Film / One Got Fat

One Got Fat is a 1963 bicycle safety film narrated by Edward Everett Horton. In the film, ten friends (who are children with monkey masks and tails) plan on going to the park for a picnic. They all ride there on their bikes, but each one meets a different fate on their way to the park as a result of their failure to follow specific bike safety rules (like not making hand signals, not reading traffic signs, not riding with traffic, riding double, or riding on the sidewalk). One by one, each of the friends makes a mistake and suffers an interesting fate. In the end only one of the friends (who not only followed all the bike safety rules, but is also a normal human, whose face is not shown until the very end) makes it to the park and eats all the food by himself. Thus, as the title says, "One got fat!" It can be viewed here. Also available as a RiffTrax VOD short.

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• The Ace: Phillip Floogal is mentioned as being a star athlete, the class president, an honor student and having the handsomest profile in school.
  Bill Corbett: Chicks dig a Glasgow smile!
• Agony of the Feet: One of the monkeys, due to having his bike stolen (he forgot to get a license, so the police had nothing to go on), is forced to run after his friends. He eventually collapses when his feet wear out.
• All Crimes Are Equal: All safety code violations meet the same penalty: death by sudden car impact, save two who plummet down a manhole and another who dies when his feet burst into flame. One survives and can be seen in the hospital.
• Big Eater: Based on his body type and the size of his lunch bag, it's safe to assume that "Slim" Jim Maguffny is one of these.
  • And there's Orville, the titular one who got fat by eating his and all his friends' lunches.
• Bloodless Carnage
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Rooty-Toot Jasperson gets hit by a car after failing to make one hand signal after his arm gets tired. At the end, the narrator reviews the various incidents and several times points out that the children failed to do the right thing "just once."
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• Catchphrase: "Right? Right."
• Chekhov's Gunman: Orville Slump.
• Contrived Coincidence: Some of the monkeys' fates seem a bit contrived, like the one who gets hit by a car after failing to make one hand signal. And then you have Phillip Floogal who decides to ride against traffic and gets creamed almost instantly.
• Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Horton's narration is always cheerful, even while the kids are being injured or possibly killed; it's probably an Actor Allusion to his Fractured Faily Tales narration.
• Deadpan Snarker: Horton when anybody in the group is killed or injured.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The kids all die for their very minor safety code violations in what is implied to be divine retribution.
• Dwindling Party
• Edible Theme Naming: Filbert Bagel and Mossby Pomegranate. Also, there's "Slim" Jim Maguffney, though that one was unintentional (Slim Jim meat sticks wouldn't hit the market until 1969).
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• Expressive Mask: Some of the masks change when the characters meet their ends. It's pretty terrifying.◊
• Final Girl: Gender Flipped, as Orville is the sole survivor.
• Human All Along: The Reveal of Orville at the end, but thanks to bad camera placement after Slim and Trigby's demises, you can see his face earlier than that.
• Hit Flash: Most of the monkeys meet their fates with one of these. Averted with Filbert Bagel (the one who gets run over by a steamroller), who gets a black screen and a Sickening "Crunch!".
• Humans Are Good: Orville, the only one who followed all the bicycle safety rules, is revealed at the end to be a human.
• Innocent Innuendo: "Slim knew that his big sack would be hard to handle."
• Interspecies Friendship: Assuming the masks weren't some kind of visual metaphor.
• Jerkass Gods: This is one interpretation of the narrator. This is most apparent when a steamroller just happens to come by at exactly the right moment to run over Filbert Bagel (the one who neglects to tune up his bike).
• Killed Off for Real: Not explicit, but seeing as how the characters meet fates such as being hit by traffic and getting run over by a goddamned steamroller, it's more than likely that not all of the monkeys survived.
  • This is supported by the fact that not all the monkeys are present at the hospital at the end of the film. They're probably at the morgue.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: Rooty-Toot Jasperson is described as "a slam-bang go-getter." It's unclear what this is meant to mean.
• Male Monkeys Are The Expendable Gender: Played with; there are way more male monkeys in the cast than female, but both of the female monkeys present meet pretty damn final ends.
• Nice Hat: Rooty-Toot Jasperson, Phillip Floogal, and Stanislaw Hickenbottom each have one.
• Non-Indicative Name: Despite the short being "One Got Fat", it does not refer to Slim Jim. It refers to Orville, who inherited all the lunch bags.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The kids' accidents are all shown offscreen, covered up with animated stars and flashes and cartoony sound effects.
• Offscreen Crash
• Scare 'Em Straight
• Sickening "Crunch!": The one who gets run over by a steamroller.
  Bill Corbett: Ooh, he was crunchy!
• The Sociopath: Everyone, as they don't seem affected at all by the deaths of their friends.
  • They don't even stop.
  • The unseen adults as well. None of them even seem to stop after killing one in their car.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The music is cheerful and upbeat despite the fact that the characters are being killed/severely injured.

• Space Whale Aesop: If you break a rule of the road when on a bicycle, a car will appear out of nowhere to murder you.
  • That includes not registering your bicycle riding license at the library. The car will know.
  • Safe bicycle care results in morbid obesity.

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