Upload date: June 20th, 2025

Caine grows frustrated by the increasing reliance on the suggestion box and opts to clear it out by sending the whole group through a lightning round of continuous mini-adventures. As the chaotic day goes on, Jax and Ragatha struggle to keep up their respective façades, while Pomni decides to take a chance on a new friendship.

Tropes:

• 7-Minute Lull: When Caine asks what everyone thought of the Spudsy's adventure, Jax, Gangle, and Ragatha answer at the same time, talking over each other. Gangle and Ragatha finish just as Jax says "I'm going to kill Ragatha".
• Absurd Phobia: Jax is revealed to be scared of corn for an unknown reason, backing away in fear whenever he sees some in front of him. Zooble exploits this twice to finally get back at him.
• Abusive Parents: Ragatha confides in the bar adventure that her mother was emotionally and verbally abusive towards her. She describes her mother as often yelling at, berating, and guilt-tripping her, even suspecting she doesn't miss her.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Kinger seems to be in a detective outfit for the barroom noir segment. Sean Chiplock is also the voice of Eugene McQuacklin, the titular Duck Detective.
  • Michael Kovach's performance as Evil Jax has him playing a meek Nice Guy, calling to mind his performance as N from fellow Glitch series Murder Drones, down to using a very similar voice.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Starting with the stargazing episode, Pomni starts visibly chuckling and smiling at Jax's antics. The most notable case is when Jax, no longer bound by the "vegan" rule they imposed on him, immediately ravages Evil Jax on the field. Pomni snickers but then stifles her laughter once she notices Ragatha's disapproval.
• Ad Bumpers: Parodied. The "President Pomni" segment ends with "We'll be right back after these messages". "These messages" end up being Bubble eliciting a static feedback sound before quickly returning to the show, and the next adventure.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: In addition to two Alliterative Titles, Jax's "Poacher's Paradise" adventure has him hunting the "red ribbon rhinoceros," a.k.a Gangle.
• Advice Backfire: Pomni tells Ragatha that sometimes it's okay to be a jerk. Not only does Ragatha go overboard with it when calling out Jax, but when Pomni expresses concern of the fact, Ragatha snaps at her (before immediately apologizing).
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: A Gender-Inverted example. Jax takes an almost immediate liking to Evil Pomni, a crude Jerkass version of Pomni, and starts to befriend her far more quickly than he did with regular Pomni.
• Alliterative Title: Two, both in P. Poacher's Paradise and President Pomni.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Who suggested the stargazing adventure? Was it Kinger, Jax, Ragatha, or an Abstracted player? Probably not Jax, since the adventures he was confirmed to have suggested both involved violence, he complains during the stargazing adventure that he likes adventures with more bite, and he says at the end that he only liked the first two adventures.
  • Did Jax lose friends because his unpleasant attitude drove them away, or because they abstracted? And if it is because of abstraction, did Jax drive them to that point through his behavior, or was it through other means?
  • Did Jax ever actually have a tail before? He seems genuinely confident he has one and then shocked (and a little scared) when he realizes there's nothing there, and Pomni makes it clear that she's never seen him with one. It could just be the Mandela Effect and Jax assuming his should have one based on his rabbit design, but given the hints that Caine has more control over the Players than he's let on, including turning Jax vegan when he claimed to be unable to influence their minds (which Jax lampshades) or altering Jax's design to dress him up in a maid outfit (albeit, with majority support from the other players), it's possible Jax genuinely did have a tail at some point that got removed without his notice...invoked
  • When Zooble tells Pomni to ignore Jax as he apologizes to her, is it because they think he's being insincere, or because they know he's drunk?
  • Did Pomni give up her chance at batting as a genuine sign of goodwill toward Ragatha, or did she just want to spend more one-on-one time with Jax and wanted to get Ragatha out of the way? If it's the latter, was Pomni trying to comfort Jax over his maid outfit, to ask about Jax's friend, to defend Ragatha, more or all of these or something else?
  • Did Gangle actually hit a home run offscreen, or did Caine make up what counts as a home run like he does with Zooble and Ragatha just to get the adventure over with faster? Whatever happened, Gangle certainly believes she did something right and thanks Ragatha for the softball advice she gave in the previous episode, but Ragatha is only ever shown teaching Gangle how to pitch, not to swing a bat. The fact that Kinger is the one to tell Ragatha what happened does nothing to clarify the situation.
• "Anger Is Healthy" Aesop: Invoked but Defied. Jax and Pomni criticize Ragatha for being too positive, Jax believing she does it so much that it's disingenuous and ineffective, and Pomni conceding Jax's point that there are times when being a jerk is necessary. Although Ragatha hears this criticism, she hasn't fully committed to it and thinks Pomni means that hitting the Rage Breaking Point is when it's okay to act like a jerk. After calming down, she appears ready to use the softball game as a healthier outlet for her anger, but a fed-up Caine makes up new rules to end the game early before Ragatha even swings, leaving her feelings unresolved.
• Animesque: Gangle's suggested adventure is a Japanese high school adventure themed and animated like a Slice of Life anime.
• Animorphism: Gangle and Zooble are turned into a rhinoceros and a flamingo respectively in "Poacher's Paradise", with Jax's dialogue implying that Pomni, Ragatha, and Kinger were turned into animals as well. Later during the noir bar adventure, Jax votes to have Zooble turned into a slug in revenge for proposing the vote to make him vegan for the Lightning Round back during "Poacher's Paradise", but is outvoted.
• Arc Number: The number 57 appears several times again:
  • One of the books on the shelf in the Oval Office is labelled LVII, which is 57 in Roman numbers.
  • It also appears on the spine of some books during the anime segment, when Gangle is drawing at her desk.
  • At the end of the softball game, the scoreboard incorrectly shows a score of 3 to 57 before it resets to 0, even though Caine declared the Big Tops the winners and didn't even allow the Evil Big Tops to take their turn batting.
• Art Shift: The third adventure takes place in a Japanese school, complete with the entire animation style being completely changed from 3D to anime-styled 2D, and Jax, Pomni and Kinger have five fingers per hand instead of four to accommodate. The sequence was directed by Yoshiharu Ashino, the director of Cross Ange and co-director of the similarly Animesque Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: Jax turns out to have quite the lust for meat despite having a lagomorph avatar, but the other characters force him to defy this trope by voting to make him vegan for the entire Lightning Round after Zooble sees Jax chew on Gangle's ribbons.
• Aside Glance:
  • At the opening of the episode, when everyone comes out from their offscreen adventure, Caine repairs Gangle's mask. When she puts it on, she gives a friendly wave to viewers as she walks offscreen.
  • During the Not What It Looks Like moment in the presidency adventure, Jax pointedly turns to the audience and asks if he came in at a bad time.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the Softball adventure, Caine starts the game by having Disappearing Guy sing the United States' national anthem. Due to his quirk, the Disappearing Guy only gets up to two lyrics before vanishing in the midst of the song. Nevertheless, the audience cheers for him as loud clapping emits from the crowd. But when it cuts to the audience, none of the generic mannequins are clapping, and it turns out that the numerous clapping sounds are actually coming from a single giant centipede who enjoyed the song.
• Baseball Episode: The final adventure is a "Good Ol' Fashioned Softball" match between the players and their evil counterparts. However, because Caine is already bored with (and a little threatened by) the suggestion box adventures and doesn't know or care much about how softball is played, he eventually starts awarding runs to the protagonists like candy just to end the game faster.
• Because I Said So: This is the closest thing to an explanation Caine gives for the limits he imposes on the adventures and what the humans can do.
  • He apparently requires for every situation to have "[some]thing bad happening" to induce "intrigue" and "stakes" for the players, but it's not clarified if this was a weirdly specific core of his programming or if he just wants something going on. It's not helped by him being the one to skip the bar scene out of his boredom, instead of leaving it to the players' votes like he originally promised.
  • Zooble suggests Caine could satisfy the different tastes and ideas of every player by leaving multiple adventures open and free for everyone to visit whenever they so desire. Caine isn't so keen about the idea of leaving other (rather intelligent) programs active for extended periods of time, with Bubble chiming in and agreeing, but he doesn't explain exactly why it's so complicated, only that it wouldn't be a good idea.
  • Caine rushes to end the "Good Ol' Fashioned Softball" adventure by constantly rewarding Team Big Tops with points to make them win quickly. Every hit is counted as a "homerun" unless the opposing team catches the ball mid-flight, an unconscious Bazooble not being able to pitch instantly grants Ragatha a free homerun, and getting three "homeruns" in a row is apparently an Instant-Win Condition. Ragatha is bothered by how none of the rules of softball are being followed, and Caine retorts by stating that's how his "softball" works.
• Berserk Button:
  • The very idea of a suggestion box acts as one for Caine, who momentarily freaks out because he is not the mastermind of the adventure, but he composes himself and goes with it. Later on, however, he freaks out when he realizes that the players are enjoying the suggestion box adventures more than his own. At the end of the episode, he takes the moment to insist that suggestion box adventures are a horrible idea that everyone hates (even if this is not necessarily true).
  • It turns out that Jax becomes completely livid when someone brings up the fact that he used to have a friend, so much so that he gives Ragatha a Death Glare with Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises for blurting it out to Pomni. On a less serious note, he is genuinely pissed when Gangle and Zooble make him wear a maid costume, with Zooble noting this is the angriest they've ever seen him.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: During the softball game, what at first appears to be clamorous applause from the audience turns out to be a gigantic centipede clapping with all of its legs at once.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In-Universe. The entire "intermission", an instrumental Disney Acid Sequence that Caine starts on the fly when he sees in Stargazing that the players are enjoying the adventures they requested themselves, which ends suddenly when Zooble asks what they're doing, merely bridging the gap between the Stargazing and bar adventures.
  Zooble: Caine, what are we doing right now?
  Caine: We're "intermission-ing"!
  Zooble: Why?
  [beat]
  Zooble: Uh, hello?
  Bubble: And now, back to the show!
• Big "NO!": Evil Ragatha shouts this as she melts after her team loses the softball match.
• Big "WHAT?!": When Jax comments there's no way Kinger remembers anything about his past, Pomni asks if they know about Kinger's wife. After Jax gives a confused "Huh?" at this, Kinger screams "MY WHAT?!" in shock, due to not being lucid at the moment.
