Remains to be Seen is the twenty-second episode of the second season of Happy Tree Friends, and the forty-ninth overall. It is the first episode to be rendered in Toon Boom, as opposed to Macromedia Flash MX.
Plot
The Happy Tree Friends are trick-or-treating when they come across a road where Flippy is driving his truck, carrying radioactive waste in the back. As Flippy stops the truck and waits for them to pass, the car backfires, giving off a sound similar to a gunshot. Flippy gets scared and jumps to the floor, only to come up flipped out and turned into Fliqpy. In this state, he stomps on the gas pedal and crashes into a tree, splashing radioactive goo everywhere and killing all the other Happy Tree Friends present, along with himself.
Later, after burying all the Happy Tree Friends into graves, Lumpy (as a grave-digger) sighs with relief that his job is done. Then he notices that one of Nutty's legs is sticking out of his grave. When he goes to push it down, an arm pops out instead. Lumpy continues pushing down limbs, eventually ending up right on top of the grave just in time to see Nutty's head pop out of the earth, rotting and soaked in radioactive goo, but definitely not dead.
Before the undead sugar freak can do anything more than moan groggily, Lumpy buries him under a pile of dirt, but then sees the dead Happy Tree Friends rise from their graves as zombies. Quickly, he grabs an old-time push mower and shreds Lifty, Shifty, Russell, and several Generic Tree Friends, when he is suddenly stopped. He looks down to see that two green hands are holding the mower. Fliqpy's face pops out of the ground, still flipped out even after his death. Fliqpy jumps at Lumpy and bites his arm, revealing that he has no lower body. Lumpy shakes his arm in shock, causing it to rip off, and runs away screaming.
Fliqpy spits out Lumpy's severed arm to pursue him. He rips Handy in half at the waist and steals his lower body, using Handy's intestines as suspenders to keep the two halves together. Lumpy runs into a nearby tool shed, looking around for a weapon and smiles when his eyes come upon a chainsaw. However, Lumpy instead chooses a leaf-blower to put on as a replacement for his missing arm. He jabs the air in front of Fliqpy's face, but only succeeds in blowing a few maggots away. Unimpressed, Fliqpy tackles Lumpy to the ground, with the latter closing his eyes, ready for certain death. When he opens them, he sees that the leaf-blower is now lodged in Fliqpy's eye, causing his brain to swell in gastronomic proportions. This attracts the attention of the other zombies, who gather around the cadaverous commando. Lumpy quickly takes the leaf-blower off his arm and runs away.
As the zombies start to surround the scared veteran, Toothy climbs up Fliqpy's over-sized brain and uses his buckteeth to bite it, resulting in a gigantic explosion which kills and re-buries all of the zombies (with the exception of The Mole) and replaces the tombstones in their proper positions. A relieved Lumpy lies on his back, his previously ripped-off arm resting on his chest. Suddenly the hand becomes zombified and attacks Lumpy, attempting to tear out his heart. Lumpy manages to remove the limb from his chest and examine it. The arm comes back to life, however, and punches him out cold. Before the cartoon ends, the same paper ghost from the past Halloween Specials drops down and lets out a wail.
As the credits roll, a silhouette of The (still-zombified) Mole can be seen blindly walking on the horizon.
Moral
"Live and let live!"
Blurb
The blurb version of this episode was released on October 27, 2015 on the official Mondo site, and was also released on October 28, 2015 on YouTube. It contains these annotations:
- Starting off with creepy music and spooky letters. This must be a Christmas episode!
- BlurB!
- Just kidding, it's Halloween. Christmas would have scarier music.
- Halloween tip #1: Trick or treating in a forest with dead trees and no houses is a good way to avoid crowds.
- Flippy isn't much of a Halloween guy...he's allergic to chocolate and candy corn
- When transporting toxic waste, always make sure the lids are lose
- Remember kids, when crossing the street don't bother looking or stopping, just keep walking
- Flippy is a HUGE Halloween guy he loves all the blood and gore and scary stuff
- Most car accidents that happen involve a car
- Wow! That was a short episode
- not very creative either
- FACT: Humans have been burying their dead dating back for 100,000 years
- FACT: Lumpy just started burying these dead tonight
- he's clearly has a lot to learn
- Nutty went through 23 hours of makeup to get this look
- It took that long because his makeup was sugar based and he kept eating it
- FACT: Zombies are fictional characters and can't hurt real people
- FACT: Lumpy is a fictional character so these zombies can mess him up bad!
- This is obviously an homage to the classic Disney film "D2: The Mighty Ducks"
- Lumpy is freaked out because he almost forgot to mow the lawn.
- That happens to me a lot too
- We used stunt doubles for these scenes.
- R.I.P. Stunt Doubles
- That's the worst case of crab grass I've ever seen
- I think you all need to take a moment and appreciate the awesomeness of the intestine suspenders
- If you thought we were above giving ourselves props, you were wrong!
- The next part is an homage to the classic horror movie "D2: The Mighty Ducks"
- Stupid Lumpy
- Or maybe not so stupid Lumpy
- They say the brain is the strongest muscle in the body and you need to work it out every day
- Flippys brain looks like it's been worked out enough today
- Doesn't matter anymore I guess
- Lumpy got out of that in relatively one piece
- Could somebody give Lumpy a hand?
