Rob: Oh no... it's started.
In this, the Series Finale, a strange, live-action man by the name of Superintendent Evil comes to the school and sucks the cartoonish nature out of Elmore Junior High's students so they can be human and normal.
Tropes
- Adoption Diss: Superintendent Evil finds it necessary to refer to Darwin as "Darwin Watter-adopted-son".
- Apocalypse How: If the subtext has anything to do with the series truly ending, then the show's world got swallowed up by the static seen in "The Void", meaning that the show disappeared into the ether of television.
- Back for the Finale: Both Sussie and Molly make their first physical appearances since Season 5 (although both of them did appear in pictures in "The Web" and "The Spinoffs", respectively).
- The Bad Guy Wins: Not Evil/Rob who fails at his mission to save Elmore High's students by turning them human, but whatever force is behind the Void claiming Elmore.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Superintendent Evil does this a lot so he can give people hope and immediately take it away.Evil: Any questions... (a few students put their hands up) ...regarding my authority will be severely punished. (those hands quickly go down again)
- Blind Mistake: Teri is made to erase her face because Evil prohibits tattoos and accidentally hole punches her ear attempting to use the phone, so he also gives her detention. She passes her time feeding the class lizard bread but she's actually sprinkling crumbs over a pickle and ripping up Anton.
- Book Ends:
- The episode starts and ends with the Dark Reprise of the ending credits.
- The early reel took place entirely in Elmore Junior High. This episode happens almost entirely in the school as well, with the space appearing for a quick joke and the Void being shown in the very endnote
- The Bully: Superintendent Evil bullies the students and staff, and when Gumball and Darwin ruin his plans, he runs away like a pathetic coward.
- Bolivian Army Cliffhanger: The show ultimately ends right as the Void begins to swallow up Elmore, starting with Elmore Junior High. The last shot is a freeze frame of Rob falling in.
- Bowdlerization: Yes, even the finale of The Amazing World of Gumball has gone through censorship in some international cuts, though the violence, transformation horror, and disturbing cliffhanger ending weren't the problem. What was the problem was Miss Simian's line to Principal Brown ("Pull yourself together, Nigel! You sound like a winded Chinese opera singer. What's wrong?"), which was cut in the Irish dub, the show's native UK version, the Middle Eastern/North African dub, the Russian/Bulgarian dub, and the continental Europe dubnote ),
- Card-Carrying Villain: Even when going in disguise, Rob couldn't help but outright use Evil as his alias.
- Call-Back:
- Superintendent Evil is the figure vaguely shown at the very end of "The Future".
- When Rob is revealed, he has the pig tail Banana Barbara gave him at the end of "The Future". Sure enough this is also the episode where that painting comes true, and his motive was preventing that outcome.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Gumball attempts to bring Banana Joe's memory back after him being turned into a human, he sings the banana song from "The Singing".
- When Darwin does this to Sussie, he makes the googly face from "The Weirdo".
- Gumball calling Miss Simian "two-faced" resembles Nicole calling her a "two-faced baboon" in "The Ape".
- Didn't Think This Through: Rob learns the hard way that no one is going to listen to him after he tried to brainwash everyone and turn them into something they're not. Tina simply beats him up without caring what he has to say.
- Dirty Coward: When confronted by Gumball, Darwin, and everyone they changed back, Evil pretends that he'll face Gumball in a fistfight, but then turns tail and runs before slipping on Banana Joe's peel.
- Disney Villain Death: The last scene of the episode is Rob falling into the Void opening up under him.
- Extra-Long Episode: Heavily downplayed. This episode is one minute longer than every other episode in the show.
- Eye Scream: William gets terribly injured after making a lot of effort to open a door without using his powers... and not even to the classroom but for the broom closet.
- False Reassurance: Superintendent Evil tells the school at an assembly that he's not there to tear them down and build them back up. He's just there to tear them down.
- Fantastic Racism: Subverted. Superintendent Evil seems to be transforming the students merely because he hates toons, however once he's revealed to be Rob it becomes clear that his real motivation is far more benevolent.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Gumball kisses a girl he assumes is human Penny, who is reading (apparently untranslated) manga, something Penny never showed any interest in. Sure enough it's not Penny, it's Sarah.
- Full-Body Disguise: The live action human Superintendent Evil turns out to be Rob in disguise. The illusion markedly breaks when he trips and the true size and shape of his head deforms the mask after impact.
- Grand Finale: The last episode of the show, although Cartoon Network didn't promote it as such.
- Hands Go Down: Superintendent Evil's New Era Speech repeatedly states "Any questions..." prompting raised hands before finishing that questioning him will be severely punished, which makes them go down. When he finishes by genuinely asking if there are any questions, everybody's got the point by then.
- Humanity Ensues: Superintendent Evil forcibly turns all the students into humans, ultimately planning to make them live-action humans like him.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Gumball and Darwin get everyone to change back by reminding them of their old selves.
- "Join Us" Drone: Tobias, Tina and Sussie try to convince Gumball and Darwin to undergo the human process after they've gone through it, chanting "It's better this way." when they corner them.
- Kick the Dog: As the other examples can show, Superintendent Evil doesn't miss an opportunity to verbally abuse someone.
