Splitting Images
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| "Splitting Images" Danny Phantom episode |
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| Season | 1 |
| Number | 5 |
| Prod. code | 005 |
| Airdate | April 24, 2004 |
| Special Guest(s) | Peter MacNicol as Sidney Poindexter |
| Writer(s) | Marty Isenberg |
| Directors | Wincat Alcala, Butch Hartman, Richard Bowman |
| Ghost Appearances | Sidney Poindexter (1st), Box Ghost |
| Abbreviation | SI |
| Previous episode Attack of the Killer Garage Sale |
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| Next episode What You Want |
"Splitting Images" is the fifth episode of the TV series Danny Phantom. Danny must deal with a teenage ghost nerd who wants revenge on bullies for what he had to suffer through.
[edit] Episode Recap
The reluctant Danny and Tucker help Sam carry boxes filled with live frogs which Sam wishes to save from being dissected, instead preferring to use robotic frogs as alternatives. She plans to announce this in the school's auditorium. The Box Ghost comes out of nowhere and attacks Danny, causing the two to battle throughout the school, ultimately landing inside the auditorium where Box Ghost attacks Danny with boxes containing costumes and props for a school play. With Danny smothered in clothes, Box Ghost makes his exit just as Sam makes her entrance to the stage podium to displace her disgust. Unfortunately for her, the students pay more attention to Danny, laughing at his expense due to him donned in a pink dress from the clothes thrown at him.
Sam displays anger towards Danny for making her frog saving campaign a bust while Danny is sentenced to a new locker after his old one got trashed by the Box Ghost; locker 724. Tucker and Sam immediately gasp in shock while a confused Danny opens the locker to find only a mirror hanging inside. Tucker starts to explain the locker is cursed when Dash and his friends come to bully Danny, stuffing him in his new locker. A peeved Danny goes ghost and thrashes Dash and his gang, something Tucker expresses great satisfaction on while Sam critisizes her displeasure for his power abuse. When the three leave, locker 724 glows as a voice echoes, "Bullies...".
Back home, Danny is informed that his parents will be coming over to investigate his school for ghosts (with their newest invention, the Ghost Gauntlets), something which Jazz relents upon. The next day in school, a mysterious ghost from Danny's new locker retaliates to all the bullies he sees in contact, causing every student to think the school is haunted. Sam immediately suspects Danny who merely defends himself, saying he did nothing. Before Sam can berate some more, she eyes Mr. Lancer and rushes away leaving Tucker to take this time in telling the story of Sidney Poindexter, a local nerd from the 50's who was bullied more times then anyone else in Casper High (enough that it was a required graduation project). Because he was stuffed in his locker more times then anyone could count, Sidney is rumored to haunt it to this day. Sam returns afterwards with a box of frogs she smuggled while Lancer wasn't looking. After getting bullied yet again by Dash, Danny stuffs Sam's frogs down his pants in the hallway despite her protest.
Sidney, having finally been freed from his locker imprisonment, witnesses Danny's recent abuse towards Dash and confronts him, thinking him to be a bully. Danny tries to convince him otherwise, but instead gets him angry, causing a commotion in various rooms of the school, something which Jack and Maddie also discover when they see various high schoolers running for their lives, much to the dismay of Jazz. With Sidney on the offensive, Danny has no choice but to fight back, eventually leading him to the school's boiler room where he accidentally becomes human, prompting Sidney to cry out that he is the "halfa" (half a boy, half a ghost).
Under the impression that Danny is using his powers for evil, and also discovering that he can possess people, an upset, yet hopeful Sidney overshadows Danny's body, causing Danny's ghost half to end up in Sidney's body in his world, a 1950's black and white Ghost Zone. Sidney gets used to Danny's world, using misunderstood kindness (using his powers to steal sodas for others from soda machines) to gain the friendship of others, (which Sam takes advantage off to get the others to support her cause,) while Danny suffers the bullying Sidney had to go through.
Going back to his locker, Danny tries in vain to contact Tucker and Sam, but with no luck. Only when Sam and Tucker head nearby locker 724 does Danny catch their attention and convince them of who he is. He then quickly express his guilt for being a bully to Dash and then thinks of a plan with his friends to get his body back. Sam urges Sidney to come over to help a poor nerd in need later on, only for him to be taken to his zone through the portal in the mirror.
There, Danny and Sidney fight while Sidney's peers watch, expressing in awe that Sidney (really Danny) was defeating the halfa. Only when Danny threatens to smash the mirror does Sidney dive inside his own body where Danny fights for and gains back his own body. He dives back to his own world through the mirror while Sidney apparently gets praise from his peers over his impressive fighting against Danny Phantom, prompting him to forget any set of revenge he had earlier.
Danny, upon returning to his own world, destroys the mirror and apologizes for what he has done. Despite the loss of Danny's popularity, Sam gets her wish for the school to use mechanical frogs for dissection then real ones. At the last minute the Box Ghost reappeares and snatches one of the robotic frogs, declaring, "I am no longer the Box Ghost. I am now the Mechanical Frog Ghost!", however the frog overloads, causing him to revert back to his previous namesake and disappear.
[edit] Allusion
- Title: The show's title may be a reference to the old phrase "spitting image", which is where one looks remarkably like another. Considering Poindexter and Danny are stuck in the opposite body for a majority of this episode, it can be inferred that each one is a spitting image of other.
- If you add the digits of locker 724 together (7+2+4), they equal to 13, a number considered to be unlucky in many cultures.
- The "I can't believe it's not a frog cadaver" is an obvious spoof of the product "I can't believe it's not butter".
- The "Save the Frogs" scheme is an obvious parody of "Save the Whales".
- When Danny first encountered the Box Ghost in this episode and was flung to the auditorium, he was attacked with "costumes and props from the Broadway classic, "My Fair Lady".
