Bittersweet Tragedy

"I...had a tendency for destruction?"

- Wrenchy

## About

Bittersweet Tragedy is the eighth episode of the first season of Objects At Gaming. It was released on April 13th, 2022.

## Story

After eliminating Pink Sunglasses since their team's loss in the Rubik's cube challenge, Pinata starts to have a breakdown. Plant and Spaghetti rush to try and comfort their team leader, the latter of which had been previously comforted in the same cabin hallways. Cookie also gives Pinata a hug.

The ODDyssey decides to recruit Snowflake to the alliance, and Shelfy was quick to invite her over before the challenge began. After Wrenchy had tampered with all of the possible but not really necessary microphones, Red announced the challenge to be a friendly game of NFL (National Football League) football. The goal is to get to the end zone, like the sport in real life. However, Red had forbid tackles in favor of tags, and any sort of pushing the limit would result in possible penalties. Due to uneven teams, Cookie and Spaghetti opted not to risk participating.

Four players on each team would serve as defense, in this case, practically every armless player. Cardy, Orangey, Lampy, and Wrenchy on Team Fix-It, and the entire ODDyssey alliance for Team Birthday Party, consisting of Cactus, Illuminati, Shelfy, and the newly added Snowflake. Four other members would be on offense and would have the opportunity of catching the ball and running to score. For Team Fix-It, it would consist of quarterback Sombrero, and runners Blueprint, Mustache, and Socky. For Team Birthday Party, Toilet Paper immediately signed up to be quarterback due to his muscular throwing arm. Pinata, Plant, and a fearful Football would run.

Taking place in a field in the middle of nowhere, Team Fix-It would have a poor start, as Socky immediately got tagged by Snowflake, supported by the Shelfy barrier. Meanwhile with the eliminated contestants, Blender and Watery become impatient that Wire and Power Outlet aren't immediately available for service with Blender whining and Watery throwing a fit

Team Birthday Party has their attempts after Team Fix-It uses all four downs. Plant jumped a little too low to catch with the soil in their plant pot. Pinata makes great progress before running into Lampy. As Football may be the next one to catch, he starts fearing Wrenchy would do something extra devious against him. As the first down begins again, he's open. Toilet Paper throws and Football catches, only to be forced to run after Wrenchy. He gets closer and closer, but before he could score, Wrenchy grabs the knife at the top of Football's head and plucks it out, deflating him and rendering him presumably unconscious, to the horror of his teammates. Pinata, out of anger and her love for her team, whacks Wrenchy hard across the head with a spiky bat which causes him to be scared of her

At the CCC, Wire speaks with Power Outlet, bringing along Medaly, who provides enough believable evidence of her elimination being rigged by Wrenchy. In the middle of the night, in a flashback, Wrenchy bit Medaly's strap and used his teeth to drag her out of her cabin room to the elimination area. He placed her on her platform, turned on the abductor, and altered the vote totals. Due to this, Medaly was allowed to rejoin the game and leave the CCC, and makes her return to the mainland in OAG 9.

Back at the field, a doctor by the name of Doc enters the scene and checks a deflated Football's pulse. He is pronounced unresponsive at the scene, but he confirms that the hospital does have treatment that involves inflating Football and patching up the mark from the knife all of those years ago, but warns that the chances of survival aren't guaranteed. Cookie and Toilet Paper go with to the hospital, as those two are the closest to him by far. In the meantime, Red puts the competition on hold until Football is out of the hospital safe and ready to play again, and does not boot him for unexpected injury.

Now things get real once Red confronts Wrenchy. He angrily condemns his actions both in the challenge, and in the past, also finding out that him eliminating Medaly was unfair, via a text message from Power Outlet. Because of this, he officially disqualifies and eliminates Wrenchy from the game, but instead of taking him to the CCC, Pinata transfers him to the Box of Shame, and overnight, once the police officer Spring Green (voiced by Jacob F.) is called, is to be taken to prison. Team Fix-It rejoices that their evil leader is finally gone, and Socky is named the new team leader. The seven remaining members of the team are up for their own prize voting.

