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"Sleep Fighter" is the thirty-fifth episode in Season 4 (and one hundred-fourteenth episode overall) of Regular Show. It first aired on July 29, 2013.
Synopsis
The guys must help Muscle Man stop fighting in his sleep.
Plot
Mordecai and Rigby are sleeping, when suddenly Muscle Man comes in and leaps onto Mordecai's bed and starts punching him. Rigby notices and tries to get Muscle Man to stop but he is too strong. The scene cuts to the next day, with the park workers gathering in front of the house. All of them are visibly injured except Benson and Muscle Man. Muscle Man protests he never remembered attacking them in his sleep, and as the park workers complained about how his sleep fighting issue is a park problem, Benson argues that it hasn't affected him so it's not his problem. The scene shifts to the night time, with Benson asleep and Muscle Man entering the room, pulling the sheets off Benson and punching him in the face. Benson is seen the next day with bruises and a black eye. The park workers suggest watching Muscle Man in his sleep to try and see what is causing him to fight in his sleep.
The scene changes to Muscle Man tied up in a bed and video cameras all around him with his walkie-talkie on the nightstand. Benson explains the plan to Muscle Man: they will watch him sleep and if he goes after them Rigby is wearing an old police dog suit to protect them. Benson plays a soothing tune on the walkie-talkie that causes Muscle Man to quickly fall asleep. The rest of the park workers are seen monitoring the video camera screens. Later, Thomas wakes them up to show them that Muscle Man has begun dreaming, they see him thrashing and straining against the ropes and making threats and soon tearing free of the ropes and destroys the cameras in his sleep. Soon the cameras show the park workers staring at the screen and they are confused for a short amount of time only to realize Muscle Man is walking toward their van with cameras strapped to his shoulders. Rigby begs Mordecai not to make him face Muscle Man but Mordecai tosses him out and they close the van. The park workers wince and look away as Rigby gets beaten mercilessly by Muscle Man, yelling "The suit's not working!"
The scene changes to the next day and Rigby is holding an ice pack to his head and his face is swollen and bruised. Rigby scolds everybody for being "great spectators," as none of them decided to help him when he was getting beaten. They are thinking of a plan B when Muscle Man comes in holding two suitcases and telling the park workers that he plans to move far away to prevent himself from hurting them but before he could carry out this plan Hi-Five Ghost comes in and says he has something to show everyone. You see a video of an ostrich kicking a ball at a person (the ball just rolls in between his feet harmlessly) and then running up to the person and kicking him in a sensitive area. Hi-Five Ghost says that wasn't what he wanted to show them and then shows them the scene the cameras got when Muscle Man started dreaming. He zooms in to show tiny purple dream monsters on his face.
Seeing this Muscle Man remembers where he saw it before. He remembers babysitting Starla's niece and sitting on the couch and when Starla left, she told him to watch over the baby and he turns on the TV. There is a creepy show with the purple creatures called Huggstables offering to hug a criminal. Muscle Man changes the channel but it causes the baby to start crying so he switches the channel back to the Huggstable. The Huggstables have surrounded the criminal and hugged him causing him to explode in a multitude of sparkles and they remark that "he looks so pretty now". Then they point to a terrified looking troll and rush over to hug him and he also explodes into sparkles. Muscle Man says that every time he tried to turn it off the baby would start crying, and what made it worst is that they played each episode of this show back to back, all 8 seasons with 257 episodes. As a result, Muscle Man was traumatized to the point that he was curled up on the floor crying by the time Starla and her sister had returned.
Using this knowledge, the rest of the gang deduces that Muscle Man's nightmares are being caused by his memories of the show. This time Skips has an idea, asking Pops if he still had that dream catcher Skips gave him since Pops had nightmares about talking dogs. Later that night, they tie Muscle Man to the stair banister and Skips instructs that when he begins to dream they should tilt the dream catcher toward him to make the nightmares come out. In Muscle Man's dream, he is in a colorful play area and swarms of purple dream monsters offer to give him a hug and surround and bury him in hugs. The park workers aim the dream catcher at him, shooting out a pink light that sucks out the Huggstables into the dream catcher. Soon the dream catcher gets full because there are so many of them from all the episodes Muscle Man watched in his dream. Skips pulls out a gym bag full of various dream catcher weapons (harpoon, bow, slingshot, mirror, pistol, etc.) and the park workers begin to quickly suck back up the dream monsters. When they are all gone, the biggest Huggstable comes out and offers to give them a hug and Skips and the rest of the park workers run off to get Skip's van to suck the giant dream monster into the dream catcher. Seeing the skateboard ramp again, Benson criticizes everybody because they didn't follow his orders to put the ramp away. But Skips says that they were lucky that they didn't, because Skips uses it to jump into the air. It is revealed that underneath the van is a giant dream catcher, which they use to catch the giant Hugstabble. After catching the Hugstabble, the van crashes into the house, leaving a giant hole in the wall.
Muscle Man finally wakes up and says he had the strangest dream that everyone (except Thomas) was in it. Benson suggests they all get some sleep, but Pops wants a group hug in celebration. Mordecai ends the episode by saying "Uh... no thanks Pops."
Characters
- Muscle Man
- Mordecai
- Rigby
- Hi-Five Ghost
- Benson
- Skips
- Thomas
- Pops
- Huggstable Leader
- Huggstables
Trivia
- The episodes title was a reference to the popular video game "Street Fighter," as well as sleep walking.
- Skips is shown to have a duffel bag full of weapons designed as dream catchers.
- This episode reveals that Pops has recurring nightmares about talking dogs.
- Muscle Man mentioned "eight seasons, two hundred and fifty-seven episodes back-to-back" which alluded to the amount of seasons and episodes this show produced.
- The plot for this episode was inspired by a fan. In 2013, J.G. Quintel received a Facebook message from a fan of Regular Show with an idea for an episode plot involving Pops buying himself a dream catcher to aid a nightmare problem.
- This idea first manifested as an Easter egg in the episode Country Club, as a dream catcher was the item that was stolen from Skips.
Goofs
- When Starla asked if Muscle Man will be okay taking care of her sister's baby, she's not wearing any lipstick. When Muscle Man replies that he can handle it, Starla has her lipstick back.
- When Muscle Man is tied to his bed, he has ropes holding down his chest and legs. But when he starts dreaming, the rope holding down his legs is gone.
- When Muscle Man tosses the camera after saying "I'm gonna turn your face into a meatball pizza!," his eyes are briefly shown to be open, even though he's dreaming.
- Muscle Man's position on the stair banister changes multiple times during the fight between the park workers and the Huggstables.
- Benson disappears in the last scene when Mordecai says "No thanks, Pops".