"It's Time for Horror!"

Produced 2005, aired in U.S. on 3/24/06

Production order: 34 (2-14)

Danny is enjoying a meal at the Nasty Burger with his friends when Jazz bursts in, telling him to hide. Their parents have dressed in 80s' clothes and brought a radio playing 80s' music, embarrassing their children in front of the other teenagers at the diner. When Danny goes outside, he encounters Plasmius, who soon detransforms to reveal that his ecto-acne from his lab accident has returned. To ensure Danny will help him find a cure, Vlad releases a gas that afflicts Tucker and Sam with ecto-acne as well. Danny's parents soon show up and bring the patients to their house where they're closely monitored. Maddie lets slip that Sam and Tucker's cases of ecto-acne are fatal.

Intentionally or not, Vlad's use of words inspires Danny to seek out Clockwork in hopes of going back in time to prevent Vlad's accident so he will not gain ecto-acne or ghost powers. Clockwork initially refuses, but relents and gives Danny a chance to change the past. Danny pushes Vlad out of the way of the ecto-blast that would have disfigured him and he in turn saves Maddie when the blast goes astray. Clockwork returns Danny to the present, where he is shocked to discover that the ecto-blast hit his father and turned him into a half-ghost whose attempts to be a hero caused him to become a social reject. Meanwhile, Maddie married Vlad after falling for him due to saving her life. Danny escapes his dad after accidentally angering him by revealing that he meddled with time and caused him to get ecto-acne, and makes his way to Wisconsin in search of a ghost portal to contact Clockwork and Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

After a long flight, Danny loses consciousness on Vlad's property in exhaustion. When he wakes up, he carefully tells Maddie and Vlad that his parents went missing and there was an accident. The lack of ghost-hunting equipment confuses him since his mother would never abandon her hobby. He searches around at night and finds Maddie's secret basement where she has been doing ecto-science after Vlad forbade her from working on her passion. She catches Danny who tells her about Jack's love for her. Jack himself arrives, confirming Danny's words. He shows her the photo Danny gave him of Danny's family and they reconcile. Now eager to help Danny reset the timeline, Maddie opens her portal. However, Vlad arrives to put a stop to Maddie's hobby and drive Jack and Danny out of his house. He catches Danny in Maddie's contraption but is stopped from hurting him by Jack. When he fights off Jack, the enraged Maddie flings him through the ghost portal, where he finds himself surrounded by angry ghosts. Maddie urges Danny to fly through before the portal closes and he complies.

Clockwork resets the timeline but refuses to let Danny try to change the past any more times. Danny, seeing the accident and the moment Jack accidentally pours diet soda into the portal machine again, realises what to do and returns home. With his help, the Fentons are able to fix the ecto-acne. Vlad is kicked out of the house and Danny, having gained an appreciation for the style of the Eighties, joins his parents on the dance floor at the Nasty Burger.

This episode provides examples of:

• Agent Mulder: Jack and Maddie may find the fact that the other loves them hard to believe, but that you're their son from an alternate timeline? No problem.
• Almost Kiss: Vlad was about to do this after he saved Maddie from the portal explosion.
• Alternate Timeline: Danny creates one after saving Vlad from getting hit with the ecto virus. Danny does not like it.
• Blatant Lies: Vlad's entire relationship with Maddie is based on these.
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: Vlad borrows Jack's "...molecule by molecule" catchphrase.
• Brain Bleach: Danny wishes he had some after he sees his mom kiss Vlad.
  Danny: And I thought my real parents were embarrassing. This is so much worse!
• The Bus Came Back: After being featured heavily as the Big Good in "The Ultimate Enemy", Clockwork returns to help Danny on his quest as a Trickster Mentor. Of course, after this episode, he wouldn't be featured again, in a Long Bus Trip that lasted up until the series finale.
• Butterfly of Doom: Changing one instant in time causes a runaway chain of Disaster Dominoes. Danny even points this out when he explains it to Alt Jack.
• The Chessmaster: It's safe to assume that Clockwork knew exactly how everything would turn out when he allowed Danny to return to the past.
• Dark Reprise: A more sinister version of Danny's Leitmotif/the show's theme briefly plays after Alt Jack transforms.
• Despair Event Horizon: Alt Jack experienced this when the accident happened to him instead of Vlad.
• Dramatic Irony: When Danny tries to tell Alt Maddie that he's her and Jack's son from an alternate timeline, she thinks he's lying to her on the basis that Jack allegedly hates her. According to Vlad, Jack didn't want to see her ever again, blaming her for the accident. As evidenced by alt Jack being deeply affected by his inability to see her because he's a ghost, this could not be further from the truth.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Danny has one when he witnesses his father pouring Diet Cola into the Proto-Portal's filtration and realizes the cure for ecto-acne to save his friends... and Vlad.
• Evil Is Sterile: Apparently, Alt Vlad (who is still a Jerkass) and Alt Maddie didn't have any kids of their own during their marriage, despite the fact that the original Vlad did have a desire for a family of his own. This was probably done to ensure there would be no morally dubious repercussions to restoring the timeline.
• Exact Words: At the end, Jack expresses disappointment that Vlad had to fly back to Wisconsin so suddenly. Indeed, he was sent flying back to Wisconsin not on a plane, but by being launched through the air by Danny's Megaton Punch.
• Fantastic Aesop: You can't use Time Travel to solve your problems — it always makes things worse.
• Foreshadowing: Right after Danny pushes Vlad out of the way of the Ghost Portal, the energy bounces around the room before hitting the floor. Vlad pushes Maddie out of the way and, after coming off as aloof with him, she shows gratitude for Vlad saving her life. Jack is also notably not in sight when this happened.
• Gallows Humor:
  Tucker: I can't be a goner! I haven't even dated a cheerleader yet!
  Sam: Trust me, you're never gonna live that long.
• Gilligan Cut: Clockwork does this twice (must be easy, when you're a Time Master).
  Danny: That gives me a great idea.
  Clockwork: No, it's a horrible idea.
  Later
  Maddie: Clockwork will help.
  Clockwork: I will not help.
• Gone Horribly Right: Danny’s plan to cure ecto-acne is to prevent Vlad from becoming half-ghost in the first place. That plan works, but at the cost of the fate happening to Jack instead and Maddie falling for Vlad, resulting in Danny himself never being born.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Alt Maddie thought it was a good idea to marry the selfish, ghost-forbidding Vlad Masters instead of sweet, ghost-hunting Jack Fenton. In her defense, Vlad told her Jack didn't want to see her anymore, and grief does make people do desperate things.
• If I Can't Have You…: Vlad must know his manipulations have only succeeded in trapping both himself and Maddie in a loveless marriage, but he'd rather see her miserable with him than happy with Jack in another timeline.
• I Just Want to Be Normal:
  Danny: Just once, I'd like to know what it's like to live in a normal family!
• Irony: Jack thinks Maddie, a ghost hunter, could never accept him now that he's half-ghost. While this is shown not to be true for Maddie in that timeline, it's exactly the same way Danny felt about Valerie in the original timeline, which is why he resolved never to let her know his secret right before they fell apart. Like Father, Like Son.
• It's All About Me:
  Danny: You don't understand! None of this should be happening!
  Vlad: You think I care? I like it this way!
• It's a Wonderful Plot: Danny goes back in time to stop Vlad from getting ghost powers, but creates an alternate timeline where Jack gets ghost powers, and Maddie marries Vlad.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Vlad's true nature, as showcased in this episode. It deconstructs his entire Freudian Excuse and expands more into his true origin story. Even before his accident, Vlad already felt entitled to be with Maddie, failing to see that she wasn't infatuated with him at all and just saw him as a friend. Either way, he grew jealous of Maddie falling in love with Jack. Even if he was human and married Maddie, he only saw her as a prize and cared more about having her.