## References

### Continuity

A lot of music tracks were reused from previous episodes, see if you can catch them all :)

#### Here For Our Host

* Pink Sunglasses' elimination gets several mentions during Pinata's breakdown.
* Snowflake remembers lifting the portrait not helping her fear of heights.
	+ The ODDyssey also finalizes their decision to add Snowflake from the alliance after only being thought about.
* Pinata steals Illuminati's "ASSEMBLE" line as well as a "DUH"

#### Rubik's Algorithm Antics

* The outcomes of the challenge also are mentioned during Pinata's breakdown.
* The "DUH" face returns, instead being made by Pinata rather than Socky.
* Football's fear of Wrenchy making his team lose shines as he thinks about it for the majority of his screentime this episode.
* Wrenchy singsongy taunts him again after dealing his damage.
* If you looked closely, you could see a yellow triangle in OAG 6 near Medaly. This episode, it was confirmed that she was building a hang glider of the same color scheme to try and escape the CCC herself before talking to the staff.

#### Ring The Bells Of The Seven Seas

* Pinata brings up the bell challenge, recalling the Fix Its complaining about what happened
* Medaly recounts several never-before-seen moments from when Wrenchy had rigged her elimination, and recaps the votes.

#### Depths Of The Diamond

* In that episode, Spaghetti was being comforted in the cabin hallways when he got scared of not seeing his friend again. Now, he is the one comfortING someone else who has a similar anxiety. He also credits Shelfy for teaching him in the first place.
* Similarly, Shelfy uses the exact same TYPE of opening line for when he's about to ask Snowflake if she wanted to join the ODDyssey, like how he was about to comfort Spaghetti.

### Cultural

* Illuminati saying "welcome to the party, girl" is similar to the line "welcome to the party, pal" from the action film Die Hard.
* Snowflake compares herself to Elsa from Frozen, even saying the words "let it go" during the planning for the challenge.
* Spaghetti refers to himself as a "galaxy brain" in a confessional, which is a common gaming meme phrase.
* Pinata's meltdown is similar to how her voice actress gets mental breakdowns
* Lampy saying "or else we're on the chopping block" is a reference to the Food Network show Chopped. When writing this line, TCOOS didn't even know it was a reference, he just knew the phrase.
	+ Rebecca K. Lunetta had watched the show years before and according to her, the chopping block in Chopped was when a chef was eliminated from the TV show
* Toilet Paper makes a nod to the BFDI universe as he had done 2,763 one handed push-ups.
* Pinata's angry line at Wrenchy (YOU WON'T ESCAPE MY WRATH) references the Dragon Ball universe.
	+ It's also an internet meme
* Red uses the official referee hand signal for a personal foul penalty in the real NFL.
* Socky pronounces "eliminated" as "elimernated", a direct reference to the object show THANOS created by Ivan Maslov "Highvan".
* As he's nearing prison life, Wrenchy saying "FOR THE LOVE OF WALDWICK" is an allusion to him getting eliminated the exact same way in user R Animate's voting series, Waldwick Elimination. Wrenchy is saying the host's name and that episode was released following OAG 7, prompting TCOOS to give it a shoutout.
* Rose points out that the football challenge allows girls unlike actual NFL games which is a reference to how NFL doesn't allow women to be football players or even quarterbacks
* Rose compares flowers having ears to corn when she answered Plum's question of how does she know what happened. It's a reference to corn having a part of a stem which people would call it ear
	+ It's also a corny joke
* The "the objects will return" screen is a reference to some films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

## Trivia

* This is the first time an episode releases in April.
* This is the first episode where Pinata finally snaps and takes action against Wrenchy
* This is the second episode that Rebecca K. Lunetta co wrote
	+ She admit that she went all out as Pinata via expression of her depression and anger
	+ She even did some concept art of Doc and Spring Green as well as Pinata's new string design
* This episode had the shortest production schedule since Testing the Plan, and the overall shortest after the voice acting upgrade.
* This is the first episode to begin without a planned elimination, since Here For Our Host still had one even though it took place at the end following a change of schedule.
* This episode introduces BorisCrafter as the new voice of Wire after L. I. Green stepped down to focus on college.
	+ It's also the second episode to have guest appearances since Rubik's Algorithm Antics: Actor/filmmaker Michael Howard as Doc, and Jacob F., a popular contributor to the Object Show Community, as officer Spring Green.
* According to TCOOS, this is the first episode to have an after credits scene.
	+ Pinata's lines in the scene are improvised by Rebecca herself
* This was the first episode to confirm a contestant rejoining.
	+ This was also the first episode to have a disqualification and an almost-death for two players respectively.
* This was also the first prize voting period to be had AFTER a contestant had been confirmed eliminated.