Original air date: 6/2/2000 (produced in 1999)
Production code: PPG-212
Speed Demon: A race home from school finds the girls breaking the speed of light and traveling to an alternate future where HIM rules Townsville after 50 years without the girls' protection.
Mojo Jonesin': Mojo Jojo offers 4 kids from the girls’ class Chemical X, on condition that they use their temporary superpowers to destroy the Girls.
Speed Demon provides examples of:
- After the End: What Townsville looks like in the bad future; the whole city is in ruins, and the sky is permanently red.
- Bad Future: Boy, and how! Without the girls, Townsville falls into ruin, the Mayor is murdered, HIM takes over and plunges the world into "Heck", literally and figuratively, and everyone the girls knew and loved have gone mad.
- Big "NO!": Buttercup screams this when the elderly citizens tell her and the other girls leaving them was their fault.
- Big "WHY?!": Bubbles while the rest of the citizens tell her and her sisters off for leaving them.
- Broken Record: Future Ms. Keane is so mentally broken by what has happened, she just stands in what is left of Pokey Oaks kindergarten, repeating “I just stood there waving goodbye, and they raced off” over and over.
- Chekhov's Lecture: Possibly spoofed since Ms. Keane gives an in-depth lesson on temporal physics and the Theory of Relativity to a kindergarten class right before the girls accidentally time travel due to extreme speed.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The entire confrontation between HIM and the Powerpuff Girls. He lets them pummel him till they exhaust themselves, then shows that nothing they have done has actually hurt him before turning into a giant demon creature. Rather than attacking in return, he calls in the tortured citizens of Townsville, who call the Powerpuff Girls out for not being there to protect them, hammering in that he has already won and they cannot defeat him.
- Darker and Edgier: By far the darkest and most nightmarish episode in the show. Bar none.
- Evil Only Has to Win Once: Without the Powerpuff Girls to stop HIM, He has taken over Townsville and likely the rest of the world. Defeating him in the Bad Future is impossible, nothing hurts him, so all the girls can do is return to the present to ensure he never takes over in the first place.
- Foreshadowing: Mrs. Keane’s calculation about lightspeed and time traveling foreshadows what is going to happen when the girls race home.
- Go Mad from the Apocalypse: Whatever HIM did to the world in the Girl's absence had left everyone in Townsville in a near-catatonic state, living in the ruins of their destroyed civilization.
- Gone Horribly Right: HIM goes out of his way to hammer into the Powerpuff Girls that he has already won and there is nothing they can do to defeat him. Once they realize it, they return to the present to prevent him from taking over.
- Hallucinations: The old professor thinks the girls are this, suggesting he frequently hallucinates that his lost daughters are still with him.
- Hell on Earth: Him pulled this after the girls vanished, noting that it was easy to take over now that the Powerpuff Girls were no longer in his way.HIM: As you raced through time, the whole world went... to... HECK!
- The Juggernaut: HIM is completely invincible in the Bad Future. The Powerpuff Girls exhaust themselves pummeling Him, and their attacks do nothing. He does not even bother fighting back, he simply turns into a giant demon to show how outclassed they are.
- Just Toying with Them: HIM confronts the Powerpuff Girls to gloat about how he has taken over without them being around to stop him. He doesn't bother to hit them back when they attack him, because nothing they do hurts him. After proclaiming he has already won, he turns into a giant monster for no reason other than to hammer in that they cannot win.
- Madness Mantra:
- "It's your fault...your fault...your fault.."
- "I just stood there waving goodbye, and they raced off... waving goodbye..."
- My God, What Have I Done?: The girls all feel this way as the townsfolk blame them for disappearing for 50 years, prompting them to launch into space screaming and race right back, returning time to as it was before.Blossom: What... what have we done?
- Never Say "Die": In the Bad Future, the Mayor is clearly supposed to be dead (implicitly murdered by either HIM or some other villain or criminal after the girls disappeared), but both Ms. Bellum and a poster announcing his death only state that he's "gone".
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Because Him insisted on breaking the Powerpuff Girls by showing they cannot defeat him and how they failed to protect Townsville, they get the message and return to the present.
- No-Sell: The girls give HIM a beating so severe it pushes them to their limits. Unfortunately, he casually shrugs it off.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We aren't given exact details on how Townsville went from the flawed but idealic metropolis of the present to the literal hellhole in the Bad Future. During the girl's brawl with HIM, news posters mention test scores falling, interest rates rising, Professor Utonium was declared a "proven fraud", the Mayor had died at age 83 and this could have all been avoided if the Powerpuff Girls never disappeared. Considering how well HIM is thriving, it's very likely that he used his corrupting influence to accomplish all of this without the Powerpuff Girls' positive influence on the city.
