We've all heard about "dropping the soap", but this is a little extreme.
Crypt Keeper: (dressed as an athlete and holding a skull like a shotput, which he proceeds to lob, shattering as it hits the ground offscreen) Greetings, hack and field fans! I hope you're in the mood for a little fiend-ly competition. It's that time of fear again. The annual All Crypt Die-Cathalon! I've been working out like crazy to get ready. (picks up another skull) This year, I'm really going for the cold. Kind of like the woman in tonight's tale. It's a putrid portrait of an up-and-coming young artist that's sure to leave a nasty taste on your palette. I call it: (lobs the skull onto the book of the story) 99 & 44/100% Pure Horror.
Willa Sandelton is an artist who specializes in gory, graphic works. Her husband Luden is the president of a soap company for which she designs the packaging. Willa despises Luden, having married him for his money, and gets her thrills by cheating on him with her dimwitted lover Tom.
She is invited to appear on a talk show, but finds herself being ignored in favor of up-and-coming "guerrilla artist" Renaldo Escuarita because her work is too graphic to show on television. After the taping, Luden informs her that the company has chosen Renaldo instead of her to redesign its packaging in an effort to boost declining sales. Willa demands a divorce from Luden, intending to take half his money, but he confronts her with photographic evidence of her infidelity. She flies into a rage and beats him senseless with a giant bar of soap, then rolls him up in a carpet and gets Tom to help load him into her car. Luden starts to revive at times, but Willa beats and kicks him again until he finally dies.
That night, Willa drives to the production plant, dumps Luden's body into a vat of chemicals, and starts the machinery to process it into soap. She gathers up all the bars and takes them home to hide the evidence, but uses one of them for a shower. As she washes, though, the soap begins to eat through her skin and one of Luden's still-twitching eyeballs glares up at her from within the bar. She collapses and dies in the shower stall, a bloody mess of flesh and bones, with Luden's comments about the various acids present in animal carcasses playing through her mind.
The final shot of the episode is a slow pan across a painting Willa has done of herself, showing her body flayed to pieces but her beautiful face intact.
99 & 44/100% Pure Horror contains examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Chemistry: After turning her husband's corpse into soap, Willa is burned and melted to the bone by his "acid" when she uses the bar in the shower. Soap-making typically uses an alkali such as lye (sodium hydroxide), which increases the pH of the mixture and neutralizes any acids present, though this can be excused given the fact that it's hinted to be a form of revenge from the grave.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Upon hearing that Derma Smooth's sales are at an all-time low, Willa carelessly tells Luden to fire someone to make up for it. The person who ends up being canned is Willa herself.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Luden may be viewed as a spineless pushover by his ungrateful wife, but assuming Willa being melted to the bone with the bar of soap that was proccessed with his body is a form of supernatural activity, he got some pretty excellent revenge after being pushed too far.
- Blackmail: Luden stops Willa's ranting about a divorce by showing her photos of her and Tom making love. Being the nice guy he is, Luden uses his leverage over Willa to go see a marriage counselor in the hopes that they can start over. Doesn't keep the guy from getting his skull mashed, but you gotta give some props there.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Luden gets rubbed out as Willa clubs him repeatedly over the head with a block of soap. He does survive that initial beating, but a few more kicks and slams to the head do the trick.
- Body Horror: The soap that's made from Luden's body slowly and painfully dissolves Willa's skin, turning her into a pile of goop.
- Bookends: The beginning and end of the episode feature Willa taking a shower, as well as the camera focusing on one of her gory paintings.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Willa, who gradually becomes an outright cartoon villain when she loses her job and is reviled by the host of Fame Talk, demanding a divorce while outright saying she never loved her husband.
- Carpet-Rolled Corpse: Rather, carpet-rolled soon to be corpse, as Willa rolls Luden's unconscious body up in one for transport.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Derma Smooth Soap-a-matic 5000, the machine Luden demonstrates in his pitch for a shareholders' luncheon, is where Willa dumps his murdered body for the purpose of turning it into soap.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Tom, Willa's lover, who she kicks out at the beginning of the episode. He reappears after Willa kills Luden for their next "afternoon delight" where she enlists him to help get rid of Luden's body.
- Creator Cameo: Rodman Flender, the director of the episode, plays Brian, the director of Fame Talk, where Willa is ridiculed. His sole line shows him to be more caring than his bitchy superior.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: After beating her husband to death and turning his body into soap, Willa is dissolved by the supposed acids inside the bar she uses, screaming and flailing the whole time.
