the newspaper company doesn't take any new animal or pet-themed comics, fearing that the seniors will protest about the new comics either being a ripoff or trying to steal Poochie's thunder.
• Shout-Out: When the Heffleys get a new dog and can't agree on what its name should be, Rodrick suggests naming it Turtle.
• Stylistic Suck: Li'l Cutie, a ridiculously saccharine newspaper cartoon about a cute little boy. One example of its style is a panel where the titular cute child asks "Daddy, is rain just God sweating?" This is the only thing that Greg and Frank agree to hate.
• Take That!:
  • Li'l Cutie, a saccharine newspaper cartoon about a ridiculously cute little boy, is a Take That parody of The Family Circus.
  • Precious Poochie is a parody of Ford Basset and other pet-focused comic strips that have likable main characters but not particularly funny punchlines.
• Time Title: Dog Days is a term used for Summer, which is the time period the book is set in.
• TMI: Greg makes a comic strip telling people not to talk about that sorta stuff in public.

  Caption: When in public, please refrain from discussing details of your recent surgery.

• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In-universe, the movie about the muddy hand. The last person who sees the hand is always the next victim. At the end of the movie, the hand crawls straight towards the screen, implying that Greg and Rowley are the next victims. This kept them nervous and paranoid for the rest of the book.
• Unsuccessful Pet Adoption: When the Heffleys adopt a dog named Sweetie, they find him too annoying and give him away to Grandma.

The Ugly Truth

• Big Brother Mentor: A company called "Cool Brian" invokes this trope, advertising itself as providing "wholesome mentors for growing boys." Rowley's parents hire a Cool Brian to hang out with him after his fallout with Greg.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Greg feels that the girls and Rowley did this in regards to the egg sitting project; instead of just taking care of their eggs, they also decorated them.
  • Grandma buys some LEGO so the boys have something to do when she comes over - then, to keep them from getting scattered, she glues them all into one giant block.
• Covers Always Lie: Greg is seen with his egg that he has during the brief Egg Sitting plot. It goes on for two journal entries, has no impact on the plot, and is never mentioned again. It does, however, vaguely tie into the Central Theme of puberty.
• The Dentist Episode: In this book, Greg changes dentists. He is very uncomfortable with his new dentist, whose office is full of unsettling posters and tools. He has X-rays taken, but bites on the dentist's finger instead of the thing he's supposed to.
• Egg Sitting: Used for a mini-plot. All the boys break their eggs except for Greg and Rowley; Susan accidentally scrambles Greg's egg for breakfast. The girls (and Rowley) get theirs to school safely, some having sewn little pouches for their eggs and decorated them with sparkles and glitter, but they burst into tears when the teacher collects the eggs and throws them in the trash. Greg's conclusion is, "This assignment has got me seriously worried about the next generation of parents in our country."
• Embarrassing Old Photo:
  • Gammie advises Greg to not let anybody take his picture while he is going through puberty, showing old photos of Greg's father and other relatives.
  • Greg learns that one of his uncles looked exactly like him as a kid. He plans to save up for plastic surgery.
  • An illustration depicts a picture of Greg and Rodrick freaking out on Santa's lap, captioned "Season's Greetings."
• Generation Xerox: It turns out that Greg looks exactly like Frank's cousin, Terence. He's not happy about it.
• Irritation Nightmare: Greg is having trouble learning to wake himself up because the sound of his alarm clock keeps coming into his dreams instead of waking him up. He's illustrated dreaming about a rabbit making the alarm's noise and Greg shouting, "Cut it out!".
• Mega Meal Challenge: Greg mentions that his Uncle Gary finished the "Monstrilla Burger" in one sitting and got a tattoo for it.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Discussed; Greg says that his mom often claims that her mother (Greg's maternal grandmother) has ESP. Greg remarks that if it's true, she's not using her powers to their full potential.

  Greg: So, Gramma, what do you think the lottery numbers will be tonight?
  Grandma: I'm not sure, but I "predict" you're going to enjoy these cookies!

• Mistaken For Flatulence: When Greg pranks his great-grandma, Gammie, with a Whoopee Cushion, everyone at the dinner thinks she actually farted, even Gammie herself. In her apology letter, she wonders if her latest surgery made her gassier.
• Multi-Ethnic Name: Greg's background classmate Jeffrey Chang, who has an English first name and a Chinese last name. In the US, it's common for immigrant parents to keep their last name, but give their child an American first name so they'll fit in better.
• Noodle Incident: Throughout the book, Greg and Rowley avoid each other following a massive fight at the end of last summer (which was never shown in Dog Days.) Then again, it's strongly implied to have been the incident where Rowley crushed Greg's hand with a mallet after Greg pulled a prank on him.
• Not What It Looks Like: A group of boys take a photo of one boy's bent arm for a class game, but the teacher mistakes it for a photo of someone's butt crack, and doesn't believe otherwise until the boys recreate the position of his arm, using a mole on the elbow as proof.
• One-Episode Fear: Greg becomes afraid of eggs due to accidentally stinking the neighbours out by putting devilled eggs in a plastic plant. However, previously and since then, he has not been afraid of eggs.
• Poor Communication Kills: This is what leads to Uncle Gary's second divorce.

  Lydia: I've got about thirty thousand in the bank, maybe forty...
  Gary: And I've got forty-five!
  Greg: As it turns out, Uncle Gary only had forty-five dollars, not forty-five thousand.

• Sick Episode: Greg wakes up sick after attending the Lock-In.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Greg finds out that one of his relatives was physically identical when they were his age. He then makes plans for plastic surgery for the future.
• Wedding Day: The climax of the book takes place during Uncle Gary's forth wedding.
• Where There's a Will, There's a Sticky Note: In The Ugly Truth, the narration reveals that Greg's great-grandmother, Gammie, is so old that people have started putting sticky notes on her stuff. Greg points out that it's disrespectful before admitting that he also did it himself.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: After the puberty unit in health class, Rowley starts avoiding the older kids at school because he thinks he's going to "catch puberty" from them, as if it's a disease.

