Gumball returning to the void.
Gumball: I lost everything! But I was given another chance. A chance to fix it all! [gasp] I can change the future!
After the events of "The Disaster", Gumball is sent to the episode's beginning with knowledge of what happened. He tries to prevent Rob from tearing his family apart, but ends up making things even worse before they get any better.
Tropes:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Although Gumball succeeds in beating Rob (seizing the remote and sending him into the Void), from which point he can undo all the damage, he still feels guilty over leaving someone with no friends or family exiled to an empty wasteland when he didn't even want to be a villain in the first place.
- Berserker Tears: Gumball, in tears over the loss of his family, screams and bum-rushes Rob after being told that he was warned... only to once again be controlled into pushing Penny off the ledge.
- Bond One-Liner: Deconstructed, as Gumball pushes Rob into the void with the one liner "you shouldn't have pressed my buttons", but feels like the villain because he doomed someone to a Fate Worse than Death "and made a dumb quip about it".
- A Day in the Limelight: For Rob.
- Delayed Ripple Effect: De-aging Nicole and Richard causes their children to fade from reality, from youngest to oldest, with their bodies physically disappearing one piece at a time.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Gumball nearly gets that he's in a giant TV show, but gets distracted trying to save Rob.
- From Bad to Worse: While Rob's original attempt left the Watterson family in tatters, the only one it put in serious physical danger was Penny, who was frozen in time just short of a two story fall. Gumball trying to fix everything leaves Penny exactly where she was before, while Richard and Nicole turn into babies, resulting in their children fading from existence, youngest first. In other words, The Darkest Hour got even darker!Gumball: [To Rob] Well played. This is even worse than the last time.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Darwin reverted back to a normal fish due to Richard and Nicole becoming babies, losing his lungs and legs, and then dies in front of Gumball due to lack of water.
- Fountain of Youth: Using the rewind function on Nicole and Richard changes their ages retroactively, which cause their children to have never been born.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: For a split second, Nicole is seen in her underwear using balls from a ball pit to cover her breasts.
- Mental Time Travel: Gumball unintentionally uses the remote to send his mind back to the beginning of the last episode to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Throughout the episode, Gumball consistently remembers Rob's name, when he would usually quickly forget it, showing just how serious the situation is for him, which briefly takes Rob off-guard before the fight starts.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Gumball to Rob just before shooting him into the Void:"You shouldn't have pressed my buttons".
- Ret-Gone: De-aging Richard and Nicole causes Anais and Gumball to start physically vanishing, body part by body part. When Anais was fully gone, Gumball and Darwin lose most of their memory of her. Being adopted, Darwin doesn't vanish, but he does start to turn back into the regular fish he'd be without Gumball (and suffocates because he's out of water).
- Save the Villain: Gumball decided to rescue Rob after ejecting him into the Void.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Gumball tries to fix Rob's damage after coming back in time, which Rob succeeds in doing after being talked into it after being rescued even when Gumball had the Universal Remote in his hands to undo everything.
- The Story That Never Was: Once Rob undergoes a Heel–Face Turn, he goes back to when he first bought the remote and breaks it. Since only the remote's user has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory when it's used to time travel, Rob is the only one who remembers the episode's events—which means Gumball forgets about the Void again. When Gumball points out he won't remember becoming friends with Rob, Rob admits he'll be OK with being enemies again.
- Temporal Abortion: Played with when Gumball's attempt to stop Rob from attacking his parents causes them to regress to babies, making the Watterson kids start to cease to exist.
- Unwanted Rescue: Rob is resigned to losing and being in the Void, which means Gumball's rescue becomes The Chase.
- Wham Episode: While Rob fixed everything in atonement by rewinding to back when "The Disaster" aired, he's the only one well-aware of what truly happened and the world they live in. Despite Gumball wanting to be friends with him after what happened, Rob chose to have him forget about it for his sake so he'll live his life as a villain... before destroying the Universal Remote because it's too powerful.
