Fatal Contraption is episode 13B of third season of Rocko's Modern Life. It is the final episode of Season 3.
Summary[]
Rocko becomes the owner of a possessed food-processor. With the exception of the television announcer, this episode has no spoken dialogue from any character, except for Rocko's screaming.
Plot[]
Rocko searches inside his cabinet and finds a can of spredable pork fat. He opens it and throws it out in disgust. He opens up a packet of instant soup and it evaporates instantly. He finally gets a jar of Jeff's Peanut Butter and spreads it on his sandwich. As he eats his sandwich, he checks out an ad of a new food-processor called the Food-O-Matic 2000. Rocko fantasizes about his cooking after receiving the food-processor and throws away his half-eaten sandwich.
At the Feh Mart, Rocko checks out the food-processors and finds a lonely purple food-processor sitting on the corner. He buys it and takes it home with him. Back at home, Rocko tries to juice an orange in the food-processor, but it fails. So Rocko tries to return it to Feh Mart to the returns basement, only to find that all the windows are closed. When Rocko finally comes to the last window, it closes in him, holding a sign that says "all sales final." Rocko reluctantly takes the food-processor back home with him.
At home, Rocko puts the food-processor inside the cabinet and toasts his bread in a toaster, only to find that the food-processor took the toaster's place. Rocko then takes the food-processor and puts it inside his basement. But the food-processor puts him in the basement instead and Rocko finally puts it into the garage. When the food-processor honks the horn in his car, the frustrated wallaby stuffs him inside a trash can. While he plays fetch with Spunky, the food-processor is seen inside the kitchen destroying every other kitchen device. It then watches Rocko playing with Spunky through the kitchen window in envy. The food-processor tries to have Spunky ran over by a vehicle, but ends up getting ran over itself. It tries to drop heavy object on the dog while he is eating in the kitchen, but this also fails. Enraged, the food-processor sneaks up from behind Spunky and runs its blades against his backside, prompting Rocko to flush it down the toilet. He later answers the door to find that he has received a fish from the Fish-O-Gram. The food-processor is then seen emerging from inside the fish and Rocko takes it to the edge of the dam, which he falls down from and into the water as the food-processor startles him from behind. As Rocko returns home, he tries to send the food-processor away via rocket. This fails, as not only has the food-processor somehow gotten itself out of the rocket, but the rocket ends up destroying Rocko's house. This becomes the final straw for Rocko and he drives all the way to the desert to abandon the food-processor. As Rocko drives off angrily, he starts getting qualms of leaving the food-processor to die of thirst in the hot desert and turns the car around on a quest to search for it, only to run over a cactus, the pricks of which cause the tire of his car to deflate. Now Rocko must search for the food-processor on foot.
Meanwhile, the food processor continues to roam throughout the desert. It sees an oasis with loads of food processors taking a swim. It jumps into it, only to find that the oasis was a hallucination and that it actually jumped into a field of cacti. The food processor jumps out of the patch. Frustrated, it drills a hole in the bottom of a cactus. To its surprise, water flows out of it. The food processor runs around, drilling holes in as many cacti as it can find. Rocko, now dehydrated and exhausted, continues to roam the desert in search of the food processor. Just as he collapses into the sand, he is offered a glass of water by the food-processor, who had implemented its own business selling water from cacti called Food Boy Cactus Drink, which is adjacent to the FB Casino. As the food-processor heads inside the building, Rocko stares back in confusion.
Characters[]
- Rocko Rama
- Spunky
- Heffer Wolfe (cameo)
- Filburt Turtle (cameo)
Trivia[]
- Heffer and Filburt make cameos during the fantasy scene.
- There is no speech or dialogue in this episode except dialogue from the television announcer guy.
- This would later happen again in the SpongeBob (a show many Rocko staff members went to work on) episode "Reef Blower".
- It's ironic that there is no speech in this episode because the previous episode ("Zanzibar") was a musical themed episode.
- The episode's title, as well as part of the episode's conceit, are references to the 1980s film Fatal Attraction.
- This is the first episode (and only Season 3 episode) to be animated by Rough Draft Studios as opposed to Sunwoo Entertainment.
- When the food processor is sulking in the desert, he passes by a coyote chasing after a giant bird. Later, the coyote has the bird roasting on a spit. This is a parody of Chuck Jones' Road Runner and Coyote from Warner Bros. Cartoons.
- Jeff's Peanut Butter is a parody of the peanut butter brand Jif's Peanut Butter.
- One of the rocks on the desert scene spells out J-O-E, a reference to the creator Joe Murray.
- The music during Rocko's fantasy is Bach's Brandenburg Concerto.
- This is the last episode to be directed & storyboarded by Timothy Björklund and Jeff Myers before he got paired up with animation director John McIntyre to direct and storyboard episodes of season 4.
- This is also the last episode where Chris Savino serves as the character and prop designer before his department to focus on The Loud House and Rob Porter as the background designer and before Rob got paired up with Robert McNally-Scull direct and storyboard episodes of season 4. However, Antoine Guilbaud manages to stay as current background designer for the rest of the series.
- The can of spreadable pork fat and its questionable contents may be based on deviled ham.
Quote[]
- (the only line of dialogue in the episode)
- Announcer: Buy this! Food-o-Matic 2000!