"Popcorn Pandemonium" is an episode of the first season from Rocko's Modern Life. In series' production order, it is the second segment of the twelfth episode of the first season, as well as the twenty-fourth episode overall.[1]
Summary[]
Rocko and Heffer are off to the local movie theater complex after blowing out Mr. Bighead's television while trying to recreate a drive-in movie experience.
Plot[]
Rocko and Heffer are in the car watching TV through Ed Bighead's window. Rocko is annoyed because this is not tantamount to watching a movie at a real drive-in. Heffer uses a remote control to change the channel to a scary movie and Bighead changes the channel back to his program. Soon, Heffer and Bighead continuously flicker the TV channels back and forth, which cause Bighead's TV to explode. Heffer suggests that he and Rocko should go to the Googa Plex Cinemas, a local movie theater that offers numerous amount of movies. But when they get there, they find that the only film playing is Lethal Odor IX. As a result, the two pay roughly $100 for two tickets and buy their refreshments (while waiting hours in a long line). They enter a movie theater, only to find that they mistakenly entered a restroom. They go to theater #42, where the floor is sticky because of a boy's gum and someone's taffy. A trailer for a kung-fu movie called "Enter the Rodent: Part 6" is shown, but the screen is too far away to see. So Rocko and Heffer go to another theater, which is too small while playing a trailer for a movie called "The Doo", which is about an evil hair do craving ray flesh, and an elephant takes the front row, blocking the two friends' view. Rocko and Heffer go to another theater, which plays a trailer for a movie titled The Cuddly Little Poots which crosses over with Really Really Big Man. After having to put up with a baby's obnoxious behavior, Rocko then suggests that he and Heffer should look for another theater, but not before Tammy the Pig (who mistakes him as an usher due to him wearing the same shirt the ushers wear) asks him to stand up to a huge warthog smoking a cigar, prompting the warthog to toss Rocko out in the process, and Tammie tosses the warthog out as well. Rocko goes with Heffer to see the preview of a movie titled Garbage Strike: The Musical, which stars a bunch of rats singing about being on strike. After a preview of a movie about Dracula's demise, the movie blurs out before it shows the feature presentation. Filburt, the projectionists, listens to the guests' complaining and hit his head on the top of the opening of the window, causing his glasses to fall off his face and reflect the light of the movie projector to start a fire, which trails through the carpet and into the popcorn storage room. This causes the popcorn to overflow through the building and Rocko and Heffer run out just in time to make it to the car. But when they find that the overflowing popcorn has caused the building to collapse, they find that it has become a drive-in and stay to watch the film. As the popcorn continues to overflow and bury Rocko and Heffer in the process, the Garbage Rats from the second-to-last preview appear and sing their strike song.
Characters[]
Songs[]
Trivia[]
- The kid in the theater is voiced by Tom Kenny, using the voice that would later become synonymous with the titular protagonist of SpongeBob SquarePants (and was used by Al in "Dear John" and a kleptomaniac chicken in the CatDog episode "CatDogPig").
- The cigar-smoking warthog character predates Pumbaa from The Lion King by a year.
Cultural references[]
- The monster movie shown is a parody of the 1953 movie Robot Monster.
- The multiplex movie theater Rocko and Heffer go to is called the GoogaPlex Cinemas, very similar to the Springfield Googolplex Theater in The Simpsons.
- The lone movie playing at the GoogaPlex Cinemas is titled Lethal Odor IX, a parody of the Lethal Weapon action movie series starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon 3 had been released a year before this episode).
- The preview for the Cuddly Little Poots movie mentions that another Poots movie is coming soon. The other Poots movie is called "Das Poot", a reference to the 1981 movie Das Boot.
- The warthog annoying other moviegoers in the theater by smoking a cigar is similar to a scene in Cape Fear (1991) where Max (Robert De Niro) annoys other patrons at a movie theater by smoking a cigar and laughing loudly (though the warthog does not laugh, as the theater was still only playing trailers at the time).
- When Rocko and Heffer try to escape the theater, they go out of theater 666.
- One of the films previewed in the theater is a parody of the vampire movie genre, specifically films featuring Dracula, more specifically, the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula with Keanu Reeves, and pokes fun at how cliched they have become by this point with the title Dracula: Done To Death.
- The preview of the movie Enter the Rodent: Part 6 is a reference to badly dubbed kung fu movies; none of the character's mouths sync with what they say in the preview.
- The preview of Garbage Strike: The Musical is based on Newsies.
Errors[]
- While watching Mr. Bighead's TV, Heffer uses a remote to change the channel. Mr. Bighead also has his own remote. It is unknown how two remotes could control one TV, although Heffer's could've been a universal remote.
- This episode marked the third time Really Really Big Man appeared, after previously appearing in "Power Trip" and a cameo in this segment's accompanying episode "Spitballs". However, Filburt, who was made into a friend of Rocko's in the former, is back to being a background character.
Quotes[]
- Tammy: Now, let me see. I'll have a mega tub of popcorn, extra salt, extra butter, three juju floats, industrial sized Raisin Oats, nachos, box of gummy cheese with choco-sauce (gasps) and a diet cola. After all I've got to watch my girlish figure.
- Heffer: Hey, Rock, I think somebody spilled something on my chair. It's all wet. (lights up to reveal he and Rocko are sitting in bathroom urinals)
- Tammy: Pummel him! Smack him with your flashlight!
- Rocko: I don't have a flashlight.
- Tammy: Here!
- Heffer: (upon seeing the Garbage Strike trailer) The book was better.
- Announcer: It's not new! It's not original! It isn't even very interesting. But it is coming this summer!
- Hunter 1: All right, Dracula! You're in for it now!
- Announcer: Dracula... as you've never seen him before... DEAD!
- (beat)
- Hunter 1: Our work here is finished.
- Hunter 2: Mmm, yep.
- Hunter 1: Get some bagels?
- Hunter 2: Okay.
- Announcer: Dracula, it's been... Done... to... Death!
References[]
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