Escargoon Squad

	This article contains information that does not coincide with the main series canon.	(Similar)

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Escargoon Squad
Name (JP)	デデデ城じょうのユーレイ (Dedede Jō no Yūrei)
- Meaning	Ghost of Castle Dedede デデデ城 = Castle Dedede, の = of, ユーレイ/幽霊 = Ghost,
Air Date (JP)	December 22, 2001
Air Date (NA)	October 26, 2002
Copy Ability	None
Monster	Ghost

Escargoon Squad is the 13th episode (12th in Japan) of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!.

Synopsis

After an odd sighting of a ghost in a picture that he took, Escargoon and King Dedede suspect that there is a ghost haunting Castle Dedede. After visiting the fortune teller, Mabel, Dedede is told that the ghost is real, and is out to haunt him... Will they be able to fight off the ghost?

Episode Plot

Spoiler alert: The following section contains plot-specific details.(Skip Section)

The episode starts with Escargoon taking a photo of King Dedede making a peace sign with his hand on the balcony. Upon looking at the photo once it develops, they find a ghost in the picture. Escargoon freaks out and tells Dedede that the ghost could be the spirit of a citizen the king abused. Dedede begins to get nervous but tries to hide it by saying that he wants to fight the ghost, and then he goes off to his throne room where he begins to shiver.

The ghost in the photo

That same night, Dedede visits Mabel to fortune-tell if the ghost would come that night, and the answer is yes. Mabel also states that the ghost seeks revenge from the king. Afterwards, Escargoon drives Dedede back to the castle in his tank, as he tries to rationalize the situation. When they arrive at the castle, the draw bridge starts closing on its own as they are crossing it, causing their tank to slide down. Waddle Doo arrives and Escargoon scolds him for not looking after the bridge, while Dedede sees the same ghost from the picture again flying towards him.

Lady Like encounters the ghost.

Dedede hides his face and shivers, but Escargoon says he doesn't see anything there. Dedede gets back up and walks back into the castle with him. When they come in, Tiff, Lady Like, and Sir Ebrum tell the duo that they too had strange encounters with this ghost. Tiff heard footsteps in the hallway and then saw the ghost flying right towards her, Lady Like was closing the glass doors to the balcony when she saw it there and then afterwards seeing it in the room, and Sir Ebrum was in the dungeon when the bottles started moving all by themselves. Dedede gets even more frightened, but he tries to rationalize that it's just a trick by them to get him to move out, but they swear what they had seen is true. Meta Knight overheard and states that he's surprised that the paranormalities don't have anything to do with him. Finally, Dedede stops with the excuses and freaks out.

Dedede goes to his throne room to order a monster to hunt down the ghost, but the N.M.E. Sales Guy says that his account is on hold until he pays his debt. Suddenly, the lights start flickering on and off, and he runs through the hallway, trying to remain calm, but he hears footsteps in the hallway and gets scared when Escargoon bumps into him and the two both scream. After they calm down, Dedede requests that Escargoon helps him in finding the ghost, but he is too scared to do so.

Finally, Dedede makes it back to his room and decides to try to go to sleep, thinking that in the morning it will all be over. However, he is unable to sleep all night, and eventually, he needs to use the restroom. As a result, he brings Escargoon with him, in case the ghost is to come. When Dedede is ready to go back to his bedroom, Escargoon runs back and leaves him behind. Dedede runs through the hallway frightened, and three ghosts come after them (who are actually Kirby, Fololo, and Falala wearing sheets, with Tuff helping them out). Tiff, Meta Knight, Lady like, and Sir Ebrum hear the king's screams, worried, and run to find him.

Dedede's trapped.

Meanwhile, Dedede is trapped in the wine cellar, chained to a table, with a giant blade swinging overhead. Kirby, Fololo, Falala, and Tuff scare him until he faints. When this happens, Escargoon arrives and rewards the group with lollipops. Tiff, her parents, and Meta Knight arrive and question them. Escargoon admits that he was behind it all, and the whole thing was just an elaborate prank all along. He was trying to get revenge on Dedede for scaring him with so many pranks, and every single scary encounter he was behind, including bribing Mabel with cash in order for her to fool Dedede and recruiting his own squad of ghosts.

Once Dedede wakes up, he gets mad and starts chasing Escargoon, Kirby, Fololo, Falala, and Tuff around. But King Dedede runs into the real ghost, which came after the king. After Meta Knight, Tiff, Sir Ebrum, and Lady Like catch up, the scared Dedede runs and opens his vault and pays the ghost to leave him alone. The spirit enters the N.M.E. monster transporter. It was a trick by Nightmare Enterprises to get all the money the king owes for his bills. The episode ends with Dedede trying to hit Escargoon with his hammer in anger, but he gets away.

