Thanks ManX and Bill. I think the main takeaway is that the order of the pedals and effects matters, and effects applied further in the sequence will be applied over the top of the previous effects.

So, the looper will "inherit" everything that happens in front of it, but anything later in the chain would not be included in the loop. If I want my loop to include chorus, I need to use a chorus effect in front of the looper.

There are two ways to accomplish this. One is to put the looper behind everything else using a backend interface. If you do that, then your chorus could come from a pedal on the front side, or it could come from an amp FX setting. It wouldn't matter which one because the effect would be pushed to the looper. If the looper is plugged into the front side, you would need the chorus to come from a pedal earlier in sequence, before the looper. A chorus effect produced by the amp would not make it into the loop.

If you usually want a pretty clean sound on your loop then you are probably fine without having the back end interface.

Am I pretty close?