ORB

"ORB"
The Venture Bros. episode
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 11
Directed by	Jackson Publick
Written by	Doc Hammer
Original air date	August 10th, 2008
Episode Chronology
← Previous "The Lepidopterists" Next → "The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together (Part I)"
List of The Venture Bros. episodes

ORB is the eleventh episode of Season 3 and the overall thirty-seventh episode of The Venture Bros.

It is the first part of the multi-episode third season finale, as the events in ORB directly lead into the The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together (Part I) and the show's writers acknowledged that the finale could be considered a three-parter.

Plot

In this episode a lot of the past is dug up, literally. Billy Quizboy finds a mysterious message hidden in an old episode of the Rusty Venture cartoon that leads him to a buried box next to Brock Samson's room. The contents of the box divulge the secrets of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, the death of Dr. Jonas Venture Sr., and the entire purpose of why Brock was assigned to protect the Venture Family.

The Original Guild

A flashback reveals that The Guild of Calamitous Intent existed during the Gilded Age as merely The Guild, and had been "founded to protect and serve humanity's best, not to be 'a guild of calamitous intent.'" A cabal of Guild members, including Colonel Lloyd Venture (Rusty Venture's great-grandfather), his bodyguard Eugen Sandow, Fantômas (grandfather of Phantom Limb), Aleister Crowley, Samuel Clemens, and Oscar Wilde, had devoted their lives to "perfect and protect" a mysterious artifact known as the Orb, which had been crafted over the centuries by Archimedes, Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Galileo, and other great minds in history. Colonel Venture's group eventually came into conflict with a splinter faction of the Guild and had to flee with the Orb aboard an airship while being pursued by Nikola Tesla and the Avon Ladies.

The Guild members had different ideas about what to do with the Orb: Colonel Venture and Oscar Wilde both wanted to use it "for the good of mankind," while Fantômas argued that the Guild should be the ones to "decide what is best for mankind." When Crowley tried to seize the Orb for himself, Fantômas and Colonel Venture put aside their differences to throw him out (literally) and then agreed to use the Orb against Tesla. However, before Colonel Venture could figure out how to work the Orb, Sandow did what "must be done", believing it for the best of humanity that the Orb remain unused. It is purposely left unclear in this episode whether Sandow destroys the Orb or kills Colonel Venture to prevent its use.

Connections To Previous Episodes

• The police officer who enters the Studio 54 bathroom to check on Dr. Venture and Billy Quizboy is the same one who attempted to apprehend The Monarch for jumping the NYC subway turnstile in The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay.

Trivia

• The Frick (official name The Frick Collection) is an art museum located in the upper east side of Manhattan, New York City.
• The Guild's logo, as seen in the zeppelin interior, contains both the sword from the contemporary OSI logo and the dragon from the contemporary Guild of Calamitous Intent logo, possibly suggesting that both organizations share a common root origin in the Guild which at some point split into the two institutions that they are today.
• Dr. Venture first introduces the concept of a "Doctail" on the show when he has Dean serve him a Red Mocho Kooler.