PIZZA FACE

01PLOT

One night, April and Irma are about to watch a movie. April receives a call and starts lying about having a date with Casey. Then, a pizza delivery guy drives by them and falls off his bike. He screams about being attacked and leaves in a hurry. He drops a free pizza. April wants to bring it to the guys, but Irma says she wouldn't eat it. April receives another call and runs away. She thinks about what Irma said and throws the pizza in the trash. She hears creepy voices saying "Eat me." She comes closer to the pizza and opens it when a mutant pizza attacks her.

In the lair, Leo and Raph are watching TV and Donnie is worried because April isn't answering for hours and Mikey is worried as well because none of the pizza shops in town are answering too. Leo says that he is the culinary expert and that he should make his own. A happy Mikey runs in the kitchen. There, he prepares the ultimate pizza while singing and dancing. The smell reaches Leo and he is disgusted. Mikey offers some to the others and they decline. He rapidly starts eating. The other Turtles see a commercial about Antonio's Pizza-Rama and Leo is suspicious. He orders a pizza and Raph sends Mikey to wait for it and not to eat it. Mikey receives the pizza from a weird acting pizza guy and returns to the lair. He is tempted to eat it and calls the guys.

The pizza then starts talking like it did to April, but Mikey thinks it's his imagination. He opens the pizza box and an angry mutant pizza starts attacking him! After the fight, the guys show up and see Mikey rolling on the floor covered in pizza toppings. They thank him sarcastically for ruining their dinner. Mikey stakes on the rooftops to Antonio's and sees April with human zombies. He is then attacked by three people that have pizzas on their faces. He almost gets pounded, but saves himself with a smoke bomb.

He rushes to the lair to warn the others, only to see them zombified from eating some of the mutant pizzas too. He is attacked by several mutant pizzas while the others escape. He takes one pizza as a hostage and interrogates him about the situation. The mutant pizza finally says everything after Mikey threatens to put it in the oven. The mutant pizza says that, one day, chef Antonio was making a pizza and he heard a noise. A mutagen canister fell out of the sky and he had to know if it would be a good pizza topping. He tried some and mutated into a giant pizza blob. After the slice of mutant pizza finishes talking, Mikey asks what will he do with his zombie customers. The mutant pizza slice says that he'll wrap them in calzones and eat them whole. Mikey says he'll save them, but first he throws the mutant pizza slice in the freezer where it deals with Ice Cream Kitty.

Mikey sneaks to Antonio's acting like a zombie. Inside, he goes to the kitchen where he sees April getting prepared. When a mutant pizza asks what to do with the Turtles and Splinter, Pizza Face says that they will be his guards, since they've tasted the secret ingredient (mutagen). He throws up on their faces and makes them his zombified pizza slaves. Mikey throws a box at Pizza Face, but Leo stops it by stabbing it. Mikey declares "the jig is up, Pizza Face!" and Pizza Face says that he likes the name before sending the other turtles and Splinter to attack. Mikey luckily knocks down the Turtles, while apologizing to Leo and Donnie, but not Raph, but is then knocked down by Splinter.

Mikey gets back up again and then gets stuck to the wall by Pizza Face's pizza barf. When Pizza Face is about to eat April, Mikey's stomach rumbles and he realizes that he's hungry and begins eating his way out, much to Pizza Face's horror. Pizza Face eats Mikey when the young turtle tries to attack only for Mikey to start eating him from the inside until he's just a slice of pizza. Mikey tells Pizza Face to bring everyone back to normal or he'd eat him to which he complies, mentally ordering the pizza zombies to return to their homes where they wouldn't remember a thing. Mikey begins to gloat loudly to his brothers about being right and saving them when Pizza Face attacks.

Mikey wakes up in his bed and his brothers and April walk in. Glad they're back to normal, Mikey starts babbling about how they all were pizza zombies and that Pizza Face was gonna eat April. The others tell him that it was just a dream and leave his room. Mikey begins to believe that it was all a dream and goes back to sleep. Pizza Face confirms that it wasn't, hiding in one of Mikey's empty pizza boxes and laughs.

02CAST & APPEARANCES

03SCREEN GRABS

4 frames. Auto-matched screencaps via Fancaps.net.

04MEMORABLE QUOTES

Donatello: Ah! I've been trying to reach April for hours! Hope nothing's wrong. Michelangelo: Something sure is wrong, bro… There isn't a single pizza shop in town that's picking up! Donatello: I'm serious, Mikey! Michelangelo: You think I'd joke about the pizza? You know me a little better than that, Donnie, to joke about the pizza!

Shopkeeper: Antonio's pizza is so good, you'll want to obey its every command. Man: It is my new delicious master. Sewer Worker: Obey the flavor.

Michelangelo: How much? Pizza Guy: At Antonio's the first one's free. Michelangelo: Whoa… How many times can you order the first one?

