The Copycats

"The Copycats" is the eleventh episode of Season 5 of The Amazing World of Gumball. It is the 167th episode overall.

Synopsis
Gumball and Darwin are confused when they meet Chi Chi and Ribbit, a pair of siblings that copy everything they do and say. Then they find out this copycat family is making money online from imitating the Watterson family.

Plot
The episode begins with the Wattersons at Elmore Shopping. Gumball and Darwin stop at the exotic food section and examine the different foods. When they leave, Chi Chi and Ribbit stop at the exotic food section. Shortly after, Gumball & Darwin come back to the exotic food section, with Gumball & Darwin looking suspiciously at Chi Chi and Ribbit. Chi Chi and Ribbit then copy everything Gumball & Darwin do.

In the car, Gumball & Darwin tells their family about it, with the Wattersons not believing it at first. But Chi Chi's family appears, driving parallel to The Wattersons, and Nicole and Richard see their doppelgängers, who also copy what they do. The Wattersons are so distracted by this that they crash their car into a tollbooth, and the copycat family drives away.

At home, Gumball looks them up on the computer, with everyone having a doppelgänger, except for Anais. At first, The Wattersons laugh at this. But Gumball soon realizes that they're being ripped off by Chi Chi and his family by copying their action and making money off of it. This makes Gumball mad because his family is broke while Chi Chi's family is making money off of them.

Then the Wattersons battle Chi Chi's family in an awkward way, sine Chi Chi's family is evenly matched to the Wattersons. Such as Gumball and Chi Chi cowardly trying to hit each other. Nicole and Chi Chi's mom hitting each other without inflicting any damage upon each other. Darwin and Ribbit slapping each other, inflicting pain on them, while subsequently apologizing. And Richard and Chi Chi's father only finger-fighting. Which results in putting their fingers in each other's mouths. After battling them failed, they instead try to help the find their own identities. They even sing a song about it. But the Wattersons then watch Chi-Chi's family copy this song on the Internet, and Chi-Chi then copies Gumball's reaction to the video.

Anais figured out that they copy everything they do. So she says that let them copy the Wattersons, at their own risk. She meant that they should live dangerously as possible, and hope that they give up trying to copy them.

In the morning, Gumball's alarm clock goes off, with a time bomb wired to his clock. He tries to defuse the bomb by trying to cut the wire, but while in his bed and not paying attention. Richard takes a bath with chains strapped to him. He locks the chains with a padlock and spits the key out in the toilet. Afterwards, he fully submerses himself under the water. Darwin is blindfolded. He has a bowl of Daisy Flakes with a biohazard and milk near him, the biohazard being closer to him, but he ends up grabbing the milk instead and puts that on his cereal. Richard also juggles chainsaws blindfolded, cutting a tree that's close to a power line. Richard also leaves the iron on, left the candle burning next to the curtains, and leaves the stove on before leaving, which results in their house blowing up. They also jump into the car when Nicole comes around the corner. Nicole drives while reading a newspaper while the car is suspended on the right wheels, and Nicole steers with her foot. Richard also goes to the hospital to donate an organ of the hospital's choice. The Wattersons come crashing in their house, while looking scared and stressed about their actions that they've done. But that failed as Chi Chi's dad received the kidney Richard donated, which was donated again. So they take it a step further.

The Wattersons are on the expressway with a gasoline tanker with gas leaking out of the back, and fire following the trail of gas. When they realized that the tanker is heading towards the unfinished ditch, they figured that they went too far, and try to figure out how to get out of their situation. They get out of their situation by using Anais to unhook the tank. Since Chi Chi and his family didn't have a little sister to unhook the tank for them, they end up in the ditch in the expressway, and the tanker subsequently explodes. Luckily, Chi Chi and his family barely survived the accident.

After that, Gumball searches for them on the computer, and no results pop up, indicating that the doppelgangers have deleted the website. Gumball & Darwin are happy about this, and they laugh over it. While laughing, they briefly flickered indicating that their voices has changed. Soon enough they took realization of this, ending the episode.

Main Characters

 * Gumball
 * Darwin
 * Nicole
 * Richard
 * Anais
 * Chi Chi
 * Ribbit
 * Mom
 * Dad

Minor Characters

 * Milk Guy
 * Pigeon
 * Anais Rip-off
 * Tobias
 * George
 * Felicity
 * Karen
 * Bandage Paramedic

Trivia

 * Ben Bocquelet talked about the progress of this episode on November 4, 2016 for the Pictoplasma conference in New York City.
 * This episode was released on the Cartoon Network app and Video On Demand services 3 days before it aired on TV.
 * This is the last episode in which Jacob Hopkins and Terrell Ransom, Jr. voice Gumball and Darwin, and the first episode Nicolas Cantu and Donielle T. Hansley Jr. represent their voices as the two main characters.
 * Cartoon Network conflicted the continuity of Gumball and Darwin's voices when they released "The Ollie" on Video On Demand services first.

Continuity

 * Similar to the episode "The Kids", at the episode's climax, Gumball and Darwin's voices become more childlike due to their voice actors being replaced after hitting puberty. The characters take notice of this, breaking the fourth wall again.

Cultural References

 * The copycat Watterson family is based on the main characters of Miracle Star, a Chinese bootleg version of Gumball.
 * The absence of a bootlegged version of Anais is also referenced, as she was excluded from Miracle Star because during it's airing, China had a policy stating that families can only have one child owing to the country's overpopulation problem (with Gugu/Ribbit, the frog character from the show being counted as a pet). As of now, they can only have two children in a family in China.
 * The first video of The Incredible World of Chi Chi on Elmore Stream-It is a recreation of a real scene from Miracle Star which copied the first episode of Gumball, "The DVD."
 * When the Copycats' website was translated, Ribbit's profile said he was green, but he was actually blue. This may be because Traditional Chinese lacks a word that differentiates blue and green. It instead uses the word qīng (Chinese: 青) to describe both colors. However, the modern Chinese language now differentiates blue as lán (Chinese: 蓝/ 藍), and green as lǜ (Chinese: 绿 / 綠).

Goofs/Errors

 * The Copycat family's website is named "The Wonderful World of Chi Chi," but the image on the website says "The Incredible World of Chi Chi."
 * When Gumball reads about Chi Chi, "center" is spelled the American English way, but when it shows the page again as Darwin reads about Ribbit, it is spelled "centre", the British English spelling.
 * On the Elmore Expressway, a sign can be seen that says "Interstate 95." Interstate 95 is an east coast highway, and Elmore is likely in California.
 * The sypnosis states that Gumball and Darwin's doppelgangers are called "Kiki and Quack".