Literature / The 65-Storey Treehouse

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It was preceded by The 52-Storey Treehouse and followed by The 78-Storey Treehouse.

The thirteen new storeys are:

• A pet-grooming salon (run by Jill)
• A birthday room (where it's always your birthday, even when it's not)
• An un-birthday room where the longer you stay, the younger you get
• A cloning machine
• A room full of exploding eyeballs
• TREE-NN (Treehouse News Network): a 24-hour TV news center, featuring regular updates on all the latest news, trends and gossip
• A lollipop shop run by a lollipop-serving robot called Mary Lollipoppins
• A screeching balloon orchestra
• An owl house with three wise owls
• An invisible level
• An ant farm (with 65 chambers)
• A quicksand pit
• And a bow and arrow level.

Tropes found in The 65-Storey Treehouse

• Acid Pool: The wheelchair access ramp at the end includes a hop over an acid pool.
• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap visit the caveman times, and they're all big-browed, hulk-speaking, animal-skin-clad folks with underbites, the men, women and children, with a few wielding clubs. Though they are otherwise proportioned normally and are not at all brutish and are shown to be quite artistic once given the means.
• Alphabet News Network: There's a new network in the treehouse called TREE-NN (Treehouse News Network).
• Alternate Species Counterpart: When in the prehistoric pond scum era, Andy and Terry encounter pond scum counterparts to themselves. (Though they're technically the ancestors of all life on earth, including them.) In the dinosaur era, they meet plesiadapis versions of themselves and Inspector Bubblewrap... and a dinosaur version of Mr. Big Nose.
• Amusingly Awful Aim: In the bow and arrow room, Terry shoots eighteen arrows... none of them reach the target, but they do reach Andy.
• Anachronistic Animal: Lampshaded when Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap go to the Archean era when all life was just single-celled organisms in little ponds and there's a snake slithering around. The Inspector tells it off for being millions of years too early.
• Angst Nuke: Like its successor, the Bignoseasaur has a huge nose, and the angrier it gets, the bigger and redder its nose becomes, to the point of exploding and killing all dinosaurs.
• Arc Hero: Inspector Bubblegum replaces Jill as the third main character for this story, going with Andy and Terry on their adventure instead. He goes through his own self-contained character arc for the book and is never seen after.
• Art Imitates Art: When the cave people are going wild painting all sorts of things on the cave walls, many of them are art references to things like the Vitruvian man, the Mona Lisa doing the The Creation of Adam gesture, Girl with a Pearl Earring, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and more.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Inspector Bubblewrap is a building inspector obessed with safety and regulations. It makes sense that he would wear a safety helmet and vest... but a cape made of bubblewrap?
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: H. G. Wells was really a time traveller who's endeavors inspired him to write.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: There's a sasquatch inside an unreachable part of a cave complaining in Hulk Speak about being trapped in the stupid cave.
• Billions of Buttons: In the Safety Central Headquarters is a room controlling every aspect of safety in the whole world, which of course has too many buttons and levers to count. Luckily, to Inspector Bubblewrap at least, it's not as complicated as it looks.
• Bizarre Taste in Music: While lacking a punji to charm the snakes, Terry instead uses an awfully screechy deflating balloon, and it works just fine.
  Andy: Sure, it might not be everybody's idea of beautiful music, but the snakes seem to like it.
• Boredom Montage: Upon figuring out that the future is a hundred-percent danger-proof, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap get to enjoying themselves by going into what would otherwise be dangerous and unsafe scenarios, but after doing it over and over again, become bored and conclude that the totally-safe future is totally-boring instead.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": As Bubblewrap's new daredevil persona, he wears a BW on his chest, standing for "bubble wrap" of course.
• Brown Note: The sound of screeching balloons is so painful to the giant crabs that they let go the Inspector and Wells when Terry unleashes his balloon.
• Chariot Race: Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap end up in the middle of a chariot race when they end up in Ancient Rome. They do battle with a ruthless warrior called Drusilla the Dreadful alongside their ancient ancestors. The chapter is also titled "Bin-Hur", (their chariot was a wheelie bin) and once the race is over, they decide that they'll watch the movie once they get home.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The prehistoric ant Terry saves during the Mesozoic era saves him and Andy from the wrath of the present-day ants, and they even help form their next book.