The Third Wheel

• Abhorrent Admirer: Greg tries to be nice to a Fregley-like girl named Ruby Bird because he's terrified of her, but he worries that he's being too nice to her and is scared by the idea that she might develop a crush on him. We never get to find out her feelings on the matter.
• Ambiguous Disorder: A girl named Ruby Bird, who seems to be a Distaff Counterpart to Fregley. She's the only girl who's ever been suspended from Greg's middle school, and that was because she bit a teacher's arm so hard that her front tooth ended up in his elbow. She's also drawn with a vacant stare and a mouth that's constantly gaping open. Sure enough, she and Fregley are partnered up for couples dancing, and it's a match made in heaven.
• Bittersweet Ending: The book ends with Rowley and Abigail broken up and Greg with chicken pox. At the same time, however, Greg enjoys a bath and it's revealed that Rowley and Abigail, who were both suspected to have chicken pox, actually only had zits.
• Chekhov's Gag: Corny's Family-Style Restaurant turns out to be where Greg goes with Abigail and Rowley for dinner before the dance.
• Chickenpox Episode: During the book, there's an outbreak of chicken pox, stemming from local Kidanova Evan Whitehead. Greg is surprised that you can even still get chicken pox anymore. Later, Greg and Rowley are about to go to a school dance, but Greg sees that Rowley has a few red bumps on his face. Thinking that he's gotten chicken pox, Greg has him wear a hat and a scarf to cover it up. At the dance, Greg sees that Abigail has a red bump by her lip and freaks out, fearing that she's gotten it too. As it turns out, neither of them had chicken pox and they were just zits. Ironically, Greg himself gets chickenpox at the end of the book.
• Failed a Spot Check: Uncle Gary takes over a street corner store that sells souvenir t-shirts. Problem is, all the t-shirts read "Botson." Rodrick buys one from him anyway.
• Foreshadowing: Greg at one point creates a chart detailing the relationships between the kids in his grade. On the chart, he shows that students Abigail Brown and Michael Sampson are currently dating, though a second girl, Cherie Bellanger, is also shown to be interested in Michael. This comes back around just before the Valentine's Day dance when Michael has a family obligation and can't go to the dance, leaving Abigail date-less and leading to Greg and Rowley taking her out to the dance. Cherie factors into this because it turns out that Michael was actually planning on going out to the dance with Cherie (and was lying about the family obligation) instead of Abigail, who catches the two-timer red handed when he (who was clearly not expecting Abigail to be there) shows up at the dance with the other girl. Ultimately, this sets up Abigail's brief relationship with Rowley.
• High-School Dance: The Valentine's Day dance, where The Climax takes place.
• Imaginary Friend: Manny has many imaginary friends, including Joey, Petey, Danny, Charles Tribble, The Other Charles Tribble, Tiny Jim, and Johnny Cheddar. He mainly uses them as scapegoats and excuses to get extra dessert.
• Landslide Election: Eugene Ellis becomes president in a landslide, all because he promises the students better toilet paper in the bathrooms.
• Love Triangle: Greg likes Abigail, but Abigail likes Rowley. Greg loses.
• Market-Based Title: The Spanish title for The Third Wheel is "Three is Not Company."
• A Minor Kidroduction: The book's beginning details Greg's entire life, from before he was born to where he is now in middle school.
• Mirror Reveal: Rowley has two pimples on his face. Greg sees them and instantly thinks they're chicken pox, then shows him a mirror. Rowley assumes it's chicken pox too and screams.
• More Hypnotizable Than He Thinks: After a school assembly featuring a hypnotist, a kid who thinks he was a fake tries hypnotizing two other kids into thinking they're superglued together. It works a little too well, and they have to track down the hypnotist at his job to unstick them.
• Multiple Choice Form Letter: The candygram messages used to raise money for the Valentine's Day dance are designed for the giver to fill in their and the recipient's name. Greg tries to cover multiple bases by filling in the blank with one girl's name, then writing in a P.S. telling her that if she doesn't want to go to the dance with him, she should give it to a particular girl who sits nearby.
• No Infantile Amnesia: Greg claims this applies to him at the beginning of the book. He goes on to explain that he was born three weeks early because he couldn't take all the noise he heard from the outside world (especially because Mom was using prenatal speakers to talk to and play classical music for him) and that as a result he has been trying to catch up on all the sleep he missed out on ever since. His love of long baths also stems from memories of peacefully floating in the womb.
• Serious Business: Toilet paper for the students at Greg's school. One candidate for student council president didn't bother campaigning at all and his entire speech was him promising to make the school replace the regular toilet paper with the quilted kind. He won the election by a landslide. It's decided that, since the school doesn't have enough money to replace the toilet paper, kids can bring in their own from home. The kids bring in so much of it, they have to carry bags of the stuff to class with them because it wouldn't fit in their lockers.
• Sequelitis: In-universe with the Slumber Party Pals series. Greg thinks the first 30 books were good, but that the quality went downhill when the author ran out of ideas. Volume #87 is titled Lindsey Loses a Mitten.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Implied with Krisstina, the local pop singer who calls herself an "international pop sensation" despite never travelling out of the state.
• Suck E. Cheese's: Corny's Family-Style Restaurant. Greg has a traumatic experience trying to rescue Manny from the indoor playground, and the serving staff and overall chaos easily makes up for the lack of animatronic robots and video games. Remember, anyone who comes in wearing a tie clearly isn't having fun and will get it snipped off.
• "Take Your Child to Work Day" Plot: Greg's dad takes him to his office job on the designated day. To offset the boring aspect of the work (and let the adults get some work done), they hire clowns to distract the kids. Greg watches his father work, and to get rid of him, he sends Greg to get some snacks. Greg returns with jawbreakers, which Greg's father finds even more distracting. Greg sits in the bathroom to eat, and his parents forget about him at the end of the day, only for him to be discovered by the nighttime janitor.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The "Mad Pantser" was never caught!
• Write Who You Know: invoked In-Universe. When Greg was little, a kid named Bradley always bullied him. After Bradley moved away, Greg's mom wrote a book called "Bad Bradley" about a kid who was always misbehaving, though she made Bradley out to be way worse than he actually was. She never got to publish it because Bradley and his family moved back to their neighborhood.

Hard Luck

• Artistic License – Biology: Greg caricatures the children who Grandpa and Darlene could possibly conceive, as if they would not be attractive and/or problematic. However, this overlooks the fact that given Darlene's age, she would be infertile. Realistically though, the older the mother, the more likely the child is to develop birth defects and other problems, such as Down's Syndrome.
• Brick Joke:
  • The Easter egg hunt plot goes nowhere. However, near the end of the book, the egg is found in a pile of wood in Gramma's yard. It's actually hinted at earlier, visually, where the egg will be found- the egg is seen in the same pile of wood.
  • Fregley claims he can blow a bubble with bubble gum in his belly button. It doesn't work, and Greg comments that he should have known that was impossible. Later, Greg's taking his picture for the yearbook, and he does it, much to Greg's shock.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover has Greg using his diary to shield himself from a rain of 8-balls. This doesn't happen in the book.
• DIY Dentistry: Greg mentions that he was too nervous to let anyone pull his loose tooth out when he was younger, so Frank tricked him into tying his tooth to a door and slamming it. He then brings up his younger cousin Georgia, who refuses to let anyone help her pull out her own loose tooth. Greg goes to look for some string so he can do the same trick to her, but he never gets a chance to do this because the Easter egg hunt starts just then.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: In an incident from the original webcomic that becomes a flashback in Hard Luck, a younger Greg has to stay with his Aunt Cakey for the night while his parents are away. Right before Greg goes to bed, Aunt Cakey tells him not to touch the iron because it's still hot. Guess what Greg does after Aunt Cakey goes to sleep.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Greg and Rowley do become friends again, but Greg doesn't make any effort to improve himself. He just thinks he and Rowley will get in another fight later, and they're good for now.
• Dreaded Kids' Table: At Easter, Rodrick and Greg are forced to sit at the children's table despite the former being almost an adult and the latter in middle school. To add insult to injury, their toddler aged adoptive uncle (who was adopted by a great aunt) is allowed to sit with the adults.
• Dysfunctional Family: We finally meet the rest of Susan's side of the family and they're just as dysfunctional as Frank's. Especially Susan and her sisters, to the point where Greg is shocked that they all grew up together.
• Easter Episode: A recurring theme in the book is Greg and his relatives (on his mother's side) who are visiting for Easter looking for a plastic egg in which a dead relative allegedly hid her wedding ring.
• Everyone Has Standards: Greg refuses to cheat on a science project using one that had been made by another student, after he notices his brother's science project (the school dumped tons of old projects and papers in a storage room, and some bullies were using it as a money-making venture). He knows it's going to land him in huge trouble, and thinks it's stealing. (He thanks his instincts as he later notes the teachers staged a raid after a tip-off from another student, and the bullies landed in summer school.) He also hides a precious diamond ring near the end, so Mom's family won't kill each other over it. In Rodrick Rules, he also refuses to buy a paper off of Rodrick, noting that even though he's copied off of other people during quizzes, buying a paper from someone is too far, even for him. Also, he does not like the fact that a nice kid got put in detention for earning his hero points (which the same school bullies as above counterfeited, which caused the teachers to get suspicious) legitimately.
• Hypocritical Humor: Greg assumes Abigail is only dating Rowley to use him because she makes him carry her bags to school, even though he made Rowley do the exact same thing.
• Karmic Jackpot: Greg is introduced to a shady science fair project black market run by some students which puts past projects on sale. Understandably, Greg turns down the offer and runs away. The next day, an anonymous tip caused a group of teachers to raid the market and managed to get everyone connected to it sentenced with a mandatory term at summer school.
• Gotta Pass the Class: Greg has to finish all of his missing assignments or else he has to go to summer school.
• Implausible Deniability: Greg mentions that a kid named Aric Holbert got suspended for breaking into the school and spray painting "Aric Holbert is cool" on the lockers. He tried to deny it was him, but as Greg points out, "it was pretty pointless."
• Lucky Charms Title: The U in Hard Luck is a horseshoe.
• Operation: Jealousy: It's implied that Abigail Brown only dates Rowley to make her ex jealous. It works.
• Reverse Psychology: Greg recalls his parents using this technique on him and Rodrick as kids. He then wants a cell phone, but tells his parents that he doesn't because it's too much responsibility: this works, and his mother buys him a new phone.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Greg's assumption that Abigail is using Rowley is clearly only out of jealousy, but it actually ends up being correct: she was only dating him to make her ex-boyfriend jealous.
• Scatterbrained Senior: When Greg's great-granny Meemaw was alive, she hosted an Easter egg hunt for the family every year and filled the eggs with prizes herself. But when she got really old, she "wasn't as sharp as she used to be" and started putting strange things in the eggs, including green beans, tissues, and her extremely valuable diamond ring.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: A good example of the cynical attitude in the books is the Hero Points story. The teachers start giving Hero Points to kids whenever they catch them doing good deeds, and the points can be exchanged for rewards like extra recess time. Not even this manages to make them nicer: most decide to fake good deeds when teachers are around, or just buy counterfeit Hero Points. After the program is shut down due to the rampant counterfeiting, Greg remarks that "now that extra recess is off the table nobody's willing to do anything nice".
• Slipping into Stink: Greg steps in dog poop and mentions that "normally, [he finds] poop as funny as the next guy," recalling laughing at people walking and almost tripping into dog poop.
• Superstition Episode: The main plot of the book is Greg getting a magic 8 ball and using it to make decisions for him. He just wants something to answer all his questions for him and acts upon its responses.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: In a flashback, Aunt Gretchen told the Heffleys that her rabbit, one of the many pets she offered them to look over, was male. The Heffleys weren't happy when it gave birth to a litter.

The Long Haul

• Ambiguous Ending: It's never revealed in this book or the later books whether Greg tells his family that the key to the locker at the water park was in his shorts after all, which would have saved everyone so much trouble had it been found earlier, or not.
• Author Tract: The book is heavy with the New Media Are Evil message: Greg, the Unreliable Narrator who's a bad person and is meant to be an anti-role model, says that "electronics are the key to family happiness." Susan bans technology from the road trip, to Greg's dismay.
• Brainy Pig: The Heffleys accidentally winding up adopting a piglet. The piglet turns out to be very smart; he can use a potty, and in the next book, "Old School", he even learns to walk on his hind legs, use the TV remote, and communicate with Manny's See-n-Say.
• Broken Pedestal: Downplayed. Greg likes the Underpants Bandits series so much that he write a letter to the author, Mik Davies, in his own time. Despite commending the author, Greg does not receive a personalized response, but just an ad for a new book, as the author receives so much mail that he is unable to give back a personalized response.
• Car Ride Games: The Heffleys are on a road trip and they play two games: Alphabet Groceries where people have to think of food that begins with each letter of the alphabet, and I Must Confess which is similar to the real-life game Never Have I Ever.
• Conforming OOC Moment: Greg says that all the boys in his class read a book series called Underpants Bandits. This isn't OOC on its own, but it becomes this trope when he says they'd become illiterate if the teacher banned the books, implying that's all they read. Actually, one of his male classmates, Alex Aruda, is nerdy and it's clear he reads a lot more books than just Underpants Bandits.
• Destination Ruse: Frank and Susan tell the kids that they're going to a retirement home for their summer trip, when really, they were going to Disney World, as to surprise them. This backfires on them as Manny actually wanted to go to the retirement home, so everyone had to do that before going to Disney World.
• Disaster Dominoes: Frank has an important work call that he has to take while driving, and everyone else has to be quiet.
  • Rodrick gets a pack of gum and starts chewing five pieces at once, making noise.
  • Susan snaps her fingers to get Rodrick to stop chewing, but her snapping is louder.
  • Susan opens the sunroof so that Rodrick can dispose of his gum, but the rush of air only makes more noise. Susan starts to close the sunroof, but Rodrick throws his gum out, which boomerangs back and jams the sunroof open.
  • Susan frantically tries to close the sunroof, but a gust of wind carries Flat Stanley out of the roof.
  • Frank starts trying to close the sunroof, but he has one hand on his phone and the other on the center console, so he is steering with his knees. He drifts out of his lane and is honked at by a large tractor-trailer.
  • The horn causes Frank to drop his phone.
  • The horn also startles Manny, whose pacifier falls out. Greg tries to unbuckle his seat to put Manny's pacifier back in, but he accidentally unbuckles the cooler with the pig.
  • Frank jerks the car to the left, causing the cooler to tip over and the pig to fall out and start running around.
  • The pig picks up Manny's pacifier. Greg tries to get it out, but the pig bites him and then attempts to climb out the window.
  • Susan grabs the pig, but accidentally hits a button that causes the stereo to play at full volume.
  • Frank manages to pull over and turn off the stereo, and then yells at everyone for ruining his work call. Then he picks up the phone, and his client is still on the other end.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: Greg goes into a gas station bathroom only to find out that it's full of graffiti, toilet paper sprawled on the floor, and the mirror is partly broken. He decides to go in there anyway.
• Downer Ending: Greg's parents lose their credit cards and wallets at a water park. After everything is sorted out, Greg finds the key to the locker where they were and wonders what he should do with it: accept the consequences, blame Rodrick for it, or flush it down the toilet. He compares it to Choose Your Own Adventure books and, as he explains earlier in the book, he always seems to make the wrong choices and get the bad endings.

  Greg: And whichever way I go from here, it's hard to see this story having a happy ending.

• Extremely Short Timespan: Compared to previous books which last for at least a few months, this one only lasts for nine days, three of which take place during a Time Skip after the family gets home.
• Fake Interactivity: Discussed. Greg recalls watching TV shows that pretended to be interactive. He believed that the characters actually listened to what he told them, so his mother had to tell him that they couldn't.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: During a car game that involves bringing up moments of the family's lives, Rodrick tries to win the game by bringing up how he and the rest of Löded Diper threw toilet paper at their neighbor's house for complaining about how loud their music is. His mother is not amused.

  Susan: Let me get this straight. You and two of your friends toilet-papered an elderly woman's house?

