Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers is the 9th book in the Captain Underpants series. It was released on August 28, 2012.
Summary[]
The story continues where the previous book left off, with George and Harold and Sulu and Crackers running away from Tippy Tinkletrousers. As they are running away, the book explains that what happened was something that was not supposed to happen as Tippy and his Robo-pants were not supposed to appear at the point when George and Harold were about to be arrested as they actually came from the future.
The book then explains something called 'The Banana Cream Pie Paradox', which explains that going back to the past and changing something will remain its changed way in the present. Meanwhile, the story switches to the timeline of what will happen if Tippy Tinkletrousers did not appear. As George and Harold are being taken away by the cops, the cops stop by Mr. Krupp's house where he is seen taking out the trash after cleaning the house from the wet soggy toilet paper. The cops rush and handcuff a confused Mr. Krupp. After their court date, George, Harold, and Mr. Krupp aka Captain Underpants were arrested and were sent to jail. George and Harold are sent to the Juvenile Hall while Mr. Krupp was sent to the Piqua State Penitentiary. The 3 were actually framed and mistaken for Evil George Beard, Evil Harold Hutchins, and Captain Blunderpants's evil antics causing chaos in the town of Piqua. They were found guilty and Melvin laughed at them.
One autumn afternoon, Tippy (who is also a prisoner from the fourth book) is tasked to build a statue of Warden Gordon Bordon Shmorden, who is the chief jailer of the prison. Tippy does the task but instead builds "a giant robot suit". Krupp notices Tippy and he remembers and confronts him for what happened the last time when he shrunk the school and made everyone change their names. However, Krupp does not remember that he as Captain Underpants was the one to put a stop to Tippy's reign of terror that day.
On the day of the 10th Anniversary of the Penitentiary, Tippy presents his robot suit to Gordon Schmorden, he reveals his work and climbs on to the suit and freezes everyone in his way (the same suit used at the very end of the eighth book). Tippy then grabs Mr. Krupp and forces him to spill the information of Captain Underpants and to give him the information of George and Harold whereabouts. Tippy soon finds George and Harold at the Piqua juvenile detention centre and puts Mr. Krupp down, wanting information of Captain Underpants. Krupp picks on them telling them they were in a lot of trouble. Seeing that they were in danger of Tippy plotting his revenge, George and Harold act fast and snap their fingers at Mr. Krupp who turns into Captain Underpants. Tippy then realizes that Mr. Krupp was Captain Underpants all along and Captain Underpants gets chased, while Tippy is unsuccessfully trying to freeze him, soon he accidentally freezes his robotic legs and as a last resort, time travels to five years into the past. Captain Underpants flies down in confusion wondering where he might have gone.
The story switches to George and Harold as kindergartners who have a hard school life due to Kipper. (a school bully and Mr. Krupp's nephew.) Harold's father had recently gotten divorced and moved to Nevada about six months ago, none of which had been easy for Harold. He didn't talk much about the subject, and kept to himself, mostly, and drew lots and lots of pictures, mainly about monsters and superheroes. The monsters he created were always evil and ferocious, and his superheroes were always brave and trustworthy. Harold loved getting lost in his wonderful hand-drawn adventures, where the heroes were always triumphant and gave the bad guys the punishment that they deserved.
Everyday, Harold would get dressed and eat breakfast, trying hard not to think about the tough day ahead of him. He hated every minute at his elementary school, with his mean teacher, rough bullies, and a straight-up evil principal. He would brush his teeth and very carefully place his favorite drawings into his backpack, unaware that this day, his life would be changed forever.