• Bittersweet Ending: The episode ends with Ragatha seemingly taking Pomni's advice to not always be a Stepford Smiler and "winning" the softball adventure while Pomni and Jax form an Odd Friendship. Unfortunately, Ragatha begins to feel excluded and alone when seeing those two walk off while Gangle, Zooble, and Kinger head out in their own friendgroup, dejectedly thinking her habit of constant positivity has made the others keep their distance from her and prevented her from forming a genuine bond with anyone. Then right as she leaves, the mannequin Pomni saw watching her from behind a wall at the beginning of the episode returns and stares at the group from afar as sinister music plays, implying that something sinister is actually happening in the background of the digital circus.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • "Untitled" is the first episode where all six players end up in the adventure, as well as having multiple adventures focused on. For that matter, the episode begins with the players returning from an offscreen adventure, which hasn't happened in the series before this episode.
  • This is the first episode where Ragatha swears.
  • This is the first episode where there's no remix of "Your New Home" in the episode. Unless the "Intermission" theme counts as a remix of the theme, then this is the first time the music is used for a more wacky tone in the middle of a plot instead of a dramatic one for the story's climax.
  • This is also the first episode to have adventures with the players acting against each other. While it seems to be because Jax was the one to suggest them, the next episode would also have the players competing against each other as part of an adventure as well.
• Breather Episode:
  • Despite having a fair amount of invokedmore somber moments here and there, "Untitled" is significantly Lighter and Softer than the two previous episodes. Months before its release, Gooseworx had already warned that "Episode 5 would be the silly before the storm".
  • In-Universe, Stargazing and the unnamed bar adventure are this during the Lightning Round. The anime adventure would have been this too, since it was based on slice-of-life anime, but Gangle was coerced by Jax to end it early before anything happened.
• Brick Joke:
  • Jax gnaws at a Rhino Gangle in the safari adventure before Zooble votes to make him a vegan, with the majority of the cast in favor. By the end of the episode, the voting effect wears off and he gnaws at an evil version of himself in the softball adventure (who just happens to be a nice and timid version).
  • In the President Pomni adventure, Jax (as the Australian extremist) threatens to destroy the office using a bomb which'll release deadly Australian wildlife. Later on, he mentions how this includes centipedes. A few moments later, during the baseball adventure, a centipede is among the crowd attending the game.
  • In the stargazing adventure, Jax jokes about his rabbit form being "the pinnacle of masculinity". Then in the softball adventure, he is forced to wear a French Maid Outfit, threatening said "masculinity".
  • When Kinger comes into the bar with Ragatha, he asks Zooble for a "Corncob Blitz", a nonsensical drink that Zooble obviously has no idea how to make, but promises to "throw something together". Later on in the scene, they actually do serve Kinger a drink with a corncob in it, much to Jax's horror.
  • At the start of the softball adventure, Kinger starts a Rousing Speech of how he doesn't know what's going on, who's going on, when's going on, or why is going on, but he knows where is going on, and it's in that field to play. At the end of the adventure, when Jax starts mauling his evil clone like a rabid dog, Kinger shouts, "WHY IS GOING ON?!"
  • Following Jax backing off from Kinger's "Corncob Blitz", Zooble notices that he seems to be afraid of corn. Several conversations later, they put corn in front of him to confirm the suspicion.
  • Zooble can be seen sneakily placing an ear of corn in the seat next to Jax when he's talking to Pomni and Ragatha during the Softball game. Near the end of the scene, he finally notices it and jumps up in the air in fright.
• Buffy Speak: When Zooble demands to know what Caine's doing during the intermission, he awkwardly says they're "intermission-ing".
• Call-Back:
  • When trying to come up with new adventure ideas, Zooble suggests using the suggestion box again, as they and Pomni had no problems with the previous adventure working at a fast-food place. Gangle, Ragatha and Jax however, didn't enjoy the adventure. Gangle laments how the adventure showed some of her bad qualities as she became very bossy to everyone, even if it was her manic mask doing the talking. Ragatha is uncomfortable with the adventure, because of how she got stupid sauce in her eye, and she wasn't acting very nice during the adventure and made her say some mean things she wouldn't usually say. And Jax hates that adventure for how boring it was, and how limited control he had with doing his shenanigans and threatens to go on a murderous rampage and kill Ragatha if he ever did an adventure like that again.
  • Kinger's cognitive abilities getting better when he is in the shadows under Pomni's desk. More subtly, Kinger stating (indirectly) his favorite color is black is a subtle nod to him preferring darkness to light, because it reminds him of his last moments with his wife.
  • In trying to distract Pomni from Jax, Ragatha references the part in the "Pilot" when she got beaten up by an Abstracted Kaufmo. Jax counters by referencing the part in "Fast Food Masquerade" where she got high because of the Stupid Sauce, although he fudges some of the details to make Ragatha feel worse than she already does about it.
• Calvinball: Because Caine does not know how softball works, he keeps giving home runs to the players' team in the softball adventure despite them hardly playing the game, which Ragatha eventually lampshades. He even declares the players the winner with 3 home runs in a row after the evil team had a score of 57 runs that is then emptied to 0, despite the evil team not getting to bat, something that's also lampshaded by Evil Pomni. It's all but implied that Caine is enforcing this trope so that he can end the adventure early and thus get rid of the Suggestion Box for good.
• Cerebus Retcon: Ragatha getting "high" from Stupid Sauce in the last episode led to some of that adventure's more comedic moments, but some of the things she muttered in that state take on a much different context after she explicitly vents about her home life during the bar scene. Her sadly reminiscing about missing her "horses" (getting sidetracked when trying to grab a bottle of horseradish sauce), and how she felt "hurt enough" from fanciful activities like tea parties and dancing lessons, make what was initially a nod towards her character's visual inspiration double as an accidental confession of how exhausted she was from her wealthy upbringing while on her family's farm. Most notably, Ragatha admiring the Gloink Queen for the motherly love she shows for her young can now be read as implicitly tied to the experiences she had with her abusive and emotionally manipulative mother.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: Amusingly, both Ragatha and Jax use Kinger to do this.
  • When Ragatha pisses Jax off by mentioning he doesn't have friends anymore, she tries to apologize, but ultimately goes after Kinger to ask him about the nearby fireflies.
  • When Ragatha tells everyone about her past and Jax feels uncomfortable after she mentions her Parental Issues, he sarcastically says that nobody will ask Kinger because he doesn't remember anything.
• Cleavage Window: The maid outfit Jax is forced into has a heart-shaped cutout in over his chest.
• Clingy Aquatic Life: At the beginning of the episode, the gang coming back from an (unseen) adventure are all wet and with seaweed clinging to them.
• Closet Geek: Jax is implied to be one. He bemoans going through Gangle's adventure since it puts everyone in the stock anime setting of a Japanese high school. He makes fun of Gangle for it while talking to Pomni, but then continues his critique by specifically mentioning Slice of Life animes are the "worst ones". It's odd that someone who thinks anime is for "losers" like Gangle can somehow distinguish the genre, unintentionally admitting there are settings he would be interested in.
• Company Cross-References:
  • The episode's trailer features two consecutive references to fellow Glitch Productions series Murder Drones and The Gaslight District. Caine tells Bubble that he'll be absent for the trailer because he has to take a flight to Copper-9 from the former show, and Bubble mistakenly says the latter show's title in place of "The Amazing Digital Circus" when introducing the trailer (complete with a brief shot of Jack the Rat upon receiving a headshot from Mud's sniper rifle, taken from The Gaslight District's pilot).
  • In the episode itself, the anime adventure's classroom features various concept artworks for The Gaslight District (mainly Melancholy), one of Glitch's other shows, on a billboard, plus a symbol of the Black Hand on a back blackboard. Amusingly enough, one of the concept arts (which later turned out to be a sketch for a teaser poster for the series' season announcement video) has a text in The Gaslight District's trademark Cypher Language, which literally translates to "GASLIGHT DISTRICT REFERENCE".
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Jax tries to buddy up with Pomni in the anime adventure, she reminds him, "You threw me out of a moving truck."
  • Jax references "the figurine thing" from "Candy Carrier Chaos!", which makes Gangle skip to the next adventure.
  • The Moon from the pilot briefly reappears in the "Stargazing" section, and even starts to make the moves on Caine again before getting interrupted.
  • Right at the end of the "Intermission" scene, Kaufmo's door can be seen for a few seconds when Jax is running through the hall.
  • Pomni asks the gang if they know about Kinger's wife. Kinger freaks out when Pomni mentions her... but he calms down when Zooble brings his drink over.
  • Ragatha's fear of centipedes comes up again after being mentioned in the pilot. Not only does Jax mess with her by claiming there are some inside the bomb Pomni has to defuse, later on in the softball adventure a giant one is inexplicably one of the audience members watching the game. Ragatha is highly disturbed when she notices.
  • Gangle hits a home run because of Ragatha's advice in the last episode.
  • Kinger detaches his hand briefly, like he did in the pilot, when Jax snatches the bat from his hand along with the hand still holding it. Also, he is still able to take out his own eye and use it as a projectile when he plans to use it to replace their eaten softball. But just as he detaches it, he decides to use Zooble's big eye instead, for it's proper softball size.
  • Caine's notebook is seemingly full of nothing but drawings of bees, like the cool bee he drew in "The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor".
• Cross-Popping Veins: During the anime adventure, Jax briefly gets a red anger mark as he tells the group to skip it.
• Cue the Falling Object: After Caine reads his horrifying adventure ideas to the group, Gangle's comedy mask breaks in half and falls off her face.
• Cultural Translation:
  • In the "President Pomni" adventure, some of the foreign dubs changed the participating countries in the war (originally Australia and New Zealand). In the German dub, it's a war between Austria and Switzerland. In the Spanish dub, it's a war between Argentina and Uruguay (and the threat is from an Argentinian comic); with Caine commenting it's hard to believe that Jax is Argentinian because he's such a good comedian, instead of his original remark about Jax being a good actor despite his vegan status.
  • Downplayed for when the Disappearing Guy sings before the baseball match. The Star-Spangled Banner is typically replaced with the country's respective national anthem in some of the dubs. ^note Specifically, in Dutch, Filipino, German, Indonesian, Portuguese, and Russian. The Ukrainian dub does not use a national anthem at all: instead, the Disappearing Guy sings a Soviet-era Ukrainian folk song. In Brazilian dub, he sings "Evidências", of Chitãozinho & Xororó.
• Culture Equals Costume: For his role as an Australian Mad Bomber in the "President Pomni" adventure, Jax shows up wearing Gummigoo's slouch hat and a Steve Irwin-esque set of khakis (repurposed, ironically, from his Evil Poacher outfit from the preceding segment).
• Cute Indignant Girl Stance: After Gangle puts Jax in a maid outfit against his will, he becomes so enraged and embarrassed that he winds up sticking his fists out at his sides in this manner, almost like the suit itself is subtly compelling him to act more like a kawaii anime girl.