• Crawl: After introducing the TREE-NN, a crawl appears on the bottom of every page with a headline describing what happens in the movie.
• Cyborg: Andy and Terry's future counterparts Android D and Terrybot D are cyborgs.
  Terry: Are you guys robots?
  Terrybot D: Well, we do have bionic bits and pieces, but we're still human enough that we want to have fun.
• Dark Action Girl: Drusilla basically has no moral qualities and only cares to absolutely destroy her opponents in deadly chariot races, which she dominates easily.
• Deadly Game: After winning the Chariot Race, Andy and Terry are horrified to learn that the consequences of losing would be death.
• Death Course: The wheelchair access ramp Andy and Terry make at the end is designed to be as dangerous as possible. It's got buzzsaws, it's got rings of fire, it's got a crocodile pit, a trampoline, an Acid Pool, and more.
• Evil Counterpart: The Safety Central Headquarters of the future serve as this to Inspector Bubblewrap. They're what happen if you take his Safety Freak tendencies to eleven. In the future, they've taken over the entire world and made it totally safe and by extension, totally boring. This encounter helps Bubblewrap realize that total safety isn't all that great.
• Eye Scream: One of the new storeys is an exploding eyeball level, where there are not only eyeballs ready to explode, but your own will explode when you enter.
• Fun with Bubble Wrap: As one of the main characters in this story is named Inspector Bubblewrap and wears a bubble wrap dispenser like a cape, this is to be expected. Though Bubblewrap himself is too much of a Safety Freak to use it for fun, some leftover bubble wrap does distract some ancient Egyptian guards from chasing after him and the others as they find it way too fun to pop the bubbles.
• The Future Will Be Better: The future Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap encounter 65,000 years in the future is absolutely danger-free, thanks in part to the lessened gravity. Unfortunately, it's also totally boring.
• Generation Xerox: Every time Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap visit a new time period, they always meet some of their ancestors, including ones from the Archean and Mesozoic eras. These ancestors always have similar appearances and personalities to them, such as their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic or their creativity.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The future in 650 million years is overrun by giant crabs, as a reference to The Time Machine. H. G. Wells himself is there being attacked by one and is saved by Inspector Bubblewrap.
• Giant Spider: Jill fights a spider with her time with the ants. It's actually a normal spider, but because she's ant-sized, it's giant to her.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Inspector Bubblewrap gets cut in half by a giant crab, but doesn't seem to mind all that much. Once his two halves are wrapped up with bubble wrap, he's all fine.
• Historical Domain Character: In 650 million years in the future, the world is overrun by giant crabs and the sky is red, just like how it is in The Time Machine. Andy exclaims there's no way what happened in the book could be real, unless H. G. Wells himself has seen this future. As it turns out, he did. He built his own time machine and is being attacked by a giant crab when the main characters meet him.
• Horrifying the Horror: Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap manage to scare off a Mummy by disguising themselves as mummies themselves.
• Hulk Speak: The residents of the cavemen era (both human and otherwise) speak very simply, only referring to themselves as "me". Even a random bone on the ground speaks this way.
  Bone: Me leg bone. Me got nothing to say.
• Human Ladder: A snake ladder, really. When trapped in a Snake Pit, Terry charms the asps with a screechy balloon and the asps form a ladder to the exit.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: At the beginning of the story, Terry redraws Jill at a smaller size so she can speak with the ants. They completely forget about her for the whole time-traveling escapade, and when they come back, it's been an entire year from her perspective, but that's because creatures of that size perceive time differently.
• The Inspector Is Coming: The plot is kicked off by Inspector Bubblewrap, a building inspector arriving and deeming the treehouse a horrendously unsafe place to reside, and thus, the treehouse must be demolished immediately.
• I Remember It Like It Was Yesterday: When sent 65,000 years into the future, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap find themselves trying to break into Safety Central Headquarters. Luckily, it was Bubblewrap himself who created the password all those years ago. He claims to have remembered it like it was yesterday... of course, for him, it was a lot closer to yesterday than 65,000 years.
