

Chekhov's Gun: The beaver, whose dam ends up causing a flood.Butt-Monkey: Harold Greene and Chip are the main targets of Rudy's pranks and insults.Brick Joke: The 1000 volleyballs that Rudy ordered for the camp eventually show up.Warden is a bit clueless, but he just wants everyone to have fun and is pleased whenever he sees them doing so. That being said everyone but him seems to like it there. The Alcatraz: Invoked by Rudy's nickname for the camp, with it being an island he can't get off of.At least, until they stop, and think hard about it, and then one by one all of them start laughing too.

They come back having experiences misfortunes like falling into the lake, being spayed by a skunk, and mistaking each other for bears in the woods, and everyone is sore about how much Pierre is laughing about this.

Actually Pretty Funny: After all of the chaos at the camp, the counselors went charring into the woods after Rudy's escape attempt not noticing that Pierre had already stopped him.His room at home is full of trophies that don't mean anything to him. Deconstructed, since everyone pushes him to do things he doesn't care about, and he's bored with winning all the time. The book is a humorous take on prison break stories, as Rudy and Mike attempt increasingly elaborate escapes and the counselors enact increasingly desperate measures to keep the two in camp. Unfortunately, the counselors have other plans. Rudy, or simply Miller! to the counselors, is a genius and a natural athlete, but has run into enough trouble at school that, in his own words, "The guidance counselors misguided my parents into guiding me here." Rudy is interested in one camp activity only-plotting to leave camp.

Fortunately for Mike, he quickly befriends the only other person in all of Camp Algonkian Island who would rather be somewhere else: a quiet loner named Rudy Miller. It's like torture to the unathletic teenager. Mike Webster has been sent to summer camp as a "reward" for his good marks.
