Prankklok

"And the ocean was at once the destroyer, AND the savior."

- Ishnifus Meaddle

"Prankklok" is the third episode of the fourth season of Metalocalypse, fifty-second overall. It aired on May 13, 2012, on Adult Swim.

Synopsis
Murderface tricks Skwisgaar and Toki with various phone calls. Meanwhile, Nathan and Pickles plan their Friender Bender but a storm derails their plans.

The new album
"And the ocean was at once the destroyer and the saviour." These cryptic words resonate as newscasters talk about how the new Dethklok album is shipped off, ready to hit stores simultaneously worldwide. Facebones gave an announcement that this limited edition album will only be only available in liquid format and that anyone caught pirating it will be subjected to imprisonment without due process. Dethklok gave a one-note sample of the new album and it was reported as reaching unprecedented levels of brutality.

Friender Bender
Charles talks about how now that the album is officially shipped, the band can talk about tour plotting, staging, and merchandise. Murderface interrupts him to show him "the art of the prank call", which consists of calling Toki (who is sitting next to him) and pretending he is an old lady who wants to visit him and then pretending to want to order pizza in the same phone call. Toki doesn't catch on, and worries about the old lady when the call gets cut. Murderface immediately calls Skwisgaar and pretends to be an overweight African-American lady who wants to meet him for sex. Skwisgaar takes the call seriously and tells "her" to be more discreet.

Nathan ignores this and asks loudly if the colour red on their album cover art is too pink. He complains it looks like tomato soup and asks Charles to send it back and ask for more blood red. Charles says the albums have been shipped out, so it's too late to change anything and Pickles agrees. Meanwhile, Skwisgaar's fake booty call hangs up on him and he worries about the caller. Murderface continues pranking Toki and Skwisgaar, telling them he is the princess of the forest and then hanging up. Nathan asks William if that's all he will do during his vacation and Murderface gets angry and tells him he will go to a Gettysburg reenactment, something he has been looking forward to for a long time. Pickles asks Skwisgaar what he will do with his free time once the album comes out and the guitarist responds "probablyes finally get some times to play guitars" as he frets endlessly and Toki he says he will watch him play guitar.

Nathan and Pickles announce that they're going around the world as a duo to get drunk until they blackout, though Pickles clarifies that he doesn't pass out and that Nathan is not allowed to have tequila because it "turns him into a dark person". Pickles forces Nathan to promise he won't drink tequila and Nathan apologetically agrees, saying he doesn't even remember the last time he had tequila. A brief flashback shows him in Japan, screaming and bodily throwing people around. The rest of Dethklok seems to remember the incident well.

At the Tribunal discusses the current situation, both the shipment of the new album and Dethklok's planned vacation. Crozier is well informed about the Shanghai shipment that left heavily guarded at 0700 hours since he keeps close surveillance on all Dethklok activity. Vater Orlaag mentions that the People's Liberation Army air force shipped the liquid master copy back to Mordhaus. Senator Stampingston declares that Murderface has become a master at prank calls and calls in the Prank Call Specialist, Dr. Borgermu Barret Swingdworth. Dr. Swingdworth explains that prank calls are an old tradition dating back to the 18th century when prank messages were delivered on the Prank Pony Express. According to him, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone solely to expedite the process of humiliating friends and strangers. He also warns that prank calls can spiral out of control and cause wars, like when the Pearl Harbor bombing happened after a European child prank-called Emperor Hirohito or when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened when someone prank-called Fidel Castro's nephew. The warns that the telephone is a powerful technology that can lead people to discover a new level of humiliation and shame.

Later, at a private meeting of only Mr. Salacia, General Crozier, and Vater Orlaag, Salacia warns that the new Dethklok album the center of the world's economy as everything revolves around it. Crozier says that the FalconBack legislation will pass as long as the general populace is distracted by Dethklok's doings and the economy remains stable, with people having jobs and the real estate market rising. Vater Orlaag says that hopefully Dethklok's excessive drinking and prank calling won't interfere with the stable economy they have unwittingly created. Salacia repeats that the album has already been shipped, so he wants to see Dethklok's decadence play out.

The Scandinavian prank
Toki is in his room playing with a coloring book when he gets another call from Murderface, who this time is pretending to be a radio DJ giving Toki a prize. Supposedly, Toki has won two tickets to Splasharoonie Water Park, and even when Murderface slips up and mentions Skwisgaar, Toki doesn't find anything suspicious and wants to claim his tickets. Murderface gives him instructions to go to a certain address and "say the magic phrase". Toki does invite Skwisgaar and the two go to a shabby, run-down bar called "the Exhumed Tavern". They walk in and Toki calls everyone's attention so he can say the phrase, which he somehow has not read even though he wrote it is down himself on a piece of paper from his coloring book. The phrase turns out to be "I would like you all to suck my c*ck!" The rough-looking bar patrons don't look at all amused and Skwisgaar finally realizes something is amiss and yells at Toki to call back the DJ, who admits he doesn't know who it was since he received the call. Skwisgaar thinks to look at Toki's call history and they realize Murderface is the culprit.

Pickles and Nathan plan their Friender Bender. Their first stop is Russia, where they will drink potato vodka and look at polar bears. Then it's on to Switzerland to drink absinthe and jello shots and then parachute-ski off the alps. After that, it's Italy to drink grappa and flip off Renaissance art. Then it's London in the UK, where they will have dry martinis with the local gin and flip off the Buckingham Palace. Pickles pauses to remind Nathan not to obsess over the album, and Nathan agrees even though he has it in his hand and is staring at it intently. Now that their plans are finished, they have nothing to do in the two hours before their plane arrives, so they decide to get started on the drinking. They revel around Mordhaus, urinating off one the roofs on top of the Klokateers, performing a helicopter two-man kegstand, and generally drinking all the accessible liquor around. They run out and begin to look for anything they may have missed and Nathan finds an unopened bottle of tequila and looks at it longingly. Pickles manages to find some blueberry schnapps, but when he turns around Nathan is not in the kitchen anymore.

Meanwhile, Murderface is packing for his Gettysburg reenactment trip and Skwisgaar and Toki plot their revenge. Their plan is to order dangerous or illegal items with Murderface's credit card, which will make it very hard for him to travel on commercial airlines. Skwisgaar orders firearms, explosives and, anthrax, and he snickers with Toki about how airport security might kill William; but he gets interrupted when Murderface comes into his room to politely say goodbye and wishes them both to be safe. The new Dethklok album is all over the news and the newscasters say that the world economy is depending on this album to get a boost. The US Treasury made a new denomination of currency: the klokillion, which is one million trillions. The world's economists are basing their projections entirely on the sale of the album and the subsequent planned tour. In Mordhaus, Nathan is silently staring at the liquid master, the open bottle of tequila in his hand. A Klokateer informs him that the Dethjet is grounded due to the gathering storm. Murderface arrives at the airport with Toki and Skwisgaar sneaking behind, sniggering for the trouble Murderface is about to get in. Nathan continues to glower at the liquid master and a female voice tells him to destroy it while he has visions of enormous whales. In the airport, security appears to somehow figure out it was Skwisgaar and Toki who placed the phone calls for weapons and they receive a beating instead of Murderface. The storm gathers strength and breaks all the glass in the airport, grounding all the flights due to weather concerns. Murderface spots the two guitarists being brutalized by security and he begins to laugh, but he gets punched as well. The storm increases further and a global map shows at least 18 epicenters of hurricanes around the world, which greatly disturbs Pickles. At the sea, the bizarre hurricanes create vortexes and maelstroms that swallow up the ships carrying the shipments of the new album, sinking all of them. Soon, the only remaining copy in existence is the liquid master in Mordhaus. Pickles goes to the basement to look for Nathan and check on the liquid master and to his horror he finds Nathan standing over it with an axe. Nathan mutters that it's a sign that the master must be destroyed and raises the axe but Pickles interferes and the two struggle.

Eventually, Nathan punches his best friend in the face and Pickles falls backward, his nose bleeding. He can only look aghast as Nathan brings down the axe on the liquid master, which gives a rather organic scream as it is destroyed. As the episode ends, Edgar Jomfru looks at the data he has been gathering and says that Dethklok must go back in the water

Trivia

 * When Toki and Skwisgaar come into the bar to ask for their tickets, there's a guy wearing an Ash Ketchum's hat.
 * Facebones says that prisoners of Dethklok will experience eye-poking, waterboarding, acts of war, throat slashing, and butt humpin'.
 * The new album ships from Shanghai, China. This means that even though H.E.A.R.D. technology was discovered and perfected in the USA, the manufacturing part has already been outsourced to China.
 * Murderface's passion for historical wars, particularly the US Civil War comes up again in this episode. It's possible that his friends outside of Dethklok are from the reenactment groups and it could explain his mysterious phone buddy in Dethtroll.
 * Pickles' relative immunity to drugs and alcohol is brought up again when he mentions his tolerance is much higher than Nathan's. This was first mentioned in Snakes n' Barrels.
 * When Nathan is shown terrorizing the Japanese, he lets out a roar reminiscent of a kaijin.
 * Dethklok was in Japan in time for Toki's birthday, it's possible that this was when Nathan got drunk.
 * There is a brief shot of the Falconback Project when Crozier is speaking about the shipment, maybe because he used the resources of the project to spy on Dethklok.
 * Murderface travels in a commercial airline even though he's the fifth richest man on the planet and Dethklok owns a number of personal aircraft. There's no indication on what happened to all his money, but it's mentioned in Dethvanity that he has a hard time keeping his trillions.
 * Murderface's credit card number is 9665 5456 1234 3213.
 * The klokillion is the same as one quintillion. It is 1,000,000(1,000,000,000,000) or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1018dollars.
 * It's consistent with Dethklok's relation to the number five because one quintillion is 1000 x (1000)5.
 * Edgar's cryptic words at the end of the episode are a reference to Dethklok's song Go into the Water. It is unknown as of now how this related to the prophecy and Dethklok's powers.