• A Day in the Limelight: Ragatha and Jax share the spotlight in this episode, with Ragatha learning not to bottle up her negative emotions and Jax having bits of his story in the Circus revealed before forming a friendship with Pomni.
• Death Glare: Jax gives Ragatha an icy cold glare after she blurts out "Not anymore" to Pomni's question about him having any real friends.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The bar adventure has the group and most of the setting colored in black-and-white, though their bodies do regain color whenever they turn into the light coming from behind them and their drinks similarly are colored in.
• Deteriorates into Gibberish: Bazooble's introduction has this happen:
  Bazooble: I'm Bazooble! Yibbadoobadabbadoobadubbadubbi...
• Dialogue Reversal:
  • During the bar scene, Jax mocks Zooble for being a bartender and tattoo artist in the human world:
    Jax: A bartender AND a tattoo artist. You're killin' me, Zoobie.
    Zooble: What do you mean when you say that? Do you have, like, an actual point?
    Jax: I'm just havin' fun. I forgot you hate fun.
  • Later at the softball stadium, Jax is forced to wear a maid outfit, and Zooble mocks him back:
    Zooble: Seems fitting for you, though. I figured you would be into this.
    Jax: What does that mean? What's that supposed to mean?
    Zooble: I'm just havin' fun. I forgot you hate fun.
• Diegetic Visual Effects: The first two times the voting box is used, it appears on-screen as a HUD element, and no one interacts with it directly. The third time it's called, during the softball game to vote to put Jax in a maid outfit, it pops up behind Jax who turns around to look at it, revealing that it appears in the scene with them.
• Disney Acid Sequence: Caine's intermission compiles a lot of crazy, random animations. Zooble is quick to lampshade just how bizarre and meaningless it is.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • When Jax barges into the "President Pomni" adventure, he cuts himself off after seeing Kinger slowly rise up from under Pomni's desk. It prompts him to turn to the audience and say, "Did I pick a bad time?"
  • Jax and Ragatha's argument over Pomni during the softball adventure looks like parents arguing about the way they should raise their child. Pomni even tells them that she can think for herself.
• The Dog Bites Back: Gangle manages to get one on Jax by calling a vote to put him in a maid dress during the softball game, possibly at Zooble's suggestion. She even giggles to herself once the vote passes.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In the Softball adventure, the players force Jax into a maid outfit, much to his anger. When he steps onto field, Bazooble mocks his dress, but Evil Jax tries to cheer Jax by telling him he doesn't look so bad, but he dismisses his sympathy simply for his hatred against him.
  Jax: I don't want to hear that! I want you DEAD!
• The Door Slams You: When Jax enters the President Pomni adventure, he kicks through the door, slamming Zooble behind it, causing them to break into pieces.
• Double Take: Kinger asks Ragatha if she could go and help him count his eggs before they hatch. Ragatha casually agrees and walks away, but then changes the look on her face when she realizes how out of left field the errand itself actually is and asks, "Wait, what?"
• Dragged into Drag: When everyone but Pomni and Jax votes to have the latter wear a French Maid Outfit, he is not happy about this whatsoever.
• Drink-Based Characterization: All the players order something different during the bar adventure, aside from Zooble, who acts as the bartender for everyone else. Pomni and Gangle don't order theirs out loud, but have been identified by Gooseworx herself.
  • Pomni's drink is a Negroni, a bittersweet and herbal cocktail of purely Italian origin. The mixture of these flavors suggests those who order it have a personality just as complex as the drink they order; they live their life a bit on-edge but still in control of themselves, capable of deep and meaningful conversations with those who get to know them. The cocktail's Italian roots might also bring to mind comparisons between Pomni's avatar being a cartoon jester clown and one of the most famous introspective Sad Clowns in fiction, Pagliacci.
  • Jax orders a Whiskey Sour, minus any mixtures of egg whites due to his forced veganism for the day. Bolstered by the usual stereotype of tough guys preferring strong stuff like whiskey, the whiskey sour is a relatively mild drink that's specifically thought to be the typical choice of younger men somewhat new to drinking but are still expected to get something that makes them look more mature. Not only does this align with Jax being both one of the youngest players at 22 ^note nearly Tying with Zooble at the same age yet beaten out by a difference of six months. and the lightest weight of the entire cast (which he'd protest if called out on it), but it also plays into his toxic insistence of putting on a tough act in front of others when he's actually not as uncaring as he leads them to believe.
  • Gangle has a Long Island Iced Tea, infamous for an extremely potent alcohol concentration easily hidden by its very sweet flavor. For the inexperienced, especially for college students it's rather popular among, the cocktail's taste masks its true nature for a short while and can lead to glasses emptying faster than they should, meaning it's possible for an unprepared drinker to intoxicate themselves into a dizzying stupor before they've even realized what's happening. It's much like how Gangle herself can only briefly hold onto happiness before her comedy mask easily breaks. This extends to the nature of her manager persona, whose assertive behavior can come across as sudden for people used to her tragedy mask and hides beneath a veneer of cheerful smiles, yet still isn't enough to stop any doubt and dread from setting in and building up over time for both her and the people around her.
  • Ragatha orders a Cosmopolitan, a pink fruity beverage with a thin slice of citrus. It's a cocktail often associated with femininity and class. As revealed by Ragatha herself, she used to work in real estate and came from a family wealthy enough to have their own farm, but this rather sophisticated life also involved an emotionally abusive mother.
  • Kinger asks for a "Corncob Blitz", something completely made up by him and mainly serves to properly introduce Jax's fear of corn into the show. Zooble decides to improvise a yellow drink garnished with a corncob slice. This characterizes both Kinger and Zooble; the former displays his imaginative mind and Cloudcuckoolander tendencies to comedic effect, while letting the latter reveal they used to be a bartender after Pomni mentions they must be familiar with mixology enough to invent something fitting the name on the spot.
• Eagleland: With Jax doing most of the writing for the "President Pomni" adventure, the United States is depicted as the Boorish Type. The character brief he provided for Kinger shows America is mainly concerned with Playing Both Sides of the Australia versus New Zealand conflict for their own personal gain, from annexing their territories to harvesting kangaroos for meat, while trying to keep as much of a distance from the mess as possible. None of Pomni's staff in the Secret Service are able to help her defuse the Australian extremist's bomb beyond words of advice. Oh, and Jax walks in on the Madam President while one of her assistants is in a compromising position underneath her desk.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even Jax looks somewhat concerned when Ragatha talks about her relationship with her mother. He sports a serious look on his face when she trails off, but looks down at his drink contemplatively after Ragatha tries to move past her venting.
  • Earlier in the episode, even he looks repulsed at the new suggestions for adventures that Caine proposed to the cast, this being killed off one by one at a chocolate factory, dealing with a sentient cardiovascular system going to war with the United States military and dealing with a mean telepathic talking dog in a nuclear wasteland.
• Evil Brit: Evil Ragatha has a posh British accent.
• Evil Doppelgänger: In the "Good Ol' Fashioned Softball" adventure, the group faces off against "evil" color-inverted versions of themselves: a swearing Jerkass Pomni, a hammy Ragatha who cackles constantly, a friendly, timid Jax, a zany "Bazooble", a dictator-like Kinger named "Coach Dictatorer", and an aggressive Orbsman in place of Gangle. Gangle asks why she doesn't have a doppelganger of her own.
• Evil Is Hammy: Evil Ragatha seriously hams it up every time she's onscreen, in contrast to the more subdued regular Ragatha.
• Evil Knockoff: For the softball game scenario, Caine provides "evil" versions of the main cast (save for Gangle) and Orbsman to serve as the opposing team. Ragatha says they weren't part of her suggestion.
• Evil Poacher: Jax happily takes on this role for "Poacher's Paradise". Considering that he not only suggested the scenario, but was also probably the one who chose the title, he's gladly taking on the negative connotations tied to "poacher" instead of picking the more neutral term of "hunter".
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A subtle one, but Jax's muttering about how Caine made him vegan visibly makes him realise that Caine likely wasn't being honest about being unable to control minds.
• Expy Coexistence:
  • During the Film Noir segment, Jax makes a joke about Ragatha getting high at McDonald's, when in reality that happened at Spudsy's, a fictional restaurant that imitates a McDonald's.
  • Caine is based off of AM from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and at one point he describes the plot of A Boy and His Dog, which is written by the same author, implying that the story exists in this universe.
• Extreme Omnivore: The centipede in the softball adventure catches one of the balls, and then eats it in one gulp, complete with a cartoony chomping sound.
• Face Plant: At the beginning, the gang comes back from an unseen adventure, all sopping wet and looking drained; after a few steps, Pomni falls flat on her face.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Jax spent his entire time in the Circus believing he had a tail until Pomni pointed out that he actually didn't.
  • During the Bar adventure, Jax says to Pomni, "You ever had any jobs? Or are you too young for that?" Even though they're in a bar, which is a place where only adults are allowed.
  • The softball game is halted after the centipede in the audience eats the ball. There are several balls in the dugout (one on the bench right next to where Ragatha and Pomni were sitting) but no one thinks to use these; Kinger tries to use Zooble's eye as a substitute, with Zooble leaving the dugout to yell at Caine to spawn in a replacement ball.
• Fangs Are Evil: Evil Pomni and Evil Ragatha both have a mouth full of sharp teeth.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Before the vote, you can see Gangle and Zooble snickering in the background and then looking at Jax. When the vote call forces Jax to dress up as a maid against his wishes, you can see that Gangle is the only one who doesn't cast a vote. Turns out that she was the one who called it in the first place.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Ragatha fails to comfort Pomni, Jax claims that her charm "is starting to wear off". This episode shows the limits of her positive mindset, how others are repelled by it, and how self-destructive it is for Ragatha.
  • When Pomni lifts her head right after Jax makes his comment, she briefly sees a Mannequin NPC watching her from behind a wall, who quickly goes back to hiding when it's spotted. It's easy to forget before it makes its more prominent appearance at the end of the episode.
  • In the bar, a poster advertising the Big Tops team (and a C&A logo) can be spotted behind Pomni.
  • Kinger says blue is his favourite colour, which is more significant in Episode 7 with the blue button.
  • The fact Caine can make Jax vegan despite his previous claim he couldn't control minds is the third hint that he can control minds, although this time in the form of a vote.
