Blast From the Past

"Blast from the Past" is episode number 8.1 of the Happy Tree Friends television series. It was the second episode to be written by Mark Zaslove.

Plot
Sniffles walks into his living room with some milk and cookies and sets them on a table. He rewinds the movie he's watching to catch the part he missed, but he accidentally knocks over and breaks his glass of milk upon reaching for it. Seeing the movie rewinding, Sniffles gets an idea. He gets to work welding a lawn mower motor onto his washing machine, adding a few additional items, and in the end he has invented a time machine. He goes back in time to before the glass broke and exits the washer, which is standing over a pool of blood, triumphantly. Before he can enjoy his snack, however, Lumpy runs in the room, urgently telling Sniffles to follow him.

At a nearby park, Toothy sits on the ground by the slide, holding his broken arm and crying, while Cuddles and Giggles try to comfort him. Sniffles decides his new invention can fix the situation. As he goes back in time, he sees Toothy fly from the ground (where he is flat on his face) back to the slide. When enough time has passed, Sniffles exits the time machine, hammers down the end of the slide, which curves upwards, and hides in the bushes.

Lumpy, Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy frolic back onto the playground, holding hands, unaware of what Sniffles had done. Everybody splits up to play on various equipment, Toothy obviously going to the slide. He slides down again, but, since Sniffles flattened the end of the slide out, he flies forward at a fast speed. He ends up flying through Lumpy, impaling him through the back and killing them both. Sniffles, seeing this, goes back in time again, but this time he completely dismantles the slide. When Lumpy and the kids run back into the playground, Toothy sadly wonders where the slide went.

Elsewhere, by the seesaw, Cuddles beckons Lumpy over to play with him. Lumpy hops on, but the seesaw doesn't move. He pushes his body down on it, but he loses his grip on the handle which ends up impaling him. Sniffles turns the clock back again and oils the seesaw so that it moves. Once more, the group happily enters the playground and Cuddles calls Lumpy to the seesaw. This time, however, when Lumpy jumps onto the seesaw, Cuddles is launched into space where he freezes and is shattered by a passing satellite.

Sniffles turns back the clock, and once more Lumpy launches Cuddles upwards, but this time he flies into the open door of a passing plane. We see that Sniffles is piloting it, and he lands the plane on the playground near the swings. Giggles, playing on the swings, marvels at Sniffles' innovativeness, when the air given off by the engines of the plane pushes her back. She flies into a dumpster, where she emerges unharmed. Unfortunately, the dumpster is picked up by a garbage truck and Giggles is crushed when the back door begins closing. Sniffles gets frustrated and decides to try drastic measures.

He goes back in time, now in prehistoric times. A prehistoric ant and a prehistoric Sniffles watch as Sniffles does some measurements and plants a few acorns in specific areas of the ground. On his way back to the time machine, he sees a prehistoric ant and eats it. After Sniffles leaves, the prehistoric Sniffles does likewise to the prehistoric ant on his shoulder. Back in present times, Sniffles ties a net between the two trees that grew where Sniffles planted the acorns.

Once more, the events happen in place. As Giggles flies off the swings, she bounces off the net and flies back into the swings, twirling around the bar until she is crushed by the chains. Sniffles, now fed up with the task of keeping everyone safe, cuts down the trees, and dismantles all the playground equipment. With that, he drives the broken playground equipment to the dump as the gang once more frolics onto the scene. They are saddened to see that all the playground equipment is gone, but Lumpy spots a merry-go-round behind some bushes.

The kids get on and Lumpy pushes them, but they shout they want to go faster. Happy to oblige, Lumpy begins pushing the merry-go-round as fast as he can{based on the episode "spin fun knowin ya"] Toothy ends up losing his grip and flies into a tree, where he breaks his back. The bar that Giggles is holding onto then breaks off and she flies away. Her body is cut in half by a nearby treestump, and her chest is then impaled by the bar that flew off. Cuddles, now screaming and holding on for dear life, flies off the merry-go-round when his hands get torn off by the force. He ends up flying through the engine of the plane that Sniffles parked earlier, being shredded in a bloody mess.

