Even from beyond the grave, Slade still finds ways to get under your skin.
"Slade! Show yourself! Come out and fight!"
—Robin
Robin has started spotting Slade everywhere, but none of the other Titans can see him.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc: At the end of the episode, Cyborg reveals that the chemical reagent in Slade's mask was triggered by a signal... from outside the tower. This was never brought up again in future episodes, nor is it ever revealed who or what triggered it. Presumably it's linked to Trigon resurrecting Slade but if so, the connection is never made in-universe.
- An Aesop:
- Obsession is bad. If you let someone live rent-free in your head, then the person will have mental power over you and you won't even know it.
- Obsession is not only bad for yourself, but also for the people around you, as Robin's inhumane treatment of his friends can attest to.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Robin begging Slade to stop is just a really disturbing thing to watch.
- Apologetic Attacker: Downplayed with Starfire knocking Robin out. She doesn't say anything, but her expression is clearly apologetic. More in the "sorry, but you needed that" sense than anything, though.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Robin tells the other Titans what Slade told him (that he had been using cloaking devices to mask his presence), Starfire immediately asks Robin how he was able to see Slade if she couldn't. This briefly, but noticeably catches Robin off-guard before the argument resumes. Doubles as a Wham Line.
- Bond One-Liner: "Lights out, Slade."
- Break the Badass: The entire episode shows Robin being broken to the point where he threatens his own teammates. As if that weren't enough, during the final moments, he begs Slade to stop to no avail, showing despite his heroism, he's still a kid who is scared and hurt.
- Chekhov's Gun: When Robin gets Slade's mask out of storage at the beginning of the episode, it kicks up dust that Robin inhales. At the end of the episode, it turns out that the dust contained a chemical reagent that made Robin hallucinate Slade.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: As the episode progresses, Robin's "fights" with the Slade hallucination become more like beatings than actual fights.
- Darker and Edgier: Quite possibly the darkest episode in the entire series with all of the very few amounts of humor and comedy in this episode coming from exclusively Beast Boy.
- Deconstruction: This episode a deconstruction to the previous episode, "Crash". Both stories starts out mostly the same; a Titan (Cyborg, and then Robin) gets infected by a virus of some sorts and embarks on a self-destructive spree that endangers both themselves and their fellow Titans, with most of the episode being the Titans trying to locate their escaped, infected friend before things turns to the worse. But what "Crash" Played for Laughs, this episode plays it dead serious.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- While Robin's hallucinations of Slade are revealed to be caused by a toxin, the entire episode can be seen as an allegory for going through PTSD.
- "Eureka!" Moment: "All these... bruises... but you don't have a scratch." What causes Robin to realize that the Slade attacking him is a hallucination is that Slade has no wounds- As good as Slade is, their past battles were never so one-sided. Furthermore, Slade's Evil Gloating about how he's always lurking in the darkness of Robin's mind has Robin determine that the hallucination only exists in the dark, and defeats "Slade" by turning on the lights.
- Eyes Are Mental: When Raven astral projects into Robin's body/mind, she decides to try seeing through his eyes to prove that Slade isn't there. This is displayed through her eyes appearing in Robin's mask.
- Five Stages of Grief: Robin's entire nightmare throughout the episode could be considered this.
- Depression: At the beginning of the episode, Robin keeps wanting to believe Slade is somehow still alive, perhaps feeling unfulfilled without his nemesis to drive him.
- Anger: Slade's apparent return drives Robin into a such a rage-filled frenzy to the point of hurting Starfire when she seemingly lets Slade get away and threatening to severely harm his teammates if they get in his way.
- Denial: At the beginning, Robin is constantly making excuses to justify his Slade paranoia. Later on, when his teammates try to spell it out that Slade isn't real, Robin is left furious, angrily screaming that he knows what he saw.
- Bargaining: When beaten to a pulp within an inch of his life, Robin is reduced to begging Slade to stop.