  • Caine is shown flipping through some of his drawing of bees early in the episode. At first there's one, then two, and then one bee is dressed like Caine (with big eyes and a cane), and the other has sharp teeth and is still round like Bubble. However, the Bubble-esque bee looks angry, and later in the episode, Bubble uncharacteristically tells Caine to die.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Instead of just one adventure like in previous episodes, Caine creates several in a lightning round.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Jax enters into the Oval Office, it's possible to read the labels on the books on the shelf. One reads XDDCC, Pomni's first name in the pilot. Another has LVII, which is 57 in Roman numerals.
  • Everyone is given briefs about their characters during the presidency adventure (except Pomni). Kinger shows his:
    Name: Mr. Kinger
    Role: Assistant to the President
    BRIEF: Australia and New Zealand are at WAR!!
    Motivation: How can we make this not our problem and still benefit? Is there a way to come out of this whole thing with ownership of both Australia and New Zealand? Does Kangaroo taste good?
    NOTE!: NO FUNNY BUSINESS! DO NOT EMBARRASS THE PRESIDENT OR THIS GREAT NATION! >:(
    In case of character breaks: use the ZONE OF COMTEMPLATION™ under the Resolute Desk. Don't worry, a baby head lamp has already been installed.
    
    And remember... HAVE FUN! :)
  • After witnessing Gangle's less-than-ideal attempt at being a New Zealand extremist bomber, Jax can be seen smiling eye to eye before the whole room is engulfed in an explosion, implying that he's been counting on that to happen and her having that reaction in general.
  • During the anime adventure, various artworks of The Gaslight District, mainly concept drawings of Melancholy and the Black Hand's symbol, are present on both the classroom's billboard and back blackboard.
  • If you pause at Gangle's first appearance on that same segment, when she is drawing at her desk and just before she hides her paper sheets, she was representing Ragatha kissing another woman.
  • For all of a split second during the "Intermission" sequence, Kaufmo's door can be seen with a red X crossed over it. Another door with the former occupant of the room, a frog character, can be seen immediately after. Gooseworx states this character was called Ribbit, and it's implied from both Ragatha's Wham Line below and Jax stopping at his door that he was friends with them before they abstracted.
  • The "RADICAL!" sign from "Pilot" can be found on one of the walls of the bar during the Noir adventure.
  • The label on one of the bottles in the same adventure reads, "Digital Caine Berry".
  • In the softball adventure, the voting box appears behind Jax at another angle, meaning it exists physically.
  • When the vote to force Jax into a maid's dress comes out, his name is checked under "no" automatically and Pomni is the only other that joins him. It's a hint she's warming up to him.
  • Banners and advertisements based on NPCs, previous adventures, Abstracted players, and various real life products can be found in the softball adventure, ranging from painfully obvious advice by the Sun and the Moon to invoking Perverse Sexual Lust for Gummigoo.
    The Sun: Can't wake up? Try opening your eyes.
    The Moon: Tired? Try going to sleep.
    GatorGoo: It's all you're thirsting for.
  • The C&A logo is visible on several billboards and pieces of equipment throughout the stadium.
  • When Kinger calls Jax up to bat and hands him a bat, Jax snatches the bat along with Kinger’s hand still gripping on it briefly.
  • The Utah teapots appear several times:
    • At the beginning of the episode, there is one on the coffee table in front of where Zooble sits.
    • One can be seen behind Gangle in the anime segment.
    • It could be difficult to spot it because it's painted in dark shades of grey, but there is a painting depicting Utah teapots in the bar, visible when the camera angles to frame Kinger and Zooble at the same time.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: While Gangle alluded to it in the previous episode, this is the episode where it becomes most apparent how alone Ragatha is in the Circus, despite (or rather, because of) her kindness and positivity. Because of how constant it is, it comes off as disingenuous to everyone else, and as such she has no one with whom she's really close to. The episode ends with everyone else breaking off in groups that genuinely enjoy each other's company while Ragatha is by herself.
• French Maid Outfit: In the softball adventure, Jax is forced to wear one of these thanks to a vote by the other players after heckling Ragatha. To say he is frustrated and embarrassed about it is a massive understatement. It is shown before that Zooble whispered to Gangle to start the vote and only Jax and Pomni were against it (Jax didn't know until the effect starts, and in Pomni's case, it's because she's starting to warm up to him).
• Fridge Horror: In-Universe example. Jax's delayed realisation that his forced veganism doesn't match up with what Caine said about not being able to control the cast's minds.
• Funny Background Event:
  • If you look at Jax during Gangle's failed attempt at being a New Zealander terrorist, you can see his smile growing wider and wider up to the point where her time bomb explodes. Also, if you look at Zooble, you can see they're silently sighing, probably out of relief because they guessed the adventure would almost be over. Ragatha is trying a Futile Hand Reach at the last second while Pomni has an Eye Take.
  • While Jax is poking fun at Ragatha for "getting high at McDonalds and telling Gangle to kill herself", Kinger is behind him just nodding along... even though he wasn't even part of the previous episode's adventure anyway.
  • Doubling as a Brick Joke, Zooble places a corncob behind Jax on the bench from the side of the screen. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot it happening, but it takes two actual minutes in the episode for Jax to notice.
  • Evil Ragatha's reaction to losing the softball game is to melt into the ground while screaming like The Wicked Witch of the West.
• Genre Roulette: Caine decides to have a "Lightning Round" of sorts to make use of the suggestion box the cast filled and he has ignored before the previous episode. This trope is invoked so they can have multiple adventures in succession, switching to a new one if the majority votes to move on. The episode switches between hunting game, president simulator, anime Slice of Life, and simple stargazing before Caine switches to a noir bar and finally sports game.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: For their last adventure in this episode, the Big Tops play a game of softball against the Evil Big Tops.
• Great White Hunter: Jax's first adventure puts him in the role of an Evil Poacher on safari with the others as animals he intends to hunt. He shoots Gangle — transformed into a rhinoceros — and then starts trying to eat her ribbon body like a dog gnawing a chew toy. This prompts the others to force him to be Vegetarian for a Day.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: The rules of the "softball" game bear only a passing resemblance to the actual rules.
  • A pitch when the batter is obviously not ready is allowed to stand.
  • Hitting the ball back to the pitcher hard enough to shatter them into pieces is counted as a home run.
  • The pitcher still being unconscious for the next batter is also counted as a home run.
  • The "Evil Big Tops" somehow score 57 points despite not having been up to bat.
  • Three "home runs" in a row is counted as an automatic win for the characters, with their opponent's score being reset to zero, in the top of the first inning.
    Ragatha: Uh, that's... not how softball works.
    Caine: Well, that's how my softball works. We're done! Hooray!
• Hate at First Sight: Jax toward Evil Jax, most likely because Jax hates seeing himself acting meek and passive. As soon as Evil Jax wishes the Big Tops luck in the softball game, Jax declares his intent to murder him, and later tells his doppelganger to his face that he wants him dead. The moment Jax is out of the maid dress and the vegan rule is off, he immediately heads over to his "evil" counterpart and starts mauling him.
• Hidden Depths: In this episode, a lot of information is revealed about the players' backgrounds, and by extension aspects of their personalities that were hidden up until this point: Pomni used to record her adventures in abandoned buildings to escape from the monotony of her life; Ragatha has serious Parental Issues regarding her mother; and Jax used to have at least one friend, something that bringing it up is a huge sore spot for him.
• History Repeats: In the previous episode, Ragatha and Jax teach Gangle how to play softball, with Jax hitting the ball straight back at Gangle, shattering her comedy mask, ending the practice. During the softball game, when Bazooble won't give Zooble back their eye, they hit the ball right back at Bazooble, knocking them out cold, and effectively winning the game as Caine thinks not having a pitcher means free runs for the Big Tops.
• Hotter and Sexier: While previous episodes tried to avoid adult humor, here, Bubble openly mentions sex jokes due to something breaking in the censorship programming, while Kinger and Pomni hiding under the desk reminds Jax of certain something. The noir adventure also gives everyone more mature costumes. Plus, Jax is forced into a sexy maid costume in the softball adventure.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Parodied between Kinger and Pomni. During the "President Pomni" suggestion, Kinger is given the role of her assistant, and he immediately lets her know how the situation between New Zealand and Australia is developing while dumping a stack of papers at her desk. Pomni, meanwhile, is completely lost and confused at how he knows what they're doing, prompting Kinger to bring her down to ZONE OF COMTEMPLATION™ to explain. Then it turns out the reason she has no idea about what's going on is because Jax deliberately left her as the only one without a debriefing on the story, just to see what she'd come up with.
• Ignored Epiphany: While watching the "Stargazing" sequence, Caine seems to realize with the Moon's help that the gang actually seems to be enjoying themselves for once, something he's always wanted. However, he doubles down on his behavior upon realizing the adventure they're enjoying isn't one he made.
• I'm Melting!: Evil Ragatha does the "collapsing into lumpy goo" variant as a reaction to her team losing at softball.
• I'm Standing Right Here: Upon hearing Zooble suggest the adventures be left open for the players to go through at their own pace and choosing, Caine turns aside to Bubble and insultingly whispers about how this idea coming from "the toy box character" wouldn't work for certain reasons, with Bubble chiming in agreement with his disgust. Zooble, confused, asks if Caine talking aloud was meant to be heard by them or not. He just tells them to shut their (nonexistent) mouth before literally zipping up the front side of their head, which still doesn't stop them from talking.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: During the noir adventure, Ragatha delves so deep into her Parental Issues, she downs her entire cocktail once she notices the whole gang is giving her concerned looks.
• Inexplicably Tailless: Jax panics once Pomni points out that he doesn't have a tail. He has apparently not realized this until now, and implies he used to have one at some point.
• Infodump:
  • The noir adventure provides some backstory information for Zooble, Ragatha, Pomni, Gangle, and some introspection for Jax (assuming their memories are real and not distorted or implanted). It appears that none of the players knew much about each other until then. Zooble acting as a Bartender Confidant makes the scenario a fitting vehicle for each character to have some introspection.
  • Also done In-Universe with the "President Pomni" scenario, where Jax provided every player with a brief on what characters they'd play, minus Pomni since he wanted to force her to improvise.
• Innocently Insensitive: Ragatha's Stepford Smiler status is put into scrutiny. First, it's pointed out that her positive attitude disregards the fact that the players are still trapped for life and don't want to be here, and she is accused of forcing others to ignore the problem. Then, she mentions to Pomni that Jax lost a friend in the Circus, a reminder of which enrages him and something she apologizes for. Then, when Pomni suggests to be a bit of a jerk to let the heat out, Ragatha tells to Jax her resentment of him, which isn't what Pomni was expecting.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Happens twice in the President Pomni adventure, both being done by Cloudcuckoolanders:
    • Caine says it's hard to believe Jax is vegan after seeing Jax's allegedly "phenomenal" acting, implying that being vegan somehow correlates with acting quality. Or that being an "Australian extremist" is supposedly the opposite of what you'd expect a vegan to be.