On that day, Harold's mother helped him put on his backpack at the front door, assuring him that he might make a friend that day. She then tells Harold that a little boy had moved in next door last weekend, and asks him if he knows his name. Harold had seen the kid once or twice but never met him clearly, and shrugs. His mom suggests that he should go over and introduce himself, but poor Harold shrugs again. His mother then sends him off with a kiss and hug and hands him two dollars from her purse for his lunch, but tells him not to use it on any of the vending machines. Unfortunately, Harold's lunch money would never reach the candy or pop machine anyways, as it was usually taken by a sixth-grade bully named Kipper Krupp, who, coincidentally, was the nephew of the principal. Kipper Krupp is Benjamin Krupp's 6th grade nephew and captain of the wrist wasting practice Kipper and his friends Bugg, Loogie, and Finkstein liked to bully the kindergarteners, Since Kipper was the nephew of Benjamin Krupp and he often called for his uncle when he's in a jam, nobody could figure a way to give him and his friends a lasting form of punishment. Mr. Krupp would readily punish anyone who was "bullying" his nephew: Kipper Krupp. Kipper just needed to yell out for his uncle and explain to him what happened, though he usually made it look like he was bullied in front of his uncle. For example, when Kipper punched a little girl in the stomach, Kipper told his uncle that the girl's stomach somehow hit his fist first. Benjamin always believed his nephew's claims no matter how illogical they seemed. Harold knew from experience that the wisest thing to do would be to stay out of Kipper's way, making his daily walk to school much more complicated. He quickly ran in spurts from trash can to mailbox to the tree, hiding behind any object he could find, just in case Kipper and his mooks were nearby.
Usually, the worst section of Harold's mad dash to school was the intersection by Dogwood Drive and Rosita Lane, due to no hiding locations except for the alleys then to the coffeeshop's tree and the sign at the gas station across the street. Most days, he was lucky when waiting for the walk signal, until this particular day.
Harold crouched quietly behind the tree at the coffee shop, concentrating on the traffic lights and cars, watching out for Kipper and his mooks. This was very stressful, but after a few minutes, the cars paused, the walk signal lit up, and Harold glanced left and right one more time before bolting for the display sign at the front of the gas station. Unfortunately, Harold was almost immediately noticed by the sadistic owner of the gas station, Billy Bill, who yelled at him to get away from his sign. Then, the bullies came and started beating up Harold while Billy Bill laughed at him.
Described as a "precocious" child, George's mother had already taught him how to read and write, and by kindergarten, scored higher on tests "than most children half his age." In fact, George was so smart for his age his teachers recommended he skip to the third grade, but his parents decided against it, reasoning that George would be overall better off in a classroom with students his age. George's parents, however, came to question that decision, as although it helped George develop adept social skills and was well-liked by his classmates, he was often bored in class due to his higher intellect and sometimes got into mischief, to the dismay of his teachers and parents. When not riding his skateboard, reading comic books and graphic novels, or watching monster movies, George would often write stories, and had reportedly "filled up" twenty-one spiral notebooks full of "marvelously silly adventure stories" he had written. Most of George's stories would often offend his teachers and get him into trouble. Sometime during or before kindergarten, he and his parents moved from Michigan to Piqua, Ohio, in the hopes of starting a new life. On his first school day there, George's mother wanted George to make a good first impression at school by wearing a tie, which, after a short argument, reluctantly agreed to wear it, stating that "ties are for nerds".
On the way skateboarding to school, George was waiting for the traffic light to change when he saw Billy Bill, the unfriendly and cold gas station owner, push his new neighbor, Harold Hutchins towards a few mean-looking sixth-graders (Kipper and his friends), who yank him up and steal Harold's lunch money, while the gas station owner watched and cruelly told the kid he needed to learn to stick up for himself, apparently humored by the child's lack of advantage against the bullies. George was visibly angered by the hostility and unfairness of the circumstance, as the bullies and Bill were easily bigger and stronger than Harold and outnumbered him 5 - 1. When the light changed and the bullies had dragged poor Harold away, George walked over and switched the words on the gas station sign from "Free Brake Inspection" to "Free Bra Inspection", attracting the attention of an increasing mob of women, who became angry at the new words on the sign and beat the horrible gas station owner senseless, while George parroted the same words Bill had said to Harold.
Finished with Bill, George skateboarded to the school and yelled at the boys to leave Harold alone. When the bullies, Kipper Krupp and his gang, began to run toward George, he undid his tie and proceeded to whip Kipper and his friends with his tie, scaring them to retreat into a trash bin. With the bullies in the trash bin, George stated firmly to them that if they messed with him or Harold again, they "will get the tie", and snapped his tie in the air again to make his point. Through his tears, Kipper wailed for his uncle Benjamin Krupp, who came over and demanded what was going on. Kipper framed George for bullying him and took George and Harold (whom Krupp thought was lying about George merely defending himself) into detention.
