Recap / The Amazing Digital Circus E2: Candy Carrier Chaos!

Story:

Zooble couldn't be bothered to show up for the thumbnail.

After waking up from a nightmare about being abstracted, Pomni has her door knocked on by Ragatha. She tells Pomni that she forgives her for leaving her behind, understanding the circumstances and saying there are no hard feelings. Caine then reveals the gang's next adventure: CANDY CARRIER CHAOS! The Candy Canyon Kingdom has been robbed of its maple syrup by a trio of gummy crocodile bandits, and it's up to the players to take down the bandit gang and save the kingdom's syrup supply. After Zooble walks away, he tells them that he's testing out a new, "57 times more immersive" AI in this adventure. While it isn't enough to convince Zooble to stay, the rest of the gang is shoved through a portal to the kingdom.

The group is welcomed into the kingdom with a chariot ride, raining confetti on them as gummified mannequins cheer them on. They're then greeted by Princess Loolilalu (Vera Tan), who recognizes them as the knights sent by "God" (Caine) to help. As Ragatha tries to cheer up Pomni, Loo grants them a modified syrup tanker truck to go against the bandits' own as well as the key to the kingdom's gate to Ragatha for when they return. Jax initially calls shotgun, before giving the driver's seat to Gangle after being disappointed by the truck's horn. The gang then drives out to search for the bandit gang.

The trio of bandits are resting at a campsite. Two of them discuss if the syrup will be enough to save their boss' mom once they return to their village. The boss (Jack Hawkins) assures them that she's a fighter, even if he can't be sure until they get back. However, he soon spots the performers' truck in the distance with his binoculars and the gang quickly hops back in their own. Jax concocts a plan with Gangle, wanting to hop aboard to blast them with a candy shotgun. Ragatha tries to get Pomni to help, trying to suggest something before Jax cuts her off and throws Pomni out of the truck through the roof. She lands between the two trucks, now side-by-side, and gets her arms stretched out as they both pull apart from each other.

After a bit of searching, and Pomni getting hit in the face with a life preserver ring thrown by Kinger, Jax soon pulls out a bazooka and tells Pomni to stay connected to both of the trucks so he can cross her like a bridge. She loses her grip on the performer's truck, flinging her on top of the bandit vehicle. The chubbier bandit attempts to grab Pomni, but is shot off by Jax's bazooka and is left clinging to a rope on the back of the truck, dodging rocks. The boss instructs the lanky driver to steer into a patch of rocky terrain to throw them off, but the gang follows them in as the short crocodile climbs up the rope.

Jax instructs Gangle to ram into the bandits, which Ragatha objects to as Pomni's still on the roof of the truck, but Gangle does it anyway after Jax threatens to tell Ragatha about "the figurine thing". After being rammed, the boss pulls a switch to activate a bunch of spikes on both sides of his truck. Kinger throws an anchor towards Pomni to try and help, but it flies over the truck and falls off a cliffside... with the rope to it attached to the inside of their truck. The trucks collide once more as the anchor tugs the performer's vehicle towards the bandits', causing Ragatha to be impaled by one of the spikes as it pierces the truck. After a struggle, the players' truck is sent falling off the cliff into a river of fudge while the bandits collide into a small gap in the cliffside that causes it to start clipping through the map. Both Pomni and the boss are sent falling underneath the world as the truck is flung back into the air along with the other bandits.

The bandit boss painfully lands in a big maze with black and blue checkered tiles. After exploring for some time, he finds a test room containing all the models of the adventure's NPCs... including himself and his lads, which sends him spiraling into panic just as Pomni lands in the room. As Pomni tries to figure a way back to the map's boundaries, and after realizing he can't even remember what his mom looks like, the boss demands to know what he or anyone else in his world is. Meanwhile, as the players' tanker floats in the river, they encounter The Fudge, a living sludge-fudge monster who attempts to eat them but is dissuaded after Ragatha clarifies that they aren't made of candy. He used to live in the kingdom but was banished after he ate many of the kingdom's residents.

