First appearance: S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel · watch it on YouTube
Sprinkles is a soft-spoken halfling gardener and self-described pacifist who walked into the arena armed with friendship bracelets and a firm belief that kindness could win a fight to the death. He faced Nigel Night Louis, an award-obsessed actor, in S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel. Sprinkles’ sweetness hid a secret: something dark lived inside him, and it very much wanted blood. The result was one of the strangest and most heartfelt Deathmatches of the Shadow King’s era.
Story
Sprinkles came through the Grandmaster’s portal into The Shadow King’s throne room in The Dread Fortress and admitted at once that he was “really not a fighter.” He explained that he had made a bet with a friend that he could win with the power of friendship. He spent the pre-fight admiring the pillars and recognizing Nigel from There Won’t Be Blood. He had Nigel sign a grappling hook, and he gave him a red-and-blue friendship bracelet “so we can always remember each other as the bestest of friends.” When the Shadow King blasted both champions with a cannon full of blood and goblin guts, Sprinkles brightly called it “free food… steak tartare.” In the arena, a cold, dying forest, he asked for a trowel and started tending the dead grass.
Nigel treated the fight as an acting lesson. He conjured tickling hands to make Sprinkles laugh, but Sprinkles shrugged them off. When Sprinkles walked slowly in for a hug, Nigel grabbed him by the face and set about “projecting trauma.” Sprinkles opened up about the many siblings who had called him “stinky head,” his battle with acne and the mockery over the hair on his feet. Nigel then magically compelled him to strike. Sprinkles flailed and missed so badly that the Acolytes booed, “You stink.” He started hitting himself in the head (“No, not yet, not yet”). After landing a single feeble punch, he panicked: “No, no, no… I haven’t lost yet.” Under a truth spell Nigel cast on them both, he confessed that a “dark passenger” lived inside him and that he answered her with kindness, because “I don’t get angry. That’s her job.”
Old-lady skeletons armed with purses of Werther’s rose from the ground, and Sprinkles asked Nigel: “Are you sure about this? Do you really want to meet the Dark Passenger?” Then his eyes filled with demonic flame, his bones cracked and stretched, his jaw dropped, and claws pushed out of his fingertips. The passenger tore into Nigel with savage, reckless attacks, wounding both his body and his ego, even after Nigel shoved her into the corrosive kiss of a grandma zombie named Gertrude. When The Box of Chaos crashed into the arena, Sprinkles sacrificed all of his friendship bracelets while a voice screamed inside his head, “It’s worth so much!” The box first threw them back. Then it returned a cursed cloak made from Nigel’s own flayed face, sewn together with those same bracelets. “I’m already cursed,” Sprinkles replied. “I have a demon living inside my brain.”
Nigel then hurled himself into the box, where the shadow inside filleted his skin off piece by piece and he died. The shadow came out wearing him like a skin suit and hit Sprinkles with a filthy, dull toe knife given to it by Danny DeVito, leaving an infected wound. At this point the passenger named herself Melchizedek, the Dark One. She called Sprinkles “my flesh puppet… that pathetic little halfling,” and abandoned him for the “much more worthy vessel” of Nigel’s famous body. Left empty and bewildered (“Oh, gee, what the heck is going on, guys?”), the original Sprinkles simply went back to gardening with Nigel the Goblin. While the two spirits fought inside Nigel (Melchizedek threatened to make Nigel piss so it would “smell like asparagus,” and both spirits were swept away by an avalanche of chunky vomit and stomach acid), Sprinkles grew a beautiful flower field at the foot of the giant corpse. Sprinkles was thriving. Inside the body, Nigel’s childhood self killed Melchizedek. The Shadow King then rained green slime from the heavens and drowned Sprinkles and Nigel together, and the match ended with no winner.
Personality and Abilities
Sprinkles dressed like a waiter: a neatly fold-rolled dress shirt, vest, slacks and dress shoes. He was good-natured to the core. He said he usually won employee of the month for it, and he carried friendship bracelets in many colors. He had once been a production assistant on the Rock’s superhero film “Ack Blattom” and had also worked with the Rock on Tooth Fairy. He was proud of his hygiene (“all kinds of soaps”) and believed that “the kindness that we can pick up along the way is easier when it’s spread.”
Underneath it all was the dark passenger, whom he called “my friend” and described as someone who had made a bet with him. He hinted at a long-ago mistake: “I made a mistake… a long time ago. And now I’m living with it.” He believed that losing the bet would mean losing himself. In her raging form, his body stretched into a clawed monster that fought with relentless, reckless fury and a gift for wounding minds as well as bodies. Melchizedek later revealed her true form as a nine-headed dragon-snake and claimed to have been an angel scorned from heaven. Sprinkles’ gear included a trowel the Shadow King summoned for him, the grappling hook Nigel signed, and the cursed cloak of Nigel’s face from the Box of Chaos.
After the fight, Sprinkles’ final words urged anyone carrying “something real dark inside” to “live through spite,” turning anger against the part of themselves that says they can’t, and kindness outward to everyone else.
Relationships
- Nigel Night Louis: His opponent. Sprinkles was a fan and his would-be best friend, while Nigel tried to “corrupt” him into a great performance and ended up fighting his dark passenger for his own body.
- Melchizedek: The dark passenger living inside him, who got angry so he didn’t have to and who finally left him for a more famous host.
- The Shadow King: Conjured Sprinkles’ trowel, mocked him for not fighting, and drowned him in slime at the end.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Covered his ears to protect his innocence. When he offered her a hug, she exploded into a rant about what she’d like to do to the Shadow King, from feeding his face to Doug to squishing what Doug pooped out.
- Nigel the Goblin: His gardening partner while the two spirits fought inside Nigel’s body.
Memorable Quotes
- “I made a bet with a friend of mine that I could win this fight with the power of friendship.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “It’s because the dark passenger that resides inside me scares me a bit, so I have to counteract it with kindness.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “She doesn’t want me to know who I am because I made a mistake… a long time ago. And now I’m living with it.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “Sprinkles has been hurt physically, but I have been hurt emotionally.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “I’m already cursed. I have a demon living inside my brain.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)
- “Live through spite. Not to spite anyone else, but to drive all of your anger to the part of yourself that says you can’t do it.” (S4E11 — Beatdown — Sprinkles v Nigel)