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Gwimbly: Definitive Remastered Enhanced Extended Edition DX 4K (Anniversary Director's Cut)

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"Gwimbly: Definitive Remastered Enhanced Extended Edition DX 4K (Anniversary Director’s Cut)" is the first episode of Season Two of Smiling Friends. It premiered on April 1, 2024.

Synopsis[]

The classic gang help a disgusting, vile loser they found on the streets. However, Allan sprays him with the hose.

Plot[]

As Pim and Charlie are walking towards the office, Pim tells Charlie how Mr. Boss has been acting strange recently, with him mumbling phrases in an unknown language, screaming in a loop, as Pim states it was the most terrifying experience in his life. As they arrive at the office, they find Allan spraying a low-poly character with dirty brown water. Pim immediately recognizes him as Gwimbly, a video game character from his childhood who is now homeless and living off Cameo. He and Allan decide to help him get his job back at the game studio, while Charlie stays at the office.

At the office, Charlie is accosted by James, who demands that Charlie makes him smile, taking full advantage of the fact that Charlie must agree to his whims until he is able to make him smile. Throughout the episode, Charlie tries his best to obey James’ demands only to be violently mistreated by him, even going as far as James ripping his nose off of his face.

Meanwhile, Pim, Gwimbly and Allan arrive at Insane Groundbreaking Games, the company that created Gwimbly’s breakout game in the late 90s. When they approach The CEO of Insane Groundbreaking Games with the prospect of featuring Gwimbly in a new game, they are harshly denied as the CEO is far more keen on making games with DLC and micro transactions than a single player platforming game. He pronounces this by revealing the company’s new mascot Troglor (stylized as TΓOGLOΓ), a modern first-person shooter character. Troglor demonstrates his firepower which the CEO orders him to stop as he is not allowed to fire indoors.

Upset, Pim assures Gwimbly that he will help crowdfund his new game himself. Incensed by this idea, The CEO climbs on top of Troglor and orders him to kill Gwimbly and his accomplices to retain complete control of Gwimbly’s license as an IP.

Pim contacts the villain of the original game, Count Groxia, to be a part of their new project but he turns them down. Gwimbly then mentions that his partner Mr. Millipede may join as well. They soon discover his tombstone afterwards, having succumbed to a fentanyl overdose. As Gwimbly and Pim mourn, The CEO and Troglor suddenly appear and chase the trio back to the Smiling Friends Headquarters.

Back at the headquarters, Charlie contacted 911 for his cut off nose as James threatened to slit his throat if Charlie fails to make him smile. Just as Pim and the others arrives and locks the door, he warns Charlie and James that they are being attacked. Troglor blasts open the door and The CEO jeers at Gwimbly to come out in the open. James insults the CEO and the CEO orders Troglor to shoot him. However, Troglor is unable to due to the CEO’s earlier request not to shoot indoors. James immediately stabs the CEO in the skull, killing him. Satisfied from the carnage, James finally smiles and leaves.

With Troglor now bereft of a master, Gwimbly sympathizes with him. Troglor offers a team up and then punches Gwimbly, warping them into a Super Smash Bros-style fighting game. Pim remarks that the crossover game has given Gwimbly a new lease on life while Allan is thankful that he's no longer loitering around the office. Mr. Boss appears and announces that he is has been featured in the fighting game and has performed motion capture while he was away. He then inexplicably begins to spasm and scream endlessly in a loop, freaking out Pim who earlier told Charlie about a similar incident with Mr. Boss. As his condition grows more erratically, Pim and Glep rush over to restrain Mr. Boss while Charlie contacts the authorities.

In a post-credits scene, James is shown in his dingy apartment, feeling deep remorse and shame over his treatment of Charlie. He intimately holds a framed picture of Charlie as he begins to cry.

Characters[]

Transcript[]

To view this episode's transcript, click here.

Gallery[]

To view this episode's gallery, click here.

Trivia[]

General[]

  • This is the first episode to air in 2024.
  • With 91 characters in total, this episode has the longest title in the entire series.
  • The models for Gwimbly and Count Groxia were done by Hoolopee [1], credited under his real name David Post.
  • This is the first episode where Allan goes out to help a Client as well as the first episode where Charlie doesn’t help the main client with Pim as he’s busy with a different client.
    • This is also the first episode with multiple clients that are experiencing different issues.
  • This is the first episode to have the subtitles in all caps.
    • However, they only appear in all caps whenever a character yells.
  • The word "Fuck" is uncensored on Max, unlike Desmond's Big Day Out.