In detention, the two sat quietly until Harold started to draw. Harold introduced himself as George's neighbor and lent him papers to write on. George and Harold spent the entirety of the detention (which lasted all day due to Krupp being so busy that day he forgot about the boys) working on their first comic together, The Adventures of Dog Man. On the way out the school, the two came across Kipper and his gang, about to give "killer wedgies" to a couple of kindergartners, but when they saw George, the bullies released the kids and ran away. On the way home, the two talked about each other's interests and decided to start their own comic book company, Tree House Comix Inc. After greeting his father, introducing him to Harold, making a couple of peanut butter and gummy-worm sandwiches, the boys went straight to George's bedroom and began writing a list of Kipper Krupp's strengths and weaknesses, only having but only needing "kinda dumb" under the weaknesses section.
The next day at school, the boys spent every free moment they had spying on Kipper and his gang, studying his schedule, behavior, and activities. They got his locker number and the type of padlock he used, even going so far as to stay after school, when Kipper had wrestling class. In just a week, George and Harold knew Kipper's schedule better than Kipper himself knew. One day after school, the boys went to a local hardware store and bought a padlock that was the same type as Kipper's and went across the street to a toy store and bought a Susie Sunshine Friendship Bracelet Kit. That weekend, George and Harold spent most of their time planning and designing pranks to assist them in putting an end to Kipper's bullying. They got a roll of shelf-lining paper from the Beard family's kitchen and pants and dress shoes Harold's father left behind and nailed them to a pair of wooden stilts they had built.
On Monday, when Kipper and his gang go to wrestling practice, George and Harold empty his stolen lunch money and use it to buy pizzas for the kindergartners from Piqua Pizza Palace, puts money, coupons, instructions and a tip for the delivery guy in the mail slot, and replaces the money with girly things like friendship bracelets. The next day they put dresses, and on the third day, dolls, while sending strange texts to Kipper's goons on all three days with them getting all freaked out, while placing a note from "Wedgie Magee" with it. causing him to get embarrassed in front of his friends.
However, Kipper eventually catches on to George and Harold's padlock, and replaces it with a Supa Doopa Combo Lock 2000 while wedging Donny Shoemeyer, and the next day, him and his gang steal the pizzas that George and Harold bought for the kindergartners as a way to torture them even further. Infuriated, the two friends come up with another major prank on the bullies in retaliation. First, they fill the four bullies' lockers with shaving cream to pass it off as ectoplasmic ghost juice. Then they run outside scaring their heads off, while the cheerleaders were finishing their practice. Then they go to Kipper, Bugg, Loogie, and Finkstein's lockers and "run for their lives" when they see the "ectoplasm".
While initially this works, Principal Krupp points out that the "ectoplasm" was obviously sprayed through the vents on doors and is shaving cream. Enraged and tired of the anonymous pranks, Kipper and his friends begin to torture the kindergarteners for answers, even stealing more pizzas, which George and Harold were actually counting on them to steal, as they ordered them to have double ghost chili peppers (Piqua Pizza Palace's hottest chili peppers) which cause the bullies' tongues to burn up completely, resulting in them getting sent to the nurse's office.
George and Harold eventually create a comic that tells the tale of Wedgie Magee and the signs of his curse that looks very old, all of which match their pranks. They then put extra hot cheese in their "Man Stik" deodorants so their burn they armpits. Then they take a couple of garden spiders and blow them into the vents of the bullies' lockers. Loogie, who has a fear to spiders, tells Kipper and the gang that they to get out of here.
Mr. Krupp is at a meeting when he hears the screaming and goes to get to the bottom of this. Kipper and his goons run and enter the restroom. After Kipper and his gang "see" that ghost (George on stilts, wearing a giant pair of pants), they run outside in terror, during a severe thunderstorm and power outage while beating up Mr. Krupp, thinking he's a monster.
On Monday morning, Kipper gives a 5-dollar bill to Donny and promises to return all the money he stole from him. Elsewhere, Kipper's friends are passing out money to the kindergartners and doing good deeds for them. Kipper and his friends eventually gave back all the money they stole and never picked on anyone ever again. George and Harold would later call off the vengeful wrath of Wedgie Magee after they were certain their enemies were truly reformed. However, it is revealed that what happened was what was supposed to happen is not what actually did happen. As it turns out, Tippy had time-traveled to when Kipper and his friends were running out of the school.