- Looks like he's already got one!...Get it?
- AHHHHHHH!
- Oh wait, it's not real. Man, that was scary!
Deaths
- Russell, Lifty, Shifty, Handy, Cuddles, Giggles, Toothy, Petunia, Sniffles, Mime, Nutty, The Mole, Flippy, and some Generic Tree Friends die in the truck crash. They are later revived as zombies, and all except The Mole are later killed again.
- Russell, Lifty, Shifty, and some Generic Tree Friends die again when they are shredded by Lumpy's lawnmower.
- Handy, Cuddles, Giggles, Toothy, Petunia, Sniffles, Mime, Nutty, and some Generic Tree Friends die again either when Fliqpy's brain explodes or by falling to their deaths before being re-buried (one hit its head on the ground before falling into the hole, possibly killing it). (Debatable for Nutty, as all of the soil that he was buried in may have saved him from the explosion.)
- Fliqpy dies when his inflated brain explodes with the help of zombie Toothy biting it.
- Lumpy may have been killed by his severed arm, as he was struggling to fight it and was knocked out in the end. (Debatable and not seen)
Injuries
- Flippy is torn in half.
- The zombified Handy is ripped in half by Fliqpy, though his upper body is still animate.
- Lumpy's arm is bitten off by Fliqpy. It later comes to life and tries to tear Lumpy's heart out.
- Lumpy is knocked out by his zombified arm.
Destruction
- Fliqpy crashes his truck into a tree.
- The leaf blower most likely blew up when Fliqpy's brain explodes. Numerous graves are also blown into the sky and start landing in random areas of the cemetary.
Goofs
- Normally, when Flippy goes insane, his eyes turn green. In this episode, Fliqpy's eyes are the same shade of light blue as are later exhibited by the zombified Happy Tree Friends.
- The Tree Friends take an incredibly long time to cross the road. When they start to cross, there is a time span of approximately 15 seconds where the truck's exhaust backfires and Flippy flips out, yet he still manages to hit the group - either that or he drove off the road.
- As usual, the direction of Lumpy's antlers changes frequently throughout the episode.
- Even though Lumpy loses his left arm to Fliqpy, he is seen with both arms intact as he runs into the tool shed. Furthermore, his left arm is still attached to him when he is inside the tool shed.
- When the crash scene is shown completely, the trail of radioactive waste and a few body parts can be seen 'floating' above the ground.
- Since a few episodes hint that Mime can actually talk, he should have made noises with the other characters since he is a zombie would be 100% oblivious to his Mime artist status.
- The Mole should have been attracted to Fliqpy's brain. Blindness isn't an excuse for zombies.
- The road that the trick-or-treaters are crossing disappears when the crash scene is shown.
- Prior to the crash, Petunia and Mime appear to be absent from the group (though the former's severed leg is shown along with the other body parts), only to appear, with no costume, among the zombies. The Mole, Lifty, Shifty, and numerous Generic Tree Friends also appear like this, possibly implying that they were in the area, but not as trick-or-treaters, or they may have died before the events of this episode.
- While a zombie, the blood on Handy's hard hat disappears and the left horn is broken instead of the right one.
- When the truck crashes, Petunia loses one of her legs. But when she gets revived, she is able to walk in a straight line.
- When Flippy dies, he crashes through his windshield and his body appears intact. When he comes back as a zombie, he is missing his lower half. No explanation is given as to why his body was in that condition (though it is possible Lumpy accidentally broke him in half while burying him). Given the angle of Flippy's post-crash corpse, on the other hand, it may be possible that his body was already bisected, but that it was simply covered by his shirt or the truck itself.
- When Mime becomes a zombie, the wrong half of his head is missing; the crash that cut his head took off the right side, not the left.
- The missing part of Petunia's face changes places when she walks toward Flippy.
- When Fliqpy severs Handy's torso, the maggots on the missing parts of Handy's face disappear as his torso is thrown.
- When Fliqpy tears off Handy's torso, his tail is somehow attached to his back.
- Even though Handy loses one of his legs in the truck crash, it reappears when the destroyed vehicle is shown, as well as when he gets revived as a zombie.
- If one looks carefully, when Fliqpy grabs Lumpy after Lumpy replaces his arm with a leaf-blower, he jumps at Lumpy's body while the leaf-blower is not pointing at him, meaning that it would be impossible for the leaf-blower to get stuck in Fliqpy's eye unless Lumpy struggled with him before that.
- The tree which Flippy crashes into is nowhere near where the Tree Friends cross the road.
- When Flippy crashes, Handy's hard hat flies off to the road. In the next scene, he is wearing it. However, he could have retrieved it, or Lumpy could have placed it back onto him when he buried him.
- Some of the stars are pasted over the moon (likely a layering error).
- Petunia's air freshener is torn up when she dies, but it is in perfect condition when she begins walking towards Flippy.
- Lumpy's pupils grow larger after he forces his severed arm off of him.