• Ironic Fear: The Mummy in the pyramid is scared of... other mummies.
• Irony: At the end, Andy and Terry construct the world's most dangerous... disabled-access wheelchair ramp, complete with rings of fire, Saw Blades of Death, and a crocodile pit. It's essentially a Death Course.
  Crawl: DANGER-RAMP DELIGHTS DISABLED DAREDEVILS
• The Lad-ette: Drusilla the Dreadful is a ruthless charioteer who gets very physical with her opponents, even using her whip and other underhanded tactics to win. The only feminine part of her is her long hair.
• A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll": After ending up 65,000 years in the past, Andy and Terry are surprised to find that the cavepeople do nothing but sit around all day because nothing fun has been invented yet. Terry teaches them to draw and paint, and they end up painting their cave walls with all sorts of art references and also SpongeBob SquarePants. Terry wants to teach them mixed media and art installations as well but is pressed for time.
• Man on Fire: In the future, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap find that it's completely and utterly safe, and that includes the fire. Andy and Bubblewrap both set themselves on fire without getting hurt, though once Bubblewrap does it enough, he gets bored of it.
  Inspector Bubblewrap: I'm bored of setting myself on fire without getting burned.
• Matchlight Danger Revelation: In the dark pyramid, Andy feels a mysterious tapping. It's not Terry, and it's not Inspector Bubblewrap either. Bubblewrap turns on his torch to reveal... a Mummy! He immediately turns it off again and gets the three of them to disguise as mummies. He then turns the light on again then it's the mummy's turn to be scared. Happens again when the three fall into a trap door and land on something squishy. Bubblewrap turns on the torch again to find... they're in a pit full of asps!
• Meaningful Rename: Inspector Bubblewrap renames himself Super BW when he decides to become a Stunt Performer.
• Meek Mesozoic Mammal: Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap encounter their prehistoric ancestors in the forms of plesidapis. All they can do is run and hide from the monstrous dinosaurs of the era and after they all become extinct, Andy and Terry convince Bubblewrap to wrap the creatures in his namesake to protect them in this dangerous time.
• Merlin Sickness: The un-birthday room causes you to age backwards the longer you stay in there.
• Mona Lisa Smile: One of the cave paintings is of multi-armed Mona Lisa. One of the arms is doing pointing towards another pointing hand like in ''The Creation of Adam''.
• Mortarboard of Intelligence: The three wise owls introduced here all wear mortarboards to show how "smart" they are.
• Mummy: Andy, Terry and the Inspector encounter a mummy when inside the pyramid. It shambles with its arms out and freaks out the three, before getting freaked out in turn when they use bubblewrap to dress like mummies.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Drusilla the Dreadful really lives up to the name. She's a vicious charioteer who makes no qualms with attacking or killing her opponents.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: In Ancient Egypt, the time machine accidentally crashes into the Pharaoh, though he doesn't die. Instead, he sentences Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap to be executed.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Inspector Bubblewrap is a building inspector who threatens to destroy Andy and Terry's ridiculous dangerous treehouse but accidentally gets dragged along on a time-travelling adventure. He uses he bureaucratic abilities to annoy and help them at points. He's mostly a comedic character in a comedic story, but the threat he poses is very real. By the end, he's learned to embrace the fun in life and allows Andy and Terry to keep their treehouse, as long as they build a wheelchair ramp.
• Out of Focus: Jill takes a backseat in this book and only appears in the beginning and end. In her place is Inspector Bubblewrap, who accompanies Andy and Terry on their adventure.
• The Pen Is Mightier: Subverted. It seems like Inspector Bubblewrap is going to fight a Giant Enemy Crab using his pen as a sword and clipboard as a shield, but he just gets grabbed immediately.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: When traveling to the dawn of the Mesozoic, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap worry about seeing their ends at the hands of a meteor. It turns out, what they had to worry about was a Mr. Big Nose-like dinosaur with a huge exploding nose killing all the dinosaurs.