• Market-Based Title: The Spanish title for The Long Haul translates to "Road and Blanket," a Spanish expression meaning "to travel."
• Mistaken for Thief: The Heffleys think the "Beardos" stole their luggage, but in actuality, they just got the locker number wrong.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Anyone with even just the most basic knowledge of Spanish can tell that Susan Heffley doesn't understand it nearly as well as she thinks she does—she thinks "Tengo hambre" means "Tango hamburgers" (it actually means "I'm hungry") and she thinks that "Te amo" means "What is your name?" (it actually means "I love you"). It embarrasses a younger Greg when he once tried asking a Spanish-speaking waiter what his name was by repeatedly saying, "Te amo."
• Ordered Apology: After telling his family about his tee-peeing incident that he and his bandmates did to a neighbor's house, Susan ordered her husband to pull the car to the side of the road, and then demanded that Rodrick get on the phone to apologize to the nieghbor. Greg notes in his diary that it was awkward for everyone in the car to hear.
• Out of Focus: Everybody save for Greg, his immediate family and the Beardos in this book, in which Rowley only turns up in a flashback illustration and no other recurring characters appear. However, Rowley is in the film adaptation, as he gets to come along with the Heffleys to a restaurant.
• Potty Emergency: Both Greg and the pig have one while on a road trip, and end up using a Disgusting Public Toilet in the gas station.
• Red Herring: "The Beardos" would appear to be villains, stealing the Heffleys' beach chair, locker key and in turn wallets and cellphones. But, aside from the beach chair (which could have easily been a misunderstanding) and being slight jerkasses they aren't.
• Retcon: Greg mentions that the previous summer, his parents tricked him into believing they were visiting relatives, when they were actually planning on going to Disney World. This equates to the summer during Dog Days, which has no mention of this.
• Retool: The book focuses on just one summer trip, whereas all the other books unfold over longer timespans — one year for the original, six months for 2 and 3, and two-to-three months for later installments.
  • Also, the book takes on a much more cartoony tone than the previous ones. It focuses less on satire and more on the ridiculously bad luck of the Heffleys, while also introducing a bizarrely intelligent pig that only gets more humanlike over time.
• Road Trip Plot: The entire book is about Greg and his family going on a road trip. Cliches such as a dirty motel, Disgusting Public Toilet jokes, and Car Ride Games, all happen on the vacation.
• Shout-Out:
  • Greg recalls reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books. He says that no matter what choices he picks, they always seem to be the wrong ones.
  • The Underpants Bandits series is a clear nod to Captain Underpants, right down to the Moral Guardians being opposed to it being used for book reports.
  • Flat Stanley books are referenced, with a cutout of Stanley being brought by Susan for the road trip. Greg thinks that if he was flat like Flat Stanley, Rodrick would put him through a paper shredder.
• Symbol Swearing: Frank shouts various symbols in a flashback of one of Greg's family barbecues gone wrong.
• Toilet Humor: Greg and the pig go in a disgusting gas station bathroom.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Greg tries to remember the family locker number at a water park when he loses their key. The locker he remembered turns out to be empty, leading the family to believe their stuff was stolen, which means Mom and Dad have to cancel their credit cards and get new cell phones. At the end of the book, it turns out that Greg had the key the whole time and got the locker number wrong. He doesn't know what to do about it, but he knows it'll turn out badly. By the next book, the whole thing is completely forgotten.
• Vacation Episode: This book unfolds over the course of a road trip for the Heffleys (and thus takes place in the shortest time span of the series — less than a month — up to that point).

Old School

• Appeal to Tradition: The driving trope of the book. First of all, Mom wants her family to take a break from electronics and live like the old days. She successfully convinces the town to set an Electronic-free Weekend. Second, Greg goes to Hardscrabble Farms, which is old-styled and doesn't allow anything modern.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Greg's opinion on his mom's anti-technology views.

  But if Mom had HER way, we'd be living like people did before there were computers and cell phones and baby wipes.

• Bizarre Beverage Use: Greg and Rowley sell some (actually completely normal) water from the Heffleys' garden hose as a fitness drink, but it only really becomes successful when the girl scouts buy it to water the plants with.
• Comic-Book Time: Lampshaded.

  Greg: And to be honest with you, I feel like I've been in middle school FOREVER.

• Covers Always Lie: The book has a cover illustration of Greg holding a cassette tape, which doesn't actually appear in the book.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: Greg's father reveals that when he went to Hardscrabble Farms, the only available toilet was a gross outhouse.
• Follow the Leader: Discussed in-universe when Greg complains about a kid copying his lemonade stand even though opening one wasn't his idea in the first place — his father did the same thing as a child and suggested it to him.

  See, this is the problem when you have an original idea. Five seconds later you've got a million copycats.

• For Want of a Nail: Greg drops the toothpaste cap down the drain. His attempt to get it back starts a chain of Disaster Dominoes that end in the family car rolling down a ditch.
• Foreshadowing: The kids start discussing the tale of Silas Scratch, one of them says that his dad told him about a child named Frankie encountering him, traumatized to the point of being unrecognizable. Later the children start noticing inconsistencies with the story, and when Greg's dad has to substitute for Mr. Jefferson as the overseer for Greg's hut, he seems to know everything about the camp already. It's pretty weird that the name of the kid was explicitly stated, since it was actually a clue that Frank made the story up when he was at the camp.
• Getting Sick Deliberately: When the students hear that they can be sent home from Hardscrabble Farms early if they're sick, they try to think of ways to make themselves ill. Melinda eats a lot of the chef's awful stew to give herself indigestion and she gets to go home. Julian eats an entire stick of deodorant and he also gets to go home, though by the time his mother comes to pick him up, he seems to have gotten better.
• Horrible Camping Trip: The trip to Hardscrabble Farms. Nothing remotely modern is allowed, the cabin bedding is nonexistent and campers are expected to bring their own with seemingly no warning, Greg's bedmate is Rowley's father, the foods served include a stew made from leftovers which was a thing when Greg's father was Greg's age, and the attendees try to get sick to go home early. After this works the first time from a cabinmate eating a stick of deodorant, the teachers confiscate all the boy's deodorant so the others can't escape. This, of course, makes all the cabins smell horrible.
• Hypocritical Humor: Greg complains about a kid copying his lemonade stand even though making one wasn't his idea in the first place — his father did the same thing as a child and suggested it to him.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Greg lampshades that it seems he's been in Middle School forever. That book represents the fourth time we've seen Greg start a school year and each successive book spans a shorter period of time (the first being a year, the latter books spanning months or weeks). Then again, it's pretty normal for some schools to consider Middle School as being up to the 9th or (on MUCH rarer occasions) even 10th grade.
• Multigenerational Household: After the rent at his retirement home was raised, Grandpa moves in with the Heffleys.
• New Media Are Evil: Susan petitions the town to not use any electronics for a weekend. Greg dislikes this and says that electronics are a good thing. Later, at the old-fashioned Hardscrabble Farms, Greg's cabinmates try to look up survival techniques on a phone, but get distracted and watch funny videos instead.
• Parody of Evolution: Greg illustrates how humans have come to depend on the comforts of modern life with a parody of "The March of Progress", in which the upright-walking human is followed by Greg wrapped in a blanket playing video games.
• Potty Emergency: Discussed. After Albert Sandy claims that Silas Scratch might move through the pipes, the kids get too scared to use the bathrooms. Some of them decide to hold it in until they get home, but Greg writes that it doesn't sound so smart because they're only on day 2 of a week-long trip.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Downplayed. While there is no disguise involved, the Urban Legend of deranged murderer Silas Scratch was invented by Frank Heffley to frighten his fellow campers away from the maintenance shed so he wouldn't have to share its running water and electricity.
• The Scrappy: In-Universe, Old-Timey Tobias, the mascot for the Old-Timey Ice Cream Parlor, gets pelted with ice cream left and right every time he comes out to entertain the kids at the restaurant.
• Shout-Out: The pig the family adopts in The Long Haul begins walking on its hind legs, wearing clothes, and starts acting oddly human, with Greg theorizing pigs would take over the world because of them. A shout out to the climax of George Orwell's Animal Farm, in which the pigs (a representation of Stalinist leadership) begin separating from animalism (communism) by walking, dressing and acting like the former human overlords (the capitalists), ensues.
• Sick Episode: Nearly everyone in Greg's group ends up having to be seen by the nurse, including Rowley who gets sent home on the first day. The day he gets back, he has an accident with poison ivy. Rowley's father inhales poison ivy and they both get sent home early.
• Suck E. Cheese's: Old-Timey Ice Cream Parlor, where Rodrick gets a job dressing as the restaurant's creepy mascot, Old-Timey Tobias. He doesn't enjoy it.
• Technologically Blind Elders: Susan tries to convince the neighborhood to shut down electronics for a weekend, but flubs it when she uses a pet-tracking app on her phone to find Greg.
• Tempting Fate: When the teachers claimed that students are not allowed to leave the awful camping trip early with the exception of medical reasons, a student deliberately got himself sick by eating deodorant.
• Urban Legends: An urban legend occurs at Hardscrabble Farms, that a deranged and maniac farmer with long, sharp claws, known as Silas Scratch, roams the farms and will kill anyone who goes near his shed. It is revealed that it was a hoax created by Frank, so he could use the high-quality maintenance shed he found as a child. Greg decides to keep the legend going, since he wants to use the maintenance shed himself when he grows up.
• Vacation Episode: The second half of the book has Greg on a school camping trip to Hardscrabble Farms.

Double Down

• 90% of Your Brain: Greg hears that humans only use 90% of their brains. He hopes that people don't figure out how to get the last 10%, imagining it being complete chaos.
• Amateur Film-Making Plot: The end of the book has Greg and Rowley storyboarding and filming a horror movie. They only get to the end of the introduction before things start going wrong.
• Angst? What Angst?: Enforced in-universe. While working on their No Budget indie horror film Night of the Night Crawlers, Rowley is so freaked out that Greg has to shoehorn in a joke to keep him from running away. This joke turns out to be an unnamed man reacting to his wife's horrifying death by saying "Well, I guess this means I'm single!" and winking at the camera.
• Bland-Name Product: Greg reads a series of scary books called Spineticklers, a parody of Goosebumps.
• Brain Bleach: Greg remembers scaring his father after his father just got out of the shower. He writes that he would pay money to get rid of that memory.
• Brick Joke: Very early in the book, Greg says that he sometimes does ridiculous things to keep people entertained because he thinks his life is being broadcast on TV. When Rowley goes on the news at the end of the book, he says that "you'd never see ME making a fool out of myself to get a cheap laugh from the people watching at home."
• Call-Back: The Cheese Touch from the first book is referenced. Greg says that people are trying to start it again with different foods, but the teachers always catch them.
• Catchphrase: Greg thinks that his life is a TV show and comes up with a catchphrase of "Well, bite my biscuits!" It just confuses people.
• Comically Missing the Point: Greg's mother tells him that he'll end up being a garbage collector if he doesn't think of a job to get earlier. Greg thinks being a garbage collector would be pretty cool.
  • When told that geese are scared of dogs, Rowley uses a toy that plays out the word "Dog" repeatedly.
• Continuity Nod: Greg says that the Underpants Bandits books (from The Long Haul) are old news now and that Spineticklers has replaced them.
• Dream Sequence: A small scene in the book is Greg recalling various strange dreams he has had: one about sneezing his teeth out, one where he's a turtle, one where he is made to walk the plank, and one where he grows a tail.
• Follow the Leader: In-universe. Greg says that the school book fair only has Spineticklers books and Spineticklers knockoffs: he doesn't think those are legal.
• Foul Waterfowl: Some geese migrate to Greg's street. Greg notes them to be very aggressive, chasing him and Rowley when they go home from school, and even Greg's dad has to be cautious while going to get the mail.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Susan thinks that Maddox Selsam, a homeschooled boy with No Social Skills whatsoever who does nothing but practice his violin and build Lego sets, is a good role model for Greg. Probably because Maddox's mom doesn't let him play video games or watch TV.
• Literal-Minded: Greg thinks his parents saying "maybe we should go away for the weekend and recharge our batteries" means that his parents could be robots.
• Losing Your Head: Greg's bizarre dream involves himself kicking his own head, which is shouting, "Mustards on my turnips, please!"
• Movie-Making Mess: Greg tries to make a horror movie titled Night of the Night Crawlers. He has to shoehorn jokes into the script because the only actor, Rowley, is easily frightened and doesn't even want to make a horror movie. Rowley keeps forgetting his lines and refuses to wear a dress when he plays an unnamed woman. The terrible special effectsinvoked include throwing gummy worms at Rowley's face in an attempt to make a scene where worms come out of the shower. After Rowley runs out of the house with barely any clothes on and climbs a tree to escape the geese that ate the gummy worms on the ground, Greg's dad gets home and the attempt to make a movie comes to an end.
• No Budget: In-universe, where Greg and Rowley try to make an indie horror film. Their low-end equipment is "borrowed" from their parents, the only actor is Rowley, and their "special effects" are gummy worms and ketchup.
• Not What It Looks Like: A chain of events at the fall concert leads to Rowley playing the flute while coloring in Greg's underpants in the band room. Frank interrupts and grounds Greg, accusing him of "goofing off."
• It Won't Turn Off: The witch Rodrick gets cackles at the slightest movement, even after Frank removes the batteries.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Greg takes up playing the French horn to get invited to Mariana Mendoza's Halloween party. Then he learns that only the woodwind section will be invited and that his best friend plays the flute, meaning that he can just go with his friend.
• Shout-Out:
  • The book starts with Greg wondering if his life is a TV show, recalling that he once saw a movie where a man's life was filmed without him knowing it. Greg must have watched The Truman Show.
  • Maddox's only hobby besides playing his violin is building LEGO sets.
  • The Spineticklers series is a clear nod to Spinetinglers and Goosebumps. The Swedish translation even calls it "Kalla Kårar," which is the Swedish title of the Goosebumps series.
  • Real life musician George Deveney appears in this book.
• Special Effects Failure: In-universe where Greg tries to create a homemade horror movie on No Budget:
  • Rowley is the only actor, and has to act for many. Since Greg has no video editing skills, this means that no scene in the movie can feature more than one character.
  • Rowley plays an unnnamed woman. Unfortunately, he refuses to wear a dress, and they don't have a wig for him. He ends up wearing yoga pants and a hooded sweater, and having the character never show her face.

  Woman: I hope you don't mind if I don't turn around but I am really concentrating on doing these dishes.

  • They try to make a scene in which an unnamed man tries to take a shower, but worms come out instead of water. Greg can't find a way to make it looks natural, and settles for throwing gummy worms at Rowley's face and hoping it'll look realistic once they make the final cut.
  • They use ketchup as fake blood.
  • Discussed when Greg points out that he still hasn't figured out how to film the climax of the movie, which would feature a battle against a giant worm. Sadly, they never get around to attempting this scene at all.
• Situational Hand Switch: Greg, who is right-handed, buys a French horn and learns the hard way that it's a left-handed instrument.
• Symbol Swearing: Greg is shocked when he watches a video with swearing, pictured by a speech bubble full of symbols and exclamation points coming out of the computer.
• Toilet Humor: Greg was once lied to by Rodrick that sitting on the toilet with the seat down is "for girls," and Greg sat in the toilet instead. He would've believed it for the rest of his life if he hadn't accidentally left the door unlocked and had his mother come in.
• "Truman Show" Plot: Greg wonders if the world really does revolve around him and thinks that people are watching him on TV. This leads to situations such as him inventing a Catchphrase, Greg wondering if his family members are actors or robots, Greg suggesting new plots to the "writers" by talking into a mirror, and doing funny things to make sure people keep watching.
• Title Drop: The back cover of the book contains the line "But is doubling down on movie-making a smart plan?"
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Maddox after Greg's "playdate" with him?
• Wild Teen Party: Mariana Mendoza is known for hosting annual Halloween parties, which are rowdy and wild. Her parents don't care, as long as the party stays in the basement. A year before the books' events, the party got so large, that it spread to outside the house and the police had to end the party. This year, Mendoza only invites the band (actually only the woodwind part), so Greg tries to join the band.
• You Are Grounded!: Greg's punishment for "goofing off" instead of playing at a school concert is being grounded with no video games. Greg says that the only thing he can do is practice his instrument, which he thinks is the point.

