Freakin' Halloween
From Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki
This is another idea of mine for a Halloween toon. Bubs does some experimentation, and the results are not what he — or anyone else — were expecting!
Cast: (in order of appearance): Bubs, Strong Bad, Strong Sad, The Cheat, Strong Mad, The Sad Kids
See Freakin' Halloween Costumes for more information on what everyone was wearing.
Places: The Field, Bubs' Concession Stand, House of the Brothers Strong, Homestar Runner's House, The King of Town's Grill, Coach Z's Locker Room, The King of Town's Castle, Underground Laboratory
Date: Someday, ????
Page Title: Apples to... punkins?!?
Contents |
Transcript
NOTE: The following notation to deal with characters in other people's bodies will be this: When two names are separated by a slash, the first indicates the speaking voice, while the second tells whose body is being used. For example, "STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER" means that Strong Bad is speaking while in Homestar's body.
{The sky is orange as the sun is setting before finally turning dark in night. Crickets are heard chirping. Cut to a silhouetted long shot of Bubs' Concession Stand, with a tall transmitter tower somehow set up behind it. Ratcheting sounds as well as Bubs grunting off-screen can be heard.}
BUBS: {off-screen, after ratcheting for some time} There! Now let's give it a shot!
{Foreboding music plays, sounding like the music from "Doomy Tales of the Macabre", as the tower suddenly shakes and rattles violently; the camera then vibrates, too. A low rumble begins, then grows, followed by a flash of white light that fills the screen. Then the shaking and rumbling stops. Then the sky flashes a different color once and, as the music intensifies, an energy field radiates outward from the transmitter, while the toon title, "Freakin' Halloween", is displayed. The waves pass over the House of the Brothers Strong, which shakes briefly afterward, accompanied by reverse-color flashing and a musical sting (also from "Doomy Tales"), set to the rhythm of the flash. The same thing happens at the following locations: Homestar Runner's house, Marzipan's house, The Cheat's grill, Coach Z's locker room and the King of Town's castle. Cut to a long shot of most of the Free Country area, with the energy field radiating over the entire view, still to the foreboding music from "Doomy Tales". After a few seconds, the emissions stop and the screen flashes the same way. The music dies down. Long silence.}
BUBS: {inside concession stand} Aw, nuts! Now what's happened here? I gotta go explain to someone!
{Footsteps are heard as Bubs leaves the concession stand, but before he can be seen leaving, the camera cuts to an interior shot of the front door of the House of the Brothers Strong. Footsteps are heard approaching the door, on which someone knocks.}
BUBS: {knocking on door} Hey, Strong Bad! I need to speak to ya!
STRONG BAD: {off-screen; mumbling} J-Jungle... Jungle... Strike... {mumbles again; approaches door, footsteps heard} Hang on, Bubs, I'm coming!
{Strong Bad reaches the door. Cut to the opposite side of the door, where Bubs is apparently waiting. The door opens and the camera then swivels over to the door knocker. But it's not Bubs — it's Coach Z, in his Halloween costume. However, when he speaks again, the voice is Bubs'.}
BUBS/COACH Z: Thank goodness! I need to speak to you!
STRONG BAD: What do you...
{Suddenly, Bubs gasps in shock, then stammers as the camera cuts over to his perspective — looking towards Homestar Runner, in his Halloween costume. Homestar speaks, not in his own voice, but that of Strong Bad's.}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: What! What're you staring at?!
BUBS/COACH Z: {stifling laughter} Go look in the mirror!
{Strong Bad does just that. He goes to a bathroom mirror. When he realizes what has happened, he gasps and then screams his head off. He then races back toward the front door.}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: What the crap's happened to me!! What happened to my husky head?! And my arms are gone!
BUBS/COACH Z: Now calm down, Strong Bad. There's a perfectly rational explanation for this.
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: Rational?! What's been going on?!
STRONG SAD: {off-screen} Will you guys keep it down? I'm trying to figure out how not to get egged this year!
{Strong Bad and Bubs then look back in shock. They see Pom Pom in his costume. He bobs his head up and down like how he usually does when he makes bubbling noises. However, instead of bubbling, he actually speaks in Strong Sad's voice.}
STRONG SAD/POM POM: Homestar? Coach Z? What are you guys doing here? {Strong Bad and Bubs both snicker} Wait, what's going on here?
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: {stifling laughter} Go look in the mirror, Dumbo and Led Zeppelin together!
{Strong Sad goes to the bathroom mirror and, like Strong Bad before him, screams when the truth hits him.}
STRONG SAD/POM POM: I didn't plan to dress up as Pom Pom!
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: You're not dressed as ol' Roundly, you're in his body!
BUBS/COACH Z: Indeed, Strong Bad!
STRONG SAD/POM POM: {stammering} But if I'm Pom Pom's body, you're in Homestar's body, and Bubs is in Coach Z's body... then, what of Strong Mad and The Cheat?
THE CHEAT: {off-screen; The Cheat noises}
STRONG MAD: {off-screen} MY PANTIES! GIMME BACK MY HALLOWEEN PANTIES!
{Crashing noises are heard off-screen. Then Strong Mad and The Cheat come into view, both dressed in their respective costumes.}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: There you two are!
{Strong Mad opens his mouth to speak, only to make The Cheat noises. The Cheat, meanwhile, opens his mouth and speaks in Strong Mad's voice.}
STRONG MAD/THE CHEAT: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, HOMESTAR?!
