There's some big trouble brewing in Little Frogtown...
Hop Pop investigates the disappearance of an old friend and the shadowy crime syndicate he suspects is behind it. Full Recap
TBA...
Tropes:
- A Day in the Limelight: For Hop Pop.
- Aspect Ratio Switch: Whenever Hop Pop begins his Private Eye Monologue narration, the screen narrows to a cinematic 2.35:1.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- The kids are ecstatic that Hop Pop brought them to a gaming arcade, only to find that he actually brought them to Sal's sandwich shop next door.
- Hop Pop searches all over Newtopia for Sal, thinking he's been kidnapped. Instead, he'd just retired from sandwich-making and opened a factory for his sauce.
- A Bloody Mess: Hop Pop is initially worried the recipe he finds in Sal's hidden safe is covered in blood, but it's actually Sal's secret sauce.
- Brick Joke: In "Bizarre Bazaar", Sprig asks if Hop Pop has ever killed anyone. In this episode, Hop Pop accidentally causes a security guard to fall to his death.
- Concealing Canvas: Hop Pop finds a safe hidden behind Sal's portrait in the restaurant.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Whenever Hop Pop goes into noir mode, the scenes change to black and white.
- Failed a Spot Check: Hop Pop doesn't notice the dilapidated state of Sal's restaurant until he goes inside and sees the place is a mess.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Used in a Black Comedy Burst. Hop Pop tosses a security guard into a vat of boiling sauce and everyone later freaks out when his body is dredged up from the vat. All of this is Played for Laughs.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: According to a note in Sal's desk drawer, the "secret sauce" is just food coloring and ditch water.
- Jerkass Ball: While Anne wasn't wrong for getting annoyed at some kids for cutting in line, she ends up going too far when she uses her Monster Façade to try to scare them off. While she does briefly show remorse for causing one of them to cry, it gets the security guards' attention. Anne still blames the kids for the mishap, and doesn't show remorse for getting herself along with Sprig and Polly getting banned from the arcade as well despite them doing nothing at all. Polly correctly calls Anne out for this.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: When everything with Sal is resolved, Hop Pop mentions he's glad that he didn't take things too far. Then a floor worker shows up to tell Sal they found the body of the foreman that Hop Pop caused to fall into a vat of Sal's sauce.
- Interactive Narrator: Hop Pop frequently converses with his Private Eye Monologue, like when it scolds him for repeating "Follow the sauce, find Sal", or when he tells the monologue that its speculation about what might have happened to Sal is "too graphic".
- Last-Second Word Swap: While infiltrating the gala, Hop Pop tells a lady he's a farmer, then hastily amends it to "pharmaceutical executive".Hop Pop: [narrating] Nice save.
- Literal Metaphor: Hop Pop complains that the kids are leaving tradition in the dust, and ends up choking on the actual dust cloud kicked up by the kids as they race over to the arcade.
- Misplaced Retribution: Sprig and Polly are banned from the arcade along with Anne, despite doing nothing to deserve it.
- Monster Façade: Anne exploits her angle as a ferocious beast in order to intimidate some kids who cut in line. Unfortunately, it backfires when one of them bursts into tears and somebody nearby calls security.
- Mugged for Disguise: Hop Pop knocks out a waiter and steals his uniform in order to infiltrate the kitchen. It doesn't last very long, for the waiter regains consciousness and has Hop Pop thrown out.
- Noir Episode: Inspired by an old detective movie Anne was showing them on her phone, Hop Pop does a film noir-style investigation of his friend Sal's disappearance.
- Police Brutality: The Newt security guards taze Anne even though she was already restrained.
- The Reveal: There was no conspiracy to kidnap Sal and steal the sauce recipe; Sal's restaurant was doing badly, so he turned to selling his family sauce recipe directly and turned it into a culinary empire.
- Right on Queue: Anne and the kids have to wait in a long line to get into the arcade. Anne gets annoyed that a little kid and his friends cut in line, so she confronts them. Long story short, they get banned from the arcade.
- Scary Teeth: When Anne announces herself as a monster from another universe and threatens to eat the kids who cut in line, her teeth are shown as shark-like fangs.
- Shout-Out: The title of the episode is a play on Chinatown.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: With the episode being a parody of old detective movies, one of them involves Hop Pop knocking out the newt waiter and stealing his clothes. The plot continues as normal, but then the newt suddenly regains consciousness and gets him kicked out of the gala.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Hop Pop is convinced he's uncovering a Film Noir mystery, when the real answer is quite mundane.
- X-Ray Sparks: Anne when she gets tazed by security.
