Return to Spider-Skull Island

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The Venture Bros. episode
“Return to Spider-Skull Island”
"There is anotherrr Venturrrre."
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 13
Writer(s)	Jackson Publick Doc Hammer
Director	Jackson Publick
Production no.	1-11
Original airdate	30 October 2004
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"The Trial of the Monarch"	"A Very Venture Christmas"

"Return to Spider-Skull Island" is the thirteenth episode, and the season finale, in the first season of The Venture Bros.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cultural references 3 Trivia 4 Goofs

[edit] Plot

Team Venture has returned to base following an unseen adventure during a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Dr. Venture's stomach is unusually bloated and painful, so Brock takes him to the hospital in the X-1. Hank and Dean are told to stay with Dr. Orpheus for the time being. The boys' naïveté and misunderstood knowledge of human reproduction lead them to the conclusion that their father is pregnant.

At the hospital, emergency surgery is performed on Dr. Venture. The good news: the doctors were able to remove the "tumor". The bad news: the tumor subsequently disappeared when the surgeon was not looking. As Dr. Venture and the surgeon argue (and Brock watches with disinterest), the X-1 lifts off, unnoticed by anyone in the room.

Back at the compound, Hank and Dean decide to run away and start new lives, and take off on their hoverbikes the next morning. Dr. Orpheus immediately panics, but Triana calms him and asks him to not embarrass them. He agrees and dons a windbreaker instead of his usual cloak with the intention of unobtrusively protecting the boys. He trails Hank and Dean to a small diner, where he is accosted by two rednecks. When the boys hit the road again, they are soon arrested for driving too slowly and apparent truancy as Orpheus watches helplessly from a distance.

Brock and Dr. Venture have finally managed to get home without the X-1, and Brock puts Dr. Venture to bed, telling him he needs rest. As Brock heads back into the lab, he is knocked out from behind by a mysterious assailant and chained to the roof of his beloved Charger. Meanwhile, Dr. Venture experiences his recurring nightmare about one fetus devouring another and wakes up to see a familiar looking head in a robot body. Venture initially assumes he is dreaming about his father, but the figure reveals himself Dr. Venture's long-lost twin brother, who he had been consumed in the womb forty-three years ago. The twin was finally able to escape through surgery and now intends to claim his vengeance and the Venture birthright by killing Dr. Venture! Dr. Venture quickly escapes to his panic room, but to his horror the brother easily gains access. The robotically augmented twin pursues Venture throughout the lab, pointing out how he has made working weapons from Thaddeus' failed experiments.

Brock manages to talk H.E.L.P.eR. through the process of driving the car, to which Brock is still chained. The car, in flames by now, smashes through a lab window just in time to save Dr. Venture. The evil twin's mechanical body is destroyed, revealing that he has an infant's body. Brock, his mullet singed to a crewcut, begins to crush the tiny man underfoot; Dr. Venture stops him in the name of brotherhood. After calling a truce between them, the brother decides to call himself Jonas Venture, Jr., Dr. Orpheus arrives, announcing the boys' imprisonment.

In prison, The Monarch participates in a Scared Straight-styled program, talking to punks and surly teenagers on how much of a mistake it would be to be a supervillain. He recognizes the Venture Brothers and convinces them to return home. After being bailed out by the rest of Team Venture, they ride back home on their hoverbikes with the others following at a respectful distance. Dr. Venture and Jonas Jr. put aside their differences and decide to split the Venture estate between them. The Monarch's henchmen 21 and 24, driving the Monarch-mobile, pull alongside the boys and ask where to get a haircut for 21 and ammunition for their gun. The weapon accidentally goes off and causes the hoverbikes to explode.

After the credits, Brock and the doctors look at the boys' smoldering bodies; Dr. Orpheus sobs and Dr. Venture merely tells Brock to "get their clothes".