Jax tries to strike a deal with the Fudge, showing him the key to the kingdom that he stole from Ragatha and offering to bring him back inside the kingdom in return for helping them catch the bandits... just as the bandits' tanker crashes into the river right in front of them from the sky. Back under the map, Pomni is trying to free the truck model from its stationary spot while the boss has an existential crisis, having learned the truth of his NPC existence through her. As he bemoans how nothing matters now due to him, his friends and his entire reality being fake, Pomni sits beside him and shares that she's going through something similar with her own situation. She offers to bring him back to the circus, to have a new home and new friends, and to be someone real there rather than staying in the Candy Canyon Kingdom. He agrees, as long as she doesn't reveal the truth to his gang, and reveals his name to her: Gummigoo.

Pomni then decides to try and cause the truck to glitch again by placing three cubes in front of it to drive over, which succeeds, flinging the tanker up and sending them hurtling back towards the map. Meanwhile, the gang is now riding both of the tankers on top of the Fudge as it crawls back to the kingdom, the two remaining bandits tied up with rope. Jax laments that the adventure had ended anti-climatically, wishing it had ended with a bloody final battle while Ragatha tries to ask the bandits where Pomni and their boss went, but they have no clue. Ragatha confides in Kinger that she's worried about Pomni, saying that today is another horrible experience for her and that she thinks she doesn't like her but Kinger tells her to not take it too personally as Pomni is still new to the circus, noting how long it took for Ragatha to adjust to life in the circus.

The second bandit tanker bursts from the ground to their side, before landing right into the top of the Fudge, who dissolves. After vomiting up his guts with Pomni, Gummigoo reunites with his lads, giving them a hug while telling them they don't wanna know what happened. Gangle asks why there are two bandit trucks, but is ignored as Kinger finds out both are filled up with syrup. The bandits decide to bring one truck back to their village while the gang takes the other back to the kingdom. Pomni tells Ragatha about Gummigoo, and how he'll be joining them in the circus. The gang, plus Gummigoo, brings the truck back to the kingdom. The princess bids them farewell as the portal back to the circus appears, hoping they'll have fun executing Gummigoo... before the Fudge, still alive, suddenly invades the kingdom through the gate Jax left unlocked. The gang then hurriedly leaves as the kingdom is attacked, returning to the circus. However, Caine spots Gummigoo and snaps his fingers, causing him to explode into confetti right in front of Pomni.

He explains he can't let NPCs stay in the circus, in order to avoid confusing them with the players, before leaving to drink water while Pomni maniacally laughs to herself. Ragatha tries to comfort her, saying she might run into Gummigoo again someday since Caine occasionally reuses NPCs, but it does nothing to help. She then offers her to join them for Kaufmo's funeral, as they hold one whenever someone is abstracted to honor their memory, though they didn't yesterday due to all the chaos. Jax walks away, looking sad at first before shifting back to a mean glare.

The group minus Jax stands around a box with Kaufmo's portrait propped on top of it with flowers. Each member gives a speech about Kaufmo as Pomni watches, while Pomni flashes back to the end of her nightmare from the start of the episode... but the gang's hands all reach out and grab her as she falls down the hole. Finally realizing that the others truly care for each other, including herself, she gives her first genuine smile. The shot extends further and further from the group until we see the outside of the tent as the episode ends.

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Tropes:

• Accidental Hero: Jax throwing Pomni into action against her will accidentally starts the chain of events that makes her snap out of her depression.
• Abandonment-Induced Animosity: Averted; Ragatha says at the start of the episode that she isn't upset about Pomni leaving her in the last episode. She was actually upset because she wants Pomni to feel welcome in the Circus, and feels bad that her first day there was so chaotic/traumatic. She spends most of the episode attempting to befriend Pomni, and by the end it seems like they're making progress.
• Alien Sky: The Candy Canyon Kingdom's sky is pale green at the horizon, shading into blue overhead; in the evening, the green is replaced by pink. It's also full of macaron-shaped clouds, behind which are a large number of planet-like orbs.
• All for Nothing:
  • After going through an entire existential crisis and deciding he's willing to try living in the Circus with the rest of the cast, Caine immediately blows up Gummigoo due to him not wanting to risk mixing up real people with NPCs.
  • To a lesser extent, the gang returning the Candy Canyon Kingdom's syrup is rendered moot when Jax intentionally leaves the front gate unlocked for the Fudge to sneak in and start devouring people again.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • Ragatha and Kinger get kitchen knives stuck in their heads due to Gangle's bumpy driving — Ragatha gets a butcher's cleaver through the top of her skull, while Kinger ends up with knives stuck all over his head. Due to the game world's cartoon physics, they only express some consternation over this, although Ragatha seems more annoyed than Kinger by all the knives in the truck.
    Ragatha: Why are there so many knives back here?!
  • Ragatha is also later impaled through her chest with a spike, but is completely fine when it gets back out outside of losing a bit of stuffing.
• Anachronism Stew: The Candy Canyon Kingdom is a medieval-esque kingdom, but it also has Old West bandits and modern-day trucks. Pomni is quick to lampshade this.
  Pomni: What time period is this supposed to be, anyway?
• Ax-Crazy: Jax outright craves violence and destruction and is very disappointed when the adventure starts to end on a wholesome note. He desires to see people die so much that he leaves the gates open for the Fudge to come in and terrorize the Candy Canyon Kingdom again.
• Bittersweet Ending: How the episode ends. Gummigoo dies an abrupt death by Caine, and a spiteful Jax unleashes the Fudge upon the Candy Canyon Kingdom. Despite that, the funeral at the end is sincerely sweet with everyone truly saddened to see Kaufmo get abstracted. With Ragatha's kind reassurance, Pomni not only has her nightmare turn into a hopeful dream where the gang rescues her from the pit, but she finally displays a genuine smile as uplifting music plays, a sign that she may be stuck, but she's not alone.
• Book Ends: The episode begins with Pomni having a nightmare that she's abstracted and being sent to the cellar. Towards the end, while the rest of the gang is giving their respective eulogies in memory of Kaufmo, it flashes back to her falling only to be caught by the rest of the gang.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When the gang starts driving towards the bandits, Jax says that when "[they] catch up to 'em, [he]'ll jump over, crawl inside, and shoot 'em repeatedly until they're unrecognizable."
  Gangle: I feel like that violates some kind of convention.
  Jax: You're violating my ears with your clap-back. Get driving, driver!
• Brick Joke: The beginning of the episode has Pomni falling from her Catapult Nightmare and bounces off a glitchy block in her room. During the gang's adventure in the Candy Kingdom, she and Gumigoo's truck clip into a wall, causing them both to fall into the Debug Room. Near the end, Pomni uses a truck stashed in that room, attaching cubes for wheels so they can catapult via glitching and escape to the surface.
• Call-Back: Fudge calls Jax a Master of Unlocking for having the key with him. In the Pilot, Jax also did steal keys to unlock Kaufmo's and Ragatha's rooms.
• Calling Shotgun: Jax calls shotgun for the driver's seat instead of the passenger's seat, but he gets disappointed by the sound the horn makes, so he forces Gangle to drive instead.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Jax attempts to appeal to the Fudge in order to gain his help by complimenting his character, but the Fudge brags that the things he does during his off-time would disturb even a sociopath like Jax.
• Censored for Comedy: Besides sticky, Bubble describes the Candy Canyon Kingdom adventure as something so vile it has to be replaced with a long censor bleep, rather than the usual style of cartoonish sound effects. Caine lampshades it.
• Character Development: Despite her situation certainly not getting any better, Pomni at least gets over her Heroic BSoD and tries to socialize.
