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 then realize it's too cold, however, when their drinks have become frozen. The brothers put on winter coats, now miserable from the increasing chill. 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!"

Blurb
The Blurb version contains these annotations:


 * BlurB!
 * This little poem makes no sense
 * It's like drunk Dr. Seuss
 * Fun Fact: Looking directly into the sun makes you cool!
 * Not cool like cold, but cool like everybody will like you.
 * This gag is based on actual events
 * it's happened to every kid who's gone down a metal slide on a hot day.
 * We feel ya.
 * It's rude to sit on swings, but not swing.
 * Nutty suffers from an actual eye condition called "Eww, gross your eye!"
 * Nutty also has a skull that offers, literally, no protection. It's like an egg shell.
 * Oh I see now...frying like an egg
 * They're sad because they killed him for nothing.
 * Cro-Marmot drives an ice cream truck because his Taco Truck went out of business
 * Fun Fact: Lifty and Shifty stole this apartment building.
 * Want to buy a TV?
 * Cro-Marmot must be putting out a lot of BTU's
 * Lifty is wearing his Mole costume
 * Shifty knows all the words to "Let it Snow", but doesn't know the tune
 * All this from Cro-Marmot?
 * Of course! When in doubt, use a torch!
 * Science Fact: Fire can freeze.
 * Don't question us, just accept it.
 * Science Fact #2: When fire unfreezes, it's fire again.
 * just nod in agreement.
 * Science Fact 3#: An explosive force can freeze.
 *  You guys are learning soooo much from this episode
 * Blood on the floor does NOT freeze
 * Write that down
 * Looks like Cro-Marmot could use a refill

Deaths

 * 1) Nutty's head is cracked open after tripping over Shifty's leg, leaving his exposed brain to be fried like an egg in the heat.
 * 2) A goldfish is frozen in its bowl due to the temperature drop caused by Cro-Marmot's ice block.
 * 3) Lifty is shredded to pieces and frozen in ice after his gas tank explodes.
 * 4) Shifty slips on Lifty's blood and is impaled through the eye by an icicle from the explosion.

Injuries

 * The skin on Giggles' buttocks get melted and scraped off as she slides down a boiling hot slide.

Goofs

 * 1) There is a slight typo in the opening to the episode, the storybook reads "Staring" when it should read "Starring." This mistake is also in Peas in a Pod.
 * 2) When Shifty is on the swing at the start, his hands had four fingers and a thumb.
 * 3) Lifty and Shifty are sweating, but when they go up to Nutty, 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, Shifty's leg extends too long, though 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, so it is impossible for it to freeze.
 * 12) If the slide were really that hot, Giggles' buttocks should have been stuck in place, making her unable to move.
 * 13) Nutty's snow cone melted without leaving any trails or steam behind.
 * 14) It's impossible to make it snow inside of an apartment since clouds are necessary for snow to occur. Clouds are made up of water vapor, which was not available since all of the water was frozen.
 * 15) Considering the high temperature being able to melt Nutty's snow cone in seconds, it should have done something to Cro-Marmot's ice, even melt it a little..
 * 16) They put Petunia as a featuring character, despite the fact she was only in one shot.

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 the HTF Break short Moppin Up.
 * The trick Lifty and Shifty use to steal Nutty's snow cone is similar to the one used in Sea What I Found when they stole Russell and Lumpy's treasure.
 * When Shifty's hands are set on fire, he screams the same way he did during his death in Easy For You to Sleigh.
 * This is the second time Lifty and Shifty have kidnapped or taken hostage another main character (in this case Cro-Marmot). The first ones 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 four instances in the entire series that Lifty dies before Shifty.
 * In the credits, the writers added at the end: "not a moderator: MOD".
 * The playground in the start of the episode is also seen in other episodes, such as Spin Fun Knowin' Ya, Blast From The Past, I Nub You, and All Work and No Play.
 * The animators credited were characters "Daniel Dreiberg" and "Walter Kovacs" from Watchmen.
 * This is the first time that the raccoon duo steal from Nutty.
 * In the featuring card, Giggles is on the slide, and coincidentally 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.
 * Not counting the HTF Break short Claw, Lifty and Shifty do not appear again until 4 years later in Buns of Steal.
 * If one doesn't count the frozen fish, Shifty is responsible for everyone's death.