"...vs. B-Tor, The Brawling Bear! And C-Tor, the Cuddly Caribou?"
Film watched: Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982) (the predecessor to Cave Dwellers)The Segments:
Prologue- Kinga and Max share a toast to their success while Synthia is up in Dr. Erhardt's spaceship to deliver the liquefied song he needs. She's getting rather chummy with him.
Segment 1
- One movie remains in The Gauntlet, and Jonah is ready. The Invention Exchange serves up two tasty treats in his Swiss Army Cheese and Kinga's Pizza Roll Popper.
Segment 2
- As Crow and Jonah imitate Griba's training session with Ator, Tom the training dummy heckles them incessantly.
Segment 3
- Ator's bear cub Kiog has gotten onto the Satellite of Love. Kinga has him removed immediately, but Max wants to keep him.
Segment 4
- The Gauntlet is over. Kinga's spaceship is loaded up with bad movies and now she's loading everybody onboard to start her world-conquering live tour across Earth. However, Jonah has left her and Max a little surprise in the movie vault.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Ator, the Fighting Eagle provides examples of:
- '80s Hair: Ator's luscious pompadour comes in for quite a bit of mockery, with him often being more concerned about his hair than his life.
- Actor Allusion: When Jonah Heston and Dr. Donna St. Phibes first meet, they're immediately smitten with each other—because Jonah Ray and Deanna Rooney are married in Real Life.
- All Animals Are Dogs: This trope is played straight in the movie itself with Ator's pet bear cub Kiog, then parodied in the third segment when a puppet "Kiog" seems to be acting doglike around Jonah and then promptly rips Servo's arm off. This leads Kinga and Max to debate whether he's a dangerous predator or just a rambunctious fur-baby.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Parodied. The bots sometimes forget Jonah isn't just one of the gang:Crow: That's how I think of him, too: a big, wonderful, hairy robot.
- Book Ends: Cave Dwellers is usually regarded as one of the best jumping on points for newbies. It's kind of apt to have the first Ator movie be the subject of the series finale (at the time, anyway).
- Brother–Sister Incest: Even with Ator and Sunya being Not Blood Siblings, their wanting to marry before learning this naturally disturbs Jonah and the Bots, who never let up on jokes about Ator wanting to bang his sister.note
- Call-Back:
- The very second riff of the film is a fitting callback to its previously-run sequel:
- Max bonds instantly with bear cub Kiog during a host segment. Dr. St. Phibes says Kiog can share a habitat with the killer shrews.Dr. St. Phibes: You'd like that, wouldn't you boy?
Max: Nooo, b-but they'll kill him!
Dr. St. Phibes: [offended] ...That's a common misconception. - When Kiog and Max are immediately parted, Max assumes he has to sing a song, much like TV's Frank (and Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter) before him.Max: I guess it's time for my heartfelt song of goodbye, "There's a Cut on My Hand (and a Pain in My Heart)". [clears throat, vocal warmups] Ma-a-a —
[singing] Oh there's a cut on my hand,
And a pain in my heart
My feedbag is empty
Oh where shall I start — [Smash Cut] - "Dog ponies!" over a pair of running deer. In Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2, Crow calls a deer "a forest dog!"
- Kinga's spaceship is named the Deep Hurting.
- The first bad movie Kinga and Max get stuck watching is the short Mr. B Natural, in all his/her androgynous glory.
- At the end of "Your Horrible Show" the lyrics nod back to Reptilicus's breakout song "Every Country Has A Monster":Jonah: Every country
Has a monster
Reptilicus is still really silly
- Fan Disservice: In-universe, when Ator is poised standing in a tree above the eyeline of the women searching for him, wearing a very short fur loincloth/skirt. "Enjoying the view, ladies? That's one hundred percent Ator."
- Grand Finale: For the third time, though now the show has found new life on its own dedicated platform, the Gizmoplex.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: Before getting on their ship, Kinga and Max load the last movie canister into the vault. This triggers the vault to pull the Mads down a long hallway of doors into... another movie theater, where they must now watch all the horrible movies they themselves have forced onto so many people. Kinga quotes the trope when she realizes what's happened.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: An in-universe gag panel during the credits asks the fans to keep circulating the URL.
- Living Shadow: "You know the budget's really run out when the guy's fighting his shadow."
- Musicalis Interruptus: Max's "heartfelt song of goodbye" gets cut off before it really begins.
- No OSHA Compliance: "What better for a workshop of blind laborers, than a gaping pit in the middle of the floor?"
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Kinga delivers a long one (seemingly) to the audience at home on how worthless their lives are to have wasted their time watching so many bad movies. And then the tables turn on her...Kinga: Yeah. Them. The lowlives who just spent eight hours of this precious one-way trip we call life... watching schlock. I'm in your heads, folks. And you're never gonna get rid of me. Every time you see a movie with a cheap set, I'll be there. Every gaping plot hole or monster costume with a zipper — I'll be there, too. [Ominous Music Box Tune starts up] ...Fact is, we've always been here. We're the ones who sucked out all the art and replaced it with trash. We're the ones who fill your life with so much noise and visual clash, you can't tell the good from the crap anymore. Maybe the truth is out there, but we've mixed it up with so much other stuff you're never gonna find it. You're alone in this whirlpool of meaningless images —
Max: I've just — quick question, though, how can they be alone, and you're always with them, whenever there's, like, a Plot Hole —
Kinga: Shut up, Max, I'm on a roll, here? - Running Gag:
- The Mark of Toran looks a lot like a certain superhero's logo.Roon: The Sign of Toran!
Tom: [as Ator] You mean Sideways Batman.
Roon: So you are the Son of Toran!
Tom: [as Ator] You mean Son of Sideways Batman.- "Quick, to the Sideways Bat-Signal!"
- The love deer, which clearly only exists in separate footage. "If you do it in front of me, I won't care, I'm just an animal! Love each other!"
- "I don't use names. No one in this movie does!"
- "Corn Pops, family-style? Right on!"
- "Mmhf, pops! I gotta have 'em!"
- "Whadaya think?" "It stinks!"
- Stock riffs: "Hello..." "Hello..." "Hellooo..." "...Hello!"
- The Mark of Toran looks a lot like a certain superhero's logo.
- Shout-Out:
- "Do your worst, Kinga. You can take our sanity, but you can never take our freedom!" note
- "And there was no room at the manger for the camera man!"
- "Stonehenge! Where the demons dwell!"
- "Don't feed him after midnight and don't get him wet, okay bye!"
- ""Look! There goes Ator with his game like always, / He brings the rabbits more and more / There he goes, he's all dressed up / But the sister thing's messed up / He's different from the rest of us Ator!"
- "My name is Ator Montoya. You mussed my hair. Prepare to Die."
- "Mean Girls 2: Ragnarok."
- "When a man's an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle, and yet I'm torn apaaaart..."
- "He's smizing!"
- "Rock rock rock rock Rock N' Roll Smelt School..."
- During the scene where Ator fights his own shadow, Crow references Alfred Hitchcock Presents by humming a few bars of "Funeral March of a Marionette".
- "Oh, no! Jonah's hoisted us on our own petard! What a world, what a world!"
- Three-Month-Old Newborn: Newborn Ator weighs 22 pounds, has a full head of hair, and has all of his adult teeth.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Everyone is quite concerned about Kiog's repeated unexplained disappearances from the film.
"Keep the legs apart, with the equilibrium of the body distributed evenly." Griba kicks Ator in the groin. "Rule number two: surprise!"
