Cheat Code
Written By: Claire Carré & Charles Spano
Single father Jeff (Lochlyn Munro) cleans out boxes of his old stuff to get his mind off the rift that his wife's recent death has formed between him and his teenage son Dave (Connor Wong). Inside one particular box, Jeff rediscovers his old Atari 2600 and his childhood video game cartridges, including his personal favorite game, Weird Wednesday. Overcome with happiness and nostalgia, Jeff rushes upstairs to show the game to Dave as a means to bond with him, though Dave is more interested in Sentinel Strike, the modern first-person shooter he's playing with his friends. Jeff tells his son that he had the highest score in the Southwest US and almost became the national champion of Weird Wednesday back in the 80s, if only the championship wasn't canceled and all the game's copies weren't pulled off the shelves and buried in the desert. Noting his father's intentions for quality time, Dave allows Jeff to start up the game as a means to humor him. Dave discovers that Weird Wednesday is an 8-bit side scroller where the player character must make their way across town without dying, while objects and hazards that become increasingly difficult to avoid are thrown in their way. Though his father dies early on from his lack of experience, Dave quickly dies and continues to do so repeatedly, realizing that Jeff was right about how the game is immensley difficult. Jeff tries telling him the unfairness of the game is the whole point, and that no one's made it to the final level because of the difficulty level.
After playing for some time, Dave gradually falls in love with Weird Wednesday, trying again and again to beat it. The next day, he tells his ex-girlfriend-turned-friend Reina (Hanna Huffman) and his other friend Spencer (Nikolas Filipovic) all about the game. As Dave and his father try again to beat the game later that same day, Spencer and Reina come over to see Weird Wednesday for themselves, with Jeff having a conversation with Reina where he thanks her for her sympathy regarding his and Dave's recent issues. Hoping to make himself look cool to his son's friends, Jeff tries to teach them a trick he knows to get past a level they’re stuck on, but Dave brushes him off and says that he can teach them later. Later that night, Dave beats his father's old high score after hours of obsesively trying. While Jeff is happy for his son, he reminds him that he still needs to beat the game itself, though Dave decides to go to bed rather than play with his father. The next day, Reina shows Dave and Spencer that she purchased her own 2600 and a copy of Weird Wednesday online to beat Dave's high score, though her copy comes with a cheat code on the lid of the box and a warning from the seller that the game killed her kids. At Reina's house, as the trio again try to beat the game, Reina tries to get Dave to give his father a chance at bonding with him, while the oblivious Spencer wishes to borrow her system.
The next day, Jeff invites Dave to a rematch, but Dave again passes. Desperately wanting to spend quality time with his son, Jeff makes a friendly wager with Dave. If Dave beats Weird Wednesday before him, he can finally take his driver's test, but if Jeff beats it first, Dave has to spend every Friday night hanging out with him. Agreeing to the wager, Dave proceeds to play the game some more with Reina, who tells him that Spencer hasn't returned her console and copy yet. They also learn that Reina's cheat code has unlocked a new character for Weird Wednesday that looks suspiciously like Spencer, and proceed to play until they run out of lives. The duo then head to Spencer's house to have Reina's system returned, but Spencer's mother tells them that her son isn't picking up his phone. Regardless, she lets them in to take the console, whereupon they see a "Game Over" screen in the empty living room. As they leave the house, Dave and Reina pass a crime scene involving an ice-cream truck. The camera pans down to reveal Spencer's mangled corpse under the truck, just like what happened to his "character" from Weird Wednesday.