The Getaway

• Absentee Actor: The pig that the Heffleys adopt in The Long Haul had previously appeared in Old School and Double Down, but is absent from this book. The Meltdown explains that the pig was upset over being left behind and was sent to an obedience school, and eventually escaped.
• Adults Are Useless: When Greg is cornered by a spider in the hotel room, he calls room service for help. The room service guy is scared of the spider, too. However, Greg does work with him to trap the spider.
• Artistic License – Animal Care: A monkey is regularly served at a swim-up bar. This is frowned upon in real life.
• Brick Joke: Taken Up to Eleven. Greg finds a giant spider in his slipper and attempts to flush it down the toilet with the help of the room service waiter. Later, Dad says he tried to use the toilet, but that same spider was on the underside of the seat, so he hit it with the room's bathrobe and it seemed to disappear into thin air. This joke continues near the end of the book when Greg attempts to scale a fence to evade security, and Rodrick tries to help Greg over as he cannot quite reach the top. The spider crawls out of his sleeve and onto Greg, causing him to fall. This is because Rodrick had to wear the bathrobe dad hit the spider with to a fancy restaurant as he could not find any trousers, and he carried the spider with him all along.
• Chest Burster: Greg gets startled by a sea horse while snorkeling, and in a panic, swallows some water. Worried that he might've accidentally swallowed the seahorse, Greg imagines it bursting out of his midsection at school.
• Christmas Episode: Doubles as a Vacation Episode by having the Heffleys take a Mexican resort vacation to avoid traditional Christmas trappings and hassle.
• Children Are a Waste: Greg says that if he has children, he'll send them out of the house as soon as they become old enough to order at fast food restaurants.
• Downer Ending: The Heffleys' vacation to Isla de Corales is ruined by Contrived Coincidences and bad luck; Rodrick is left with severe sunburns and finds out his new girlfriend is cheating on him, Manny loses all of the animals he tried to take home as pets, the resort is left in shambles, and the Heffleys have been banned from Isla de Corales and are wanted criminals, meaning Frank and Susan can never return to the place they had their honeymoon. The only one who gets what they want, ironically, is Greg, who briefly gets to swim with the dolphins, the thing he wanted to do the most, while fleeing from the local police and to add salt to the wound, The Meltdown reveals this led to the Pig running away.
• Episode on a Plane: Part of the book deals with Greg's first plane ride. He is seated between a family with a baby, has fantasies about everything that could go wrong, has a bathroom break ruined by turbulence, and is not happy with only getting pretzels for food.
• Meaningful Background Event: On Page 171, Manny can be seen swimming underwater with a bucket in hand. Seven pages later, we find out what he put in said bucket...
• New Media Are Evil: Greg complains about how many people are on their phones and not watching the airplane safety video. Later, the "Teen Zone" at the resort is just a bunch of teenagers on their phones, and camera flashes cause sea turtles to lose their way to the ocean.
• Plane Awful Flight: It's Greg's first time going to the airport and taking an airplane. Not only is he seated between a couple with a baby, but he also gets anxious over something happening to the plane after he watches the safety demonstration video (and he also gets worried about the turbulence and the pilots being allowed to move about the cabin), the passenger behind him puts his feet up on Greg's armrests, and he can't lean his seat back because he's sitting in the emergency exit row. Also, meals are only given to first class passengers. The Heffleys also have to alternate between who gets to sit in first class, but Greg never gets his chance due to the doorway getting blocked by the food cart after the turbulence hits.
• Shout-Out: Manny's obsession with collecting sea creatures and turning them into "pets" is a reference to Animaniacs where Dot has a obsession of collecting monsters and putting them into her box as "pets", which in numerous occasions, scares people (or animals) with them. The gimmick works for Manny, except it's backwards because the parents see what's inside his bucket. Later in the book, the Jerry Lewis caricature (AKA Director of Fun) pokes around in Manny's bucket and gets scared because there is a box jellyfish in his bucket.
• Shown Their Work: Yes, there really are box jellyfish around the Caribbean.
• Toilet Teleportation: Greg assumes the stewards are not afraid of having to leave because they have their own emergency exits. We then get an image of one leaving by flushing himself down the toilet.
• Unsuccessful Pet Adoption: Manny tries to keep multiple pets, including a sea turtle and a box jellyfish. Susan returns them to the ocean.
• Vacation Episode: This time, the Heffleys fly to the island resort while Frank and Susan spent their honeymoon. The first leg of the book is about the flight and then the story turns to the actual vacation. Doubles as an unconventional Christmas Episode; Frank wants a break from traditional Christmas trappings and hassle.

The Meltdown

• Author Tract: The book begins with Greg ranting about climate change.
• Brawn Hilda: Latricia Hooks, one of the residents of Surrey Street. She's 6'2", has a very broad physique, used to bully Rodrick when they were younger, and during the snowball fight between the Surrey Street residents, she's shown punching people in the face on two occasions.
• Brick Joke: Greg introduces various kids in his neighborhood at the start of the book. They all reappear during the snowball fight climax.
• Call-Back: Greg talks about his Christmas vacation from The Getaway.
• Covers Always Lie: The Meltdown features Greg's face on a snowman.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: A kid called Mitchell Pickett sells pre-made snowballs. When there's a big snowfall he expands his business to include more advanced weaponry like snowball launchers, icicles and even custom-made snowballs with a slushy center. He sells to the kids on the Surrey Street hill and the kids on Lower Surrey Street who are in a constant feud with the kids on the hill. He buys a snowmobile with the money he makes. Greg comments that this proves war CAN pay. One imagines Mitchell would be very successful as an amoral Arms Dealer should he decide to go down that route when he grows up.
• Enemy Mine: The snow war starts with the Upper Surrey Street kids vs. each other, then all the Upper Surrey Street kids vs. the Lower Surrey Street kids, then all the Surrey Street kids vs. the Safety Patrols, then the Whirley Street kids join the fight and it turns into a free-for-all, and then finally the entire neighborhood vs. the Mingo kids.
• Escalating War: The climax of The Meltdown ends up being about this, as the different factions of kids' in Greg's neighborhood go to war over long-simmering tensions on a snow day— soon all sorts of other factions join and it devolves into a massive free-for-all, which is ended by the snowplow coming up the road and blindsiding everybody.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Upper Surrey Street kids immediately stop fighting and call a ceasefire when someone gets hit in the face with an ice ball and loses a tooth.
• Feuding Families: Greg mentions that one of the houses on Upper Surrey Street is a duplex but that the two families that live in it hate each other.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule: One of Fregley's lines, "Betcha I can find your 'tickle spot'!", is taken word for word from the earlier tie-in do-it-yourself book.
• Foreshadowing: All the Surrey Street residents that Greg brings up near the start of the book, even the Mingo Kids and the Safety Patrols, return in the snowball fight climax.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: Greg decides to put on a sweater his Grandma knit for Sweetie in her house. It fits, but it's super itchy, possibly because the dog had fleas.
• Human Snowman: The cover for The Meltdown has Greg as one. In the book proper, Fregley is seen as one when Greg passes by him while walking to Rowley's house.