• Chekhov's Gag: Pomni catapults out of bed after her nightmare and clips into a block in her room, rocketing her into the ceiling and slamming on the floor. Later, while Pomni and Gummigoo are still stuck out of bounds, Pomni gets an idea to escape: taking a copy of Gummigoo's truck and putting three blocks under the wheels to clip into and rocket them back into the game world.
• Camera Abuse: Happens twice. Fudge goes all over the screen when the gang's candy truck lands in the fudge river, and it happens again when it happens again to the bandits' truck moments after getting launched into the sky after clipping through the map.
• Chekhov's Gun: Loo gives Ragatha a key to the gates before the gang leaves, and warns to not let it fall into wrong hands. Jax steals it and uses it to try to bargain with Fudge. Then he leaves the gates open when everyone returns just so Fudge can cause at least some violence.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: At the start of the episode, Bubble says that an entire kingdom of candy "sounds sticky", and then adds that it also sounds like some much longer thing that is completely censored out. Whatever it was, it was enough to unnerve Caine.
  Caine: Bubble, you can't say that.
• Commonality Connection: Pomni and Gummigoo bond over the fact that they're both going through existential crises, although Pomni acknowledges that they have opposite problems. Gummigoo can remember his life, but now has to deal with the fact that it's not real, while Pomni knows she had a life in the real world, but can't remember it.
• Cruel Twist Ending: After half the episode is spent between Pomni and Gummigoo bonding with over their feelings of worthlessness and deciding to work through them together as friends, Caine zaps Gummigoo out of existence just to spare himself the trouble of keeping track of who's human and who's an NPC. The ending is sweetened somewhat by Pomni learning to embrace the others at the circus as her friends, though.
• Debug Room: An In-Universe example of this is encountered when Pomni and Gummigoo get out of bounds in the Candy Canyon Kingdom. The room in question is a box shaped room filled with the models of all of the Candy Canyon Kingdom's characters, and also has some Utah Teapots (a commonly used test model for 3D) floating above it. Obviously, this breaks Gummigoo's mind.
• Due to the Dead: Kaufmo's abstraction is treated like his death and the crew hold a funeral for him at the end of the episode.
• Ending Memorial Service: The episode ends with the players (sans Jax) holding a funeral for Kaufmo.
• Everyone Has Standards: Caine seems genuinely mortified by whatever Bubble said that got censor-bleeped.
• Existential Horror: Gummigoo is hit hard with an existential crisis after falling under the map and learning he's just an NPC in a video game, and that his life and memories are just fiction meant for one-off, ultimately trivial entertainment.
• Expy:
  • Princess Loolilalu is essentially a candy version of Princess Peach from Super Mario Bros.
  • A sludge monster that craves candy? The Fudge is almost identical to the Greedy from Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure.
• The Eeyore: For the first half of the episode, Pomni has stopped caring what's going on and dismisses Ragatha's attempt to cheer her up. She snaps out of it when Jax tries to use her as a makeshift bridge, and feels slightly better after having a talk with Gummigoo.
• Fake Memories: When they're first introduced, Gummigoo and his crew talk about his sick mother and their village. However, these are just implanted memories that Caine gave them. Gummigoo later realizes that he doesn't remember his mother's face when he sees that she doesn't have a model in the gallery of model references for the kingdom's residents, which is a major part of his crisis of self once he realizes that his life is just elaborate fiction.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • As the Circus characters leave the Candy Canyon Kingdom with Gummigoo, Princess Loolilalu tells them to "have fun executing the bandit"^note Whether or not they told her this is why he was going with them or if this was her own conclusion is up for debate. Pomni laughs it off, thinking that Gummigoo will be allowed to stay in the Circus. Not even a minute later, Caine explodes Gummigoo on sight.
  • When Gummigoo and Pomni are in the Debug Room, there's a copy of The Fudge's character model. The rest of the gang encounter him in the next scene.
