Banjo Frenzy

Banjo Frenzy is the pilot episode of Happy Tree Friends, created in 1999. The animation and writing are fairly primitive and poorly designed compared to what the series would later become.

Episode Description
Before there was Cuddles, Giggles, Toothy, and Lumpy, three cute creatures sat around a campfire with a banjo playing dinosaur that doesn't take well to criticism, notably his banjo skills. Watch Banjo Frenzy, the seed that blossomed into the bloody good time we all come to know and love!

Plot
The episode begins with a blue dinosaur playing a song on his banjo for three young animals: a yellow rabbit, a light blue squirrel, and a purple beaver. Suddenly, one of the strings on the dinosaur's banjo breaks, saddening him, and making the three animals laugh at and mock him.

Infuriated, the enraged dinosaur swings the banjo at the squirrel, slicing her head off, and causing her head to fall in the nearby fire pit and burn to the bare skull. As the other two animals look on in horror, the dinosaur slices the rabbit in half, slices off the beaver's head, and then begins bashing at their remains with a crazed and manic look.

The beaver's head, somehow still alive, retaliates by biting one of the dinosaur's feet, making the dinosaur scream loudly in pain, ending the episode.

Deaths

 * 1) The squirrel is beheaded and thrown into a fire.
 * 2) The rabbit is sliced vertically in half.
 * 3) The beaver is beheaded, but his head is somehow still "alive". (Debatable)

Injuries

 * The dinosaur's foot is bitten by the beaver's decapitated head.

Survival Rate

 * Amount of surviving main characters: 2 (1 including Debatable deaths)
 * Amount of dead main characters: 2 (1  including Debatable deaths)
 * Total Rate: 33% (50% including Debatable deaths)

Destruction

 * A string breaks on Lumpy's (the blue dinosaur) banjo.

Goofs

 * 1) The dinosaur's nose disappears several times, including when he slices the rabbit's body in half, before he smashes the squirrel's head off, after decapitating the beaver, and when he cuts off the beaver's right arm.
 * 2) The rabbit's left half falls behind the beaver, but not above him.
 * 3) The rabbit right half falls in front of the squirrel's corpse but not above her.
 * 4) The green oval on the dinosaur's stomach disappears while he is smashing the beaver to bits. It is also absent when he laughs maniacally.
 * 5) When the dinosaur decapitates the beaver, his head flies behind the dinosaur. However, when he laughs crazily, the beaver's head is right next to him.
 * 6) When the dinosaur smashes the beaver to bits with the banjo, both of the beaver's legs fly behind the dinosaur, but when the beaver's head bites the dinosaur's foot, the camera shows one of the legs behind the log he was sitting on.
 * 7) When the beaver is being smashed to scraps by the dinosaur, his brain and both of his eyes fly behind the dinosaur. However, his head is seen with both eyes in and his brain inside it when he attacks the dinosaur.