All I wanted was for them to hear my song!
—"Ruthless" Ruth
The king suspects that despite Rapunzel keeping her promise to stay in the kingdom, she is still finding danger, so he has his guards keep an eye on her more closely. This leads to Rapunzel running away from them and into a ghost at the Snugly Duckling pub. This ghost is "Ruthless Ruth" and threatens to permanently trap Rapunzel and the Snugly Duckling thugs in the tavern if they don't finish her song before the end of the night. A night spent at the Snugly Duckling with singing follows.
This episode provides examples of:
- Alliterative Title: The title of the episode, but also watch out for "The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth's Wraith."
- Arbitrary Skepticism: The Captain has spent his life serving a kingdom whose queen was saved by a magical flower and whose princess had magical healing powers and now has indestructible hair. And yet he thinks ghosts aren't real.
- Bait-and-Switch: Big Nose starts telling a ghost story with an evil-looking lady, but turns out it was about his date last week.
- Call-Back: At the beginning of the episode, the king looks through Rapunzel's journal and sees some pages depicting some of the more dangerous events from past episodes, and this motivates him to crack down on Rapunzel's security.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Subverted, Rapunzel decides at the end of the episode to tell her father off for having the guards follow her, but one look at his grief-stricken face just before he realizes she's home is enough to convince her otherwise.
- Continuity Nod: While in the Snugly Duckling pub, things from the Snugly Duckling sequence in the original movie are referenced:
- An outline of a corpse (as shown in modern-age detective movies) is briefly shown on the floor just like at the beginning of "I've Got a Dream".
- Pascal is again scared by the pub rats.
- The hatch door leading to an underground tunnel escape route through which Rapunzel and Eugene escaped in the original movie, is again shown.
- Rapunzel plays on the piano Hook Hand played on during "I've Got a Dream". A poster for his current musical tour flutters by as she's playing.
- Disproportionate Retribution: For disturbing her sanctum, Ruth intended to doom everyone in the Snuggly Duckling forever until they found her song.
- Foregone Conclusion: Since Rapunzel, Shorty, Attila, Big Nose and Vladimir appear in Tangled Ever After which is set after this, we know beforehand they will not be killed as Ruth threatens.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Rapunzel and Pascal are in the bookstore at the beginning of the episode, there is a book titled Beauty and the Beast.
- Ghost Song / Image Song: "Listen Up!" is Ruthless Ruth's.
- Halloween Episode: It's an episode about spooky ghosts and aired in October, though it's still relevant to the plot/character arcs.
- Literal-Minded: When the Captain declares he's rusty (at singing), Shorty replies "Your name's not Rusty! It's Captain!"
- Mouth Stitched Shut: During Ruth's song recounting her past reluctance to sing in front of an audience, a cord winds itself bloodlessly through her lips, to symbolize how stifled by embarrassment she'd been.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- The King, in an effort to keep Rapunzel safe, alienates her by having her every move watched by the guards. These guards then are actually what cause Rapunzel to "flee" to the Snugly Duckling... where she does encounter danger.
- The Captain too. Just as Rapunzel is starting to placate Ruth by playing her song, he takes the club onto which the song is written and throws it into the fire, believing that it's the only true way to stop the ghost. This only makes her angrier and nearly drives her to kill them all.
- Parents as People: The King ordering the guards to follow Rapunzel wherever she goes seems overbearing, but he's honestly terrified that he'll lose Rapunzel again, and clearly hasn't recovered from the trauma of almost losing his daughter forever. His face towards the end of the episode (before he sees that Rapunzel's okay) says it all.
- Shout-Out: One of the books at the bookstore is Beauty and the Beast, which in turn is also a reference to Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
- The laughing moose head is a reference to a similar scene in Evil Dead 2.
- Tongue Twister: Subverted; while multiple characters keep saying "the wrath of Ruthless Ruth's wraith" in quick succession, making the viewer very much expect someone to flub the line, nobody ever does.
