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"Prankless" is the thirty-fifth episode of Regular Show's third season (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 play a prank on Mordecai by taping his bed to the ceiling. Unfortunately, things go wrong when Pops' balloon hit the bed, causing it to fall on Pops, who cries loudly for help, getting everyone else's attention. Skips quickly removes the mattress from Pops. Benson orders Mordecai to call an ambulance while Muscle Man watches in horror as Mordecai quickly runs out of the room to get the phone. As the paramedics load Pops into an ambulance, one of them tells the park gang that Pops will recover in a few days, but explains that he was really lucky to have survived. As Pops is taken to the hospital, Muscle Man realized that his pranks could harm or kill people. Therefore, he says that from this day forward, he'll never prank again. Ever.
Rigby was delighted until Benson revealed that The Park had a prank war with its rival park, East Pines, led by the park manager Gene. Muscle Man was the only one who had the courage to defeat them. This is how Muscle Man found his calling: pulling pranks on people around the Park. East Pines restarted the prank war, and the Park was under attack.
The groundskeepers gathered in Skips' garage and devised a plan to win the Prank War. Benson went to convince Muscle Man to come out of retirement, while Mordecai and Rigby are gonna out the East Pines bathrooms with jumbo rolls of plastic wrap. Skips and Hi Five Ghost will prank the rival park members with expired bologna, illegal fireworks, and "three good arms." Once the plan was sorted out, they noticed Gene and his park workers waiting outside. Gene ordered his men to fire their tomato guns, forcing everyone back inside. Skips and Fives drew the fire while the others handled the rest.
Benson went to Muscle Man's trailer and informed him that East Pines was pranking The Park again. Muscle Man told Benson that he would never prank again. Benson insisted that he couldn't let East Pines destroy the park, but Muscle Man reminded him of what happened with his last prank and declared his pranking days were over.
With everyone pranked by the members of East Pines, Benson brought Pops from the hospital to encourage Muscle Man to come out of retirement. When Pops showed him a present, it turned out to be the old boxing glove-in-a-present trick set up by East Pines. This made Muscle Man so angry that he came out of retirement. He went to East Pines and took out all the rival groundskeepers, then scared Gene so much using trick mirrors that he ended the prank war for good. The episode ended 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 to get Muscle Man out of retirement and save them.
Characters
- Muscle Man
- Pops
- Benson
- Gene
- East Pines Rangers
- 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, for all of his prankster tendencies, Muscle Man does have some limits -- for example, he draws the line at physically harming someone.
Initial Broadcast & Reception
- The episode premiered on Cartoon Network on August 6, 2012 at 8:00pm as part of the channel's Monday Nights block, following the premiere of Adventure Time's "BMO Noire" and preceding both The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange's "Bad News Pears" and MAD's "The Blunder Games / The Poop-seidon Adventure".
- This episode received 2.933 million views domestically in the United States.
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.
- After the bed fell on Pops, the tape that was still on the ceiling disappears in the next scene.
Official Releases
- On iTunes and Amazon Prime, the episode was paired with "The Best VHS in the World" under "Volume Four". It was released digitally on July 30, 2012 for the price of $2.99 in HD, or $1.99 in SD.
- This episode is available as part of the following DVD sets: