Chowder, Marzipan City’s master of the munchies.

Flapjack, swashbuckling adventurer of Stormalong Harbor.

They say gluttony is a deadly sin, but is it really? I mean, that food looks really tasty, and the thrill of adventure sounds really enticing. And if you have a… toooootally responsible adult to keep you in check and show you the way, is it really so sinful to indulge in life’s great pleasures? These two toons certainly don’t think so, and though they may have been retired since the 2000’s, they’re here today to see which apprentice is truly the master. It’s time for a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

Both of these characters have very simple canons, with only a handful of very minor external appearances outside of their shows, which don’t add anything. In that regard there is practically nothing to discuss, we’ll be sticking to the shows for the most part.

More notably, since both of these characters most frequently operate as part of a larger squad, we’ll be including their close support characters, making this ultimately more of a team fight. That is to say, Mung and Schnitzel will be present for Chowder, and K’nuckles and Bubbie will be present for Flapjack.

With that established, on with the show!

Background

Chowder

• Name: Chowder
• Age: 13 years
• Occupation: Apprentice
• Species: Cat-bear-rabbit hybrid!
• Likes: Food, Food, Food, Food
• Married to Panini in the future and has 50 children

In the town of Marzipan, every kid is an apprentice to someone, and to the great Mung Daal, the greatest chef, his apprentice is the one and only Chowder! A silly… cat… bear…rabbit… hybrid? Who loves to eat, and eat, and… eat. He’s not a very good chef, but he tries his best. Sometimes.

Chowder’s origins are completely unknown, and his family is …never seen, but he, Mung and Schnitzel (along with Truffles, Mung’s wife) got up to all sorts of adventures around his catering company, with Chowder learning lots along the way.

Still, every childhood has to end, and even Chowder had to grow up. After singing for 20 years, he inherited Mung’s company, finally had his voice changed, talked with his creator, and even married. He’s still the same kid at heart, but he’s moved on to greater pastures – and maybe that end goal made all the goofy adventures worth it.

Flapjack

• Name: Flapjack
• Age: Approx. 5-10 years
• Occupation: Adventurer
• Home: Stormalong Harbor
• Adopted son of Bubbie, a sperm whale
• Likes: Candy, Sally Syrup, ADVENTURE!
• Immune to the Bubonic Plague
• Can sing 369 different songs

Across the docks of Stormalong Harbor, whispers can be heard of a legendary island hidden somewhere in the Lemonade Sea: Candied Island! Covered in lollipop trees and rocks dripping with sodie pop, Candied Island is the white whale of adventurers everywhere, who sail the seas in hopes of locating it, in all its sugary goodness. But few have pursued this dream with as much vigor as the adventurer, Captain K’nuckles, and his young protege: Flapjack.

Flapjack’s origins are… kind of mysterious. Years ago, he was discovered floating in the sea, wrapped in seaweed, and taken in by a sperm whale named Bubbie, who raised him as though he was her own son. Though the boy had a heart of gold and was brought up to be a precocious, respectable young man, the thought of adventure always called to him, and this came to a head after he met K’nuckles. With tales of great adventures, the grimy captain quickly won Flapjack’s undying admiration, and took him under his wing in his pursuit of Candied Island.

An endeavor that Bubbie was thoroughly not in favor of. The seas are, after all, a treacherous place, and in his marvelous misadventures at K’nuckles’ side, Flapjack ended up in all manner of dangers. Fighting giant monsters and disturbing horrors, getting stranded on treacherous islands, and getting up to countless shenanigans throughout the harbor, it was undoubtable that the good captain was a not-so-good influence. But that sense of excitement is what made Flapjack happy, and through it all, he never lost his optimism or his kind heart. Though we may never have seen him reach Candied Island, his quest to find it never stopped. Adventure, after all, is the life for him.

Support

Chowder

Mung Daal

Mung Daal is the mentor to Chowder, and his father figure! He’s actually quite good at his job, though his own pride often gets in the way of his intellect. For the most part, Mung is fairly impressive as a mentor and treats Chowder and Schnitzel well… mostly. Ignore the soul contract.

As for what he brings to the table as a fighter, Mung has shown incredible regenerative capabilities, as well as being able to duplicate himself with gelatin and being able to stretch himself like any normal toon force user. Overall, a reliable ally.

Shnitzel

Now, Mung’s other assistant! Shnitzel is the most normal of the group, and generally the most rational, despite talking in “radda raddas” all the time. He cares a fair bit about Mung and Chowder despite this, but he’s a rather snarky person and generally gets made the butt of the joke regularly.

As a rock monster, Shnitzel is superhumanly durable and tough, able to lift large structures with ease, and not even cracking. His brute strength allows him to lift large objects and take tons of physical abuse, with him only faltering in this regard if he turns soft.

Flapjack

Captain K’nuckles

Captain K’nuckles is Flapjack’s mentor… in, er, some sense of the word, I’m sure. In reality, K’nuckles is mostly a con man with a heart of grease and a massive repertoire of false tales of glory meant to hype himself up. Even so, he inspired within Flapjack a thirst for adventure, and the two of them have been inseparable ever since. Does it really matter if K’nuckles’ stories are true, if they can motivate Flapjack either way?

In dangerous situations, K’nuckles is the more seasoned fighter between himself and Flapjack, and tends to get into scraps more frequently, though he’s often on the losing end of them. His arms (S1E15, 2:12) and entire lower body (S2E13, 1:26) are prosthetic, and his body is relatively fragile, not uncommonly ripped apart (S1E6, 21:00) or having pieces removed from it (S1E20, 4:55). Even still, he’s survived as a result of his powerful toon force abilities, many of which Flapjack can replicate.

However, while K’nuckles brings quite a few abilities and the experience of a somewhat seasoned adventurer to the table, he’s also oftentimes just as much a hindrance as a help. Lying to or even betraying Flapjack for his own self-interest, getting them into dangerous situations, and making short-sighted decisions that make those situations worse. Even so, given that the two of them are still alive, it’s evident that they’re also pretty good at getting out of those situations too.

Bubbie

The team member who brings the brain cell total into the double digits, Bubbie is Flapjack’s adopted mother and the only one of the three with a consistently good head on her shoulders. She often puts in great effort to reign in K’nuckles’ idiotic habits and prevent Flapjack from getting into too much trouble, though her success in this regard varies. She loves Flapjack with all her heart and soul, and conversely quite detests K’nuckles for the influence he has on her baby boy.

As a sperm whale, Bubbie is extremely strong, durable, and heavy, capable of using her muscle to great effect and employing abilities unique to her physiology. She also has some toon force, stretching body parts (S2E13, 2:48) or having her internal organs messed with without experiencing any harm. The interior of her body is quite interesting, with Flapjack and Knuckles using the inside of her mouth as a makeshift home, Pinocchio style.

Experience & Skill

Chowder

Chowder’s not the most experienced in a fight, but he certainly tries. He once gained warrior training inside his psyche to make him a greater fighter, but oftentimes runs away when a fight is going on.

Mung has no real experience in a fight, but has shown quite a bit of wit and intelligence when the moment calls for it. His advanced age – being over 450 years old – helps in that regard, and he even fought once for some ingredients for over 25 years, showing impressive stamina.

Shnitzel, meanwhile, has the most experience, as he (supposedly) used to be a samurai in Tofu Town, having received training for years before failing. While this is part of a story Chowder told, we don’t entirely have reason to disbelieve its accuracy, so it’ll be used.

Flapjack

Being an adventurer, Flapjack has developed some decent survival skills, such as navigating with maps and compasses (S1E7, 2:00) and identifying specific knots (S1E5, 7:45). He knows how to start a fire with sticks (S1E8, 9:55), has sailed on military ships, and has demonstrated a degree of proficiency in sword combat (S1E1, 6:12). He also has some more hyper-specific skills, like singing lullabies to put people to sleep (S2E1, 6:53), or training K’nuckles with a bell and candies like a dog (S1E13). He is however a young child and thus has all of the intellectual and emotional weaknesses that come with that.

While K’nuckles’ adventure stories are mostly exaggerated, he does genuinely have years of experience as an adventurer, and has gotten into physical scraps on various occasions throughout the show. The two of them together have encountered a variety of giant monsters, esoteric magics and deeply unusual situations, which has caused them to become extremely capable of adapting to that which is unexpected.

Bubbie, while less experienced in high-stakes adventures than the other two, is smarter than both of them combined and always holds her own whenever she is involved. She’s fought other whales in physical combat (S1E14, 21:15), and is adept at helping to resolve life-threatening situations, such as putting a stop to K’nuckles’ manifested story world (more on this later).

Equipment

Chowder

Hat

Chowder’s trusty hat, which he uses to store his pet gas cloud, Kimchi! Kimchi allows Chowder to fly! In addition, Chowder’s also used his hat as a parachute, and even to fly to the moon.

Brain Grub

With the Brain Grub, Chowder’s intellect increases twelve fold, as does his ability to manipulate the show entirely! He’s been able to outright change the genre of the show just by thinking about it, changing the reality of everything into a completely different show that is “intelligent” as opposed to the show he was in.

Poison

A food Chowder made once that is outright poisonous to anyone who eats it

Cinna-Minni Powder

Powder that when blown on someone or something, causes them to shrink to super tiny sizes. It also seemingly allows teleportation, as when blew through a phone to Truffles, it shrinks Truffles and brings her to a house far away from where she was.

Spicy Food

One of Mung’s meals, when Chowder eats it he’s able to spew fire that lets him burn the animation itself!

Pencil & Eraser

Chowder has a large pencil, which he has used to erase portions of his show and then redraw a new location, serving as a scene transition.

Grappling Hook

Shnitzel has a grappling hook, for grappling things.

Cage Gun

Shnitzel has a gun that shoots cages. Don’t ask.

Flapjack

Sword

Though only used sparingly since Flap is a good lad, he has been shown to use a sword with decent effectiveness (S1E1, 6:12). Naturally, it has a pointer finger stuck onto the end of it to poke people with, cuz poking people with a normal sword would be too mean and violent and stuff.

Pencil

He do be writing tho. (S1E7, 1:03)

Compass

As befitting any adventurer worth their salt, Flapjack has a compass which he can use to get his bearings (S1E7, 2:00). This comes in handy when navigating the sea or any unknown island he comes across.

Grease

For when he needs to be a slippery little guy, Flapjack can lather himself up with grease, which combined with his natural squishiness can allow him to squeeze through tight spaces, such as into a somewhat human-sized glass bottle (S2E1, 1:33).

Lanterns

For when it’s dark and spooky out, Flapjack has a couple lanterns which he can use to light up the seas. Most prominently, he shines these through Bubbie’s eyeballs from within her head, turning her peepers into a pair of search lights (S2E8, 1:53). Which, last I checked, isn’t quite how eyes work, but you do you, Flapjack.

Buckets

A pair of buckets that Flapjack and K’nuckles acquired from their pal Lolly Poopdeck, which they were able to use as makeshift parachutes to save themselves from falling (S2E12, 16:45). Note: This would not work in real life. Don’t try this at home, kids.

Fingernails

Because they live in a whale and lack good hygiene practices, Flapjack and K’nuckles have super long fingie-nails that they can use like talons to carve through anything in their path (S2E16, 14:42). Solid trees, and even giant rock formations fall before their grippers (S2E16, 15:10). They could probably maul a person pretty good with them, too.

Disguises

Flapjack and K’nuckles are masters of deception, able to use disguises to fool even GENIUS onlookers such as my glorious king Peppermint Larry (S3E6, 13:55). They have a massive assortment of them, and can quickly switch between them for sneaky sneaky purposes.

K’nuckles’ Limbs

K’nuckles has wooden prosthetics that encompass both of his arms all the way to the shoulder, as well as his entire lower half. How does he control these prosthetics if they’re made of wood, you ask? Good question! Anyway, they can detach, but are generally more useful attached to his body. Without them, K’nuckles is just a torso and thus can’t do much of anything.

Mermaid’s Heart

Perhaps the most powerful of Flapjack and K’nuckles’ weapons is a Mermaid’s Heart full of candy mermaid tears, which can each grant the user any wish when eaten (S1E17). With these candies, the two of them wished:

• For golden eyeballs
• For a giant muscle-y arm
• To transport Eight-Armed Willie to their location to punch him
• To transport Eight-Armed Willie away again
• For K’nuckles’ mouth to be forever full of maple syrup
• To not be blind anymore
• To breath syrup
• For beautiful long hair
• To turn a woman into a horse
• To spit anchors
• For really tall legs
• To see through walls
• To never have to use the bathroom again
• To sit on a cloud
• For a new hat
• For even more candy
• For an even bigger stomach
• For K’nuckles to be less fat
• For K’nuckles to be a normal person
• To know what to do in a difficult situation
• To transport a suitcase across the room
• To transport a suitcase across the room again
• To open the suitcase
• For Bubbie to shut her mouth
• For a corndog
• For another corndog
• To care
• To not care
• For a new hat and a corndog

It would have also been capable of transporting them to Candied Island, but because K’nuckles accidentally wished for two things with the second-to-last candy, he mistakenly used up all of their wishes and thus was unable to make the wish he actually wanted to make. Once all of the candies are expended, the mermaid that they came from dies and becomes a Skymaid.

Abilities

Chowder

Plot/Fourth Wall
Manipulation

Chowder’s most infamous ability, and for good reason. On multiple occasions, he along with Shnitzel and Mung have shown the ability to mess with the fourth wall on a regular basis. Shnitzel’s been able to leave the animation entirely, taking things out or cleaning the animation from outside of it and Chowder has been able to flip reality, erase the show with his pencil and draw it back in, remove someone from the episode and erase them by telling them “you’re not in this episode”, retell the plot of the show but fast forward and rewind it, break outside of the animation into the background and create an entire world inside of it, and more.

In addition, he’s also shown complete awareness of his medium – he’s been able to know the plots of episodes and the type of genre he is in and what he can and can’t do as a result of said genre. In addition, he’s also shown the ability to be able to turn off the TV he’s in entirely! Finally, he can also summon people who aren’t in the plot of the episode to help him, as he did with Mung and Truffles. He’s also shown the ability to straight up interact with the real world, including his own VA, possessing him. Yeah don’t ask.

Suction

Like any good small guy obsessed with food, Chowder has shown the ability to be able to suck up and retain objects! His suction has a fair range, and he can keep stuff within the hammerspace of his stomach to spit out whenever he needs it.

Elasticity

Chowder and his friends have shown the ability to be able to stretch their limbs to absurd lengths, with Chowder being able to change the size of his hand as well as being able to stretch his limbs to absurd distances. Mung has also shown a similar ability to stretch his limbs.

Regeneration

All of Chowder’s friends, as well as himself, as proper cartoon characters have shown a ridiculous ability to be able to regenerate themselves. Chowder’s been able to regenerate his head after it exploded, and his face shattering entirely. Mung has been able to regenerate from shattering, from being burnt out of the animation entirely by Chowder’s green fire, and regenerate his face from being torn up and his body completely falling apart. Shnitzel, meanwhile, has regenerated his face, has come back from being crushed, and has come back from being ground to bits. Overall, the regenerative capability of the gang is easy to underestimate. 

Time Travel

When in this wacky world, anyone can travel back in time. Whenever someone tells a story of the past, people can enter the story and travel back to it and change the events – however, they need to be cautious, as if they cause the past to change, they can outright erase themselves from existence… And still come back the next episode. Yeah, don’t ask.

Telekinesis

Shnitzel has shown the ability to telekinetically move objects. Because why not.

Duplication

Mung was able to use gelatin to create a perfect duplicate of himself. Don’t question it.

Wishing

Chowder’s shown the ability at a wishing well to be able to wish for whatever he wants, and it will just… happen. No matter what. He’s not used it for much, though.

Portal Creation

Mung and Shnitzel, by chanting, can open up portals to places to travel between them. 

Invisibility

_{(oooooo where did he goooooooooo-)}

Chowder has the ability to become invisible temporarily. It’s unknown whether this has any kind of time limit, since he only used it once for a few seconds, but it’s implied he could use it to hide for an extended period if he wanted to.

Hair Manipulation

Mung can will his hair to grow longer just by saying it, as can Chowder if he so wishes.

Resistances

Plot Manipulation: Mung and Shnitzel were unaffected by Chowder reality warping the show into being an entirely different genre, retaining their original identities and selves despite the rest of the show being completely changed.

