The Prank

"The Prank" is the fourteenth episode of Season 1 of The Amazing World of Gumball.

Synopsis
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 for breakfast, while Richard is reading the newspaper. Gumball asks Richard to pass the sugar, but Richard giggles and passes him the salt instead. Gumball sprinkles the "sugar" onto his cereal. After having a spoonful, he spits it out at Darwin. Darwin, also thinking it's sugar, sprinkled more salt onto Gumball's cereal suggesting that it needs more sugar. 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. Richard claming that it was the best prank ever, 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 squeezes the bottle making ketchup getting all over Richard. Gumball and Darwin start laughing, but Richard can't take a prank and runs off crying. Nicole scolds the boys. Gumball complains about how she didn't tell Richard off for pulling a prank, but Nicole says they know it too late for their father 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, and realizing that his prank has been seen through, 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 was the one who put the baked beans in there. Knowing he wasn't going to get a refund, Richard walks off, saying he wants to keep the shoes because he feels "grown quite attached to them".

Back at the house, Richard begins listening to a How-To-Prank tape on a portable cassette 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 for the last nineteen seconds. 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 6 steps are as follows:

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

Gumball and Darwin laugh at him the whole time. After step 5, Richard gets stuck in the chimney for 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 2 of them realize that he won't wake up until he's lost on an island in the middle of the ocean. When he finally back home he's sunburnt, has no clothes on, and carrying a bag of coconuts. Upon being asked about what happened to his clothes, he responds that he ate them. He then walks up the stairs with his bottom showing. 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 see and hear him, Gumball stating "This is too easy". They decide to tease their dad, saying they should go to the backyard through the window instead of the door. Richard gets angry saying the idea Gumball brought up is crazy. 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. Gumball reveals that they seen him attempting the prank, but Richard realizes that he's been tricked and accuses Gumball and Darwin of betraying him. This drives him into a panic of insanity and Richard starts running across the yards, wailing and panicking about his failure at pranking Gumball and Darwin. One of the paramedics tells Richard to calm down, but Richard won't listen to him, shouting them to "LEAVE ME ALONE! GET OFF MY LAWN!", so he had to be tranquilized by Eddie, one of the paramedics. 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 because he thinks that they are the reason for his failed pranking attempts. 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 creepily says that he's going to prank them, then goes crazy. Gumball and Darwin, realizing that Richard has gone insane, frantically 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 panics 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 declares all out war against Gumball and Darwin by yelling "PRANK TIME!". The boys run to the living room and hide under the sofa, and Richard busts through the ceiling and asks "Where are you?", 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 classic retro romance show, a documentary, and a music video. This proves fake, though, because Richard knew they were there the whole time, Richard unplugged the TV while they were still acting. The warpath continues for a short time before Gumball tries escaping through the air vent. Unfortunately, it was nailed in, not only does this doesn't work, it leaves the two of them cornered, giving Richard the chance to finally get them. 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, and his intentions to kill them) was all part of his prank. Gumball and Darwin find it terrible and accuse him of trying to kill his own kids, but Richard points out that the cement was wet when he poured it into the bucket. The 2 sides apologize to each other; Gumball and Darwin apologize for taking the pranks too far, and Richard apologizes for starting the prank.

Suddenly, Nicole enters the house with Anais. Nicole and Anais look shocked at the huge mess left behind from the chase. Nicole angrily asks "WHO DID THIS?!", causing the guys to all blame each other, ending the episode.

Main Characters

 * Gumball
 * Darwin
 * Richard

Supporting Characters

 * Nicole

Minor Characters

 * Larry
 * Bandage Paramedics (debut)
 * Marvin
 * Pantsbully
 * Anais (non-speaking cameo)
 * Sal Left Thumb (on newspaper)

Trivia

 * This is the episode where Daniel Lennard first appeared
 * This is the first time Richard wears footwear, though they were shoes that didn't fit him.
 * On the magazine cover, one of the show's storyboarders' name and face can be seen, with the heading "TV Gossip with George Gendi!".
 * Also on the magazine is an ad for the "Daisy the Donkey Show."
 * Considering on not wearing shoes, Richard bought new shoes for Gumball (and Darwin) but knew it was a prank.

Continuity

 * In the TV scene, there's a VHS tape that is labeled "Wrestling" with a few letters crossed-out before it. In "The Club,' it's revealed that this is the tape that used to contain Nicole and Richard's wedding video, until Richard taped over it.
 * This is the second time Richard says something is "only funny when it happens to someone else". The first time was in "The Ghost."
 * This is the second time Gumball and Darwin were tricked by Richard. The first time in was "The Laziest."
 * The commercial heard in "The Responsible" is heard again in this episode, when Richard comes back from the sea.
 * This is the third time in the series Richard seen in his underwear.

Cultural References

 * Gumball and Darwin sending Richard out on a raft while he's asleep is a reference to "The Parent Trap".
 * This episode shares the same title from Chowder.

Goofs/Errors

 * At the beginning of the episode, Richard has a bowl of cereal in front of him, but after Gumball sprinkles salt on his cereal, it disappears.
 * The ketchup was seen when Richard was laughing, but not seen when Gumball was eating his cereal.
 * Since Nicole was in the kitchen she could of over heard Richard's prank and blaming all of them.
 * 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.
 * Richard initially cuts off the right side of the Wattersons' family photo (the half showing Gumball and Darwin), but in the next scene, the left side of the photo is shown to have been cut off.
 * After Darwin takes his hand off Gumball's sweater, his hand can still be seen on it for a split second.
 * When Gumball and Darwin hyperventilate under the couch, their mouths don't move.
 * During Gumball and Darwin's song, Gumball's whiskers vanish.
 * The air vent that Gumball went disappeared when Gumball and Darwin were mad at Richard, but when they said "Good job, Dad," it appeared again.

La Broma