• Foreshadowing: When the main characters arrive at the city, two signs with drawings of the Fudge and reading "Danger" and "Keep out" can be spoted around the drawbridge. A minute later, Princess Loo gives the town's key to Ragatha, and warns her to not let anyone bad put their hands on it. Eventually, Jax steals the key, and uses it to let it the Fudge in by the end of the adventure.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: In the beginning of the episode, Pomni fears this happening to her with a nightmare where she is Abstracted and thrown down in the Cellar with Caine, Ragatha, and Jax treating her demise with casual indifference. This makes it difficult for her to open up to the other Players, especially Ragatha who is making an effort to cheer her up. However, the end of the episode makes it clear that the Players defy this with their funeral to Kaufmo, making it clear how much they care about each other and miss them when they are gone.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Ragatha invites Pomni to visit Kaufmo's funeral, Jax's expression is very briefly sad between angrily looking off to the side, implying that he might feel a little bad for Kaufmo.
  • Pausing and slowing down the scene of the group catching Pomni and saving her from the cellar reveals that Jax's hand is not included.
• Funny Background Event: When Pomni and Gummigoo reunite with the others, while Pomni is talking to Ragatha, Max and Chad are in the background doing different funny things that switch between scenes such as playing patty-cake, Chad moving his arms to do the whip while Max claps, and the two of them dancing in a kick line.
• Gone Horribly Right: Caine said that he made the AI more immersive for his next adventure. This means that Gummigoo has enough self-awareness to recognize the nature of his existence when he ends up in the Debug Room and has a mental breakdown over it.
• Heroic BSoD: Pomni is in one for much of the episode, being generally depressed and speaking mainly when spoken to, as well as failing to notice Ragatha trying to reach out to her and likely feeling lingering hurt over Pomni leaving her behind last episode. She starts to feel better when she empathises with Gummigoo and while it seems like his sudden death might reset her to square one, the others holding a funeral for Kaufmo helps allay some of her anxieties for the moment. When Ragatha is worried about Pomni being off on her own, Kinger suggests most residents go through a depressed state on first arrival at the Circus, something that included Ragatha herself.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Fudge was banished due to him constantly eating the other Candy Canyon Kingdom residents.
• Immediate Sequel: This episode takes place the day following the events of the last one.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Ragatha briefly gets impaled by one of the spikes of the bandits' truck, but it hardly fazes her.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: After deleting Gummigoo, given that Caine (and the rest of the Circus denizens) seems to be a construct in a computer system and thus doesn't need to consume for nourishment:
  Caine: Well, I'm gonna go drink water! It's been a while since I've done that! [disappears into thin air]
• Kayfabe: Ragatha fully embraces being a Candy Canyon Kingdom's knight, even if she's aware it's just a temporary quest Caine has generated to keep them occupied. Pomni earlier compares it to LARP.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Happens to Gummigoo at the end.
  Caine: Oop! Looks like one of these guys made it through! *snaps fingers*
  Gummigoo: Wait, wha— *explodes into confetti*
• Laughing Mad: Similar to her reaction when seeing the computer station in the false exit area during the pilot, Pomni devolves into insane laughter upon Caine blowing up Gummigoo, rendering all her attempts at forging a friendship with him pointless.
• Level Ate: This episode takes place within the Candy Canyon Kingdom, where everyone and everything is made of candy or some sort of sweet-tasting entity. In it, the Circus members are tasked by Princess Loolilalu to recover their maple syrup from Gummigoo and his gang of bandits.
• Like a God to Me: Caine is treated as an actual God in the Candy Canyon Kingdom.
• Magical Profanity Filter: Just like in the pilot/first episode, Pomni's swearing is censored with sound effects and a censor box. This can be seen during the truck chase.
• Memorial Photo: A framed picture of Kaufmo sitting atop a toy chest with white flowers is featured during his funeral service.
• Near-Miss Groin Attack: While Pomni is only halfway over the ledge of the bandit's truck, its side draws spikes, the nearest one right between her legs. The point misses her so narrowly she ends up sitting on the flat edge and being lifted up slightly.
• Necessarily Evil: Caine really doesn’t like killing NPCs who manage to get out from their reality (and Ragatha even says that he sometimes brings them back to life for the next adventure), but he can’t allow them to mix up with the players. Judging by his expression, if such event could happen, the consequences would be catastrophic.