Back at Dave's house, the pair play the game some more until they end up stuck on a level, which prompts the frustrated Dave to enter the cheat code as Reina leaves the room for a snack. After entering the code, Dave suddenly bolts upright and begins walking and jumping against his will. When Reina returns and sees him like this, Dave admits that he entered the cheat code and he begins realizing that the person who sold Reina her system was right about the game being cursed, as the cheat code evidently makes players part of the game. Disbelieving this, Reina tries to prove that Dave isn't "cursed" by shutting the console off, but this only makes Dave disappear. After being restored, Dave forcefully exits the house as Jeff, playing Weird Wednesday on his own system and trying to win the bet he made with Dave, is revealed to be the person controlling him. As Jeff plays, his son is forced to mimic the movements of the game's player character as he walks down an obstacle-filled sidewalk. He repeatedly dies in gruesome and painful ways (shredded by a lawnmower, bludgeoned by falling bricks, suffocated by a plastic bag, and stabbed by a "knife storm") as his character loses lives, respawning in Reina's living room every time. After getting over the sensation of dying and respawning, Dave wonders what happens when his lives run out, slowly realizing what happened to Spencer. Jeff soon texts Dave to invite him to play the game again, since he's "killing it" with a new character, prompting Reina to realize that Dave was right and frantically call Jeff, who's unfortunately too busy playing to answer.
As Reina races to Dave's house and Dave keeps dying, Jeff arrives at the final level of Weird Wednesday, where a crashed UFO sits in a forest. In the real world, Dave similarly comes across the downed spaceship in the woods, watching as a grey alien, the final boss of the game, emerges from it. The alien demonstrates strong psychic powers, attacking Dave by lifting and hurling rocks at him and shooting balls of psychic energy from its hands. As the oblivious Jeff continues playing, Reina finally gets to the house and pounds on the door, prompting the frustrated Jeff to pause the game. After hearing Reina's frantic explanation as to what's been happening with his son and his favorite video game, as well as that he can't shut off the console and that Dave will die in real life if he dies in the game one more time, Jeff volunteers to go after him and enters the cheat code. With Reina controlling him, thereby freeing Dave of his control, Jeff stands by his son's side, ready to beat the final boss with him. As Jeff prepares to beat the alien with a large stick, it telekinetically lifts him into the air. As his father struggles to breathe, Dave spies the boss' weak point: a glowing red button on the spaceship. With the alien distracted, Dave quickly gets to the button and presses it. This causes the spaceship and its pilot to explode, winning the game for the father-son duo, whose characters share a relieved hug.
In the real world, Jeff and Dave bury Weird Wednesday on the side of the road. Dave says that he has plans with Reina that night (revealing that they got back together), so Jeff decides he'll walk home and let Dave take the car, now that he has a license. Before he drives off, Dave tells his dad that he'd like to play ball together tomorrow, filling Jeff with glee. As the happy father and son leave the game's impromptu resting place, the earth starts pulsating and an ominous blue glow shines through the cracks, hinting that Weird Wednesday isn't finished with them yet.
This episode contains examples of:
- Amicable Exes: Reina and Dave are said to have been in a relationship that ended before the episode began, though they're shown to still be good friends, which Jeff is grateful for. The ending hints that they've gotten back together after the Weird Wednesday fiasco.
- Artistic License – Art: Despite ostensibly being on an Atari 2600, Weird Wednesday looks and plays a lot more like an NES game. Among other things, it pauses, has a menu screen, and has a scoreboard.
- Attack Its Weak Point: As the alien telekinetically strangles Jeff, Dave manages to push a button on its crashed ship that causes it to explode, taking the alien with it and winning the game for him and his father.
- The Bet: Jeff offers to play Weird Wednesday with Dave to spend some bonding time with him, offering a wager if he agrees: if Dave wins, he can take his driver's test, but if Jeff wins, Dave has to spend every Friday night bonding with him. The end of the episode reveals that Jeff honored the bet, having taken Dave to get his license after they beat the final boss.
- Big "YES!":
- When Dave finally beats his dad's high score after hours of trying.
- Reina lets out one of her own when Jeff and Dave beat the final boss.
- Classic Cheat Code: The cheat code on the lid of Reina's copy of Weird Wednesday, which borrows heavily from the Konami Code.
- Deadly Rotary Fan: Dave's first death inside Weird Wednesday has him getting graphically shredded feet-first by a lawnmower's blades.
- Dying Declaration of Love: As the final boss prepares to kill him, Jeff apologizes to Dave for showing him Weird Wednesday and that he loves him.
- Endless Game: Weird Wednesday was thought to be one when Jeff was a kid, as he and his friends only focused on getting the highest score rather than actually completing it.
