The Prank

The Prank is the 14th episode of Season 1 and the 14th episode of The Amazing World of Gumball. In this episode, Gumball and Darwin's pranks on Richard get out of hand.

Plot
Gumball, Darwin, and Richard are sitting at the dining table. Gumball and Darwin are eating cereal, while Richard is reading the newspaper. Gumball asks Richard to pass the sugar, but Richard giggles and passes him salt instead. Gumball sprinkles the salt onto his cereal, thinking it's sugar. After having a spoonful, he spits it out at Darwin. Darwin, also thinking it's sugar, sprinkled more salt onto Gumball's cereal. Gumball takes another spoonful of the cereal and promptly spits it at Darwin again. When he finishes, Darwin tastes some of the vomit and finds out it was salt that they sprinkled onto the cereal, causing Richard to burst out laughing at the prank he pulled. Gumball decides to get back at his dad by tricking him into looking closely into a ketchup bottle. As he looks into the bottle, Gumball sqeezes, covering Richard's face with ketchup. Gumball and Darwin start laughing, but Richard can't take a prank and runs off crying. Nicole scolds the boys and tells them to apologize before she returns home.

Later in the day, Gumball and Darwin play a video game when Richard comes back, asking them to try on some new shoes. The boys accuse him of trying to pull another prank. Richard, panicking, denies their claim. The scene then cuts to Richard at a shoe store, trying to return the prank shoes. Larry denies his request, saying that he filled them with baked beans. In an attempt to prove there were no beans in the shoes, Richard puts them on, pranking himself because he did put baked beans in there. Knowing he wasn't going to get a refund, Richard walks off, saying he wants to keep the shoes.

Back at the house, Richard begins listening to a How-To-Prank tape on a portable cassete player. The tape tells him the lesson will take thirty minutes, so Richard decides to eat thirty minutes worth of food, which consists of two subs, a muffin, a tub of ice cream, and a sausage. While Richard goes to the kitchen to eat, Gumball switches the How-To-Prank tape with a tape he recorded himself to prank Richard. Not knowing that Gumball switched the tapes, Richard follows the instructions.

The seven steps are as follows:

1. Go out onto the roof of the house. 2. Take off all of your clothes. 3. Pretend that you are a ballerina while repeatedly slapping yourself on the face. 4. (skipped, possibly to yell "I'm a ballerina!" repeatedly)  5. Realize that you've just been pranked. 6. Try and fit down the chimney, head first.

Gumball and Darwin laugh at him the whole time. After step 6, Richard gets stuck in the chimney for an unspecified amount of time, though it was at least a few hours.

The next day, Gumball and Darwin find Richard asleep in the living room, surrounded by papers with schemes on how to prank them. Gumball and Darwin realize that this is a perfect opportunity for another prank. They put their sleeping dad onto a rubber raft and push him down the river, sending him out to sea. The two of them realize that he won't wake up until he's lost in the middle of the ocean. When he finally makes his way back home, he's dirty, sunburnt, naked, and carrying a bag of coconuts. Upon being asked about what happened to his clothes, he curtly responds that he ate them. He then angrily walks up the stairs. Gumball and Darwin start wondering whether they're taking this prank thing too far.

Later, Gumball and Darwin start vandalizing people's faces in a magazine while Richard places a bucket over a door in another attempt to prank the boys. Gumball and Darwin hear him, so they know not to go through that door. They decide to tease their dad, saying they should go to the backyard through the window instead of the door. Richard gets angry, desperately wanting them to get soaked with water from his prank. In his frustration, he demonstrates how to open the door, causing the bucket to fall on him and get stuck on his head. The situation is so serious that the paramedics have to come to pull it off. Richard was flailing around too much in shame, so he had to be tranquilized. As he lays asleep, the paramedics easily pull the bucket off.

Gumball, Darwin, and Richard sit together in the living room. Richard has an angry look on his face while Gumball and Darwin look guilty. They try to end the prank war, but Richard still looks angry, and worse yet, he cuts out Gumball and Darwin from the family photo. Gumball and Darwin see another bucket on top of the front door and figured they would purposely fall for this prank to make their dad feel better. When they open the door, they expected to get hit with water, but instead, a heavy block of cement nearly crushes Gumball, and freaks them out. Richard then goes crazy, creepily saying that he was going to prank them. Gumball and Darwin sprint to the bathroom upstairs and hide in the bath tub. Gumball starts hyperventilating, which causes Darwin to try to slap him out of it. Gumball panicks more and yells at Darwin that he's making it worse. Darwin decides to use tenderness to calm Gumball down, and this seems to work. He strokes, hugs, and kisses him to make him feel better. After a moment of silence, Richard busts through the bathroom wall and yells "PRANK TIME!". The boys run to the living room and hide under the sofa, but Darwin gives their position away, so they hide inside the TV. Richard spots them, forcing them to act out TV shows to stay hidden. They act out a news show, a soap opera, a documentary, and a music video. This proves futile, though, because the dad knew they were there the whole time, and unplugged the TV while they were still acting. The chase continues for a short time before Gumball tries escaping through the air vent. Unfortunately, not only does this fail, it leaves the two of them cornered. Gumball, spotting a bottle of ketchup, decides to try to use it as a weapon. When he squeezes, instead of squirting ketchup at Richard, the side facing him bursts open, splattering the boys with ketchup. Richard laughs at them and reveals that all this (the ketchup, his psychotic behavior) was all part of his prank. The two sides apologize to each other; Gumball and Darwin apologize for taking the pranks too far, and Richard apologizes for starting the prank war.

Suddenly, Nicole enters the house with Anais. Both of them look shocked at the huge mess left behind from the chase. Nicole angrily asks who caused this disaster, causing the guys to blame each other, ending the episode.

Characters

 * Gumball
 * Darwin
 * Richard
 * Nicole

Minor Characters

 * Laurence Needlemeyer
 * Bandage Paramedics
 * Anais

Trivia

 * Gumball forgot to say step 4 after Richard dances like a ballerina on the roof repeatedly slapping his own face while he was on the roof.
 * When Gumball and Darwin are playing their video game, the health bar on Darwin's character comes back to full health while in game-play.
 * When Gumball takes a second of the cereal with the salt in it, the newpaper Darwin used to shield himself from Gumball's spit suddenly appears.
 * Anais does not speak in the episode, even though she makes a small appearance at the end.
 * At the beginning of the episode, Richard doesn't have a bowl of cereal in front of him, but after Gumball sprinkles salt on his cereal, a bowl of cereal appears in front of him.
 * On the magazine cover, George Gendi's name and face can be seen, with the heading "TV Gossip with George Gendi!". George Gendi is one of the show's storyboarders.
 * Also on the magazine is an ad for the "Daisy the Donkey Show".

Quotes

 * Richard: "IT'S ONLY FUNNY WHEN IT HAPPENS TO SOMEONE ELSE!!" [runs off crying with the ketchup still splattered on his face]