- "What goes around comes around!"
Airdate: September 15, 2002
"Rink Hijinks" is the third episode of the second (internet) season of Happy Tree Friends.
Flaky goes to a roller rink, but she has trouble balancing herself on the roller blades. She sees a roller skater passing by, making her jealous, so she decides to try entering the rink slowly. Disco Bear enters the rink as well, pushing her away straight into Lumpy's floor buffer, which spins her around while destroying her body and launching her quills everywhere. Disco Bear is one of the victims. Soon Lumpy becomes unable to handle the malfunctioning buffer and ends up being twirled around instead. He gets launched into a claw machine that Cub is playing. There, Cub manages to grab the moose's heart as his prize. He is confused at first, but he ends up liking it.
"Rink Hijinks" contains examples of:
- An Aesop: The moral message, "What goes around comes around!", actually fits this episode, considering Disco Bear's Karmic Death.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Lumpy's antlers switch positions when he lands in the claw machine.
- Artistic License – Biology: Lumpy appears to possess a second heart inside his body.
- Artistic License – Physics:
- Considering that the floor buffer's head is still stuck on the floor, it should have continued spinning instead of stopping after Lumpy gets thrown off.
- The holes created on the claw machine are only larger than Lumpy's body radius without taking any account of his head shape and antlers.
- Beat Still, My Heart: Lumpy's heart is picked up as Cub's claw machine prize.
- The Cameo: One of the early episodes to feature the In-Universe fictional character Buddhist Monkey. Note that this only applies in the original version of the episode, as he's depicted on a regular arcade machine which somehow turns into a claw machine in the next shot (which is fixed on the DVD due to said inconsistency, removing his cameo).
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Flaky's body is destroyed by the floor buffer.
- Lumpy's heart is torn out by the claw machine.
- Disaster Dominoes: The whole chaos starts off with Disco Bear merely bumping into Flaky.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: As the early Season 2 intros were still not fully finalized (notable as the only pop-up prior only featured one character), the pop-ups for the four main characters look different compared to their later appearances in said season. All pop-ups share the same purplish blue background and the characters are posed differently.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The episode is about the mishaps occurring at a rink.
- Faceless Masses: The featureless purple bears shown in the background.
- Human Pincushion: Disco Bear's death.
- Karmic Death: Disco Bear bumping Flaky ends up biting him in the rear when her quills start flying everywhere, including into him.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Lumpy works at the skating rink in this episode.
- Sole Survivor: Cub is the only featured main character to survive.
- Spell My Name With An S: The Classics Remastered version of the episode is titled "Rink Hijink".
- They Killed Kenny Again: Flaky and Lumpy die yet again, while Disco Bear has his first death.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Cub survives.
- Updated Re-release: One of the early episodes to be part of the "Classics Remastered" releases, which rerelease early HTF episodes in HD.
