Recap / Dragon Ball Z Abridged E 20

Super Kami Guru: So Dende, how does it feel to be the bronze medal?
Dende: Like everyone I know and love is dead.
Guru: (sings) Every party needs a pooper, thats why they invited you- party poopeeer, party poopeeer.

Original Airdate: January 29, 2011

It's Recoome's turn to fight, and to hog the spotlight in this slam fest! But even after he takes down Team Three Star, what will he do when a new challenger approaches?

And you're gonna be tropin' all too soon:

• Anything but That!: Two examples: First Freeza at Captain Ginyu performing The Dance of Joy, then Dende at being left behind with Guru when the latter orders Nail to help out the Earthlings against the Ginyu Force.
• Audience Participation: Team Four Star put out a video while the episode was in development asking fans to provide recordings of cheers and boos which serve as the episode's audience.
• Badass Boast: "THE NAME'S RECOOME! AND IT RHYMES WITH DOOM! AND YOU'RE GONNA BE HURTING ALL! TOO! SOON!"
• Calling Your Attacks: Recoome does this to all of his attacks. Krillin calls him out before being kicked hard.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Despite their best efforts, all of "Team Three Star" is utterly decimated by Recoome before Goku finally arrives on Namek.
• Did Not Think This Through:
  • Gohan lampshades this about fighting Recoome all on his own when his only advantage over him is knowing more about peach farming.
  • After Freeza and Ginyu discover the Dragon Balls can't be used as simply as they thought, Ginyu believes that the Namekians may have a password or other method to activate them. Freeza soon realizes the potentially fatal error on his part: as far as he knows, he and his army killed everyone instead of capturing a couple to interrogate for the method.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The end of the Cold Opening has Burter, Recoome, and Jeice performing a "1, 2, 3, not it!" contest to decide who's going to tell Captain Ginyu about Guldo's death, with Jeice losing. By the end of the next episode, Jeice is the only Ginyu Force member left alive to tell Ginyu what's happened.
  • Hints are given in this episode about King Cold's Abridged personality, such as him referring to Freeza as his "little Princess."
• Just in Time: Just as Gohan, Vegeta, and Krillin are about to be killed by Recoome, Goku shows up in his space ship and lands close to where they're fighting. To the theme of Hulk Hogan's "Real American".
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Before they even notice Guldo being destroyed, Recoome, Jeice and Burter talk about how long they lasted until they had to... relieve themselves, similar to how Krillin did so in the cave shortly after he and his friends landed on Namek. Recoome claims he did it after "waiting three weeks", with "no room left in his Pod" while Burter did it on the Team's way to Namek.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The entrance music the Ginyu Force gives to Vegeta is the Dragon Ball GT dub theme. His annoyance is based on the mixed public opinion to this Sequel Series.
  • Recoome's "rhymes with doom" line is from the Ocean dub.
  • During the Spacey's commercial, the talk of the new Raditz menu is accompanied by a photo of a double sundae (the name of one of Raditz' techniques in canon).
• No-Sell: Vegeta's first attacks have little to no effect on Recoome, to which he responds:
  Recoome: Silly Vegeta. The only thing Recoome sells... is merchandise!
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Krillin is briefly delirious after Recoome delivers a brutal Recoome Kick to his head.
  Krillin: Hello, Gohan! Have you done your homework? 'Cause if you don't, Chi-Chi will KICK my ass...
• Parody Commercial: One for a restaurant called Spacey's; It's good food. In space.
• Running Gag: Ginyu continuously needing to perform new dances before Freeza can use the Dragon Balls. First he must perform The Dance of Joy, which King Cold has ordered him to perform following every successful mission. Then he must perform The Daddy's Little Princess Dance, which Cooler has ordered him to do to annoy Freeza. Finally, when Freeza attempts and fails to summon the dragon, Ginyu suggests performing The Dance of Cheering You Up.
  • Also note that all of these are pretty much the same dance.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Recoome, Jeice, and Burter have one at the beginning of the episode before noticing Guldo's corpse. Ironically, it's on the subject "The Contest" episode of the Trope Namer was about.
• Shout-Out: Plenty to professional wrestling:
  • The episode title is a pun on WrestleMania.
  • Both Vegeta and Recoome ask to "hit the music"
  • Recoome's personality is a combination of The Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Randy Savage.
  • The theme music Recoome uses is a rock arrangement from the first Doom video game, and takes advantage of his line "...And it rhymes with DOOM!".
  • Recoome at one point refers to himself as a "five-time champion!"
  • Recoome mentions "selling" (how an entertainment wrestler reacts to being hit by an opponent’s attack) after he survives an energy blast from Vegeta.
  • Vegeta at one point tells Recoome to "Suck it, jabroni"
  • Jeice and Burter serve as a wrestling commentary duo.
  • Jeice, on commentary, uses phrases commonly used by Jim Ross or Michael Cole.
  • Goku makes his entrance at the end of the episode to Hulk Hogan's theme song "Real American".
  • And a joke that isn't about professional wrestling: an audience member in the background shouts that Vegeta "suck-diddily-ucks".
• Take That!: Recoome calls out Vegeta and the entire Saiyan race for declaring themselves a proud warrior race.
  Recoome: Well look at where they are now: DEAD!
  • Vegeta shouts out for someone to hit his music. The response? The dub opening from Dragon Ball GT starts playing.
    Vegeta: Oh, the f*ck with this!
• Wrong Song Gag: Vegeta demands some cool entrance music to go along with Recoome's whole pro wrestling gimmick before they fight. What he gets instead is Mark Menza's "Step Into The Grand Tour" from the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball GT, which pisses him off.

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When it comes crashing down, and it hurts to hide
Ya gotta take a stand, it don't help to hide
If you hurt my friends, can you hurt my pride
I gotta be a man, I can't let it slide...