- Acceptance: By the end of the episode, Robin admits how he's been fighting Slade for so long, his obsession is hard to let go of and that he feels like he's looking for him, the only one who can stop him. His friends assure him that he'll never be alone, promising that they'll be ready for Slade should he really ever somehow return for real, and suggest he gets some rest, to which Robin happily agrees.
- Flatline: Subverted. The other Titans see Robin's vitals go straight to zero right after spiking into the stratosphere - but when they run into the next room, they find that he's ripped off the leads and fled the med wing.
- Foreshadowing: Slade's illusory nature is hinted by his body never affecting his environment in the way others' do:
- In the downpour, Slade is the only one without a Rain Aura.
- As Robin chases him through the trees, the branches and leaves only move as Robin jumps on them.
- In a more blatant variation of the same idea, Slade skips around on the debris piles in his abandoned lair and they never budge. Robin lands on them, and they collapse. There are also a number of shots where Slade disappears, making it look as though Robin is reacting to hits from an enemy that aren't there, which is made all the more blatant when the Titans walk in on the situation.
- When Beast Boy tries to play devil's advocate for a moment and suggest Slade really is somehow invisible to everyone but Robin, Cyborg notes even if that were true, he would still show up on Cy's radar or some sort of sensor, but there really is nothing.
- And though it was never mentioned, Raven would have also sensed Slade's presence if he was actually there.
- Whenever there's a flash of light, Slade alone disappears for an instant—indicating that he isn't just a hallucination, but one that only shows up in the dark.
- When Raven enters Robin's mind, she can see the eye of Slade's mask glowing red. It does so at the end of the episode.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Starfire knocks Robin out when he more or less threatens his friends over the whole Slade coming back thing. Her expression when she does so pretty much screams "Sorry, dude, but you needed that."
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: In the final scene, the eye of Slade's mask is shown glowing red.
- Heroic RRoD: Robin shows the effects of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown when it's one-sided, and Raven notes his heartrate is unusually high. He collapses at the end of the "fight" with Slade and is still visibly beaten-up despite medical treatment.
- Ignored Epiphany: When Starfire points out how Robin logically shouldn't have be able to see Slade either if he was really using a cloaking device, it was at that moment Robin should've realized he was actually attacking himself and just hallucinating Slade the whole time. Instead, while caught off-guard, Robin assumes that his teammates are just insinuating he's lying and are trying to undermine his mission.
- Kick the Dog: When Starfire seemingly lets Slade escape, Robin angrily grabs her arm, physically hurting her. When Starfire points this out, Robin just ignores her and furiously screams at her for just standing there and letting Slade get away, almost driving her to tears.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy are appalled when Robin threatens to hurt them if they get in his way to stop Slade once and for all.
- Mind Rape: The dust causes Robin to hallucinate Slade as an omnipresent, untouchable attacker whose assaults physically and mentally injure Robin.
- Mythology Gag: When inside Robin's head, Raven briefly sees two acrobats falling to their doom (the Flying Graysons being murdered which led their son to become Robin) and a silhouette of someone holding their hand on a book (Robin swearing into his post in the Batcave).
- Never Found the Body: Robin tries to use this as an excuse to justify his Slade paranoia, insisting they can't be sure that Slade is truly dead because he "was never captured, never found." While Cyborg is quick to point out that Slade fell into a pit of lava, the audience knows Robin has a point considering before he joined the Titans, he'd previously dealt with a clown notorious for surviving much worse.
- If you look at it from Robin's perspective, he somewhat has a point. For all the Titans know, the Slade they saw get killed by Terra could've been one of his robotic body doubles.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Throughout the entire episode, Robin doesn't once lay a single scratch on Slade. This turns out to be what clues him in that something is wrong: he realizes that even outclassed, he logically should have hit Slade at least a couple of times.