It then goes back to when Kipper and his friends were running out of the school. At this point, Tippy and his Robo-pants appear. Due to Tippy's appearance and dialogue with Kipper and his friends while it was still dark, they mistakenly thought that it's the haunted pants of Wedgie Magee. They were all so shocked by this, that all four of the boys snapped. Any sort of mental sanity Kipper and his gang had was thrown out the window, as they all go completely insane. Kipper babbles nonsense as he smacks his face over and over, Bugg strips down to nothing but his boxers and starts to dance the hula, while singing ''I'm a Little Teapot'', Loogie starts to eat the dirt, and Finkstein just bangs his head on the ground. Tippy then travels four years into the future when George and Harold were about to be arrested in Book 8.
Unbeknownst to Tippy, his actions led to Kipper and his friends being sent to a mental health institute and the police to immediately suspect Mr. Krupp for what happened to the sixth graders (in both the original and changed timeline, Mr. Krupp was unintentionally beaten up by his own nephew, and his friends while escaping from the school due to a blackout). The cops show up and blame Mr. Krupp for everything. This eventually led to Mr. Krupp being fired which means in a few years he would not be hypnotized by the 3D Hypno Ring into becoming Captain Underpants.
Tippy then time travels back to the present time, thinking that kids five years from the past were weird. However, as Mr. Krupp never got hypnotized by George and Harold, a universe is created where Captain Underpants never existed. Tippy arrives at a present destroyed and overrun by giant evil zombie nerds caused by Doctor Diaper's Laser-Matic 2000. After learning of the changes that have happened in the present, Tippy realizes the terrible mistake he made and becomes determined to return time to normal and save Captain Underpants. Tippy screams and yells in agony for minutes before putting a large ketchup packet and escapes, which the packet gets squished by George and Harold, who are now giant zombie nerds.
(Although the end of the book didn't show what really happened, it is true.)
Comics[]
The Super Top-Secret Truth about Captain Underpants (intro comic)[]
This comic is a recap of the events of the other books that lead up to the present day.
The Advenchers of Dog Man[]
The comic begins with a police guy whose partner is a specially trained police dog named Greg. They are professionals in catching criminals. One day, he and Greg spotted a bomb, but it was too late to defuse it. Then they got transported to the Hospital via Ambulance. The doctor announces that Greg's body is dying and the Cop's head is dying too. Then the nurse had a great idea: that he will cut off Greg's head and sew it on the Cop's body. The doctor accepted the idea and they held a big operation. It was successful and everyone called him "Dog Man." Dog Man is the best of all cops because he sniffs criminals with his nose, hears crimes with his ears, and punch criminals with his fist. But he had one mortal fear: vacuum cleaners. Petey, the "world's evilest cat," saw Dog Man's weakness so he invented the evil vacuum robot. The robot stole all the money from the bank and Dog Man came to stop it but the vacuum was chasing him. The robot chased Dog Man until he reached the corner. Dog Man knew it was death time for him until the plug for the robot got unplugged. Dog Man then destroyed the robot and followed the cord. The cord leads to Petey's hideout and they arrested him. Then Dog Man celebrated the victory by drinking some non-alcoholic wine.
The Curse of Wedgie Magee (A True Storie)[]
Once there was a kindergartner named Wedgie Magee, who always got picked on by a gang of bullies. The bullies always gave him wedgies and stole his money. One day, he went to see a Gypsy Lady and tells her what was happening. She tells him that she was going to give him a special potion that will help him. She was supposed to give him the Anti-Wedgie Potion, but she forgot her glasses and gave him a ''Voodoo Ghost Potion' instead. She tells Wedgie that when the bullies come by to give him a wedgie, he had to pour the potion onto his pants. The next day the bullies came by to gave him a wedgie, so he poured it onto his pants. The pants disappeared and became a ghost. Nobody was scared as they were too busy laughing at Wedgie Magee's lack of pants, causing him to die of embarrassment. On that very night when Wedgie Magee died, his pants came back for revenge. He ate the first bully on his way home from school, ate up the second bully while he was eating dinner, and ate up the third bully when he was in bed. After that, his pants are laid to rest, but he will be back to appear to people who are mean to Kindergartners. At the back of the comic book, there is a bonus section page explaining to the reader or Kipper and his friends the ways he could get cursed and how to undo it.
Here are the reasons:
- You start acting all weird and stuff.
- You want to play with dolls, dresses, and bracelets.
- You get ectoplasm and spiders on your stuff.
- Awesome food like pizza tastes all hot and burns your mouth and stuff.
- Your armpits get all burned and stuff.
