Jack is Naked
Episode numeral: XIV
Original air date: 9/27/02 (produced in 2001)
Jack's clothes and sword are stolen by a white rabbit while he takes a bath and chases it into a bizarre underground world. While naked.
Tropes
- Alice Allusion: Jack chases a white rabbit down a hole and winds up in a strange, strange place. At one point he wears a costume like the one Alice wore in the Disney version. And the monster in the theatre play that Jack mistakes for Aku is called the "Cheshire Dragon".
- All Part of the Show: When forced to act in a play, Jack mistakes the other actors' dragon costume for Aku and attacks it. The audience is taken aback for a brief moment, but then they all start cheering, thinking it's just part of the show.
- Animation Bump: The animation is broader and more fluid to accommodate its more cartoonish premise.
- Apologetic Attacker: Jack apologizes to a man right before he knocks him out to steal his clothes, because his own clothes were stolen.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Jack's failed attempt to hide out in a fairy tale play.Director: (Whispering from off-stage) You're supposed to scream! "Aaah!"Jack: (Barely audible) Aaaaaaa...
- Breather Episode: This episode has little to no action in it (it does open with a monster fight, but that ends rather quickly), and it's mostly comedic.
- Chekhov's Gun: The episode opens with Jack battling a robot slug. He later retrieves its tusks for the orphan who stole his clothes, believing that they were almost as valuable as the robot slug tusks.
- Denser and Wackier: In terms of both premise and tone, this is easily one of the silliest episodes of the show, second only to "Chicken Jack".
- Disguised in Drag: Jack briefly hides out in a play dressed as the Princess of Hearts. Things get awkward when he actually has to act in it.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Subverted. Jack does, in fact, lose his clothes and is briefly chased down in the subway for being "almost naked", but most of the episode has him grabbing whatever clothes he can find while looking for his stolen gi and sword.
- Fanservice: While Jack's nudity is largely played for comedy in this episode, the scene where Jack slowly undresses before leisurely showering under a waterfall does make one wonder.
- Fully-Clothed Nudity: Jack is only completely naked for a relatively short period. But later on, when he's reduced to scraps of clothing that act as a (fairly modest) loincloth, people still point and shriek that there's a nearly naked man.
- Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: The plot is kicked off by Jack's clothes being stolen by a white rabbit (who is eventually revealed to be a little orphan girl with a white rabbit backpack) while he takes a bath in a waterfall.
- Idiot Ball: Jack while being chased by the townsfolk. Just. Drop. The. BAG! Heck, why did you even pick it up in the first place?
- Lame Pun Reaction: Inverted; it's a lame pun anticipation. One of the citizens who chase after Jack, assuming that he's the burglar who stole their cats hesitates to call him a "cat burglar" until the rest of the mob tells her to just go ahead and say it.
- Mugged for Disguise: Jack does this twice in the episode; first stealing a burglar's clothes and then a train engineer's.
- Naked People Are Funny: It's right there in the title; Jack's lack of clothing is largely played for comedy, especially when he gets into all kinds of mishaps while trying to get his clothes and sword back.
- Pressure Point: Jack renders the train conductor unconscious by pinching his neck.
- Shout-Out
- The episode's unusual visual style borrows heavily from Dr. Seuss and Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Jack also assumes a costume that gives him the appearance of Alice from the Disney movie, though missing her footwear.
- Parts of the show's score are a sound-alike of "Big High Wire Hop" by Riders In The Sky, the music used in the Pixar short For The Birds.
- The way the train moves through the air, controlled by a trackball, and accompanied by 8-bit sound effects seems to reference Centipede.
- The Stinger: That weird-looking fairy that shows up out of nowhere pops in one last time during the episode's end card.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Even after Jack returned the cats he "stole," the angry mob still chases after him!
- Visual Pun: The man who Jack first steals some clothes from turns out to be a cat burglar—as in, he stole a bunch of people's cats.
- "A stranger world than this I fear I have yet to visit..."