[edit] Cultural references

• The Venture family dressed up for The Rocky Horror Picture Show as follows:
  • Dr. Venture - Frank-N-Furter
  • Dean - Riff-Raff
  • Hank - Columbia
  • Brock - Rocky
  • H.E.L.P.eR. - Magenta
• The movie Easy Rider is referenced several times, particularly in the diner scene, the deaths of Hank and Dean, the helmets they wear while riding their hover-bikes, and the closing credits.
• One of the prisoners participating in the Scared-Straight program is "Shame Face", whose face and body were severely burned in an accident involving super-heated plasma. He seems to be a parody of comic books' post-silver age tradition of villains disfigured due to their own misguided actions. Such a theme is common in the Batman mythos with Two-Face and The Joker. Shame Face is possibly a specific parody of Two-Face, except that his entire face was disfigured instead of only half.
• Dr. Venture's offer to his brother that he can have Dean, who can carry him around "like Master Blaster" is a direct reference to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
• Doctor Orpheus' windbreaker-and-necktie ensemble gives him a noticeable resemblance to PBS icon Mister Rogers.
• The line "...little miss, little miss can't be wrong," which Hank says to Dean as they're running away, is from the song Little Miss Can't Be Wrong by the Spin Doctors.
• Dr. Orpheus mentions that "there is a television behind the El Greco", referring to a painting he must own by the famous painter.
• Dr. Orpheus says, "Goodnight, you princes of Venture, you kings of sleepovers." This is a reference to a line in The Cider House Rules.
• The plot element of Dr. Venture trying to strangle his brother in the womb is likely an homage to Grant Morrison's E For Extinction storyline in New X-Men where Professor Xavier tries to kill his twin sister, Cassandra Nova, in the womb. Both Jonas Venture Jr. and Cassandra Nova return seeking revenge.
• Thaddeus tells Jonas Jr that he can have the "old busted-up chiffarobe". This, coupled with the fact that Jonas Jr has one mangled arm, is likely a reference to Tom Robinson of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
• The "Homeboy" figurine that Dr. Orpheus purchases is a reference to the Homies line of toys and merchandise.

[edit] Trivia

• This episode originally ran long and Jackson Publick accidentally cut a sequence which explained several key parts of the episode. The Venture family is commissioned to solve a ghost-case at a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when Brock attacks and injures almost everyone in the theater. This explains the injuries in the emergency room as well as the panic when everyone sees Brock (dressed as Rocky). In an attempt to fix this, Publick added in a 9-1-1 call that can be heard during the opening sequence. In addition, the title sequence was extremely shortened.
• The song that plays at the end of the episode is "Look Away", By Nick DeMayo.
• The painting seen in Dr. Venture's room is actually one of Doc Hammer's series of Saint oil paintings. The subject of the painting is Liz Vassey, who was a co-star of the live-action incarnation of The Tick.
• This episode contains several faux-homosexual references to the relationship between Dr. Venture and Brock, including a nurse assuming that Brock is Dr. Venture's domestic partner and Dr. Venture patting Brock's hand and saying "See, you big worry wart?" As Publick stated this potential characterization point was dropped almost even before the pilot aired, they cannot be taken seriously.
• The two punks who stole the boys' wrist communicators in "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay" are seen attending the Scared-Straight program.
• Henchman #21, for the record, did manage to grow a ponytail by the episode "Powerless in the Face of Death".
• The Monarch's list for the Henchmen to do:
  • Destroy the Giant Cocoon Headquarters (shown in the next episode)
  • Send the charred remains of Wonderboy to his beloved Captain Sunshine
  • Rewind and return the director's cut of "Working Girl".
  • Unleash the herpes-smeared sexbots among the traitorous members of the Guild.
  • Fill Phantom Limb's garage with clingy, static-charged Styrofoam packing peanuts.
  • Send apology letters to each of his sponsored Ugandan foster children.
  • Kill the Venture Brothers.
• During the extremely long wait between this and the second season, many fans speculated upon how the show would continue after the deaths of the titular Venture brothers. Popular theories were that Jonas Jr. and Dr. Venture would become the new Venture brothers, or that the boys would be cloned (due largely to an offhand remark of Dr. Venture's that he could have corrected Dean's propensity for testicular torsion "in the prototype phase," as well as the last line of this episode: "All right. Get their clothes.") Both of these predictions were actually correct, although the new Jonas Jr. / Dr. Venture team was only temporary.
• Ironically, Spider-Skull Island is never seen in this episode, and only passingly mentioned near the end of the episode. Publick has stated that he chose the name deliberately to keep from revealing the episode's surprises too early. (The island is shown in the second-season episode "Twenty Years to Midnight".)
• One of the animation directors (Kimson Albert) gets to have a "nickname" inserted into his credits. The nickname is an unusual line or word from the preceding episode. For "Return To Spider-Skull Island" the credit reads Kimson "King Gorilla" Albert.

[edit] Goofs

• As Dr. Orpheus brings Hank and Dean tea and pizza rolls, he carries a tray with two cups on it and each of the boys takes one cup. As the angle switches, there are still two cups on the tray. And as Dr. Orpheus places the tray on a table, one of them disappears.

Preceded by: "The Trial of the Monarch"

The Venture Bros. episodes original airdate: October 30th, 2004

Followed by: "A Very Venture Christmas"

The Venture Bros.
Episode Guide
Pilot	The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay
Season 1	1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13
Season 2	1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13
Specials	Christmas
Other	Phone Calls