"Total Re-Carl" is the twelfth episode of the second season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the 30th episode overall. It originally aired on October 5th, 2003.
Plot[]
Cold open: Dr. Weird gets a call on his answering machine asking if he would like to buy a new deck. Dr. Weird has Steve send robot "phone spiders" through the phone which kills the operator on the other side.
The episode opens with Carl in hiding from Frylock, who is looking for him for a favor. After Frylock somehow gets into the house, he shows Carl what he wants him to do - test out an environmentally friendly super toilet he has placed on Carl's front lawn. Frylock explains that the toilet uses a jet engine and highly compressed air to dispose of waste. To give Carl reason to use the toilet, Frylock gives him a 'care package' with stool softener, fiber tablets, and espresso, then locks the door to Carl's house while Carl is outside so he can't get in to use the bathroom. Frylock also tells Carl that he's installed a cloaking device which will render him invisible while he uses the toilet in a bid to give Carl a false sense of privacy. But this turns out to be a lie, because he could never afford that kind of technology. So, he watches Carl through his binoculars, praying that the police won't drive by and see Carl using a toilet in his front yard and quickly stops Shake from calling the police and giving them reason to.
Finally, Carl is forced to use the toilet. After defecating, he hits the flush button. The toilet works, but it is so powerful that it sucks Carl into the toilet's jet engine and he is reduced to nothing but his head and a pool of blood, all while the Aqua Teens watch from their yard in horror. As Frylock ponders what to do, Meatwad says "...we have the technology. We can rebuild him." Meatwad then "rebuilds" Carl by tying his head to a tree in his backyard with bungee cords and nailing his clothes to the tree, until Frylock finds out what he's doing and takes the head to be reattached to a body.
Frylock keeps Carl's head alive with electrical stimulation by connecting it to a car battery with chopper cables, while his brain output is translated into text on his computer. Naturally, Carl apparently isn't too happy with his situation, more specifically with Frylock as it was his fault, as all of his brain outputs are obscenities mouthing out Frylock for causing this to happen. Meatwad notices and proclaims that Carl is, "dropping F-Bombs". Frylock blocks the screen so Meatwad won't see what Carl is saying, but Meatwad none the less tries to poorly imitate what Carl is saying.
Master Shake is then seen out the window and laughing at Meatwad for failing to use F-Bombs. Frylock goes outside to find that in order to get a body for Carl, Shake had unearthed a corpse from a graveyard with a bulldozer. Frylock is angry as Shake had driven it through town to get back to the house. Shake defends driving the corpse through town by claiming he stayed on the shoulder the whole way. Frylock then tells Shake to bring it in through the back. So Shake drives the bulldozer through the wall of Frylock's room, proclaiming, "You said the back.". Finally, Frylock connect the nerves in Carl's head to the nerves in the body and turns on the life support to see if it works. It does, and Carl asks what happened. Frylock denies knowing what happened and declares that they're just happy that Carl is alright. Frylock asks Carl if HE remembers what happened. Carl says he does remember somethings, but then noticed that he had the body of an elderly black man. Shake berates Carl for being picky because that was they best they could get. Things only gets worse as the body rejects Carl's head and begins to punch and claw at it, forcing Frylock to sedate Carl, remove the head from the body with a chainsaw and come up with a plan B.