Flapjack

Elasticity

Like any good toon, Flapjack and his friends can squash and stretch their bodies in a variety of ways, with their malleability allowing them to fit through narrow gaps, reach things that are hard to reach, and survive hits that would severely injure a normal person. This also applies in more disturbing ways, such as stretching their eyes, ears, or noses.

Regeneration

An ability primarily demonstrated by K’nuckles, but that Flapjack or Bubbie could hypothetically replicate, is the power to heal from all manner of injury. K’nuckles has regenerated from his head exploding (S1E11, 7:30), his brain poofing out of existence (S1E2, 16:08) or exploding (S3E4, 16:35), his face being melted off to reveal the skull underneath (S1E6, 7:45), every part of his body being stolen except his eyes (S1E6, 21:00), half of his body being squished (S1E8, 5:18), his nose being removed (S1E20, 4:55), exploding into hot dogs leaving nothing but his eyes and nose (S2E5, 11:20), and completely crumbling into dust (S2E13, 19:00).

…This man frequently gets FUCKED up. But it’s fine cuz he always gets better.

Fourth Wall Interaction

Though relatively limited, Flapjack has a few showings of interacting with the fourth wall. Namely, Flapjack has physically interacted with the screen wipe at the end of an episode (S1E4, 21:44), and Bubbie has interacted with an onscreen text window (S2E14, 4:16). Though more vague and artistic in nature, there are also a few instances that could be interpreted as interacting with the scene transitions.

Superhuman Hearing

Because of the amount of time he spent without getting a haircut, with his hair covering his ears, Flapjack developed superhuman hearing (S1E4, 17:05), allowing him to hear much more acutely than normal once his hair was trimmed shorter. Notably, this is exclusive to Flapjack himself. K’nuckles actually has some degree of hearing loss, in comparison (S3E4, 1:08).

Momentum Manipulation

A classic example of toon force, Flapjack characters can behave in ways incompatible with real-life momentum and inertia. When launched through the air, they were able to brake a car that they were riding in, which actually caused it to come to a dead halt midair. Subsequently, Eight-Armed Willie impacted the vehicle and was likewise slammed to a halt, despite the fact that there was nothing actually holding it in place. (S1E6, 10:50)

Ignoring Gravity

Flapjack and K’nuckles have behaved without regard for gravity, walking up the side of a flagpole and even on the underside of the flag itself (S1E13, 4:50).

Pavlovian Training

Inspired by the experimentation of Ivan Pavlov, Flapjack learned how to train K’nuckles like a seal, ringing a bell and offering him candies in reward for good behaviors, which had an almost hypnotic effect on him. This demonstrates the ability to pair a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus to encourage specific responses. In theory, he could likely replicate this on other subjects than K’nuckles, though it would be reliant on him possessing some kind of reward that the subject wants. (S1E13)

Prehensile Body Parts

Flapjack and the others can manipulate unconventional portions of their body like limbs. For example, Bubbie can use her tongue as though it’s an extra arm (S2E13, 2:48), and K’nuckles can do the same with his nose (S1E9, 0:58).

Ambergris

Being a sperm whale, Bubbie can produce a substance called ambergris from her stomach and spit it out in the form of a large glob (S1E13, 10:05). Somehow, this was able to restore K’nuckles’ lost sanity upon contact.

Guardian Angel Tears

At one point, Flapjack’s tears were able to somehow snap K’nuckles out of hypnosis, in lieu of the tonic that was actually intended for this purpose by K’nuckles (S1E19, 10:34).

Lullabies

Flapjack has exceptional vocal talents, and most practically can sing lullabies that can put those who listen to them to sleep (S2E1, 6:53). Though, whether this is a supernatural effect or just a normal lullaby is unclear.

Story Creation

One of the gang’s most powerful abilities is the power to use their imagination to manifest completely fictional scenarios around themselves in the form of storytelling (S2E6). While doing so, they have the ability to alter their environment and situation at their leisure, conjuring a specific setting and even creating monsters. Notably, this isn’t imaginary, since Flapjack and K’nuckles actually ended up stuck in the situation that K’nuckles created, and were unable to change or end it. They ended up getting out of it via Bubbie’s arrival, as she was able to spawn a manticore to help them overcome the monsters that K’nuckles created. At the end of the episode, Bubbie is even able to immediately end the episode by saying “the end.”

Wishmaking

Distinct from the Mermaid’s Heart, Flapjack and K’nuckles have shown the ability to make wishes at a wishing well, by throwing coins into it (S2E17, 13:22). K’nuckles wished that he would never have to see anyone again for the rest of his life, and this worked, instantly causing everyone else in Stormalong to vanish from existence entirely. K’nuckles quickly came to regret this, but was unable to undo his original wish without locating the coin that he first used to make it. Eventually, he managed to do so and undo his original wish via another wish, at which point he was transported back in time to before he made the wish in the first place.

