Backwards Mouse

"**Backwards Mouse**" is the 15th episode in the series and the sixth episode of Season 2.

## Episode Description

A cursor on a certain Horsey Inc. computer forgot its lefts and rights. And its ups and downs too.

## Appearances

* Christian Horsey
* John Kirby
* Tech Guy
* Evil Plant (imagination scene only)
* Jessie Jimenes (doesn't speak)
* Tyrone Leffew
* Female Security Guard (doesn't speak)
* Ambulance Technician

## Notes & trivia

* This is the first...
	+ RJL Show episode to be released in 2022.
	+ RJL Show episode/animation to be released over two months after the preceding episode since "Clippy", and the first to take over half a year at least to air since "Dirty Cursor".
	+ RJL Show episode/animation of Season 2 to include the Secret Door (visually anyway; it was at least mentioned in "Clippy" and implied to be used in "Print Me".
	+ RJL Show episode to be at least mostly done in 2022 (with only most of the first draft of the script being completed hours before the release of "DownHoax" in 2021).
	+ RJL Show episode where Nat23's new Huion Kamvas 12 was used (for his scenes/revisions anyway).
		- One of the few exceptions outside of assets already seen in previous episodes is John Kirby's first non-intro body in the episode (as it came from a template file originally).
	+ RJL Show episode with an updated credits sequence (apart from it getting extended since the start of Season 2). Here are the main changes:
		- The credits background is now non-existent, leaving the credits with just a black background, which hasn't been the case since the second episode.
		- The text is no longer outlined white and is now a light shade of blue (minus the cast part of the credits).
			* This change in particular has already been implemented in an earlier Nat23 animation released in 2022 (Wavatar Land Episode #22).
	+ RJL Show episode without a scene animated by Bbtund8 (at least for the YouTube version).
	+ RJL Show episode to have a trailer preceding it since the episode "Dirty Cursor".
	+ RJL Show episode to be released on the anniversary of another RJL Show episode (the second anniversary of "Fake Format" in this case).
	+ RJL Show episode/animation where HarpyCarp helped animate (he did the FX for Mr. Leffew crashing into the wall).
* This is the second...
	+ RJL Show episode in a row to use WebTV music for the credits.
	+ RJL Show episode based on a CD-exclusive prank.
	+ RJL Show episode to be released on July 15 (albeit on a different year of course).
	+ RJL Show episode to share MegaAnimazing's birthday.
	+ RJL Show episode to come out with official captions the same day it released.
* This is currently the longest Season 2 episode to date. It's also longer than all Season 1 episodes save for "Click Me", thereby making it the second longest RJL Show episode to date.
* This episode also took the longest to make so far excluding the first three RJL Show episodes (four if you count the fourth episode starting production before the third one was finished).
* This RJL Show episode/animation has a prank only found on the Fool's Tools CD. However, unlike the previous episode based on a CD-exclusive prank, it's slightly more limited within most of its other movements though (arms especially) rather than lip sync, and nearly everything is done on at least twos most of the time. Bodies aren't redrawn as much either (similar to Season 1).
* The original ending to this episode had Mr. Horsey go back up to the top floor to tie up Mr. Kirby and injure him (although this part would be exclusively oral) in order to send him to the hospital rather than Mr. Horsey being mistaken for the rope contraption victim instead. This revised idea came to be while Nat23 was making the preprocessed lines sound more natural (a normal process in The RJL Show episodes (since the third/fourth episode anyway)).
	+ The elevator shot in the trailer was actually based on this idea, although it was made after Nat23 already decided to change the ending.
* All of the audio work was done on the Windows 11 laptop again. Most of the animation was done on it too (particularly around the first 20 seconds of the episode (discounting the intro of course), and most of the episode starting from the middle of the Secret Door scene).
* Despite Mr. Horsey never specifying the specific problem with his mouse to Tech Guy, he still seems to know that the issue is related to the mouse, if his advice for Mr. Horsey is any indication. Then again, he might not, since he likely knows that RJL pranks are typically revealed to be pranks by moving the cursor to the top-left corner of the screen.
* Interestingly, in the last episode, Mr. Leffew was looking to see which prank should be pulled next, and right before his computer screen started to glitch, the last prank the cursor landed next to was the Backwards Mouse prank (a.k.a. the prank pulled in this episode), which could potentially be seen as foreshadowing, although it's technically more of a coincidence.
	+ Even more coincidental is that both the last episode and this episode had the pranks pulled on Mr. Horsey.
* The animation before the Secret Door shots was finished in the middle of April 2022 while most of the animation afterward was finished around two months later. Most of those shots were completed a week before the episode's release (other than a few shots late into the episode) since most of them involved the rope device, which wasn't designed until late into the episode's production.
* The original punishment for the episode involved a magnet rather than the rope device.
* The rope device not being designed until late into this episode's production, the lateness of the script being finalized, the audio being done a month after the preceding episode released, along with Bbtund8 making an animatic were the main reasons for the long hiatus between this episode and the last.
* This episode wasn't going to be released on Newgrounds originally, although that changed in order to not let Bbtund8's scene for this episode go to waste. It was released a week after the YouTube version.
* Unlike the YouTube version, the Newgrounds version has embedded captions in the video.

### Goofs

* The phone still has it's older, less symmetrical design when Mr. Leffew's office shows up in the intro.