Recap / HTF - Remains to be Seen

"Live and let live!"

Airdate: September 27, 2003

"Remains to be Seen" is the twenty-second episode of the second (internet) season of Happy Tree Friends.

A group of costumed Happy Tree Friends are out trick-or-treating, while Flippy is driving a truck carrying barrels of radioactive goo. He stops to let the critters cross the road when suddenly, his car backfires, causing him to flip out. He steps on the gas, killing everybody present, including himself. Later, Lumpy has finished burying all the dead critters. He then notices Nutty's foot still exposed above the dirt, so he pushes it in, but Nutty's arm pops out instead. Lumpy pushes said arm, then another foot, then another arm, before Nutty's head pops out with a moan, prompting Lumpy to bury him in a large mound. He is not out of the woods yet though, as the rest of the dead critters, not just Nutty, rise from their graves as zombies. The moose panics for a while before he decides to run towards his tool shed and grab a lawnmower, using it to destroy the zombies. His lawnmower is suddenly stopped by a pair of hands. Zombie Fliqpy rises from his grave, then leaps onto Lumpy, biting his arm. The poor moose shakes Fliqpy off, tearing off his arm in the process, before running away while letting out a girlish scream. Zombie Fliqpy has no lower body, but he happens to spot zombie Handy, whose upper half is then torn off by him, leaving the legs free for him to use. Lumpy runs back into the shed and has to decide on a tool to replace his missing arm. He picks one, attaches it to the stump... and it is actually a leaf blower that does not affect Fliqpy at all. That is, until Fliqpy leaps toward him again, causing the leaf blower to get lodged in his eye. Lumpy detaches his arm from the tool and watches as Fliqpy's head inflates and then rips open, exposing his inflated brain, which attracts the rest of the zombies. The apocalypse ends when zombie Toothy bites down on Fliqpy's brain, causing an explosion that leaves a large crater where the zombies end up buried once again, this time for good. Lumpy feels relieved after all that trouble, until his arm suddenly attacks him. Turns out, his torn arm has been zombiefied. As Lumpy looks at it in confusion, the arm punches him out.

---

"Remains to be Seen" provides examples of:

• Ambidextrous Sprite: Flippy's beret's crest, Russell's eye patch and Hook Hand, Lumpy's antlers, zombie Handy's broken decorative horn, and zombie Petunia's damaged face.
• Appendage Assimilation: After the truck crash cuts him in half at the waist, zombie Fliqpy rips zombie Handy in half as well and "borrows" his lower half, using his intestines as suspenders.
• Artistic License – Biology: Handy's tail is somehow attached to his back, as shown when zombie Fliqpy rips his upper half off.
• Artistic License – Space: As usual, stars end up drawn over the moon.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Lumpy deciding on a weapon to replace his missing arm. The scene is fixated on a part of the shed that happens to feature the typical zombie-slaying weapon, the chainsaw. Lumpy picks a tool... namely a leaf blower. Still effective, though.
  • In a meta sense, the promotional picture◊ used to hype up the episode hinted nothing towards it being an episode about Fliqpy, Lumpy, or the zombie apocalypse.
• Bittersweet Ending: Lumpy survives the Zombie Apocalypse, but he has lost one of his arms and said missing arm ends up zombiefied. Also, notice zombie Mole in the credits...
• Bloodier and Gorier: Once Fliqpy takes over, the BlurB! caption regarding Flippy and Halloween becomes this.
  Flippy is a HUGE Halloween guy he loves all the blood and gore and scary stuff
• The Cameo: A Freeze-Frame Bonus during Cuddles and Giggles's "brain spaghetti" scene shows that the cursed idol is in one of the graves in the background.
• Captain Obvious: A staple of BlurB!s, really.
  Most car accidents that happen involve a car
• Caption Humor: One of the episodes with a BlurB! version.
• Comically Missing the Point: Courtesy of the BlurB!.
  • Immediately averted after the "BlurB!" caption, though.
    [the Happy Tree Friends theme plays in minor key over a Halloween version of the intro]
    Starting off with creepy music and spooky letters. This must be a Christmas episode!
    BlurB!
    Just kidding, it's Halloween. Christmas would have scarier music.
  • Played straight during the scene where Lumpy gets a lawnmower to destroy the zombies.
    Lumpy is freaked out because he almost forgot to mow the lawn.
• Credits Gag: The credits sequence has zombie Mole still shambling about in the background.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: All the zombies (except Mime, who has pale purple) have pale blue eyes. And for some reason, Fliqpy has them even before he dies.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Everyone involved in the truck crash ends up with horrific injuries. Special mention goes to Mime, who ends up with his flesh fully stripped from his body (his head remaining mostly intact with a chunk of it suddenly missing when he becomes a zombie, exposing a part of his brain), leaving him with bones and what is left of his vital organs for his body.
• Cowboy: Cuddles's costume.
• Does Not Like Spam: Played for Laughs. According to the BlurB!, apparently Flippy is not into Halloween much because he is allergic to chocolate and candy corn (that is, until his Fliqpy self takes over).
• Faceless Masses: Pretty much all the bear-shaped background characters. Subverted, however, when they are shown as zombies, as their faces become visible, though they still look generic.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Following the truck crash that turned the Tree Friends into zombies, Fliqpy is missing his lower half. He fixes the problem by ripping zombie Handy in half as well and "borrowing" his lower half.
• Halloween Cosplay: Most of the trick-or-treaters are costumed. The episode's promotional image shows even more, with three of the Faceless Masses dressed up as a Bedsheet Ghost, a devil, and a bee.
• Halloween Episode: Despite being released about a month earlier.
• Horny Vikings: Handy is dressed up as one.
• Mummy: Russell's costume. Makes his Zombie Gait look more fitting once he turns undead.
• No Zombie Cannibals: Averted. Once zombie Fliqpy's inflated brain gets exposed, the rest of the zombies see this as a treat and shamble towards him instead of targeting Lumpy.
• Nuclear Mutant: The zombies are the result of the dead being covered in radioactive goo.
• Oh, Crap!: Oh so many coming from Lumpy, thanks to the situation he ends up in.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Furthermore, the usual "infection by bite" also works in turning anything dead into a zombie, as seen on Lumpy's torn arm. Lastly, No Zombie Cannibals is averted in that the zombies go after zombie Fliqpy when his brain inflates to where it pops out of his head.
• Recycled Soundtrack:
  • The music heard after the crash is reused from "Mime and Mime Again".
  • The music from "Boo Do You Think You Are?" and "Out of Sight, Out of Mime" is reused in this episode as well. Fitting, both aforementioned episodes are Halloween episodes.
• Revenant Zombie: Zombie Fliqpy continues to be aggressive and out for blood even after his (first) death. He is also noticeably much more intelligent compared to the rest of the zombies.
• Rise from Your Grave: The zombie Happy Tree Friends all emerge from their graves to attack Lumpy the gravedigger, starting with the classic shot of a hand emerging from the ground.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: One of the BlurB! captions mentions the radioactive waste barrels having "lose" lids when instead of "loose".
• Shout-Out:
  • Lumpy running into a shed after having his arm torn off is similar to what happens to Ash in Evil Dead 2, albeit (stupidly) attaching a leaf blower instead of a chainsaw.
  • Sniffles is dressed as a red shirt with Vulcan ears.
  • Nutty's glasses and fake mustache invoke Groucho's appearance.
• Sickly Green Glow: The radioactive goo.
• Sole Survivor: Lumpy is the only one who survives the entire episode.
• Spaghetti Kiss: Zombie Cuddles and Zombie Giggles do this with a brain they're both eating. The BlurB!, in its usual style, hilariously misattributes this as a reference to D2: The Mighty Ducks. The same joke Shout-Out is also captioned over the Evil Dead 2 reference.
• Special Edition Title: Being a Halloween Episode, the intro of course has a different theme.
• Take That Me: Played for Laughs, obviously.
  Wow! That was a short episode
  not very creative either
• They Killed Kenny Again: Cuddles, Giggles, Mime, Flippy, Toothy, Petunia, Nutty, Russell, Handy, Lifty, Shifty, and Sniffles die twice. Mole is also revived as a zombie but he stays "alive" at the end.
• Toxic Waste Can Do Anything: Apparently all dead Happy Tree Friends exposed to the spilled radioactive goo can come back to life... but not in a happy way.
• Updated Re-release: One of the early episodes to be part of the "Classics Remastered" releases, which rerelease early HTF episodes in HD.
• Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: This part.
  Flippys brain looks like it's been worked out enough today
• Zombie Apocalypse: The premise of this episode.
• Zombie Gait: The zombie Happy Tree Friends move like this, except for Fliqpy, who basically behaves more aggressively than his living self.

---