• Love Makes You Evil: Even without ghost powers, Vlad's still as determined as a phantom not to let anyone take Maddie from him.
• Never Say "Die": Uses the old it's-not-death-if-you-don't-explicitly-100%-confirm-someone-died trick.
• The Only Way They Will Learn: When Danny begs Clockwork to send him back in time to prevent the accident that gave Vlad his ghost powers, Clockwork warns him that changing the past will have dire consequences but decides to let him go through with it when he sees that words won't get through to Danny.
  Clockwork: You always have a choice, but since you insist on learning things the hard way...
• Papa Wolf: "GET AWAY FROM MY SON!" Even when he can't remember being his father, Jack won't let anyone harm Danny on his watch.
• Poison and Cure Gambit: Vlad infects Sam and Tucker with the ecto-acne to ensure Danny will help him find a cure.
• Redemption Quest: Danny's adventure becomes this after he realizes the effects of what he's done.
• Rescue Romance: Deconstructed. Maddie looks smitten after Vlad saves her from the explosion, but it's clear she's miserable in her marriage. Whether she felt obligated to marry him out of gratitude or simply overestimated his character based on that one seemingly-noble act, rescue is not good grounds for a long-term romance in this case.
• Sad Clown: While Jack has become a half-ghost and an embittered Tragic Hero in the alternate timeline unlike Vlad with his ghost powers in the primary timeline, he's still the same doofus as the show's regular Jack everyone is familiar with.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Clockwork has no objection to doing this (fixing problems with the timeline caused by time travel), but he is firmly against Wayback Trips (using time travel to fix problems in the past that were not caused by time travel).
• Shout-Out: The plot is very Back to the Future Part II-esque. Though Danny should consider himself lucky he only has to watch his Arch-Enemy kiss his mother instead of beat her.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Downplayed. In an alternate timeline, Jack and Maddie are tragically broken up by the circumstances of the accident. He kept away because he didn't think Maddie would accept his ghost half, and Maddie was fed false information that Jack blamed her for the accident, leading to her marrying Vlad instead. For 20 years, they kept their distance from one another, despite still having feelings for each other and Maddie being secretly unhappy in her marriage. It's only when Danny comes along with the photo of his family that prompts alt Jack to come forward and reunite with alt Maddie proper. Even then, they're only together for a total of five minutes before alt Jack is killed by alt Vlad. The downplayed part is that Danny (with Clockwork's help) manages to undo that particular timeline, thereby enabling a life where the original Jack and Maddie do get together and have a family.
• Temporal Paradox: Time travel continues to work the way it did in The Ultimate Enemy — Danny still exists even though he went back in time and changed events that caused him to never exist in the new timeline.
• Trickster Mentor: Clockwork seemed to have planned out this entire chain of events just to teach Danny a lesson about messing with the timeline...but also indirectly helped with Danny's more urgent matters as well. Seems to be a running thing with him, really.
• Uncertain Doom: We see the alternate timeline Jack get hit by one of Vlad's blasters and is knocked back into human form, his wording making it seem like the hit killed him. Likewise, Maddie throws Vlad into the Ghost Zone, where a horde of ghosts suddenly close in on him, the last thing we hear of him saying a Big "NO!". We don't know what the exact fates of these two were, but Danny restoring the timeline back to before he meddled renders these moot.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Whoever left that diet soda there unintentionally set up the events that would turn one random student into a supervillain.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: Heavily implied. On the surface, alt Vlad has exactly what his original timeline version always wanted, to be married to Maddie and not suffering the lab accident. However, a little scrutiny will reveal he's just as discontent as his original counterpart, if not more-so. For one, his infatuation with alt Maddie is surface level, only caring about Maddie as a Trophy Wife. Second, his strictly forbidding any mention of ghosts under his roof forces Maddie to hide her ghost-hunting passion from him, making him constantly on-guard for any time she experiments again. Lastly, his marriage to Maddie is built on the lie he told her Jack didn't want to see her again, meaning he has to resort to feeding her lies just to keep her. All in all, just because Vlad got what he wanted doesn't mean he was happier for it.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is a more serious take on the plot used in "Father Time!" from Butch Hartman's other show, The Fairly OddParents! (the hero goes back in time to fix something, only to erase himself from existence by preventing his parents from ever getting together).
• You Are What You Hate: This is one problem Jack has that Danny, not being a ghost hunter, never did. Deconstructed as what nearly keeps Jack from coming clean to Maddie about how he's a half-ghost.
• You Just Had to Say It: Inverted.
  Maddie: There's only one place on Earth that knows how to treat ecto-acne!
  Danny: Please say "hospital," please say "hospital," please say "hospital"... Why couldn't she say "hospital"?