Feats

Chowder

Overall

• Went on several adventures across Marzipan 
• Avoided Panini (not for long enough…)
• Saved his own show from being cancelled
• Ended up owning Mung Daal’s Catering Company
• Helped defeat the Remote Control in Punch Time Explosion

Power

• [Chowder] Impacted the moon hard enough to shift its position
• [Chowder] Flipped reality 
• [Chowder] With his big hand, broke a dam
• [Chowder] Ate the universe??? (Probably just a weird scene transition)
• [Shnitzel] Held up a giant rock

Speed

• [Chowder] Flew from his home to the moon
• [Chowder] Farted, propelling himself from the land of the dragons back to his home
• [Chowder] Shot his teeth so fast they hit someone floating in the sky within seconds
• [Chowder] Flew into the sky

Durability

• [Chowder] Tanked an explosion that blew up the concert stage 
• [Chowder, Mung, and Shnitzel] Tanked an explosion of two burgers that blew up the entirety of Mung’s catering company
• [Mung] Got flung across the city

Flapjack

Overall

• Defeated Eight-Armed Willie
• Embarked on numerous adventures throughout Stormalong Harbor and the surrounding seas
• Explored Cammie Island, Mechanical Genie Island, the Moon, and more
• Found Candied Island! …for about two seconds
• ALSO helped defeat the Remote Control in Punch Time Explosion

Power

• [Flapjack] Chews through a rope (S2E11, 16:47)
• [Flapjack] Beat Eight-Armed Willy at arm wrestling offscreen (S1E12, 17:24)
• [Flapjack] Knocks down a grown man, who was previously part of a group that was bullying K’nuckles physically (S2E16, 7:18)
• [Flapjack] Hits a number of pool balls to the moon, around the moon several times in succession, and then back down to Earth (S2E17, 8:50) (1.41 megatons of TNT)
• [Flapjack and K’nuckles] Claw through solid trees and large rock formations with their fingernails (S2E16, 14:42)
• [K’nuckles] Wrenches open Bubbie’s jaw (S1E9, 5:38)
• [K’nuckles] Busts down a stone wall (S3E6, 6:51)
• [K’nuckles] Pulls Bubbie around (S2E14, 9:05), with Bubbie weighing 8000 lbs (S2E14, 10:59)
• [K’nuckles] Knocks into a building and destroys it (S2E17, 18:44)
• [K’nuckles] Drags around all the buildings in Stormalong Harbor at once (S2E17, 7:45)
• [K’nuckles] Fart blasts an entire village of buildings and people into the clouds (S3E5, 16:33)
• [K’nuckles] His nose becomes the moon (this may just be a weird scene transition) (S1E15, 13:37)
• [K’nuckles] Manifests a “story” environment which contains a moon (S2E6, 19:32)
• [Bubbie] Lifts and throws Harvey, a whale much larger than her (S1E14, 21:15)
• [Bubbie] Crashes into the rising moon (S2E3, 1:50)

Speed

• [Flapjack] Speeds around the harbor quickly (S1E3, 16:36)
• [Flapjack] Dodges a giant crab’s pincers (S1E19, 1:06)
• [Flapjack] Paddles to the other side of the ocean within 100 seconds (S2E3, 11:30)
• [Flapjack] Hits a number of pool balls to the moon, around the moon several times in succession, and then back down to Earth (S2E17, 8:50) (22% speed of light)
• [K’nuckles] Dodges electricity blasts from tridents (S1E17, 11:49)
• [Bubbie] Crosses the Sea of Teeth quickly (S1E1, 8:15)
• [Bubbie] Swims to the bottom of the world (Antarctica) in 7 seconds (S1E8, 4:02)

Durability

• [Flapjack] Survives a tidal wave (S2E15, 1:52)
• [Flapjack] Survives falling into the Abyss (S3E4, 7:40)
• [Flapjack] Survives a fall from the clouds (S3E5, 21:15)
• [K’nuckles] Takes punches from a giant who previously lifted and destroyed the Candy Barrel (S1E15, 7:55)
• [K’nuckles] Gets his ass beat for an entire night (S3E3, 21:15)
• [K’nuckles] Survives a lightning strike… twice (S3E4, 6:30)
• [K’nuckles] Survives a lava eruption (S3E4, 9:08)

Scaling

Chowder

None notable.

Flapjack

Citizens of
Stormalong Harbor

Flapjack and the gang should be broadly comparable to other individuals throughout Stormalong Harbor, as they are all generally portrayed as comparable to one another and fighting evenly in scuffles and whatnot. As a child, Flapjack is typically portrayed as physically weaker than K’nuckles and K’nuckles in turn as weaker than Bubbie, but Flapjack is still capable of fighting against grown adults and holding his own physically, so the difference shouldn’t be too drastic.

• A group of criminals destroy all of Stormalong Harbor in several seconds (S1E5, 21:57)
• A random adventurer lifts and then smashes a boat (S1E9, 17:38)
• A fight within a building sinks all of Stormalong (S1E10, 12:19)
• Random guy tanks a cannon shot (S1E11, 17:38)
• A bunch of people survive being impaled on sticks, including ones through the head (S3E3, 7:39)
• Ponce De Leroy survives jumping into an active volcano (S3E4)

Monsters, Giants,
& Misc.

Flapjack has outmuscled top tier monsters like Eight-Armed Willie and thus can be compared to feats from various other monsters. K’nuckles has also withstood physical beatings from giants. It’s worth noting that certain beings such as Poseidon are depicted as far beyond the main cast, and thus they would not scale to those characters.

• Cammie, a giant monster, shakes an island (S1E4, 4:09)
• A giant punches down the largest building in Stormalong (S1E15, 10:16)
• A guy survives wind that clears the fog from an entire island (S1E15, 19:20)

Weaknesses

Chowder

Jokes about his finale being garbage aside, Chowder as well as the rest of his friends have quite a few weaknesses to note. 

First of all, Chowder’s biggest weakness himself is that he’s, frankly, an idiot. He’s frequently disobeyed direct orders due to not understanding them or done the exact opposite of what Mung asks him, and his overprioritization of food over everything else means that he can fumble quite a bit even on the most basic of tasks. In addition, he’s never really been shown to use his abilities to manipulate the plot the best, at least until he eats the Brain Crumb, at which point he uses them exactly in the way he wants to – to make the show intelligent, but normally he’s just not quite that smart.

Speaking of Mung, his own greatest weakness has to be his pride and ego. He frequently makes big mistakes and says a lot of things that are just outright wrong but runs with them anyway due to said ego and unwillingness to believe he’s incorrect. 

Finally, Shnitzel’s shown a weakness in that the more stuff he cares and damage he takes, he will eventually turn soft, being unable to do even the most basic of tasks. However, it admittedly takes a lot of punishment to reach this state, so it’s likely not relevant to a fight.

Flapjack

_{(Never made it…)}

Outside of obvious jokes about the show getting canceled, Flapjack and his friends have several very notable weaknesses worth covering, the biggest one being that their teamwork isn’t great, and aside from Bubbie they aren’t very smart.

To his credit, Flapjack is occasionally shown to be clever for his age, but he’s still a child and is largely very gullible and impressionable, easily influenced by K’nuckles and other adults. K’nuckles, much more damagingly, is an irresponsible man-child who frequently lies to Flapjack and manipulates him in pursuit of whichever short-term goal he has his sights set on at the time. Oftentimes, he’ll screw both Flapjack and himself over for something as simple as a piece of candy – something that both of them are extremely prone to doing stupid things to acquire.

This brings us to a broader issue where in spite of the fact that they possess some pretty broken abilities, they don’t exactly use them “optimally” in most circumstances. For example, when they had a limited supply of wishes that could have taken them to Candied Island at any time, Flapjack and K’nuckles wasted all of them on pointless things, and then K’nuckles accidentally spent the last one before getting a chance to wish for what they actually wanted. This is also a pattern with things like their story creation; while it is a very powerful ability, K’nuckles ended up using it to put them in a situation that they could not escape without Bubbie’s assistance.

On that note, Bubbie, while much more levelheaded and honest than K’nuckles, tends to have a difficult time pulling Flapjack away from K’nuckles’ influence, as he idolizes K’nuckles and is much more likely to listen to him than not. With that in mind, her ability to reign in the other two is unfortunately limited, though Flapjack does still love and respect her and is willing to listen to her depending on the situation.

Lastly, in terms of specific weaknesses, Flapjack is established to be notably ticklish. K’nuckles, meanwhile, has sleeping complications, hearing loss, arthritis, and poor vision. K’nuckles’ arms and entire lower body are also prosthetic and can be easily detached, leaving him prone and vulnerable.

Verdict

Stats

All things considered the actual physical comparison and stats in this matchup are… Well, not much of a contest. Flapjack can smack 15 pool balls to the moon and back at once, and scales to other characters who have torn up Stormalong Harbor in a variety of ways. More impressively, with reality warping and plot manipulation he can manifest completely fabricated environments which encompass at minimum a moon, and likely a planet as well.

That said, Chowder is able to pretty casually fly to the moon in a few seconds and hit it hard enough to dislodge it from its position. Not only is the speed at which he did this nearly twice as fast as Flapjack’s pool feat, but the actual energy needed to shift the moon within a single frame would be many times beyond baseline planetary, putting even Flapjack’s reality warping to shame with physical stats alone.

This is to say nothing of Chowder’s own reality warping, which allows him to affect his own animation on a much greater scale than Flapjack’s storytelling (as well as survive the animation being damaged or destroyed entirely), interfere with the sun and moon, collapse the space-time continuum temporarily via time paradoxes, and more. In a direct contest of physical might or reality alterations, Chowder’s team clears Flapjack’s team with little trouble.

Arsenal & Abilities

So Chowder dominates stats, but what about their powers? These are toons, after all, so they’ve obviously got a lot going on. But in this regard as well, Chowder has many immediately apparent advantages.

Flapjack, holistically speaking, has roughly three abilities that are actually notable and important. The rest are mostly noise. These are:

1. His regeneration, which allows him to quickly come back from being ripped apart or disintegrated into ashes, scaling off of K’nuckles.
2. His ability to leave his own narrative and manifest new story realities that he shapes himself, as well as return to his own reality afterward.
3. His ability to make wishes via either the Mermaid’s Tears or a wishing well, which grants him a variety of sub-abilities, including erasing people from existence, time traveling, teleportation, and so on.

To his credit, all three of these powers are really strong. His regen actually rivals Chowder’s, given that Chowder can come back from ashes as well, scaling off of Mung. Given his ability to leave his own narrative and manifest new ones that he can then alter at will, he could reasonably leave the story if Chowder were to change the genre or utilize other forms of narrative manipulation, keeping him in the game in that regard, even if his own offensive capabilities in this regard are more limited. Finally, his wish granting is much more extensive than Chowder’s, given that Chowder’s experience with his own wishing well only amounts to wishing for information.

Once you run down that list, however, a lot of additional advantages start popping up for Chowder. For starters, yes, his plot manipulation and reality warping are simply on a higher scale. For another, he and his friends have resisted his own plot alterations and kept their personalities, meaning Flapjack’s ability to alter his conjured narratives won’t allow him to alter Chowder himself in any way. He can BFR Flapjack by telling him that he’s not in the episode. He can fast forward or rewind the episode he’s in, to undo negative consequences for himself and retry the fight with more information. He can turn invisible, which Flapjack has no means of seeing through. The list goes on. Altogether, just like with stats, the chef cooks.

Teamwork, Skill,
& Competence

So if Chowder wins the physical fight and runs circles around Flapjack’s reality warping, what about actual effectiveness in combat? Neither group are traditional fighters in the majority of situations, and both of them are… kind of stupid. So even if Chowder has a lot of advantages on paper, it’s not inconceivable that Flapjack could turn the tide by just being better at fighting than him.

