Something Fishy

Appearances
Lumpy Toothy Nutty Mittens Handy The Mole Pop Fliqpy (as a blackboard drawing) Cuddles (as a blackboard drawing) Generic Tree Friends (as blackboard drawings)

Videos
Voice-Over Blurb

Previous Episode

All Flocked Up

Next Episode

Without a Hitch

Something Fishy is an episode of the Happy Tree Friends internet series, the ninth of the third season, and sixty-third overall.

HTF Episode Description

Class is back in session! The gang has brought in their pets for show-and-tell but Russell’s scaly friend has more than a passing interest in the school body.

Plot

It is pet day at school, and Giggles, Sniffles, and Russell show off their pets. Giggles has a cat, Sniffles has a mouse, and in particular, Russell has a piranha. To demonstrate its carnivorous tendencies, he dangles a drumstick over it, and the class cheers as it quickly devours the drumstick as well as the bone it was attached to.

Later in art class, the children are hard at work building props for the school play. Russell's fish starts snapping at Sniffles' mouse, attracting Giggles' attention. She sets her cup of water down, pushes the mouse cage away, and waves her finger at the fish, telling it not to eat the mouse. The fish reponds by hissing angrily at Giggles' cat, scaring it away. Giggles, distracted by her fleeing cat, doesn't notice the fish jump into her cup of water.

Later in biology class, Lumpy teaches the kids about the digestive system. Giggles, bored out of her mind, takes a drink from her cup. She suddenly gasps and asks Lumpy if she can go to the bathroom.

In the hallway, Flaky is seemingly trying to decide which restroom she should go in. Giggles runs past her to the girls' room, dashes to the nearest open stall, and all is quiet for now. All of a sudden, Petunia, sitting on the neighboring toilet and reading a newspaper, hears Giggles screaming next door and sees a pool of blood seeping in from Giggles' stall. Petunia panics, wanting to leave but unable to since she's out of toilet paper. Before she can do anything else, the fish comes out of her toilet and eats her before disappearing down the flushing toilet. Meanwhile, Flaky, who is happily washing her hands at the bathroom sink, realizes that the fish has come out of the sink and chewed the flesh off her hands and exposing her bones. She runs away, screaming, while the fish continues to bite down on her skeletal hand.

Back in the hallway, Russell holds his fish bowl while Flaky runs past him, screaming in pain and fear. The fish jumps from Flaky's hand back into its fish bowl, unnoticed. Lumpy then runs over and drags Russell to the auditorium to dress him up for the school play. Lumpy takes off Russell's pirate hat, hands him a flag attached to a pole, and, thanks to his stupidity, puts the fish bowl on Russell's head instead of the space helmet.

On stage, Russell stands on a lunar set as Mime and Sniffles enter, dressed as aliens. Everything goes well until Russell sees his piranha swim right in front of his face. Russell realizes the great danger he is in, but before he could do anything, the piranha started to quickly devour his head. Russell thrashes in pain and chops the top of Sniffles' head off with his flag. Mime, having ducked the first assault, is cut in half vertically by another swing. Russell's skull is now completely exposed as his corpse falls down and stabs Sniffles' body with the pole of the flag. The audience, thinking this is part of the act, cheers wildly. The fish bowl and Russell's skull fall to the floor, and the fish emerges from behind one of Russell's eye sockets, whereupon it belches loudly.

Moral

"Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life!"

Blurb

A blurb video was released on Sep 28, 2013 containing these annotations:

BlurB!
I think this should say, "Rrrrr Matey!"
or is it spelled "Arrrgh"?
Wow, Russell gets top billing and everybody else is crammed onto one page. I see how it is.
Pause and look at the chalkboard! Some cool, old HTF drawings from actual sketches.
A cat, a mouse, and fish all in one room. What could go wrong?
This fish is in need of some serious orthodontic work.
Fun Fact: Most fish spin like the Tasmanian devil when they eat.
except for bones.
A space helmet with a star ...how cliché.
I love this chase scene! It's as exciting as any movie.
FYI: Scolding a fish doesn't work.
Wait! Why didn't he do that to get the mouse?
I don't know what Lumpy is saying, but I can guarantee it's wrong.
Don't forget kids, the fish who needs braces was in that cup.
Flaky can't decide something.
Which bathroom to use!
To be fair, those signs aren't very helpful
Giggles figured it out
or doesn't care.
Dang! Petunia's camping out in there
Light a match
Fun Fact: Based on an actual bathroom experience.
Helpful Hint: Make sure there is toilet paper before you sit down.
No toilet paper means that you'll just end up getting sucked into the toilet and die
So always check!
Helpful Hint #2: Washing your hands is very bad for you.
Russell didn't notice his fish was gone?
Somebody call Fish Protective Services!
Oh Lumpy, always panicking
Poor bowl/helmet placement
What are you talking about? This is NOTHING like Star Trek!
Seriously, get some braces.
What did you expect, they're wearing red uniforms
not that it's anything like Star Trek!
Everybody loves the Star Trek!
I mean everybody loves THE THEATER
that was close.
Fun Fact: Fish Star Trek!
I mean burp
fish burp
Ugh, I need to shut up now.

Deaths

Giggles and Petunia are eaten by Russell's piranha. (It might have been possible that Giggles possibly peed the piranha out before it ate her, and then the fish probably went through the toilet water system and then ate Petunia on the other side)
Sniffles' head is sliced in half horizontally by a flag pole.
Mime is sliced in half vertically by a flag pole.
Russell's head is eaten by his piranha.

Injuries

Flaky's hands are chewed to the bone by Russell's piranha.

Goofs

The direction of Lumpy's antlers change a few times.
Russell's hook switches hands a few times.
Lumpy has more of a featuring role.
At art class, when the screen pans to show the fish snapping at the mouse, the floor doesn't scroll properly. (just a common thing to find in Flash animations.)
When Giggles puts down her cup to push the mouse cage away, the cup passes through her cat's head.
Mittens' body is smaller than usual when she is asleep on the desk.
After Flaky runs past Russell in the hallway, Russell's position (in relation to the door behind him) changes when Lumpy grabs him.
The fish bowl is not big enough to fit over Russell's head. It grows, however, when Russell enters the stage.
The sand and the underwater decorations disappear when Russell is wearing the fish bowl (though it's possible Lumpy took them out so he could put the bowl on Russell).
When Russell sees the fish in front of his face, his point of view is inconsistent with the fish' position.
1. To make it easier to explain: When Russell sees the piranha in front of him, it looks like it's between his eyes. But just before the piranha begins to eat his face away, it's right next to his right eye.
If one pauses just as the top of Sniffles' head gets chopped off, they will see that Sniffles' eyes are missing.
When Mime walks on stage, he is wearing alien ears, but before Sniffles gets chopped, he is not wearing them anymore.
In Mime's featuring pop-up, he has a tail. In the actual episode, however, he doesn't have a tail.
After Russell's head is eaten, his nose hole is a right-side up heart. However, in In a Jam when he was electrocuted, it is an upside down heart.
Nica Lorber's (voice of Flaky) name wasn't in the credits.
When Russell is feeding his piranha, he is holding the bowl with just one hand. This would prove to be near impossible, as he only has one finger and one thumb, but the writers seemingly had to do this because of Russell's hook.
Right after Giggles started screaming, it cut to static.
The Mole is in the audience to "see" the play. This would be weird, since he is blind (although he could listen to it and follow the plot).
There is no blood on Russell's flag when he kills Sniffles and Mime.
In the Blurb, Sniffles' hamster is mistakenly called a mouse. (However, like most Blurbs, the annotations always make jokes, so this might have been intentional.)
The piranha ate away the flesh on Flaky hands while she was washing them, but the water didn't turn red and bloody until after she notices the piranha.
When Sniffles dies, his body fall backwards. But when the audience is shown, Sniffles' body is leaning forward against one of the props.
It's pretty strange that when Giggles took a drink from her cup, she didn't feel the piranha swishing in her mouth (though the piranha might've went quickly inside her stomach upon being drank from the cup).