• Nightmare Sequence: Pomni has a nightmare where the glitching on her hand from the previous episode spreads up her arm, and she ends up being tossed into the basement by Caine. He, Jax, and Ragatha all mock her as she falls with a crestfallen expression before waking up.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Jax tells Gangle (who’s driving the truck) to ram into the bandits' vehicle. Gangle refuses until Jax threatens her, saying that if she doesn't do it he’ll tell Ragatha about the figurine thing. Gangle then fake-laughs innocently and does what Jax requested.
  • Caine implies that the players have tried bringing foreign NPCs into the Circus with them before and it led to Caine getting the players and the NPCs mixed up. What exactly happened isn't made clear, but Caine immediately deleting Gummigoo and his haunted expression afterwards suggests that the consequences weren't pretty.
• Not So Above It All: Despite their usual grumpy attitude, Zooble finishes the arrangements for Kaufmo's funeral while the rest of the group is adventuring the Candy Canyon Kingdom, they are shown participating in Kaufmo's funeral service, and though their dialogue is hidden by the soundtrack, their expression makes it clear that they aren't happy to have lost one of their friends.
• Off the Rails: The main adventure's plotline is thrown severely off track when Pomni and Gummigoo accidentally glitch through the bottom of the Candy map into the unrendered default area, causing Gummigoo to realize he, his friends, and his entire history are fake when he encounters his template model.
• Person as Verb: While floating on the fudge river, Jax says that they're "one tanker away from being Augustus Glooped!"
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: After the adventure goes off the rails, everybody still in the map's bounds runs into a fudge monster named The Fudge, who has no connection to the maple syrup or the bandits and was banished for unrelated reasons. Jax makes use of him, although not for completely helpful reasons.
• Pun: Jax callously insists that Gangle follows his orders to be "submissive and agreeable", a rather obscene pun on the internet meme phrase "submissive and breedable" (which is rather disturbing if taken literally).
• Rewatch Bonus: At the start, it seems like Zooble is simply trying to stay out of the adventure out of pure moodiness (much like they tried to do in the last episode). However, the end reveals that they actually stayed out of it because they were setting things up for Kaufmo's funeral.
• Sanity Slippage: Defied, barely but still. After seeing Gummigoo explode, Pomni begins to start losing her mind not unlike the first episode. However, after attending Kaufmo's funeral and seeing all the players giving their speeches about him and acting like a family, her mental health starts to improve with the realization that she is not alone, giving to the viewer her first genuine smile.
• Self-Duplication: Done inadvertently to the syrup tanker truck when it glitches through the map with one clipping through the floor along with Pomni and Gummigoo and the other launching itself towards the sky with the rest of the cast.
• Shout-Out:
  • Pomni's Nightmare Sequence where she is dropped into the cellar after her arm abstracts is very similar to Woody's nightmare from Toy Story 2 where Woody is dropped into a trash can.
  • When Jax throws Pomni between the two tankers, her arms get stretched out and her legs squash up into her body, identically to Scrat in Ice Age: The Meltdown when he's caught in a glacier that's splitting apart.
  • When one of the gummy gators falls off his crew's truck and ends up being dragged by a rope, he dodges various rocks by striking poses with a white backdrop exactly like the taunt-parry in Pizza Tower.
  • While floating in the fudge river, Jax complains the group (sans Pomni) is "one tanker away from being Augustus Glooped."
  • The Fudge asks if Jax is a "master of unlocking" when he offers the key to the Candy Canyon Kingdom, referencing a popular meme from the original Resident Evil.
  • The trucks are referred to as "war rigs".
  • The gummy elephant the players ride to the kingdom is based on this rather funny video.
• Sixth Ranger: Gummigoo is set up to be this, befriending Pomni after his reality-shattering discovery and being brought back to the circus... only to be immediately taken out by Caine.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Whatever Bubble said about Candy Canyon Kingdom is bleeped out by a long traditional bleep, as opposed to the wacky noises and censor bar everyone else has.
  Bubble: An entire kingdom of candy? Sounds...sticky!
  Caine: Very sticky indeed!
  Bubble: Sounds [an extremely long bleeped-out phrase]!
