Okay i've watched the end more times than any
one person probably should. Between scripting these videos, editing these videos, and
general rewatches I must have seen The End about 50 times, and I like to think i know
the episode inside and out. But there's always been one questions at the back of my mind,
and that is where did Tord get the robot? This is a bit of a weird question always meant
to be explained away with cartoon logic, but even after addressing it in a previous video i've
never really settled on an actual conclusion. We know who Tord is, we know who the Red Leader
is, we know who Paul and Patryck are but, how exactly this robot came into existence remains a
mystery. And after thinking about it for some time I realized it's because I don't actually know
what's going on in Tord's head and I don't know what he was doing during his extended hiatus.
And I realized that to understand where he got this thing we need to reach a conclusion about
everything else. I don't expect to necessarily reach that conclusion by the end of this video, but
I hope to at least understand what's going on a little bit better. If you're unsure as to where
my confusion lies let's go through the events chronologically as presented within the show: First we find out that Tord is leaving in his car, he tells the gang that he is leaving to, and I quote: "Make it in the big city" he comes back after some amount of time letting Edd know before doing so, he spends some time in Durdam Lane, before he gets into his mech suit, blows up the house, tries to fly away, is shot down and then gets retrieved by Paul and Patryck at the top of the hill So we've got a pretty good idea of the chronology from Ed, Matt and Tom's perspective - the episodes are viewed through their eyes - but what about Tord's perspective? It's never really been clear
when Tord first met Paul and Patryck, when he built this robot or when he turned evil. Some might tell
you that this isn't actually the Tord that we know and love and he's in fact a clone, but we'll
be ignoring that theory today. The crux of this question I think lies in when exactly Tord met
Paul and Patryck and when he founded the Red Army working that out will give us some idea of when
he became evil and when this robot was built. And with that i see three main possibilities: 1) He knew them before he built the robot and left the house to take over the world 2) He'd already built the robot and met them when he was away or 3) - and i'll admit this is a little bit out there - he'd never met them before this moment on the hill. Let's start with this first answer because it seems to be the one that's most commonly accepted, the one that i believe for the longest amount of time, and probably has the most evidence supporting it.
Though paul was a character before the Legacy Era he only really made his first appearance in Moving
Targets as a soldier for the generic "Bad Guy Army". This is significant because it was also the last
episode that Tord was voiced by his original actor. He left at the beginning of the very next episode
without even voicing it, so it is entirely possible that after this experience Tord decided that he
wanted to be involved in whatever these guys were up to. Tord presumably met Paul and Patryck, founded
the red army, built the robot, and then left to do... something? And then came back for the robot. The
real problem here is explaining why Tord left in the first place without taking the robot with him.
If he already had his army together and already had plans for world domination then why not take
the robot with him? To me the far more likely timeline is option 2: he built the robot BEFORE
he left and met Paul and Patryck on his travels. In this timeline Tord's robot was never designed
to be a super-weapon but just one of Tord's weird passion projects. It is entirely possible that by
the time he drove away Tord actually had no evil intentions whatsoever. Maybe after his experience
in the army Tord realized that he didn't want to cause pain unto others. He looked at the weapons
he'd constructed and realized what a monster he was becoming and decided to make a new life for
himself in the big city. Maybe he wanted to go to New York to be a new man but upon meeting a couple of revolutionaries he decided that he was not throwing away his shot so he became Red
Leader. This makes a lot more sense in my head because it explains what he was doing when he was
away from the show and it gives him time to have built the robot in the first place. With the first
timeline we assume that the robot was constructed sometime between Moving Targets and 25ft Under
the Seat. We know it was constructed before he left because the robot is constantly described
as something he left behind, not something he was working on between the two End episodes.
But with this second theory the robot could have been constructured any time after the first
episode potentially even before the first episode. Tord's been shown to have violent tendencies
in some earlier episodes so is it really such a surprise that he'd build a giant weapons
facility behind a wall in his bedroom? Admittedly this is a little bit far-fetched, but not quite as
far-fetched as the third option, which few people seem to consider but i actually think is the most
interesting of the bunch. This meeting on the hill might just be the first time these characters
ever met in person. Now obviously there's a bunch of evidence to the former in terms of easter eggs
and such but let's just ignore that for a second. According to this timeline everything Tord does
up to this moment was entirely of his own accord. He built the robot on his own and he planned to
dominate the world on his own without any help from anyone else. And it was this incident which
caused him to meet Paul and Patryck and fall down the path to becoming the Red Leader. This actually
makes a lot of sense thematically, I could totally buy that Tord thought that he could become an
evil dictator without any help at all. After all...
Of course the robot wasn't actually good enough he was defeated by none other than the group of
friends the ones that he'd previously shunned. They cared for each other enough and together they
alone were able to bring down his giant mech suit. Think about how defeated and humiliated Tord
would feel in this moment. His entire life's work destroyed in seconds literally by the power
of friendship. He'd built himself from nothing and now he has nothing to show for it. He has no
friends, he has no house, he has no direction, no plan from here on out. But then he meets these
two people, two revolutionaries just like him who want more than they've got. They obviously
have a lot of interest in weaponry, they saw the commotion from down below and rushed to see what
was going on. And in this moment Tord realizes that he can't do this alone. He feels accepted,
he sees direction, he's found some friends who will actually help him to safety.
They accept him and give him a ride. They show interest in whatever his plans are
and Tord is happy to tell them in the car ride home. They bond and realize that if they're going
to change the world they need to do it together. Okay so there is a lot of evidence that they'd
met before this moment let's be honest. In Fun Dead you can see Tord's shadow whilst the other
two soldiers are controlling a zombie outbreak. In The Snogre we only see Paul and Patryck
in the aeroplane but then three parachutes when the plane crashes. People act like
this is the ultimate smoking gun and that must be Tord but it could just as easily
be literally anyone else who might have been on the plane. However the plane's serial
number is exactly the same as Tord's car number plate. That is less easy to explain. And
then there's also the Red Leader clan-tag that was clearly created by Tord, and we see it
all the time linked with Paul and Patryck. That's basically confirmation that these three
have been working together for a long long time. Still even though there's basically no evidence
supporting it, this timeline just might be part of my new head canon. I think it's a really great
way of looking at the scene and the relationship between these characters. And I hope now that you
might just have a new appreciation for this stuff. A lot of information was left unshown but that
means that you have the ability to create your own interpretation. Was Tord evil before he left?
How long was this thing left under their house? Is the story told out of order and we have
the chronology completely wrong in our heads? Is Hellucard the puppet master behind the
whole operation? All that is up to you to decide. It's up to you to decide how you interpret any
piece of art. You can get out of it whatever you want and enjoy it however you see fit. Just so
long as you do it in a healthy way that you enjoy that isn't hurting anyone else, go nuts! Nobody's
telling you how to enjoy things. So where did Tord get the robot? That's up for you to decide. Also why does Edd have a picture of Paul in his house?
