Swelter Skelter

Swelter Skelter an episode of the Happy Tree Friends series, the eleventh of season three, and sixty-fifth overall.

HTF Episode Description
Things heat up for Lifty & Shifty when they try to chill out. Tempers flare but will cooler heads prevail?

Plot
It's an incredibly hot day at the playground. Lifty and Shifty pant on the swings, while Petunia fans herself and sighs. Giggles slides down a slide, eager to have fun, but the hot metal melts her backside, smearing it on the slide.

Nutty then casually walks by, holding a snow cone, and giggling to his heart's content. Lifty and Shifty spy the frozen treat and decide to steal it. Shifty taps Nutty on the shoulder from behind to get his attention. As the brothers laugh, Nutty gasps and starts to back away. Shifty sticks his leg out behind him, tripping Nutty onto the ground. Nutty's head cracks open (due to the heat) and his brain pours out, frying like an egg on the hot ground. Shifty attempts to grab the snow cone in the air, but only succeeds in grabbing the cone. The ice falls out and instantly melts upon touching the ground.

The brothers are disappointed by their loss, when Cro-Marmot's ice cream truck pulls up. Lifty and Shifty spy Cro-Marmot standing next to the truck and get an idea. They kidnap him, take him to their apartment, and place him behind several fans so he will cool down the room.

At first, Lifty and Shifty think it is paradise. They realize it's too cold, however, when their drinks have become frozen. The brothers don winter coats, now miserable from the increasing cold. To make matters worse, it begins to snow inside the room. Lifty and Shifty try to push Cro-Marmot outside, only to find the front door is frozen shut.

Thinking quickly, Lifty tries to use a blowtorch to melt the ice around the door. It is so cold, however, that the flame freezes solid and falls off the torch. Gas still spouts from the torch as a confused Shifty picks up the solid fire only to have it unfreeze in his warm mittens, setting his hands on fire.

A panicked Shifty accidentally places his hands in front of the blowtorch, which is still spewing gas, causing an explosion of ice. The exploded, dead Lifty is now encased in the massive ice block with numerous sharp icicles sticking out in front of him. Shifty is alive, only a few inches away from the sharp points of the ice. He sighs at his good fortune, but slips on Lifty's blood at his feet. He falls forward and impales himself in the eye and tongue on the ice, killing him.

Cro-Marmot, with the room now almost one big ice block, has gotten a drink inside of his own ice block.

Moral
"Don't sweat the small stuff!"

Deaths

 * 1) Nutty's head is cracked open after tripping over Shifty's leg, his exposed brain is fried in the heat.
 * 2) A goldfish is much frozen in the bowl.
 * 3) Lifty is cut to pieces and frozen in ice after his gas tank explodes.
 * 4) Shifty slips on Lifty's blood and impaled through the eye by an icicle from the explosion.

Injuries

 * Giggles' skin on her buttocks is melted and scraped off as she slides down a slide.

Goofs

 * 1) There is a slight typo in the opening to the episode, the storybook reads "Staring" while it should read "Starring" like in Peas in a Pod.
 * 2) When Shifty is on the swing at the start, he has four fingers and a thumb.
 * 3) Lifty and Shifty are sweating, when they go up to Nutty while they are not covered in sweat anymore.
 * 4) Cro-Marmot's club switches hands several times.
 * 5) The size of Nutty's brain in this episode contradicts the size of his brain in Easy Comb, Easy Go.
 * 6) When Shifty trips Nutty while Shifty's leg is too long, this might just be a cartoonish effect.
 * 7) Shifty's mittens disappears when he is trying to open the door.
 * 8) The couch Lifty was sitting on changes position when Shifty turns the cup upside down.
 * 9) Considering the position and size of Lifty's whiskers, the top of them should've been visible when he was wearing his scarf.
 * 10) The candy cane on Nutty's chest goes from pointing left to pointing right.
 * 11) Fire is energy, not matter, being impossible for being frozen.
 * 12) If the slide was really that hot, so Giggles' buttocks should have been sticked in the place, making her unable to move.
 * 13) Nutty's ice cream melted without leaving any trails or steam behind.
 * 14) It's impossible to make it snow inside of a apartment, since are necessary clouds, originated from steam, which was not available since all of the water was frozen.
 * 15) Considering the high temperature being able to melt Nutty's ice cream in seconds, it should have done something to Cro-Marmot's ice, even melt it a little.
 * 16) How did Cro-Marmot take a drink from the lemonade if it was frozen?
 * 17) The cone from the ice cream vanishes when Lifty and Shifty see Cro-Marmot.
 * 18) They put Giggles and Petunia as featuring characters, But Petunia only appears in one shot while Giggles appears in two shots.

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is a reference to Helter Skelter, which was originally a poem written by British poet Jonathan Swift. Today, it is most famously known as The Beatles' song of the same name.
 * This is the first internet episode to star Lifty and Shifty since Milkin' It.
 * This is the first episode of the third internet season in which Lumpy does not appear.
 * Both "versions" of the Lifty & Shifty laugh are heard in this episode. The lower pitched version by Mark Giambruno and the current higher pitched laugh by Kenn Navarro.
 * Ellen Connell's voice was sampled for the voices of Giggles and Petunia.
 * Nutty's death is similar to Sniffles' death in Moppin Up.
 * The trick Lifty and Shifty use to steal Nutty's ice cream is similar to the one used in Sea What I Found, when they stole Russell's and Lumpy's treasure.
 * This is the second time Lifty and Shifty have kidnapped or took hostage another main character (in this case Cro-Marmot). The first one were Petunia and Giggles in Gems the Breaks, where they tied them up to steal their lemonade stand and their profits.
 * During the explosion, The Cursed Idol briefly appears.
 * This episode features one of only three instances in the entire series, that Lifty dies before Shifty. The other episodes are Milkin' It and Who's to Flame?.
 * In the credits, the writers added at the end: "not a moderator: MOD".
 * The same playground in the start of the episode is also seen in other episodes, like Spin Fun Knowin' Ya, Blast From The Past and I Nub You.
 * The animators credited were characters "Daniel Dreiberg" and "Walter Kovacs" from "Watchmen". The original animators were Roque Ballesteros, Alan Lau, Brad Rau, Lyla Warren, Jeff Biancalana, Mike Milo and David Winn.
 * This is the first time that the duo steal from Nutty.
 * In the featuring card, Giggles is on the slide, and that is just where she is in the episode.
 * This is one of the few instances that half of the characters die, the other is Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow.
 * Unless counting the HTF Break short Claw, Lifty and Shifty do not appear again until 4 years later in Buns of Steal.
 * If one dosnt count the frozen fish Shifty is responsible for every ones death.