After Thrasher's very public me1TD0WN, the Ink Well was left with large cracks running through it. Despite its battered appearance, however, it continues to function as normal... but a sense of uneasiness falls over Ink City as its residents wonder how to fix it.
Before a solution can be reached, however, a terrible earthquake shakes the City to its core — and over the rumbling, a high-pitched, horrifying screech brings already stumbling residents to their knees. Reality seems to split at the seams, and a terrible BOOM! brings the quake to an abrupt end.
...As the citizens pick themselves up, however, they find their surroundings to have undergone drastic change. Not simply because some buildings collapsed, though a few have fallen... No, everything has either gone black and white or burst into riotous color. Ink City has become two cities, stranded in alternate dimensions and dividing the residents among the drab Inkside and eye-searing Paintside. And its residents all find themselves stuck on one side or the other, only able to contact those in the other half over their communicators.
While the Mayor initially tries to help a few of those stuck on the Inkside, he quickly realizes his powers have diminished and freaks out, retreating into solitude and leaving everyone else to their own devices. Meanwhile, his sister, the Painted Lady, appears on the Paintside, confused by the chaos and searching for her own answers.
Unfortunately, the City being split apart begins having negative effects on its residents. Several Inksiders who were injured during the quake begin transforming into ink monsters, while several Paintsiders discover it's much harder to control their emotions... or turn into a grossly exaggerated caricature of themselves.
...Oddly enough, however, the Well continues pulling new residents in without any apparent ill-effects. The only issue there seems to be how the newcomers are randomly assigned to one side or the other, dumped into a City that's even more chaotic than usual.
Among the new arrivals come Dot Warner, Yakko and Wakko's little sister, and Parson Gotti, aka 'Lord Hamster', both stuck on the Inkside. A partial reunion between the siblings grows into a strategy meeting, as they figure out that the two cities don't quite match — certain areas are intact on one side while wrecked on the other. By pairing up with partners on opposite sides, they search for these places and make them match, hoping that will help the place pull together.
...Of course, this mostly entails blowing up what doesn't fit, but hey. Blame it on lack of resources.
As they get closer to fixing everything via generous applications of explosives, a new threat emerges: Audrey II. Badly injured by the quake, he spawns an ever-growing army of mini-Audlings and sends them hunting for victims. Anyone they manage to overpower gets Eaten Alive — and soon both cities have been almost completely overrun.
Finally, the Mayor reemerges and makes a public broadcast, thanking them for their hard work and announcing he was going after the source of the audlings. Though several residents call him out over his lack of presence up until now, he endures the barbs and humbly requests help, directing everyone's attention towards the forest.
...Oddly enough, however, by the time his ink monsters actually reach the forest, most of the volunteers have already engaged Audrey II and his hordes. A series of well-placed bombs by Digger, Elias and GLaDOS take him out on the Paintside, and the effects ripple over to its inky counterpart, resulting in a whole lot of flames and a hasty retreat for the heroes still fighting on that side.
With Audrey II's demise, another earthquake rumbles through both cities, and a Pillar of Light erupts from the Ink Well, releasing a World-Healing Wave that knits the two halves together. Working together, the Mayor and his sister redraw and restore all of the damaged buildings, as well as tending personally to all the corrupted residents. Many happy reunions follow, including Yakko finally getting to hold both his siblings after a year stranded alone in Ink City.
This Event includes examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The Paintside.
- Big Damn Heroes: Though he recognizes it as a terrible idea, Yakko still goes after Maya when she's possessed by an ink monster.
- A rapid succession of these occur in the forest, including an inky Trevor bailing out Kay, Deadpool helping Megamind and Ren, and a loop where Rapunzel saves Ichigo, Dot saves both of them, and Ichigo pulls Dot away from the flames. The last example includes a minor Deconstruction, however, as Dot's running off to save the day forces Yakko to choose between sticking to their battle plan or leaving Parson to defend himself while he chases after his sister.
- Body Horror
- Break the Haughty: Having the City break down all around him puts quite a chink in the Inky Mayor's high opinion of himself, and leads him to admit he needs help.
- Came Back Wrong: While the fountain brings people into the city well enough, dying while it's broken has terrible side-effects...