• Piano Drop: Terry once played his piano too hard it fell off the floor directly into the ant farm. When visiting the future, because of its lowered gravity, physical injuries are nigh-impossible. Terry tests this out by letting a piano drop on him.
  Terry: Hit me, you stupid piano!
• "Pop!" Goes the Human: Terry forgets he's allergic to magic beans when he eats one. He explodes, but gets better.
• Quicksand Sucks: There's a new quicksand level which is exactly what it sounds like. Andy and Terry try working on it, which ends with Andy sitting on Terry's shoulders while he wears inflatable shoes.
• Ramp Jump: Team Wheelie Bin uses a ramp made of crashed chariots to jump over Drusilla the Dreadful as they're crossing the finish line.
• Ramp-rovisation: In the Chariot Race, Inspector Bubblewrap becomes confident that a pile of destroyed chariots can make for a suitable ramp. The gang tries it, and flies over their opponent Drusilla the Dreadful all the way over the finish line.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The sky is red 650 million years in the future, as a reference to The Time Machine.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Inspector Bubblewrap enjoys rhyming, to the point where he does his building inspections in rhyme.
• Safety Freak: Inspector Bubblewrap is obsessed with safety, as he is a safety inspector. He deems the treehouse too dangerous to exist and even point out safety hazards in eras when the regulations don't even exist. He then develops into a Thrill Seeker during the adventure.
• Safety Worst: In the future, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap find that the world's been taken over by the Safety Central Headquarters, and everything's now a hundred percent safe. Thanks to altered gravity and other advancements in technology, injury is almost impossible. The three have fun for a while in this injury-free world doing what would otherwise be incredibly dangerous acts without any risk but find that it's actually really boring and go to Safety Central Headquarters to set the Earth back to its default settings.
• Saw Blades of Death: There's a tungsten-covered saw blade on the wheelchair access ramp at the end.
• Scarecrow Solution: Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap disguise themselves as mummies to scare off a real mummy.
• "The Scream" Parody: One of the cave-doodles made by the cavepeople is of The Scream.
• Seemingly Profound Fool: The three wise owls are constantly screeching nonsense, but Andy and Terry interpret it as wise advice.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Safety Central Headquarters has a self-destruct mechanism, which Inspector Bubblewrap uses after setting Earth back to its default settings so no one will ever make the world meaninglessly safe again.
• Sewing Needle Sword: Jill uses a pair of sewing needles as swords to fight against a spider during her shrunken-down time with the ants.
• Shapeshifter Showdown: The escaped ants come together to form into different shapes, so Andy and Terry change shapes to fight back. The ants turn into a giant foot, so Andy and Terry turn into dog poop, then the ants turn into a poop-scooper, so Andy and Terry turn into water, so the ants turn into a towel, so Andy and Terry turn back to water.
• Shout-Out:
  • The new lollipop robot is named Mary Lollipoppins.
  • Andy interprets the three wise owls's advice as relating to Doctor Who and telling him to travel through time. When Terry shows him his Time Machine made from a wheelie bin, Andy remarks how he thought time machines were supposed to be Bigger on the Inside.
  • As the cavepeople are painting, the Crawl compares them to various famous artists, calling them things like "ROCK-ART REMBRANDTS!", "VINCENT VAN PALEOS!", "CAVE MAN KANDINSKYS!", "CAVE WOMEN KAHLOS!", "PREHISTORIC PICASSOS" and "WAYBACK WARHOLS!".
  • One of the cavepeople paints SpongeBob SquarePants on the cave wall.
  • Another caveman paints a doodle that looks very similar to Daffy Duck.
  • The chapter in Ancient Rome is entitled "Bin-Hur" where they do a Chariot Race. After the race is finished, Andy and Terry decide to watch William Wyler's film.
  • The furthest point in the future they go to is an homage to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, with the reddened skies and giant enemy crabs all over the place. Wells even makes an appearance.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Inspector Bubblewrap trades out his hard hat and safety vest for a daredevil outfit complete with his initials on the front, showing his shift from a Safety Freak to a Thrill Seeker. He still keeps the bubble wrap cape.