End of spoilers

Changes in the dub

Scene Changes

• The flashback of King Dedede chasing Escargoon with a chainsaw was removed from the dub due to violence. Presumably, editing a laser effect on top of it (as in Beware: Whispy Woods!) was deemed insufficient by 4Kids in this case, or they didn't repeat this to save money.
• In the very beginning, the first scene is a shot of what appears to be a total lunar eclipse (or a blood moon) before panning downwards for a shot of the castle, lingering on a static image before zooming in. In the English dub, the episode immediately begins with a shot of the castle being zoomed in on.
• The scene where the camera pans horizontally in the village on a foggy night is sped up slightly in the English dub.
• Before the viewer sees the king chained to a table, there are a few seconds of screen time that show a light bulb swinging from the ceiling. This was cut from the English dub.
• When King Dedede and Escargoon bump into each other in the hallway, a flatulence sound was added in the 4Kids dub.

Script Changes

• At the beginning at this episode, Escargoon says he's finally finished with something. In the English dub, King Dedede asks him what he's holding in his hand.
• After the photo of King Dedede develops, he says to Escargoon that he can take good pictures if he has a good model. In the English version, he says that he should maybe put it on a postage stamp.
• In the Japanese version, Waddle Doo hypothesized that the draw bridge had been raising and lowering on its own, but in the English dub, he instead claims that someone sabotaged it.
• Sir Ebrum refers to the wine cellar as the dungeon in the English dub to avoid references to alcohol.
• In the Japanese version, King Dedede thinks that the prime minister's family is just playing a joke, but in the English dub, he accuses them of convincing him to move out so that they could have the castle to themselves.
• When the lights malfunction in the throne room, feminine giggling can be heard, but the giggling was removed from the English dub for unknown reasons.
  • Giggling can also be heard again in the original version when King Dedede is backing up in the corridor, convincing himself that ghosts didn't exist. This giggling was also removed in the English dub.
• After Escargoon shuts himself up in his room, King Dedede bangs on his door. In the original version, Escargoon doesn't speak, but in the English dub, he says "he's not here."
  • When Dedede retreats to his room, he runs down the corridor trying to get someone else's attention out of fear, but in the English dub, he simply states that he has to get to his room.
• When King Dedede is trying to sleep, he's counting sheep in the original version and then proclaims that he's unable to sleep. In the English dub, a disembodied voice is instead calling his name repeatedly until the king realizes that it's calling out to him.
  • King Dedede plays rock music to lift his spirits, but in the English dub, he thought wearing himself out would help him sleep.
• When Kirby, Fololo, and Falala are disguised as ghosts, they are silent in the original version.
• In the original version, Lady Like calls Tuff an impossible child for helping Escargoon scare King Dedede. In the English dub, she says to Tuff that she's ashamed of him.

Cosmetic Changes

• King Dedede's tank is altered to avoid comparing a villain like Dedede to the military.
• The original background for Nightmare Enterprises when the N.M.E. Sales Guy is on screen is plastered over with another background in the English dub to avoid any references to religion.
• The rock music that plays in the king's room slightly differs between the Japanese and English versions.

Trivia

Thunder scares Dedede witless.

• King Dedede being almost hit by the swinging axe is a reference to a fictional method of torture described in the 1842 short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum.
• Besides his intentionally hideous depictions in Cartoon Buffoon, this particular episode has a few frames with some of the most distorted images of Dedede in the entire series, to the point where he is almost unrecognizable. In animation, such techniques are used to convey extreme emotion, but it is only seen for a flitting moment so that the viewer does not fully register the ludicrous portrayal.
• The Japanese version's flashback depicting Dedede with a chainsaw shows him wearing pink clown hair, which may be a reference to various "evil clown" characters in other media, such as Stephen King's novel It and the movie Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

The mysterious skeleton.

• An oddly humanoid skeleton with its arms chained to the wall inside of a cell appears in Castle Dedede's dungeon during the flashback with Sir Ebrum. It seems to be wearing knight armor, and its presence is not acknowledged (at least not in the dub, because in the original Japanese version, King Dedede confirms that it's just a plastic model to create atmosphere). A similar chained skeleton not wearing armor appears more prominently in the Japanese version of Escar-Gone.
• Kirby doesn't make an appearance until about fourteen minutes into the episode.
• The ghost monster appears in Dedede's photo and Tiff's flashback, but in Escargoon's story, the camera was sabotaged and the ghost chasing Tiff was actually Kirby, however, that's probably because the ghost monster still wasn't discovered yet.
• This is one of the several episodes where Kirby flies by inhaling air.

Errors

• When Tiff, Meta Knight, Lady Like, and Sir Ebrum are in the corner of the corridor together, there is no ground underneath them.
• In the part where Tiff asks Escargoon what he means by revenge, Meta Knight briefly loses his blue color, but gets it back in the next scene.
• When King Dedede asks Escargoon what he's holding, he says "All I have to do is point, click, and within seconds we'll have a nice new photo." In reality, the average time for an instant photo to form is just a minute.