"You are now cursed. If you don't forward this email to ten people, The Snatcher will first take your money, then he will take your friends, then your family."
—The Snatcher's Message
Against Darwin's advice, Gumball refuses to forward a scare email, which brings down a curse on his family and friends, and only he, Darwin, and Carrie the ghost can stop it.
Tropes:
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Darwin is mocked by Gumball for believing in things like Bigfoot, horoscopes, and telepathy despite Elmore having plenty of things that are weirder than those.(laughing) Oh my gosh! You believe in things I don't believe it!
- Bowdlerise:
- Cartoon Network's North Africa/Middle East channel cuts out the part where Penny turns into a snake-haired Medusa after Carmen tells Penny that Gumball thinks she's fat (when really he meant to say "[She's] so cool, she gives penguins brain-freeze]").
- This episode didn't air at all in Turkey, for some reason.
- Boy Meets Ghoul: Mrs. Jötunheim says the Snatcher Was Once a Man who fell in love with a ghost in the mirror. To be able to kiss her, he used a spell that let him touch a ghost, but the price for it was that he became cursed to float in limbo, went insane with loneliness, and forced others to join him. Carrie tells the same story but adds that the man and the ghost did more than kiss, they actually had a child—namely, her.
- Chain Letter: The email flavor.
- Continuity Nod:
- The channel Gumball refuses to watch, even to save his life, is the same shopping channel he couldn't bring himself to stand for the bet in "The Laziest" (the one with the kissing boy and girl figurine) and was briefly seen whenever someone channel-surfed in a season one episode (such as "The End" and "The Meddler").
- Carrie briefly possesses Gumball and he looks the same way he did in "The Ghost".
- Carrie tells Gumball and Darwin that The Snatcher was her father, which not only explains why she knows the legend but also how it's possible for her to have been born a ghost.
- The Medusa/rattlesnake monster Penny transforms into after Carmen tells her that Gumball says she's fat is the same one she turned into when she nearly choked to death on the ring in her drink on "The Bros."
- Defying the Censors: Gumball actually says the word "damnation", and it ISN'T censored.
- Died Happily Ever After: The Snatcher is turned back into a mortal, then falls out a window and dies. However, this works to his advantage: now that he's a ghost, he can hold his daughter, which he couldn't do in life because the spell wore off.
- Eye of Newt: Mrs. Jötunheim was interrupted while brewing something that required tiger eye, and she makes a potion from a human arm bone to ward off the Snatcher. When Gumball throws that potion in Richard's face, he thinks it tastes good and Gumball tells him he doesn't want to know what it's made of.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Three. Gumball and Darwin frantically search through the spellbook for spells that might help combat the Snatcher, only for horrible effects to come directly after, as Carrie warned. One thing leads to another, and Darwin shatters like glass. Gumball immediately casts a revival spell that reassembles Darwin's shattered remains, but the parts are stitched together and look as if they've decayed. Gumball immediately loses his body, followed by Carrie saying that the side effect to a revival spell is the loss of your own body. They both got better. Lastly, there's the untimely death of Carrie's father, the Snatcher. He, whilst trying to lovingly embrace his ethereal daughter, falls out a window.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Gumball slaps Darwin, telling him that he's being hysterical, but Darwin was completely calm and Gumball was the one yelling. Darwin slaps back, and so on for the next several seconds.
- Hypocritical Humor: Gumball says he and Penny are in love but not obsessed with each other, hears an e-mail that might be from her, and jumps through the ceiling to check it.
- Literal-Minded:
- Richard was banned from the local chicken joint because he thought "all you can eat" applied to a chair.
- Darwin suggests using the spellbook to defend themselves from the Snatcher.Gumball: Great idea!
(Gumball smacks the Snatcher in the face with the book)
- Mirror Monster: The Snatcher can appear on and come out of anything reflective, including picture frame covers, windows, and televisions. His curse is broken by smashing the mirror he occupies while he's covered in sunlight.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: The chain e-mail is, according to Gumball, so stupid that it can only be described by using words "that I'm too young to know the meaning of".
- Persona Non Grata: According to Nicole, the family had to go to a chicken restaurant in another town since Richard was banned from the one in Elmore because he took the "All You Can Eat" gimmick literally and ate a chair.
- Oblivious Mockery:Carrie: There once was a young man, a mortal man who fell in love with a beautiful—
Gumball: Yeah, yeah thanks. We know.
Carrie: Did you know that the young man and the ghost had a child?
Darwin: Egh. A zom-baby.
Carrie: That child was me. - Real After All: Gumball's family are revealed to be gone because they went across town for chicken, not because the Snatcher got them, and the previous events (losing his money and his friends hating him) were assumed to be coincidences. Then, the Snatcher shows up and takes them for real.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Carrie hears about the Snatcher, she gets really scared and teleports away. She actually wasn't running away but going to the Underworld to grab a spellbook.
- Sideways Smile: When Gumball thinks he got an e-mail from Penny, he makes a very Crayon Shin-chan-esque smile visible from a back view.
◊ - Sickeningly Sweethearts: Gumball insists that he and Penny are NOT this, despite showing just the kind of obsessive behavior he's talking about.
- Skewed Priorities: Darwin saves Gumball when the Snatcher comes out of the TV by changing the channel to a home-shopping channel. Gumball insists that he changes it back.Gumball: Dude, I think I'd prefer a life of damnation in limbo rather than having to watch that.
Darwin: Yeah, fair enough (changes channel). - Speak of the Devil: The Snatcher appears before you if you say his (real) name five times. Carrie says all ghosts work that way, so Darwin and Gumball briefly abuse it to make her teleport around until she possesses Gumball and makes him slap himself.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: Carrie takes a book from the underworld that has spells in it with a terrible cost for using each, one of which created the Snatcher. It bears some resemblance to the Evil Dead depiction of the Necronomicon.
- Unexplained Recovery: The cost of using a bunch of spells turned Gumball into a decrepit disembodied head and Darwin into a revived corpse, but they're suddenly back to normal in the last scene. It's possible that this was an effect of the Snatcher's curse being undone.
- You Are Fat: Gumball's passes on a message through classmates, meaning to tell Penny that she's cool, but the message turns into calling her fat by the end. Cue a Nightmare Face from Penny and thrown objects from the rest of the class, including Banana Joe (as in someone threw him).