- Death by Irony: Luden gets his head bashed in by one of his own bars of soap, and is then turned into bars of soap through the soap-making machine he was shilling to potential shareholders.
- Willa herself has her flesh melted off by showering with one of the bars of soap she made from her husband's body.
- Destroy the Evidence: Willa gets rid of the giant soap-on-a-rope she used to (almost) kill Luden by running water over it until it's dissolved. She plans to do the same with all the soap she made from his body, but gets sidetracked into taking a shower first.
- Disposing of a Body: Willa wraps Luden's body in a rug and dumps it in a vat of glycerin atop the Soap-a-Matic 5000, turning it into bars of soap, his blood turning the mixture pink.
- Due to the Dead: Sharply averted with Willa, who makes love to Tom while sitting on Luden's freshly-murdered body.
- Dumb Muscle: Willa's side piece Tom, who she enlists to help her get rid of Luden's body.
- Eccentric Artist: Renaldo Escuarita uses graffiti to make astonishing works of art, all while dressed like a cross between a beatnik and a hipster and using his catchphrase "BAM!".
- Establishing Character Moment: Willa having sex with her extra-marital lover, who she bluntly and callously tells to leave when Luden is approaching the house.
- Exact Words: As she picks up one of the bars of soap she made with her husband's body, Willa posthumously reminds Luden that he wanted to "shower with her".
- Fanservice / Fan Disservice: Willa's shower scenes start out pretty stimulating. But once she starts bleeding during her second one, it gets nauseating really fast.
- Foreshadowing: Willa is shown to have been working on a self-portrait depicting her as grusomely mutilated early in the episode. In the end, as she dies, the camera returns to this exact painting to show that Willa has become the real thing.
- Get Out!: Willa's very first words, showcasing how little she thinks of everyone who isn't her.
- Gilligan Cut: The steam of Willa's shower soon fades into the backdrop of one of Luden's pitches for Derma Smooth, intended for shareholders.
- Gold Digger: Willa outright admits to Luden that she never loved him and only married him for his riches when she wants a divorce, flaunting about it to his face.
- Hate Sink: Willa is, without a doubt, the single most amoral female protagonist in the whole series. She blatantly admits to Luden that she never loved him and married him for his money, regularly cheats on him with a dim-witted hunk who she treats just as amorally and outright calls her slave, and kills him when he's forced to fire her and replace her with the artist who stole her spotlight, as well as his refusing a divorce that would give her half of his assets. And then, after bashing her husband's head in, she and her lover proceed to have sex atop the body, before she drags it to the factory and dumps it into the Soap-a-Matic to turn it into soap. The sheer wickedness she displays throughout the episode ends with her being given one of the single most gruesome and agonizing deaths in the entire series.
- Henpecked Husband: Luden, who Willa continously walks over, cheats on, and even kills.
- Hollywood Acid: Soap made from a human body is apparently acidic enough to melt the skin right off. To be fair, the living, moving eye seen in the soap bar implies that Willa's excruciatingly gory death is actually a form of supernatural revenge from beyond the grave.
- I Lied: Willa quotes the trope as she tells Tom to get out, and after claiming he was special.
- I'm Melting!: The fate of Willa, who has her flesh melted off by the "acidic" bar of soap she makes from Luden's body.
- Insistent Terminology: As he's being interviewed, Renaldo insists that he doesn't use "the 'G' word" when discussing his art, not wanting it to be compared to vandalism. He clarifies that he's an "urban guerrilla artist", whose city is a canvas that he works on a small scale with.
- Ironic Echo: As Willa's skin dissolves, Luden's warning about how people used to add acidic animal parts in soap is replayed.
- Willa gave one of her own to her now-soapy husband, leaving her stained clothes and jewlery on the floor after he initially asked her to pick them up.
- It's All About Me: Willa only ever cares about herself, her art, her job, and her money, treating everyone who isn't her or has nothing to do with her like absolute shit.
- It's Not Porn, It's Art: The trope is played with the in the opening scene, where Willa paints Tom as the pair have sex.
- Jerkass: The host of Fame Talk, who appears to have invited Willa solely to mock her artwork and tell her that her designs for Derma Smooth are causing the company's sales to plummet. She's even worse off the air, where she outright calls the "physically impaired" children she's featuring on the show "retarded".
- Jerkass Has a Point: Despite being an amoral scumbag to the equally-amoral Willa, the host of Fame Talk does make it clear that her designs for Derma Smooth are being seen as highly controversial and driving sales to an all-time low. She also clarifies that her work isn't something that most people want to see first thing in the morning, and the network clearly won't allow such smut on the air, a scene of a crewmember pretending to vomit at the sight of her paintings illustrating her point.