• Sistine Steal: One of the cavepeople paints Mona Lisa with several arms, one of which is pointing to another pointing hand, like in The Creation of Adam.
• Snake Charmer: To escape from the Snake Pit, Terry uses his terribly screechy balloon to charm the asps into forming a literal snake ladder to get him and his companions out of there.
• Snake Pit: After falling through a Trap Door, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap end up in a pit full of asps. They escape by charming them with a screeching balloon.
• Sneeze of Doom: The Bignoseasaur's anger-fuelled explosion is implied to also be a sneeze, as the Crawl at the bottom makes a sneezing sound as it happens. This explosion also causes the extinction of dinosaurs.
• Spiked Wheels: Drusilla's chariot has spiked wheels that dismantle her opponents, so Inspector Bubblewrap wraps them in his namesake, rendering them harmless.
• Spikes of Doom: The wheelchair ramp includes having to jump over a box of pointed sticks.
• Stable Time Loop: Terry was inspired to invent his own Time Machine by reading H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. When visiting the future, he and his companions find Wells himself in the future with his own time machine, and save him from getting killed by giant crabs, ensuring that he could go back to his time and write the book to inspire Terry in the first place.
• Starfish Language: Jill speaks to the ants in dialogue made up of "||||" characters akin to Woodstock from Peanuts.
• Stunt Performer: After going through an exhilarating time-traveling adventure, Inspector Bubblewrap goes from an obstructive Safety Freak to a Thrill Seeker and changes careers to being a stunt performer, and even helps Andy and Terry deliver their new book by motorcycling on the new wheelchair ramp they built. He also changes his name from Inspector Bubblewrap to Super BW.
• Thrill Seeker: Inspector Bubblewrap starts as a Safety Freak before developing into a thrill seeker over the course of the book to the point where he runs head-first to fight a giant crab, gets chopped in half and regrets nothing. At the end, he switches careers from a building inspector to a Stunt Performer.
• Time Dissonance: Terry redraws Jill to be the size of an ant, and leaves with Andy and Inspector Bubblewrap on their time-travel adventure. When they come back, it's only been a few minutes but to Jill, it's been an entire year because when you're that small, time goes a lot slower.
  Jill: Time passes faster when you're small. I've been living with the ants for a whole year. I thought you were never coming back!
• Time Machine: Terry builds a time machine out of a wheelie bin, and no. It's not Bigger on the Inside. It travels through time and through space.
• Time Travel Episode: In this story, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap accidentally travel all throughout history, from the start of life developing on earth all the way to the far future.
• Trap Door: When about to reach a door in the pyramid, Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap all fall through a trap door into an asp pit.
• Unwise Owl: The three wise owls introduced are supposedly supposed to give brilliant advise, but all they do is spew nonsense all day. Andy and Terry still think they're wise though.
• The Vitruvian Pose: One of the cave-doodles is of a little man standing with his arms out in a circle and two square, one at a fourty-five degree angle imposed on him, though lacks the second pair of arms.
• Walk Like an Egyptian: Andy and Terry's ancient Egyptian ancestors are always walking this way, with their arms at perfect fourty-five degree angles. This also applies to the Barky the Barking Dogyptian cartoon they make as well as the Pharaoh's guards who chase after them.
• Whateversaurus: Andy, Terry and Inspector Bubblewrap meet a huge, short-tempered dinosaur called the Bignoseasaur, which, according to Bubblewrap, is a direct contravention of the World Health Organization's suggested guidelines for a healthy nose-to-body ratio. It's exploding nose is responsible for the extinction of all dinosaurs.
• Whip of Dominance: Drusilla the Dreadful uses a whip, mainly designed for the horses in the Chariot Race, but she's not above using it against her enemies as well.
• William Telling: There's a guy in the bow and arrow room standing with an apple on his head. Also he's covered in arrows, but not one in the apple.
• The Worm That Walks: Terry accidentally leaves the ant farm open and the ants come together to impersonate him and attack Andy. After Terry shows up, he and Andy engage in a Shapeshifter Showdown against the ants.