Episode references[]

  • This episode shares parallels with the pilot episode, such as having a client that only smiles after killing someone, and the peace of the group being interrupted at the very end by a bizarre event.
  • Charlie's streaming service profile contains the following shows, which reference various episodes:
  • The headquarters for Insane Groundbreaking Games has TVs playing footage of Mouse Quest II from "Shrimp's Odyssey."
    • Additionally, Shrimp's username, Xxd4rkShrimp98xXx, can be seen listed above the footage.
  • A dance mat picturing the critter from the Dance Dance Revolution-esque game Mr. Boss was playing in "Frowning Friends" can be seen hanging in the CEO's office.
  • Allan kicking the small blue IGBG worker may be due to PTSD from the Bliblie infestation, an event that took place in "Desmond's Big Day Out".
  • One of the playable characters in the Smash Bros. parody is the stick figure character from the fighting game Allan and Glep were playing in "Enchanted Forest."

Cultural references[]

  • The scene where Allan sprays Gwimbly with a hose may be a reference to an incident in San Francisco, where a 71 year old art gallery owner hosed a homeless woman in front of his gallery.
  • Gwimbly’s likeness is heavily modeled after many game mascot characters from fifth generation consoles such as Croc, Crash Bandicoot, Gex, and Bubsy. It’s likely he’s from the same generation.
    • His game's focus on collecting cans of creamed corn is also based off the "collectathon" platform genre that was popular in that generation, such as the Banjo-Kazooie games.
  • Gwimbly and Count Groxia are low-poly characters rendered at a lower resolution, with affine texture warping and no texture filtering, mimicking the look of Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn games.
  • Gwimbly is shown to make money off Cameo videos, where he records one for "James from Idaho." When making these videos, his character model has higher resolution and proper polygons with texture filtering.
  • Troglor's name is most likely a reference to the Homestar Runner character Trogdor the Burninator.
    • His design is likely a reference to the Doomslayer, the main protagonist from the First Person Shooter game franchise DOOM.
    • Additionally, he resembles the Space Marines from the Warhammer 40,000 series.
  • Mr. Millipede, Gwimbly's sidekick, died on May 23, 2021. This may be a reference to Eric Carle, the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, who died the same day.
  • Many of the CEO's behaviors are likely based off the behaviors of game company CEOs. These include:
    • Stating the Gwimbly IP is "his to sit on and do nothing with" being a jab at game companies doing little to nothing with their legacy franchises in favor of producing newer titles, One of the most famous examples is Electronic Arts (EA) refusing to allow American McGee to develop his project "Alice: Asylum" (a prequel game to his Alice series) and refusing to sell the license to him, resulting in his forced retirement from the game industry.
    • Offering to make Gwimbly a skin in a new game refers to how game companies will include legacy characters as skins or references in order to show they "haven't completely forgotten about them."
    • Trying to get Gwimbly to "kiss his nugget" could be a euphemism for how some game developers will force employees to perform sexual favors for them. The most infamous case being Blizzard's history of sexually exploiting employees, with some speculating that this behavior was covered up for decades by both games journalists and Blizzard alike.
    • Shifting from Gwimbly to a far more mature "mascot" is likely commentary on how some game companies try to shift their image in order to be taken more seriously, such as Naughty Dog switching their flagship series from Crash Bandicoot to The Last of Us.
    • Saying that everything is about microtransactions and DLCs is commentary of how the gaming marketplace is now filled with games that try to bleed their players dry in order to get "the full experience." A popular example involves David Zaslav, the new CEO of Warner Bros., announced that WB Games will "double down" on making live service, free to play, and mobile games for profit and holding off famous IPs, which became a controversial move due to Zaslav's past actions of cancelling or removing shows on MAX and cancelling movies that finished production for tax write-offs (such as the Batgirl movie, Scoob! Holiday Haunt and Coyote vs. Acme).

Videos[]

References[]

  1. ↑ https://twitter.com/hoolopee/status/1774673573589733553
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