When Uncle King Julien XII abruptly and unexpectedly hands down the crown to his nephew.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Time Period: In a blink and you'll miss it moment, the box of party decorations King Julien fetches is labelled "New Years 1999", which due to the lemurs nature of using old garbage they found washed up, simply dates the series to any time between 1998 and now.
- Bloodless Carnage: A "large chunk" of Julien's butt is eaten off by fossa, but there is no blood to be seen.
- Deus Exit Machina: Although the show has only just started and thus the audience doesn't really know just how powerful she can be, Clover is taken down by fossa early on in the attack and is rendered physically out of commission for the entire day following, forcing Julien to take care of the situation himself.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Julien's recurring dream of how he becomes the best king ever by throwing an awesome party and defeating the fossa. It doesn't play out as efficiently as that, but the similarities are noted.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Although Clover's personality being extremely subdued has a plot reason due to Uncle Julien keeping her on a tight leash, she notably loses a fight to the fossa and is out of commission for the entire episode. Later episodes will show she is quite competent at taking out armies of fossa by herself.
- Easily Forgiven: Julien apologizes for leading his people to their deaths. They accept it fairly well.
- Establishing Character Moment: As soon as King Julien XII notices a potential loophole in the prophecy, he firmly establishes himself as an Evil Uncle by immediately handing the crown off to his nephew, sentencing him to what he believes to be death.
- Exact Words: How Uncle Julien plans to survive the prophecy. As it only says the King will be eaten, he'll pass the kingship on to someone else and return for his crown after the prophecy is fulfilled.
- Hair-Trigger Avalanche: When Julien notices the bass from the boombox is on the verge of causing a rockslide, he plans to invoke this by turning the volume up. When that just breaks the boombox instead, the rockslide is triggered by Julien's scream of pain when he gets bitten by fossa.
- Improbable Weapon User: Looking for a weapon to save his people, Julien makes a promising showing with ping pong paddle. Subverted when it works as well as you would think in practice.
- Living Is More than Surviving: The main problem Julien has with his uncle's rule is that it is all about survival over anything else.Julien: I don't want to survive Maurice, I want to live! And this is not living!
- No Matter How Much I Beg: Julien tells Maurice not to help him if anything goes wrong in fighting the fossa. Naturally, when the ping pong paddle immediately breaks, Julien tells Maurice to disregard what he said earlier and help.
- Offhand Backhand: Julien's dream sequence takes this up to eleven, as he fends fossa off back turned by using his tail.
- Just Eat Him: The fossa kidnap the entire kingdom overnight and even though they aren't rescued until the next evening, no casualties are mentioned.
- Oblivious to His Own DescriptionJulien: What kind of yellow-booted coward would just run away and leave his own people in the toothy mouths of the fossa?!*The other lemurs, unimpressed, simply point at Julien*Julien: Oh.
- Origins Episode: How Julien was crowned King Julien XIII, King of the Lemurs
- Power-Up Letdown: Trying to crank the volume high enough to cause a rockslide ends up breaking the boom box instead.
- Prophecy Twist: Masikura foretold simply that the King of the Lemurs would be eaten by the fossa, not that he would be eaten whole or necessarily be killed as a result.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: With Clover injured fairly early on, Julien notably does most of the work in rescuing the kingdom from the fossa by himself.
- Theme Music Powerup: "I Like to Move it, Move it" playing on full blast allows Julien to party hard enough to fend off the fossa and save the kingdom at the same time.
- Twisting the Prophecy: Attempting this kicks off the entire series. King Julien XII is given a prophecy by Masikura that the king of the lemurs will be eaten by the Fossa at sundown tomorrow. Realising the prophecy only states the "one who wears the crown" will be eaten, he decides to make his nephew Julien king so he'll die instead, then afterwards he'll just take his kingdom back. It backfires on him as Julien survives with Fossa only succeeding in taking a small bite out of him, as the prophecy never stated the king would die.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Masikura insists that nothing that Julien does can change the prediction.