Trivia

The term "something fishy" means that something is wrong.
This is the first episode to show the Happy Tree Friends at school.
- Though they have been in a school before, in Class Act.
Out of all the appearance characters, Lumpy was the only one who made dialogue. All the other characters either sighed, gasped or said "Huh?," which is just an expression word.
On the blackboard are pictures of Cuddles with a fork, Sniffles, several generic tree friends, Lumpy upside-down, a generic tree friend about to get crushed by a weight, and Flippy holding a grenade.
All of the characters that the Piranha eats are the same characters who feature and survive in the episode Put Your Back Into It.
Mime is snoring as Lumpy lectures the class. This is the fourth time Mime has been able to produce a sound vocally (the other three are Happy Trails Pt. 1, Out of Sight, Out of Mime and Keepin' it Reel).
The writers poke fun at the early debate over Flaky's gender by having her ponder over which bathroom to enter. It's quite debatable whether she entered the boys' bathroom or the girls' bathroom, as when Petunia was eaten, she didn't see any blood or hear Petunia scream. This could be a goof or a surefire way of Flaky being male. Still, Flaky may have most likely been in the girls' bathroom, since it would take Russell's piranha longer to get from the girls' bathroom to the boys' bathroom (however, it could have cut through time).
- This was just for fun though as the creators eventually confirmed Flaky's gender to be female.
Lumpy takes off Russell's hat, revealing one long, curly strand of hair which has not been seen in previous episodes.
This is the first regular episode to have Pop without Cub. He also appears without him in his Smoochie, Milk Pong, and Tunnel Vision.
Mime's death is similar to Cuddles' death in Banjo Frenzy, while Sniffles' death is similar to Giggles' death and Toothy's injury from the same episode.
The YouTube thumbnail spoils Russell's death.
This was the first episode in which Lori Jee voiced Petunia and Giggles instead of Ellen Connell.
Petunia's and (presumably) Giggles' deaths are similar to Lumpy's death in Letter Late than Never.
The plot of the school play is a reference to "Star Trek". The red uniforms of the actors is a reference to the fact that characters in the show with red uniforms are often cannon fodder.
When Mime and Sniffles perform the Vulcan Salute, they are seen with four fingers and a thumb. This is not considered a goof, however, as they need that many fingers in order to perform the salute correctly.
Russell's death is similar to Kenny's death in the "South Park" episode "Spookyfish", in the manner that they both get their heads forced into a fish bowl, get their head torn apart by the fish inside, and are left with only their skull.
In the sneak peak for the episode, Lumpy is smiling while teaching. In the actual episode, however, he isn't smiling.
This is one of the few episodes where there is a large cast and only a few characters die.
This is the second time a fishbowl has been stuck on a character's head, the first being Handy in Shard at Work.
Russell's death is similar to his death in Sea of Love.
This is the first internet episode to star Russell since Get Whale Soon.
On the blackboard, there is a math question that reads:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3+6
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------17
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9

This is the only season 3 episode where Nutty survives.
This is one of the episodes to have a Blurb version.
The Blurb version of this episode was uploaded to YouTube before the Mondo site, much like the Blurb version of I Nub You.
When Russell dies, he resembles Vashta Nerada, a villain in the BBC Television series, Dr. Who.
An episode of Thomas and Friends shares the same title.
On real life bathroom signs, the male sign is always a triangle, and the female sign is always a circle. If one understands that concept, they understand the bathroom joke with Flaky.
Giggles is partially responsible for her own death in this episode, since she taunted the piranha which resulted in it jumping into her cup, and she swallowed the piranha.
Even though Russell's piranha was responsible for all the deaths in this episode, it could be assumed that it was mostly Russell's fault of bringing it to school in the first place.
- If this is the case, Russell is indirectly responsible for every death in the episode.