Banjo Frenzy

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

Starring Roles
Lumpy

Toothy

Cuddles

Giggles

Plot
Lumpy plays the banjo for Cuddles, Giggles and Toothy, who sit around a campfire. One of the strings on Lumpy's banjo breaks, making him sad. The other three laugh at him, enraging Lumpy. He swings his banjo and decapitates Giggles, causing her head to fall in the fire. He then cuts Cuddles in half down his head and decapitates Toothy. He begins laughing maniacally, when Toothy's eyes open. His severed head bites down on Lumpy's leg, making him scream in pain.

Deaths

 * 1) Giggles is decapitated by Lumpy's banjo.
 * 2) Cuddles is sliced in half vertically by Lumpy's banjo.
 * 3) Toothy is decapitated by Lumpy's banjo (debatable because he somehow was able to bite Lumpy's leg).

Goofs

 * 1) When Lumpy hits Toothy, his decapitated head still has both eyes. When Lumpy begins hacking up Toothy's remains, however, two eyes fly out of the mess. Though Cuddles' body fell behind Toothy, he was split in half vertically, meaning only one of his eyes would have been hit in Lumpy's attack.
 * 2) When Lumpy destroys Toothy with his banjo, the green oval on his stomach disappears.
 * 3) When Lumpy decapitates Toothy, Toothy's whole head flies past. When Lumpy is chopping up the body, Toothy's brain fly's past also.

Trivia

 * 1) The title card says "The Happy Tree Friends Bonanza".
 * 2) The characters in this episode are animated and appear differently than how they are during the regular show. For instance, Giggles is a blue squirrel rather than a pink chipmunk, Lumpy is a dinosaur rather than a moose, Cuddles is the same, but orange, no pink cheeks, a smaller tuft of hair atop of his head, and no bunny slippers, and Toothy has normal buckteeth, a darker shade of mauve, and a black tail instead of a mauve tail.
 * 3) Lumpy's personality characteristics in this episode, suddenly going from nice to evil, seem to resemble Flippy's personality. The only difference is that his killing spree was caused by humiliation rather than post-traumatic stress disorder.
 * 4) The music Lumpy plays is "Dueling Banjos" from the movie Deliverance.
 * 5) When Lumpy destroys Toothy with his banjo, an empty soup can flies past his head.
 * 6) In the episode Wrath of Con, Cub wears a mask that resembles Lumpy's head as it appears in this episode. Furthermore, Wrath of Con premiered 10 years after this episode was made.
 * 7) According to the credits, Dean MacDonald and Aubrey Ankrum (along with Rhode Montijo and Dana Belben) provided voices on this episode.
 * 8) Cuddles' Death is similar to Mime's death in Something Fishy.
 * 9) Giggles is the first to die in the entire series.
 * 10) Sequently, if the series came to be like this, it would mean that a character would survive anything as long as their head was intact.Shown whereas Cuddles head was sliced in half, Giggles head landed in the fire, but Toothy's landed on the ground and was untouched in Lumpy's rampage.