- Mime's zombified appearance makes him look like he has been dead for a long time. Since all the characters are killed at the same time, it does not make sense that all of the characters have only slightly decomposed, while Mime has decomposed to the point where most of his skeleton and rib cage can be seen.
- In the remastered and blurb versions of the episode, when zombie Mime appears, the outline and coloring of his mouth become dislocated.
Quick Shot Moment
After Lifty and Shifty get shredded by Lumpy's push mower, there is a brief shot of a zombified Petunia.
Note: This is fixed on Classics Remastered version.
Trivia
- The title of this episode is an idiom that means that something (likely an event) has not even happened yet.
- This is one of the Halloween specials to come in both the Halloween Web-Fright and Blurb versions.
- This is the highest rated Flippy episode on YouTube.
- This is the first episode to be produced using Toon Boom Animate PRO (known as Toon Boom Digital Pro at the time), which allows the frames to be rendered, scanned, and composited without any stop-motion effects. However, this isn't entirely true, as the creators never actually got rid of Flash (the old animation software); they just started animating with Toon Boom along with Flash. Flash was also updated (two years later in 2005) to be much smoother. The TV series was rumored (but not confirmed) to be animated entirely with Flash, but at a smoother framerate. Also, the website Cold Hard Flash considers the show to be Flash animation.
- These are the costumes that the characters are wearing at the beginning of the episode:
- Toothy - Splendid
- Sniffles - Vulcan from "Star Trek" (he will dress like this again in a future episode)
- Giggles - Angel (similar to her Cupid outfit in her Smoochie, but replacing the bow and arrows with a dress)
- Cuddles - Cowboy
- Russell - Mummy
- Handy - Viking
- Nutty - Thick glasses with a fake nose and mustache
- The glasses and fake mustache are a reference to Groucho Marx, a comedian from the 40s and 50s who was known for that distinctive appearance. He died on August 19, 1977 due to pneumonia.
- The scene where zombie Cuddles and Giggles slurp a brain like spaghetti until their lips touch is a parody of the famous scene from Disney's 1955 film Lady and the Tramp.
- When Giggles and Cuddles are kissing, one can see The Cursed Idol in the background.
- This is the only time where Cuddles and Giggles share a genuine kiss. However, the two would be sharing another one in The Carpal Tunnel of Love, but this doesn't count as a genuine kiss because they were both dead when their lips touched.
- Interestingly enough, Cuddles is the only character that Giggles has kissed so far, and vice-versa.
- This is the first episode that shows Fliqpy with sharp teeth. In previous episodes, he had crooked, rectangular teeth.
- Lumpy attaching a leaf-blower to his missing arm is a reference to the 1987 comedy-horror movie Evil Dead II. In the movie, Bruce Campbell's character loses his hand and attaches a chainsaw to his arm.
- This is the only episode so far where Fliqpy has killed Handy, Russell, and The Mole. This is also the first episode where Fliqpy kills Nutty, Sniffles, Lifty, and Shifty.
- Although Rhode Montijo is credited as Lumpy's voice actor, this episode is actually David Winn's first time voicing Lumpy. Rhode's voice is sampled when Fliqpy bites down on Lumpy's arm.
- The music that plays from when Lumpy is trying to bury Nutty's limbs to when Fliqpy stops Lumpy's lawnmower is reused from The Mole's preparation of Mime's head in Out of Sight, Out of Mime. It is also used throughout the entire episode of Boo Do You Think You Are?.
- The Mole is seen walking in the background during the credits, as he was walking away from Fliqpy right before his brain exploded, which marks the first time a character appears in the ending credits in the series. This is done again in Just Desert, where Pop is shown sleeping while fishing at the beach.
- Due to his sight and hearing disabilities, The Mole does not notice Fliqpy's brain being inflated and walks away from the area, thus saving himself. In fact, he is most likely the only zombie to survive in the episode.
- This is one of the few episodes where The Mole does not kill or harm anyone despite being killed himself.
- This was the last episode in which Jeff Biancalana voices Russell.
- The only six characters who do not appear in this episode are Pop, Cub, Flaky, Disco Bear (somewhat ironic, given his Halloween-themed Smoochie), Cro-Marmot, and Splendid. However, Toothy is wearing a Splendid costume.
- This was Dana Belben's last time voicing Giggles and Petunia.
- This is the first episode where Flippy dies in his flipped-out state.
- This is the most viewed Season 2 episode on the HTF Official Site.
- Lumpy and Toothy are responsible for all of the zombies' deaths.
- This is one of three instances where a character (or characters) die multiple times in the same episode. The others are Blast from the Past and Better Off Bread.
- This is the first episode to show the eye colors of any other character than Lumpy.
- All of the zombified characters have blue eyes, with the exception of Mime (who has purple eyes in this episode).
- This is the last episode to have the "Mondo" watermark.
- This is one of the four episodes where Fliqpy attempts to kill Lumpy and fails. The other three are Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow, Double Whammy Part I, and By The Seat Of Your Pants.
- If one looks closely when the zombies fall into the crater, one can be seen hitting its head on the side of the crater before falling in.
- The moral of this episode is a reference to the title of one of Paul McCartney's songs, "Live And Let Die".
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