And on some level, this seems reasonable at first glance. Flapjack himself has shown some degree of skill in swordsmanship and physical combat, and on average has been in life-threatening situations more frequently than Chowder himself. He’s also relatively smarter and less tunnel-visioned, especially if we suppose he’s listening to Bubbie rather than K’nuckles.

Speaking of Bubbie, she’s almost definitely the smartest and most level-headed player on the field, and can serve as an effective guide for Flapjack and leash for K’nuckles, depending on the situation. Her ability to manipulate the plot is also more advanced than that of Flapjack and K’nuckles, so she’s a strong counter to many of Chowder’s more dangerous tactics.

That said, it’s here where we get to K’nuckles… and that’s where things start to fall apart. In theory, he’s a more experienced adventurer and combatant than anyone on Chowder’s team… in theory. In reality, most of his stories are exaggerated or outright bogus, and while he offers a lot of good abilities to Flapjack’s side, he’s also by far the least competent character on the field and much more likely to sell than clutch. 

He’s been known to leave Flapjack out to dry over singular pieces of candy, is easily distracted, easily incapacitated by messing with his prosthetics, easily swindled, manipulated, and otherwise leveraged against Flapjack. It also doesn’t help that Flapjack trusts him far too much, and he’s prone to undoing any good advice that Bubbie might provide.

On the other hand, Chowder’s team has lower highs, but also higher lows. Sure, Chowder isn’t as smart or experienced as Flapjack, but he also doesn’t have anyone on his side misleading him the way K’nuckles misleads Flapjack. Sure, Mung might be prideful, but he’s not an idiot in comparison to K’nuckles. Sure, Shnitzel isn’t technically as experienced as K’nuckles or as smart as Bubbie, but his training as a samurai in Tofu Town is better than anything on Flapjack’s end. Neither group could really be described as “coordinated,” but Chowder’s team is simply less dysfunctional. Mostly because of K’nuckles.

Win Conditions

Well alright so the fight is over and Chowder obviously wins. He has pretty much every advantage imaginable, so all he has to do is kill Flapjack by…

…Uh-

Um.

Well.

He could…

He could, like…

…

Uh oh.

Let’s start with brute force. Chowder’s a lot stronger than Flapjack, so he could just hit him really, REALLY hard. Obvious problem, Flapjack can regen from being reduced to ashes. Even if a punch from Chowder would break every bone in his body, he’d be back up in no time. Chowder can breathe fire hot enough to damage the background animation, but even when used on Mung point-blank, all it did was… burn him to ashes. Which Flapjack and friends can regenerate from.

Well, shit, okay. Chowder has a million abilities though, surely one of them would work? Let’s run down the list.

He can tell Flapjack that he’s not in the episode and make him disappear. He did this to Truffles in the show and she poofed away for the rest of the episode. Except this didn’t kill Truffles, she was back in the next episode, he was just sending her away to a different location, out of the story temporarily. Flapjack can return to reality even after leaving his story, temporarily spending time in a white void outside the narrative in between. So even assuming that Chowder isn’t just teleporting Truffles offscreen and is actually narratively removing her, Flapjack could just… come back. The Mermaid candies can also teleport him, so that’s a second counter.

Chowder can change the genre of the story, provided he eats the Brain Grub first. When he did this in the show, he altered the personalities and professions of his friends, for instance making Panini and Endive into stand-up comedians. If he were to just make Flapjack a dishwasher forever, that would be a victory, no? Well, Flapjack’s tears can cancel hypnotic effects and Bubbie’s ambergris can undo madness, so altering his mind to change his personality permanently is out the window. And Chowder’s genre alteration isn’t shown to remove the character’s powers, so even if Flapjack finds himself in this situation, it wouldn’t be hard for him to just leave the narrative and make a new one, thus canceling the tactic entirely.

Chowder can time travel and collapse the space-time continuum via creating a time paradox, erasing people (and reality itself) from existence. That exceeds Flapjack’s regen, since he’s never come back from erasure, so that must be a win, at least?

…Except for two issues. Doing this 1) erases Chowder too, and 2) is not permanent. All of reality and everyone in it were back by the next episode due to classic cartoon status quo. While the exact method by which reality came back was unspecified, there’s no reason to believe that it was anything attributable to Chowder himself. So even if Chowder destroyed the timeline, it would kill both him and Flapjack, and the timeline would likely be back before long, which would in turn bring back both characters. This could hardly be considered a Chowder win by any reasonable standard. Notably, Flapjack’s wishes can also alter time by changing the past, and thus give him some means of fighting back in this scenario regardless.

Chowder has used a pencil to erase the background animation and redraw it, but this was just a scene transition. It didn’t actually erase or otherwise destroy the part of Marzipan City that he erased, just removed it from the frame. He’s never used this method to erase a person, and even supposing that he could do so, he would have no reason to think to try it. Even if he were to eat the Brain Crumb to increase his intelligence, there’s no guarantee he would land on this specific tactic. And that’s assuming it’s valid combat-applicable existence erasure in the first place.

Chowder once made a wish on a wishing well. But all he asked for was information, so it doesn’t really do anything for him that could win him the fight. Not only is there no proof that his wish granting could erase Flapjack or take away his regen or anything like that, he also just wouldn’t have a reason to think of it, given he has never done it before.