Lumpy, not realizing what happened, stops pushing the merry-go-round when he runs out of breath. He sees Cuddles' hands still holding onto the bar of the merry-go-round and, realizing what happened, whistles and walks away. Back at Sniffles' house, he is finally about to enjoy his hard earned glass of milk. His time machine appears above his head, however, and crushes him as it falls to the floor, causing a pool of blood to form beneath it. Sniffles gets out and is about to enjoy his milk when Lumpy comes in and frantically tells him to follow him to the playground. They leave the house, and Sniffles' milk remains on the table, untouched.

Moral
"Time heals all wounds!"

Deaths

 * 1) Sniffles unknowingly crushes her future self with her time machine. Later on in the episode her past self inevitably kills him, forming a paradox.
 * 2) Toothy dies twice. The first time he flies off a slide and impales Lumpy, where they both die. The second time he flies off a merry-go-round and slams into a tree, breaking his back.
 * 3) Lumpy dies twice. The first time he is impaled by Toothy, who flies off a slide. The second time, he is impaled on the handle of a seesaw, forcing his spine out of his back.
 * 4) Cuddles dies twice. The first time he flies into space, freezes, and is shattered by a satellite. The second time, he flies through the engine of a plane.
 * 5) Giggles dies three times. The first time she is crushed by a garbage truck. The second time she is crushed by the spinning chains of a swing set. The third time she is cut in half when she flies into a tree stump and impaled through the chest by a metal bar.
 * 6) A tiny prehistoric lizard/dinosaur is crushed by Sniffles' time machine.
 * 7) Two prehistoric ants are eaten by Sniffles and the prehistoric Sniffles.
 * 8) Sniffles is crushed by her time machine, when history repeats itself. She's not fully dead, however, as a version of her from the past emerges from the time machine, having no knowledge of her previous labors.

Goofs

 * 1) As Sniffles rewinds his movie, the same part plays twice.
 * 2) The first time Sniffles uses his time machine, the glass of milk can be seen returning to the table (or "falling in reverse") without Sniffles on the couch spilling it, but every time it's used after that, Sniffles can be seen.
 * 3) When Sniffles is crushed by the time machine, you can hear him screaming & "crushing" noises. However, when this happened before, you just hear the "thud" of the time machine landing.
 * 4) At first, When Sniffles had not spilled his glass of milk and watching his movie, Lumpy didn't appear but after he first use the time machine, Lumpy appeared.
 * 5) The directions of Lumpy's antlers change numerous times throughout the episode, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 6) When Toothy is shown sliding down the slide in reverse, Lumpy is standing next to the slide, watching Toothy fly over his head. After Sniffles changes the past, however, Lumpy is standing further away from the slide and has his back to Toothy.
 * 7) Sniffles' position changes from behind the slide to next to the slide the first time he goes back in time.
 * 8) Sniffles has no tail before he removes the slide.
 * 9) After Sniffles removes the slide, it reappears after Lumpy gets impaled by the seesaw handlebar.
 * 10) As the trees Sniffles planted in prehistoric times grow, the trees in the background remain the same size.
 * 11) If Sniffles undid all of his actions near the end of the episode, the plane that Sniffles used to save Cuddles shouldn't have been there.
 * 12) Even though the bar Giggles' was holding broke off, all four bars are present on the merry-go-round when Lumpy stops spinning it.
 * 13) When Lumpy stops spinning the merry-go-round, Cuddles' severed hands aren't visible until it almost comes to a complete stop.
 * 14) When Cuddles was launched into space, his voice should not have been heard, as there are no air molecules in space to carry sound. Therefore, he could not scream in space.
 * 15) When Lumpy first goes to Sniffles, he takes his goggles off after Lumpy is done talking. At the end of the episode, he takes his goggles off as Lumpy is talking.
 * 16) At the end of the episode when Sniffles is crushed by himself, this is shown to be after he has failed, and Cuddles, Giggles and Toothy have all died. Yet Lumpy comes over to the past Sniffles (who has crushed him) for help, which, at least at the beginning of the episode, was for Toothy injuring his arm.
 * 17) However, time in this episode could be constantly changing because of time travellers such as Sniffles rather than be in a loop that always returns to what the timeline was originally.

