Without a Hitch

Without a Hitch is an episode of the Happy Tree Friends internet series, released October 13, 2009 as the 2009 Halloween special. It is the tenth episode of the third season and sixty-fourth overall, and done in a Sin City-esque style of being mostly in black and white with occasional bursts of color (in this case, red blood and Flippy's green eyes).

HTF Episode Description
In the dead of night, Flaky finds that unimaginable terror lurks at every turn. Fasten your seat-belts for a one way trip straight to the end of the road!

Plot
On a dark night, Flaky happily drives her car when she suddenly spots a figure underneath a streetlight. Flippy casually puts out his thumb to catch a ride. Being kind, Flaky stops and picks Flippy up. Once inside, Flippy pulls out some cheese from his dufflebag. The cheese gives off a horrid odor, forcing Flaky to roll down her window and stick her head out for fresh air. As she sighs in relief, the window begins rolling back up. Flippy, who is now flipped out, presses the switch to raise the window, laughing manically. Flaky screams as the window closes on and decapitates her.

The scene then shifts back to Flaky in her car, her "death" having been a vision inside her head. She shivers at the thought of her gruesome death and drives on past Flippy. A few seconds later, however, Flaky runs over a nail and has to stop. As she stares at her flat tire, it begins to rain heavily.

Flaky starts to use her lug wrench to change her tire, when she looks up. Lightning tears through the sky, revealing Flippy's figure proceeding towards her. Flaky begins to panic and tries to speed up her work. Flippy catches up to her, causing Flaky to drop her lug wrench shrieking in terror. She reaches out to grab it, but Evil Flippy picks it up and stabs her in the eye with it, twirling the lug wrench around, and pulls out her eye. To finish her off, he smacks her in the head, crushing her skull. Evil Flippy then drives off in Flaky's car with Flaky's carcass acting as a tire.

It turns out this, too, is just a vision Flaky made up in her frightened mind. She was zoned out and waving her hands away to defend herself, but Flippy has already fixed her tire. Gracious that her car was fixed, a nervous Flaky gives Flippy a ride. After buckling in and encouraging Flaky to do so, Flippy pulls out a straight razor from his dufflebag. He then proceeds to smash Flaky's head through her windshield. Evil Flippy then lets go of the wiper blade, which he has tied his razor to, slicing Flaky's face off in several pieces as it moves back and forth.

However, this is another convoluted vision from Flaky's imagination. Flaky is squealing as this vision goes through her head, taking her eyes off the road. Flippy tries to slap some sense into her to no avail, and the car plows into a utility pole, throwing Flippy through the windshield of the car. Flaky is still in her car thanks to the many seatbelts she put on earlier, however she is badly injured and cut from broken pieces of the windshield.

Flippy, seeing Flaky is badly injured and trapped in her car, pulls out his straight razor to cut the seatbelts away from her. However Flaky's overactive imagination has gotten the better of her. As she sees the razor, she grabs a nearby shard of glass. As Flippy starts cutting one of the seatbelt straps, Flaky jams the glass into Flippy's eye. Flippy yells in pain, seeing with one eye cracked-glass vision, and flees from the scene, where he is run over by Lumpy, who is driving a semi-truck. Lumpy, noticing he's hit something, slows his semi-truck down and comes to a screeching halt behind Flaky's car. He barely hits her bumper, bumping her car forward a few inches.

Inside her vehicle, Flaky sighs in relief, having survived the ordeal. Suddenly her airbag deploys, splattering her body all over the car.

Moral
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Blurb
The Blurb version contains these annotations:


 * BlurB!
 * Hey! The color is messed up!
 * Oh no, an olden days episode.
 * Mondo spend almost $1,000,000 creating backgrounds for this shot
 * Worth every penny
 * These backgrounds cost twice as much
 * Good thing that ONE light post happen to be there
 * Fun Fact: Nothing ever goes wrong when you pick up a hitchhiker
 *  Flaky is lactose intolerant
 * Or smell intolerant
 * which I didn't know was a thing.
 * There is plenty of time to move
 * Seriously, I'd totally have my head in by now
 * He has nobody to blame but herself
 * Oh tricky! This episode is like some crazy Rashomon/Memento mash up
 * they're movies...Google them.
 * Fun Fact: Light posts are always conveniently placed
 * How did that nail get in there sideways?
 * Oh no! Shaking straight lines!!
 * Flaky should roll up the window...some shaking lines might get in the car.
 * OK, that was a little scary
 * Wow. Why is he hitchkiking? He makes good time just walking
 * That's nice, he's going to help
 * If Flaky had anti-theft eyes, this wouldn't have happened
 * Aww, Flaky looks tired!
 * Flaky is kind of a jerk for misjudging Flippy.
 * Fun Fact: Seat belts save lives
 * no joke.
 * Just thought I'd put in a real fact to throw you off.
 * Well, I guess seatbelts can't save you from everything.
 * Flippy is like the MacGyver of killers
 * MacGyver was a TV show
 * Google it.
 * It was all a dream INCEPTION!
 * This episode is really messing with my seat belt theory.
 * See kids! Dreams really do come true! even bad ones.
 * Fun Fact: Flippy is a nice guy
 * Fun Fact: Nice guys finish last
 * Fun Fact: Nice guys finish last and have prism vision
 * Didn't see that coming
 * but it had to be Lumpy.
 * LOOK OUT!
 * Air bags! The silent killer!
 * Nice olden days credits!

Deaths

 * 1) Flaky has three imaginary deaths:
 * 2) Flaky is decapitated when Flippy closes her window.
 * 3) Flaky's eye is removed and Flippy killed her with another blow to the head. Later, he is seen driving her car while using her stretched, bloody body as a tire.
 * 4) Flaky's face is cut off with Flippy's knife. Had the hallucination gone on longer or the goof never happened, Flaky would have been decapitated.
 * 5) Flippy is run over by Lumpy's truck.
 * 6) Flaky is splattered to pieces by her car's airbag.

Goofs

 * 1) In the shots of Flaky and Flippy in the car, when Flaky is holding the wheel, she has four fingers and a thumb.
 * 2) When Flippy gets in the car, she puts on his seat belt. After the shot of Flaky buckling her seat belt, Flippy is not using the seat belt anymore.
 * 3) When Flaky runs over the nail, she blinks once. When she blinks, she has a pacman pupil over her closed right eye.
 * 4) As Flippy smashes Flaky's head through the windscreen her seatbelt disappears as well.
 * 5) When Flaky's face is cut by wiper blade in her imagination, her damaged face stays the same, even though huge chunks are cut off.
 * 6) The angle in which Flippy slaps Flaky isn't possible.
 * 7) After the crash, one of the headlights is lying near Flippy. The light is still working, despite the fact that the headlight is not attached to anything.
 * 8) When Flippy notices that Flaky is hurt, there is one shot in which his eyes become unnaturally large.
 * 9) Just before Flippy is stabbed in the eye, he was cutting Flaky's buckle. When Lumpy bumps Flaky's car, however, the buckle is not cut.
 * 10) The design on Flippy's beret changes places numerous times, sometimes during continuous shots.
 * 11) When Flaky is fixing the car's wheel (in her imagination), the car mirror is not seen.
 * 12) Airbags are not that strong enough to crush someone that much.

Trivia

 * This is the only regular episode that is in black and white. For the most part, the animators try to avoid these colors (with a few exceptions, such as eyes, teeth, milk, snow, etc.). These colors were also used exclusively in the irregular episode Dino-Sore Days. This episode also contains red (blood), greenish-yellow (Evil Flippy's eye color), and pink (organs, guts and brains).
 * This is the second episode to have an opening in the style of a Horror movie, the first being Peas in a Pod.
 * This is the first internet episode to star Flippy since Remains to be Seen. Ironically, both episodes are Halloween specials.
 * There are no voices in this episode (only sound effects, i.e., music, thunder).
 * This is the second episode where Flaky and Flippy co-star together since Party Animal.
 * This is the second time Flippy is killed by one of the main characters (other than himself). In this case, by Lumpy (directly) and Flaky (indirectly). The only other characters to kill Flippy so far were Toothy (Remains to be Seen) and a generic tree friend (Autopsy Turvy/Double Whammy Part 2 ).
 * This was the first regular episode where Flippy did not flip out (although he did in Flaky's imagination, but there was no reason for him to flip out there). Arguably, he didn't flip out in Happy Trails Pt. 2: Jumping the Shark.
 * Flippy's death is similar to his death in Autopsy Turvy/Double Whammy Part 2.
 * This episode made some fans believe Flippy was cured from his flip outs for good (as he was cured in Autopsy Turvy/Double Whammy Part 2). However, he flipped out in his next appearance, On My Mind, indicating otherwise.
 * This is the first time Flaky has intentionally hurt someone else.
 * The aftermath of one of Flaky's imagined deaths was similar to Handy's death in The Way You Make Me Wheel.
 * One of Flaky's imagined deaths was similar to Petunia's death in Peas in a Pod.
 * Flippy injuring Flaky with a lug wrench may be a reference to Sorority Row.
 * This is the first episode where Flippy doesn't die last.
 * The car that Flaky drives in this episode is somewhat similar to the car she drove in Easy Comb, Easy Go.
 * This is the second episode where Flippy doesn't kill anyone (although in Flaky's imagination he can be seen killing her three times) the first one was Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow.
 * At the end of the episode, just after Flaky was killed, if you listened carefully, you can hear the "Woo..." from the paper ghost in the Halloween Specials.
 * This is the first internet episode to star Flaky since Ski Ya, Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya!.
 * The story is quite similar to the urban legend of "The Barbed Autostoppist".
 * Since Flaky survived Double Whammy Part 1, it's possible that she remembered Flippy's murders in that episode, thus explaining her phobia. However, it remains unknown if she is truly aware of the difference between Flippy and Fliqpy and that Fliqpy will only appear if he is reminded of war or perhaps Flaky is scared entirely of Flippy.
 * This is the first internet season 3 episode Flippy appears in.
 * This episodes title is based off the the phase "without a hitch" as in: there are no problems, hitched ride.
 * There are no trees in this episode.