The Wrong Side of the Tracks is the first episode of the first season of the Happy Tree Friends television series.
HTF Episode Description[]
Keep your hands and feet in the car at all times! (Part 1)
It’s going to be a Lumpy ride, hold on! (Part 2)
Lumpy repairs a roller coaster, need we say more? (DVD)
Plot[]
Giggles and Nutty enter Lumpy's carnival, followed by Sniffles, who is looking for money with a metal detector, disappointed, however, to only find scraps of metal. Cuddles, wearing a blue hat with antlers on the sides, brings Flaky onto a roller coaster, much against her wishes. They, along with Disco Bear and Russell, enjoy the ride (with the exception of Flaky) until they come to a sudden stop. Lumpy walks by on the opposite side of the track and Flaky vomits seemingly upwards, leading everyone to realize that they are upside down. Despite Lumpy dislodging part of the cart and a wheel from the track, all four make it off the ride safely, but everybody is left with disappointed expressions. When Cuddles and Flaky get off the walkway, Cuddles spots Flaky's vomit nearby, and stares at Flaky in confusion, to which Flaky responds by shrugging her arms nervously. Lumpy places a "broken" sign by the entrance to the roller coaster and slips on Flaky's vomit.
Lumpy attempts to rescue Cuddles, Flaky, Disco Bear, and Russell, who are trapped on the roller coaster.
Sniffles continues his search for money, becoming once again disappointed when his metal detector leads him to the detached wheel from one of the carts. Lumpy gets to work on his roller coaster, laying down a piece of missing track. He, however, cannot find a pin that goes in to hold the tracks together, as it has fallen to the ground where Sniffles finds it. Lumpy decides to jam his pencil in the hole, figuring it will work just as well. He next begins hammering a part of the track while Nutty sits nearby, eating cotton candy. The hammering dislodges the stopper on a cart, which is on a small hill in the track, causing it to roll down and fly off a part of the track that has fallen off. The cart hits Nutty and sends him flying onto a ring toss peg, impaling him and exposing his heart. Nutty watches his heart slowly stop beating and dies, while Handy somehow manages to land a ring around the peg Nutty is on and celebrates, showing no concern for Nutty's death. Lumpy then notices Nutty's cotton candy and, seeing nobody around, starts eating it.
Lumpy looking through the blueprints to revamp his roller coaster.
As Sniffles continues searching, a balloon-carrying Mime walks up to Lumpy, who is holding a wooden board with nails sticking out of it. Sniffles finds a nail with his detector and tosses it away in frustration, popping Mime's balloon. Startled by the noise, Lumpy turns around and unknowingly hits Mime in the head with the nails in the board. Oblivious to what happened, Lumpy walks away with a dead Mime still stuck to the board. Later, Lumpy looks at the blueprints for what the roller coaster is supposed to look like and then looks at his own roller coaster. The tracks are twisted and incomplete, but Lumpy thinks that the roller coaster is ready for riding.
Lumpy removes the "broken" sign and sends a three-cart coaster on its way. Handy and Cuddles sit in the first cart, Giggles and Petunia sit in the second cart, and Lifty and Shifty sit in the third cart. Everything goes well until the pencil Lumpy jammed into the track breaks, causing the portion of the track to fall off. When the six riders reach it, all of them, except Cuddles and Handy, fall down onto another section of the track. They land on a hill in the track and balance perfectly, but the carts disconnect, sending Giggles and Petunia forward and Lifty and Shifty backwards.
Meanwhile, Cuddles and Handy come upon a small tunnel in the track. The two enter the tunnel seemingly with no problems whatsoever, but when they exit, Cuddles screams in terror when he realizes that his hands are missing. It turns out that the tunnel was so small, it severed Cuddles' arms as they were raised in the air at the time. Handy is unscathed as he ducked the moment they entered, and laughs mockingly at Cuddles as he is now not the only one who does not have arms. Eventually, Cuddles passes out/dies from blood loss and falls out of the cart. Handy then notices that he is headed straight for a wall of glass, and he can do nothing but scream in pain as the cart smashes through the glass and emerges out the other side, with Handy being vertically cut in half at the coronal plane by a large shard of glass.