- Ocular Gushers: Bubbles twice; first when Buttercup makes fun of her for losing a race, and again when the Townsville citizens call them out for abandoning them.
- One-Winged Angel: HIM transforms into a giant, demonic creature when fighting the girls, presumably powered by the despair of Townsville. Contrast to his normal, androgynous form, this one is more masculine in appearance.
- The Scream: The girls let out a cry of agony in unison over what HIM showed them, causing them to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and return to the present day.
- Sanity Slippage: Whatever torture HIM inflicted on the citizens of Townsville in the fifty years the Powerpuff Girls were gone has taken a toll on their sanity. The professor has lost it so much that he thinks the girls are hallucinations when he sees them.
- Series Continuity Error: The old Professor Utonium complains that he never wrote down the formula for creating the Powerpuff Girls, however in “Twisted Sister” it was shown that he had written it down (the girls used his notes when making Bunny). Considering he's old and has gone mad by that point, it's likely he either lost it or his attempts at recreating the girls in the past failed even before then.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The girls eventually manage to travel back in time to the day they originally left, thus preventing the bad future from happening.
- Shoo Out the Clowns:
- The Narrator is mostly absent in this episode and doesn’t say a word during the Bad Future segment.
- The Mayor is Killed Offscreen in the bad future.
- Shout-Out: The episode is titled after the Michael Jackson song of the same name.
- Time Dilation: The girls’ breaking the speed of light is what sends them into the future.
- Tragic Time Traveler: The girls engage in an innocent race home, only to end up going past the speed of light, causing them to travel 50 years into the future. As a result of their absence, HIM has managed to take over the world and turned into a literal and figurative "Heck", with all of the girls' friends and loved ones going insane in the process. With nothing they do hurting HIM, the girls travel back to the present to prevent the future from happening, but are left marked by the experience regardless.
- Undying Loyalty: If all her interactions with the Mayor were not enough clues, during the Bad Future, an old Ms. Bellum is shown holding the Mayor's hat years after he passed away, and when the girls try to come close, she snarls like a cornered animal and screams that the mayor is "hers and hers alone".
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: Boy howdy.
- The Un-Reveal: In both the bad future and the restored present Ms. Bellum's face is covered by her hair.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The citizens make no bones about calling out the girls for abandoning their city.
Mojo Jonesin' provides examples of:
- An Aesop:
- Don't accept drugs from strangers.
- Don't talk to strangers.
- Bequeathed Power: When the second batch of Chemical X begins to wear off, the kids realize they've been tricked and quickly transfer what little power they have left to the unconscious girls in order to revive them.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Mojo wears the classic trench coat + fedora combo when approaching the kids with Chemical X.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Powerpuff Girls suffer this in the hands of the kids. You can thank Mojo for that.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Mojo Jojo’s behavior is very much like that of a drug dealer; first providing the four kids some Chemical X for free to get them hooked onto the stuff, and then, when they want more, start demanding they pay him for it (by destroying the Powerpuff Girls).
- Drugs Are Bad: Mojo and his chemical X dealing are basically a metaphor for this trope. The Narrator even uses the “Just Say No” line when Mojo demands the kids destroy the Powerpuff Girls in return for more Chemical X.
- Easily Forgiven: None of the Girls hold any grudges towards the kids. While the girls claim that Mojo added something to Chemical X to corrupt their minds, how they knew this is never elaborated on.
- Epileptic Flashing Lights: The scenes where Chemical X is used throughout the episode uses rapid flashes of black and light.
- Handicapped Badass: A super powered Jeff flies around in his wheelchair.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The kids have this reaction when, after defeating the Powerpuff Girls, they realize who the guy that gave them chemical X really is.
- Never Say "Die": Mojo wants the kids to "destroy" the girls.
- Smug Super: A mild case, but the episode opens with the girls showing off their powers to their classmates.
- Superpowers For A Day: The Chemical X that Mojo gives the 4 kids is only a small dose, so it wears off pretty quickly.
- Too Smart for Strangers: The episode ends with Blossom using the whole adventure as an example for why you should stay away from strangers.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Said word for word by the Narrator when the 4 kids agree to Mojo’s condition to destroy the Powerpuff Girls.
- Very Special Episode: About encountering strangers and how to deal with them.