After sending letters to various medical companies and a failed attempt by Shake to get an "assload of organs" from an organ bank in Passaic, Frylock receives a package from wegotusssomemedicalwaste.com. Unfortunately the only organs they sent were eyeballs. Despite this, Frylock persists and constructs a torso, arms, legs, hands, and feet entirely out of the eyeballs and attaches Carl's head to them. Shake is uneasy as Frylock plugs Carl in, questioning whether or not Carl will be able to chase them claiming that, "if I woke up looking like that, I would just run towards the nearest living thing and kill it." Upon waking up, Carl immediately feels weird. Frylock tells him to try and walk to see if his legs work. They do, but unfortunately, because the eyeballs are sensitive to touch, any form of movement is excruciatingly painful for Carl. Carl asks for a mirror so he can see him self and is horrified by his new body. Frylock optimistically says that they could craft some eyelids for Carl so his movement wouldn't be so painful. Carl, says that instead of doing that, they should just kill him now and save some time because he's probably going to commit suicide anyway. Persistent in making their efforts work, Frylock tells Carl to take another step towards him despite the pain. Carl says he will, because he's going to kill him. He starts throttling Frylock and Meatwad quickly unplugs Carl's life support before he chokes him to death.Seeing how this plan had also failed, Frylock moves on to plan C.
Plan C involves attaching Carl's head to a military suit bristling with weapons that can cause massive destruction. Shake quickly questions Frylock's plan given Carl's attempt to kill Frylock earlier, and Frylock aptly agrees, saying "You're right. Damn, what the hell was I thinking?" Finally, Frylock attaches Carl's head to the top of a radio controlled dump truck, moving under the control of Frylock. After Carl threatens to sue Frylock and discovers that he can't steer himself on his own due to his tongue being an eye ball. Carl agrees to have Meatwad take him home. Meatwad bursts in wearing the military suit and holding Shake in a torture position where Meatwad launches him up in the air. Then, he engulfs Shake with rocket explosions.
Deaths[]
- An unnamed telemarkater is killed by Phone Spiders.
- Carl is sucked into the super toilet, reducing him to just a head.
- Carl gets a new body, however, it rejects him and Frylock decapitates him with a chainsaw.
- Carl is killed by Frylock two times when he disables his life support.
- Master Shake is blown up by homing missiles caused by Meatwad.
Trivia[]
- When Carl's head is attached to the computer, it translates what Carl is thinking. If you freeze frame it, there are actually sentences on the computer. And while Frylock's fries get in the way to obscure it for censorship purposes, most of it is still readable -- and very vulgar. Basically Carl is thinking about what he's going to do to Frylock when he gets his original body back. The computer screen reading Carl's thoughts says this:
Oh man, I swear to fucking God,
Fry-man, I'm so fucking pissed
right now. Oh, and by the way,
I hope you enjoy eating your
own shit, because I'm about to
rip your motherfucking throat
out, and shove it so far up
your ass, that you have to
fart to fucking breathe, fucker. - WeGotUsSomeMedicalWaste.com used to be a real page created by the editors for this episode.
- In recent Adult swim re-runs, Carl's brain input is censored ("Mother f***ing" is changed to "Mother loving").
- As of July 2020, Carl's rant is censored and slightly altered on the streaming platform, HBO Max. The following is the full modified rant, with changes being slanted as to be apparent: "Oh man, I swear to Bagling God, Fry-man, I'm so Bagley pissed right now. Oh, and by the way, I hope you enjoy eating your own James B, because I'm about to rip your mother-loving throat out, and shove it so far up your Jim, that you have to fart to Bagley breathe, Fornicator."
- Carl hurts while he walks with his body of eyes, yet he doesn't feel any pain while choking Frylock with his arms. (Although it's possible Carl was simply too obsessed with killing Frylock that he raged right through the pain.)
- Carl being sucked into the toilet is series co-creator Dave Willis' favorite death of the character.
Allusions[]
- The title of this episode is a parody of the title of the film Total Recall.
- Meatwad: "Fudge you, butthole."
This a reference to the famous quote of The Terminator, who really said "fuck you, asshole." - Meatwad: "He gonna be like the Hulk, just ripping out the back of his pants."
A quick and funny reference to the transformation of The Incredible Hulk. - Carl: "So it's sorta like Predator, but instead of killing people, he's like crapping."
Frylock: "Or Hollow Man..."
A funny reference to the film Predator, where the villian can cloak himself to beld into his surroundings. And also a reference to Hollow Man where the main character turns himself invisible.