Mario, Meggy, Tari, and friends take a FUN train ride to the west 🤠🤠🤠🤠🤠🤠
The journey to the find One-Shot Wren has begun and Mario, bored and hungry, heads to the dining car to get some food. However, the food stores are guarded by Chris and Swagmaster, and it doesn't take long before everything devolves into chaos throughout the train. When Meggy finds Tari panicking and tries to help, the mood quickly sours as a familiar television appears. Is Meggy merely seeing things, or is there something more sinister behind this?
- Big Brother Instinct: Mario and Meggy both have their moments.
- Mario notices instantly something is off with Luigi, but is soon distracted. Twice.
- When they reach the entryway to the dining car, Mario holds out his arm to halt Meggy because he sensed before Meggy could that Swag was armed and itching for a fight.
- As soon as she noticed Tari wasn't in her seat, Meggy doubles back and walks through the middle of a shootout to get her back.
- Call-Back: There are a few.
- As soon as Meggy again talks up One-Shot Wren to Tari, Mario pops up and asks, "Didn't he fall off?", the claim from the previous episode, prompting Meggy to snap at him.
- Remember that weird TV Tari and Meggy found at One-Shot Wren's house? It's back on this train but only appears after everything goes to hell.
- In the "help.bsp" file, noclipping out of the train to look into the engine room shows it's completely empty except for that TV (specifically the model used in IT'S GOTTA BE PERFECT)
- The little TV doodle first seen in the listing for The Showgrounds reappears in this file at the very end next to the "Ready For The Next Show?" text.
- Rob and Whimpu are playing Beyblade, eventually dragging in a very pissed off Belle. Mario and Peppino briefly became Beyblades during their fight at the top of Pizza Tower a few weeks earlier.
- Cliffhanger: Despite reassuring Meggy, Tari's smile turns into a look of worry as soon as the former falls asleep, and the ending shot of the episode pans away from her to a TV giving a message directly to the viewer. Very long story short, it ends on a screen saying "Ready For The Next Show?"
- Dirty Coward: Bob, as always. He blames Boopkins for trying to steal Shroomy's spuds when of course Boopkins told Bob not to do it and ask nicely instead.
- Epic Fail: Mario's attempts to get past Swag, who counters mostly using techniques from Mario sports games, culminating in Mario trying to ram Swag with his go-kart, hitting a banana peel, and exploding.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The first hint we get that something is wrong is at the start of the episode when Mario tries to talk to Luigi, who appears to be reading a book but is actually frozen in place, his face a bit uncanny – at no point during the scene does he blink.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: When the episode is about to end, the TV screen in the train car sends a message straight to the viewer telling them to check the link at the bottom of the video description. Doing so will lead the viewer to a link on the Steam workshop for a version of the GMod map used in the episode which is titled "help.bsp". A full description of what this file is can be found here.
- Funny Background Event: As Mario and Meggy reenter the forward passenger car, we get a brief shot of Shroomy pulling out an enormous potato and smashing Bob with it right as the door closes.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Implied. When Meggy tells Tari that everyone's frozen, Tari appears confused, prompting Meggy to turn around to see that everything is back to normal… or rather, everything's back to the state in which the episode started. Tari then tells Meggy they should take a nap since the train ride is making them feel "loopy".
- Hell Is That Noise: The credits of the video have no sound except for that of television static.
- Irony: Bob gets into a fight with Shroomy over potatoes – by this point Shroomy has peeled literally dozens – because it's the only food not under armed guard by Swag. During their fight, Mario (being dragged back to his seat by Meggy) simply snatches the entire pile and soon eats it.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Once again, an episode ending on a dark note has the credits mostly silent, except for the wind and some TV static.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After Meggy rescues Tari from Swag, she finds everyone acting like over-the-top Western stereotypes. It's stupid and silly until SMG3 pulls out a lit stick of dynamite, causing them all to freak out and Meggy to lose her cool, prompting everything except Meggy to freeze in place and giving viewers the episode's Surprisingly Creepy Moment.
- Out of Focus: Lampshaded by Mario and Meggy when they enter the rear passenger car containing all of the secondary characters. Mario notes they haven't seen or talked with them in a long time, so Meggy starts a conversation with Shroomy.
- Shout-Out:
- As Bob prepares to return fire, he says the famous "Yippee Kay-yay motherf*cker!" line from Die Hard.
- The spud-grenade Shroomy tosses at Bob says "Hello!" before it explodes just like the Mine Turtle from ASDF Movie.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: As soon as Meggy has had enough of all the insanity happening around her, she screams… and everyone freezes in place. She heads straight to Mario to snap him out of it and fails. Nearly in a panic, she tells Tari what she's seeing… but Tari tells her nothing is out of the ordinary; everything is back to the way it was at the start of the episode.
- Uncanny Valley: Invoked with the episode's thumbnail. Mario is dressed like a cowboy looking directly at the viewer, smiling, while Tari stares at him in horror. His eyes are completely dull, strongly suggesting he's not the real thing, further supported by another Mario (dressed normally) outside the train banging on the window.