- Luden also reinforces this theory by mentioning that it's the board of directors who want to go in a whole new style instead of him personally.
- Large Ham: Renaldo Escuarita, the hippie-like "urban guerrilla artist", who showcases his latest work (which he calls "Welfare Cheese") with a long, echoing "BAM!"
- Mad Artist: Willa, who goes insane when she and her work are universally panned.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The eyeball Willa sees in the bar of soap she washes herself with in the shower hints that her getting melted to the bone is the result of Luden getting his revenge from beyond the grave, instead of just a ludicrous amount of acid melting her alive.
- Nice Guy: Luden is a pleasant and affable man who does everything he can for his business. He even uses the incriminating photos that he uses to blackmail Willa with not as a tool for her to do what he says, but as an opportunity for the two of them to go to marriage counselling and start over. Willa, unfortunately, sees him as a spineless wimp, whom she easily overpowers and kills.
- Nice Character, Mean Actor: Well, Nice Show Host. As stated above, the host of Fame Talk smiles and acts polite towards Willa and the physically impaired kids that are to appear later on the show. When the cameras stop rolling, she's much less civil and calls the kids outright "retards".
- Nightmare Fetishist: Aside from the work she makes for her husband's company, Willa spends her time painting excessively gory paintings, especially those depicting herself and Tom. What's more, she and Tom even get turned on by Luden's murder, having sex on his concealed corpse.
- No Name Given: The jackass host of Fame Talk who rebukes Willa and her work.
- Nothing Personal: Luden tells Willa that "it's just business" as he says he can't use her designs for the shareholders' luncheon, then fires her and replaces her with the artist who stole her fame.
- Not Quite Dead: Luden does this twice after Willa beats him unconscious. She sees him start to move inside the carpet she's rolled him into and gives him a few kicks in the head. Later, he revives just as she reaches the Derma Smooth factory, so she slams his head against the tailgate to finish him off.
- Oblivious to Hints: Luden just doesn't understand that Willa never loved him and only wanted his assets, wanting to patch things up with her even as he's bringing out photos that will absolutely wreck her chances in a divorce case.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: As Willa beats her husband to death, she tells him that he "caught [her] on a bad day."
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The host of Fame Talk using the slur "retarded" about physically disabled kids that are soon to be guests on the show.
- Recycled Premise: This episode shares some pretty similar elements to Easel Kill Ya, since both episodes focus on a sadistic artist who is screwed over by forces beyond their control, and end up killing people and painting gory artwork either out of inspiration, money, or petty revenge against those who wronged them. The difference is that unlike Jack, who was at least trying to put a lid on has bloodlust, Willa actively embraces her lust for blood and guts into a series of horrifically gruesome works.
- Sanity Slippage: Universal loathing, demeaning, and insulting of her work and herself causes Willa to snap and beat her husband to death.
- Sex Is Violence: Willa's lover Tom happens to pick up the bar of soap Willa used to kill Luden, and he gets pretty excited when she simply explains that it's "for later."
- Shower Scene: Willa one at the beginning of the episode, and another at the end where she washes with the soap bar she made from Luden's body, which causes her to melt.
- Show Within a Show: Fame Talk, a trashy talk show where Willa is belittled and demeaned before a national audience.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Willa is never satisifed by anything her husband gives to her, nor to Tom's begging and assistance for her plot,, to the point where she outright states she never loved the former and is automatically entitled to half of his assets upon announcing her divorce.
- Villain Protagonist: Willa, if that wasn't obvious enough.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Luden suffers from stomach ulcers, so he needs to ingest a steady stream of antacids to remedy them. Of course, the hefty amount of acids that the ulcers and tablets create at the time of his death could've potentially leached into the soap Willa makes from his body, which is what makes her melt.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Willa being insulted and demeaned by the snooty host of Fame Talk, then having her position taken over by the very person said host was praising. Given how she's an utterly awful person, it's well-deserved.
Crypt Keeper: (wearing a "0" label on his sweater) Looks like Willa's changing her school of painting. From art goo-veau to ghost-impressionism. That'll get her into Ooze Who. (snickers) Okay, kiddies, it's time for my big event. Wish me luck! (he mentally prepares himself, just as a javelin is launched through his chest) Caught it! Ah, the kill of victory. (cackles, then tries pulling the javelin out)