The only way to undo this curse is must undo all the bad stuff you did and never pick on nobody ever again.
Characters[]
- George Beard
- Harold Hutchins
- Benjamin Krupp
- Tippy Tinkletrousers
- Captain Underpants
- Sulu
- Crackers
- Melvin Sneedly (Mention)
- Warden Gordon Bordon Schmorden
- Director Hector Schemceter
- The Employee of Everything Except Fabric Softener
- Billy Bill (debut)
- Kipper Krupp (debut)
- Loogie Tope (debut)
- Bugg Usalowzgi (debut)
- Finkstien Noviz (debut)
- Wendy Swan
- Piqua Pizza Guy
- The Haunted Pants Of Wedgie Magee (debut)
- Moses Beard
- Barbara Beard
- Grace Hutchins
- Donny Shoemyer
- Little Boy and his Mom
- Officer Wiggly and the Police Chief
- Zombie Nerd George Beard and Zombie Nerd Harold Hutchins
- The Talking Toilets (cameos in destroyed form)
- Petey The Cat (comic book, second appearance)
- Dog Man (comic book, partial debut due to the mention in the first book)
- Chief (comic book, debut)
- Genie S. Lady (comic book, debut)
- Doctor (comic book, debut)
Trivia[]
- Mr. Krupp's full first name is revealed to be Benjamin.
- On the last page of the book, The Original version said "Except for This One", but in the full color version, it said "Just Kidding, There will be more, Trust me." with Tippy saying "I Will be back too" (This was not included on the last page in the original version)
- The 26th chapter is called When Kipper gets angry- really, really angry, and it is a reference to When Sophie gets angry- really, really angry books.
- This book reveals a lot of George and Harold's past and how they met among other things.
- The Coming Soon/Coming Sooner-ish section of the 8th book shows that this book has a scene involving Tippy chasing Captain Underpants, George, Harold, Sulu and Crackers on a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Cretaceous Period. The final version of this book doesn't have this scene, but the tenth book shows that the gang will go to the Cretaceous Period, and a redrawn version of that scene is used in chapter 7 of book 10.
- The Everything Except Fabric Softener Store makes a third appearance in the series. It previously appeared in the fifth book and the seventh book.
- The eleventh chapter is called Furious George. This is a reference to the book parody that Dav Pilkey was initially going to make before he abandoned it and went to work on the first Captain Underpants book (because his girlfriend thought it was too offensive to be published). Even though Furious George was never made into a book, Dav Pilkey liked the flipping action violence so much that he dubbed it Flip-O-Rama and incorporated this into the Captain Underpants and Ricky Ricotta books. (The name Furious George is also an obvious parody of Curious George.)
- Furious George was eventually made by another publisher.
- The Flip-O-Rama chapter's title is a parody of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (in the book it’s “Indiana George and the Tie of Doom
- The little boy and his mother make a return appearance in this book. Their last appearance was in the fourth book, which was Professor Poopypants' debut appearance.
- In the 8th book, it was implied that Jerome Horwitz Elementary School did not have a school nurse. In this book, it's revealed that the school does have a school nurse as Kipper and his friends had to spend two hours in the nurse's room with ice packs on their tongues since they were burned by the ghost chili peppers. However, it's possible that the school stopped having a school nurse at some point after George and Harold's kindergarten times.
- This book's intertwining story of George and Harold's past is by far the longest story in any of the books shown thus far. Most backstories are relatively short while the main part of the storyline takes up most of the book. The main part of the storyline in this book is relatively short in comparison to most books as the parts explaining what actually did happen and where Tippy went and what his actions did are explained at the beginning of the story and close to the end. The remaining parts of the story are George and Harold's past.
- This book by far is the longest book in the series, with a page total of 304.
- The sixth chapter of this book is called "Calling Captain Underpants." This is a reference to the song of the same name by Koji Matsumoto.
- In Chapter 16 when George and Harold are buying Susie Sunshine Friendship Bracelet Kit, there's Carbie dolls and accessory sets at the shelf, which is based on Barbie dolls. It is removed in the Full Color edition.
- On page 167 in the Full Color versions there is a period missing after Kipper, at the bottom of the page. The period exists in the original releases however.
- Crackers and Sulu are notably absent in this story but they appeared in chapter 1. (In the scene from Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People with George, Harold, Crackers, and Sulu running from Tippy in the Freezy-Beam 4000 Robo-Suit.)