  Caine: ...Bubble, you can't say that.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: At the end of the episode, when Pomni, Ragatha, Gangle, Jax, and Kinger are about to leave the Candy Canyon Kingdom, Pomni tries to bring Gummigoo along with her to the circus. Princess Loolilalu assumes that Pomni's bringing Gummigoo with her to be executed. Pomni's really bringing Gummigoo along because she wants to bring him along with her to the circus after the existential crisis he endured while in Candy Canyon Kingdom's out-of-bounds area, but Pomni goes along with the princess' assumption. Gummigoo gets "executed" by Caine not long after arriving in the circus, though.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Almost immediately after arriving at the circus, Gummigoo is exploded into confetti by Caine snapping his fingers, because Caine will not allow other NPCs to stay at the circus. While Ragatha tries to assure Pomni that he could come back as Caine likes to reuse NPCs, it's unlikely it'll be the same Gummigoo.
• Terrible Trio: The three crocodile bandits, Gummigoo, Max, and Chad who stole the Candy Canyon Kingdom's maple syrup make up this, with Gummigoo being the head honcho behind this operation with Max and Chad following along.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After being forced into one of Caine's adventures, getting their body parts stolen by Gloinks and eaten by the Gloink Queen in the pilot, Zooble manages to hide out from this adventure and set up Kaufmo's funeral, all with their body parts perfectly intact.
• Token Evil Teammate: While in the Pilot Jax was more of The Prankster, here he joins the adventure exclusively to see some violence, and is overwhelmingly repulsed by the task's relatively boring resolution. Then, he leaves the Candy Canyon Kingdom citizens to be eaten by Fudge for no reason in particular and doesn't even stay to watch it.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Whereas Jax mainly liked pushing others' buttons and getting them involved in wonton slapstick in the pilot, he's become even worse here. He verbally abuses and blackmails Gangle, constantly complains that there's no bloodshed happening, and deliberately leaves the gates to the Candy Canyon Kingdom open to unleash the Fudge upon them once more.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Pomni goes from being so scared by her surroundings that she was willing to abandon everyone else for what she thinks is an exit (something she does feel guilty about, but the point still stands) to quickly befriending and helping an equally frightened and confused soul, even if her efforts were All for Nothing in the end. She also seems to start forming a genuine bond with the other circus members when they set up Kaufmo's funeral.
• Uncertain Doom:
  • The last we see of the Candy Canyon Kingdom, the hungry, candy-eating Fudge is slowly approaching them offscreen. Their fate is not seen, but it's not likely to be pleasant for the kingdom, especially given we can already hear screaming. Then again, Caine might totally freeze the place without any PCs there to observe it.
  • It's unknown if Gummigoo exploding into confetti killed him or just was a way of sending him back to the candy kingdom, especially since it's similar to how Caine routinely pops Bubble. Granted even if he was sent back, it's unknown if he'd survive Fudge.
• Visual Pun: The "shotgun" seat of the candy rig is shown to have a literal Sawed-Off Shotgun stowed underneath it. (Of course, this is where the term originally comes from, as it initially referred to the seat on a stagecoach where the guy carrying a shotgun to fend off bandits would sit).
• Vomit Chain Reaction: After the Fudge is defeated, Pomni whom experienced carsickness throws up, with Gummigoo joining in not long after.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Pomni sympathizes with Gummigoo enough to invite him as a permanent guest at the Circus. Caine, however, nonchalantly deletes him. Caine cites that he doesn't want to risk losing track of who's human and who's an NPC, foreshadowing that it could lead to big trouble if he did.
• When She Smiles: During the funeral scene, Pomni gives her first genuine smile of the series, realizing that, yeah, her current situation is pretty terrible, but that the other cast members are in the same boat and, strange/jerky/quirky as they are, they're all trying to support each other.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: After going through an existential crisis over his role as an NPC, Gummigoo is offered a new lease on life by Pomni and joins the Digital Circus. Unfortunately, the moment Gummigoo arrives to start his new life, Caine nonchalantly deletes him, owing to him not wanting to risk mixing Gummigoo, an NPC, with the player characters.
• You Are Not Alone: Pomni's nightmare at the beginning shows her fear of abstracting and being written off as a Forgotten Fallen Friend whose life at the circus has no meaning. When she attends Kaufmo's funeral at the end, however, she sees firsthand how devastated the others are by the ones they've lost, and begins to see them as people who would absolutely come to her aid if they could, finally starting to feel she has a place among them.
• You Won't Like How I Taste: Ragatha uses this tactic on the Fudge, and it works, as he's only interested in eating things that are made of candy.

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