    • Kinger suggests cutting the blue wire on the bomb, as his favorite color is blue because it's closest to black. When Pomni asks, "Wouldn't black be your favorite color then?", Kinger explains that black is not his favorite color because the bomb doesn't have a black wire.
  • In the softball adventure, Kinger prepares to use his eye to replace the ball eaten by a centipede. He then changes his mind and takes Zooble's because he believes theirs is the right size for softball, explaining that he would've actually chosen his own eye if they were playing baseball instead.
• Interface Spoiler: The captions instantly identify the anthem singer during the baseball episode as Disappearing Guy, spoiling the gag where he vanishes two words in.
• Intermission: Caine forces one in the middle of the episode, albeit one that's more psychedelic in nature.
• Internal Reveal: Downplayed and Subverted. While everyone is opening up about themselves in the noir bar adventure, Jax moves things past Ragatha's talk by noting how Kinger won't add to the conversation, since he doesn't remember anything. Pomni decides to ask if they ever knew about Kinger's wife, but Jax is confused and Kinger himself belts out a Big "WHAT?!". Zooble serving the latter his Corncob Blitz gets them to quiet down before this can go anywhere.
• In Vino Veritas: Jax's apology to Pomni comes after he's downed most of his whisky sour and seems to be a little buzzed. According to Gooseworx, he's the lightest weight of the cast.
• I Reject Your Reality: At the end, Caine claims that everyone hates the suggestion box and asserts his ideas are much better, even though the cast was clearly shown enjoying plenty of them.
• Ironic Echo: During the bar-themed adventure, Jax makes a couple snide, vaguely insinuating remarks about Zooble's sexuality/gender identity when they mention they used to be a bartender and a tattoo artist, then defends his trolling provocations by smugly claiming he was "just havin' fun". Later, when Jax is forced into a maid dress during the Softball adventure, Zooble teases him about his sexuality/masculinity and, when Jax asks what they mean by it, proceed to throw his "just havin' fun" excuse right back at him, verbatim. Jax is too livid to notice, however.
• Ironic Name: Evil Jax is actually a perfectly nice guy, due to having the opposite personality of Jax.
• Irony: Jax, surprisingly enough given his general cruelty, simply leaves Ragatha's venting about her abusive mother be without saying a word, let alone anything demeaning. The normally kind Ragatha, meanwhile, lets slip a remark about Jax's (lack of) friends that is a very touchy subject for him. Ragatha later apologizes, however.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Evil Ragatha taunts Ragatha by telling her that nobody loves her and she's going to die someday. Ragatha only sheepishly responds that they can't die, while not mentioning the "nobody loves you" part. The end of the episode shows Ragatha is the loneliest of the players, and the next episode reveals that Ragatha is worried that everyone hates her.
• It Amused Me: This is why Jax refuses to give Pomni any stage directions during the "President Pomni" adventure, wanting to see her improv skills.
• It's All About Me: Despite actually fulfilling his programmed objective of keeping the players entertained for once, Caine freaks out at the notion they might prefer (some of) the suggestion box adventures to his crazy, trauma-inducing ones, showing that assuaging his own fragile ego matters more to him than their enjoyment or well-being.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Jax notes that Caine is supposed to be unable to affect the behavior and free will of the players, yet he's still forced to be vegan for his drink order and made to subconsciously follow Caine's direction since the other human players voted for it. While he's mostly complaining because it's holding him back from his usual sadistic self, it is worrying to know how the brains and will of the human players are at the mercy of the Ambiguously Evil ringmaster program, despite Caine already claiming their minds were one of the few things he doesn't have control over. Even if Caine's programming prevented him from abusing this power like Jax believed, the "player voting" mechanic shows there's at least one loophole that lets him bypass this possible limit. Zooble doesn't contest this and almost agrees when they respond by saying they "could have made it way worse".
  • Lampshaded and somewhat Reconstructed by Pomni; Jax makes it clear that he doesn't care for Ragatha's relentless Stepford Smiler attitude, given that the situation they're in is nothing to smile about. Later on, Pomni tells Ragatha herself that she could learn to let her negative feelings apparent instead of bottling them up, but makes it a point to differentiate her tone from Jax's and turns his derisive comment into constructive criticism.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Evil Pomni swears more than both the other doppelgangers and cast combined, being censored once per spoken line.
• Lampshade Hanging: Kinger is made to teach English in the anime adventure... despite the fact that everyone's already fluent in it.
  Kinger: [writes down the kanji "英語" ^note The Japanese word for "English".] All right, class. Today, we're gonna learn the popular foreign language known as... [baffled] English?
• Learning English in the English Dub: This trope is parodied where in an anime parody, Kinger is teaching an English class despite everyone still speaking English, where his confused reaction lampshades how confusing it is. This gag is kept in foreign language dubs like French and Spanish, with "English" being replaced with the aformentioned languages.
• Lighter and Softer: Despite having a fair amount of sad moments, Episode 5 is way goofier than 3 and 4. The worst that happens is Gangle's comically failed attempt at being a suicide bomber, and everyone meeting their "evil" counterparts in softball.
• Literal-Minded: During the Stargazing Section, Jax says he likes his adventures with a little more bite. Kinger responds to this with, "Then why don't you help yourself to a sandwich?" after chomping down on one he grabbed.
• Little Black Dress: Ragatha wears one during the bar adventure, pearl necklace and all.
• Local Reference: Pomni's brief tenure as US President has her forced to mediate a war between Australia and New Zealand, and confront Jax playing a wildly stereotypical Australian political terrorist. Gooseworx is American, while Glitch Productions is based in Australia.
• Locked Out of the Loop: It's established that Pomni is the only one of the players that knows any detail about Kinger's past, such as his wife. Jax comments there's no point asking Kinger since there's no way he remembers, due to his insanity, and he is confused when Pomni asks if any of them know about Kinger's wife.
• Luminescent Blush:
  • Gangle blushes a bit when Zooble figures the anime adventure was her idea and when Jax mentions what she did to an anime figurine.
  • Jax blushes furiously once he's forced into a maid costume during the softball adventure.
• Mad Bomber: Jax is more than happy to play an Australian terrorist who forces President Pomni into a Wire Dilemma with a bomb that supposedly contains all of Australia's worst bugs and insects. Gangle has less luck when being the New Zealand terrorist, and blows the gang up after taking too long to come up with any threats or demands. Since Gangle couldn't come up with any stereotypical New Zealander animals or objects, her bomb is an ordinary dynamite-vest.
• Magnum Opus Dissonanceinvoked: In-universe, Pomni and Zooble both admit they didn't mind the Spudsy's adventure from the last episode, as they enjoyed doing something more grounded in reality compared to what Caine usually suggests. When Caine asks the rest what they thought of it, though, they all (minus Kinger) immediately declare their dislike for it; Gangle and Ragatha express shame at how the Manic Mask and the Stupid Sauce respectively affected their behavior, while Jax simply states how much he utterly loathed the adventure and threatens to get violent enough to kill Ragatha if they ever do something like it again.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Parodied and Played for Laughs. In the President Pomni adventure, wherein Pomni is made to roleplay as the President of the United States, Jax breaks in her office as the role of an Australian terrorist and threatens to detonate the place with his bomb. The adventure's gameplay tasks Pomni with deactivating the bomb using her own two hands while the other players give her suggestions on what she should do as her staff.
  Pomni: Why wouldn't the president have a bomb squad?!
• Mandela Effect: Occurs in-universe when Jax is surprised that he doesn't have a tail, hurriedly asking how long his character model has lacked one.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Gangle is forced to play the role of a terrorist/suicide bomber from New Zealand during the "President Pomni" adventure. She doesn't exactly do a good job at it though.
• Meaningful Name: "Disappearing Guy" is, well, a guy who has a habit of disappearing without warning. So far he's done it before he can get more than one or two words out.
• Medium-Shift Gag: In the Anime Adventure, the show switches from 3D animation to 2D Animation.
• Mind Control: When everyone votes to make Jax vegan, he temporarily becomes one while everything else isn't affected. Jax tries to bring up that Caine previously said he doesn't have control over minds.
• Modesty Shorts: While Jax being forced into a maid costume is embarrassing enough as is, he at least gets shorts underneath his outfit to maintain his dignity. It's most obvious when Jax goes to sit down on the sidelines with Pomni.
• Mood Whiplash: When talking about Ragatha to Pomni, Jax opens up to her about how he finds Ragatha annoying because of her Stepford Smiler behavior in his most honest moment of the series so far... before he follows it up with "also she's dumb and she looks weird!"
• Moral Myopia: Jax constantly makes fun of and bullies others, even going as far as being physically abusive. In this episode, he gets humiliated and made fun of by being forced to be a vegan and wear a maid outfit, yet he gets angry over it (especially having to wear the maid outfit) even though it's no different from how he treats others.
• Musicalis Interruptus: True to his name, Disappearing Guy disappears two words into singing the National Anthem of the United States in "Good Ol' Fashioned Softball".
  Disappearing Guy: Ooooh, say— [disappears]
• My God, What Have I Done?: Though she doesn't remember any of the unpleasant things she said while high on stupid sauce in the previous episode, Ragatha has been brought up to speed by what happened and is horribly ashamed about it. She's especially apologetic to Gangle, who was deeply hurt when Ragatha told her she was annoying with her happy mask on, something Ragatha hasn't stopped apologizing for.
• Mysterious Watcher: The mannequin that shows up in the beginning and end of the episode. First they watch the gang as they return from their latest adventure, and at the end, they watch Jax and Pomni as they go to look at the thing in the hall.
• Never Say That Again: Caine is disgusted when Bubble calls himself "Daddy Bubble" and quietly demands that he not say it again.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Well, not the trailer itself in this case. Rather, in the days before the release of the episode, the Wacky Watch website, Glitch's tweets, Bluesky posts and YouTube community posts showed several sneak peeks of different adventures allegedly happening during "Untitled".
  • First, it was never specified explicitly that "Untitled" would contain several adventures at once (that said, a lot of fans had already guessed it before the trailer's release).
  • Second and more importantly, not all of sneak peeks were accurate. Some of them were (such at the shot of Jax chewing on Gangle's ribbons from Poacher's Paradise, or the softball adventure's images), but most of the images showcasing adventures that weren't hinted at in previous episodes displayed entirely different premises.
