BL4Z3

"BL4Z3" is the twenty-fifth episode of the fourth season of Teen Titans Go!, and the one-hundred-eighty-second overall episode of the series.

Summary[]

The Titans become hackers to stop a gang of computer pirates.

Plot[]

The episode starts off, as many do, with the Titans watching television. Suddenly, the broadcast is interrupted by a crime alert. Robin is shocked by the alert, leading the other Titans to speculate that some horrible catastrophe is threatening the world. But Robin tells his team that the threat is coming from piracy.

The other Titans become excited because they think they are about to go on a seafaring, swashbuckling, pirate adventure. Robin then tells them that the threat is actually from computer piracy, which the other Titans think means robot pirates. Robin has to explain to them that computer piracy is when bad guy hackers steal digital goods and make them available for free on the internet.

The other Titans get upset and ask if the FBI can handle the problem instead of them, but Robin insists that becoming good guy hackers will be awesome.

He leads his team to a computer room where they transfer their conscious minds into his old computer. Robin creates a digital outfit for himself, which is mostly leather, and logs in under his hacker name, BL4Z3. The other Titans find the outfit and name pretty ridiculous.

While on the desktop of Robin's computer, they mess around with his files, causing the system to crash and reboot. Robin is still determined to have an awesome hacker adventure, connects them to the internet, and does a web search for "pirates". Finding the pirates takes a while since the Titans are "borrowing" WiFi from their neighbors.

Once the search is complete, a portal opens up and a floating pirate ship appears. The pirates on board have a treasure chest full of stolen digital goods. Robin's disappointed that his hacker adventure isn't going exactly as planned and admits the other Titans were right about this hacker adventure all along and letting the FBI handle the Computer Pirates, but the other Titans are now excited and they encourage Robin to open his mind to the new adventure. Robin becomes renewed with added enthusiasm for this new adventure. He and his team get into pirate costumes and board their own pirate ship. They engage the computer pirates in battle, defeat them, and recover the stolen digital goods.

While the Titans are inspecting the treasure chest, several agents from the FBI enter the scene and assume that the Titans are the computer pirates. Before they can explain, the FBI agents charge, wielding katanas like ninjas and samurais, as the Titans run away. The episode goes to black as the head FBI agent slashes at the 4th wall.

Characters[]

Robin
Cyborg
Starfire
Raven
Beast Boy
Octopus (cameo)
Puppet Wizard (cameo)
Flower with Hose (debut)
Martha Wayne (cameo, mentioned)
Martha Kent (cameo, mentioned)
FBI Agents (debut)
Computer Pirates (debut)
Mr. Freeze (cameo, referenced)
Captain Cold (cameo, referenced)
Rat
Butterbean

Trivia[]

The episode title is a translation of the word "blaze" into leetspeak.
This episode premiered one year after "Think About Your Future".
The same sock puppet that was used for the Puppet Wizard's character in "Puppets Whaaaaat?" makes a brief appearance on the TV show the Titans were watching at the beginning of the episode.
The Titans steal their WiFi from HIVE Tower, their only neighbors.
As the title of the episode appears, the Octopus now has sunglasses, then quickly changes its color to green, then back to orange. This foreshadows the theme of this episode.
The episode breaks the fourth wall during the scene after Robin finishes explaining hackers in Matrix-style, where the Titans are seen inside an outdated desktop computer, indicating them as cartoon characters being created via computer animation.

Continuity[]

This is not the first time the Titans were enthusiastic about pirates. Cyborg was very excited when he thought Aqualad was a pirate in an earlier episode. And in "Hand Zombie", Cyborg also mentioned how cool pirates are.
Raven is seen unhooded for the 64th time in the series.
Among the loot in the treasure chest is a Pretty Pretty Pegasus movie, which Raven is ecstatic about.
- This is once again a reference to My Little Pony: The Movie, a movie based on the popular series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, that Raven's voice actress, Tara Strong has starred in.
Robin has stored sexy selfies of himself just like he did in "Parasite".
Robin once again displays his one-sided crush towards Starfire when she calls him "Blaze".

References[]

The 1999 movie The Matrix is referenced several times:
- Robin's black hacker outfit is similar to Neo's and the fighters that show up at the end are similar to Trinity, Morpheus, and Agent Smith.
- The "red pill/blue pill" dilemma is taken from the movie as is the quote "I'll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes."
- The FBI Agents bear a striking resemblance to the Matrix agents.
The phrase "Jack In!", which Robin says numerous times, is from the 1995 movie "Johnny Mnemonic"
Many of the visuals are from the video game Tetris, including the Computer Pirates.
Robin's desktop has a folder marked "Lexcorp Files". These might be the same files that Batman obtained in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Robin has folders on his computer desktop marked "Batman" and "Flying Graysons".
The game Beast Boy finds named "Cool Dudes" seems to be about Mr. Freeze and Captain Cold.
Robin's old computer runs on an operating system called Lexcorp ZX which is a reference to Windows XP.
Robin's pirate costume is a direct reference to One Piece's Luffy, with his vest, cloth around the waist, and short pants, along with the two scars (under the eye and on the chest). However, it is using Robin's color palette.
"Did you try turning it off and on again" is a reference to the British comedy The IT Crowd.
Starfire's attire may be referenced to Peter Pan's attire.
Once the Titans enter the internet, a series of memes are shown. Ones specifically;
- A meme of a crying baby that has a caption that says TEEN TITANS NO!. Which is a reference to people who strongly despise the show and want the previous series back for a sixth season.
- A meme of a man with a shocked facial expression that has a caption that says WHAT IF MARTHA WAYNE WAS ACTUALLY MARTHA KENT. Which is a reference to Batman's mother and Superman's adoptive mother that have the same first name.
The floating pirate ship could be a reference to the controversial website The Pirate Bay.
When Robin says "Free your minds" it sounds almost like Soundwave from Transformers with sythinized voice similar to his.
The Mac OS X startup sound can be heard when the computer boots up again.
When the other titans think that Robin means Robot Pirates when he says Computer Pirates may be a reference to a Rayman game (Rayman 2) where there are Robo pirates, taking over Rayman's world, made by Polokus and The Lums.
When fighting against the Computer Pirates, Cyborg mentioned Davy Jones from the Caribbean Pirates, who was based on a rumored captain that betted his soul to the demon or a bankrupt pub owner went on being a pirate.

Errors[]

Cyborg exclaims something about "walking the plank" when in fact, pirates never did this in real life.
The Titans should have left the FBI to arrest the computer pirates as they suggested as they mentioned in the beginning.