After black rhinos begin disappearing on the African Serengeti, the Wild Kratts crew fly there to investigate.
Tropes:
- Accidental Kidnapping: As Chris decides to board the plane taking off to rescue the stolen rhinos, he ends up being kidnapped by Zach and held first by Zachbots, then in a jail cell.
- All for Nothing: Chris tuned up the Createrra only to have it put through hell and back by a wildlife ranger and their herd of rhinos stampeding through.Chris: Oh no. I just tuned it up!
Martin: I like it. Gives it character. - Amusing Injuries: Chris and Martin go through the Createrra doing a few consecutive rollovers and the only injuries they receive is Chris being turned upside down in the passenger seat with some pain of the head by the end of it.
- Artistic License – Biology: Martin decides to place Nubs into an area with a lion cub even though rhinos and lions are enemies of each other. However, the cub is shown amiably nuzzling and playing with the calf instead of trying to harm it, and going by Martin's comment, the cub appears to be orphaned. There's also the matter of Martin needing the cub later on, in order to activate his Creature Power Suit so he can stop the rhinodozers.
- Ass Shove: As fitting karma for his actions, Zach gets a rhino horn straight to the butt, which sends him flying through the air and landing straight into a tree.
- The Atoner: After learning that he was ignorant of Zach's plan, Martin tells Chris that since he was the one who mucked things up, he has to be the one to save the animals. As such, he spearheads a majority of the plan.
- Batman Gambit:
- Zach banked on his personal knowledge of Aviva and knew she was going to build a Creature Power Suit out of the black rhino, which would grant him a charge code needed to activate his rhinodozers.
- Martin later tries this in his own plan to free the rhinos, by showing them Nubs and having the rhinos' instinct override Zach's control. It works for only a short time, as Zach simply puts them under his control again, but after trying again and again, the instinct manages to trump the mind-control.
- Big Damn Heroes: Martin manages to save his brother from a nasty fall after he gets thrown off of a rhinodozer. Conveniently enough, Martin is also donning his Creature Power Suit gear.
- Big "NO!": Chris gives one when he sees Zach's plan working like an absolute charm.
- Bound and Gagged: No gag is featured, but Chris is secured via the clasps on the ends of two Zachbots' arms when he's captured by Zach. At one point he tries to free himself, but to no avail, and he later ends up being freed only to be put into a jail cell.
- Comically Cross-Eyed: At the beginning of the episode, Martin tries to follow a chameleon's eye movements, resulting in him briefly gaining Fish Eyes as well as him going cross-eyed.
- Covered in Gunge:
- When cooling Nubs down, Martin jumps right into the mud wallow alongside him and splashes around.
- Zach later gets his front soaked in mud after being flung into it by his rhinodozer armor breaking and sinking into the wallow. He's quick to cry out that he's contaminated and beg for someone to save him.
- Deranged Park Ranger: A park ranger is shown trapping black rhinos, herding them into a tent and boarding them onto a plane, and trapping said rhinos in chains as they stand in a jail cell. A Freeze-Frame Bonus seen while the ranger is moving the animals into a tent shows that he is actually a disguised Zachbot.
- Distressed Dude: Chris winds up kidnapped by Zach after being caught by his Zachbots, and ends up put in a jail cell. He is able to save himself with clever tricks, though.
- Drives Like Crazy: Chris makes mention of Martin jumping over a ravine while the Createrra is still in its Truck Mode.Chris: You can't jump a twenty-foot ravine while we're still in truck mode, bro.
Martin: Hey, a charging hippo doesn't change modes, dude. I was going hippopotamus!
Chris: [rolls his eyes] Just pass me the oil cap. - Five-Second Foreshadowing: Subverted. Martin makes mention of the oxpecker giving a cry that warns the black rhino there's danger around as one of the things he finds cool about the black rhino. He and Chris high-five over it, which sets the oxpeckers off and leads the rhino to charge at them — only the rhino was set off due to a pack of lions, not the Kratt brothers.
- Foreshadowing: While out in the Serengeti, Chris makes note of how the black rhinos are acting, including running in herds and not coming for the call of a lost calf, both of which are unnatural behaviors for the creature among many others. Turns out that Zach has been stealing them right from under his nose, which certainly doesn't extend to the calf that Martin takes back.
- For the Evulz: There's no real reason for Zach to build a parking lot in the dead center of the Serengeti, making his building of rhinodozers come off as this.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: As the wildlife ranger brings the rhinos into a tent, a split-second shows his face changing to that of a Zachbot's before it reverts back to normal.
- From Bad to Worse:
- The more the rest of the Wild Kratts Crew are unaware of Zach's plan, the worse things get, to the point where they nearly get killed by thousands of pounds of black rhino slamming into them and the Tortuga.