    • The picture for what turned out to be President Pomni, which takes place in a recycled background of the office building area from the pilot, depicts Pomni in her president outfit typing on a keyboard (interestingly, the keyboard is of the same model as that of the computer seen at the end of the pilot), Ragatha carrying stacks of papers while wearing her bodyguard glasses, and Kinger wearing his assistant necktie and looking at Pomni. The various captions for the picture mentioned a desk job adventure in an office, which didn't happen at all.
    • The image that turned out to correspond the noir bar adventure was presented as a full-on mafia movie.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: In the anime adventure, all of the players turned into students wear different uniforms from each other.
  • Pomni and Gangle wear the Sailor Fuku. Pomni gets a scarf in blue and red while Gangle instead wears a ribbon tied into a bow. Gangle's uniform also comes with yellow buttons.
  • Jax and Ragatha get blazers with a patch/chest pocket in blue, yellow and red stripes. The former has a necktie while the latter wears a bowtie. Ragatha also has a sweater under her jacket in the same blue as her skirt and bow.
  • Zooble sports a gakuran (boys' high school uniform), a buttoned coat with a standing collar.
• Noodle Implements: Upon returning from their sea-related adventure, Kinger takes Ragatha aside and asks if she could help him "count [his] eggs before they hatch," which she agrees to without understanding what this request actually means. When Caine snaps his fingers and summons everyone around to discuss his adventure ideas, Kinger and Ragatha float in holding cartons of brown and white eggs. Other than being a mix-up between the "don't count your chickens before they hatch" phrase and the Chicken-and-Egg Paradox, we don't get to know why Kinger felt the need to do this.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Whatever the offscreen adventure was at the beginning of the episode. All that's known about it is that a.) there was a lot of saltwater and seaweed involved, b.) Zooble refused to participate in it again, c.) Ragatha comments that it could have gone better, and d.) Gangle had her mask broken again.
  • Gangle's "figurine thing" is once again brought up by Jax so she would give up on the slice of life anime-style adventure by herself instead of directly suggesting a vote that he would probably have lost.
  • A more serious example comes regarding Jax's friend. We don't know exactly what happened to them (though abstraction is implied), with the only hint being Ragatha snarking he doesn't have friends "anymore" and Jax's Death Glare when she brings them up, showing that he doesn't want to talk about it.
  • The "Intermission Time" would probably have lasted much longer if Zooble hadn't interrupted the sequence and broken Caine's ego, forcing Bubble to quickly return to "regular programming".
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: For her role as the "New Zealand extremist", Gangle, given her limited knowledge about the country, makes no attempt at a New Zealand accent. Before that, Jax initially enters doing an Australian accent but swiftly drops it when trying to coach Pomni through the scene.
• Nothing Is Funnier: Out of all the players, Gangle is the only one who doesn't get an alternate Evil Doppelgänger version of herself in the "Good Ol' Fashioned Softball" adventure, with an evil version of Orbsman being in her place instead. Even Gangle herself comments on it, yet the reason as to why is never explained.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Zooble is quick to force everyone out of Jax's "Poacher's Paradise" adventure and make him a vegan, in part to get a rise out of him. However, when Caine declares himself bored with the bar adventure, Zooble is just as shocked and annoyed that Caine would force them out of their own adventure.
  • Gangle is shown giggling to herself after forcing Jax into his maid outfit, indicating that she likes playing pranks on Jax just as much as he does with her. Unfortunately, Jax's Unstoppable Rage means she can't bask in the victory for long.
  • A less funny example comes from Ragatha, who is coming apart at the seams regarding Jax's usual attitude and Pomni growing closer to him. She ends up letting slip something to Pomni about Jax's past that he is not happy about, and when she later yells at Jax for being... Jax, she turns on Pomni when she tries to get her to calm down a bit. Despite apologising for both, it still shows that Ragatha is still human and can't keep her "positivity" going forever.
• Not the Intended Use: In terms of the in-universe videogame logic of the Circus.
  • For the Lightning Round of suggestions, Caine gives the players the option to democratically vote on whether or not they want to skip an adventure. Zooble not only calls for a vote to skip "Poacher's Paradise", but also adds the extra detail of making Jax vegan for the rest of the day. Jax actually notices the difference in his behavior when he later orders a cocktail and subconsciously requests to leave the egg whites out of its mix, realizing Caine's supposed inability to affect a player's mind somehow doesn't apply thanks to the voting system.
  • Disregarding its original adventure-skipping function entirely, Jax tries to use the system to get Zooble turned into a slug. It doesn't happen since none of the players agree to it. This even comes with Caine teleporting in to let Jax know his idea has been vetoed.
  • The voting gets exploited again when Zooble and Gangle get the idea to put Jax in a maid outfit, this time executing it with success.
• Not What It Looks Like: Invoked. By making Kinger have to go under the table in case he breaks character, Jax makes it seem like Kinger and Pomni are having sex underneath it.
  Jax: [puts a finger to his face as he looks at the camera] Did I pick a bad time?
  [laugh track plays]
• Occidental Otaku: Jax references such when talking to Pomni in the anime adventure.
  Jax: Can you believe this, Pomni? First, she draws anime. Now she drags us all into one. She must be one of them, uh... losers.
  Pomni: You threw me out of a moving truck.
• Odd Friendship: Jax and Pomni end up becoming friends despite the fact that Jax is a chaos-loving gadfly who regularly picks on the entire Circus Gang, and Pomni is much kinder and tries to be the voice of reason with everyone. It turns out that Pomni is realizing that Jax is just a disturbed guy, not an evil genius.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: During the softball game, Gangle apparently managed to hit a home run against the Evil Big Tops. She tells Ragatha that she took her advice from the beginning of the previous episode to help accomplish this. Though considering how Caine simply declares anything that happens in the Big Tops' favor a "home run" to get the adventure over with, it's unclear whether or not Gangle's home run was genuine.
• Older Than They Look: When Jax begins wondering if Pomni's too young to have held a job before, she points out that she's 25.
• Only Friend: Pomni starts to become the one person who can handle Jax, with him even pointing out the start of their friendship during the noir bar adventure. Notably, Pomni is the only one to vote against him being forced into a maid outfit later during the softball adventure, showing she's warming up to him.
• Only One Finds It Fun: Played for Laughs.
  • In a Bait-and-Switch at the beginning of the Softball adventure, when Disappearing Guy performs the United States' national anthem, he immediately disappears in the first two lyrics. Nevertheless, a loud clapping emits from the audience of NPCs... only for it to turn out that all the clapping is actually coming from a giant centipede using its many legs to clap, while all the generic mannequins in the audience remain completely idle.
  • Both of Jax's adventures show only him enjoying them. Unsurprising since one has him shoot and eat the other players, and the other has Pomni try and defuse a bomb (which ends with Gangle blowing everyone up by mistake).
• OOC Is Serious Business: Jax is usually angry when he doesn't get his way; in this episode's case, when he is forced to go vegan, deal with corn, and wear a maid outfit. However, when Ragatha points out that he doesn't have "actual friends [anymore]", he gives her a serious Death Glare, showing that it is a sore spot that not even he wants to talk or joke about.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: After Pomni asks Jax if he has any friends, Ragatha responds on his behalf with a snide tone of voice: "Not anymore." One Death Glare from Jax later, she immediately regrets what she said and tries to backpedal before going over to Kinger to escape the subject entirely.
• Open the Iris: When Ragatha apologizes for bringing up the fact that he doesn't have any more friends, Jax noticeably says nothing, but his square irises grow significantly larger, while his smartass smile disappears.
• Opposing Sports Team: For the softball adventure, Caine conjures up evil duplicates of the gang (minus Gangle, plus Orbsman) to act as this.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Both Jax and Zooble aren't too fond of their evil versions created by Caine for the softball adventure, the former's being a Shrinking Violet and the latter's being a spacey dunce. Both also harm them once they see the first opportunity. On the other side of things, Evil Ragatha makes a point to mock the real Ragatha by claiming that nobody loves her and that she's going to die someday. Ragatha herself is hardly vexed by this.
• Palette Swap: The Evil Big Tops mostly share the same physical models and forms with the main cast, just with a few aesthetic differences.
  • Evil Pomni is missing her Blush Stickers^note though according to Gooseworx this was an Off-Model mistake that no one caught before the episode's release, sports sharp teeth, and has the blues and yellows on her suit rearragned.
  • Evil Ragatha's button eye, bow and dress are red, while her hair is blue, inverting the real Ragatha's primary colors.
  • Coach Dictatorer is a light purple to contrast with Kinger's yellowish beige, wears a commissar cap, and has clothes with more washed out colors. His robe also replaces the ermine fur pattern with a solid yellow.
  • Evil Jax is a pink rabbit in purple overalls instead of a purple rabbit in pink overalls.
  • Evil Orbsman is simply colored red instead of blue, and given Angry Eyebrows for good measure.
  • Bazooble stands out the most by having different body parts chosen, but their most basic differences are swapping the pink and yellow colors of Zooble's head and torso respectively, and the words "I'm Evil" written on their body.
• Parent Play Kink: Bubble calls himself "Daddy Bubble" at one point, much to Caine's disgust.
• The Perfectionist: Ragatha shows that she tries to be a role model, acting like everything is fine and putting her best in the adventures. As a result, the Stupid Sauce incident from last episode puts her into a great shame, as she typically tries to keep her frustrations suppressed, and she gets quite upset for not contributing to the softball game even when nobody else really cares about it. She doesn't take it well when, after the adventure, the others don't hang out with her, especially with Pomni getting close to Jax.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Caine snaps his fingers to fix Gangle's broken mask as the cast (minus Zooble, who once again sat things out) are returning from their offscreen adventure.
  • Jax, of all people, wonders if Gangle can be happy all the time, implying that he does think about others' feelings beyond just messing with them. He also doesn't try to skip the stargazing adventure, after seeing Pomni enjoy this moment of relaxation, even though by his own admission he would rather do something more action-driven. Finally, he doesn't crack any mean jokes when Pomni and Ragatha reveal their own backstories, though he does with Zooble.
• Pie-Eyed: Jax gains this trait during the anime segment.
• Playful Cat Smile: Jax does a cat smile towards Zooble while repeatedly teasing them.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Jax makes fun of Zooble being "a bartender and a tattoo artist". Zooble feels he either has some obscure offensive stereotype in mind or is only trying to make them feel offended with a made-up reason.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Ragatha doesn't get the reference Jax makes when he gives the premise of Breaking Bad as his backstory and is confused when Zooble says they know what he is referencing.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Bubble swears with a censor bar when Caine realizes that the players like the suggestion box ideas more than any of his ideas.