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: I'm not Homestar! I'm just in Homestar's body! Just like you're in The Cheat's body!
{Suddenly, The Cheat's head (actually Strong Mad's head) explodes as he tries to figure out what's going on.}
THE CHEAT/STRONG MAD: {squealing The Cheat noises}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: All right, Bubs, start talking! What the crap is going on?!
BUBS/COACH Z: {sighs} Come with me, boys, to the basement of my concession stand. I wanna show you something.
{Cut to Bubs, the Bros. Strong and The Cheat entering Bubs' Concession Stand. Inside, they are shown from the usual perspective of the front. They then descend via trap-door elevator into the basement — which turns out to look like the Garage. Only this Garage appears to look more like a laboratory.}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: Whoa! This is what your basement is like?!
BUBS/COACH Z: {impatiently} Yes! Now pay attention, all of you!
{The Bros. Strong and The Cheat sit down. Bubs gestures toward a blackboard behind him; next to him is a glass dome fitted with electrodes and with an apple and a pumpkin underneath it.}
BUBS/COACH Z: Lately, for reasons that I don't care to elaborate on, I've been taking up alchemy. I was working up a way to turn apples into oranges with a new passive nucleic electron alchemy I've devised.
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: Whoa, I've never seen you speak in scientific terms before.
BUBS/COACH Z: Hey, don't insult science, man! Anyways... {paces} though my early tests failed to retain cohesion and suffered bipolar reversion... {Strong Bad and the others look perplexed} I found that I could saturate the nucleo-peptides with theta emissions and stabilize the dormant synaptic cell structure in its formative phase. And it worked! {Strong Bad and the others all cheer} But... not well enough.
{Bubs takes a knife and cuts the two produces in half. The apple has the pumpkin's innards and vice-versa.}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: Aw, crap!
BUBS/COACH Z: Hmm, yes. But then, I quickly realized that all I needed to achieve total conversion was a much larger dose of theta waves.
{He gestures toward a large piece of equipment. The camera tilts up toward the ceiling, where there is a hole that has been cut in it for the equipment, which is the transmitter tower. The camera pans past the tower and into the night sky above. Pan to an image of a nondescript house and the Sad Kids all floating in mid-air as they climb into floating beds and fall asleep. Energy radiates from the tower.}
BUBS/COACH Z: So I just recoupled the Heisenberg compensators to the radio-frequency array to tap the naturally emitting theta waves that occur naturally during REM sleep.
{Energy radiates from the boy's and girl's respective sleeping faces. A nighttime shot of Free Country, USA, appears behind them.}
BUBS/COACH Z: As a result, this would harness the neuroelectric power of everybody in Free Country, USA!
{The camera then returns to Bubs' underground lab, where the equipment looks like it's shorting and sparking.}
BUBS/COACH Z: Unfortunately, however, I overloaded the power matrix. {gestures toward blackboard} This caused a negative feedback pulse to discharge back through the frequency array and across Free Country.
{Two pairs of molecules appear, along with a cut apple and pumpkin. As Bubs continues, energy washes over them. Now the following pairs appear: Strong Bad and Homestar, Strong Mad and The Cheat and Strong Sad and Pom Pom. As the energy washes over them, they trade places. Strong Bad gets Homestar's hat (which Homestar loses).}
BUBS/COACH Z: As a result, not unlike the two produce, our exomolecular constructs were inadvertently interchanged. {cut back to the lab} And that's why we're all in different characters' bodies! {Strong Sad raises his hand} Yeah?
STRONG SAD/POM POM: Yeah... uh...
{Bubs sighs.}
STRONG BAD/HOMESTAR RUNNER: Look, Bubs, it's Halloween night, which means it's time for our usual spree of egging houses, T.P.-ing trees and eating candies 'til we burst, so just go ahead and change us back now, okay?
BUBS/COACH Z: {heavy sigh} I don't know how, man.
Easter Eggs
- At the end, click on Strong Mad:
- STRONG MAD: CRAP ARE MY POLITICS! CRAP IS MY LIFE!
Fun Facts
Inside References
- At the beginning, the foreboding music the plays is the same as from Doomy Tales of the Macabre. The musical stings that plays as the waves pass over everywhere also come from this toon.
- This toon contains another instance of couch mumbling, albeit in an implied form, as it only happens from off-screen.
- While in Strong Mad's body, as he tries to figure out what's going on, The Cheat's head (actually, Strong Mad's head) explodes.
- While in The Cheat's body, when Strong Mad speaks, The Cheat's gold tooth is shown.
- Strong Mad previously had panties in morning routine and rampage.
Real-World References
- The concept for this toon is similar to that for the movie Freaky Friday, in which a mother and daughter switch bodies for a day. The plot is even more reminiscent of an episode of The Powerpuff Girls called "Criss Cross Crisis", in which bodies of everyone in Townsville get switched, often unexpectedly.
- The game that Strong Bad mumbles, supposedly in his sleep, is Jungle Strike, which is a video game made by Ocean Software and published by Electronic Arts in 1993. It was first made for the Sega Mega Drive and then for SNES.
- Strong Mad's line at the end is a variation on his depicted costume's line from Pink Flamingos, "Filth are my politics! Filth is my life!" Except in Strong Mad's case, he replaced the word "filth" with "crap".