- What finally makes Zach flinch is a rhino-powered Chris handily destroying his Zachbots, then using his horn to destroy the remote controlling the rhinos.
- Human Disguise: Zachbots can wield human disguises of pretty much anyone Zach orders them to. This power is not limited to any member of the Wild Kratts Crew, as a Zachbot donning a red jacket takes Chris's place in a call to Martin.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Martin tries to break the mind-controlled rhinos out of their trances by showing them Nubs. It works for a time, but Zach simply ups the ante by increasing the strength of the mind control. However, Martin keeps persevering and manages to snap the rhinos out of it thanks to Chris destroying the remote controlling them.
- Improvised Lockpick: To escape his cell, Chris flags down an oxpecker eating ticks off of one of the mind-controlled rhinos by grabbing a tick, placing it into the keyhole, and letting the oxpecker go to work in getting it and eating it.
- Insult Misfire: Right after Martin cracks a joke about Chris not taking a shower, he asks "How about cleaning those ears?" Chris gives him an angry nudge but Martin explains that he was talking about the oxpecker sitting on top of the black rhino they're observing.
- Just Between You and Me: Zach is all too happy to lord his success in his plan over Chris as the latter is trapped...many, many times over.
- Lampshade Hanging: When Martin drives away with Nubs in the passenger seat, Chris makes a side remark that his older brother always finds some way to hang out with a baby animal.
- Lethally Stupid: Martin, being the one who's more willing to take risks between him and Chris, puts himself in full sensory range of a black rhino and its baby. Chris drops as many reminders as he can about the creature and tells his brother to move back, but he's not having it.
- Malicious Misnaming: This episode begins the trend of Zach respectively referring to Chris and Martin as "Green Guy" and "Blue Boy".
- My God, What Have I Done?: Martin gets hit with this hard when he realizes exactly what Zach's plan was, especially considering the rhino calf he's holding was an Unwitting Pawn in it.Martin: Oh, this is all my fault! You were the bait all along, and I led Zach right to us!
- Near-Villain Victory: Thanks to the Batman Gambit he pulls off, Zach very nearly gets away with his newest Evil Plan — and that's not even taking into account the rest of the Wild Kratts Crew, who are largely unaware of what he's doing up until the climax when he tries to destroy the Tortuga by using his rhinodozers to bulldoze it.
- Not Quite Flight: Aviva builds a personal hangglider for the Kratt brothers to use. It doesn't take long for Chris to call dibs on it, and he ends up using it in the climax in order to activate his Creature Power Suit with rhino powers.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Martin doesn't notice something is wrong with his brother at first, even though Chris is quite obviously wearing a red jacket instead of his usual green one and concludes his conversation with Martin with "Toodles". He's got a gut feeling that something is wrong, though, and manages to figure it out once Aviva gets ahold of the contact lens that was implanted in Nubs's eye. Chris also chews him out for it at the end of the episode.Chris: Hey, what were you thinking, bro? I'd never tell you to keep a rhino calf back at the HQ.
Martin: I know.
Chris: And since when do I wear red shirts?
Martin: Yeah, I may have been a little distracted.
Chris: A little? And you thought I'd say "toodles"? I'd never say "toodles".
Martin: I did think that was pretty dorky, even for you.
[they both laugh] - Spy Cam: Zach implants one via a contact lens in Nubs's eye that allows him to see everything the calf sees. Unfortunately for him, this means seeing the silly side of Martin.Zach: [after Martin topples over from the weight of a rhino horn] Eww, that's not what I wanna watch! Stop acting goofy, Blue Boy!
Chris: That's my bro! - Strong as They Need to Be: An untransformed Martin is able to pick up Nubs and run with him easily, though this may be justified with Toon Physics in play.
- The Symbiote: The episode explores different symbiotic relationships between creatures, focusing specifically on the one between black rhinos and oxpeckers, who pick ticks off of black rhinos' bodies and serve as a warning system for incoming predators.
- Title Drop: Martin drops the title of the episode when he enacts the final part of his plan, in having the mind-controlled rhinos go into a mud wallow.Martin: Like I always say, you can't keep a rhino out of the mud. Let the rhinos roll!
- Underside Ride: Chris goes from riding on top of one of the rhinodozers to clinging for dear life on the underside of one after they bulldoze the barn that held the Tortuga. Luckily, due to Chris's skilled climbing, he's able to make a quick recovery.
- Unwitting Pawn: Nubs, a baby rhino calf, is the catalyst in Zach's Batman Gambit. He has a contact lens with a transmitter and a tracking device implanted into his eye so he can give information to Zach, and eventually leads Zach straight to him and the rest of the Wild Kratts Crew into the Tortuga.
- Wham Shot: Nubs seems like a normal lost rhino calf who wants to go back to his mom...that is, until he's put in a scanner for Aviva to scan his skeleton and the audience receives a shot of his eye suddenly turning red.