  Fregley: Wanna finish "building" me?

• Kid Detective: One of the kids in Greg's neighborhood is a boy named Pervis Gentry, who solves neighborhood crimes (most of which are committed by the same delinquent) from his backyard treehouse during the summer.
• Lip Losses: Discussed in "The Meltdown" when Greg says he wouldn't want to lose his lips to frostbite because he would look like he was smiling at unfitting moments (listing a funeral as an example).
• Literal-Minded: Greg plays "The Floor is Lava" with Manny. Before he can explain the rules, Manny screams and refuses to touch the floor at all, thinking it really is lava.
• Mistaken for Gay: Greg and Rowley sneak into Gramma's house while she's gone so that they can get warm. Greg figures that they could warm their clothes in the dryer in the basement, but since they're naked otherwise, they decide to use some of Gramma's clothes. Cue Greg's mom walking in on them. Initially, it seems that she's in Tranquil Fury that they went into Gramma's house without permission to do shenanigans, but she later sits down with Greg to tell him that it's okay for boys to "play pretend" and that it's part of growing up. Greg doesn't understand what she means, but it's obvious to older readers what she was thinking.
• New Media Are Evil: Greg says that selfies and phones caused a lice outbreak in school.
• Playing Sick: Greg tries acting sick to get out of going to school. It doesn't work and his parents catch him.
• Potty Emergency: Rowley really has to pee while walking home from school with Greg. He ends up peeing behind a large rock.
• Princess Phase: One of Surrey Street's many residents is a little girl named Emilia Greenwall, who always dresses like a fairy tale princess. Greg thinks she's been watching too many Disney movies.
• Shout-Out: Manny builds some snow monsters that seem to be a reference to the grotesque snow creatures built by Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes.
• Sibling Team: The Marlee sisters, who live in Greg's neighborhood and will attack anybody or anything that comes into their yard.
• Toilet Humor: Rowley pees behind a rock.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Greg doesn't find anything strange about Rowley showing up to his door dressed as a member of the Queen's Guard.
• Urban Legends: The Goat Man is brought up. Greg thinks it's the top half of a goat and the bottom half of a man, but Rowley thinks it's split down the middle.

Wrecking Ball

• An Aesop: Parodied. Greg says that he's sure that he can learn a lesson from the experience, such as "be happy with what you have" or "there's no place like home," but what he says is the moral is "don't be late to an old lady's funeral or she'll make you pay."
• Art Shift: The Grout is drawn in a much more realistic, gritty style than the rest of the series. Justified in that it's what Greg thinks, so he imagines it being really scary.
• Blatant Lies: Rodrick tells Greg about "sewer wasps" that come out of the toilet. Greg believes him and is very cautious when he goes to the bathroom.
• The Bus Came Back: Nasty Pants appears for the first time since Cabin Fever. He's dancing at Greg's going-away party.
• The Cameo: Fregley only appears once in this book.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A picture on Rowley's collage depicts him and Greg in their two-headed monster costume from Double Down.
  • Various characters from The Meltdown appear attending Greg's going away party.
  • There are three references to Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid. Two illustrations (Greg's baby pictures and Rowley with an ice cream cone on his head) from said book reappear here in Greg's style, and a picture that Rowley draws in cement is done in the Awesome Friendly Kid style.
  • The Family Frolic magazine from The Long Haul and Double Down appears once again, with Susan using it to help Greg with the yard sale.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The Heffleys' house, which the family were planning to sell, getting a giant hole through the middle from their old hot tub being dropped from the roof. This caused both the family buying the house to back out, and leaving the Heffleys unable to afford their new house. On the other hand, Greg is glad to have not left Rowley, as he initially thought.
• Embarrassing Old Photo: Rodrick once fell asleep in a hot tub, getting his skin wrinkly for two weeks, and got his picture taken a few days later.
• Forged Message: Rodrick once wrote a bunch of notes signed by Greg, supposedly saying that he "owes" a bunch of stuff to Rodrick.
• Garage Sale: The book opens with Greg holding a yard sale after doing spring cleaning. Among his objects for sale are one of his old diaries, broken toys, old birthday cards, and socks full of random objects. He is unable to sell anything, unconvincingly trying to use Very False Advertising. Greg's yard sale is eventually rained out and ends early.
• Hypocritical Humor: The Heffleys wound up with a large sum of inheritance money and they host a meeting to decide what to do with it. Susan says that the money needs to be spent on something that everyone in the family agrees on, but gets upset when nobody likes her new kitchen idea and leaves.
• Lies to Children: At Greg's Garage Sale, he puts broken toys on a table labeled "FUN TOYS" and outright says that he hopes kids who can't read will buy them.
• Moving Angst: Discussed and inverted. When Greg is about to move (though it's later canceled), he reads Rowley a book called Preston Platypus Says Farewell to a Friend, which is about the titular Preston Platypus being distraught when his best friend Pelican Pete moves away. He overcomes this angst when he meets some new friends, which Greg notes isn't that happy of an ending since Preston Platypus forgets all about Pelican Pete.
• New Media Are Evil:
  • Greg thinks that if he got electrical powers, people would just have him charge their phones.
  • He also wants a moving sidewalk in his house so that he can pay more attention to his phone, with an audio indicator when the sidewalk is ending.
  • Greg goes on his phone instead of learning about how the car works.
• One-Episode Fear: Greg is afraid of wasps in this book.
• Pest Episode: Subplots involve the Heffleys dealing with wasps and rats. Greg wishes that his house would be infested by something cute like koalas.
• Property Line: It turns out that an extension to the Heffleys' house is over their neighbor's property line, so they have to tear it down and patch up the hole in the wall.
• Status Quo Is God: Greg is about to move away from Surrey Street and to a new neighborhood. Until, in the last two pages, it turns out that the family that was going to move in cannot afford the house and that their house is in no condition to live in anyways. So Greg's stuck on Surrey Street for a while.
• Symbol Swearing: Frank does this while trying to fix an appliance.
• Title Drop: The titular wrecking ball is mentioned a few times.
• Toilet Humor:
  • Manny uses a toilet on display while at a hardware store.
  • Greg shows a page of his biography, depicting him having stepped in dog poop.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Conversed. Greg reads a Preston Platypus book where Preston's best friend, Pelican Pete, moves away. He thinks it's fine until the ending in which Preston makes new friends and just forgets all about Pete, and that it's never shown if Pete is happy in his new neighborhood. He considers writing the author an angry letter over this.
• With a Foot on the Bus: The book sets up Greg's family moving away from Surrey Street. Rowley is very upset about it, and he has a going-away party with other people in his neighborhood. But when the last bit of construction goes wrong, the house is in disrepair and is not sold, so Greg and his family have to stay.