    Caine: Wait a minute! That's a bad thing!
    Bubble: Explain to Daddy Bubble how bad thing?
    Caine: I-I think that— Don't say that! [sweating nervously] I-I think they're enjoying the suggestion box adventures more than the me adventures! What should I do?!
    Bubble: You should die!— You should throw a fff-f[BLEEP!]ing beach party!
    Caine: Why do you swear now?!
  • Ragatha swears twice during the softball adventure when she hasn't sworn before this episode.
• Premature Aggravation: As Zooble comments on possibly using the suggestion box for adventures, Caine scrunches up and gets visibly angrier as he turns his attention to whatever critique they could possibly give him this time. When Zooble earnestly admits they didn't mind the Fast Food scenario from the last episode, Caine gets ready to explode into another batch of insults until he realizes Zooble just said they actually didn't hate it.
• Production Foreshadowing: One of the supposed concept arts of The Gaslight District in the anime adventure's classroom turned out to actually be a teaser poster for said series' season announcement video, which was first announced a month after "Untitled"'s release.
• Psychological Projection:
  • Jax does it to Ragatha when he's talking to Pomni. He's tired of Ragatha's fake positivity, and it feels like she's taking advantage of people; while true, it says as much about Jax as Ragatha. Ragatha is a people pleaser who only finds gratification through how much joy she can bring to others, not because she's inherently nice, while Jax has given up on finding any meaning in the Circus and spends his days tormenting everyone for his personal amusement.
  • During her argument with Jax during the softball match, Ragatha accuses him of things that, while they rightfully apply to him, also do to herself, notably when she accuses him of acting like he never does anything wrong and everybody loves him.
• The Psycho Rangers: The opposing team to the players in the softball adventure, fittingly named the "Evil Big Tops" in comparison to the players' own "Big Tops" team name. It consists mostly of "evil" clones of the players who are opposites of them in personality. Gangle is matched with an evil version of Orbsman instead, however.
• Pun: Bazooble makes a pun on the words "maid" and "made" when Jax steps up to bat in the maid outfit he was forced to wear for the rest of the softball adventure by vote. Jax doesn't take kindly to the pun.
  Bazooble: Let's see what you're maid of!
  Jax: SH-SHUT UP!
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jax and Ragatha give one to each other over how they're affecting Pomni during the "Good Ol' Fashioned Softball" adventure, with the latter primarily chewing out the former. Ragatha even starts chewing out Pomni a little bit for trying to calm her down.
  Jax: [mockingly] Oh, look, Gangle's up to bat. How do you think this is gonna go?
  Ragatha: [quietly furious] Would you stop trying to force her to act like you?
  Jax: Oh yeah, I should force her to be happy all the time instead, right.
  Ragatha: Well, it's better than turning her into some insensitive jerk who deflects everything!
  Pomni: I can think for myself, guys.
  Jax: Hey, I ain't forcing anything on ya.
  Ragatha: And then you just act like you never do anything wrong and everybody loves you, when in reality, you just F(bonk!)CK EVERYTHING UP FOR EVERYONE ELSE!
  Pomni: Okay, let's like calm down a bit...
  Ragatha: WHAT?! You're the one who said it's fine to be a JERK SOMETIMES!
• Record Needle Scratch: Caine's intermission gets cut off with a record scratch as Zooble quickly asks what is going on.
• Remember the New Guy?: In-Universe. Just like the previous episode, Pomni meets Disappearing Guy (before he disappears abruptly), an NPC the players have met before her.
• The Reveal: Several backstory elements are revealed here:
  • Zooble was a bartender briefly, and worked for a couple of years as a tattoo artist. They also enjoyed urban exploration.
  • Pomni used to work an accounting job for a supermarket chain, and would escape the monotony of work by exploring abandoned buildings, which she implies is how she ended up in the Circus (which in turn implies that the C&A building itself is abandoned). She also used to post videos of her exploration onto YouTube, but she never got very popular, using her channel more for vlogging than for audience engagement.
  • Gangle worked in fast food, as implied in the previous episode, and attended community college for graphic design. She sadly recounts how she dropped out and stopped pursuing art afterward.
  • Ragatha was born into a wealthy family that owned a large farmland, and worked in real estate prior to ending up in the circus. She also had a very strained relationship with her mother.
  • Jax's backstory isn't fully revealed, but it is shown he has an Absurd Phobia for corn, and it's implied that he did have at least one friend in the circus who most likely abstracted.
• Rich Bitch: Evil Ragatha is seemingly based on this archetype, having a Noblewoman's Laugh, Trrrilling Rrrs, and being a Jerkass. The "rich" aspect is validated by Ragatha herself being born into a wealthy family.
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • It's never explained what Jax found so funny about Zooble being both a bartender and a tattoo artist, because he deflects without explaining himself and says that he's just "having fun". It may be Jax teasing Zooble for being nonbinary (both jobs are stereotypical occupations for queer people to have), especially since Zooble teases him back about his maid outfit later in the same manner, but it's ultimately never explicitly dwelt upon.
  • What is the thing in the hallway that Pomni and Jax go to see at the end of the episode? According to Gooseworx, this is something the audience doesn't get to learn.
• Rousing Speech: "Coach" Kinger attempts to give one of these. Key word: attempts.
  Kinger: All right, team! I may not know what's going on, or who is going on...or when is going on...or why is going on...but I do know where is going on, and it's out on that field. So, let's go break some tailbones, team!
• Running Gag:
  • Jax is repeatedly irritated each time he says that he's vegan, which was forced by a vote.
  • The disappearing mannequin who shows up for a brief line before popping out of existence both times he shows up. Everyone except for Pomni treats this as perfectly normal.
  • Zooble placing a cob of corn near Jax to trigger his phobia after it comes out that he's afraid of the stuff.
• Secondary-Color Nemesis: None of the Evil Big Tops have a green-and-purple color scheme, but their team’s logo is a circus tent with green and purple stripes, as a reference to this trope.
• Series Continuity Error: A small but noticeable one happens when Ragatha is censored for saying "Damnit!", this is in spite of the fact that Kinger said "damn" completely uncensored two episodes prior. This could be excused by the fact that Kinger swore in an adventure meant for mature players like Zooble, whereas Ragatha's swearing was censored due to the softball adventure being more family-friendly.
• Ship Tease:
  • During Gangle's anime suggestion, Zooble is seated at the back row near the window while Gangle herself gets the desk right next to theirs, which plays into the anime and light novel cliche of these being the seats of choice for the main characters and their love interests respectively.
  • Jax seems to gain a liking to Evil Pomni due to her having the same personality as him. He even takes some time to chat with her while the cast tries to find a replacement softball.
  • Like with Gummigoo in the previous episode, Ragatha once again seems to look very jealous of Pomni hanging out and befriending somebody else, that somebody else being Jax this time.
• Shout-Out:
  • When the players (sans Zooble) come back from their underwater adventure, Caine refers to them as his "candy hearts and paper flowers", after the song of the same name from Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure.
  • Caine's suggestions for an adventure include a chocolate factory filled with OSHA violations where the players get picked off one-by-one, and one where they traverse a nuclear wasteland with a rude, telepathic dog, the latter of which is by the same author whose most infamous work inspired the show.
  • Caine's suggestion for an adventure where a sentient cardiovascular system goes to war against the U.S. Army is inspired by Gooseworx's original creation General Nausea.
  • Caine instantly zipping up Zooble's mouth (that they don't even have) evokes reality warpers in fantasy and sci-fi movies doing the same, like Betelgeuse, or Agent Smith against Neo. It also works as a small joke about one of the show's inspirations, since Zooble points out they have no mouth, and they must complain.
  • The baby head lamp used by Kinger is the exact copy of a doll head turned into a terrifying night-light as a joke, who went viral on the internet.
  • Jax catching Pomni and Kinger underneath the Oval Office's desk is a not-so-subtle homage to the sex scandal regarding former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
  • During the anime segment, Kinger is wearing Osamu Dazai's tie.
  • During the intermission, Bubble seen by profile for a second looks exactly like Pac Man.
  • At one point, in retaliation for temporarily making him a vegan, Jax launches a (failed) vote to turn Zooble into a slug.
  • Another gag during the intermission involves a small swarm of Caine's hands flying around forming various shapes and patterns, one of which looks eerily similar ot Mahito's Domain Expansion, "Self-Embodiment of Perfection".
  • Jax starts to give the premise of Breaking Bad when asked about his backstory. Zooble even lampshades it, saying they know what he's referencing and telling him to be more creative if he's just going to make stuff up.
  • Jax also refers to Spudsy's as McDonald's outright.
  • The Softball Stadium has various advertisements to food and drink products in the background, most of which are references to existing products with a Digital Circus theme, such as GatorGoo (Gatorade), The Gloink Depot (The Home Depot), Zoobzi (Pepsi), and Hamburger Jax (Burger King).
  • Evil Ragatha is clearly a nod to The Wicked Witch of the West in both personality and vocal performance, even melting in similar fashion when losing to the Circus at the end of the softball game.
  • Bazooble's introduction is a direct nod to Bazooey from the Anytown specials, specifically The Gift of Winter.
  • During the softball game, Evil Ragatha does DIO's "WRYYYYY!" pose as she's taunting the real Ragatha.
  • After getting counter-beanballed by Zooble, Bazooble spends the rest of the episode in the "Peter Griffin death pose".
  • For additional references in foreign dubs:
    • In the French dub, Bazooble's pun "What are you maid of" being untranslatable, they ask to Jax if he escaped from a café, referencing the famous maid cafés in Japan.
    • In the German dub, when Jax presents himself as the peak of masculinity, he refers as himself as a "Gigachad".
    • In the Russian dub, Bazooble's gibberish starts by a "skibidi".
    • In the Spanish dub, Jax threatens Pomni with a bomb that will release deadly snow.
• Shown Their Work: Most of the drinks shown in the bar adventure are actual cocktails, which are accurately modeled and rendered down to their color, ingredients, and standard drinking glasses. The only drink made up for the episode is Kinger's Corncob Blitz, acknowledged by Zooble as something they had to improvise and can still theoretically be made.
• Silly Walk: When Jax brings a bomb to President Pomni, he runs rather cartoonishly, raising legs in air several times, despite moving just a few steps from the door.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: Caine's dilemma is that his guests have different tastes and preferences, so he struggles to come up with an adventure capable of pleasing everyone at the same time. Zooble gets the idea to keep multiple adventures active for the players to choose at any given moment, but Caine shoots it down since keeping these scenarios and their advanced NPCs processing over longer stretches of time would apparently somehow complicate things. He still doesn't give an exact reason, but seeing how every setting is meant to be relatively short and disposable, yet NPCs like Gummigoo are intelligent enough to develop the self-awareness of their worlds and can process an existential crisis, he may have a point. Whether it be due to limitations on his part or not, it's one reason why Caine insists on doing adventures one at a time and according to his own pace.