- The End... Or Is It?: Jeff and Dave patch up their bond, the latter gets his driver's license and gets back together with Reina, and they take the time to bury Weird Wednesday on the side of a road. The very end shows that the mound where the cartridge is buried is glowing blue and pulsating, hinting that the game isn't finished yet.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The general plot of Weird Wednesday is that all sorts of everyday items come hurtling towards the player and killing them if they make contact. Those who get to the end of the game learn that the source of the phenomenon is a psychic alien that acts as the final boss.
- Exact Words: Weird Wednesday's box bears the slogan "Never been beaten by a single player!" Jeff manages to beat it by entering the cheat code, which allows for two-player mode.
- Fictional Video Game:
- Weird Wednesday, an 8-bit side-scroller from the 80s that features a telekinetic alien manipulating objects around the player character's neighborhood to kill them. It also comes with a cheat code that merges the game with the real world, allowing the player to be controlled by another player until they run out of lives, whereupon they die permanently.
- Dave is also seen playing a modern first-person shooter he says is called Sentinel Strike.
- Foreshadowing:
- As Dave and Reina head to Spencer's house to get her system back, Spencer's mother tells them that her son was just playing a game, then walked out of the house and didn't come back. We later see his corpse under an ice-cream truck, just like his "character", revealing that the game can lock players inside it via the titular cheat code, which is what also happens to Dave.
- As Dave and Reina walk from Spencer's house, Dave discusses how his father got to a new "forest level" in Weird Wednesday that he's never seen. This turns out to be the location of the game's final boss, and Dave and Jeff are forced into the same forest to fight the boss head on.
- The Game Come to Life: Inputting the titular cheat code of Weird Wednesday puts the player inside the game, being controlled by another player and able to be viciously killed by the game's obstacles in the real world, until they lose their final life and die permanently.
- Gamer Chick: Reina is the only female main character of the episode, but she's just as passionate a gamer as her friends.
- The Greys: The final boss of Weird Wednesday is modeled after one, and it demonstrates strong psychic powers to try and kill the player.
- Good Parents: Jeff is a pleasant, easy-going guy who wants to start bonding with his teenage son after his wife died. When he learns what's happened to Dave and realizes what he's been doing to him, he enters the cheat code and puts himself in Weird Wednesday, hoping to help his son take down the final boss.
- It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Played straight, then largely subverted In-Universe. As he plays Weird Wednesday for the first time and gets a game over in seconds, Dave comes to realize that his father was right about how difficult it is. Before he played, Jeff told him that the game was unfair and unbalanced, requires "laser focus and iron will", how it's brutal in its simplicity, and how its difficulty was even its whole selling point. As he tries beating it again and again, Dave grows to love playing Weird Wednesday and shows it to his friends, who become just as into it as him.
- Just One More Level!: After he becomes hooked on Weird Wednesday, Dave spends hours upon hours playing again and again to beat his father's high score.
- Killed Offscreen: Spencer is shown to have died sometime after he borrowed Reina's copy of Weird Wednesday, having entered the cheat code and getting run down by an ice cream truck while inside the game.
- Konami Code: The namesake cheat code is a variation of it that puts whoever inputs it inside Weird Wednesday, where they can be controlled by other players and killed in a number of ways.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: As soon as Jeff finds out that Dave is stuck in Weird Wednesday, he decides to enter the cheat code and go in after him, allowing the father-son duo to take down the final boss head-on.
- Lighter and Softer: There's very little on screen death in this episode, and those that we see aren't necessarily permanent. The plot is also much more gentle and emotional, as it concerns a father who hopes to use his favorite video game to bond with his son, and the ending is notably upbeat.
- Like Father, Like Son: Jeff was just as big a gamer as his son back in his day, so he hopes to bond with Dave through his favorite video game.
- Loophole Abuse: Noted above, Weird Wednesday's tagline reads "Never been beaten by a single player!". Jeff manages to circumvent this little detail by using the titular cheat code to put the game in two-player mode, so he and his son can beat the final boss by working as a team.
- Manchild: Jeff still holds a torch for the video game he loved playing as a kid, continuing to play it throughout the episode.