- Nonchalant Dodge: When Robin attacks, Slade responds this way every time. He is so effective at it that Robin can't even touch him the whole episode. In the end, this helps Robin see that Slade isn't real. He knows from his past fights that even Slade was never this good.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Robin has a massive one when Starfire fearfully explains that Slade wasn't even there in the woods.
- Raven has this reaction when she sees Slade through Robin's eyes, punching him. At that point, she says that whether or not Slade is real, he is attacking Robin regardless, and killing him slowly.
- Raven and Starfire both have this reaction when Cyborg informs them that someone outside the tower sent out a signal to activate the hallucinogen.
- Post-Mortem Comeback: Slade manages to torment Robin from beyond the grave thanks to a hallucinogen stored in his mask.
- Power Incontinence: Beast Boy's cold causes him to transform into a different animal whenever he sneezes, probably because it's the only remotely lighthearted thing to happen in what is otherwise one of the darkest episodes in the series.
- Primal Fear: Robin realizes that he's only been seeing Slade in the dark. To defeat him, he needs to turn on the lights. Even so, it's unsettling as he ensures that Cyborg was able to clear him of the hallucinogen.
- Rewatch Bonus: Slade being a hallucination becomes much easier to spot upon repeat viewings.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Robin tells the rest of the Titans he saw Slade and he told him about the generators he plans to use to destroy the city, a skeptical Cyborg asks "I don't get it. The dude fell in a pit of lava. Who lives through something like that?" Raven answers "Apparently, Slade."
- Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Raven uses Astral Projection to see the same things that Robin does (which is visually shown by his masked eyes looking like her uncovered ones). When she sees Slade, she is unsure he's real, but he is at least real enough to hurt Robin.
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: The episode has a dark, psychological tone dealing with Robin's Sanity Slippage and obsession with Slade. He also becomes very beaten up, which looks painful even despite no blood or bruising.
- Weakened by the Light: Robin only sees the hallucinations of Slade in the dark.
- Wham Line: Several.
- When Starfire seemingly lets Slade get away.Robin: [angrily grabs Starfire's arm] What happened?!Starfire: [rattled] You are hurting me...Robin: [lividly] Slade ran right by you! How could you let him get away?!Starfire: [absolutely terrified] But, Robin, [tears up] there was no one there...[Robin is left absolutely speechless.]
- Later, when Robin yells at the team for not searching for the generators, they explain they couldn't find any.Robin: Slade must be cloaking them, just like he's cloaking himself. [to Starfire] That’s why you couldn't see him.Starfire: [skeptical] But if I could not see him, why could you?
- Cyborg explains what caused tonight's events.Cyborg: [scanning Robin's vitals] Looks like Slade pulled off one last trick. His mask contained a chemical reagent that infiltrated your central nervous system.Robin: [realizes] The dust... It made me see, hear, [pulls off the sensors] and feel Slade, even though he wasn't there.
- After Robin leaves, Cyborg reveals something rather disturbing about the hallucinogenic dust.Cyborg: The reagent in Slade's mask didn't trigger itself. There was a signal. Somebody triggered it... from outside the tower.
- When Starfire seemingly lets Slade get away.
- Wham Shot:
- As Robin lies prone, he sees Slade flashing in and out with the lights. This lends to his "Eureka!" Moment: Slade isn't real and only appears in the dark.
- Following Cyborg revealing something outside Titans Tower activated the dust causing the hallucinations, we're shown the eye on Slade's broken mask glowing red.
- You Are Not Alone: At the end of the episode, the other Titans assure Robin he will never be alone and that if Slade really does ever return, they'll be ready to face him as a team.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Robin develops very real bruises from fighting the Slade hallucination. In fact, Slade tries to deliver a killing blow when Robin is finally convinced he is a hallucination, only for Robin to banish him by turning the lights on.Slade: I'm real enough to finish you!
Robin: Lights out, Slade. - You Won't Feel a Thing!: Slade approaches Robin as the latter is strapped to a hospital bed, with a scalpel. He promises he won't feel a thing. Robin's heart rate shoots up on the monitor.
