Blame the Gremlins

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Hooooobgoblins, hoooobgoblins, what do ya do with those hooooobgoblins?
"Blame the Gremlins"
Season	2
No. in season	8
Production company	Hasbro Studios
Airdate	April 12, 2014
Writer	Amy Gershwin
Director	Nathan Chew
Animation studio	Vision Animation
Watch this episode on YouTube

Kade's nightmares come to life and threaten Griffin Rock and Cody and the Rescue Bots must help.

Synopsis

Blades enjoys some kite flying, watched by the other Rescue Bots, but Cody's warning about letting the string out too far comes too late, and the kite gets caught in a tree. As they're conducting a postmortem, they spot Taylor's plane overhead, spewing smoke. The team swings into action, and Dani has Taylor steer the plane out over the ocean before jumping out. Unfortunately the plane turns back towards town, and Heatwave has to use water to direct it away from a building. Dani uses a safety line to get into the plane and steers it away from some houses, however the steering soon breaks with the plane headed directly for the laboratory. As Dani bails, Doc Greene runs out in front of the laboratory and tags the plane with the Collision Foam Cannon, covering it with foam and causing it to make a safe landing on the lab's runway. As the team looks over the plane for damage, Dani and Graham wonder why it turned back towards town and joke that it must have been gremlins.

They're all over here,

Later at the fire station, Cody tells the Rescue Bots about gremlins, and they realize gremlins could be behind a lot of Griffin Rock's technology woes, though Cody points out the book says they're myths. That night, Kade has a nightmare that he's flying a plane with a gremlin ripping up the engine and wakes up. Cody finds him drinking milk in the kitchen, and suggests he talk to Doc Greene about a nightmare cure. Moments later, he and Heatwave are called out to attend to a loose wind turbine and Cody comes along. While Heatwave holds the tower steady, Kade tries to tighten an anchor bolt, only to fall asleep and dream of gremlins again. The delay results in the tower pulling loose, and Kade and Cody are almost diced by the runaway fan. Heatwave yells at Kade for endangering Cody, and suggests he get some sleep.

They're all over there,

Chief Burns catches Cody heading out to the lab the next morning, and Cody's forced to tell them that Kade's seeking help for his bad dreams about gremlins. Dani and Graham admit they used to tell Kade stories about gremlins when they were little, giving him the nightmares. At the lab, Doc Greene shows off his Nightmare Imaging Device, which will create energy representations of his nightmares, allowing him to face his fears during the daytime. Kade is soon sleeping in the device's sleep chamber, and Greene powers the machine up, causing gremlins to materialize in the energy chamber. The plan rapidly becomes unfurled as the gremlins break through the chamber's glass and spread out around the lab, though as the Doc observes, they have limited energy and disappear once that's exhausted. Heatwave wakes Kade, however things go from bad to worse when the gremlins start draining power from the electrical devices around the lab. Once they blow the lab's breakers, the gremlins start drawing power from tech with batteries and cause more havoc before heading out towards town.

Those darn hobgoblins are everywhere!

Cody warns the rest of the team, as the gremlins overrun Griffin Rock, draining energy from everything in sight. Luckily they can't drain energon, so the Bots are safe but everything else is fair game. The team starts using batteries as bait to trap the gremlins, resulting in many of them evaporating out of existence, but another group of them starts heading for the power plant. The team rolls out for there as well, hoping to power down the plant before the gremlins can drain it. Heatwave and Kade get there first, and though Kade is initially afraid to leave the safety of his partner, he gets out and manages to turn the power off. The rest of the gremlins disappear in a puff of smoke and Kade returns to his usual cocky self. As the others arrive, he suggests the Nightmare Imaging Device be delivered to the Best Left Forgotten section at the Hall of Inspiration. That night, it's Dani and Graham who have nightmares about gremlins.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"You know what else is considered a myth? Aliens! And yet..."

—Blades makes a good point.

"Then my nightmare would undoubtedly contain a town where nobody broke the law, rendering me useless."
"Mine would be cumulus clouds. Seriously, they're nature's shapeshifters."

—Chase and Blades

"So they're basically walking cartoons?"
"GASP! Cartoons aren't real?"

—Dani and Blades

Notes

Continuity notes

• Boulder suggests the gremlins might be behind the problems with Mr. Harrison's heli-pack.
• Technology visible in the laboratory includes the jukebox from "Shake Up" and the newspaper dispenser from "Hotshots"
• Chase uses an Energize tool that fires a net to catch some of the gremlins.
• The second cloud Blades points out looks like a flobster.
• In "The Alien Invasion of Griffin Rock", Heatwave and co. struggled to break into the power plant when the electric door deactivated. In this episode, Heatwave just crashes right through the wall without even stopping.

Transformers references

• Autobots dealing with a menace to tech? Good thing they ain't Japanese energy titans meant to distract them.

Real-world references

• Gremlins are, in fact, a popular piece of "modern" folklore. Royal Air Force service members began to reference them in the 1920s, and they were popularized during World War II when pilots on both sides of the European Theater began suffering large numbers of inexplicable difficulties with their respective aircraft.
• The gremlins in this story owe a lot to the 1984 film Gremlins produced by Steven Spielberg.
• As Blades points out a shark-shaped cloud, a chord from the Jaws theme plays.
• The nightmare Kade has about a gremlin tearing apart the engine of a plane is lifted directly from The Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

Animation and technical errors

• Doc Greene says the sleep chamber is sound-proofed, yet Kade's snoring is very audible while he's inside it.

Trivia

• Gremlins can't drain energon. Got it.
• Kade has a large poster of himself above his bed.

Foreign localization

French

• Title: "La machine à cauchemars" ("The Nightmare Machine")
• Original airdate: ?

Hungarian

• Title: "A gremlinek" ("The Gremlins")
• Original airdate: 16 November 2014

Italian

• Title: "Colpa dei Gremlin" ("Fault of the Gremlins")
• Original airdate: 14 July 2017

Portuguese

• Title: "A Hora do Pesadelo" ("The Nightmare Time")
• Original airdate: 1 April 2015 (Netflix)

Home video releases

2014 — Rescue Bots — "Mystery Rescue" (Shout! Factory)
2015 — Rescue Bots — "Space Bots" (Beyond Home Entertainment)