Lifty and Shifty ride by a sleeping Lumpy, waking him up with their screams. Lumpy gets on a pushcart and begins following them around the twisted and confusing track, soon finding himself being followed by Lifty and Shifty. When he comes upon a string with flags hanging above the track, he grabs on, flips around, lands in Lifty and Shifty's cart, and holds onto the string as they slow to a stop. He gets out of the car, but unfortunately, he jumps onto the edge of the tracks, where he falls off. He lets go of the string, which hooks on the cart and launches the brothers away. Shifty flies into the turnstile that sits at the entrance to the park where he is shredded to death. Lifty lands just short of the turnstile and laughs at his brother's fate. The cart, however, flies down, dislocates his lower jaw, and knocks him into the turnstile, where he suffers the same fate as his brother.
"We hope you enjoyed your time here at Lumpy Park!"
Lumpy sits up on the track he has fallen on and jumps to his feet when he sees Giggles' and Petunia's cart heading for him. He braces himself and pushes back on the cart, trying to get it to stop. As he keeps moving backwards, however, he is slowly filed down by the friction. When the cart reaches the edge, the only thing left of Lumpy is the top of his head and his antlers, as the cart teeters treacherously on the edge, leaving Petunia and Giggles screaming in terror. Below, Sniffles finally finds a coin, but as he points his metal detector skyward, it suddenly begins beeping rapidly before the cart Giggles and Petunia are in falls on and crushes him. Petunia and Giggles land with so much force that their spines are forced out of their bodies (Petunia's through her back, and Giggles' through her neck), and Lumpy's scalp and antlers land on Giggles' head, resembling the hat that Cuddles wore earlier.
The episode ends with someone taking a photo of the dead Giggles, Sniffles, Petunia, and Lumpy, which ends up in a frame from the park's gift shop.
Moral[]
"If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right!"
Deaths[]
- Nutty is impaled on a peg in a ring toss game, removing his heart from him.
- Mime is hit in the head by a plank with nails.
- Cuddles either dies from blood loss, or falls off the ride to his death. (Death not seen)
- Handy dies when he gets cut vertically in half at the coronal plane by a large piece of glass.
- Lifty and Shifty are shredded by the turnstile leading into the park. (Shifty flies into it first, then Lifty gets knocked into it.)
- Lumpy's body is filed down by friction as he tries to stop a moving cart.
- Sniffles is crushed by Giggles and Petunia's roller coaster cart.
- Giggles and Petunia die from the force of the impact of their cart hitting the ground, causing their spines to force out from their bodies.
Injuries[]
- Flaky throws up when upside down.
- Lumpy slips on Flaky's vomit.
- Nutty is hit by a cart.
- Cuddles' hands are broken off by a low tunnel.
- Handy is cut in half by glass (before death).
- Lumpy and Lifty fall from large heights, probably bruising them.
- Lifty gets his lower jaw dislocated (before death).
- Lumpy's feet start to scrape, making them bleed and fly off.
Survival Rate[]
- Amount of surviving main characters: 3
- Amount of dead main characters: 10
- Total rate: 23.08%
Destruction[]
- The roller coaster malfunctions and one of its wheels are dislodged by Lumpy.
- One of the carts is dislodged from it's position and it rolls off an unfinished track.
- Mime's balloon is popped by a nail.
- The pencil Lumpy jammed into the roller coaster breaks and a portion of tracks falls off.
- The cart Handy and Cuddles ride in is cut in half by glass.
- Handy collides with several glass walls, breaking them into pieces.
- Handy's hat, bandages, and tool belt are also cut in half by glass.
- Lumpy's pushcart fell off the end of the track and was most likely ruined on impact with the ground. (Off-screen)
- Sniffles' glasses and metal detector are crushed by a roller coaster cart.
- A roller coaster cart gets damaged when it hits the ground.