• Slice of Life: The gang is thrown into this genre in the anime adventure, and Jax hates it more than other genres as he considers this one "embarrassing". There's no central conflict nor any all-encompassing adventure; it's simply the gang playing off each other and having a bit of a Breather Episode.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: For comedic effect, the Magical Profanity Filter for any swearing done by the Evil Big Tops uses a regular "BEEP" sound instead of the goofier cartoony sounds. While regular beeps are applied to NPCs like Bubble, it comes across as if it's to help sell how evil they're supposed to be.
• Stalker Shot: A mannequin NPC can be seen stalking the cast twice. The first time is when Pomni was laying face down on the ground and sees the mannequin watching them from a distance until it goes back into hiding once Pomni sees it, and the second time happens at the end of the episode where after the cast goes their separate ways.
• Stargazing Scene: The "Stargazing" adventure is entirely this. Pomni and the others casually watch the stars while eating snacks together.
• Stating the Simple Solution: When Caine asks how he's gonna please anyone if they all like different things, Zooble suggests to just leave his adventures open at all times and let the players do whatever they want, when they want.
  Caine: Are you hearing this, Bubble? The toybox character wants us to leave the other intelligent AIs to run for a prolonged period of time.
  Bubble: Disgusting!
• Stylistic Self-Parody:
  • When Zooble hears Caine gossiping with Bubble, Caine tries to shut them up by putting a zipper on their mouth. An annoyed Zooble points out that they can still talk, for they don't have a mouth.
  • Pomni points out to Jax that while he's a rabbit, he doesn't have a tail. Jax is freaked out by this when he discovers it, having always thought he had one.
• Sudden Anatomy: During the anime segment, Four-Fingered Hands gets averted and everyone with hands gains an extra finger on each hand. This goes away when the next adventure starts.
• Suddenly Shouting: Caine does this near the beginning after hearing even more deadpan criticism.
  Caine: Oh, Zooble, you mismatched cash-piano, I'LL TEAR YOU TO PIECE— constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!
• Suicide Attack: During the presidency adventure, Gangle is made to hang a bomb on her neck and call herself a "New Zealand extremist". It goes as well as one would expect.
  Gangle: Hi. I'm a New Zealand extremist, and... I... don't... know what New Zealanders threaten people with.
  [beat as the bomb ticks down]
  [cue explosion and everyone getting blown away]
• Surreal Humor: Granted, we are talking about TADC, a show that uses surreal humor throughout. However, this one episode has the Disappearing Guy, a character who entirely revolves around being a NPC randomly disappearing into thin air mid-sentence. No more, no less. Then there’s the intermission...
• Take That!:
  • The Evil Big Tops are a subtle jab at YouTube Kids' Channel Digital Circus content-farm material, which frequently feature Evil Counterpart versions of the characters like the softball team from this episode. Furthermore, Gangle is replaced with Evil Orbsman as a nod to how she is frequently left out of such content due to her design being too difficult for them to animate.
  • Just after Jax says "Democracy sucks", the title card for "President Pomni" shows the White House.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Played for Laughs in the softball adventure, where, on top of the French Maid Outfit he's forced into, Jax gets eyelashes to go with it, if for no other reason than to embarrass him further.
• That Came Out Wrong: After Pomni asks Jax if he has any actual friends, Ragatha promptly says, "Not anymore...", causing Jax to stare daggers at her. This gets Ragatha to stumble over her words while trying to assure Jax that it's not about what he thinks she meant. It's heavily implied Ragatha was trying to emphasize her own previous friendship with Jax, and he confused it with her referencing the Abstraction of Jax's other friend — Ribbit.
• This Cannot Be!: Jax has this reaction upon a group vote forcing him to be vegan for the rest of the adventure, as it should be impossible for Caine to influence his free will, as Caine himself stated in the first episode.
• Thrill Seeker: Pomni reveals that she when she would get bored of her old accounting job, she tended to seek mild thrills for enjoyment, such as exploring abandoned buildings and posting videos online. It's all but stated that this is how she wound up in the circus.
• Throw It In: Invoked by Jax In-Universe. In the "President Pomni" adventure, Pomni has no idea what to do in her role. Kinger secretly tells Pomni about how they're suppose to play characters from the little briefs they were provided by Jax, but it turns out, Pomni never got one, forcing her to improvise.
  Jax: Oh yeah, I didn't give you one 'cause I wanted to see what you'd do!
  Pomni: Thanks, Jax. Appreciate it.
  Kinger: I'm not Jax.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: For the entire circus gang, actually. After accidentally goading Caine into putting them through various suggestion box adventures in a lightning round, what follows is much less hectic and depressing scenarios (beyond Jax's two adventures made specifically to bully the other players, which are still Played for Laughs), giving the players the chance to socialize calmly. Even Jax opens up, with the strife towards the end of the experience being entirely because of his and Ragatha's mutual dislike of each other and Ragatha's Stepford Smiler attitude rather than anything related to the adventures themselves.
• Token Good Teammate: Caine creates Evil Counterparts of the players, called the Evil Big Tops. However, Jax's counterpart, Evil Jax, isn't evil at all. The reason for this is that every Evil Big Top has a personality that's the opposite of their good counterpart, but the real Jax is his team's Token Evil Teammate, which ironically makes Evil Jax a Nice Guy who wouldn't hurt a fly.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed, as Jax is not only still a dick, but even threatens to kill others on different occasions. But he is a little more willing to be considerate to how others feel, and opens up a little to his vulnerabilities, to the point of surprising others, and he and Pomni start to hang out.
• Tradesnark™: The ZONE OF CONTEMPLATION™ as mentioned in Kinger's character brief.
• Tranquil Fury: When Ragatha pushes Jax's Berserk Button (bringing up his old friend), he doesn't say a word, but his expression makes it clear that he is seethingly mad about it.
• Translation Convention: Defied in Gangle's Animesque adventure, where Kinger is confused upon seeing that the class is learning English despite the fact that they're speaking it right now.
• Twirl of Love: Kinger, while Victory Hoisting Ragatha for "winning" the softball game, also spins her around a bit in fatherly affection.
• Twitchy Eye: When Caine abruptly forces himself to regain his composure after blowing up at Zooble, his blue eye subtly twitches.
• "Untitled" Title: The episode's title is "Untitled" due to it not having a single, coherent adventure built around it, but rather a series of mini-adventures.
• Vegetarian for a Day: Forced upon Jax by Zooble and the other players when the former sees him chew viciously on Gangle's ribbons after shooting her during the "Poacher's Paradise" adventure. Caine allows this, citing "democracy has spoken" when Jax calls Zooble out on it. This appears to involve mental manipulation, as in the noir bar adventure, Jax catches himself off-guard when he bumps into saying that the whiskey he orders should hold the egg whites, noting that this shouldn't be possible given Caine can't affect the players' minds otherwise. The moment this is lifted when Caine declares the end of the softball adventure, he makes a beeline to his Evil Doppelgänger and starts mauling him like he did with Gangle during the hunt.
• Victory Hoist: After Ragatha "wins" the softball game, Kinger proudly lifts her up while praising her for the victory.
• Water Is Dry: Zigzagged. At the start of the episode, the circus gang comes back from their latest adventure completely soaked to the bone. After just a few moments, Jax completely dries himself offscreen while Pomni is still dripping wet. Later on during the bar adventure, several characters come inside from the pouring rain without a drop of water on any of them.
• We Used to Be Friends: As Pomni tries to ask if Jax has actual friends, not counting his constant bullying of Gangle, Ragatha adds to the conversation by saying he doesn't "anymore". Jax is furious when he assumes she's talking about Ribbit, but her apologetic reaction when she realizes his interpretation shows she was more likely referring to herself. This is futher implied by the tension between them throughout the episode, brought on with Jax actually having better chances at getting friendly with Pomni than Ragatha.
• Wham Line: When Pomni asks Jax if he has any actual friends, Ragatha tells her, "Not anymore." Notably, Jax's reaction is a silent Death Glare, confirming that whatever this is referring to is a very personal subject for him.
• Wham Shot:
  • During the intermission, the last scene before Zooble cuts it off has Jax run past several doors, only to stop and look at one depicting a cartoon frog with an "X" over it. Combined with Ragatha's earlier Wham Line and the scene being bordered with a design reminiscent of Abstracted players, it's heavily implied that Jax used to be close to the frog until the inevitable happened.
  • The end of the episode features a Mannequin NPC spying on Jax and Pomni as he brings her to a "thing" in the hall that only he knows about.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Deconstructed. Ragatha doesn't even get to swing during her second time up to bat since Bazooble (the pitcher) is still knocked out from Zooble's earlier swing, which Caine counts as an automatic homerun for the Big Tops. While this wins them the game, it robs Ragatha of all catharsis in her victory, which she hoped would redeem her previous loss that eventually led her to snap at Pomni.
• Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: Caine tries to zip Zooble's mouth shut. It doesn't work since Zooble already has No Mouth, a fact that they immediately lampshade, still perfectly able to speak.
• Wire Dilemma: The "President Pomni" adventure ends with Pomni desperately attempting to disarm a bomb with multiple wires, only to get blown up as a woefully unprepared-for-her-role Gangle arrives with another timed explosive.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Jarringly averted when Jax casually refers to Spudsy's, the faux-McDonald's from the previous episode, as McDonald's. Evidently, while Caine (and the players' names) cannot violate trademarks, the players are free to do so when they speak. Played straight in the same scene, when Breaking Bad is referenced but not name-dropped.
• You All Meet in an Inn: The adventure suggested by Zooble is about a Film Noir-styled bar, where they can play the role of a bartender (due to their real-life experiences, and them enjoying making drinks), while the other players gather together to get some drinks and share their thoughts and backstories.
• "You!" Exclamation: When he finds himself dressed in a French Maid Outfit, Jax goes from incredulity to outrage as he tries figuring out whose voted idea it came from, immediately screaming "YOU!" and pointing dramatically when he spots Gangle giggling to herself, before trying to attack her.
• Yuri Fan: It's hard to spot (see the Freeze-Frame Bonus entry), but during the anime sequence, Gangle was drawing what appears to be Ragatha and another woman kissing, implying she is fan of the genre.