History Recap / InfinityTrainS1E1TheGridCar

** Mikayla rather bluntly brings up the divorce of Tulip's parents, but she's clearly trying to emphasize and isn't trying to make her feel bad by doing so.

** Mikayla rather bluntly brings up the divorce of Tulip's parents, but she's clearly not trying to make her feel bad.

* InnocentlyInsensitive: Tulip's mother just tells Tulip that she can't take her, and neither can her father, without realizing that Tulip was hanging onto coding camp as a means of coping with the divorce.

* AdultFear: Your child running away after you have a nasty fight, in the winter. Not to mention the divorce is breaking everyone besides Tulip.

* BizarreTasteInFood: While walking home from the school bus, Tulip is casually eating a raw onion. Mikayla calls this out as weird, and Tulip protests that she has "refined tastes".

* RewatchBonus:
** [[spoiler:The passenger being taken away by the vortex? Turns out they were leaving the train and going back home.]]
** [[spoiler:Tulips goal is to find the Conductor. She finds out at the end of the book that she's been with the true Conductor all along.]]

** The passenger being taken away by the vortex? Turns out they were leaving the train and going back home.
** Tulips goal is to find the Conductor. She finds out at the end of the book that she's been with the true Conductor all along.

* ExactWords: When Tulip asks where she is (upon seeing someone being ''vaporized'' in front of her eyes, Sad-One states "You're in a bad place right now". At first, you would assume the "bad place" is the world where the Infinity Train rides. He never stated it was a ''physical'' place.

* RewatchBonus: The passenger being taken away by the vortex? Turns out they were leaving the train and going back home.

* JerkassHasAPoint: While Tulip's comments towards her mother about the divorce are out of line, she has a right to be annoyed that both of her parents signed a contract that if she improved her grades, she could go to coding camp, and neither of them will honor that. And neither of them even suggest that she could take a plane, the bus or a train.
* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: As Tulip wakes up in the snowy forest car, a strange pod can be seen flying off in the background, just behind the trees.

** Tulip decides to walk all the way to camp since neither of her parents can take her or offer helpful alternatives. She only realizes later that there's no way she can walk three hundred miles and make it on time and tries her luck at the train station.

* SchmuckBait: Right when Tulip complains about the distance she needs to travel, a train shows up out of nowhere and a sign flips over indicating the same town she needs to get to. She lampshades it as convenient, and is knocked out by a burst of light when she tries to board the train, winding up on an entirely different train in some strange realm.

* BizarreTasteInFood: While walking home from the school bus, Tulip is casually eating a raw onion. Mikayla calls this out as weird, and Tulip protests that she has "refined tastes"

After hours of walking, a train passes by that seems to be heading directly to her destination. Tulip steps on to the locomotive, only to find herself waking up in the snow, having seemingly slept through the night and hallucinated the train encounter. But after meeting a robot named One-One, whom Tulip initially believes is a toy, she comes across a door and discovers that she had boarded the train: the snowy landscape was actually one of its many cars. Tulip is initially enthused by this turn of events and runs to the next car, the Grid Car, to spend time playing with its defining feature: pressure plates that create colorful cubes. But when she realizes her left hand is now host to a glowing green number 115, she begins to question exactly where she is.

Leaving the train car, Tulip finally takes notice of her surroundings: this isn't the American Midwest, but some barren wasteland in an alternate dimension. After witnessing another passenger from a distant train car seemingly get atomized by a glowing sky vortex, she tries to leave the train, only to encounter a small pack of soul-sucking cockroach dog creatures in the wasteland. Tulip retreats back to the train and barely manages to escape them with One-One's help and by using the wall-building properties of the Grid Car. Deeming the train a place she definitely doesn't want to stay on either, she learns from her new robot friend that her only means of escape likely lies in the train's conductor, located at the engine room. The very ''remote'' engine room. The episode closes with Tulip looking out over the train and at the glowing number on her hand, determined to get back to Earth.

!!Tropes in this episode:

On November 22nd in North Branch, Minnesota, at the start of Thanksgiving break, a teenage girl named Tulip Olsen discusses her upcoming weekend trip to a video game programming camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her friend Mikayla. Her excitement is extinguished, however, when she gets home and learns that she is no longer able to go; due to poor scheduling, neither of her parents are able to drive her to camp. Tulip bitterly responds by attacking her parents for "messing things up" with their divorce, running away from home to walk to camp on her own shortly after.

After hours of walking, a train passes by that seems to be heading directly to her destination. Tulip steps on to the locomotive, only to find herself waking up in the snow, having seemingly slept through the night and hallucinated the train encounter. But after meeting a robot named One-One, whom Tulip initially believes is a toy, she comes across a door and discovers that she had boarded the train: the snowy landscape was actually one of its many cars.