Michelangelo: Why are you doing this, pizza!? I've always loved you!

Pizza Minion: They'll never believe you now… Totally… worth it. Ugh! I'm going into the light… Michelangelo: This is like so. Messed. Up.

Michelangelo: Does he have a pizza for a face? Pizza Minion: Yes! Michelangelo: Then I will call him Pizza Face! Pizza Minion: But we all have pizza faces... Michelangelo: Enough!

Pizza Face: Mushrooms, garlic, mozzarella, too. Peppers, onions, Mortadella! -Carlos moans- Pizza Face: Yum-a yummy, yum-a yummy, yum-a yum-a yum-a yo! Humans tastes so good inside a Calzone, yes, it's true. Hey!

Michelangelo: The jig is up, Pizza Face! Pizza Face: Pizza Face? I like a-that. Cause I have a pizza for a face! -laughs- Get him!

Pizza Face: Ooh! That's a spicy meat-a-ball!

Michelangelo: Guess it really was a dream. -falls back asleep. However, a familiar voice is hiding in one of the pizza boxes-

Pizza Face: A dream? I don't-a think so! Da-da-da-da-da-da-HA!

-Pizza Face reveals he is in fact real, foreshadowing his return-

05NOTES & GOOFS

• After Mikey fights the first pizza, there are pizza slices everywhere, but in the sequence the pizza appears whole again.
• Mikey says, "Now, how do I get my money back?", although he didn't pay for the pizza.
• As Mikey goes to save his brothers and Splinter, Garson Grunge, Carlos Chiang O'Brien Gambe, and others are seen outside of the pizza shop. However, when Mikey goes inside the back of the shop to rescue his family, they suddenly appear in there.
• When pizza face attempts to eat Mikey at the end of the episode, his bandana turns red.

06TRIVIA

• Two sneak previews of this episode were revealed in the 2013 New York comic-Con, both of them are incomplete story draft animatics.
• In this episode, Michelangelo briefly sings the chorus of the _Ninja Rap_ by Vanilla Ice, which is part of the soundtrack of _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze_.
• This is the second episode where Mikey sings "Go ninja, go ninja, go!" from Vanilla Ice's _Ninja Rap_. The first time being in "Follow The Leader".
• Pizza Face is based on an obscure TMNT villain from the 80s - his debut was as an action figure in 1990 but was never in any TMNT show, comic book, or movie until now. The original toy looked more humanoid than this newer version. He was originally Shredder's chef, then he mixed mutagen into a pizza in an oven and was transformed into a deranged mutant-cyborg being. Pizza Face has a similar origin here, except he's an independent character and has a body completely formed of pizza.
• The plot is inspired by the 1956 classic sci-fi horror film _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_.
• In the beginning of the episode Irma wants to watch "Dusk of the Zombi 4", which is a reference to _Dawn of the Dead_ and the _Zombi_ series.
• When Raph tells Mikey to go wait for the pizza and not eat it, Mikey slaps his hand, spins around and ends up hitting him in the head is an homage to _The Three Stooges_' _many iconic_ _slapstick routines._
• Victims of Pizza Face were trapped in a similar fashion that people were in _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_.
• The three-headed Hydra Beast is an homage to King Ghidorah.
• One of the VHS tapes scattered across the Turtle's common area was orange, a possible reference to the Nickelodeon brand VHS tapes.
• The pizza being delivered to the Turtles through a sewer grate is an homage to one scene from the first movie.
• When Mikey traps the mutant pizza inside the freezer Ice Cream Kitty twists her head as an homage to _The Exorcist_, where the possessed little girl Regan MacNeil not only twists her head, but also causes her room to get colder.
• Mikey eats his way out of Pizza Face just like the Aliens' Chestbusters do in the _Alien_ franchise.
• He is the second actual mutant food of the series, the first being Ice Cream Kitty.
• He is one of the few mutants who liked the nickname that Michelangelo gave him.
• His look very much resembles Pizza the Hutt from the _Star Wars_ parody, _Spaceballs_.
• According to Ciro Nieli, Antonio's character was created as a tribute to his father, who also owns a pizza parlor.
• A mutant pizza melting in the furnace during the interrogation scene looked similar to the Gremlin's head in the fire place in Joe Dante's _Gremlins_
• The mutant pizzas say "eat me, eat me" in a similar fashion to the cakes in the _Tiny Toons Adventures_ episode "Little Cake of Horrors", itself a tribute to Audrey's 11's "Feed me" line from the off-Broadway musical _Little Shop of Horrors_.
• On one phone box, it says "The Triceratops are here".
• This is the first episode where Dominic Catrambone voices Leonardo in the series.
• Jack Kurtzman seems to appear in this episode as his body is shown, but his head is blocked.
• One of the brainwashed victims has Spider Bytez's human form model.

07FAN REVIEW

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