The Deep End

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Greg lists three great inventions in the modern era: medicine, smartwatches, and peanut butter-filled pretzels.
• Bland-Name Product: One of the electronic devices locked in "The Vault" appears very similar to a Nintendo Switch.
• "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate: Greg goes fishing with a group of kids who get into a heated argument over whether it would be more difficult to fight a person with the head of a shark or a shark with the head of a person.
• Continuity Nod: Sweetie is mentioned once again. And he's still as spoiled and overfed as ever.
• Continuity Snarl: Greg does jigsaw puzzles in this book, despite an incident in Cabin Fever in which he finds a nest of crickets in a box of puzzles giving him a fear of them. However, it is possible that he had gotten over his fear since.
• Contrived Coincidence: Lightning strikes the bridge leading in and out of Campers' Eden, destroying a section of it, trapping everyone inside and preventing the food truck from bringing supplies in. The gap that's destroyed is exactly as wide as the Heffleys' RV is long, and it gets perfectly wedged in the gap when it washes down the river in a flood.
• Didn't Think This Through: Susan paid for a fundraiser and gave Greg a planet named after him. However, she forgot to include his last name, so Greg thinks that anyone with his first name can go to "Planet Greg" and claim it as their own.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The Heffleys have to endure living in Gramma's basement for months, a bear encounter, being sprayed by a skunk, teenage hooligans, the sewage tank in their RV backing up, inconsiderate campers, being trapped at a campsite with no food, and nearly getting swept away in a flash flood, among many other mishaps, but after that, with all the other rude campers gone from the campsite, they are able to have a pretty good vacation.
• Emergency Broadcast: A flash flood warning is issued for the RV park right before the climax.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Whenever Greg does a jigsaw puzzle, Manny always insists on putting in the last piece. At the end of the book, Manny steers the Heffleys' RV into the broken bridge to fill the gap, which Greg describes as snapping in "like a puzzle piece".
  • Manny's favorite book at the moment is a retelling of the Noah's Ark story, presaging the flash flood in this story's climax.
• Horrible Camping Trip: The perils encountered here include a curious bear, roving skunks, flaming marshmallows and a flash flood.
• Imagine Spot:
  • Annoyed with him, Greg imagines sending Rodrick to space in a rocket.
  • Greg imagines being the guy whose job is to collect wolf urine.
• Lighter and Softer: In-universe, Greg calls out the Noah's Ark picture book Manny loves as this given it only features a happy Noah and happy animals, disregarding how almost all of humanity perished in the Great Flood.
• Namesake Gag: Greg goes over the story of the man who invented the toilet, Thomas Crapper. He then hopes he made a lot of money from it, since he wouldn't want a synonym for defecating named after him. Cue an illustration of a man saying to his roommate:

  Man: Yo, I'm gonna take a Greg!

• New Media Are Evil: Susan makes Greg and Rodrick put their electronic devices in a vault, to be locked for two hours. Greg and Rodrick try to break it, but are unable to.
• No Antagonist: There is not a clear antagonist in the story unless Juicebox (one of the kids that Greg befriends) counts when he betrays Greg.
• Noah's Story Arc: Early in the book, Greg discusses the story of Noah's Ark. He says that if he were Noah, he would've left off animals like scorpions and kept more puppies and pandas. The climax of the book sees Greg and his family trying to escape (and eventually save) people from a flood.
• Previously On…: Greg claims that the story of him and his family now living in his grandmother's basement is a long one, so he just shows an image of a crane dropping a hot tub through the roof of their house, which happened at the end of Wrecking Ball .
• Retcon: Greg talks about doing jigsaw puzzles, when Cabin Fever claimed that Greg had a phobia of puzzles after finding a family of crickets living in a puzzle box.
• Reused Character Design: Doo-Doo, one of the kids at Campers' Eden, is identical to "Stinky Williams" (a precursor to Fregley) in the webcomic.
• Road Trip Plot: The first third or so of the book is about a road trip the Heffleys go on before sticking with the RV park for the remainder of the plot.
• Sequel Episode: This book picks up where Wrecking Ball left off: the family's house is destroyed, so they have to stay in Gramma's basement for now.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: As it turns out, all the other campers abandoning Campers' Eden during the second storm allows the Heffleys to finally have a wonderful vacation over the next few days.
• Symbol Swearing: Susan lets Manny sit up front in the RV and handle the horn. However, he begins swearing at other drivers, portrayed by an assortment of random symbols in his speech bubble.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The normally nice Grandma is openly not happy about the family living with her, to the point where she makes them live in the basement because the guest room is "Sweetie's room" and when he friends come over, she refuses to let them come upstairs, not even to use the bathroom.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After several disastrous Vacation Episodes, the Heffleys finally have a vacation they end up enjoying — after the second storm, anyway.
• Vacation Episode: The fourth in the series. This time, the family takes an RV trip on the open road.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: invoked The pool party features a movie screening that appears to be a Jaws knockoff, to the terror of all the little kids in the pool.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Not much to Greg. He shamelessly admits that if he were Noah, he would've left off the creepy and dangerous animals like scorpions in favor of cute ones.
• When It Rains, It Pours: The RV park the Heffleys stay at gets hit with two back-to-back powerful storms.
• You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Manny is unable to take part in any activities in a family adventure theme park other than a water slide since they require a certain age and height, as shown in one drawing where he can't reach a bear's paw that functions as minimum height.

Big Shot

• Bittersweet Ending: Despite all of their hard work and effort, Greg's team never wins a single game. Greg himself gets to be on a winning team, though, when he's traded during the final game to fill in for an injured opponent on a different team of lovable underdogs. The final panel shows Greg celebrating happily with his new teammates, while his original teammates and Susan (their new coach) are dejected by their loss and sore at Greg.
• Chekhov's Skill: Early on, Greg accidentally makes a basket shooting backward and claims that he shoots better that way, only for Coach Patel to refuse to let him do so again. During the final game, he scores while throwing the ball backward without really meaning to do so.
• Didn't Think This Through: In a flashback, Greg explains that one of the reasons why soccer was better when he was little was being able to have slushees at the snack bar. But then Susan and the other parents had the stand changed to sell only produce and granola bars as snacks, resulting in sales dropping-and the field becoming overgrown, because selling the slushees paid for upkeep.
• Lovable Jock: Preet Patel is the only good player on Greg's team (at least until he's injured early on) and is surprisingly nice for a jock in the series. He happily goofs around with Greg and the other un-athletic kids in one scene. He later shows up to cheer for them during the final game after their humiliating season, while happily agreeing to play while wearing an orthopedic boot.
• Small Town Rivalry: Greg's hometown of Plainview has an ugly feud with a neighboring town named Slacksville ever since Slacksville (supposedly) used bribery to get a profitable factory built in their town instead of Plainview. They are bitter sports rivals, but it goes deeper than that. Plainview changed its zoning laws so a smelly dump would have to be built in Slacksville, and Slacksville stuck Plainview with chemically dangerous lumber under the guise of a peace offering.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Zigzagged. Greg's basketball team is made up of students who flunked the tryouts for the good teams (and the coach's athletic son, who's quickly injured), and it shows. They try hard, but fail to win a single game during the main season and only score a handful of points. Then, Susan enlists them in a two-day "second chance" tournament where all of the worst basketball teams from each league play each other, and each team that wins a game exits the tournament. All of the teams there are underdogs, but the other underdogs keep beating Greg's team, who end up as one of the last two there. They play against the Funky Dunkers, five kids who have some athleticism and grit but are all pretty short and only have five players. This makes the Funky Dunkers the underdog for most of the final game and they end up beating Greg's team, although Greg is transferred to their team beforehand to even the odds after a Funky Dunker is injured. So Greg gets to be on a winning team, but none of his original teammates do.

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Well, we're out of trope examples, so I guess this is THE END.

Alternative Title(s): Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Last Straw, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Dog Days, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Ugly Truth, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Third Wheel, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Hard Luck, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Long Haul, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Old School, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Double Down, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Getaway, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid The Meltdown

Drawings of a Kid Playing Soccer

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid

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