23/07/01: So who can honestly say that they saw that one coming? The surprise ending to this episode is how I always imagined The Universe Is Toast would turn out, in what was said to be "...the biggest Keen ever", which was never made. Think about it - at the end of The Armageddon Machine, Keen fails to notice Mortimer's football helmet lying under the desk in the QED.
Now why would Mortimer, a so-called evil genius, leave his beloved football helmet behind? I suspected that it was because he had become a Shikadi and therefore had no real need for a helmet any longer. (I just brought his helmet back into the cartoon to keep his true form a secret to be revealed during the showdown.) So, it's good to finally share this idea with other Keensters after almost seven years since I came up with it. Maybe we'll never know if id had the same idea. (Unless Tom Hall spills the beans!)
So now when you're telling campfire tales, instead of resorting to tired old Blair Witch re-enactments for dramatic effect, you can hold the torch under your chin and say "Yes; I AM A SHIKADI!"
Another reason why this is my favourite episode from this cartoon series is all the references to Apogee games: Wolfenstein-3D, Cosmo, and, in the final frame, Keen IV. In the overlapping frames, Keen is reacting in the same way that he does when the Oracle shows him what the Shikadi look like.
Feel free to download or link to these images if you wanna use them as your I.D. icon on the CK forum or whatever:
