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"Prankless" is the thirty-fifth episode of Season Three (and seventy-fifth episode overall) of Regular Show. It first aired on August 6, 2012.
Synopsis[]
Just as the rival park resumes a long-going prank war, a guilty Muscle Man retires from pranking after one of his pranks goes terribly wrong (which almost claimed Pops' life).
Plot[]
In the beginning, Muscle Man and Hi Five Ghost set a prank for Mordecai by taping his bed to the ceiling. However, everything goes disastrously awry when Pops' balloon touches the bed, causing it to accidentally fall down on Pops, who sobs loud enough for all the park workers to come to his aid. Skips quickly gets the mattress off of Pops. At Benson's urging, Mordecai leaves to call an ambulance as Muscle Man watches in horror. After Pops is rescued by paramedics and taken to a hospital, Muscle Man realizes his pranks can hurt or kill people, so he retires from pranking.
Rigby is joyful about this until Benson reveals that The Park had a prank war with its rival park, East Pines, which was led by the park manager Gene. Muscle Man was the only member of the park who had the guts to defeat them. This is how Muscle Man found his calling: pulling pranks on people around the Park. East Pines restarts the prank war and the Park is under siege.
The groundskeepers gather together in Skips' garage. They begin devising a plan to win the Prank War: Benson will go and convince Muscle Man to come out of retirement, Mordecai and Rigby will take out the East Pines bathrooms with jumbo rolls of plastic wrap, and Skips and Hi Five Ghost will prank the rival park members with expired bologna, illegal fireworks, and "three good arms". Once the plan is sorted out, they notice Gene and his park workers waiting outside. Gene, having heard about Muscle Man's retirement, orders his men to fire their tomato guns, forcing everyone back inside. Skips says that he and Fives will draw the fire while other the others handle the rest.
Benson goes to Muscle Man's trailer, and informs him that East Pines are pranking The Park again. Muscle Man tells Benson that he doesn't and never will prank anymore. Benson insists that he can't just let East Pines destroy the park, but Muscle Man counters that statement by reminding him of what happened with his last prank, and declares his pranking is over.
With everyone pranked by the members of East Pines, Benson brings Pops from the hospital to encourage Muscle Man to come out of retirement. When Pops shows him a present someone gave him, it turns out to be the old boxing-glove-in-a-present trick set up by East Pines. This angers Muscle Man so much that he comes out of retirement. He then goes to East Pines and takes out all the rival grounds keepers then scares Gene so much using trick mirrors that he ends the prank war for good. The episode ends with members of East Pines cleaning up The Park and Benson and Pops revealing that they were the ones who set up the present trick in order to get Muscle Man out of retirement and save them.
Characters[]
- Muscle Man
- Pops
- Benson
- Gene
- Rival Park Members
- Mordecai
- Rigby
- Skips
- Hi Five Ghost
- Paramedics
Locations[]
- Park
- Pops' House
- Skips' Garage
Trivia[]
- There is an online game largely based on this episode: The Great Prank War.
- The Park has a rival park called East Pines which has gone to a prank war with in the past.
- Benson reveals that Muscle Man helped end the first prank war by launching a large water balloon onto East Pines, flooding it in the process.
- This episode shows that, despite his reputation as a prankster, Muscle Man draws the line at physically harming people.
Pop Culture References[]
- Mordecai's headgear throughout much of the episode is an army helmet with a peace sign on it. This is a reference to the character Pvt. J.T. "Joker" Davis in Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket who sported the same oxymoronic helmet.
- The scene when Mordecai and Rigby are hit with a bunch of tomatoes is a parody of the scene from Platoon where Sgt. Elias is shot to death from several directions.
- The interior of Muscleman's trailer has a poster that is an obvious reference to the artwork of Pink Floyd's album Dark side of the Moon.
- The poem that Muscle Man says in space whilst pranking Gene is a reference to the poem recited in the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by Gene Wilder's character Willy Wonka during the section of the film that takes place in the tunnel during the chocolate river boatride.
- Gene's headquarters is based off the war room in Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove.
Goofs[]
- When Skips and HFG explains to Benson their plan, Skips says they have 3 good arms, although HFG has 3 arms. Skips has 2 arms, meaning they have 5 arms total (unless only counting the arm on HFG's head).
- Benson's headgear throughout the episode is a green beret. However, most of the time, he wears it incorrectly, as the badge on most berets go over the left eye. Bensons badge is over his left temple for nearly all of the times he wears it. He does wear it correctly for close-up shots.
- Muscle Man's window next to the door of his trailer randomly disappears at a later point during the episode.
- When Skips takes the mattress off Pops, it is shown to be slightly smaller.
- Pops' balloon disappears when the mattress falls on him.
- Mordecai's bedframe and Rigby's trampoline are missing at the start of the episode.
- When the ambulance carrying Pops drove off, the paramedic who closed its back door gets left behind. He also disappears in the next scene.