HBO Max release date: 7/29/2021
Cartoon Network air date: 11/6/2021
A Fish Sticky Situation
- The Cameo: The CB Bears are among the citizens turned into fish.
- Chekhov's Gag: After the alley cats sell out their fishsticks, Brain spends her share on a pair of macaroni-shaped shoes, getting the instant shipping option that inflates the price from eight dollars to eight thousand dollars. At the end of the episode, TC uses the laptop to order more tomato bisque to cure the ravenous crowd of fish-headed townsfolk as the gang is cornered; he's forced to spend all of his newfound money to get it airdropped in time to save them.
- A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: The gang makes a bunch of money on their scam, but create zombie apocalypse that costs all of their money to fix.
- Gagging on Your Words: Owing to Top Cat's Greed, he struggles to say that he will cure the citizens for free.
- Group Hug: When Spooky goes back to normal, the rest of the gang gathers around to hug her.
- Here We Go Again!: The end of the episode features Top Cat and his gang having just saved everyone after turning into fish, finding a crate of expired milk which they sell to the town and turns them into cows.
- Hypnotic Eyes: Spooky hypnotizes Wally into buying fish sticks.
- Instant Home Delivery: Brain orders from a site that includes instant shipping. Unfortunately, it increases the price a thousand-fold.
- Money Fetish: When the gang celebrates their newfound pile of cash, Fancy-Fancy takes a big whiff of it, only to be immediately off put by the bad smell and wondering why he even did that in the first place.
- Mythology Gag: The expiration date of the fish sticks is when Top Cat Begins initially released.
- Piggy Bank: Shag Rugg is shown holding up a piggy bank in order to buy the fish sticks.
- Pragmatic Villainy: While Top Cat is initially eager to scam everyone again by selling the cure, they turn out to be too mindless to properly scam. Top Cat is forced to reluctantly admit the gang is going to have to help everyone for free, because otherwise there won't be anyone to pull any future scams on.
- Shout-Out:
- In a Freeze-Frame Bonus, Brain's laptop has a tab featuring a stylized yellow lampshade - possibly TV Tropes itself (among many other tabs).
- Additionally, when the denizens of Jellystone turn into fish after eating the expired fish sticks, they bellow "meep" over and over, much like the anchovies in the very first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.
- Another nod to SpongeBob; in one scene, Top Cat is flattened like a pancake and lies on the ground in a similar fashion to Squidward in Squid on Strike.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Fancy-Fancy manages to sell fish sticks by claiming that they having healing properties.
- Squashed Flat: Top Cat suffers this when the fish-headed citizens of Jellystone swarm into the alley.
- Take That!: The expiration date of the fish sticks is when Top Cat Begins initially released.
- Tears of Joy: Done by both Benny and Jabberjaw when Benny sells her fish sticks.
- Way Past the Expiration Date: The plot of the episode starts when a box of fish sticks that expired in 2015 falls off a pickup truck right in front of Top Cat's alley. TC and his gang scam the entire town into buying the sticks, only to discover that anyone who eats them turns into mindless, fish-headed zombies. Once they're all cured, it's not long before TC finds bottles of milk that expired in 2006, with implied predictable results.
- Wheel o' Feet: True to Hanna-Barbera tradition, Spooky's feet become wheel-like when she pushes the gang in a wheelbarrow.
- You Know What They Say: 'They' say that tomato bisque cures the soul.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Eating expired fishsticks turns the citizens of Jellystone into mindless, fish-headed automatons.
A Town Video: Welcome to Jellystone
- Animesque: Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound have a battle in an anime art-style. They even have Japanese voice actors and speak Japanese (with additional English subtitles).
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Jonny and Hadji are shown constructing the aspect ratio bars.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: Done when Yogi enters the office and switches off the lights.
- The Cameo:
- Yankee Doodle Pigeon appears at the beginning of the movie.
- Ding-a-Ling Wolf, Tinker, and Mr. Peebles are shown playing in the orchestra.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Huck is cast as a generic anime villain complete with purple clothes and powers, but seeing as he is facing Yogi (who by then had gone on a complete power trip) he comes across as very heroic.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Despite his villainous nature being exposed to the town in the previous episode, the Funky Phantom is shown performing in an orchestra.
- Gratuitous French: Wally starts speaking French after a misstep on a brain operation.
- Gratuitous Japanese: The climactic animesque battle has Huck and Yogi speaking Japanese.
- It's All About Me: Yogi escalates what would've been a simple advertising video for the town into a full blown movie production, roping in all the townspeople and casting himself as the cool space hero that saves Jellystone from the apocalypse.
- Losing Horns: When Huck says that everything has got to go, Tinker does the "wah-wah-wahhhh" music with his trombone.
- Lost in Character: Huck can't get Yogi to listen to him and stop making the video because Yogi has gotten to into character. To snap him out of it, Huck pretends to be the movie's villain and engage Yogi in a fight.
- Movie-Making Mess: Huck hires Yogi to direct a promotional video for the town. Yogi turns it into a sci-fi blockbuster that bankrupts the entire town and causes widespread destruction when he blows up the pickle factory, flooding everything in pickle juice.
- Nap-Inducing Speak: Huck's promo video was so boring, it caused Snagglepuss to fall asleep.
- Negative Continuity: Lampshaded as Mayor Huckleberry says in his speech about Jellystone "It's a town that gets blown up week after week, that gets rebuilt by the effort of our tireless citizens..."
- Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: When he is about to operate on Wally's brain, Yogi declares that nothing will get in the way of him being a doctor. Immediately afterwards, Yogi abandons the hospital to help make the movie.
- Rage Breaking Point: In a rare moment of genuine anger, Huck becomes furious when he learns that Yogi blew the town budget and the funding for the grass was cut.
- Rousing Speech: Done by Huck.Huck: Everyone please, you have to listen to me! This crazy movie stuff ain't what Jellystone is about. There's so much more than that. It's a town that gets blown up week after week, that gets rebuilt by the efforts of our tireless citizens. And we have grass!
- Slow "NO!": Huck does a slow no when the pickle factory explodes.
- Tempting Fate: Shazzan is enjoying a sandwich, saying that he loves that it isn't wet. Soon enough, pickle juice gets all over it.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: When Huckleberry arrives on the set of Yogi's movie, he looks like he had just witnessed a murder.
- Toilet Humor: The episode ends with a YTP-style viral video of Huck tripping, falling flat on his face and letting out a very long fart with his butt as the focal point of the shot.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Huck ends up in this position after Yogi bombs the pickle factory.Huck: Oh lookie here. I'm having a meltdown.