- Last Episode, New Character: Subverted. The Superintendent seems to be this at first, but then he turns out to actually be Rob, and thus, there are no new characters introduced in this episode.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Rob's actions from "The Disaster" and "The Future" come back to bite him. He used poor communications to ruin Gumball's life and then got Penny to fall to her death and kidnapped (or banana-naped in this case) Banana Barbara. Here, his poor communications get him beat up by Tina and then he falls into the Void possibly to his death.
- Left Hanging: Barbara’s painting of the Wattersons running in the Void as seen in "The Oracle" still hasn’t happened (though it's implied it either will happen when the series finale movie finally airs or it has happened, but off-screen).
- Literal Cliffhanger: At the very end of the episode, Rob is left hanging to small piece of Elmore Junior High's floor as the Void begins to consume it seconds before he falls into it.
- Literal Metaphor: Gumball calls Ms. Simian two-faced for breaking it off with Principal Brown to try and hook up with Superintendent Evil. Then we see she literally turns her head around to another face that's covered in makeup.
- Mistaken Identity: Gumball kisses a blonde girl with pigtails, assuming she's Penny as a human. It turns out Penny became a redhead, and he actually kissed Sarah. Luckily, he made Sarah happy enough and Penny mad enough to change both back.
- Morphic Resonance: The human versions of cast have some visible similarity to their original forms, usually color scheme.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Superintendent Evil. His only attempt at any subtlety regarding it, is in his insistence that his name is pronounced as "EV-ul" (as in "Neville") rather than "ee-VIL".
- Never My Fault: Rob blames the school for not listening to him even though he should've known better not to force them.
- Nonstandard Character Design: Superintendent Evil is a live-action real life human.
- Not a Mask: After Gumball takes off Superintendent Evil's mask, revealing he's actually Rob, Banana Joe attempts to take Rob's face off again, but it turns out to actually be him.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: The plot is based around Superintendent Evil resenting the residents of Elmore for being Toons, but no one verbally acknowledges such besides him once complaining about "cartoonish conduct".
- Poor Communication Kills: Just like in "The Future". If Rob could've just told them what was going on rather then disguising himself, brainwashing everyone and calling himself Superintendent Evil, they might have listened to him.
- Psychotic Smirk: Superintendent Evil gets a curt smile watching William hurt himself trying to open a door without his powers.
- Real-World Episode: Brushed up against; Evil/Rob appears as a live-action human for most of the episode and clearly planned to turn the residents of Elmore into the same to somehow keep them from being sucked into the Void.
- Refugee from TV Land: Rob implicitly states that his plan was to avoid the destruction of Elmore by forcing everyone to become normal, live-action people and escape to "the other place" before it all collapses into the Void.
- Transformation Horror: Masami is put into a tank by Evil that is slowly transforming her, first peeling away the cartoon part of her hand that becomes realistic along with the top part of her face to reveal live action eyes when she opens them.
- Two Roads Before You: Rob tells everyone they can either live what's left of their lives in ignorance of the coming disaster or let him explain how he was trying to prevent it. Tina chooses the former.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: For the first time, a live-action human appears in person (instead of just on TV) and interacts with the animated characters.
- Sequel Episode: This episode (rather stealthily) follows the events of "The Future". Mainly on what Rob's plan is and what Banana Barbara meant when she said that "there's no future."
- Significant Anagram: Darwin says he's suspicious of Superintendent Evil because his name rearranged spells "vile".Gumball: Dude, his name is literally "evil".
Darwin: Hmmm...? "Eee-vil"? I guess. You've got to want it, though.
Gumball: (exasperated sigh) - Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Superintendent Evil makes a run for it rather than fight Gumball with the rest of the school on Gumball's side.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Rob's plan was to transform everyone into live-action humans to escape to the "other place". Surely enough, the Void swoops in to start consuming Elmore into it at the very end of the episode.
- Toon Physics: Gumball and Darwin evade their transformed and brainwashed classmates by exploiting the fact that they're unable to use cartoon physics anymore. Gumball outruns Tina by growing extra legs and starting a motion blur, Darwin sneaks by Tobias after confusing him with Scooby-Dooby Doors on the lockers, Gumball also escapes Tobias' grasp by detaching his butt and they both get past Ocho by grating themselves through a vent to the outside.
- The Dog Bites Back: Tina was one of the students who was turned into a human by Evil. So while Rob was in the middle of his rant. She beats him unconscious with her tail.
- The Unreveal: Rob was never able to say why he wanted to transform everyone into humans, because Tina beat him up before he could.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tina beating up Rob before he can explain his intentions, to the point of him being unconscious for hours, prevents the characters from finding any way to fight against being sucked into the Void in time.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rob's plan was ultimately to save everyone in Elmore from its oncoming collapse, but it involved forcefully conditioning the citizens into looking and acting like live-action humans.
- Wham Episode: Rob was Superintendent Evil who was trying to turn all of Elmore citizens into humans so they can escape into the other world before the world they are in ends. Unfortunately, Tina knocked him out before he get to say the real reason why it needs to happen and by the time he revealed this, it was already night time and the Void, which has declared Elmore and all of its inhabitants a mistake for not being humans, begins to suck up the world with Rob falling first victim into it... as shown on the painting from "The Future".
- Whole-Plot Reference: The premise of a human, who later turns out to be a Toon in disguise, attempting to stamp out anything "cartoony" has quite a bit in common with Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