Trivia

 * It could be said that Sniffles started the Happy Tree Friends' long reputation of dying over and over, since his influence of the past altered a situation resulting in Toothy's minor injury to one that results in almost everyone's death. (The description on the HTF website says "Building a time machine to change the past creates a deadly future for Sniffles!" may also be implying that too.)
 * When Lumpy goes to Sniffles' house and tell him to go with him to the playgound Lumpy yells: "Hey, you! You gotta help me, you know, i get here when a, i guess you already know it. Come on!!".
 * In the beginning of the scene where Toothy breaks his arm in reverse, the text "Track toothy with camera" quickly flashes twice at the top right corner of the screen.
 * The movie Sniffles is watching at the start of the episode is Back to the Future.
 * The scene towards the end of the episode, with the merry-go-round, is a remake of the episode Spin Fun Knowin' Ya. In other words, Sniffles likely caused the events in the short.
 * There are numerous notable differences between the merry-go-round scene in this episode and Spin Fun Knowin' Ya, on which the scene is based.Happy_Tree_Friends_Art_Evolution.jpg
 * 1) In the original, Giggles didn't have the diamond mark on her head, Toothy had two stray hairs atop his head, and Cuddles' cheeks were white at the beginning. These are fixed in the present episode.
 * 2) In the original, Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy have their mitten hands throughout the episode, while now their fingers can be seen.
 * 3) In the original, Lumpy is neither paying attention to the kids nor smiling. In this episode, he is smiling at and watching the kids.
 * 4) In the original, only Cuddles laughs and tells Lumpy to go faster. In this episode, all three laugh and tell Lumpy to go faster.
 * 5) In this episode, Toothy flinches after Lumpy begins pushing them faster, whereas he didn't do that in the original episode.
 * 6) In this episode Toothy's expression changes before he flies off the merry-go-round, whereas in the original it didn't change until after.
 * 7) When Toothy flies off the merry-go-round in this episode, he flies in the opposite direction than he did in Spin Fun Knowin' Ya.
 * 8) In the original, Toothy's blood splatters in a design, but in this episode it makes more of a spaced out splatter.
 * 9) In this episode, the pole that Giggles holds onto is hollow when it breaks off. In the previous episode, when it breaks off, it is solid.
 * 10) In the original, Giggles is cut completely in half by the stump. In the present episode her spinal cord remains in tact.
 * 11) In the original, one cannot see Giggles' teeth when she is cut in half, but they are present in this episode.
 * 12) In the original, chunks of Cuddles' body can be seen coming out of the airplane's engine. In this episode, only his blood flies out.
 * 13) After Toothy and Giggles fly off the merry-go-round in this episode, Cuddles yells, "Oh my god I'm gonna die, not this old death again!" whereas in Spin Fun Knowin' Ya he shouts, "Alright! Alright! I don't wanna die!"
 * 14) In Spin Fun Knowin' Ya, Cuddles' hands face the wrong way at the end. In this episode, they face the right way.
 * 15) In the original, when Lumpy makes the "OK" sign, he has five fingers. But, in this episode, when he makes it, he has four fingers.
 * To date, this episode marks the only time in the series Sniffles was able to eat and hold down an ant.
 * In total, Sniffles travels back in time seven times.
 * The order of the events that takes place are roughly:
 * 1) Sniffles plants the trees in prehistoric times.
 * 2) Sniffles chops down the trees and dismantles the playground equipment.
 * 3) Lumpy, Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy arrive at the playground.
 * 4) Toothy breaks his arm or Toothy impales Lumpy or Toothy walks away from the spot the slide was in or Lumpy, Cuddles, Giggles, and Toothy find the merry-go-round.
 * 5) Lumpy is impaled by the seesaw handle or Cuddles is flung into space or Cuddles is rescued by Sniffles or Toothy gets flung into a tree
 * 6) Giggles is crushed by a garbage truck or Giggles is crushed by a swingset or Giggles hits a stump and splits in half.
 * 7) Cuddles is flung into an airplane propeller.
 * 8) Lumpy asks Sniffles to help him deal with Toothy's broken arm or Lumpy asks Sniffles to help him deal with the deaths of Toothy, Giggles, and Cuddles.
 * 9) Sniffles knocks over his glass of milk or Sniffles is crushed by the time machine.
 * 10) Sniffles begins building the time machine or Sniffles goes to help Lumpy.
 * The moral in this episode is the same one used in Better Off Bread.
 * When this episode aired along with Chew Said a Mouthful and See What Develops on Youtube, the alternate title for the trio of segments was named "Behind the Eight Ball". Lumpy, Toothy, and Giggles appear in all three episodes. also, Toothy dies in all three.
 * So far, this is the only episode where Sniffles has a starring role and survives.