- Cat Up a Tree: Tigger gets stranded in the branches of his treehouse during the Audling swarm, and is forced to take a Leap of Faith to escape.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: Ichigo hangs onto the makeshift katamari she uses to roll up the flower garden and finds further use for it when the audlings start showing up.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Anyone trapped on the Ink Side is recolored in black, white and grayscale, while those stuck on the Paint Side have any black and white replaced by various other colors.
- The colored speech used by the Painted Lady and other Paintsiders is linked to various emotional states, giving a glimpse into their frame of mind.
- Two Deadpools wind up running around; a yellow one, who has lost control of his inner monologue, and a red one, who seems interested in killing his fellow inkarcerated and absorbing their ink.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The Inkside.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Inverted: while staying at Larry's houseboat, Dr. Chipotle Junior manages to set the place on fire and flees the cucumber's assumed wrath. Larry just asks if he's okay and gives him a mild Veggie Lecture about not running away from his mistakes.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The trigger of the split, likely caused by Thrasher at the end of me1TD0WN.
- Eaten Alive
- Flanderization: A potential side-effect of losing one's ink. For instance, Don's love of sugar is exaggerated to the point that all he can say is "Sugar".
- From Bad to Worse: Audrey II returns, complete with little "Audling" offshoots that are spreading out of the forest on both sides of the split, with intent to kill and eat their fellow citizens.
- Improbable Weapon User: If makeshift katamaris being weaponized weren't improbable enough, Ichigo also arms herself with paper drink umbrellas and plastic toothpick swords.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall
- Laughing Mad: As Shiro became more unstable, this became a rather prominent feature of her and her Pokemon.
- No Sympathy: The Mayor tries to defend himself from Ichigo's tirade by stating his powers were destablized. She immediately responds that he didn't need any special powers in order to give everyone instructions and rally the citizens — just his communicator, which they're speaking over that very moment. She does show some empathy when he agrees with that, however.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Intentionally invoked with many of the characters on the Paintside, as the loss of ink causes their emotions to go wild. Most notably with Heloise, who constantly changes color in mass exaggerated mood swings.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In addition to the above, Skips is visibly shaken after hearing that Mordecai has become reliable.
- Painting the Medium: On the Paintside, the Painted Lady always speaks in technicolor, and the habit has been adopted by a few other characters.
- Ichigo likes to Say It with Hearts, which are normally colored red and pink; being stuck on the Inkside turns them all black.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Veser, driven slightly crazy by a paint blob that has been spouting quotes from his past, decides to get his revenge for his death in the first event when he hears Audrey II is on the loose.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Ichigo gives the Mayor an earful for not acting like a Mayor and rallying the citizens together in their time of need.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Po Ping and Tai Lung arrive at the same time, and both end up on the Paintside. Po's dominant hues become an awesome mishmash of vibrant red and yellow, while Tai Lung's fur is recast in shades of blue. (Po is thrilled with his temporary makeover; Tai less so.)
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Bass takes this on Audrey II during the final battle of World Split, as he died at the plant's hands (vines?). Since he Came Back Wrong due to having been glitchy even before dying and as such is fused with the Gospel Virus data in his body, this makes it a literal Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Rule of Perception: Yakko, Dot and Parson play with this during the final battle: Parson films the Audlings while Yakko and Dot act like giant monsters 'squashing' them in the foreground. And it works.
- Splash of Color: Used to illustrate where the Audlings are, as they're the wrong colors for their side — green on the Inkside and black and white on the Paintside.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The methodology used for making the sides match: blowing up most of the mismatched areas.
- Take a Third Option: While trying to fix the City, this comes into play twice. The Warners use invisible ink to make the Water Tower vanish rather than destroy it so it matches the other side, and Ichigo uses a katamari to clear out the Ikebana Flower Garden.
- There Are No Coincidences: Played for Laughs; Maya just happens to have been fussing with a TV remote in Edgeworth's mansion when the Split occured, and just happens to remember this and try fiddling with it again just when the City's returned to normal. Cue her thinking she's an Accidental Hero and trying to convince everyone else of this.
- Ungrateful Bastard: When the Mayor and Painted Lady restore the corrupted Bass, he uses Get Ability to steal... something from them and takes off.
- Visible Invisibility: While most characters on the Paintside have their black and white replaced by other colors, Wakko is rendered functionally invisible, with only his nose, cap and shirt visible.
- World-Healing Wave: Though the Painted Lady and the Mayor still have to personally attend to several stubborn areas afterward.