Beyond that…? Chowder has historically been attributed with the ability to stop time via pausing the episode. As far as we can find, he’s never actually done this. It’s been on his VS wiki profile since 2019 and has never had a source, and we didn’t find it upon actually going through the show. The closest thing is a scene where Shnitzel interacts with the animation and beats dust out of the screen as though he’s cleaning a dirty carpet. When he does this, the animation momentarily pauses and then resumes when he’s done.

Even generously calling this a time stop, Shnitzel doesn’t actually hurt anyone when he does this, even though there were people onscreen. The animation also immediately resumes as soon as he’s done, so it’s not something that can be applied permanently, to freeze Flapjack in time forever or anything. Chowder would need to resume the episode in order to, well… get on with his life and stuff. At best, it would be a temporary stalling method.

So… Chowder has no win conditions. Not anything that could permanently incapacitate Flapjack, or that he can’t come back from. That’s okay though, he beats the everloving hell out of Flapjack in a straight-up fight, so as long as Flapjack can’t kill him either, he would win the fight regardless of whether Flapjack would outright die permanently.

…Except Flapjack can kill Chowder, can’t he? We skirted around it in the powers section, but he can wish people out of existence – K’nuckles did it with the wishing well, and the Mermaid’s Tears could very likely replicate it as well. Chowder’s regen is good enough to come back from ashes, just like Flapjack, but Flapjack’s wishes give him both physical and temporal erasure. Though Flapjack characters can notably regenerate from ashes, just like Chowder, they couldn’t come back from this wish without K’nuckles undoing it, so Chowder couldn’t either. And unlike with Chowder’s pencil, wishing actual people out of existence is something that K’nuckles straight-up did. The wishes can do that and Flapjack and K’nuckles both have reason to consider it, since they’ve actually done it before.

Sure, Chowder came back from the timeline being erased. But so did literally everyone else in existence, as well as the timeline itself, offscreen and with no explanation. Calling it a regen feat for Chowder would be based on… well, nothing, really. The fact that he was erased in the first place, if anything, proves that an erasure wish would work on him. Likewise, Shnitzel once had a portion of him erased and redrawn by the animator, but never his entire body, so that would be an insufficient counter as well, and would be another anti-feat against erasure.

Chowder could theoretically eat or otherwise get rid of the Mermaid candies – and in fairness, this would be in-character for him, to eat a bunch of candies without needing to know what they do. He wouldn’t even need to necessarily figure out how they work (which is good for him, since he’s probably not smart enough to do that). This would remove Flapjack’s easiest method of making wishes, and likely prolong the fight by a lot. But Flapjack can also make wishes via a wishing well, so in the worst case scenario he could still find a way to get the win-con off eventually, unreliant on the candies.

But more pertinently than perhaps any of Chowder’s own counters is a simple fact: Flapjack and K’nuckles are both morons. They wasted all of their Mermaid candies on pointless stuff and lost their opportunity to get to Candied Island because of it. Bubbie isn’t stupid, of course, but Bubbie specifically refuses to make any wishes on the Mermaid candies herself, due to not wanting to mess with magic. Earnestly, with all this in mind, the best argument for Chowder avoiding the existence erasure is simply that Flapjack and co. would not think to try it.

The fact of the matter, however, is that it’s an option. It’s an option that might take Flapjack a long time to think of. It’s an option that Chowder could make more difficult to pull off, with his rampant eating and superior battlefield control. But it’s an option that would end the fight permanently, the only one that either character has, and that’s what matters. Even if it took him a long time, eventually Flapjack’s two brain cells are going to grind together hard enough for him to figure out what he needs to do.

Conclusion

Advantages:

• Stronger
• Faster
• More durable
• Better plot manipulation and reality manipulation
• Impervious to Flapjack altering him narratively
• Regeneration negates most of Flapjack’s offense
• Overall more competent team, with better teamwork and greater training
• Can fast forward and rewind the animation
• Can turn invisible
• Can BFR Flapjack temporarily
• His show is better (season 3 sucked though)

Disadvantages:

• Can’t kill Flapjack
• Can’t permanently incapacitate Flapjack
• Not impervious to being erased from existence
• Dumbass
• Chowder Grows Up

Advantages:

• Regeneration, while not better than Chowder’s, is good enough that Chowder can’t kill him
• Has enough counters to prevent any of Chowder’s incap methods, such as BFR
• Can kill Chowder via erasing him from existence
• Bubbie appreciation advantage, she is the only sane individual on this team

Disadvantages:

• Weaker
• Slower
• Less durable
• Inferior plot manipulation and reality warping
• Captain K’nuckles is here
• Most of his options against Chowder would prove ineffective
• Lacks direct counters to many of Chowder’s options, like time manipulation and invisibility, requiring him to just sandbag his way through them
• Dumbass

Ultimately… this is a scuffed outcome. There’s no ifs ands or buts about that. Chowder has practically every advantage you can think of – better stats, better reality warping, largely superior powers, and a more cohesive team at his back to make up for his weaknesses. He only really lacks two major advantages, but they’re unfortunately the two most important ones: “can kill Flapjack,” and “cannot be killed by Flapjack.”

Flapjack would get the hell beaten out of him in the process, but eventually he would get a wish off and win the fight that way. It’s the only win condition either of them has, so it would eventually happen even though Flapjack has a potato brain and wouldn’t go for it immediately. I guess it’s fitting for Chowder to get cheesed, lol.

It may be a hu-mung-ous upset, but Chowder can’t do jack or schnit. Not to burst his bub-ble, but even with all his advantages, he just had to k’nuckle under.

_{(ngl we really thought for a while that k’nuckles was gonna lose flapjack the fight, it’s kind of insane that this man didn’t sell this all by himself, he is a complete liability in every way)}