With historically recurrent flares across all the spectrum, AO 0235+164 makes for an exciting subject of study among blazars. Located at redshift z=0.94, it has undergone several flaring episodes in the last decades. The last three episodes, which peaked in 2008, 2015 and 2021 respectively, received extensive MWL coverage and exhibited interesting behavior: correlated emission across almost all wavelengths, unusual features in the X-ray spectrum and changing jet direction, among others. We will show how the analysis of cross-correlations and the kinematic analysis of jet features in VLBI images can help us constrain the different models for emission. We present several SED models of the source which explain the unusual observed features in the X-ray spectrum. Moreover, we will explore the way that the observed characteristics of this blazar, including the observed wobbling of its jet, fit consistently with each other in the landscape of blazar emission models and hint at a deep reason behind its repeating flares.