- Match Cut: As the camera focuses on Dave's "new character" being maneuvered through the streets of Weird Wednesday by his father, the episode cuts to the real Dave forcefully mimicking the game in the real world, horrifically and repeatedly dying in the process.
- Missing Mom: Jeff and Dave's wife/mother passed away shortly before the story began, and Jeff hopes to use Weird Wednesday as a means for him and his son to repair the rift that her death left between them.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: Weird Wednesday, which can trap its players inside it and kill them by inputting a specific cheat code.
- Mythology Gag: The "Father's Day" ashtray appears on a memorial table dedicated to Jeff's departed wife, appearing to hold a set of keys and some loose dollar bills.
- Nice Girl: Though she's passionate about games and swears as frequently as her friends, Reina shows herself to be kindly to Jeff and sympathetic to his plight, asking him how he's doing after his wife passed and wanting him to repair his bond with Dave, even trying to persuade Dave himself that his dad is pretty cool.
- Parent-Child Team: When Dave struggles to hold his own against Weird Wednesday's final boss and is reduced to only one life, Jeff enters the cheat code and puts himself in the game to help him take the boss down. It works out in their favor, as the alien being distracted with Jeff allows Dave to sneak past it and blow up its ship.
- Product Placement: Though it's logo isn't present, it's obvious that Jeff owns an Atari 2600 that he used to play Weird Wednesday on all the time. Numerous other retro game systems are present in the background of the characters' houses.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The episode premiered about a month after the Atari 2600+
was announced, hence why it revolves around a retro video game played on the original console. - Self-Imposed Challenge: In-Universe. Though he's frustrated with the difficulty level, Dave continually pushes himself into spending hours trying to beat his father's high score, then beating the game outright after he does so.
- Shout-Out:
- For starters, Weird Wednesday is a blatant parody of the infamous E.T. video game, to the point where Jeff tells Dave that every copy of the game was buried in the desert. Jeff even calls the game's final boss "E.T." as he tries to beat it with a large stick. The game's name is also derived from the Dr. Seuss book Wacky Wednesday.
- Dave's friend Spencer is named after the stoner/gamer of the same name from Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.
- Additionally, Dave's forced mimicry of a video game character references Spencer's similarly forced movements as Freddy controls him with the Power Glove.
- Coincidentally, the film's Spencer was also played by a young Breckin Meyer, who previously played Ted Lockwood in Season 2's The Right Snuff. In contrast as to how the film's Spencer's death was ludicrously cartoonish, the episode's Spencer's death is notably more gruesome, although it takes place offscreen.
- Jeff is similarly named after Jeff Bridges, known by many the world over as Kevin Flynn from TRON and TRON: Legacy.
- The idea of a young gamer becoming obsessed with beating an impossible video game that no one has ever beaten before, only to go up against the game in real life, is heavily influenced by "The Bishop of Battle" from Nightmares.
- Early in the episode, Weird Wednesday's high score board lists that the player who got the highest score after Jeff was named "Lucas".
- Jeff drops the classic "on like Donkey Kong" retort as he takes a crack at beating Dave's score in Weird Wednesday.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The woman who sells her copy of Weird Wednesday to Reina over eBay.
- Struggling Single Father: Jeff's wife died before the episode began, and he's struggling to reconnect with his teenage son. They finally start bonding again after they manage to enter Jeff's childhood video game and beat the final boss together.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: Jeff and Dave manage to beat the final boss of Weird Wednesday and have their bond repaired. Dave gets his license and gets back together with Reina, and he and his father bury the game so it can't harm them again. The only downside to the whole thing is that Spencer is still dead, and that the cartridge doesn't appear to be finished with Jeff and Dave.
- Telepathic Spacemen: The final boss of Weird Wednesday is an alien in a crashed UFO that shows immense psychic powers, being the reason why every object in the game flies towards the player and tries to kill them as they proceed.
- Urban Legend of Zelda: In-Universe, the legend that Weird Wednesday was cursed, as the game's championship was canceled, all the copies were taken off the shelves and buried in the desert, and the seller of Reina's copy claims that it killed her children. Dave learns that the curse is all too real, as he's forced inside the game and graphically killed in numerous ways.