Tulip is initially enthused by this turn of events and runs to the next car to spend time playing with its defining feature: pressure plates that create colorful cubes. But when she realizes her left hand is now host to some strange, glowing green numbers, she begins to question exactly where she is, with a series of more unsettling observations and encounters shortly afterward only driving the point home: whatever this place is, she doesn't want to stay. Upon learning from One-One that her only means of escape likely lies in the train's conductor, located in the distant, ''distant'' engine room, the episode closes with Tulip looking out over the train and at the glowing number on her hand, determined to get back home.

One November afternoon in North Branch, Minnesota, at the start of Thanksgiving break, a teenage girl named Tulip Olsen discusses her upcoming weekend trip to a video game programming camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her friend Mikayla. Her excitement is extinguished, however, when she gets home and learns that she is no longer able to go; due to poor scheduling, neither of her parents are able to drive her to camp. Tulip bitterly responds by attacking her parents for "messing things up" with their divorce, running away from home to walk to camp on her own shortly after.

One November afternoon, at the start of Thanksgiving break, a teenage girl named Tulip Olsen discusses her upcoming weekend trip to a video game programming camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her friend Mikayla. Her excitement is extinguished, however, when she gets home and learns that she is no longer able to go; due to poor scheduling, neither of her parents are able to drive her to camp. Tulip bitterly responds by attacking her parents for "messing things up" with their divorce, running away from home to walk to camp on her own shortly after.

[[caption-width-right:350:All aboard?]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/osh_kosh.png]]

* MixAndMatchCritters: The creatures that chase Tulip look like dogs with a cockroach body on top.

* VampiricDraining: The cockroach dogs can drain the life from humans, though it comes right back if they're cut off in the middle of feeding.

One November afternoon, at the start of Thanksgiving break, a preteen girl named Tulip Olsen discusses her upcoming weekend trip to a video game programming camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her friend Mikayla. Her excitement is extinguished, however, when she gets home and learns that she is no longer able to go; due to poor scheduling, neither of her parents are able to drive her to camp. Tulip bitterly responds by attacking her parents for "messing things up" with their divorce, running away from home to walk to camp on her own shortly after.

One November afternoon, just before Thanksgiving break, a preteen girl named Tulip discusses her upcoming weekend trip to a video game programming camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her friend Mikayla. Her excitement is extinguished, however, when she gets home and learns that she is no longer able to go. Due to poor scheduling, neither of her parents, are able to drive her to camp. Tulip bitterly responds by attacking her parents for "messing things up" with their divorce and for being "too busy to be parents".

Tulip runs away from home and tries to walk to Oshkosh on her own, only admitting come nightfall that attempting to walk three hundred miles wasn't the smartest plan. At that moment, a train passes by that seems to be heading directly to her destination. Tulip steps on to the train, only to shield her face as a glowing ring flies toward her. She gasps and finds herself waking up in the snow, having seemingly slept through the night and hallucinated the incident.

As she walks along in frustration, Tulip ends up encountering a robot named One-One, whom Tulip initially believes is a toy until she comes across a door and discovers that the snowy landscape she was just in was a single car in "a really weird big train". Enthused by this turn of events, Tulip runs to the next car and spends time playing with that car's defining feature: pressure plates that create colorful cubes. Exiting the car, Tulip realizes that the train isn't traveling in Wisconsin, but rather a reddish desert landscape with ominous clouds in the sky. This is followed by more unsettling observations and encounters, from seeing a fellow passenger in the distance die to nearly getting her soul drained by cockroach/dog-like creatures when she attempts to get off the train. One of these creatures manage to follow her back into the Grid Car, where she and One-One are able to escape it after some effort.

As they sit on the platform just outside the car's door, Tulip tries to reason out their scenario, believing that something logical must exist about their situation. She asks One-One if the train has a conductor, to which she gets an affirmative answer, but the robot follows that up by saying said person would be at the distant, ''distant'' engine room. The episode closes with Tulip looking out over the train and at the glowing number on her hand, determined to escape the train.

On her way home on November 22, just before Thanksgiving, a preteen girl named Tulip is discussing her upcoming weekend trip to a video game programming camp in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her friend Mikayla. Her excitement is extinguished, however, when Tulip gets home and learns that she is no longer able to go. Due to poor scheduling, neither of her parents, are able to drive her to camp. Tulip bitterly responds by attacking her parents for "messing things up" with their divorce and for being "too busy to be [her] parents".

During a poorly thought-out attempt to get to game coding camp, Tulip finds herself on an unusual train.