Goofs[]
- Sniffles is credited as a starring character, despite his amount of screentime.
- Sniffles' voice is noticeably deeper than usual.
- Handy has more of a featuring role.
- When Nutty, Giggles, and Sniffles enter the carnival, Russell and Cuddles' voices can be heard even though neither of them are on screen.
- At the beginning of the episode, Sniffles' eyes briefly disappear when he looks at the camera.
- The directions of the antlers on Cuddles' Lumpy-hat change several times.
- Broken law of physics: When the characters are upside down, the hats of Russell, Handy, Cuddles, and Shifty never fall off when they logically should have.
Did they glue their hats to their heads, so their hats wouldn't fall off?
- Russell's eyepatch switches eyes twice.
- When Cuddles, Flaky, Russell, and Disco Bear are coming up to the top of the first hill on the rollercoaster, a small particle can be seen floating above them, as well as moving along with them.
- When Cuddles, Flaky, Russell, and Disco Bear are stuck upside down, Cuddles is shown to have a seat behind Flaky, not next to her, like Russell and Disco Bear.
- When Flaky becomes sick, some of her quills are curved.
- The directions of Lumpy's antlers change numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
- The distance between Nutty and the cart that falls off the tracks is too far for it to still be in the air when it reaches him. It should be also noted that the cart did not have enough declining track pieces to gain enough momentum to reach him while still in the air.
- One of Nutty's eyes briefly turns green during his death.
- When Mime dies, blood splatters to the ground. When his corpse is shown, his blood disappears.
- A yellow hard hat (like Handy's hard hat) appears on the broken coaster sign when Lumpy removes it, even though the hardhat was not there when he set the sign up.
- Mime is impaled on the right side of the plank. But when that plank of wood is seen boarded up, Mime is on the left side. If the board was hammered in correctly, Mime would have been on the right side, or his corpse would be upside down on the left side.
- Lifty and Shifty periodically have the regular Pac-Man pupils (Which they aren't suppose to have in the TV series, though this may have been unofficial since this is the first episode of the TV series.)
- Judging how high up they are, the top of Cuddles' head should have been torn off like his hands or at least damaged.
- Handy crashes into the glass wall head on. It should be impossible for him to be cut in half vertically.
- When Handy bursts through the glass, there is an outline where he bursts through, which, if one watches carefully enough, is the piece of glass that cuts him vertically. Its shape changes after Handy realizes what happened.
- After going through the glass, Handy is able the control the direction of his pupils, despite his eyes being vertically sliced in half.
- Lifty and Shifty change positions in their cart numerous times.
- The flags on the string of flags that Lumpy uses to slow down Lifty and Shifty's cart change color between shots.
- If one looks closely at Lumpy when he lands in Lifty and Shifty's cart, he lands in the back. But when we see a closeup of them, Lumpy is in the front.
- When Shifty gets shredded by the turnstile, one of his organs bounces off nothing, even though there was no object there at the beginning of the episode (however, this could simply be considered a "breaking the fourth wall" moment).
- When Shifty is shredded by the turnstile, a few of his organs and a lot of blood land on the ground by it, but when Lifty lands in front of it, there is barely any blood and no organs.
- When Shifty is shredded in the turnstile, his fedora should have been shredded.
- Lifty's jaw is dislocated from his face when the cart pushes him into the turnstile.
- When Lifty is completely shredded, the cart that pushed him into the turnstile is missing.
- When Lumpy tries to stop Giggles and Petunia's cart, he is in a kneeling position. But in the next scene, he is standing completely straight. It is possible, however, that he may have straightened himself.
- When Lumpy tries to stop Giggles and Petunia's cart, his feet begin to file down, but in the next scene, his feet detach from his body with no signs of damage.
- Before he is crushed by Petunia and Giggles, Sniffles' pocket protector is on the right side of his chest, as well as shortly before Mime's death earlier on.
- When Giggles and Petunia's cart crushes Sniffles, there is no impact sound for Petunia.
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